Anger Burger

I vaguely remembered that my friend Yuko was a big Korean food fan, and her husband, Sol, confirmed this.  The deal was sealed.  We were going to venture somewhere the Viking had expressed a distinct disinclination¹ to go, and for good reasons: they specialize in soup made of tofu.

But not before we both separately told them that Los Angeles’ Koreatown had the largest population of Koreans outside of Korea.  And then we told them again.  And again.  Because it is the only fact we know about Koreatown.

But first, even Vikings love pickled spicy things.  Good for everyone’s digestion.

Ahhh, there she is.  Soondufu, the sizzling, homemade fresh silken tofu soup riddled with seafood and meat bits and rich, spicy sauce.  You crack an egg in her and she looks into your soul like the baleful eye of Smaug.

The boys ordered a meat pile to preserve their vital male fluids.

And then the baby stole everyone’s rice when they weren’t looking and carefully applied it to her face and shirt.  We discussed making her a shirt with a pattern that mimics rice so this isn’t such an issue in the future.  Clothing makers, please get on this.

In the cab to the restaurant, the elder brother declared (after the rest of his family had napped) that he hadn’t napped because, of course, he was not tired.  Less than 10 seconds later his head fell forward and he remained that way while his dad extracted him from the cab, carried him into the restaurant, nestled him into a chair and then ordered a feasting-table’s worth of food.  After two hours of eating and traveling, back at the apartment he declared “I’M HUNGRY!”

The aftermath is gruesome.  The ladies working at So Kong Dong were so enamored with the baby that they kept bringing extra little things for her, including packets of seaweed snacks.  They loved her.  Each time she dropped a stainless steel chopstick they’d run over with another one, laughing at the joy of it.  I swear, it was like we brought the baby Dalai Lama into a Buddhist restaurant.  Ah, the holy baby has dumped her tea all over a pile of napkins!  We are blessed.

Wait a minute.  I think they’re onto something.

Mike said the truest thing of the night, which was “Be careful, or those kids are going to be child stars.”   Whereas all I could think was, “How hard would it be for me to make that outfit for myself?”

¹ “Odin sier nei eller dø!”

We have friends in town, which is a nice change.  A few years ago I went to Houston for two weeks to visit my friends Leesa and Aaron and I was unexpectedly smitten with the city.  Part of my mental preparation had been years of Leesa’s stories on what a hot, hopeless place Houston was, but when I was there it was the only two weeks of the year that were sunny, mild and bursting with tropical greenery.  There was a point at one of the million of the city’s parks/museums that I ran shrieking, barefoot, through grassy rose gardens festooned with gazebos, surrounded on each side by skyscrapers, shouting that this was some kind of perfect Logan’s Run utopia made real.  In that moment, Leesa forgot what a damp hellhole Houston is for the other 99% of the year and agreed: the city is capable of true beauty.  I went home and she stayed, immediately returning to humidity, giant cockroaches and hurricanes.

Los Angeles isn’t quite the jungle-planet nightmare of Houston, but it’s always good to have visitors, and to see the city through their eyes.  Our visitors from Seattle went from low-60′s temps and drizzle to perfect, breezy 73° L.A. in under three hours, and their glazed expressions reflected that.

For them, it’s already hotpot season.  Here it is and shall ever be corn-on-the-cob season.

And strawberry season.

Note the half-lidded eyes.

The baby was not as easily impressed.

Until she noticed the hummus.

And little girls with ice cream.

Man, that sounds way sadder than I meant for it to.

I remember my mom making these when I was a kid, and I remember thinking that they were fucking impossible.  But, replace “fucking” with whatever powerful adjective I had at my six year-old disposal, which was probably just “super”.  I didn’t learn the f-bomb until I was maybe nine or ten?  And I learned if from my friend Marika.  HI MARIKA!  She’ll probably never read this.  But her sister does.  HI ANNE!

What was I saying?  Checkerboard cookies.  Turns out they are the best of the Fancy Pants cookies because the dough itself is very difficult to screw up.  Now that I’ve said that about it, it’ll probably fail for everyone.  The checkerboard part is also very easy, but the more obsessive-compulsive you are, the more precise the cookies are.

This is a Maida Heatter recipe and to be totally blunt, if you like chocolate, you have to own a copy of her Book of Great Chocolate Desserts.  There is no better book of bottom-line, time-tested, classic chocolate recipes.  The only downside is that her recipe descriptions are like reading an IKEA instruction manual minus the drawings.  She will tell you precisely how to separate your dough into two equal parts in a way that is so strikingly inefficient that you’ll re-read the recipe three times trying to understand what she’s saying.  But she will tell how you to hold the spatula while you are doing it, goddamn it.

The checkerboarding itself is good for a rainy afternoon – it’s the kind of bored play-dough activity that is made especially pleasing by having hot cookies to eat when you’re done.  But making perfect 6″x6″ squares cut into perfect 1/2-inch strips is somewhat maddening, bored or not.

