→ December 2, 2014
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November music update.

My analysis of the Nelson Cruz signing went up yesterday for Insiders, as did my annual gift guide for the home cooks on your list this year, the latter here on the dish.

I’ve already begun sketching out my top 100 tracks of 2014 list as well as a ranking of my favorite albums of the year, but I’m holding that until after baseball’s winter meetings, which are next week in San Diego, just to steal myself another week or so to make sure I haven’t missed any songs I’ll regret omitting. In the meantime, here’s one more monthly playlist to tide you over, with a few songs that will appear on the year-end ranking.

Kele – Closer. Bloc Party’s lead singer goes in a totally different direction in his solo work, with elements of trip-hop, two-step, and more traditional electronica. The album is uneven, but “Closer” is its best track between the tempo changes and the duet with an unknown female artist (I can’t find proper credits for the track anywhere).

TV on the Radio – Lazerray. I was psyched for their latest album, Seeds, to come out, but was mildly disappointed in how much of it is 1) mid-tempo or slower and 2) vaguely commercial-sounding. When they really let ‘er rip, they’re at their best; “Lazerray” should bring back memories of last year’s one-off single “Mercy” or their first crossover hit, 2006’s “Wolf Like Me.”

Young Fathers – Get Up. Young Fathers were the surprise winners of the 2014 Mercury Prize; this British rap trio’s album Dead was … well, let’s just say I wouldn’t have given it the award. But “Get Up” winks back at ’60s/’70s Motown-era soul in the chorus, and YF’s technical shortcomings are far less evident because the verses are tight and the music is strong.

King Tuff – Black Moon Spell. That fuzzed-out guitar riff seems lifted off some lost ’70s vinyl, maybe a Thin Lizzy B-side, and the slight shift into a minor chord when it repeats the second time through each chorus is just perfect. I’m a sucker for a distorted lead guitar hook.

Dreamers – Wolves. Indie-rock with a good sense of melody, not terribly distinguished (so far) from a few dozen other bands with similarly ungoogleable names, but with the benefit of some early support on Sirius XM that at least is getting this strong lead single (“and if you lie down with wolves/learn to howl”) some airplay in advance of their debut album, due next year.

Death from Above 1979 – Always On. I didn’t know these guys did heavy, but the grinding guitar riff overpowers the grunge-pop drum and vocal lines here to take the song beyond the generic.

Ex Cops – Black Soap. I actually assumed Ex Cops were from somewhere in Scandinavia, just based on their sparse arrangements and lead singer Amalie Brunn’s voice (turns out she’s Danish, but the band is based in Brooklyn). I guess she was involved in a controversy earlier this year when she put out a dark metal record under the name Myrkur without revealing her identity, to which I give a giant ¯\_(?)_/¯. Anyway, “Black Soap” is a solid alt-pop track that’s gotten some quick buzz thanks in part to the involvement of Billy Corgan in producing the record. Not to be confused with Futurecop, which also put out an album last month.

Empires – Please Don’t Tell My Lover. It’s electro-pop, I think, but the guitar riff is more pronounced than most tracks in that subgenre, which is worth extra points in my book.

Dan Sultan – Under Your Skin. Winner of the ARIA award for Best Rock Album for his Blackbird (just $5.99 on iTunes right now) this year, Sultan is an Australian Aborigine singer/songwriter who draws deeply on 1960s/1970s soul sounds … which a lot of folks do these days, but Sultan actually pulls it off without sounding a bit like a fraud. “The Same Man” is the other standout track from Blackbird, but I like “Under Your Skin” best for its snarling intro riff and tight two-and-half minute run time.

Stars – This is the Last Time/Trap Door. Stars made my 2012 top 40 with their New Order-mimicking “Hold On When You Get Love.” Their latest album doesn’t plow any new soil at all; they’re playing it very safe, hewing close to their new-wave inspirations, but they do that sound particularly well, regardless of which vocalist takes the helm. The former has a hint of New Pornographers when Neko Case takes the mic; the latter is the song that reminded me most of that 2012 standout track.

Broncho – Class Historian. This song is going to annoy me if I listen it too much, due to that weird “duh-duh-duh” thing they do every thirty seconds, and I don’t love tracks that overproduce the vocals to make them sound low and distant, but there’s a decent pop hook underneath here and I think the song’s going to get a ton of airplay.

CHVRCHES – Get Away. Mentioned earlier this year, now available on Spotify. The song is from the BBC’s “re-scoring” of the movie Drive.

Banks – Waiting Game. Yeah, “Begging for Thread” is the best song from her Goddess album, but I figure you’ve probably heard that already; this was my second-favorite.

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→ December 1, 2014
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My 2014 gift guide for cooks.

My analysis of the Mariners’ deal with Nelson Cruz is up for Insiders.

I’ve seen a few “Christmas gift guides for the cooks in your life!” go by already this fall, but most of them are like this one from Grub Street, with recommendations for things that no one could possibly need – a “rosemary stripper” (I have two of those; I call them “hands”); a “banana slicer” (use your paring knife, genius); a $140 toaster (makes toast); and a $1600 set of Thomas Keller-branded pans, which, unless he forged them personally out of pure adamantium, are a colossal fucking waste of money. These are not gifts to by the cook in your life; these are gifts to buy the person in your life who pretends to cook but really just likes playing with toys. Toys don’t make you a better chef; they just make you a less socially responsible one.

I do have a few pricier toys in my kitchen, but aside from one, they’re all highly functional, at the middle to low end of the price range for their jobs, and built to last a long time. I’ve had my chef’s knife for over a decade, my food processor for 17 years (new bowl but original motor), my Dutch oven for about eight years, and just replaced my 18-year-old stand mixer when we moved last June. You are free to call me cheap, but I think I’m just prudent. I’ll spend money in the kitchen if it gets me something I need. I will not spend money to get a famous name, a fancy design, or a paperweight to live at the back of a gadget drawer until we move again. If I can make do with something I already have in the house – binder clips, a (clean) putty knife, a (clean) paintbrush – I’ll gladly do that instead. I’d rather be cheap when it doesn’t matter and spend the money when half price means a quarter of the value.

Therefore, what I recommend here – for your cheffy friends or for yourself – is largely what I own and use. If what I own isn’t available, or isn’t good value for the price, I recommend something else. I am also willing to answer any and all questions about these or other suggestions; if I include it here, that’s an endorsement that it’ll be money well spent. I’ve already posted my cookbook recommendations in a separate entry.

The most important tool for any cook is a good chef’s knife, and I love my Henckels 8″ chef’s knife, the “four-star” model (which just refers to the handle style). It’s a workhorse, has only needed professional sharpening once, and is a comfortable grip and weight for my rather small hands. However, it’s $100, and I doubt it’s worth the premium over the $30 Victorinox 8″ chef’s knife, which America’s Test Kitchen has long recommended and, therefore, so have I.

The basic knives any home cook must have are a chef’s knife, a paring knife, and a bread (serrated) knife. The bread knife is good for more than just slicing bread – serrated blades are safer for slicing tomatoes, and they’re excellent for chopping chocolate and other hard foods. I have another Henckels four-star model, also eight inches, but the same blade is available with a different handle for just $9. You might look at a 10” blade if you get a lot of large, artisanal loaves. Any strong paring knife will do, such as this OXO 3.5″ paring knife for $7. With a modicum of knife skills, you can tweak and hull strawberries with one of these without any risk to your fingers or waste of fruit. It’s also good for cutting citrus supremes, slicing apples and pears, pitting olives and cherries, and other fine-motor-skills work.

