Stir-Fried Thai-Style Beef with Chiles and Shallots

with Spicy Marinated Cucumber Salad and Jasmine Rice
The key to this dish is twofold: first, get Thai basil. It is a cross between mint and fennel — the taste is indescribable. Second, get tamarind concentrate (or paste.) It gives an authentic touch that is difficult to duplicate with substitutes. Palm sugar is good, but brown will do. Piquin chiles are good, but serrano or even jalapeños are okay.

Serves 4 with rice

Beef and Marinade
1 T tamarind concentrate
1/2 tsp. ground white pepper
1 tsp. palm sugar
2 T fish sauce (Nam Pla)
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1 T minced garlic
2 T lime juice
2 pounds Boston or New York steak , trimmed and cut into 1/4-inch-thick strips

Stir-Fry
2 T Nam Pla
2 T rice vinegar
2 T water
1 T palm sugar
1 T Asian chili-garlic paste
4 medium cloves garlic , minced (about 2 tablespoons)
3 T vegetable oil
10 Thai bird chiles (piquin), halved, seeds and ribs removed, chiles cut crosswise 1/8 inch thick
3 medium shallots , trimmed of ends, peeled, quartered lengthwise, and layers separated
1/2 cup Thai purple basil, in chiffonade
1/2 cup fresh cilantro leaves, chopped coarsely
1/3 cup chopped unsalted roasted peanuts

Lime wedges for serving

1. For the beef and marinade: Combine marinade ingredients in large bowl. Add beef, toss well to combine; marinate as long as possible. Overnight is good, minimum is one hour.

2. For the stir-fry: In small bowl, stir together fish sauce, vinegar, water, palm sugar, and chili-garlic paste until sugar dissolves; set aside. In small bowl, mix garlic with 1 tsp. oil; set aside. Heat 2 tsp. oil in 12-inch nonstick skillet over high heat until smoking; add one-third of beef to skillet in even layer. Cook, without stirring, until well browned, about 2 minutes, then stir and continue cooking until beef is browned around edges and no longer pink in the center, about 30 seconds. Transfer beef to medium bowl. Repeat with additional oil and remaining meat in 2 more batches.

3. After transferring last batch of beef to bowl, reduce heat to medium; add remaining 2 tsp. oil to now-empty skillet and swirl to coat. Add chiles and shallots and cook, stirring frequently, until beginning to soften, 3 to 4 minutes. Push chile-shallot mixture to sides of skillet to clear center; add garlic to clearing and cook, mashing mixture with spoon, until fragrant, about 15 seconds. Stir to combine garlic with chile-shallot mixture. Add fish sauce mixture to skillet; increase heat to high and cook until slightly reduced and thickened, about 30 seconds. Return beef and any accumulated juices to skillet, toss well to combine and coat with sauce, stir in half of mint and cilantro; serve immediately, sprinkling individual servings with portion of peanuts and remaining herbs, and passing lime wedges separately.

Spicy Cucumber Salad
1/2 cucumber, peeled and sliced thinly
1 tsp. sesame oil
1 tsp. sambal oelek, sriracha or garlic-chile paste
dash lime juice

Combine thoroughly, marinate for a couple of hours in refrigerator. Serve.

Jasmine Rice
2 cups jasmine rice
2 1/3 cups chicken broth
Stick cinnamon
3 cloves
3 cardamom pods
Ghee (clarified butter)

Wash rice until water runs clear. Soak in water for 2 hours, drain. In large sauté pan on medium heat, melt 2 tablespoons ghee or vegetable oil. Fry spices for a couple of minutes. Add drained rice. Stirring constantly, fry for about five minutes, or until glassy. Add hot chicken broth, stir to combine, reduce heat to minimum, cover with aluminum foil and pan lid. Let steam for 18 minutes or so, remove from heat and let rest for 10 more minutes. Remove lid. Remove whole spices and fluff up. Serve.

If You're Even Interested in Flying . . .

