Two American Classics (Pot Roast & Chicken and Dumplings):

When I lived overseas, one of the most interesting questions that came up was always, "What is American food?" When you think about it, Italian, French, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, German, all of these different ethnic cuisines are pretty easy to identify. But, what's American? We eat all of the above cuisines withouth thinking about it and have "Americanized" versions of them all. The question, though, of what's truly American was always an interesting one for me to think about. The easiest answers are barbecue, for which there is clearly not a non-Americ

an alternative, and Thanksgiving dinner. A little thought, though, and a few other things come to mind: fried catfish, hushpuppies/cornbread, crabcakes, etc.

This weekend, though, I had in mind to make a good old-fashioned pot roast for Mina. She'd never had it, and with the weather turning colder it seemed like just the ticket. Unfortunately, she was feeling kind of sick on Saturday, so I didn't get to the supermarket until a little later on Saturday than I usually do. Without 4 hours to do the pot roast, I had to come up with something on the fly, and decided on another great American dish: Chicken and Dumplings. I'd actually never made it before, but it was simple, and a fantastic stick to your ribs kind of meal.

I had 4 chicken thighs that I salted and peppered and then roasted in the oven at 375 F for about 45 minutes. In the meantime, I sauteed some onion in butter and then added flour to make a roux. In went some carrot and celery along with some herbs (sage and rosemary) and some chicken stock and white wine. Once the stew had formed, the chicken went back in. The dumplings were just bisquik and milk (the basic recipe for biscuits). I just dropped balls of the dough into the stew and let them steam to finish.

Sunday, I had time to do the pot roast, so just braised it in my crock pot. When the meat was falling apart tender, I strained the cooking liquid and reduced it by 2/3. Right at the end I mixed in a little heavy cream to make a fantasic pan sauce/gravy.

These two dishes were examples of classic, simple, American food. Not too heavy, but hearty. Hopefully Mina liked them, and hopefully the pictures do them justice.

SSO and the Eroica Trio:

Mina and I had tickets to the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra's season opening concert this evening, which featured the Eroica Trio doing Beethoven's Concerto for Piano, Violin, and Cello in C Major (Op. 56), or the "Triple" Concerto. I had only ever heard this concerto on a live CD as performed by Daniel Barenboim, Itzhak Perlman, and Yo-Yo Ma with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, but had heard that it is one of the least performed of Beethoven's catalog because it is so difficult to find either three top virtuoso soloists who are willing to work together as a team or a trio that is technically proficient enough to really handle the piece. I was curious to see 

what a world class trio like the Eroica group could do with it.

My impression was that this group was good, but not great on this very difficult pie

ce. They have become famous for performing it with various orchestras, but I was left with the feeling that this fame may come more from the novelty of there being a group that focuses on this concerto rather than their actual proficiency with it. The violin part (Susie Park) was played very, very well, and was the clear winning part of the piece. The piano (Erika Nickrenz) was quite good, if a little timid at times. The cello (Sara Sant'Ambrogio) part, however, was likely a little out of range. The liner notes to the piece indicate that it is written to stay in the cello's high register so that the instrument doesn't get lost between the violin and piano, and this may account for the tone problems that were (at least to my unprofessional ear) apparent. When the trio played a tango for their encores, all of the issues I had with their sound on the Beethoven disappeared. Perhaps that piece is just too much?

The concert was iminently enjoyable, however. I like to hear groups that challenge themselves and that seem to be having a good time doing so. The Eroica Trio shared smiles with each other, with the conductor of the SSO, and with the audience throughout (especially when the audience erupted in applause after the 1st movement...something that happens way too often at SSO concerts...)

The SSO part of the concert prior to the intermission was well performed. The Star Spangled Banner was a nice touch to the beginning of the season and their renditions of Shostakovich's Festive Overture, Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain (which reminded me of the movie score to Midway), and Borodin's Polovtian Dances were all spirited, well rehearsed, and full sounding.

All in all, this was a nice opening to the season. Hopefully there will be other high points to report as we go through the year.

Post Comprehensive Exams - A Return to the Kitchen:

With my comprehensive exams in the rear view mirror (actually, I won't know whether I passed for another week or so, but the tests are over, anyway), I have had some time to spend in the kitchen and have had a couple of good dinners. I recently got the October issue of Food & Wine magazine and put together the Baked Orecchiette with Pork Sugo that was featured. Think baked ziti, but rather than that mass produced buffet lunch staple, this was just a fantastic dish, full of rustic flavors.

To start, brown off about 1 pound of meaty western style pork ribs, and then sweat a mix of diced onion, carrot, celery, and garlic in a cast iron dutch oven. Deglaze with about 1 cup of dry red wine and add a 14 oz. can of diced tomatos and a sachet of thyme sprigs and a bay leaf. Return the meat to the pot and reduce the liquid by about half. At this point, add enough chicken stock to just cover the meat. Cover up the pot and simmer for 1.5 - 2 hours. Once the meat is tender, remove it from the bone and shred it in a food processor. Use an immersion blender to chop up the vegetables in the liquid.