I do have two other knives I use frequently, but they’re not essential for most cooks. One is the santoku, a very sharp knife with a thin edge but wide body that’s ideal for slicing vegetables and hard fruits; I recommend a 7” blade, which you can get in this two-santoku Henckels set for $21 and just … I don’t know, regift the 5” version or something, because I can’t see any use for it. I also own this exact Henckels boning knife, which is ideal for breaking down a whole chicken – it’s substantially cheaper to buy a whole chicken (sometimes called a broiler-fryer, usually 3-5 pounds total weight) and cut it into parts, and you get the bones to make stock – or for deboning other cuts of meat like short ribs. Some folks recommend a flexible blade instead, but I have never used that kind so I can’t give an opinion. I do not own a home sharpener.

My pots and pans aren’t a single set any more; I have some remnants from an All-Clad anodized aluminum set I got with rewards points in 2001, but have swapped out certain pieces to get better nonstick (coated) skillets. What you really should get for your loved one (you may include yourself in that category) is a a 12″ Lodge cast-iron skillet, an absolute workhorse that can handle about 90% of what I need from a skillet or a saute pan. I still use a nonstick skillet for egg dishes, and a saucier (sadly one that’s no longer made) for sauces or custards, but the Lodge skillet is past a decade old and just keeps getting better. The work of seasoning them is nowhere near as arduous as you’ve heard.

If you want to splurge on something, get an enameled cast-iron Dutch oven, great for soups, stews, braises, deep-frying, jam-making, and caramelizing huge batches of onions. Cast-iron doesn’t distribute heat well, but it holds heat for a long time. These pots are heavy, but I use mine for every saucepan duty that doesn’t involve boiling water or cooking grains on their own. They go stove to oven (as do the skillets) and can take the hours of low heating required for a proper braise. I own a Le Creuset that I got on sale at an outlet store because the color was discontinued; if you’re not quite that fortunate, try the 7.8 quart Lodge model for $85.


                           Isn’t she lovely?

I don’t own a proper mandolin slicer, but I do pretty well with a handheld mandolin for about $20 that works great for things like root-vegetable chips or thinly slicing onions. I love this digital instant-read thermometer, which at $10 is cheap enough that I don’t feel bad when inevitably I drop it into something and ruin it. (I’ve only done that once.) Amazon tells me that I bought my Microplane classic grater in November of 2003, and I’ve had their coarse grater for almost that long. The former is great for zesting citrus fruits or grating nutmeg; the latter is ideal for creating a snowfall of hard cheese over a pasta dish. In that same 2003 order, I bought my first Silpat silicone baking mat; I now own two and won’t bake cookies without them.

I own two scales – a chef I’m friends with on Twitter made fun of me for this – one, this American Weigh pocket scale for weights up to about 2 kg, which is ideal for precise measurements like grams of coffee (more on that in a moment), and a larger scale that’s long discontinued. This $13 Ozeri scale looks like a more than adequate replacement, measuring up to 12 kg; I rarely need to measure more than about two pounds of anything, maybe a little more for some large-batch baking but that’s about it. You need at least one good scale if you’re serious about baking, though; the best bread and pastry recipes all use grams, not cups or liters. I’ve also done horrible things to this digital oil and candy thermometer over the ten years or so that I’ve had it, including making forty or more batches of jam, dozens of batches of macarons, and engaging in numerous deep-frying experiments, and it still rocks. You absolutely must have one of these to make caramel, any kind of jam or preserves, or true buttercream frosting.

Other things I always appreciate getting or often end up buying for myself: Wooden spatulas (not spoons), silicone spatulas, good (not decorative) metal measuring spoons, Pyrex or similar measuring cups for liquids (never measure liquids in a plastic cup designed for measuring solids).

Now, for the expensive stuff:
* I believe this Cuisinart classic 7-Cup food processor is what I own; we got ours in 1996, and in all that time I’ve just had to replace the plastic bowl, which cracked during a move. At $100, it is an essential, at least in my mind; it makes so many things easier, from pie doughs and biscuits to pesto and hummus and nut butters and mayonnaise (although I do that by hand because I’m a wacko) … and the pumpkin pie I make every Thanksgiving.

* I have this Vitamix 1782 TurboBlend “food preparing machine” (it’s a blender, stupid), and it’s amazing. I can make smooth vegetable soups with it, no cream required; don’t toss those broccoli stalks, just peel, quarter, and roast them, then blend them with some vegetable stock and season to taste, maybe with some basil oil and toasted pumpkin seeds on top. It’s nearly $400, however, too much if you’re just making milkshakes and smoothies (and there is nothing wrong with just making milkshakes and smoothies). You’ll probably be fine with just a basic blender and the food processor.

* I have the 5-quart KitchenAid stand mixer, which is down to $229 right now after a $50 rebate. I kind of wish I had the next model up, mostly for bread-baking, which is still a bit of a chore for this model, but it’s great for everything else – mixing up cookie dough, brownie batter, quick breads, whipped cream, and Italian meringues (for macarons). The pasta-maker attachment is overpriced, but it does the job, and the grinder attachment has been good for me in a handful of uses, especially for turning stale bread into bread crumbs.

* Coffee is my big kitchen weakness, at least when it comes to spending money; I’m fortunate to have a few friends in the industry (whom I met through social media) who work for direct-trade roasters and have tipped me off to good sources of coffee and helped me pay for the gear I own, which is wonderful but expensive. The Baratza Virtuoso burr grinder is the least expensive grinder of its kind and caliber; when my first one had an issue with the motor, I sent a quick video of it jamming to Baratza and had a new machine within two weeks. I do make pour-over coffee at home using this 8 ceramic dripper, but my preference is espresso, for which I use a Rancilio Silvia machine that is a wonder. The boiler is huge, so it bounces back quickly between shots and you can heat up the steam wand before your shots go cold. If you get your ratios right (for me it’s 17.5 to 19 grams per double shot, depending on the bean and roast), you’ll get great crema, 32-35 grams of output in 25-30 seconds, with almost no bad pulls. I use it every morning and I miss it when I travel.

I’m also a big fan and customer of Penzey’s, a chain of spice stores that also does a brisk mail-order business. They offer gift boxes and a la carte purchases; I buy nearly all my bulk spices from them as well as vanilla beans and Dutch-processed cocoa powder. Buy a box of bay leaves and a jar of whole nutmeg seeds and the recipient will have reason to remember your gift for years to come.

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→ November 29, 2014
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Saturday five, 11/29/14.

I know a lot of you are new to the dish – welcome, thanks for stopping by – so here’s the point of this post. On most Saturdays, I put together two sets of links, one to everything I wrote for my day job over the last seven days, and another to interesting articles (originally just five, but that’s more of a minimum now) from the same period, usually about non-baseball topics like science or food. Comments are welcome as long as everyone’s civil, and I’m always taking suggestions for links for the next post.