This is pretty much the best blog on flying (and related aviation issues) on the Internet. (Hey, do they still capitalise Internet? Can't we name it something different that doesn't sound like a hip-hop group hijacked the name, like "Da Net"? Or a corporate clown? Let's call it Assholeville. Yup, that's my suggestion for you weary stock-plunging, bank-account-plummeting good folk today.

Assholeville. Has a certain ring to it, but I don't know how it would work in French . . . and "Asshole" is too difficult to spell in French so I won't even bother. I know you'll bear with me there, my legion of Assholeville pals.

Yup, it's definitely a sticky.

The New Combo

Okay, it's official: the new combo involves pastis, mushrooms, gorgonzola and crème fraîche. Oh, and San Marzano tomatoes.

Out of all the cooking shows on the Food Network, I like Michael Smith possibly the most, because he advocates "cooking without a recipe."

Now, I've had this argument with myself a few times (and on this blog) but sometimes it really is the best policy. Like I said the other day about the cook giving me the laser eye when I asked him what was in his pasta sauce and he said "Parmesan" . . . well, to him that's what was in it. Not four cups of heavy cream, two tablespoons of butter, a half a teaspoon of ground black pepper blah blah blah.

SOMETIMES -- just sometimes, these measures are useful, when, for example, you're making something completely for the first time. But does a cook in rural India, for example, use a cup measure?

At any rate, last night I made the above-mentioned. Some shiitakes, pleurots and shallots and garlic. Then some boneless, skinless chicken thighs, breaded with a little bit of flour, Cajun spice and pepper and salt, browned in truffle oil and garlic butter after being brined a while. Of course, the pastis flambéed in a dangerous manner.

Then the San Marzanos, puréed and mixed with some white wine, butter, crème fraîche and chicken broth and reduced to a nice saucy texture, then a little Emmenthal and Gorgonzola and a half a cup of Reggiano and then voilà: mix it all together and have with some fresh pasta raviolis.

Sorry, no photos today but will make it again and make sure I take some.

Facebook

That's it: I'm shutting down Facebook permanently. These assholes have pretty much admitted they don't quite know what they're doing.

I'm not a stickler for privacy or stuff like that, but I JUST DON'T NEED to know what some asshole had for breakfast yesterday or "Friends you might know". I don't know them and I don't want want to know them and and if I want someone to find me GET A FUCKING PHONE BOOK.

I swear, it's possibly the worst Internet experiment ever imagined. It's gone so wrong in so many ways.

Anyway, that's it; I'm checking out until THEY GET THEIR SHIT STRAPPED TIGHT AND LOCKED AND LOADED.

I have a blog. Get your own blog. I don't need you inviting me to kiss your fucking new dog.

Got that?

Noise

I generally do not have an instant attraction to noise. I don't know if this is genetically predisposed, or, as I love to trumpet, "Fetal Alcohol Syndrome," but other than music, noise does not agree with me.

I startle easily, but a random, thudding noise, or, say, the roar of buses down below (like I like to say, two 747s taking off together) really begin a low-grade irritation. Not at all like the extreme noise quotient of a very busy, loud restaurant where you have to shout to your companions. For some reason that does not bother me.

But someone hammering something at 8:43 a.m. on Presidents' Day really gets me pissed off. (Sorry, Ironman).

That day I actually got so tired of it that I went down, disheveled and in my bathrobe, not particularly caring, and said to some guy in the hallway, who actually looked like he'd suddenly acquired a new acquaintance with fear, "What are you doing?" The poor guy positively quailed. I'm not a big guy, not an imposing presence by any means. But I have a laser stare and a very, very cold voice . . . the voice of the grave, if I wish it.

"Uhh . . . uhh, well . . . :

"So why are you deciding to hammer one floor below my bedroom in this paper and cardboard assemblage that decides to call itself a building at 8:43 a.m. on this very fine Presidents' Day morning?"

"Uhh, the schedule . . . they were scheduled to come this mor . . . ning . . ." His voice trailed off.