The final step is to boil about 1/2 poind of orecchiette pasta (medium shells or farfalle would also work) for about 5 minutes (the package I used suggested 11 minutes to al dente, so you are cooking the pasta only part way). Mix the pasta with the soup and the shredded por

k and pour it all into a casserole and top with shredded parmesan cheese. This goes into a 375 degree oven for 15 minutes or so, or until the cheese is golden brown and delicious. I drank part of a bottle of a South African Cabernet Sauvignon with this dish.

For dessert, we had found some fresh raspberries on sale and so I decided to make a ch

ocolate lava cake that had berries inside rather than chocolate. A super-rich dessert, but the raspberries added a brightness that most lava cakes sacrifice for decadence. Not only was this a 

delicious dessert, it looked nice too!

Scallops and Chinese Egg Noodles:

Here's an interesting dish. We had some scallops in the freezer and some dried Chinese egg noodles in the pantry, so I whipped together a sort of Asian fusion pasta. The scallops were pretty simply seared with sea salt and black pepper. For the noodles, I chopped up some parsley, green onions, and garlic and made a sauce of lemon juice, olive oil, fish sauce, and cilantro. I topped it off with some lemon zest for color and brightness of flavor, and we had ourselves a really nice, easy dinner. I went with a California Sauvignon Blanc with this that set off the brightness of the sauce nicely.

Tempura:

Mina is a pretty amazing cook. She usually writes about the recipes she really likes on her own blog, but the other night she made tempura and it was so good I decided to put a picture and description here.

The selection included mushrooms, pumpkin (actually, buttercup squash, but it is the closest thing we can find to Japanese kabocha pumpkins at a reasonable price), kaki-age (a mish-mash of sliced onion and carrot), and shiso leaves. Along side she had some marinated and fried beef strips. Bowls of white rice and tempura dipping sauce completed the meal. We had ice cold beers with this dinner, but I really wanted a nice, cold sake. One of these days I will do something about that jones.

In any event, this was the first time Mina had ever made tempura for me. Hopefully it won't be the last!

An Amazing Dinner - Chicken with Spicy Plum Sauce and Focaccia with Tonnato and Anchovies:

My reader knows by now that I take a chance now and then when I cook. While I am usually pretty excited about the things that I cook, there is once in a while a meal that I am really surprised by, a combination of flavors that is new, unexpected, and just a real treat. This weekend's chicken dish was one of those. This was another Food & Wine magazine recipe, slightly modified to fit my pantry and Mina's tastes for spiciness.

The chicken is remarkably simple. I sauteed about 1/8 cup of diced red onion in butter, then added a black plum that I had chopped into 1/2 inch chunks. The plum breaks down, and at that point, I mixed in 1/8 cup of Thai Sweet and Spicy Chili relish and a tablespoon of dijon mustard. All of this went into a food processor, and that was the sauce. I grilled up some chicken thighs and slathered on the sauce.

The tonnato sauce for the focaccia is made with anchovy filets, capers, roasted red peppers, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, and mayonaisse all whacked together in a food processor. A little olive oil on the bread and a slice of red pepper and another anchovy filet on top, you have a little side dish. Just a lovely, fresh flavor.

Together with this I had a Camelot Pinot Noir. Normally, I find this wine a little weak, but I trusted the guy at the wine store who said this was a good wine to go with plums. Pretty decent, if not spectacular.

The food, though. Wow. If only I can do this well again next week.

2nd Anniversary Dinner:

We stopped into the Wegman's supermarket on Tuesday night to look for a suitably special meat selection for our anniversary dinner and saw a couple of strip steaks that were just about the perfect size and at a decent price.

In thinking about what to do with these, I wanted something that was simple enough so as not to overpower the perfection that is a nice steak, but also something that would be a good mixing of our American and Japanese cultures. What I found was a recipe for Chimichurri sauce, a light, flavorful steak sauce that is popular in Argentina, that I modified to take advantage of some Japanese ingredients that we had in the pantry.

Chimichurri is usually made with white wine vinegar, parsley, cilantro, garlic, onion, and lime juice. I substituted rice wine vinegar, shiso for the cilantro, and kabosu juice (kabosu is somewhat similar to yuzu for those familiar with these asian citrus fruits), and what resulted was a nice, sparkley sauce that helped cut through the richness of the beef (and the egg, as pictured).

To go with the steaks, I sauteed some mushrooms in garlic and olive oil, Mina made some dinner rolls, and we had a nice salad. A nice California zinfandel topped the meal off.

2 Years:

Today was Mina's and my 2nd Anniversary. Time certainly flies, there's no way to put it otherwise. I knocked off the studying early and came home to cook a steak dinner for the two of us that turned out pretty nicely, if I do say so myself (photos and recipes over the weekend; please be patient, dear reader).

The past year has been one of all the ups and downs that I guess you expect in married life, and probably on or two that you don't. Mina had a couple of surgeries on her hands and minor as they were, it still had to be scary for her to go through that in a foreign country. Still, the carpal tunnel syndrome she seems to have picked up from her days as a computer engineer seems to have been relived.