I was as busy with baseball posts as I’ve been during any previous Thanksgiving week, with five over the last five days:

* The Josh Donaldson trade
* Arizona signing Yasmani Tomas
* Boston signing Pablo Sandoval
* Boston signing Hanley Ramirez
* The White Sox’ and A’s’ signings from last weekend

I’ve also been updating my offseason guides/rankings, with the top 60 boardgames ranking before I went dark on Twitter and the favorite cookbooks guide right after.

And now, the weekly links:

  • At this time of year, many people with disposable income will think about giving money to charity – it’s the holiday spirit, or maybe just advice from the accountant. NPR’s The Salt has a great piece up on what goods to donate to food pantries. A little thought goes a long way. Food pantries can always, always use money, which, since I seldom buy canned foods anyway, is my preferred method of helping – and since food pantries focus on small, achievable goals, they’re among the best places to donate.
  • Two good pieces I read this week about Ferguson, Missouri, and the murder of Michael Brown: This piece by Prof. Carol Anderson from the Washington Post, arguing that the core issue is “white rage” against racial progress; and a piece from the British left-wing paper The Guardian, annotating the grand jury decision with critical notes on subtext.
  • The Embryo Project at Arizona State tweeted me this link to their site, on Charles Darwin’s study of embryos as part of his argument in favor of evolution as the mechanism behind the origins of species. Speaking of which, this graphic plotting countries’ GDP against what percent of their populations believe in evolution is distressing. But there’s good news – ornithologists discovered a new bird species on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
  • A little basic for this crowd, but this Washington Post piece reminds you not to ask for antibiotics when you have a cold.
  • A powerful piece from the New York Times by a mother, remembering the Thanksgiving her then two-year-old son spent in intensive care.
  • Maybe it was buried by Ferguson and the holiday, but the news that Alaska’s Mount Pavlof went boom again this past week should have gotten a lot more play. The eruption column reached nine miles; by comparison, the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, which was so powerful that it lowered global temperatures for the next year-plus, reached twelve miles.
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→ November 26, 2014
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Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity.

I knew David Foster Wallace was brilliant when I read Infinite Jest, a wildly imaginative, sprawling novel that showcased DFW’s prodigious vocabulary as well as his deep knowledge of a variety of seemingly unrelated subjects. Even with that background, I was flabbergasted by Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity, in which DFW delves into abstract set theory and other similarly abstruse topics from the history of math, explaining much of it lucidly and with humor until he gets too close to the finish to avoid relying on the reader to understand more of set theory than most readers will.

The book is less an explanation of the number infinity – which isn’t a single number, at least not in the sense that 1 or 5 or π or √2 – than the history of mathematicians’ attempts to deal with it. DFW starts with the Greeks, where most math stories begin anyway, even though the Greeks didn’t like or accept infinity or zero or the irrationals. (Zero came from Indian mathematicians, and reached Europe by way of Arab mathematicians quite a bit later.) The Greeks encountered questions around infinity, particularly in the famous paradoxes of Zeno, who liked to play semantic games around what we now refer to as convergent series – a sum of a series of terms that never ends but that approaches a specific limit as the number of terms grows. (In a related note, DFW fails to answer the question of how Zeno never got punched in the face for coming up with these paradoxes.) This discomfort with infinity continued through the writings of Aristotle and the Catholic Church’s influence over all manner of academic research, which included the idea that infinity was the sole province of God rather than of man, meaning we never got anywhere with infinity until the end of the Dark Ages and the separation of mathematics and religion during the Renaissance.

The pace of the narrative picks up at that point thanks to the explosion of advances in math and related areas of science. The empirical foundation that limited mathematical explorations until the 1600s is tossed aside in favor of more abstract thinking, with appearances by Kepler, Newton, and my homeboy Galileo, as trigonometry and eventually calculus displace geometry as the central philosophy guiding mathematical thinking and what we now think of as number theory. DFW presents an extraordinarily clear explanation of calculus, especially the infitesimals that underpin differentiation and integration and, as the name implies, connect it to the main topic of the book. The goal here is to get to Georg Cantor, the brilliant and mentally ill mathematician whose work remains the foundation of modern set theory and who was the first to recognize that there are different degrees of infinity (ℵ0 and ℵ1, at the least) but died unable to prove that those two infinities had no other infinities between them.

DFW’s writing is clear and witty thoughout the book, with many examples drawn from a former professor of his that help elucidate many of the more recondite concepts around infinity. His explanations of one-to-one mapping and Cantor’s diagonalization method of proving that real numbers are nondenumerable are outstanding, especially the latter, which I knew was true but still wanted to disbelieve because it just sounds impossible. Unfortunately, in the last 40-50 pages of the book, DFW gets so far down the set theory rabbit-hole that I found it increasingly hard to follow, such as discussions of ordinality versus cardinality and power sets of power sets. I got off the math train in college after multivariate calculus with vectors, in part because continuing meant pushing into more abstract areas – linear algebra was the next course, which starts the shift from empirical math to abstract – but that left me a little lost as Everything and More slid into Cantor’s work on the various infinities and work on numerability of sets.

Cantor’s transfinite numbers are the real goal of the narrative here, rather than what I would call the lay opinion of ∞ (what Cantor referred to as “absolute infinity”). A transfinite number is infinite in that it is greater than all of the finite numbers, but has some properties in common with the finites. If you’re familiar with the ℵ0 I mentioned above – the first transfinite cardinal number, corresponding to the number of members (cardinality) of the set of natural numbers (non-negative integers). Cantor’s continuum hypothesis, which appeared first on the famous list of unsolved math problems David Hilbert presented in 1900, posited that there was no set with cardinality (number of members) between the natural numbers and the real numbers (the cardinality of which Cantor designated as ℵ1). The hypothesis itself may be unprovable, at least within the confines of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory … which DFW mentions but doesn’t explain, concluding instead with the explanation that later work by Kurt Gödel (the incompleteness guy) and Paul Cohen (who proved that the hypothesis and the ZFC’s axiom of choice were independent) set the question aside without really solving it. At least, I think that’s what he said, because I was just barely treading water by the final page. Which also made me wonder if all of these reviewers quoted as giving the book raves actually finished and understood the whole thing; I imagine the number of people who have sufficient math background to follow DFW down to the bitter end is pretty small.

Apropos of nothing else, the biggest laugh I got from the book was when DFW referred to a mathematician as a world-class pleonast, which is the pot writing a three-page letter to the editor about the mote in the kettle’s eye.

Next up: Ned Beauman’s 2012 novel The Teleportation Accident, recommended by a fellow bibliophile I met in New York in August.

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→ November 25, 2014
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Cookbook recommendations, 2014.

I can never decide whether to copy and update last year’s post or to rewrite it from scratch, but this year chose the latter course of action to try to reflect how I’m cooking and using cookbooks right now in my (brand-new!) kitchen. I’ve grouped them into categories: The essentials, which any home cook regardless of experience level should own; the advanced books for expert home cooks; a few cookbooks from Top Chef-affiliated folks that I recommend; and bread-baking books, all by one author because I’ve never needed any others.

Essentials

There are now two cookbooks that I insist any home cook have. One is the venerable Joy of Cooking, revised and altered through many editions (I own the 1997, now out of print), but still the go-to book for almost any common dish you’re likely to want to make. The recipes take a very easy-to-follow format, and the book assumes little to no experience or advanced technique. I still use it all the time, including their basic bread stuffing (dressing) recipe every Thanksgiving, altered just with the addition of a diced red bell pepper.

