Anger Burger

It helps if you sing it like the Mothra song:

Jambal-eye-AH!  I can’t make jambalaya without singing it, and now neither can you.

Anyway, jambalaya is a classic comfort food and a perfect fridge-cleaner.  In my case there was some Portuguese sausage and some chicken thighs sitting around getting old.  I doubt this recipe would be bad with tofu, but I have to admit it’s really a meatitarian pleasure.  Well, that’s not true: if you are a fishitarian, it’s fantastic with shrimp and some very firm fish chunks added right at the end of cooking.  Delightful.  JAMBAL-EYE-AH!

Also of mild embarrassment: this is a Emeril recipe.  I can’t help it, the man knows how to make a solid jambalaya.  It’s a good a recipe as I’ve found, reliable and tasty.

I should note that I always seem to pick the wrong rice.  Maybe I don’t know enough about Louisiana cooking, but the Japanese rices I always have turn to mush before the recipe is done.  No matter, it still tastes fantastic and is even better the next day when all the liquid gets absorbed and turns it into a thick bayou porridge.  Wait, that sounded gross.  Don’t listen to me.  Do as I say not as I describe.

Do Not Say “Bam!” Jambalaya
serves two people twice or four people once

1 Tbs. Creole seasoning, recipe follows
2 Tbs. olive oil
1/4 C. chopped onion
1/4 C. chopped green bell pepper
1/4 C. chopped celery
2 Tbs. chopped garlic
1/2 C. chopped tomatoes
3 bay leaves
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp. hot sauce
3/4 C. rice
3 C. chicken stock (or water) (or vegetable stock)
1/4 C. ketchup

12 medium shrimp, peeled
4 oz. chicken, diced (or Quorn bits)
5 oz. Andouille sausage, sliced (or any sausage)
Salt and pepper

• In a saucepan, saute the onion, bell pepper and celery in the olive oil until softened.
• Add garlic, tomatoes, bay leaves, ketchup, Worcestershire and hot sauce just until combined.  Add rice and stir to coat, then slowly add the 3 C. of chicken stock/water.  Add the Cajun seasoning.  Allow to come to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook until rice is just tender (al dente), about 15 minutes.
• Add the meatses/whatever and allow to cook/heat through, about 10 minutes longer.  Adjust taste, adding more ketchup for more brightness for example.  What?  It’s good.
• Serve with vague unease that you’re eating a regional cuisine incorrectly.

Cajun Seasoning
embarrassingly and unfortunately referred to as “Emeril’s Essence” online

2 1/2 tablespoons paprika
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons garlic powder
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon dried thyme

Everyone in Los Angeles and Korea already knows that KyoChon makes the best fried chicken in the world, but I shrugged it off because I’m an unfortunate combination of stupid and lazy.

Well, that’s all temporarily resolved: today I discovered that KyoChon Chicken, a tiny little Koreatown miracle, is the best chicken I’ve ever eaten.  This is going to be a problem.

There’s a certain Asian eating establishment aesthetic that has been much discussed in recent years and will gain nothing additional by my personal views.  However, I do want to add that I like it.  Along the same lines as Pinkberry, KyoChon is clean and cute and somehow cutting-edge and retro at the same time.  I didn’t get any photographs of the interior of the store (I initially left the house to get a residential parking permit, so a camera seemed unnecessary), but The Gastronomer did, so in accordance with my aforementioned laziness I’ll let her do the legwork for me.  Mike remarked that the combination of design aesthetic and music (club-mix K-pop) made him feel, happily, that he was inside an episode of Cowboy Bebop.

After quickly looking over the menu, we decided to settle on an order of legs (4) which KyoChon charmingly calls “sticks” (someone needs to contact KyoChon corporate and make sure that take-out orders of legs are referred to as “get-away sticks”), fried original style (garlic soy), and one side order of pickled radish.  This timidity was purely due to financial reasons – fried chicken isn’t super-cheap, and the order plus a soda and tip ran us just under $15.  Knowing now that it would be THE BEST FRIED CHICKEN I’D EVER EAT has since made me re-categorize that $15 as an incredibly good deal.

