in praise of sardines

Another cold remedy...

...my wife's Tortilla Soup

Let me start this post with a disclaimer. It has nothing to do with the pallid 2001 remake of Ang Lee's masterful Eat Drink Man Woman, which, along with Babette's Feast, Tampopo and Like Water for Chocolate, is one of the all-time great food films. Who's brilliant idea was it to remake a film just 7 years after the original?

Rather, this is my response to Indira's* request to share my cold remedies {which is actually a meme started, I believe, by Raquel of Raquel's Box of Chocolates}.

To help recover from colds and flus, I rely on the curative powers of a never-ending supply of ginger-honey-lemon tea, supplemented with lots of chicken soup, like polentina soup and this spicy tortilla soup. The recipe, which I give all credit to my wife N for developing, was inspired by a different style of tortilla soup that she and I often shared in Washington, D.C., where we both went to college. However, my fondest memory of the original soup goes back to a time before I met N.

One icy winter in the dark years of Bush 41, my mother and brother visited me in D.C. to celebrate Christmas. My Republican mother {please tell me I'm adopted} had never been to the nation's Capital during the holidays, so she was keen to visit the White House to see how Barbara Bush decked the Presidential halls. I remember nothing about the decór except for Mom's declaration that, surely, Nancy's taste was better.

Mostly, I recall standing in line outside the White House for an hour on a night that the mercury dipped so low that the Reflecting Pool {that long rectangular pond between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument} froze solid. My brother was inconsolably irate. If he had his way, he'd never leave the comfort of his EZ-Boy recliner in his San Diego condo, a remote in one hand and a Big Mac in the other {remind me to check DNA samples for evidence of adoption}.

To help thaw relations {literally and figuratively}, I lured the warring parties to Houston's** with promises of hot soup. The chill thankfully kept the usual hordes away, so we were able to be seated the moment we arrived. We slipped into our bowls of velvety tortilla soup as if they were pools of volcanic mud at a Calistoga spa. The garlic-cumin aromatherapy warmed our frostbitten noses, while the avocado and cheese garnishes wrapped around our tongues like thick silk robes. I knew my ploy had achieved détente when my brother ordered a second bowl.

Although N didn't participate in this episode, we shared many bowls of Houston's tortilla soup during the year or so that we dated before moving to the West Coast.

While there is a branch of Houston's in San Francisco, we only go when my brother visits - on his insistence. With exposure to more authentic Mexican food in the Bay Area, I suppose we've outgrown Houston's version of tortilla soup, which in hindsight is basically a gooey platter of nachos tossed into a blender - i.e. pure college comfort food {see their original recipe here}.

Houston's version fortunately inspired N to create a better version, one that is wonderfully spicy, tomatoey and brothy, yet still preserves the voluptuous avocado garnish of the original. Her tortilla soup is the soup we both clamor for when the latest virus strikes. The good news for the cook is it is as easy to throw together as it is satisfying.

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*I have a feeling that Indira's recipe for tomato rasam is soon going to join our arsenal for combating future colds. Just looking at the photos of the soup on her brilliant site Mahanandi rejuvenates me. I plan to make a bowl later today!

If you're ever feeling under the weather or just need a kick-start, try Indira's other cold remedy, "Dried Ginger Ale," a tea steeped with dried ginger, black peppercorns and a touch of honey. I am sipping a hot cup right now. It's so powerful, it will resurrect a Zombie.

**Although I didn't think so at the time, my palate and restaurant knowledge was pretty simple. Back then I had no idea that Houston's - which played such a big role in the social scene during my college years - was merely a branch of a Texas chain.

Food blogging when you're ill

Every other year, I catch a cold.

Although this will hardly surprise anyone who's been reading my blog, I tend to be rather self-indulgent. Multiply that times ten when I am not feeling well. I crawl under my thick comforter and curl up catlike for long naps, only coming up for air when the impulse strikes to watch a Woody Allen movie or an episode of "The Kumars at No. 42" on my iBook.

Because my wife N spends her days taming 7-year-olds, the season's virus du jour lays siege to her at least 4 times per year. At those times, I gladly spoil her, serving as her personal chef and support staff. During the relatively rare occasions when I get to play the role of indulgee, I do not hesitate to cash in my favors Godfather-style.

N knows exactly what I will be requesting, so she hardly bothers to ask any more. I suppose that's a perk of a dozen years of marriage.