The other indisputable must-have cookbook is, of course, Ruhlman’s Twenty, by the best food writer going today, Michael Ruhlman. The book comprises twenty chapters, each on a technique or core ingredient, with a hundred recipes, lots of essays to explain key concepts or methods, and photographs to help you understand what you’re cooking. It’s my most-used cookbook, the first cookbook gift I give to anyone looking to start a collection, and an absolute pleasure to read and re-read. Favorite recipes include the seared pork tenderloin with butter and more butter; the cured salmon; the homemade mayonnaise (forget the stuff in the jar, it’s a pale imitation); the pulled pork; all three duck recipes; the scrambled eggs with goat cheese (using a modified double-boiler method, so you get something more like custard than rubber); and the homemade bacon. I’m trying his weekday coq au vin recipe tonight, too. Many of these recipes appear again in his more recent book, Egg: A Culinary Exploration of the World’s Most Versatile Ingredient, along with more egg basics and a lot of great dessert recipes; and Twenty itself builds on Ruhlman’s Ratio, which shows you master formulas for things like doughs and sauces so you can understand the fundamentals of each recipe and extend as you see fit.

Baking Illustrated is the perfect one-book kitchen reference for all things baked – cookies, cakes, pies, breads, and more. It’s full of standards, tested to ensure that they will work the first time. You’ll need a scale to get maximum use from the book. I use their pie crust recipe, their peach pie recipe, their snickerdoodles recipe (kids love it, but moms seem to love it even more…), and I really want to try their sticky toffee pudding recipe. The prose can be a little cloying, but I skip most of that and go right to the recipes because I know they’ll succeed the first time.

If I know someone already has Ruhlman’s Twenty, my next gift choice for them is Nigel Slater’s Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch, a book about vegetables but not strictly vegetarian. (There’s a lot of bacon here.) Each vegetable gets its own section, with explanations on how to grow it, how to choose it at the market, a half-dozen or more basic ways to cook it, and then a bunch of specific recipes, some of which are just a paragraph and some of which are a full page with glorious pictures accompanying them. The stuffed peppers with ground pork is a near-weekly occurrence in this house, and the warm pumpkin scone is the only good reason to buy and cook an actual pumpkin. I own but have yet to cook from his sequel on fruit, Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard.

You know, a lot of people will tell you go get Julia Child’s classic books on French cuisine, but I find the one I have (Mastering the Art) to be dated and maddeningly unspecific in its directions. Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom is a slimmer, much more useful book that focuses on the basics – her explanation of vinaigrettes is still the gold standard, and her gift for distilling recipes and techniques into simple little explanations shines here without the fuss of three-day recipes for coq au vin. Oh, that’s in here too, but she does it in two and a half hours.

Experts

The Flavor Bible isn’t actually a cookbook, but a giant cross-referencing guide where each ingredient comes with a list of complementary ingredients or flavors, as selected by a wide range of chefs the authors interviewed to assemble the book. It’s the book you want to pull out when your neighbor gives you a few handfuls of kale or your local grocery store puts zucchini on sale and you don’t know what to do with them. Or maybe you’re just tired of making salmon the same way and need some fresh ideas. The book doesn’t tell you how to cook anything, just what else to put on the plate. Spoiler: Bacon and butter go with just about everything. I gave a lot more detail on this book in last year’s guide.

Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty is an outstanding vegetable-focused cookbook that uses no meat ingredients (but does use dairy and eggs), although Ottolenghi’s restaurant uses meats and he offers a few suggestions on pairing his recipes with meat dishes. The recipes here are longer and require a higher skill level than those in Tender, but they’re restaurant-quality in flavor and presentation, including a mushroom ragout that I love as a main course over pappardelle with a poached egg (or two) on top and my favorite recipe for preparing Belgian endives (a pinch of sugar goes a long way). As of this writing, the kindle edition is only $2.99, over 90% off the hardcover price.

Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bakery is is easily the best baking book I’ve ever seen, but unlike Baking Illustrated, the recipes are written for people who are more skilled and incredibly serious about baking. Ingredients are measured to the gram, and the recipes assume a full range of techniques. It has the best macaron recipe I’ve ever found – close second is I Love Macarons, suggested to me by Richard Blais’ pastry chef at the Spence, Andrea Litvin – and has the homemade Oreo recipe I made for Halloween (but you need black cocoa and real white chocolate to do it right).

Bobby Flay has an absurd number of cookbooks out there, but the one I like is from his flagship restaurant Mesa Grill, which includes the signature items (including the blue and yellow cornbread) and a broad cross-section of dishes. There’s no instruction here at all, however, just a lot of recipes, many of which have an absurdly long list of ingredients.

For the really hardcore, Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen is an essential kitchen reference, full of explanations of the chemistry of cooking that will make you a smarter cook and help you troubleshoot many problems at the stove. I haven’t read it straight through – it’s 700-plus pages – but I’ll go to the index and pull out some wisdom as needed. It also explains why some people (coughmecough) never acquired the taste for strongly-flavored cheeses.

Top Chef Division

Richard Blais’ Try This at Home has become a staple in my kitchen both for about a half-dozen specific recipes in here that we love (his sweet potato gnocchi are now a Thanksgiving tradition for us; the lemon curd chicken is at least a twice-a-month dish around here and perfect for guests) and for the creativity it inspires. Blais has lots of asides on techniques and ingredients, and if you actually read the text instead of just blindly following the recipes, you’ll get a sense of the extensibility of the basic formulas within the book, even though he isn’t as explicit about it as Ruhlman is.

Top Chef judge Hugh Acheson’s A New Turn in the South and season one winner Harold Dieterle’s Kitchen Notebook have both recently entered my cookbook rotation as well. Acheson’s book reads the way he speaks – there’s a lightly sardonic aspect to much of his writing so that it comes off more like you’re hanging out with the guy, talking food, rather than taking instruction. His bacon-wrapped whole fish recipe is unbelievable, more for the powerful aromatics (winner, best use of fennel) than for the bacon itself. Dieterle’s book requires a lot of harder-to-find ingredients, but his side essays on specific ingredients run from the mundane to the esoteric and drop a ton of knowledge on how to choose and how to use. My particular struggle with both books is that they use a lot of seafood, with Dieterle’s including a ton of shellfish; my wife is allergic to shellfish, so I don’t even bring that into the house any more, which requires some substitutions and means there are some recipes I just have to set aside.

I’ll mention here that several readers have suggested Edward Lee’s Smoke and Pickles to me as one of the best of the many Top Chef contestant books out there, but I do not currently own it.

Bread

I’ve owned and given away or sold a lot of bread-baking books, because nothing has been able to beat the two masterworks by baker/instructor Peter Reinhart, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice and Whole Grain Breads. Reinhart’s books teach you how to make artisan or old-world breads using various starters, from overnight bigas to wild-yeast starters you can grow and culture on your countertop. If that seems like a little much, his Artisan Breads Every Day takes it down a notch for the novice baker, with a lot of the same recipes presented in a simpler manner, without so much emphasis on baker’s formulas. His pizza dough recipes are fantastic, and unlike a lot of the crap I’ve found online or in other books, you don’t need any sugar to make them.