I look at her talking on skype to her mom and sister and recall my doing so almost weekly in Japan and realize that it's really all about family, and I am glad I have mine.

Pizzas (Again):

I was watching a recent Wine Spectator Podcast about matching wine with pizza and realized we hadn't had a homemade pizza in a while. In fact, the last really great pizza we had was on our recent trip to Japan, where we had two really incredible pizza experiences. Most people might not think of Japan as a pizza mecca, but from my point of view they do an incredible job on pizzas with these incredibly thin crusts, pay careful attention to using only the best toppings, and never overload the pizzas. Add to that what seems to be an incredibly loose legal code where open flames are concerned, and you get a wood fired pizza oven in even the smallest local pizza joint. I don't have one of those, but it doesn't stop me from trying to make that crispy, thin crust pizza that I love so much. Anyway, we had a pizza lunch at a little place on a side street in Shibuya, and then my brother- and sister-in-law took us to a fantastic place called La Piccola Tavola in Eifukucho, which apparently has quite a reputation. Here is a Japanese blog posting about it with some pictures: http://blog.goo.ne.jp/fujisawamix/e/7c8c72916cb60f6c8edf9e6228a28217

Anyway, I am always trying to replicate that thin, crispy crust, and this time, I got closer than I ever have. One of the pizzas is something I would call a sausage carbonara pizza (it resembles a recipe for sausage carbonara pasta that I found in a Jamie Oliver cookbook, I think). Brush a liberal coating of olive oil onto your pizza crust and top with shredded asiago cheese. Next comes your sausage; I used hot Italian chicken sausage. If you have a pizza stone, heat it in the oven at 450 for 10 minutes or so, then slip the pizza in. About halfway through your cooking time (6 minutes for me), pour one scrambled egg over the pizza. When the crust is done to your liking, remove the pizza from the oven and top with some freshly cracked black pepper.

The second pizza I made was a pretty traditional Margherita. I brushed some olive oil onto the crust and topped with a thin layer of tomato sauce. I followed this with a little asiago cheese and some fresh, shredded mozzarella. When the pizza comes out of the oven, top with torn basil leaves and, if you like (I do), a torn up slice of prosciutto. Don't let the pizzas sit around too long, though, or all your hard work in rolling out a sublimely thin crust will be lost!

It was hot today, so I went with a chilled rose from Italy with these pizzas. The one I picked up was a Centine 2005 Rose, which is a blend of sangiovese, cabernet, and merlot (http://www.banfistore.com/product.php/catID/4/prodID/11). I found it a nice option for the price. It was crisp, stayed out of the way of the flavors on the pizzas, and has a relatively low 12.5% alcohol content, which makes it nice for hot summer nights when you might want to have more than...2 or 3...glasses...

Turkey Leg Osso Bucco (Adapted from Emiril Lagase and Epicurious.com):

I usually go to the supermarket without a clear plan of what I want to cook for the weekend meals. Mina and I maintain a reasonably well stocked pantry and have 15 varieties of herbs growing on the balcony, and this allows me to arrive at the store and create menus in my head based on what looks good in terms of meat, fish, vegetables, and fruit.

This week I saw some turkey drumsticks and a turkey back that were pretty reasonably priced and I remembered seeing this take on Osso Bucco on Emeril Live a few months or more back. The forecast was for thunderstorms all afternoon, so this seemed like it might make for a good Sunday dinner.

The recipe is relatively simple. Chop some onion, carrot, celery, and garlic. Dredge the turkey legs in seasoned flour and brown on all sides. Sweat the vegetables and deglaze the pan with some white wine. Add a can of tomatoes, some thyme and a bay leaf, and return the turkey legs to the pan. Add some chicken or turkey stock to the pan and cover, placing the whole thing in a 350 degree oven. Braising takes about an hour, but be sure to check the level of the liquid every 15-20 minutes, adding more stock as necessary.

In the meantime, prepare a gremolata of chopped parsley, lemon zest, and orange zest to top the dish with when serving. 20 minutes prior to serving, add a cup or so of Orzo pasta to the pan (it looks like rice, but is pasta). When the orzo is al dente, the meat should be falling off the bone and ready to serve. I macerated some strawberries in balsamic vinegar and honey and served those as the dressing for a simple salad.

Right back at you with Cornish Hens (or, as my uncle would remind us all, Baby Chickens):

So, a couple of weeks ago at the supermarket cornish hens were on sale. Whenever I can get a pair for less than $6 I usually jump at the chance because they are pretty versatile and usually make for dinners that look as good as they taste. Anyway, I found an interesting recipe for Cornish Hens with a Maple-Mustard Glaze on epicurious.com and gave it a shot. This is an incredibly easy preparation and would be equally good on oven roasted chicken thighs/breasts/legs, turkey, etc.