Thursday after work, she headed straight to Irving Street to pick up two orders of chicken pho' from Loi's, one for our dinner and one for my lunch Friday. Then she stopped by New Cheung Hing for an order of duck jook for Friday's breakfast. Finally she went back up the block to the grocery store to pick up a few chicken legs and thighs so that I could make stock when I was feeling better. It’s good to be loved.

Yesterday, I felt well enough to simmer up that batch of chicken broth.

The best broths are made with a good proportion of meat to bones. I often use a whole chicken per gallon of water, but this time I opted to augment the stash of bones that waited in my freezer with a few extra legs. I removed a couple of thighs after an hour so that I would have meat for my soup. I like to simmer my chicken broth for 3 or 4 hours to extract the most flavor.

The easiest soup for a sick person to make is the polentina from the Chez Panisse Vegetables cookbook. I find it incredibly soothing to prepare and eat, and believe it should be in every busy cook's repertory.

The recipe is just a few lines long. In a medium pot, stew a diced small onion or a leek and a slivered clove or two of garlic in duck fat or butter, pour in a quart of chicken broth, bring to a boil, stir in ⅓ cup polenta (preferably stone-ground), toss in a few leaves of sage, a sprig of thyme and a teaspoon of salt, and simmer the soup for 20-30 minutes. The polenta slightly thickens the broth and imparts a comforting corn flavor.

While the soup is cooking, cook and then chop whatever greens are in your fridge {I’ve used broccoli rabe, arugula, turnip greens, chard and even watercress with equal success in the past. This time I used some gorgeous red Russian kale - pictured left}. When the soup is ready, stir in the cooked greens and add a few grindings of pepper. This time, I added some shredded meat from one of the chicken thighs I removed from the stock. Garnish each serving with some shavings of parmigiano reggiano and a drizzle of your best olive oil.

Depending on how I feel, I may post one of my other favorite chicken soup recipes later in the week. Until then, take care good care of yourselves and try to stay healthy!

Food|and Drink|Recipes|Chicken|Soup

Ducking Thanksgiving (recipes included)

I don't know about you, but I'm thankful that Thanksgiving week is finally over.

The funny thing is, I barely even celebrated it this year.

No, turkeys had no reason to fear me. I yawned at the sight of yet another golden roasted bird on the cover of each and every November magazine and Wednesday food section (and felt sympathy for those poor writers who have to feign enthusiasm for yet another story on the proper way to bake a pumpkin pie, the perils of improperly defrosted birds, or the absurd notion that there is any wine that can stand up to sticky cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes). I decided I wanted none of that, so I (and my blog) took a holiday this year from the topic of traditional Thanksgiving foods.

With N swamped by graduate school and parent-teacher conferences and me searching hopelessly for some sane way to make a living, this was the ideal year to resolve to skip Thanksgiving. Some of our friends went out of town, and we declined invitations to join the celebrations of others. Even my brother, visiting from San Diego, sought his dose of dry white meat drowned in lumpy gravy at someone else's house.

My defenses began to show weaknesses Tuesday morning, however. A plan hatched spontaneously in my mind to go to the farmers market that afternoon in Berkeley, perhaps my favorite outdoor market in the Bay Area. My anti-Thanksgiving resolve completely withered at the sight of multi-hued pumpkins, freshly dug potatoes, wet kale, and soft persimmons illuminated by the market's kerosene lanterns as dusk fell.

Before I knew it, my inner Scrooge, fully (and properly) thawed, was phoning the butcher to order not a goose for the Cratchits and Tiny Tim, but a Liberty duck for N and myself. Alas, there would after all be a meal that, in appearance, somewhat resembled Thanksgiving.

After a fireside dinner of succulent slow-roasted duck and a bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin (a French pinot noir from Burgundy), I don't know if I'll ever be able to go back to the temperamental oversized American bird that needs to be brined, heavily salted, massaged with butter and caressed with spices just to taste reasonably good.

I discovered that no flour-thickened gravy can compete with a sauce made from caramelized duck bones (see recipe below). Nor can the embarrassing avalanche of stuffing, mashed potatoes, and sweet potato casserole compare with the austere simplicity of turnips and carrots roasted beneath the duck in its luxurious fat.

As for pumpkin pie, I'll take mine any other autumn day in the afternoon with a cup of Darjeeling, thank you. I have never understood its allure after that orgy of butter, cream, sugar and tryptophan we call Thanksgiving. So after our duck dinner, we savored a moist slice of Lyndsey Shere's cakey pudding made from soft hachiya persimmons purchased at the Berkeley market.