And finally, while it’s not a cookbook, Anthony Bourdain’s first book, Kitchen Confidential, is just $2.99 right now for Kindle, and it’s a riot regardless of whether you like to cook.

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→ November 24, 2014
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Galaxy Trucker iPad app.

I’ve got two posts up for Insiders, one on Boston signing Hanley Ramirez and an omnibus post covering four moves, two each by Oakland and the White Sox.

The Galaxy Trucker iPad app takes a well-reviewed boardgame (which I’ve never played) and turns it into something more on a tablet, with a “campaign mode” that plays like an adventure or role-playing game layered on the mechanics of the boardgame itself. It’s the most addictive game I’ve played all year, probably too much so – although I had a little spare time this weekend to try it out.

In Galaxy Trucker, you’re a long-haul space trucker who has to build a new ship for each run, preparing it to dodge meteors and stardust, battle space pirates and slavers, and pick up cargo from planets and abandoned ships for sale at your destination. Those various goals and obstacles require you to build a ship that has the right balance of cabins for crew, guns, engines, shields, batteries, and storage for goods … and that’s before you unlock the ability to carry certain aliens as extra crew too. Each component has connectors on one to four sides, so you have to make everything fit together on your ship while trying not to leave connectors exposed to stardust or vulnerable to meteor fire. And building those ships means competing in real-time against AI players to grab tiles from a central pile available to everyone; once the first player completes his/her ship, a timer starts and other players must finish as quickly as they can.

Out in space, the ships all appear on a track, starting in the order in which the players finished building. The journey to the next satellite or moon involves a set of eight to twenty “adventure cards,” overturned in order, each revealing a specific event. The easiest one is open space, where you can go as many spots forward as your engine allows, although position is only relative to the other ships rather than letting you speed to the destination – that is, you have to play all the cards before you dock.

Being first in line gives you first crack at any abandoned ships (where you can send crew members for money or cargo, at a cost of a couple of spaces on the track) or planets (so you can grab the most valuable cargo), but also puts you first in line to face pirates or slavers, who can damage your ship or steal your crew/cargo if you don’t have enough firepower. Meteors hit everyone in line, with smaller ones damaging tiles with exposed connectors but larger ones destroying whatever they hit if you can’t shoot them down. Combat is the one time you’re pitted against your rivals, because all ships are compared using three criteria – firepower, engine strength, and crew size – with the trucker scoring the lowest in each subject to attack, loss of crew, loss of cargo, or other penalties.

When building your ship, you do get to peek at some of the cards (I think 3/4 of them) if you don’t mind taking a brief break from the tile rush, so you can plan accordingly – such as adding weapons facing a specific side of the ship if you know you’ll face large meteors from that direction. That said, the variety of cards in all of the journey’s you’ll undertake means you’re always trying to balance the various components to survive the trip and make as much money as you can through salvage, rewards for finishing first or having the best-designed ship, or completing certain missions in the campaign.

That campaign is easily the best part of the app – it’s a little bit of a choose-your-own-adventure feel, except that you can’t die on page 63, you just go back to port and try again. The challenges increase in difficulty slowly at first, but near the end of the campaign there are two extremely tough ones (so far) that I’ve struggled to get past. The game also gives you a few broader goals to achieve outside of individual missions, and you get to keep expanding areas on your map to see more destinations and potentially earn more money from larger jobs. That “one more challenge” setup kept drawing me back to the game beyond the point when I might have been bored from crushing the AI after getting the hang of the game.

The one flaw in the implementation is the ease with which you can make an unintended move, which is irrevocable under the rules of the game. Dragging tiles down over your ship to reveal them, then dragging them back to the pile, all while trying to move as quickly as possible will result in some tiles accidentally dropped into place on your ship – and if you don’t notice that that happened and reach for another tile, you’ll be stuck with a piece you didn’t want and/or somewhere you didn’t want it.

The graphics are goofy but easy to understand, drawn from the board game for a cartoonish feel; the app itself ran smoothly over a dozen times. (Okay, maybe way over a dozen times.) The puzzle-solving aspect of Galaxy Trucker was the initial appeal, but the campaign mode is what makes it a must-purchase for boardgame fans. I’ve already gotten way more than $7.99 worth out of the game in, well, about five days of playing it.

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→ November 23, 2014
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The Painted Veil.

I appear to be totally out of step with the literary establishment on W. Somerset Maugham, whose roman-à-clef Of Human Bondage seems to be his magnum opus, appearing on the Modern Library list of the top 100 novels of the 20th century (although the construction of that list was fraught with problems). Meanwhile, his shorter novel The Painted Veil, published ten years later, receives far less praise and even less attention, even though it’s a far more interesting and readable story – that is, a book written for the reader, rather than written for the author. Unlike Of Human Bondage, which I found a chore, The Painted Veil flew by with a combination of high tension and an insightful portrayal of the protagonist’s inner turmoil.

Set in southern China during the height of British colonialism, Veil focuses on Kitty and Walter Fane, a young married couple in Hong Kong, where Walter has taken a position with the colonial authorities. Kitty, bored to tears with her bacteriologist husband, embarks on a dangerous affair with a caddish colleague of Walter’s (from the administrative side of the government), but the novel opens with her husband’s discovery of the affair. He presents her with a choice: Accompany him to a remote Chinese village where he has taken a position fighting a cholera epidemic, or face shame and ruin when he sues her for adultery. When her paramour does exactly as Walter expects him to do – that is, throws Kitty overboard in favor of the wife he never intended to leave – she heads into the hinterlands, where she’s confronted by reminders of both her faithlessness and her superficial worldview from all corners.

Kitty is the only character in the book to get a full treatment; Walter is kind of two-dimensional on the page because that’s all his character is, a stiff-upper-lip British gentleman who adores his wife – at least, before her betrayal – but shows very little emotion, one small part of her alienation from him. (Maugham eventually tells the story of their brief courtship and engagement, at which point it’s clear that the betrothal was ill-fated from the start, with plenty of blame to go around.) Coerced to journey with him to a village where death is a likely outcome for one or both of the couple, Kitty is confronted with the vapidity of her life to date, between the sacrifice of the Catholic nuns who run the hamlet’s orphanage while providing palliative care to other victims and the almost nihilistic attitude of the British envoy Waddington. You can almost predict what two things will happen next, but Kitty faces several decisions that eventually send her back to England, but as a far different woman than the one who left it three years earlier.

Maugham detailed his rather spectacular falling out with the Christianity of his father in Bondage, but his depiction of the faith of the nuns is respectful, neither mocking it nor lionizing them for their work. There’s no divine justice for Kitty, no direct retribution for her sins, and no hope given of a reward for a life given over to sacrifice either. Maugham toys with some Buddhist and Taoist themes, but Kitty’s spiritual awakening is minimal and forced upon her by outside circumstances; even as she leaves the remote village for London via Hong Kong, she still has time for one more mistake that will blow up what little sense of enlightenment she thinks she has. Yet there’s a realistic aspect to her character that sells the book; she’s flawed as real people are flawed, deludes herself as real people do, and faces the same moral and existential questions most people face throughout their adult lives. The book’s ending, for her, will only be as happy as she makes it via her own decisions.