Anyway, we ordered and then settled down to wait.  I knew it would be a while since I’d read that the chicken is largely made to-order, and the place was totally empty (!?) save for two folks that dropped in to grab call-in orders before us.  Still, I was oddly touched when the girl working brought us (apparently customary?) tiny servings of vanilla soft-serve to tide us over while we waited. We also didn’t know it yet, but they gave us an extra piece of chicken, gratis, as well.

When ready, our bag was cute and tidy and small (much smaller than that picture looks, I should have used something for scale) and filled my car with the most outrageously, startlingly fantastic odor.  It was agony driving home.

Though we live a short distance away, by the time we were home our stomachs were gurgling menacingly and I couldn’t even be bothered to take a decent photo of the un-crated goods.  The chicken was taped into a demure little paper box and the pickled radish was sealed into a mass-produced plastic container.  None of this mattered.  All that mattered was getting into the box as fast as possible.

And what a hallow moment, this moment I captured – forever frozen in time – of the seconds before I would taste the finest fried food I’d ever encountered.  Like good french fries, Korean chicken is fried twice and only very thinly coated, so that it seems, as you are eating it, as though it might even be baked.  There is almost no noticeable grease on the exterior, and the rough bits that appear to be breading are actually small chunks of garlic.  The above piece doesn’t demonstrate as well as others did, but the legs are slashed deep with a knife before frying to ensure even cooking.

The flavor is slightly sweet, pretty salty and mildly garlicky, but the texture is the moment of epiphany.  Each piece is sort of crispy-chewy, like chicken jerky, but somehow remains moist and fresh.  There’s no danger of chicken juice and oil running down your chin as is the case with even the best American fried chicken.  KyoChon is such a revelation of meat-eating, I’m not even sure I could articulate to a vegetarian what the experience is like.

I commonly find one piece of fried chicken to be satisfactory (I think I might have a wonky gall-bladder or something, because more than one piece of anything fried upsets my stomach to the point of discomfort) but after three pieces of KyoChon chicken I sat there, half amazed at my own gluttony and half-hysterical for more more more.  The pickled radish was is an inspired side for the salty-richness of the chicken, and I crunched my way through the entire container in an effort to calm my appetite down.  This is ridiculous!  I felt like I’d been drugged.

Even now I feel, well, good.  It’s been about an hour and I certainly do not feel like I ate three pieces of fried chicken for lunch.  I feel light and satisfied.  I feel like I could eat it again for dinner.  This, as already noted, is going to be a problem.

I think I might be Hawaiian.  There’s no other explanation for gravitating toward a diet of Spam, raw fish, rice and anything cooked down in teriyaki sauce.  And proper Hawaiian shave ice?  Jeebus have mercy.  I’m still working on the poi (I like it alright as a condiment, but a whole spoonful makes me gag), and while I have a surprising idiosyncrasy of disliking fried foods, even I must brake for the Hawaiian masterpiece of deep-fried corned beef hash.

I try not to do it too regularly, but at least once a month we have “Hawaiian Dinner” which consists of teriyaki Spam (at least I get the Lite Spam, which is lightened purely by replacing some of the pork with chicken and tastes nearly identical), some steamed rice and a bunch of green onion and dry seaweed sprinkled over the top.

Hawaiians also love Portuguese sausage, a mild, paprika-heavy sausage that wouldn’t taste out of place in everything from a BBQ plate to a smorgasbord.  In other words, its a tasty if unremarkable sausage.  If you’re going to eat a forcemeat, I’d vote Spam.

But Portuguese sausage has its own appeal, particularly if cooked down in homemade teriyaki sauce (equal parts sugar to soy sauce and a dash of sake).  I had a conversation that went like this:

me: “You know, anything is delicious cooked down in sugar and soy sauce.”

Mike: “Now you sound like an Asian.”

Anyway, its not exactly healthy but its not terrible either, and the more I eat like this the more I have a inexplicable homesickness for a place I have never lived (… which would be Hawaii, keep up).