For the glaze, mix 2 tablespoons of maple syrup, 1.5 tablespoons of butter, 1 tablespoon of dijon mustard, and 1 teaspoon of dried thyme in a small saucepan, simmer, and whisk until the butter has melted and the glaze has come together. Preheat your oven to 350 (f). Dry off the bird(s) and season inside and out with salt and pepper. I chopped up some mushrooms, onions, and mixed these with a little more dried thyme and stuffed the birds for a little added flavor, but that is optional. Set your timer for 50 minutes, and put the birds in the oven on the middle rack. Baste them with the maple-mustard glaze every ten minutes. At 50 minutes, insert a thermometer into the deepest part of the thigh muscle and continue to roast until the internal temperature hits 175 (f). At this point, remove the birds from the oven and let them rest. The carry over heat should push the temperature of the meat to about 180.

I split the birds into quarters and served them with mashed potatoes and corn bread (half a recipe from the side of the Quaker corn meal container, plus a teaspoon and a half of dried thyme) with mushroom gravy (from a simple roux and some homemade mushroom stock) and a side salad. The skin of the birds was incredibly flavorful, with a nice balance of sweetness from the maple syrup and spiciness from the mustard. The thyme in the background really tied the dish together, however. My wine for the evening was a 2004 Altos las Hormigas Malbec from Mendoza, Argentina. I thought it did nicely in terms of playing off the thyme flavor that I had used as a central component of the birds and the mushroom gravy.

Gnocchi:

I was in the mood for some simple, classic flavors the other night and had recently picked up a package of gnocchi at the supermarket, so I decided just to serve it with a simple marinara with some herbs. This time I made the sauce from scratch, sauteeing some garlic and red pepper in olive oil, adding a can of tomatoes (crushed by hand), some oregano and thyme, and a little sugar. Once those flavors had come together a bit, I added some white wine and a few basil leaves and let it simmer away while I put together a salad. When the gnocchi was just short of cooked, I added it to the sauce and then finished with some shredded basil leaves, a little asiago cheese, and a slice of prosciutto. Very nice, clean, simple flavors.

I had a glass of a Spanish granache along with it that was excellent for the $7 that I got it for. Mina already threw the bottle away, though, so I will have to get the name of it when we visit the wine shop on our next shopping excursion.

Salt:

When I was younger, I never gave much thought to salt. It was just one of those things that you had in the kitchen. Though it's an ingredient in most recipes you see, I often cooked without it, preferring to experiment with other flavors instead. A few years ago, though, Mina came home with a little box of Guerande Sea Salt from France (http://www.eco-natural.com/greysalt/fleurdesel.html) and we tried scattering a few crystals on some charcoal grilled beef. The flavor was one of those true revelations and started us down a path of collecting "finishing salts" from around the world. Now, we have 7 or 8 types of salt in our kitchen, the vast majority of which are used sparingly right at the table as a way of giving a piece of meat that extra little pop. Currently our list of finishing salts looks like this:

1) Le Paludier Fleur de Sel de Guerande (link above)

2) Noto Peninsula Natural Sea Salt (from Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan - http://www.atthemeadow.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_88&products_id=360&zenid=d9ee5261119b03c10ce36425fc0ebf05)

3) Kumejima Natural Sea Salt (from Okinawa Prefecture, Japan　-
http://www.sekaino-osio.com/shop/searchdetail.jsp?mode=itemid&val=000111&x=43&y=9)

4) Maine Sea Salt (http://www.maineseasalt.com/)

5) Himalayan Pink Salt

Anyway, this past weekend we found some flanken style short ribs (cut across the bone rather than perpendicualr to it) of the sort you might find grilled in a Korean BBQ and decided to grill them up and serve with some different salts. I also put out some grated daikon radish and Yuzu Ponzu to use as a dipping sauce for a change of pace. The meat was pre-seasoned with "sansho", a Japanese version of szechuan pepper (http://www.asiafood.org/glossary_1.cfm?alpha=S&startno=27&endno=51), mashed garlic, and olive oil and was then grilled (unfortunately, it was pouring rain, so I did this on the grill pan indoors rather than on the charcoal grill). I served a salad of mixed greens with some nectarine and slivered almonds and some roasted potatoes along side. The French sea salt was as good as you expect it to be, but we were surprised with how nice the Noto salt was with this flavor combination.

The other dish I feature here today was last night's dinner. We had some chicken sausage in the freezer and I decided to try a frittata with it. I fried some thinly sliced potatoes until they were crisp to form the base and then sauteed the sausage with some red onion and a little sliced jalapeno pepper (one of my missions is to secretly teach Mina to like spicy foods). I laid the potatoes on the bottom of a cast iron pan, covered these with the sausage mixture, and then poured over 6 beaten eggs. This went into a 325 degree oven until the eggs had set, and then was topped with grated cheddar cheese and cilantro. The basic idea for this came from a Guy Fieri recipe that I found on foodnetwork.com, but the potato base was my addition to the party. A quick and hearty dinner that would obviously be a good breakfast as well.