There are several film adaptations of The Painted Veil, including a 2006 version with Naomi Watts and Ed Norton, but I’ve seen none, and that most recent one changes several key plot elements. Also, I found Maugham’s prose in Bondage to be awkward and choppy, but Veil suffers from none of that at all, with highly descriptive and more poetic phrasing.

Next up: David Foster Wallace’s Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity.

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→ November 22, 2014
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Saturday five, 11/22/14.

I held my usual Klawchat on Thursday; I’ll have a wrap-up reaction piece on Monday to all the smaller moves from the last few days (Butler and LaRoche in particular). If something huge breaks today or tomorrow, I’ll write a separate piece on that.

If you’re looking for a comment, I’m sorry, but I have none to offer. I appreciate all of the support I’ve received.

  • My friend Wendy Thurm discusses the dominance of male followers on sports Twitter. I’m mentioned, and I too was surprised that the ratio of men to women among my followers was that high, given how many women I hear from via Twitter.
  • Because I’m a language dork, here are 23 charts and maps about languages from vox.com.
  • From Bon Appetit, some tips on not screwing up marinara sauce. I’ll add two more: Don’t add sugar, and add a splash of wine to extract some of the alcohol-soluble (but not water-soluble) compounds in the tomatoes.
  • From The Guardian, Hunter Felt writes about transgender MMA fighter Fallon Fox’s confrontation with the prejudice of Joe Rogan. There’s some interesting science in here too.
  • The report this week from the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate on the failures to treat Adam Lanza’s mental illness is incredibly horrifying. I’m reminded of the result of these mistakes, many of which were from his mother refusing to see her son as severely ill, every time I drive to or from Bristol, right by the I-84 exit for Sandy Hook and Newtown. But reading that piece also made it seem like Lanza was suffering badly and denied treatment that might have helped him (and saved all those kids). We’d never think of refusing treatment, even palliative care, to someone suffering from cancer or MS. Mental illness shouldn’t be treated differently.
  • NPR’s food blog goes after what’s really in “pumpkin spice” flavoring. I’m disappointed they linked to Vani Hari, who is wildly anti-science, but I would guess most people who down those drinks don’t know what they’re actually consuming. Eat real food, not facsimiles designed to remind your brain of real food.

And finally, a picture you won’t be able to unsee. What’s worse, the annexation of Crimea, or “Sweating Bullets?”

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→ November 20, 2014
→ By

Top Chef, S12E06.

Klawchat today at 1 pm ET.

* Everyone is glad that Aaron’s gone. That’s before he was arrested, too. But the entire episode feels different without him around – there’s no bickering, no obvious conflicts, no enmity among the chefs still there. I’m sure eventually that will pop back up, but it was a clear shift in tone even if it’s a temporary one. At some point someone will tell Katsuji to shut the hell up, I’m sure.

* Adam says he’s concerned about Dougie, Melissa, Gregory, and Mei as his main competition, which sounds about right. He also calls Katsuji “a mess in a dress,” which I don’t understand.

* Melissa talks about her girlfriend back home, and the love/support notes she gave her before the show. So Melissa is Asian and gay … am I wrong to think that was probably not an easy childhood? It seems like a disproportionate percentage of Asian-American contestants on both Top Chef and Project Runway share a story of parental disappointment at their career choices. (That could be producer selection bias, I suppose.)

* Tiffani Faison from season one walks into their condo. (There’s a great profile of her from a recent issue of Boston magazine.) I had no idea she had a Texas-style Q joint in Boston, called Sweet Cheeks BBQ. Have any of you been? Texas Q ain’t nothing to fuck with. It had better be good.

* So they drag all the chefs down to a cranberry bog, probably down by Lakeville towards the Cape. The quickfire challenge is going to involve cranberries, and the sponsor/partner is Ocean Spray … and maybe for the first time ever, I’m completely on board with a product placement on this show. Ocean Spray is a cooperative, owned by its farmers, which has its own challenges – during my brief tenure in consulting right out of college, they were a client of my employer and I was on that case for about two months – but at least means the people doing the actual growing are able to reap the rewards of their work. I still think there’s a lot of untapped potential in the firm and the product, even now about twenty years later; people just don’t know what to do with cranberries because you can’t eat them raw (hot cranberries > raw cranberries, Ken), so you have to educate the consumers with products. Why not cranberry yogurts? Ice creams? Jams or preserves? That would have made a great challenge for the show, now that I think about it. But I digress.

* So we see a bog that’s been flooded for the harvest; the chefs have to put on waders and run back and forth to gather the berries (about six million floating in a closed loop on the surface), and the first four to fill their buckets get an advantage in the next challenge. I’m not a fan of challenges on this show that reward size or athleticism, which doesn’t seem to have a lot to do with cooking.

* Mei is 5’2″ and can’t swim. It’s not that deep, but I can understand her fear of the water if she can’t swim. We more or less forced our daughter to learn with lessons at age four, right when we moved to Arizona, because we viewed it as an essential life skill, especially in a state where every other house has a pool. You just have to know how to swim, right? I’m not winning any relays for my team out there, but I do know how to swim from A to B.

* So it turns out that Katie is a great athlete; apparently cooking was a way for her to move to Lake Tahoe and ski all the time. She wins the challenge, but after her it’s three boys – Adam, Gregory, and Doug. Meanwhile, Katsuji is mugging for the cameras, rolling around on the ground like he needs CPR.

* The actual Quickfire challenge is to create a dish that highlights the “unique flavor of the cranberry.” The top four harvesters get to use the high-end pantry, with better proteins, fresh herbs, and produce; the rest are much more limited by the low-end pantry. Fresh cranberries, dried (and sweetened) cranberries, and juices are available for all nine chefs. The winner gets immunity.

* Doug grabs pork tenderloin; isn’t that kind of a boring cut? It’s lean and pretty one-note, especially if you don’t have time to brine it.

* Katie is doing a cranberry borscht, a dish that’s typically sour anyway due to the use of vinegar. Doug thinks it’s a terrible idea, except he chose pork tenderloin, so maybe I’m not going to worry about what he says this time.

* Stacy explains away the low-end/high-end pantry difference by saying that if you’re a chef, “you should be able to work with anything at all.” That’s true, but if your ingredients are better, won’t your dish taste better?

* Katsuji is using skirt steak for tartare. Is this just a case of not knowing your ingredients? That’s a very tough cut with long muscle fibers, and needs to be cooked very very quickly over high heat to be chewable. There’s a reason it’s one of the cheapest cuts of cow at the butcher counter. I really like it, but only, you know, cooked.

* Adam made a bourbon and cranberry sauce-glazed strip steak with cranberry-infused mushroom fricasee. He lost the liquid he was going to use for a couscous element, and chefsplains it to Padma and Tiffani, who tells him not to talk about the mistakes like that. Gregory serves an Arctic char (a salmon-like fish) with sweet and sour cranberry sauce, trumpet mushrooms, and fresh pear. Keriann serves a carrot soup with cranberry and crab; that doesn’t sound remotely appealing to me, three ingredients that probably shouldn’t even appear in any combination of two. Doug does a bourbon and cranberry-glazed pork tenderloin, crisped Brussels sprouts, and cranberry mustard. Tiffani says it “tastes like fall in New England,” but neither she nor Padma have any praise at all for the pork, just everything around it.