Luckily we’re just making cookies and not rockets.

If the checkerboard part is entirely a turn-off, it’s also easy to make spirals (roll thin sheets of each flavor, lay one on top of the other and roll into a cylinder and then slice) or artistic strata (alternate layers of color just with your fingers, mash everything into a long rectangle and then slice).  The truly ambitious could make some pretty cute panda cookies.

And the taste?  Comfortably unchallenging.  There’s not so much cocoa in the chocolate part to make them chocolate-bombs, and the white part is lightly scented with almond extract.  You’re not making these cookies because you want to taste something exotic — don’t get me wrong, they taste great.  I love them, in fact.  It’s difficult to keep from eating all of them once you’ve started.  But the real reason you make them is because they make your six year-old brain go TOTALLY BONKERS.  Dudes, it’s invisible tea party time.  Except you’re a grown up now and you can have a real tea party.  Put that in your bottle and suck it, six year-olds!

Maida Heatter’s Checkerboards
i’ve totally rewritten Heatter’s instructions and added more salt, but otherwise the recipe is unchanged from her book.  i highly recommend the extra salt – I think it’s what makes these slightly more interesting than just spritz or shortbread cookies.  which are good cookies!  but these can handle the very slight complexity that extra salt adds.

8 oz. (2 sticks) of unsalted butter, softened
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. almond extract
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 tsp. kosher salt
2 3/4 cups flour
2 Tbsp. baking cocoa (not Dutch process)

1 egg, beaten and set aside for gluing the cookie together with

• In a bowl, beat the butter until smooth and very soft.  Add the sugar, and beat for a few minutes until the butter and sugar has lightened a little.  Add the vanilla and almond extract and mix just until incorporated.  Add the flour and salt and mix until the dough forms into a smooth, dense, play-dough like mass.  If you are using a hand-beater, this may never happen because of the little beaters.  If it seems like it’s taking forever, dump the dough onto a clean work surface and knead by hand until play-dough like.

• Split the dough into two equal parts (either weigh them or do your very best eyeball guess) and mix the cocoa into one of the parts.

• Form each of the flavored doughs into perfect 6″x6″ squares.  I can walk you through doing this exactly, but basically: use a ruler, push out the dough on plastic wrap and don’t be afraid to use your fingers to push everything into shape.  To form really crisp edges, use the flat of the ruler to push up against the sides.  Take your time, the dough can handle a lot of abuse.  Put the first one on a plate and put it in the fridge while you do the second one.

• While the second square refrigerates, cut the first square into perfect 1/2-inch strips, again using the ruler.  You will have exactly 12 strips.  Do the second square.

• To make the checkerboard, alternate strips to use a total of twelve (making a 3×4 stack).  Make a second stack with the remaining twelve.  Or make a giant cube out of 24 strips for all I care — do whatever you want.  But!  Be sure to glue each stick to its neighbor by brushing a little eggwash on.   Carefully wrap your stacks up in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before slicing.  The dough stacks can also be frozen in this state so that you can theoretically bust out an awesome tea party on short notice.

• Of course the Mad Hatter version of the above is to not measure anything and make it as screwy as you can.  That works too.

• Slice into 1/2-inch thick slices, which will make exactly 12 cookies.  Or, in my case, you’ll get a mysterious 13th cookie.

• Bake at 350° for 15 – 20 minutes, or until the edges are golden.

First randomly selected person is Rita Joiner, who has NEVER HAD CHAI, so I think perhaps we can all agree a great wrong has today been righted.

And here we have Henry, who has, I believe, entered all the giveaways to date and now finally won himself something for his tireless effort.

And there you have it.  For the rest of you, I’m sorry, but you know: comfort yourself by calling Tipu’s at 888-506-CHAI and request a sample at the very least.

And to the winners: Henry will be getting the slow brew since he requested it and Rita didn’t voice a preference (and the instant is better for a chai n00b anyway).  Huzzah!

I was wondering to myself: how can I ingest more of this Tipu’s chai I’ve gotten myself addicted to?  And then, the angelic choir: cinnamon bread.  Except, not cinnamon.

Hold your horses about the giveaway, I’ll get to it in a second.  Or just scroll down now, I’m not the boss of you.

Anyway, I used the flawlessly great King Arthur Flour Cinnamon Bread recipe, replacing the cinnamon with instant chai.  Also, during the mixing process I added about a cup of chopped cherries.  Oh, and I replaced 1/2 cup of the white flour with whole wheat.  And I used a pan somewhat larger than what they recommend, hence the lack of the nice big, lofty sandwich loaf shape.

But whatever: it was totally radical.  I ate half of the entire loaf in one day and then was too full to eat dinner, which is as good an endorsement as any. I can only clutch my abdomen in gastronomic woe and wonder what kind of awesome french toast this would have made.