Sometimes just losing myself in a blog for a few days will cure this, though this last time I’ve waded through dozens of pages of the ever-delightful The Tasty Island and instead just feel worse.  So I made rice, a fried egg (topped with Japanese spice mix), teriyaki Portuguese sausage and some takuan (pickled daikon radish).  And I close my eyes and pretend the sound of the neighbor’s plastic sheeting snapping in the breeze is a palm tree rustling in the trade winds.

Hi.  Over a year ago my friend Mike Peterson made this ad and was nominated for an Emmy as a result:

And then, a few months ago, an online ad service called SuperPages made this spot:

To be fair, he didn’t win the Emmy, so, I guess they only steal from the nominated.

Blah blah blah.  I can’t even cool off enough to write coherently.  Is coherently a word?  Appears so.

Also the problem: the heat is bringing the crazy to the surface.  It’s a long and dramatic story (as these things always are) but last night marked the second time this month that police were called on our upstairs neighbor and her fiery ex-boyfriend.  She’s young and possibly surprisingly inexperienced with these things, but looks like Mama Sunday is gonna have to sit her down and give her the honey, he keeps showing up because you keep talking to him talk.

Last night, however, was an exciting clusterfuck the likes of which can only happen in Los Angeles.  At 3:30am I heard a banging and some garbled blustering and I looked out the back of our building to see Bambi (as we call him – it’s a long story) ineffectually kicking her car and shouting into his cell phone while looking pointedly up to her apartment:

“I’m kicking your car so you’ll let me in and give me a chance to explain myself!”

This poor guy.  I swear.  Needless to say, he heard me laughing.  What I didn’t expect is that he seemed embarrassed, quieted and then scampered off into the night.  And then I saw that he had left a single white rose behind.

Moments later a helicopter flew over, low, a sound I’ve come to ignore.  It circled.  And circled some more.  And then the brightest light I’ve ever experienced blasted through our extra-thick curtains and lit the room like an atomic blast.  Spewing forth profanities the likes of which I desperately wish I could remember today, I ran to a window and peered out.   Indeed — the ghetto bird, as we call in these parts — was circling our building!  My goodness!  What a crime car-kicking must be!  I had no idea.

Sitting back on my bed, I miserably considered how long short it would be before I had to get ready for work (I had an extra-early day; Tuesday is “book day” at work, when we place all the brand-new titles, an effort that requires us to be at work as early as 6am, as in today’s case) when I distinctly heard a man talking right outside my bedroom window.  I pulled back the curtain a little and startled two men standing within inches of my window.  I dropped the curtain.  A light flashed over the window and I reached for my baseball bat (hi dad!).  They quieted, and a few minutes later someone pounded on the locked outer door of our building.  By this time another tenant had emerged, and we all crept forward to see two somewhat bewildered policemen at the door.

For some reason all I could think to say was “Really?”

“Can you tell us what’s happening here?” a cop said.

There was an awkward pause.  “I was hoping you’d be able to answer that,” I said.

I explained to him the comparatively unremarkable events of the evening (Bambi kicked the car and ran off) and they asked which car was hers (the one with a single white rose next to it, fellas), and then rather casually asked, “So, did you hear any gunshots?”

“Gunshots!”

It later was agreed that two entirely coincidental dramas were unfolding in my neighborhood, one of insignificance (Bambi sad) and one of dubious significance (unknown gunshots).  It wasn’t until today yet another neighbor reported that a SWAT team had come silently trotting down the street with large riot guns held to their shoulders (and following them a news crew) that I finally, really, truly understood that I live in Los Angeles.  Hollywood, really.  A finer community of drama queens there simply cannot be.  You see, no one was shot.

So, on four hours of sleep, a full day’s labor and 95 temperatures, I come to the subject of dinner.  And decide: cantaloupe.  Cantaloupe for dinner.  And maybe some cheese.

The thing about putting your two weeks’ notice into work is that at first you’re all, yeah, take that, the man! And then you realize you have another two weeks to work.

I also mistakenly believed that my notice would signal a sudden and suspicious decline in available hours, as has happened with previous employment engagements.  Basically, once they realize you’re not going to be around, they stop putting in the effort in keeping you around.  Jokes on me!  The current job has decided to work me as much as they legally can.