* Melissa serves fried turkey with apple butter, cranberry compote, pecans, and fried sage. Katie’s borscht comes with creme fraiche, charred Brussels sprouts, and pancetta. I don’t think I’ve ever had real borscht, btu I love beets, and everything about her dish sounds fantastic – beets need acidity to balance their sweetness, and they play well with all kinds of fruits. I love a beet salad with orange supremes and a citrusy dressing. Katsuji’s steak tartare with chile de arbol mayo, olives, and cranberry hot sauce presents some mastication problems for the judges. Stacy made a curried cauliflower soup with a smoky pepper cranberry relish, but gets dinged for having too little sugar with the berries. Mei serves a sweet and sour pork with pickled mustard seed and apple salad. She’s unconcerned about the low-end pantry problem: “my fucking dish was great.” I don’t doubt it. And if I did, I wouldn’t tell her, 5’2” or not.

* So one more thought on cranberries: They’re too astringent to eat raw (just try it), but are high in pectins, which means they form a gel easy in the presence of heat and sugar; and in tannins, which are very bitter on their own and may interfere with some nutrient absorption (mostly proteins, which their structure of three to five carbon rings allows them to hold together in pairs) in the human GI tract. Tannins are what create that unpleasantly dry sensation in your mouth after you drink red wine or black tea. In On Food and Cooking, which every home cook should own, Harold McGee suggests sugar as a cover for the astringency of tannins; adding milk, gelatin, or another protein to keep the tanning busy so they don’t suck up the proteins in your saliva; or adding ingredients rich in pectins, gums, fats, or other oils to “take some tannins out of circulation” or slow their binding to proteins. That’s why cranberry sauce, which is high in sugar and gets those pectins active, isn’t astringent while the raw fruits are.

* The worst dishes were Katsuji’s because they couldn’t chew it; Adam’s, because he practically told them to hate his dish; and Stacy’s, whose soup was underseasoned and clunky to eat. The best dishes were Doug’s, a great fall dish that didn’t really push the boundaries on the key ingredient; Katie’s borscht is hard, which did push the envelope, swapping cranberries in for one of the signature ingredients in the dish; and Mei’s, which was complex and elegant. The judges didn’t specifically say that Mei’s “fucking dish was great,” but I think we know that’s what they were thinking.

* Katie wins, however, for her creativity, and gets immunity. Given the elimination challenge, that’s probably a big deal this time around.

* That elimination challenge: Cook an authentic Thanksgiving meal, historically accurate from ingredients to cooking implements, at Plimouth Plantation. They’re working as one giant group to make a traditional feast, and are only told up from that they’ll be limited to native ingredients and what the colonists brought with them. I *love* this – no gimmicks, no truffles or bacon or fish sauce or liquid aminos or whatever, no mounting everything with a stick of butter or a cup of cream. It’s as honest as food gets. Although I did wonder one thing: Did colonists bring salt and spices? The second Anglo-Dutch war in the East Indies didn’t occur until about forty years after the Mayflower reached what is now Massachusetts; at the time the ship left England, Banda/Run was still under British control, I think, so they should have had access to some of the spices from that region, notably black pepper and nutmeg.

* The diners will include James Beard winner Ken Oringer (of Toro, Clio, and La Verdad, the last one a taqueria right behind Fenway that I recommend for a pregame meal); members of the two Wampanoag tribes; and descendants of pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower.

* Gregory refers to Doug as “a little guy, very cute and a little fuzzy.” So he’s a Muppet? Or maybe a chinchilla? It sounds like he needs his own chew toy.

* The chefs arrive to find a lot of squash, legumes, and shellfish, tons of duck fat, and several containers of goat’s milk. There’s a fair amount of land-animal protein available, but it’s less traditional meats – venison, goose, and rabbit in particular. There’s one hearth with a pot, fire pits, and a lot of cast iron cookware. Adam and Doug are all over the spit-roasting set – Adam mentions catching and cooking with the drippings, which is both historically accurate and delicious. There’s a new Adam in this episode; he’s all camaraderie and teamwork this week, so maybe all he needed was for A-A-Ron to be gone. I don’t even think Adam told us where he was from in this episode.

* Gregory is going to cook the goose. I know there’s a huge layer of fat under the skin, but he says the meat itself is leaner than turkey meat. I had no idea, although I guess duck dries out pretty quickly (you can’t cook duck breast past medium or it’s a brick) so this makes sense.

* Doug is spear-roasting the rabbit, and wants the meat to spoon-ready because there are no forks for the diners. That’s thoughtful, though I imagine the pilgrims and their Wampanoag hosts weren’t squeamish about using their hands to eat.

* Katie is making a stuffing with lobster, walnuts, cranberries, and pickled blueberries. She’s taking a “big big leap” due to immunity. I can’t even imagine what this is going to taste like. I don’t really like fruity stuffings. That just sounds wrong.

* Melissa is just making a vegetable side dish because everyone else is cooking proteins. She says she’s showing off her execution and knife skills, but is that really what carries you once you’re halfway through the season?

* Mei is making a trout vinaigrette for cabbage she’s roasting with duck fat. I love this and want to try it immediately.

* Keriann was going to make a blueberry pie, but scraps it because the dough won’t stay cold, instead switching to venison and repurposing her filling, which at least she hadn’t sugared yet.

* I may have missed it, but I don’t think anyone at the table referred to the Wampanoags as “redskins.” It seems like such an easy way to honor them, too.

* Anyone else dig all the earrings Philip Wynne, one of the Wampanoag members at the table, was wearing? I might draw the line at the ring through the septum, though. I think I’d always feel like I have to sneeze.

* The dishes: Doug’s spit-roasted rabbit with garlic, ramps, hazelnuts, chestnut, and radishes required no forks, but the Wampanoags say they usually serve rabbit whole and just tear it apart at the table. The spit-roasting flavor is a winner, though. Katsuji served roasted pumpkin (or butternut squash?) with poached lobster, chestnuts, and ancho chile butter. That sounds amazing, but half the diners at my house next week wouldn’t touch it. Another of the Wampanoags says that they usually use lobster as bait to catch fish, not as food for themselves. Stacy’s ramp-smoked clams with butternut squash, roasted lobster, sesame seeds, and fresh ramps has some flavor that Gail and Padma in particular don’t like, although Tom praises her for finally “dirtying up” her food. She plated on the ground, though, which seems a little unsanitary. You can take the authenticity thing too far. Melissa’s roasted vegetable medley included parsnips, green beans, zucchini, and charred ramps with a vinaigrette. All four good but I’m not hearing a lot of praise for Melissa’s

* Tom mentions how, as a kid, his family’s Italian-American Thanksgiving always started with lasagna. It was the same in my house – often baked ziti rather than lasagna, but the same idea. And no one was really that hungry afterwards. We haven’t continued that tradition in my house, because no one can feel good after eating all of that.

* Doug steps in to help Gregory finish the goose, in part because they’re buds from PDX, but also because he loves that Gregory insisted on getting a bird on the table. It’s more of the camaraderie I mentioned above – it’s like Bizarro Top Chef where everyone gets along.