Ramen:

Mina and I are back from a quick trip to Japan for my sister-in-law's wedding, some meetings at Ritsumeikan University, and visits with friends. This was our first trip back since moving to the U.S. for graduate school, so it was good to see most of my friends (my sincerest apologies to those I didn't have time to get together with...I hope to be back over Christmas/New Year or next May at the latest), drink my fill of ice cold Japanese draft beer, and eat, eat, eat.

My regular reader will know that Mina and I drove 9 hours round trip this past Japanese to visit a Japanese supermarket in New Jersey and eat Ramen, so it will come as no surprise that I had a few bowls while I was in Japan. If you have never had a true bowl of ramen, you should realize that your experience with those packets of instant noodles that you get at the supermarket pale in comparison. I would be hard pressed to come up with another instant/convenience food that is so far away from the real thing. Maybe Totinos Pizza Rolls?

Anyway, this time around I had 2 really memorable bowls of Ramen. The first was on Day 2 of the trip, in the Akebonobashi section of Tokyo near Tokyo Women's University Hospital. This was a place called "Tengu" that claimed to have some of the more renowned "Tan-Tan Mein" in the city. Tan-Tan Mein is a ramen in a spicy soup that is heavy on the ground sesame. I have had it with both white and black sesame, and have to say that I prefer the white sesame version, which is what this shop specialized in. Not knowing what I was getting myself into, I ordered the shop's suggested heat level, though I could probably have gone a level or two higher for lunch without any problem. The noodles were perfectly al dente, the pork was lovely, and the soup was flavorful, with its sesame base very potent. We also shared an order of fried Gyoza, which were good, if not fantastic.

 

The next great bowl I had was closer to the end of the trip, on Day 15. We were back in Tokyo after 8 days of R&R in Mina's hometown of Iwaki and were staying with my sister- and brother-in-law in Eifuku-cho, which is just out west of Shinjuku. During my travels, I had noticed an outpost of an Eifuku-cho ramen joint among the ramen shops at Nagoya Station, and we got directions to it from my brother-in-law. The first thing that struck my about this bowl was its sheer size. This was one place that was not skimping on noodles, shar-sui pork, or soup. One taste, and I knew we had found something special.

The soup had a depth and complexity to it that I guessed (correctly, I later learned) came from smoked bonito flakes. It's hard to explain exactly how this tasted, but the combination of this flavor with the soy sauce "tare" that formed the backbone of this bowl was stunning. We ordered ours with raw eggs, and allowed those to cook in the hot broth while we slurped down the noodles. The char-sui was expertly cooked, and also carried the unmistakable taste of having been cooked over charcoal. This was a really great bowl of ramen.

Now, if only I could figure out how to make a soup that good, I could open a ramen shop here in the U.S. and be an ambassador for this amazing noodle experience. Anyone else out there have any great ramen stories or shops to recommend?

The CDs that Changed Things (2):

When I was about 16, my uncle gave me a CD of Paul Simon's "Graceland" (so, you now know about when I was 16...). Of course, this was in the days before portable CD players or iPods, so my first task was to copy it onto a cassette tape so that I could actually listen to it in my car or walkman. What happened next?

Well, there are probably only 3 or 4 rock/blues albums from my pre-college years that define who I am in terms of my musical tastes and Graceland is one of them. If there was one album that changed me, this was it. Had there ever been an album that combined rock, blues, and folk with these strange, seductive African rhythms and melodies before? Probably. Had a kid from Cleveland, Ohio ever heard it before? Aaaah....No. This was way off in left field.

I went off to Turkey as an exchange student and Graceland went with me. "You can Call me Al" is one of the 5 greatest videos every made, but before I ever saw it, before I was ever "soft in the middle",  I was "Al".

How? Well, imagine yourself at 16 years old and in Turkey. This was 1988 and the U.S. was not too far removed from bombing Libya, having Marines barracks blown up in Lebanon, or from the Iran hostage situation. Names were being called out to match kids with host families and they were calling for someone named, "Alan Gregory". This not being me and there being 100 other kids waiting to find out who their host families were, I paid no attention to this call for someone clearly not me.

99 kids had their names called and I was left waiting. I walked up to a coordinator and asked about the situation and was roundly chastised for not raising my hand when my name was called. "You never called my name", I said. "Of course we did. You are Allen Gregory, " came the reply.

You can Call me Al.

"A man walks down the street

it's a street in a strange world

Maybe it's the third world

maybe it's his first time around.

He doesn't speak the language

he hold no currency; he is a foreign man..."

You can Call me Al.

I spent, now, 2/3 of my life in this situation, learning it as I went along.

This, by the way, cracks me up:

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=BJwsLFDhoqM&feature=related

As compared to the original:

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=HOiVaE-pKqM

The CD's that Change Things (1):

I was walking home from the office today (it's about 2 miles, which makes a nice bit of exercise after a long day of reading) and a song came on the iPod that got me thinking. There are certain songs, and for those of us born before, say, 1990, albums that are so clearly attached to a time and a place. Like the smell of chocolate chip cookies or the ocean, they can bring back memories that are so vivid - sometimes painful, sometimes happy, but always worth having. I thought I might write a few entries about some of those albums from my life and see what memories you, my reader(s), have. Anyway, I'll start with the song I heard today and the album it came from.