I think he saw the claw hammer I'd been holding behind my back, because when I turned and stalked off back upstairs and he realised I'd been thinking about doing some hammering of my own, all the noise stopped. Instantaneously. The terror was palpable throughout the building . . .

Okay, I exaggerate, but at least they stopped the hammering.

But to me, the sweetest sound in the world is the absence of sound, like loving the absence of light -- not merely silent, or black, but wave upon wave of velvet silence, the steely blackness of the stars in some remote outpost . . . then some asshole motorcycle roaring up the mountain to make it all complete.

As far as genetically preprogrammed goes, I remember when Taishi was a tiny infant, maybe three weeks old, and I suddenly wondered out of the blue if he was deaf because he slept all the time.

So one afternoon while he was in his peaceful baby-world I decided to clap my hands, like, really loud, to indeed confirm if he was deaf.

Have you ever seen a small infant literally leap a foot in the air? All thoughts of Moro Reflex aside, I swear I've never seen a small object move so fast.

So *sigh* I guess it IS a genetic predisposition . . .

The Guitar

There are scary things in life, but one of them has to be when your fingers literally take possession of your brain, ignore you and your desires, and just Take Over. It's like ten little aliens that have invaded you, each one of them with its own agenda, its plan, quite not involving you.

So when I play guitar these days, actually more as a form of calming down, my fingers do shit I can't even imagine. I almost jump up and say "Holy shit! What was that all about?"

I guess that should be called Good.

But that your little digits override your brain can't be anywhere near good. And when you start inquiring of your fingers of their mental state, perhaps it's time to take a long, long vacation . . . somehwhere near Caicos, I think.

Ahh, dunno. Maybe the Comoros, except for that bloody Egyptair plane crash.

Umm, just thought I'd share that with you pleasant people. Now, go on, go on, get on with your own lives, what are you waiting for? My tie is too tight, what more do you want from me?

Social Obligations

. . . they're obviously something I've found I'm quite averse to. But I never used to be this way. I used to be Mr. Party Animal, hey, let's get down, what, there's a concert at nine?

And it's misunderstanding to say that I don't still have that gene in me. I do. You know, I get on planes and go to the end of the planet . . . you obviously can't be Howard Hughes to do that.

What I do do is pat myself on the head from time to time and say "Yo, you're not Head Chef at Boulud . . . you're not CEO at Lehman Bros. . . you're not designing the wing for the Airbus A380 and will be on the line for it for the rest of your life . . . you're just some schmuck who's trying to figure shit out and not trying to raise too much stink and piss too many people off, you know, just stay in your corner, don't make too much noise, don't call attention to yourself" . . . well, you know.

God, this scotch and orange juice tastes like the Irrawady river.

Itchy

I know, enough, enough already. But hey, you have the option to navigate away! Just click that mouse! What, you from Abu Dhabi? Get your servant to do it for you.

But have you ever had that itch? You know the one, just before you're trying to fall asleep. Your hand is parked under your back, or, maybe your companion's back, and all of a sudden there's this itch that is not going away. You're trying everything to wish it away, but it's right at the top of your nose between your eyes and it most definitely is not going away. If, say, you're sleeping with your companion and the hand you want to use is like, right beneath her back, snuggled all comfortably, and you know that just . . .eeeeeeeveennn . . . . moseying it on out from there is most DEFINITELY going to wake someone -- anyone -- even the cat -- up, what are you going to do?

Just what are you going to do? Go for it! Oh Christ, all hell breaks loose, companion mutters, shifts into a new position, your tiny night fantasy is broken into a million shards. Next thing: "God, I had a hard time sleeping last night. What, you want breakfast? There are no eggs. Why? Because you didn't buy them."

All because of this little itch.

But please, for a moment, abandon thoughts of Abu Ghraib and consider the space suit. Imagine, you're upside down in some fucking moon-space vehicular activity module and your nose starts to itch. No, really. Whaddya gonna do? Huh? Hey, pull off the mask and you'll be sucked into Eternity, they'll be wiping your eyeballs off the space capsule with Extra-Strength Windex.