If you're looking for a reminder of how wonderful roasted poultry can be, I've included my recipe for slow roasted duck, an adaptation of Paula Wolfert's recipe that appeared in her book The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen. Unlike the typical roast duck, this one will not explode like a fat bomb in your oven.

In the morning, I cut my duck in half, slid it into the oven on a bed of vegetables, covered it after 10 minutes, and then forgot about it for nearly 4 hours. The oven's gentle 275˚F (135˚C) heat worked its magic, melting the fat into the meat so that it became as juicy and tender as a good confit. Then, when I was ready to eat, I chose the pieces I wanted, lay them skin side down in a hot cast iron pan and slowly crisped the skin. When the skin released easily from the pan, after about 10 minutes, it was ready. The skin was so crisp, it shattered like glass under the pressure of my fork.

One 5-pound Pekin duck yielded 2 dinners for 2, the breasts one night and the legs another. Believe me, you won't want to go back to dry turkey again.

In the Pink: braising awareness for breast cancer

When I heard that Emily had started a new food blog event to help raise awareness for the importance of early detection of breast cancer during the month of October, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I felt it was vital for me to participate. Her event, called In the Pink, named after the color of the ribbons worn to show support for victims of this disease, encourages food bloggers to cook or bake something pink.

I felt inspired to go all out last night and attempted to create an entire meal of pink foods to help raise awareness for this cause. True, some of the dishes came out more purple than pink, but I like to think of magenta and fuchsia as shades of pink.

Here's my menu:

French breakfast radishes with butter, coarse sea salt and a baguette (ideally I would've used Hawaiian pink 'Alaea sea salt if I could have found it, and bright pink watermelon radishes would have been lovely too).

Salad of baby gem lettuces, pink Chioggia beets, Pt. Reyes blue cheese and toasted hazelnuts

Wine Harvester's Chicken: legs and thighs braised in red wine with Concord grapes and pink pickled onions served with polenta and spinach

Strawberry and rose gelato with chocolate cookies (I made the gelato from Marcella Hazan's simple recipe in her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, reducing the sugar to my taste and adding a ¼ teaspoon of rose water, more or less, depending on the strength of the rose water and personal preferences).

What motivated me to go to such lengths was the story of my dear friend S.

S works with my wife, N, at a school in San Francisco. She is one of the school's unbelievably talented trio of music teachers.

A little over a year ago, S complained to deaf ears at Kaiser, the school's HMO, of all sorts of maladies. The doctors at Kaiser had come close to labeling poor S a hypochondriac, refused to run any tests, and told her to take several over-the-counter drugs.

Over the summer, S went home to Spain, where they have universal health care (you know, the kind of health care system the Bushies warn us won't work). Once in Madrid, S visited the doctor and discovered she had a fairly advanced case of breast cancer which had spread to other parts of her body, causing the various digestive and other pains she had experienced.

When we learned of her condition, I impulsively gave notice and then left my new job as sous chef of a recently opened restaurant of a prominent chef and travelled to Spain with N. We spent some time with S to comfort her during the beginning of her chemotherapy.

We also consider ourselves to have been blessed by discovering and falling in love with the beauty, joy and alegría of the Spanish people, culture and cuisine on our later travels to Sevilla, Córdoba, Granada and Barcelona.

After months of treatments, S is back in San Francisco doing what she loves best, sharing her passion for music through teaching children. Her cancer is under control for now and she returns over holidays to Spain for treatment. Her unbelievable strength and courage is an inspiration to us all.

Although I'm aware that S's frightening story sends a chill up the spine of every American who has been frustrated by our lousy health care bureaucracy, I still want to encourage everyone to visit your doctor regularly. Get your annual physical examination, including a mammogram.

As I see it, the lesson for us is twofold. First, vote the current administration of bastards out of office. Bye-bye Bush-Cheney-Schwarzenegger. Support candidates who will improve the quality and spiraling-out-of-control costs of our health care.

Second, confronted with doctors more concerned about cutting costs than curing cancer, yell a little louder. Be your own advocate. Don't take no for an answer.

Or, the third alternative is clear. Get out while you still can and move to a country, like Canada or Spain or just about any other sensibly enlightened industrialized nation in the free world, where there is better health care.

Until then, enjoy the recipe for the scrumptious chicken dish I made last night, sort of a Moorish coq au vin.