(What's the Story) Morning Glory - Oasis (1995).

The song I heard today that prompted this post was "Some Might Say", and it had me thinking back to my first year in Japan. I had first heard of Oasis through a review of the album Definitely Maybe that was on "All Things Considered" on NPR. There was something about Liam and Noel and their tendency to get into fisticuffs on stage that just said, "You have to get into this group" to me. That first CD was fantastic, Morning Glory was truly a CD of its time and place.

I bought this CD in the fall of my first year in Japan for the first time, and while the first set of memories that came back as I listened to "Some Might Say" were of my then girlfriend's apartment and the "Oh god, you're listening to that CD again...?" looks she used to give me whenever I put Morning Glory on, what I really associate that CD with is Karaoke in Gifu.

My gaijin friends and I used to go to this tiny little karaoke bar on the weekends that had probably 8 seats along the counter and room for 4 or 5 more people at one table. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the place, but I am sure I averaged one night per week there over the course of 3 and a half years. They charged 500 yen ($5, or so) cover and 500 yen per drink, and you could sing all you wanted. For some reason this little joint ended up attracting this eclectic crowd of English teachers, office workers, college kids, and borderline yakuza types. I practiced my (very poor at that point) Japanese on virtually any young lady who was unlucky enough to sit next to me, and probably watched Titanic (without sound because people were singing) 50 times.

Somehow, though, a night out there was never complete without somebody breaking into "Don't Look Back in Anger" (Track 4 on the CD). Sometimes it was me, sometimes it was Charlie (our stereotypically depressed Brit), sometimes someone else. I can't really describe it in a way that does it justice, but that was simply the perfect song for 1996/1997 in Gifu, Japan.

Anyway, listening to it again today it's remarkable how well that CD stands up over time. "Wonderwall" is still a pretty perfect pop song, even if I have no idea what it's about; "Champagne Supernova" is just as over the top and self-righteous as it sounded 12 years ago; and "She's Electric" still brings a sly smile to my face (especially the "she's got one in the oven/but it's nothin' to do with me" line).

I'll leave you with a shot of the normal goings on from that karaoke bar in Gifu. This would have been Halloween, 1997. Brad, Me, Keiko, Shannon, and Naoko (L to R), with me and Shannon doing our best Puffy (or, Puffy AmiYumi for you Americans). Good times.

 

A Couple of Winners:

Well, dear readers, it's been a couple of hectic weeks at school, but here we are on Spring Break. For the undergrads (and those who remember that experience), that seems to mean trips to Jamaica, Mexico, and other destinations far more exotic than anywhere I ever went for S.B. For PhD students, though, Spring Break means studying 9-6 instead of 8-7 plus 9-11. We've got to recharge the batteries too, you know!

Anyway, that all means more time in the kitchen, so today I have two recipes to introduce. First, is a lovely bay scallop risotto. Now, I much prefer the big meaty sea scallops that brown up nicely, but in a pinch bay scallops are quite yummy. They also cost MUCH less. This week I picked up about 300 grams for $3.00, where the same weight of sea scallops was going for $10. Bay Scallops are small, though, so the sear doesn't work as well as you might like. This is why I tend to use them for pasta sauces, mousses, and this risotto.

Here, I started with a bunch of shrimp skins that we had been saving in the freezer. Those, a clove of garlic, some onion, celery, carrot, bay leaves, and peppercorns went into a pot to simmer for a couple of hours to make a lovely shrimp stock. Following that I went with basic risotto technique. In the last 5 minutes of cooking I added some thinly sliced mushrooms and the bay scallops. When ready to serve, I hit it was some paremsan and some chiffonade of red and green shiso leaves. Shiso leaves, for those who don't know, are sometimes called Japanese basil, though I find them to taste nothing like basil. Still, they are a pungent herb with an incredibly fresh taste. Lovely for this dish. A nice, dry Spanish rose was the perfect wine for this.

In the meantime, I also had the urge for some Mexican food. I love enchiladas and so decided to go with some meatless, black bean enchiladas for something a little lighter. I sauteed up some onion and garlic, and then mixed in a can of black beans that had been drained and rinsed. Add some cumin and paprika to taste, along with a diced jalapeno. You could go with more jalapeno or even a habanero here if you live with someone who likes spicy food (which I do not, so I do what I can to sneak some spice into our food...one of these days she'll get used to it, I figure).

I poured some enchilada sauce on the bottom of the caserole and then warmed each tortilla one by one in a little oil. Fill each, roll them up, cover with sauce, and top with cheese. These go into a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes or so until the cheese is nice and bubbly. I served these with some fresh cilantro, sour cream, and lime juice.

Hopefully I will have another chance to cook this week, but it all depends on how the research papers go...