What does Microsoft do for a living? Those assholes. Why don't they design an automatic itch-scratcher for space helmets? What the hell else are they good for? Windows?

They're Going To Take Over The World

Hey, I’m no chump in the kid department — guess what! Instant credentials! I have one! But sometimes I think there are some things they know that I don’t, and it’s a thorn in my side.

A couple of nights ago we babysat Nathan’s son — he’s only seven months old. Before I had Taishi, this would have been a major hassle, a trial, an ordeal. But that night it was a pleasure. I’d forgotten all the pleasures of dealing with tiny kids. It’s like, you’ll never know until you have one, but you’ll also never know until you’re a total schlub (which I kind of get the feeling you are, dear reader).

But this little kid, an adorable 7-month old boy, was merciless. Not to say he was out of line, but basically when it was time to put him to bed in his car seat (he has a bassinet, but that’s different) we had a contest. I was rocking him and crooning him meaningless songs but he was gazing at me with an almost hypnotic stare.

Normally, this doesn’t faze me. I’ve put Tai-chan to bed FIVE-HUNDRED-PLUS times. But this little oaf’s stare unnerved me, I’ll have to say. “La-la-la-laaa-la, baby go to sleep, when you awake you can have some robot sheep” or something or other I was singing, but he fixed me with this laser-like gaze while he drank from his bottle, his eyes never wavering from mine, these little black beads, I’ll swear, CHALLENGING ME . . . and . . . I backed down.

He won the stare-fest. Luckily for me, this resulted in his going to sleep, but is that a victory for me?

Huh? Is it?

Thoughts on a Snowy Day

You know, it occurred to me, in this malarious effluvial state caught on a plane recently (falciparum, if you must know), that the universe is impossibly big.

But, also, that the universe is impossibly small. If you’d just pull over your scanning electron microscope, you’d witness incredible things.

You wouldn’t imagine it, but even atoms have bars. Yep, they go out to dinner just like you and me, they waste energy all over the place dating each other and breaking up with each other. Witness, as noticed under my scanner the other day, the following exchange: this proton sidles up to the bar and buys this neutron a drink. Says, “Hey, baby, you’re really attractive.” The neutron says “Dude, get wise, you repel me.”

I swear, it was almost an episode from the Bold and the Restless.

But hey, it doesn’t match the vastness of the universe. Did you know how many atoms came out of the Big Bang? Funny, I didn’t either. But guess what: originally they all fit in a pinhole. Yup, you were a pinhole once.

Now you’re an asshole.

Uh, sorry, wrong routine.

Now I don’t particularly want to go on about gas giants, but did you know that if you compressed ten million of them to the size of a marble, they’d smell incredibly bad? I mean, bad like you’ve never known it. You’d choke, trust me.

Hmm, better eliminate some of these parasites infecting my liver with a good dose of Black and White before I pass out and whack these atoms.

The Deal? Make Sure And Get a Receipt

Here’s the deal. You meet someone. They have absolutely no idea what you’re like except what they see from your actions and what you tell them.

And you really have no agenda, you’re not making any “moves” or being devious, you’re just you.

And you fall in love. I mean, both of you.

You interact for a while but then the inevitable happens: they meet your family or friends. You meet theirs.

Various people have various levels of “familyhood” or friendships but I just have two, and it’s pretty much carved in a Tahitian marae.

But inevitably your relatives get your partner and start answering all the juicy questions, starting with “Why does he do this?" This, my friends, is the beginning of the Kiss of Doom. Because all of a sudden they’re co-conspirators, trading secrets about YOU. They’ll never admit it, but they’re doing it. And I’m sick to death of it.

When I marry someone I don’t marry their cousin-sixth-removed. I don’t involve myself in backstories or family/friend feuds and if I ever get into them I get out as soon as possible.

At least, all this, I try. And I know it’s denial, but when I marry someone I marry HER. And if not, I DON’T marry her.

I don’t know how selfish that is.

But if you calculate it, it's "What does one plus one equal?" Hopefully not one. Fermi, dove sei quando ho bisogno di te?