This and the 90+ daily temps has meant that my kitchen time is limited.  But!  Guess whose kitchen is staying clean for a record run?  This guy!  I mean lady!  Well, gal.

A few days ago I remembered that for months now I’ve wanted to make my own gravlaks¹ and what should I find at the local market but cheap salmon.

Okay, confession time.  It was cheap.  By which I hope you read totally fucking ghetto.  As in, I should probably scoffed at even paying the $3.50 a pound that I did pay.  Because frankly, at that price I was doing them a favor.  This salmon was in fillets so thin it was like long salmon pancake, and had a mysteriously greyish tone to it.  Or rather, just not the ruby red we’ve come to expect (which is fake half the time anyway, but still).  The thing is, I’m from the Pacific Northwest and I know chum salmon when I see it.  The label claimed it was “silver salmon” which is slang for Coho, but no one trying to sell it calls it “silver” — the name Coho means quality and attracts buyers.  Chum salmon, on the other fin, is so low quality that fishermen can’t sell it.  Or they can.  For about $3.50 a pound.

Anyway, who cares.  I bought a pound of silver chum salmon and made gravlaks.

Mmm, pumpernickel.

And, well.  It turned out how you’d imagine $3.50/lb. salmon might turn out.  The flavor was fine, though not exceptional, the meat itself sticky and mushy.  I wouldn’t serve it to guests, but it does the job.  And I feel pretty confident that the next gravlaks I make will be delightful.

It’s a very, very simple effort to make.  You don’t need to make much, you can make a single serving for all anyone cares.  The idea is just

• 2 parts sugar
• 1 part salt
• some pepper
• maybe some fresh dill

That’s it for the recipe.  A pound of salmon requires about:

1/2 C. sugar
1/4 C. salt
some pepper
maybe some fresh dill

And you cover the fish in the sugar and salt all mixed together, tightly wrap it in plastic wrap, put in a dish deep enough to catch the inevitable juices and let sit for at least 24 hours (two or three days is even better).  There’s some argument as to whether the fish needs to be weighed down with something, and I’m lazy so I say ‘meh.’  You can.  Or not.  I’d recommend turning the fish at least twice a day, just to participate in the curing process on some level.

When it’s done, the flesh will be quite firm.  It needs to be rinsed clean and patted dry before slicing, and it should only be eaten for about two or three days.  And any naysayers who bunch their panties over parasites: A) commercial freezers kill the parasites and 99% of the salmon you’ll buy has been frozen (bets are off for dockside/streetside fishsmongers), B) the parasites are visible, which means that you’ll see actual maggots in the fish and C) the parasites are killed by the human digestive tract.  Relax.  You’re an animal.  You evolved to eat this stuff.  You’ll be okay.

¹Yes, the spelling is correct – with a Norwegian in the house, it gets the Norwegian spelling.

I think that establishing a home is more than just renting an apartment and handing over that heart-stopping check (actually owning a home is so far beyond my comprehension that I won’t bother making comparisons here) – it is that, yes, but also the following:

• Collecting a full quiver of carefully-chosen nicknames for your neighbors.
• Recognizing which heinous yapping dog lives in which apartment.
• Knowing the shadiest (or driest, depending on your latitude) path to the local library.
• Knowing where the closest, reliable, cheap-ish genre of restaurant is.

In this instance, I bring this up because we have our local favorite Japanese restaurant, one we are already so capable at mindlessly ordering at that I’ve forgotten time and time again to take photos while I’m there.

Also needing explanation: a habit of ours is to name a restaurant after something the business serves.  It helps with memory (how many Asian-fusion restaurants have the word “ginger” in the name? LOTS) mostly, but also suits our generally antisocial ways.  So anyway, in this case we named the Japanese restaurant after an item it serves – and oh yeah,  we also renamed that item.  We’re really intolerable as human beings, I know.  So meet Squeaky Cheese, the restaurant and the food:

This reminds me of an acquaintance of mine that once criticized my boyfriend at the time by saying of him: “He’s so why-be-normal, you know what I mean?”  Maybe you don’t.  What she meant was: he was quirky (read: bad), and he was self-awarely quirky (read: double-bad).  As a point of fact, she was wrong; I would call a Hot-Topic addict why-be-normal, but he was genuinely weird.  There’s a reason I’m still friends with him and not her.  My point was: we call it Squeaky Cheese (on the menu it is called Mochi Cheese) because we couldn’t for the life of us remember what it was called, and then we couldn’t remember what the restaurant was called.  Welcome to the tangled web of our brains.