Tai Murray and the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra:

This past Friday was the 5th of our 6 subscription concerts at the SSO, and actually the last that we will be able to attend. Our 6th concert is on May 9th, and we are leaving for Japan from Cleveland on the 10th, so I'll be giving those tickets to some lucky person here in Syracuse.

Anyway, several weeks ago we heard Jennifer Frautschi play Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole and this time was Tai Murray playing Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E. Ms. Murray is one of the most accomplished violinists, for her age (she was born in 1982), that I have heard. She had an incredibly clean tone, and showed good command of the very technical sections of the Mendelssohn. Surprisingly, Amazon.com does not have any CDs by her available, though I suspect that we will begin to see some in the near future.

With that, it's time to look forward to next year's SSO season.

One of Mina's Favorite Dinners:

I was talking with Mina the other day and asked her which of the meals I had cooked for her over the last 5 years or so she had the best memories of. Pretty quickly she came up with this one, a steak or london broil with cranberry-bourbon sauce and feta cheese. My recollection was that the recipe originally came from foodnetwork.com, but when I looked I couldn't find it. Anyway, it's a pretty simple dish that combines some simple flavors but, as Mina put it, in a completely unexpected way.

For the sauce, take a handful of dried cranberries and cover them with bourbon. Let these sit for 30 minutes or so. In the meantime, thinly slice a couple of cloves of garlic, and put a fine dice on half of a small onion. You'll also need some demi-glace sauce, though I didn't have any, so I mixed together a little ketchup, worcestershire sauce, and beef stock and let this reduce until thick.

Cook your steak or london broil to the desired doneness. While the steak is on, saute your garlic and onions and, off the heat, add the cranberries and bourbon. Light this on fire to burn off the alcohol and when the flames have died down add your demi-glace. Let the sauce reduce then until it's nice and thick and bubbly.

To serve, just spoon the sauce over the steak, cruble some feta cheese on top, and garnish with a few torn basil leaves (thyme works as well). We had some pan roasted potatoes that were finished with some sea salt from the Noto Peninsula, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan, and a salad. A fruity zinfandel or pinot noir would be my red wine of choice with this dish.

A Couple of Recent Dinners:

First, recently, Mina and I have been growing a kit of portobello mushrooms that my mom and dad gave her for Christmas. We finally were able to harvest the first batch, so I've been concentrating on mushroom-centric recipes the last few days.

The pizza pictured here is a portobello mushroom pizza with mozzerella and parmesan cheeses. It came out with a nicely crisped crust and just the right amount of tomato sauce. I finished it with some nice, fruity olive oil just before serving.

Below, is one of the dinners that came out of our trip to the Mitsuwa supermarket. There's saikyo miso marinated steelhead trout, red and white mixed miso soup, steamed white rice, Japanese pickles, a salad. Actually, there's also a sauteed, soft boiled egg, which was one of Mina's most interesting creations to date.

Flavor, flavor, flavor. This couple of meals certainly had it in spades.

Bobby Corno at the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra - Beethoven's 3d Symphony:

Last night was the 3rd of our 6 concert series at the SSO. This was the one I had been waiting for as, knowing Beethoven better than any other composer, I thought this would be the real test of what our orchestra can do. Overall, I felt that they handled a challenging program well, with my notes below.

The first piece on the program was the overture from Coriolan, Op. 62 which, interestingly, I neither own nor can recall having heard performed before, but which I am going to have to add to my collection. The second piece was the 2nd Piano Concertom Op. 19 and the soloist was William Wolfram. The 2nd is probably the most "Mozartian" of Beethoven's piano concertos and I thought this was an interesting choice for this program because it is so much an earlier work than either the symphony or the overture that we heard.

So, the 3rd Symphony, Op. 55...I actually thought the orchestra worked this piece very well. The Musical Director, Daniel Hege, started off with a kind of clinic in which, working from early musical sketches of the symphony from Beethoven's notebooks, showed how the ideas in the finished version came together over time. It was interesting to hear how the complexity of the chord and rhythmic structure developed from an early idea into the piece we know today. Following this, the orchestra went straight into the symphony itself. This is where Bobby Corno came into play.

Who is Bobby Corno, you ask? Well, he is the fictional first chair horn player in P.D.Q. Bach's New York Mills Philharmonic who, on the track "New Horizons in Musical Appreciation", flubs the horn part in the first movement of Beethoven's 5th.

Anyway, there was a Bobby Corno moment in the horn section during the first movement of the 3rd last evening. The horns came together and handled the 2nd and 3rd movements without flaw, though they seemed to drag a touch in the 4th movement and that detracted a bit from the sense of urgency that you usually feel at the end of a Beethoven symphony. The first chair oboist was spectacular, however, and really held things together along with the first flute player.

So, next time it's Ravel, Saint-Saens, and Debussy.

An Interesting Set of Lists:

Returning to my interest in ranking things; I was looking around the web a while back for some recommendations of classical music to acquaint myself with. I am always looking for new things to listen to, especially now that I study 10-12 hours each day and like to have something to listen to other than the bustle of the other PhD students in my suite. So, I stumbled across this page at the Australian Broadcast Company's radio station: a ranking of their listeners' Top 100 Concertos of all time. There is also a link there for other Clasic 100 surveys, where they have the top 100 pieces by Mozart, for piano, among Operas, and of classical music overall.