So anyway, you wanna have some of this chai?  The kids at Tipu’s were happy that I liked their product, and unbidden by me sent two 4oz. packs to do with as I pleased.  I debated for a long time about keeping the Slow Brew stuff, but I actually feel too guilty.  I don’t know where this misplaced guilt comes from.  I’d steal candy from a baby, but I wouldn’t keep free chai?  It’s true.

So, for those of you not familiar with the rules of these lands:

1) You may only comment once.  If you comment more than once I will delete all but one of your comments.  It’s not personal, but more than one comment will throw the odds of the random number generator.  AND THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE TWO.

2) I don’t care what you say – but!  I do want you to state if you have a preference for either of the chai varieties.  If you both have the same preference (or none) then I will randomly choose who gets what.

3) Contest closes at 8pm PST on Monday night – any comments made after 8pm will not qualify.

4) Anyone may enter, dad.

5) Leave a valid email address in the field that asks for an email address, not in the body of the comment.  If you don’t respond to my follow-up email within 48 hours if winning, I’ll give the chai to someone else.

So that’s all she wrote.  Don’t thank me, thank the internet.  And Tipu’s.  But mostly the internet, without whom we would never have met each other, you and I.

***UPDATE FROM VARADA FROM TIPU’S:

Very clever use of the Instant chai in the bread. To your fans who don’t end up winners, anyone who calls can talk me into sending a little sample of the Instant Black Chai as long as they hold out. We’re making more – as fast as we can! So anyone who wants to try it before they buy it, call me at 888-506-CHAI. LOVE your blog! You SO get our chai!!!

Man, these guys are on the Google alert ball.  Call Varada and get a free sample either way.  And just to be clear: I’m not associated with Tipu’s in any way; my first taste of their chai is from a package I purchased, and I’m getting nothing from them for my adoration.  I just genuinely love their product, and they seem like enthusiastic, friendly people.

*****CONTEST IS CLOSED!*****

Stand by for winners!

I threw out my back in the shower this morning, so, in case anyone wonders why I have one shaved leg and one hairy leg, there’s your story.  This doesn’t have anything to do with salsa.  I took a Flexeril.

I have a strange relationship with salsa.  First of all, it’s rough on the ol’ Crohn’s.  All those vegetable skins, I guess.  Secondly, jarred and “fresh” salsa from the store all contain sodium benzoate, which I can taste because I have some kind of pointless supertasting skill just for sodium benzoate.  If god has a purpose for each of us, then mine is to detect the presence of preserving salts, I guess.  The last thing is that salsa is always so much better in a restaurant than when made at home.  This¹ always intrigues me.

But!  Mike the Viking used to use his powers of pillaging for delivering Mexican food from a restaurant in Olympia that had the best salsa ever, in spite of or perhaps because of the rest of the food sucking balls.  And he told me: they roast it.  Their secret was an even ratio of red bell peppers to tomatoes, and the peppers all get roasted until black and toasty.  The part I can’t bring myself to comply with is that they used canned tomatoes, which is insane, but also makes sense considering that tomatoes don’t really exist in the Pacific Northwest.

My recipe still isn’t exactly right – I think I tend to under-roast the peppers out of fear of over-roasting them, and I suspect the real secret may be in using canned tomatoes (baby jesus forgive me), but it’s getting much closer.  Also: the liquid fill line in your food processor is there for a reason.

Restaurant Salsa, Almost Perfect

3 medium sized tomatoes (or plain canned tomatoes if you’re feeling nutty)
2 red bell peppers
1 hot pepper of choice – I use something super mild like a poblano, pasilla or Anaheim
1 whole yellow onion
3 cloves garlic
1 – 2 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. sugar
juice from 1/2 a lime
large bunch of cilantro, stems and all

• Line a cookie sheet with foil and broil the shit outta those vegetables, everything but the cilantro.  Because my broiler has hotstpots, I have to monitor the sheet and pull out items as they start to blacken and rearrange the rest to keep them browning.  So much depends on your own broiler, the distance from the broiler, the size of the vegetables, yadda yadda, that I can’t give you any kind of guidelines on how long this will take.  You’ll have to just hover around the kitchen, use your nose to smell for when they start to blacken, and stop them before they actually char.

• Oh!  And don’t peel them!  Leave the char on!  I fought this several times, insisting that they did not in fact leave all that burned skin on, and Mike insisted I was a fool.  He was not wrong.

• Take note that both the onion and the tomato have a higher water content, and may not readily brown – this is okay, we’re just trying to un-raw them.  When all the peppers are done browning, remove the tomatoes and onions and garlic as well, no matter what they look like.

• Throw everything into the food processor all together and pulse quickly until it is the texture you want.  Also consider putting about half aside when it’s chopped rather large and then processing the rest until practially smooth , mixing the two parts together when you’re done – this will make a nice thick salsa, but with some large texture still in it.

• If you dawdle taking photos, the whole thing will puke liquid all over.  Just so you know.

¹ Want to know why mashed potatoes from restaurants always taste so good?  Butter.  And cream.  And salt.  In levels that you would never knowingly put in your body.  EVIL CACKLE!