...And, there you have it:

School starts on Monday, and we've got to go to a department bbq tomorrow, so tonight seemed the best time to have one last, special, summer dinner (well, at least until next week when we have the three-day labor day holiday to contend with). So, at the market today we spied some lamb chops on sale and snapped those up. I'd seen a Bobby Flay recipe online a couple of days ago that looked interesting, and so had an idea of what to do with them.

Now, I think Bobby Flay is a bit of a primadonna pretty boy, but, he does do fantastic things with fruits and different chilis. While I much prefer Jamie Oliver's or Alton Brown's overall cooking styles, I am consistently tempted by Flay's more accessible recipes.


This time around the sauce for the lamb called for dried cherries, cabernet sauvingon, and stems from mint plants. Forutnately, we have no shortage of mint, so this was easy. After reducing the wine and simultaneously rehydrating the cherries, I added some mint leaves and sugar, and a slurry of corn starch. I whacked the lamb chops on a griddle and then topped them with the sauce and a little feta cheese for color. I threw some cous cous together with roasted cherry tomatos and mushrooms and fresh parsley for a side and steamed some corn in water and tarragon vinegar. An accessible shiraz tied it all together (like a nice rug does for a living room...).


Anyway, Mina seemed to like it...

Koshien (甲子園) 2007 Championship Game - An Instant Classic:

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the start of Japan's National High School Baseball Tournament, which came to an end yesterday. Last year's final game saw Komadai Tomakomai and Waseda Jitsugyo play 15 innnings of 0-0 ball, followed the next day by another 8 innings of scoreless action before Waseda won 1-0 in the 9th inning.*

In this year's tournament a number of games were tied going into the 8th or 9th innings or went to extra innings, and one contest that had to be replayed due to the 15 inning rule, so all in all it was an excellent tournament.

The final pitted Saga Kita High School, of Saga Prefecture, against Koryo High School of Hiroshima Prefecture. Neither team had ever won the tournament before and both were somewhat surprising entries in the final game. Koryo took a 2-0 and then a 4-0 lead heading into the bottom of the 8th inning before their pitcher allowed Saga Kita to load the bases on two singles and a walk. Koryo's pitcher walked in a run, making the score 4-1 but keeping the bases loaded. Saga Kita's next batter stepped to the plate and blasted only the 2nd grand slam home run in the championship game's 89 year history to put S.K. up 5-4. While the top of the 9th saw Koryo attempt a move from 1st to 3rd on a sacrifice bunt, resulting in the batter and runner both being called out, Saga Kita's pitcher was able to close it out on a strikeout. Highlights of the game, inning by inning, can be seen here: <http://koshien.asahi.co.jp/highlight/data/20070822/1/20070822_1.html>

Two years in a row now we've seen incredibly interesting, competitive tournaments at Koshien. While the end of the tournament signals the end of summer, watching this game just makes me look forward to next year.

* At the National Tournament Level in Japan a game that is tied after 15 innings is halted and replayed completely the next day.

Another Recipe that Turned Out:

I got home a little early on Friday and cooked dinner. We had some leftover andouille sausage and I had been thinking all day about how to use it with some shrimp that I had seen at the store. I suppose the paella I cooked the other day (see a previous post) was still in my mind and I so made some spaghetti with a paella twist.

I steeped some saffron in white wine and sauteed some sliced garlic along with the sliced sausage. I deglazed the pan with the saffron white wine and put in some clams to steam. When the clams opened, I added 1/3 pound of shrimp and some broccoli. Finally, I added the spaghetti, which was just short of al dente, and let it finish cooking in the sautee pan, soaking up the fragrant, very colorful broth. Finally, a little pecorino romano cheese and a mix of chopped herbs (flat leaf parsley, marjoram, and green leaf shiso) went on the top and I served it up.

Simple, full flavors. I really enjoyed this dish and hope you do to.

One Problem with American Politics:

It seems like we have been hearing news about who is running, who is not running, who is raising the most/least funds, this, that, and the other thing about the 2008 Presidential Election since virtually the day after the 2004 election. Members of our House of Representatives virtually never stop campaigninng and fund raising. It has made me wonder when they have time to do their jobs... Hillary Clinton has spent the last 8 years serving as junior Senator from New York, but all that time has been running for President and even had time to write an autobiography. As has been noted, if she was writing a book, was she really concentrating on the needs of New Yorkers?