Jesus, this post is going to be all over the goddamn place, and for that I am only vaguely sorry.

I’ve since discovered that the restaurant is called Sake House Miro, and that their entire menu is pretty much delicious.  It’s not the cheapest Japanese food I’ve ever eaten, but the quality has always been high and they have $4.95 giant Sapporos on Monday and Tuesday nights, and that’s pretty much all you need to know.

One of our favorite sushi rolls they make is the Happy Roll, a salmon, yellowtail, tuna and green onion roll — no “spicy sauce” drizzles, no fried bits, no mega-mouth bites.  A perfect fish roll on all accounts.

And here!  At the very opposite end of the spectrum!  The Papa Roll, which I find delightfully terrible, embarrassingly delicious and totally absurd.  It’s a potato croquette and crab roll, which to those who don’t speak Japenglish means deep fried mashed potato roll.  Ha-haaaaaa!  And then topped with a mayonnaise-based drizzle just so you cannot ever possibly dig yourself out of the shamehole you just crawled into.  Frankly, I’d be offended if you didn’t order it.  It’s like going to In-n-Out and not ordering something animal-style.  You’re in SoCal!  As the neo-hippies say, be here now!

One of my favorite things about Squeaky Cheese is that they serve everyone a dish of free cucumber spears dressed with mildly spicy red miso sauce slopped over it (I’ve watched them serve it, the sauce comes out of a keg-sized plastic tub with a plunger-top).  Even today, when the cucumbers were bone-dry from being prepped far, far too long ago it was still eye-gougingly addicting.

But, ultimately we come back for the Squeaky Cheese.  Pockets of tofu skin are stuffed with mozzarella cheese and broiled until crispy/greasy, chewy, hot, salty and without argument the ideal drunky-snack.  There’s no getting around it: it’s the Japanese version of fried mozzarella sticks.  Which is to say: now you know how a rad thing gets radder.

Hi!  I am here.  I am still recovering from illness and working too hard, que sera.  I wrote a very long, very depressing post about economics (true!) and then deleted it.  On purpose.  Fuck that garbage,  I realized.  If you, dear reader, had written it I’d be all, “This shit sucks.”  And that is the essence of my self-critique program.

Instead, this pathetic place marker.  Thanks for dropping by!

Love,

Sunday

Item the first: I have the flu.  I don’t want to type the s-word, but we’re all thinking it.

Item the second: No food sounds especially good to me today, but for the peculiar exception of chocolate chip cookies?  Why?  I don’t know.  Wait, yes — my mom mentioned them on the phone the other day.  Anyway, I can’t wait for the New York Times recipe to ripen¹ to a grand old age, and besides, my vulnerable-sicky-baby-cookie-need demands the cakey sub-species of chocolate chip cookie.

A while back I tried the Alton Brown’s “The Puffy” cookie and found it disgusting.  I’m trying to remember wh — oh yes, the butter-flavored shortening.  Oh hell no.

After some despondent, sore-throat, lethargic, achy, sneezy, drippy Googling, I discovered a pattern: instant pudding in the mix.   Pudding cookies.  I hesitated, sensing another path down the road that led to The Puffy.   But then again, pudding mix is essentially just flavoring and food starch, so maybe it all makes sense.  And then again maybe I have the flu.

Honestly, though, these were pretty good.  The recipe came together easily (it’s frankensteined from about four other recipes).  The real test is to determine if they soften up a little overnight, since cookies are often crispy when straight from the oven (and cooled) but then soften as they humidify in their air-tight storage containers.  I’m uncertain that I am making sense any longer.  I’ll just give you the recipe.