Yo, Zacky!

Yo, Zacky!

Whatchyou doin' up there now that you're representing, like, 99.9999985 percent of human beings who've ever lived?

Ya bastard, you never told me you were going to check out before me. I'da put the bullet in the back of your head personally if you'd told me you wanted it. I guess that was a no-option option.

But you're there, and I'm here. How do we go from here? Ya gonna stay there till I get up there and kick your ass for depriving me of the rest of your life? Because I'm gonna come up there with very pointy boots.

Zacky, while you're there and I'm here, I have a few personal favors to ask: find out who that asshole God is and tell Him to call my secretary. I have a few issues with His dealings with your file. Tell Him personally that when I get to Hell, there's going to be a beef.

No sitdowns, either. I'm going to personally come upstairs and KICK HIS FUCKING ASS. And while you're at it, fucking kick St. Peter's sorry doorman ass too.

Yeah. Tell Him that. I'll mail you letters from Hell, but stay tight, dude, keep up the good work I never did.

And I will RAISE HELL in your memory.

Being Here

Christ, I've exhausted that title about 16 times, maybe.

But: Filippo's. It's a little place on College Avenue in Oakland in the Rockridge district and Brigitte and I were in desperation to escape this house and the smoke, so I remembered it from like, three years back.

You haven't lived till you've been to a restaurant-not-fat-food in the Bay Area.

I'm speaking to you Montrealers. All others can parse as you wish. But number one, you have to expect lineups. Okay, okay, no reservations at L'Express might leave you dining at the bar on a Monday night, but dinner at some buttfuck Italian place in Oakland having a lineup?

It be so. But y'know, we walked in there and there was a tiresome lineup for, maybe 12 tables, but these people REALLY knew what they were doing. At the bar: harried staff but she took the time out, completely unasked, to pour a glass of ice water. Not even a conversation. Me: "House white?" No conversation. Just move, pour, deliver.

Then while we wait we see the House do its stuff. These guys are on display and not a one of them has ever been anywhere near Napoli. I'm guessing, but the two line cooks were probably Ecuadorean or El Salvadorean and the waitresses were from Taiwan. I swear.

I watched them. Two little motherfuckers half my age, spinning pans, tossing shrimp, sprinkling basil . . . in approximately 1/8th the time it would take me.

So then we were seated, but it was like a concerted team pored over us: the El Salvadorean Maitre D' laughed appropriately at my joking but in an appropriate manner and service was whipped out. No Restaurant Makeover for this place.

This place is wired tight, locked and loaded, they might be 20-somethings from Guanaco but the food they put out was amazing. Ravioli in cream sauce, gamberi with capellini . . . hey, you expected Dean Martin to poke in and say "Who's on next?"

But it was not only delectable, with a little personal setup of garlic and spices in olive oil for your sourdough slices, but an amazingly creamy ravioli, really, really expertly done (Brigitte and I were deconstructing the recipe) and it was extremely reasonably priced so we went there TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW.

Christ, in a town where any ass one-horse restaurant could lead to a mugging or maybe just a friendly punch in the face, this was really, really nice.

Leftovers, even.

But there was a glitch. I know that customers are supposed to come and go, Table Four are assholes, but I walked into the kitchen and asked to speak to whoever was in charge. Well, the Ecuadorean dude shoves his mug in mine. And I say" Just how did you make the cream sauce for the ravioli? What, heavy cream, onion, garlic, what? Did you do a roux? Cheese?"

"Parmesan" was what came out of his mouth. At that point I kinda left it, as four line cooks were staring at me and "Manuel", as I'll label him was directing his beady gaze into my eyes.

"Parmesan . . . so that's the secret! Good stuff guys, more parmesan, just hope it ain't Kraft" and I was hustling out of there. The knives they use are very sharp.

Next time I'll tell you about the guy who REALLY wants to open a poutine place in the Bay Area.

Uhh

Somebody named Ironman who follows this blog recently pointed out that "Life's too short to be pissed off all the time."