* Adam does a twist on succotash, with beans, corn, summer squash, wilted spinach, and spiced goat milk. Several of the Wampanoags say they love it, particularly as a twist on a dish (succotash) that’s very traditional for them. Katie’s blueberry stuffing with blue-cornmeal cornbread and sauteed lobster is a huge hit after all.. Gail says it’s “wacky-looking” (is that like crazy business?) but they all love it. Mei’s duck fat-roasted cabbage with trout vinaigrette also goes over well; she usually uses anchovy for salinity in the dressing, but Ken says the vinegar “just pops.” Is it just me, or are we seeing more vinaigrettes than ever this season? Gregory’s roasted goose, goose thigh confit with herbs, green beans, and gingered onions was just fair, as the confit wasn’t tender enough. Keriann’s seared venison loin with blueberry compote and buttered/herbed hazelnuts seems to have fared well, so her choice to switch worked out. Nobody really did poorly; Tom says, “There’s not a bad dish on the table.”

* Adam says to the group that “us nine absolutely nailed this as a team.” No true New Yorker would ever say anything so sappy. Come on, man.

* Padma’s favorite was Mei’s cabbage. Gail’s favorite was Doug’s. Padma also liked Katsuji’s squash. Tom loved it – calling it “sticky, gooey, savory.” He also loved Katie’s stuffing, although he says it didn’t need the lobster.

* Melissa’s vegetable medley was light on flavor. Ken questions her choice of dish; with two plus hours to cook on open fires, this is what you do? Gregory’s confit was a little dry and rough. Keriann’s blueberry sauce was too sweet on its own. Stacy’s stuffing upstaged the clams, but more importantly, it had that flavor a few people didn’t like. Tom kind of sounds bummed that they’ll have to send someone home for a dish that was only a little flawed, rather than an easy call on an outright failure.

* Doug, Katsuji, Mei are the top three. Katsuji produced intense flavor with just a few simple ingredients. Doug’s rabbit was successful because of the flavor of the wood-fired meat. Mei’s cabbage had crunch, smoky flavor, and a “pure comfort food” feel even though I at least don’t think of cabbage as comfort food. Katsuji wins, although it’s just bragging rights.

* Stacy, Melissa, and Gregory on the bottom. Padma pauses before saying Gregory’s name, but I can’t imagine anyone was surprised. Ken compliments Gregory’s cojones; Gregory said tradition made it important to get a bird on the table. Chefs rarely get sent home for taking too much of a risk, at least not this early in the competition. Stacy’s had a flavor that turned the judges off, and someone speculates that it might have been dirt from her plating.

* Stacy goes. Tom says her dish was very tasty, just the least favorite of a good group. She was probably the weakest competitor left anyway.

* Quick ranking, top to bottom: Gregory, Mei, Doug, Melissa, Adam, Katsuji, Katie, Keriann. Melissa’s been more potential than production, though.

* Next episode: Restaurant Wars! And Last Chance Kitchen is coming back! I believe we’re off next week, so my next recap will be the Thursday after Thanksgiving.

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→ November 19, 2014
→ By

The Left Hand of Darkness.

I have three Insider posts up on recent moves, one on the Heyward/Miller swap, one on Toronto signing Russell Martin, and a third omnibus post covering Hellickson, Moncada, Burnett, and La Stella/Vizcaino. Also, if you missed my annual boardgames ranking, I posted that on Tuesday.

Ursula K. Le Guin won two Hugo Awards for novels, one for The Dispossessed, which I read earlier this year (and loved), and one for the book I just finished, The Left Hand of Darkness , a much stranger book in almost every respect. Set on a planet that suffers near-permanent winter, the novel manages to explore questions of political philosophy and economy while also delving into the still-current question of gender identity and whether gender is a biological or social construct, even though she wrote the book in the late 1960s.

On Gethen, the planet where the entire novel takes place, the still-human residents have evolved over tens of thousands of years to become hermaphroditic, mostly sexless until their mensual period of “kemmer,” a point in the hormonal cycle when that person’s male or female reproductive organs become capable of procreation for a few days. That means that a Gethenian can be a mother to one child and father to another, producing a different societal concept of families. The protagonist, Genly Ai, is an envoy sent from the Ekumen, the book’s united federation of planets (so to speak) that is hoping to invite Gethen into its alliance, which focuses primarily on the sharing of knowledge and limited trade. Ai is distrusted by two separate governments, one a loose, feudal monarchy, the latter a Soviet-style command structure, and finds he has just one Gethenian he can trust, the disgraced adviser Estraven. The second half of the book puts the two of them on a life-or-death journey across desolate, snowbound country, where Ai is forced to reconsider his own aloof, perhaps ignorant attitude toward the character of the Gethenians, including the influence of their mostly genderless existence on their development as humans.

While The Left Hand of Darkness is largely praised as an early feminist sci-fi novel, reading it today it came across as a broader exploration of gender identity questions and to what extent growing up in a two-gender society (that is still relatively intolerant of anyone with gender dysphoria, or even folks who aren’t strictly heterosexual) defines our characters as individual. In a society where roles are not defined by gender because gender doesn’t exist, many questions of equality go away, as do the narrow types of personalities considered acceptable for each gender. All Gethenians Ai encounters exhibit tendencies he considers “effeminate” – the use of the term itself even indicates the trouble he has defining people as “he” or “she” – and others he calls “masculine,” but those terms come from his own experience and have no meaning outside of the two-gender context. Increasing his understanding while suffering the privations of a trip across a glacier with Estraven – who, like most Gethenians, lacks the testerone-driven strength of a biologically male human – becomes essential to the success of his overall mission, if and when he survives.

The political aspects of Ai’s quest dominate the first half of the novel as he first fails to achieve his objectives in the monarchist nation of Karhide, then travels to the totalitarian Orgoreyn, only to get caught up in the infighting among that nation’s 33-member politburo. Much of his difficulty stems from widespread skepticism that he’s actually an alien – he looks similar to Gethenians, just taller, darker in complexsion, and of course of a single gender – and the rest comes from doubt over the peaceful nature of his mission. He spends two years in Karhide, but is hesitant to commit to bringing the ship with the rest of his trade mission (eleven others, all kept in stasis so they aren’t aging while waiting for the call) to Gethen, even though it would likely seal the agreement with the Karhidish monarch. Le Guin’s aim here is vague until Ai crosses the border, at which point she unloads on the Soviets, which I’m sure was a lot more powerful or shocking in 1969 when the book was first published than it is today. We’ve been too desensitized to the abuses of authoritarian regimes to be affected by Ai’s plight in a forced-labor camp.

My one complaint with Left Hand is Le Guin’s use of phony dialect and terminology, something a lot of fantasy and sci-fi writers do, presumably to make the whole setting seem more real to readers but instead just coming off as confusing and, to my eyes, a little juvenile. I don’t know why Le Guin needed to create a whole new calendar with names for months and days, all summarized in a appendix at the end of the book. I don’t know why she needed so many new terms for government officials; it seems like an imagination run wild, without the guiding hand of an editor to say, hey, you’re just going to make readers lose their focus on the plot. It’s too strong and thoughtful a novel to waste time on trivial word changes, and given how well the gender identity themes still hold up over 40 years later, a book that deserves a much wider audience than just the sci-fi crowd.

Next up: I’m reading two books at once now, W. Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil as my main read while also trying to read Carlos Fuentes’ The Death of Artemio Cruz in the original Spanish.

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