Be that as it may, this post is really about how the 24 hour news cycle and developments in transportation and communications technologies have conspired to obsolete a portion of the U.S. Constitution. Term lenghts are stipulated by Article 1, Sections 2 and 3 for Representatives and Senators, and Article 2, Section 1 for the President.

The framers considered 2 years to be a reasonable length of time for representatives to hold office, but given travel times, risks, and costs in the late 18th century, one has to imagine that the framers considered that representatives would spend at least 75-80% of their term in Washington. Do we believe that our representatives spend this high a percentage of their time working in Washington now? My own feeling is that one of the reason we have no statesmen of the stature of Clay, Calhoun, Hughes, Wilson, or Roosevelt, but only politicians, is that our leaders have no time to do their jobs and lead, but spend all of their time campaigning and fundraising.

My feeling is that we need to reconsider the term lengths we have for our legislators and President. Doubling House terms to 4 years, lengthening the President's term to 6 years, and changing Senatorial terms to 8 or 9 years seems to me like it would allow our representatives time to learn their jobs, and then concentrate on those jobs for a reasonable length of time before having to stand for election again.

Maybe, just maybe, that would allow us as citizens material other than sound bites to work with in making our decisions as to who to vote for.

More Baseball:

Congratulations to Barry Bonds on his 756th home run.

Question: Can he, A-Rod, or anyone else catch the world record holder for home runs, Oh Sadaharu (王貞治) at 868?

Incidentally, Cal Ripken, Jr. passed Lou Gehrig's consecutive games streak at 2,131 and then went on to break the world record of 2,215 consecutive games, which had been held by Kinugasa Sachio (衣笠倖雄). In a classy move, Kinugasa was at the game where his world record was broken.

Koshien (甲子園):

My favorite sporting event in the world, Japan's National High School Baseball Tournament, began this evening (Wednesday morning in Japan). I have never really been able to explain the reason I love this tournament so much. There is the combination of the single elimination format, the single, classic location, the pageantry of the bands, and the purity of the competition. Each of these reminds me of a different sporting event in the U.S. You would have to imagine March Madness, with the entire tournament played at the old Boston Garden, minus the money, marketing, and other issues surrounding college sports in the U.S., but still with the enthusiasm of the school-based crowds and marching bands, and kids playing for the pure love of the game. It is simply incredible. There is live streaming video over the internet available at <http://koshien.asahi.co.jp/live/> Just click the button in the middle of the page that says "Live". Games start around 8:30 pm eastern time.

The first time I stepped into the Koshien stadium for a game, it was simply electric. I remember it was the hottest August day you can imagine, and rice farmers from Miyagi Prefecture, who were simply amazed that I could speak Japanese and give them a decent reason for being there to watch Sendai Ikuei High School (one of my favorite teams from the days when I couldn't read Japanese because they wear an easily recognizable gray uniform), plied me and my friend full of cold beer and fried chicken. Our goal was one beer for every run Ikuei scored, but since they won 15-2, we didn't quite make it. It was good fun trying, though.

Being back in the U.S. is great, but there's almost nowhere I'd rather be on a hot August day than at Koshien with a cooler full of cold beer, some pistachios, and a fuji apple.

2046

Continuing with the movie related theme I seem to have going here (if one can have a theme going after only one post, that is)...

Coming back from Japan, one of the things about America I have rediscovered is the good, old fashioned public library. Mina and I have been going there to borrow books on CD for some of our trips of late, and also to borrow movies that we are trying to catch up on. This week, I borrowed Wong Kar-Wai's "2046", which I had actually seen 4-5 times before, but always with Japanese, rather than English, subtitles.

Wong Kar-Wai's movies are always such incredible visual pieces, and "2046" is no exception. The use of color is very interesting, with backgrounds changing from green, to yellow, to red and some character's clothes never failing to match the color of the curtains. Why? I have no idea, but when the curtains in the same hotel room change color from scene to scene, there must be a point. Perhaps it is to signify the passage of time?

Anyway, I thought that Tony Leung was good in a reprise of his role in "In the Mood for Love", and both Gong Li and Faye Wong were excellent in their respective short parts. As many reviewers have said, though, Zhang Ziyi stole every scene she was in. Now, I think Zhang Ziyi can do no wrong, but her performance in this film was incredible; we feel her love and her loss and her disdain at only being considered a piece of meat for sale. Her humanity is undeniable.