I found the list very interesting. Especially intriguing to me was Max Bruch's 1st Violin Concerto being in the Top 5. This is a piece that I first heard on a recording by Akiko Suwanai (my favorite living violinst, and someone I've written about here before) in 2002. I had grown up on the Beethoven Violin Concerto and always assumed it would remain my favorite. So it does, but the Bruch had really grown on me over the years as has Bruch's Scottish Fantasy for Violin, which also comes in on the list.

Anyway, for those looking for a primer on classical music, or who want something to guide them to some pieces they haven't heard or considered listening to before, I think these Classic 100 lists are a very nice tool.

Anyway, happy listening.

Mitsuwa Marketplace:

Yesterday, Mina and I took a drive down to Edgewater, NJ to do check out and do some shopping at the Mitsuwa Marketplace (http://www.mitsuwanj.com/en/index.htm), a Japanese supermarket complex. You may ask, "4.5 hours each way to go to a supermarket?", but my answer would be that the bowl of Ramen at the outpost of Asahikawa, Hokkaido's Santoka Ramen (http://www.santouka.co.jp/) was worth the drive all by itself. Santoka turns out to be more of a ramen chain than I would go out of my way to try if I was in Japan - it turns out that in addition to the original shop in Asahikawa, there are 42 branches in Japan, 1 in Singapore, and 5 here in the States), where I usually try to limit myself to one-off shops or at least to the original shops of those that have expanded, but here in the U.S., having not had a professionally made bowl for 18 months, and even not having had a passable bowl of instant noodles for that long? Again, easily worth the 9 hours I spent in the car yesterday to get there and back. The soup was rich, the noodles done perfectly, and the char-sui pork tender and flavorful.

For the lovely Mina, I think the trip was all about sea urchin. If you ask her, uni-meishi (sea urchin roe on rice) is the thing she has most been wanting to eat in recent months, so it was nice to go to a place where the yellow stuff was available. We also picked up some grilled eel and some fish marinated in saikyo miso that we will eat this week. We also picked up a bottle of kabosu (a Japanese citrus fruit) juice that will be nice for making marinades and dressings, top end ingredients for dashi soup, and other items. I also bought a very cool serving dish to add to my growing collection of plates and bowls.

The weather on the way back to Syracuse last night was much less than ideal, but with my belly full of pork bone soup, I really didn't mind.

New Year's Eve Dinner:

Ok, so there is a bit of a story behind this one. Over the summer I spent a good deal of time driving around the U.S. Mina and I went to Maine for our Anniversary, to Athens, OH for my brother's master's program graduation, and to Indianapolis for the formula one U.S. Grand Prix. While on these trips, I listened to some books on CD that I had borrowed from our local public library. One of these was the unabridged version of "Undaunted Courage", by Stephen Ambrose, which is the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition of the American west. In any event, the descriptions of the delights of buffalo meat that Ambrose, Lewis, and Clark give got me to wondering about what it tastes like. I had seen buffalo steaks at the Wegman's supermarket, and thought New Year's was a special enough occasion to splurge (actually, two 6-ounce steaks were $9.99, which is about $13.33/pound - not outrageous, really).

So, the menu: Buffalo Sirloin Steaks, Caramelized Onion Confit, Roasted Garlic and Rosemary Mashed Sweet Potato, Red Wine Braised Mushrooms, a salad, and homemade rolls (courtesy of the Lovely Mina). The steaks I did on our grill pan, 3 minutes on one side and 1:30 on the other, and they came out just perfectly medium-rare. I slathered them with olive oil along with sea salt and black pepper before grilling. Buffalo steaks are incredibly lean, with no noticable fat either marbled or on the outside of the meat, but ours came out juicy and tender. The verdict: In short, I am sold on buffalo. The meat had a very nice mouth feel, and the only way I can describe it is to say that is was somewhat sweet.

The onion confit I had prepared before, and was quite easy. The onions were browned and then simmered, covered, in 1/3 cup of stock, a few tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, and a star anise. After 20-30 minutes, the pan lid was removed and the sauce thickened. The mushrooms I sauteed in olive oil for about 1-2 minutes with garlic, and then simmered in red wine until the wine had reduced by 2/3, finally adding a small pat of butter to bring a little shine to the sauce. The sweet potato was simply boiled in satled water and then mashed with a little butter, some rosemary leaves, sea salt, pepper, and a head of roasted garlic. For the salad, we used some mixed greens, cherry tomatos, kalamata olives, feta cheese, a little sliced bosc pear, and a few slivers of toasted almond.

We toasted with Domaine Ste. Michelle Blancs de Blanc, my favorite bubbly, and had some Ravenswood 2005 Lodi Zinfandel to match the buffalo steaks. All around, a very nice dinner to see out 2007.