Chocolate Chip Cookies, Immature Style
makes about … 40? what?  who?

2 sticks (8 oz.) butter, softened
2/3 C. sugar
2/3 C. brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 eggs
1 4oz. (small) box of instant vanilla pudding

2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 1/2 C. flour
1 1/2 C. semi-sweet chocolate chips

• Preheat oven to 325°.

• Cream the butter with the sugars until pale and fluffy.  Add the vanilla.  Add eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl to keep things moving along.  Add the package of vanilla pudding.

• Add the flour, baking soda and powder and salt.  Remove from mixer and hand-stir in the chips.  Or use the mixer, whatever, who are we kidding.

• Scoop small balls onto the cookie sheet (I did 12 per sheet) and flatten just a hair to make a kind of hockey-puck of dough.  Bake for about 20 minutes or until very lightly browned.  Remember these are cakey cookies; they are pale and immature, just like you.

• Eat several straight from the pan and get a tummy-ache.

¹ If you’ve never heard of the infamous NYT chocolate chip cookie (CCC) recipe (also called the Jacques Torres chocolate-chip cookie recipe), be advised: it garnered nearly the same fervor that the admittedly-delightful-but-not-exactly-news No-Knead Bread did.  In the NYT CCC recipe, the dough is aged for several days in the fridge before use.  They are fantastic, though most people I know eschew the expensive and sort of redonk chocolate fèves in favor of plebeian chips.  If you have any foresight and freezer space at all, you can have these complex, flavorsome cookies any time you like.  If you’re me, you have neither.

UPDATE: The Next Day
They are delightful!  Still a little chewy around the edges, rather than crispy, and chewy/cakey in the middle.  I can’t even taste the fake-vanilla flavor of the instant pudding, they are just tasty.  I realized too late, but a long time ago a vegan pal of mine made these vegan cookies that tasted EXACTLY like Chips Ahoy CCC and I freaked out, asking her what the secret ingredient was.  Turns out it was a tiny pinch of cardamom, of all things.  It was the unidentifiable flavor of “manufactured cookie” that I pretended to loathe but secretly loved.  If I had put a pinch of cardamom in these CCC, Immature Style, they would taste exactly like the Chewy Chips Ahoy.  I hope my sister is reading this, because she knows what I’m talkin’ about.

• This isn’t so much a pet peeve as a relaxation of a pet peeve: now that Independence Day is over I don’t have to wade through so many stupid strawberry and blueberry recipes.

• On the subject: Wouldn’t all the bloggers and 4th of July bakers just lose their minds if science invented a second blue-tinged fruit?  Only a very few of us could survive the riots.

• This could be just me and just Hollywood, but if you just came from the gym – not just a little yoga sesh, but an actual, purging gym workout – change your damn clothes before you go shopping at the grocery store.  I don’t want to stand next to you anyway, but in a place of food worship?  It’s fucking disgusting that you’re picking out bananas when your shirt is dripping liquid that just excreted from your body.  This reminds me of when I worked at a cafe and a group of cyclists would come in every Sunday morning after having pedaled something like 20 miles, and they’d all peel damp bills from a wad they’d shoved into their spandex and try to hand it to us.  I’m sorry, sweat might be clear, but it’s body juice.  It’s no different than saliva or pee or any of the other fun ones as far as I’m concerned.  Which means that when you’re standing in Trader Joe’s, head-bopping to your iPod tunes while your soaked tank top leaks next to the fresh hummus, all I can see is a giant pile of urine walking around.

• Margarine haters.  Some margarine is terrible, yes, but some of it is pretty good and it actually has benefits not found in butter, such as softness when cold.  Is it a class issue?

• Okay, I’ll admit it: I kind of don’t get BBQ.  I mean, it’s an alternate method of heating food.  I get the outdoors part, but I don’t get the hysteria.  I keep reading this “I can’t wait to BBQ!” or “Thank goodness it’s BBQ season!” and “Please Lord God, let me BBQ today or I will kill a single human being every minute until I can!”   Hey, buddy, take it easy.  Here’s a frying pan and a gas range.  Relax.