Was she as good as Faye Wong was in Chungking Express (easily my favorite Wong Kar-Wai film, and a top five Asian film)? No. But, it certainly was one of Zhang's best performances, along with her young girl in love in "The Road Home" and her resistance fighter in "The Purple Butterfly".

So, all in all I still think that "2046" was an incredible visual piece, but that it didn't quite work as a continuation of "In the Mood for Love". I never quite understood what the point of Kimura Takuya's Japanese character was, especially why he was the narrator, nor did I have anything invested in his character's relationship with Faye Wong's hotel owner's daughter. Boiling the movie down, it was the nuanced relationships between Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi and Gong Li that were intriguing, making the relationship between Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung in "Mood" seem all the more tragic.

The Bourne Ultimatum:




Spoiler Alert: I'll try not to spoil it, but if you've not yet seen the movie, you may want to skip this post.

Mina and I went to see the Bourne Ultimatum on Friday night. I've been a fan of Robert Ludlum's books since my dad leant me "The Chancellor Manuscript", probably some time between 8th and 10th grades. The Bourne novels are the first of his books to be adapted to films in quite a number of years ("The Rhinemann Exchange", "The Osterman Weekend", and "The Holcroft Covenant" were made into feature films in the late 1970s and early 1980s, while "The Bourne Identity was a TV mini-series starring none other than Richard Chamberlain, the King of the Mini-Series).



In any event, The Bourne Ultimatum. First, I really enjoyed the way that the movie opened, with the first stanza explaining the time, at the end of The Bourne Supremay, between Bourne's meeting with Neski's daughter and his phone conversation with Pamela Landy in New York. This, I thought, was a clever use of time and aided in the pacing of the movie. Bourne's continuing search for himself takes him from France, to England, to Spain, to Morocco, and finally to the United States as an unstoppable force.



I also liked the development of Julia Stiles' charachter, Nicky Parsons. Rather than introducing a new foil for Bourne, she hints to us that there is some history between them prior to his amnesia, but it is a history that remains buried; Nicky doesn't fill in the gaps and we never know whether Bourne remembers. The characters' final two scenes together are poignant. First, as Nicky cuts and colors her hair in preparation for a life hiding from the CIA's hunters, Bourne sees her and is obviously reminded of Marie having done the same thing 3 years before. Their good-bye and Nicky boards a bus in Tangiers was, I thought, painful for both of them, if for different reasons.



So, Bourne finds himself and another group of unprincipled CIA agents is brought down. The story of a man who has lost and refound his identity and parts, if not all, of his memory has been told. Will there be a 4th installment? While further novels exist, they are Eric van Lustbader stories that continue where Ludlum left off. For me, the story ends here.



As a final aside, IMDB states that a movie version of The Chancellor Manuscript, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, has been announced for release in 2008. Fantastic. The best Ludlum book, in my opinion, I will absolutely be in line to see it on opening night.

UPDATE: Last night, I caught the 2nd half of The Bourne Identity on TV and noticed a couple of interesting points. First point: In the closing stanza as Ward Abbott goes before a Congressional oversight committee and blows off Treadstone as a training program that didn't pan out, his next talking point is on Blackbriar. This turns out to be Treadstone 2.0 that is at the focus of The Bourne Ultimatum. Point 2: What are Clive Owen's assissin's last words to Jason Bourne? "Look at this. Look at what they make you give." What are Jason Bourne's last words in The Bourne Ultimatum? "Look at us. Look at what they make you give."

Excellent continuity across the gulf of 3 movies. I have to wonder what else is in there that I have missed.

Paella:

Mina and I were in the mood for seafood this weekend, and so I decided to make some paella. In Japan, I made it from time to time, always taking full advantage of the fresh shellfish and free range chicken that was available there. Over there, I was always disappointed with the chorizo sausage available, but thankfully Syracuse has a decent selection of andoullie and chorizo available.

Anyway, paella, plenty of saffron, some chicken, some shrimp, some mohogany clams from Maine and some andoullie. Yummy. This time I used a Jaime Oliver recipe that eschewed baking for stovetop treatment along the lines of a risotto. Fantastic.

Alongside, I threw together a basil sangria from a recipe in Food & Wine's August issue and for desert we had an apple juice granita from the same magazine. Another fabulous meal. Tomorrow, Gyros a la Alton Brown!