I don't know, what's your take on that? I'm not as old as him, but I don't have, you know, POSTAL issues with humanity. I keep telling Brigitte it's Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, my mother was smoking and drinking when my "Factor X-23-selenol" was being developed in my brain but otherwise, what accounts for sheer irritability?

Aaah, anyone who reads this blog knows I lose it at the best of times. But hey, I'm not Anger Management credentials. Not even rehab. I never (god forbid!) hit anyone, the fucking worst I ever do when abusing substances is go to sleep.

Thank you Martha Stewart, who inexplicably appeared in my dreams the other day . . . "Uhh, you're Martha Stewart?" (I could not give a rat's ass about Martha Stewart) "Yes, I am!" "Whoa, you're way taller than me! What, by the way are you doing in my dream? I'm trying to process shit here in Oakland California in an unfamiliar bed, couldn't you have done me the goddamn favor of hey, like, maybe revisiting in Montreal like, maybe next Tuesday? Uhh, maybe 4:30 a.m.?"

Not sure where this is going but, as MY LOYAL READERS you will bear with me. Like they say, you always have the choice to change the channel.

Nah, but the issue of irritability keeps coming up. It's just like a low-grade fever. Just never goes away. It really isn't "Anger Management" level . . . I NEVER yell at people I don't know or have a hassling streak . . . and I sure as HELL never abuse someone I'm with or am next to.

What can I say? It's an ongoing cynicality that occupies my brain forever. Ironman said life is too short to be pissed off all the time but short of massive lithium infusions I guess I'm going to have to live with this.

I never confront people I don't know--that's a HORRIBLE kind of irritability, one I can't imagine--but I tend to take it out on the people close to me. You know, words, attitude, whatever. Never any violent or even approaching violent stuff but just a general "Fuckin' A, what the fuck am I doing here? Does this wine have to be red? Could you maybe have parked twelve inches closer to this Neanderthal so I can get this piece of shit bag out? Umm, what the fuck, do we really have an obligation with Scott? What the fuck, turn on the windshield wipers, it's really raining now."

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Ironman thought it. How can you waste the time that you have in life being pissed off all the time? Well, I SAY it depends on HOW you're pissed off.

Hey look, Brigitte constantly says how much she loves me. Y'know, I'm not the type to berate shop clerks or to send food back. or ANYTHING APPROACHING THAT. To do that kind of shit, you have to be a clod . . . there is no other word for it. No, me, like it or not, just gets irritable of things I can't control.

I swear, I actually have a checklist of sorts. "Ahh, fuck" (sorry, it always starts that way) "okay, I am waiting in this line in this grocery store and there are five people ahead of me. That dude has a shitload of stuff. Do these tomatoes really matter?"

Ironman,you're a good guy. Passing ANY TIME AT ALL being pissed off is a true total waste of time. It just doesn't move the checkout line any faster or solve the fucking problem I have talking to some asshole at Videotron who keeps asking what my "personal question" and answer is when all I want to do is change my channels. Ironman, you're right. You are SO FUCKING RIGHT.

Life is amazingly short, but you know what? JUST FOR YOU I will not continue this rant like I want to do and instead I will try to get a bit jiggy and pat a cat, maybe that little asshole cat that keeps hiding under the bed but seems to like me . . . maybe I'll do that instead of launching into a new tirade.

Trust me, if I tried to go to sleep angry, well, you'd have the longest-woken human on the planet.

I think we all get all kinds of angry and we express it many different ways. I hate Angry Me, but somehow I justify him. The biggest thing that I ever care about is that I don't want to hurt anyone IN ANY WAY with my irritability, but you know what?

It's all my parents' fault. Yup. Obviously Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. See?

What you lookin' at anyways?

Writing

Writing is so much fun. Think about it; there's no effort! You don't even need a typewriter any more! Hey, can you put 26 letters together in a somewhat organized fashion? Or is it 28? I forget, but hey, I just wrote something!

And maybe it entertained you! Do the math. You are READING WHAT I AM WRITING. Hey, did I issue some RSVP for you to read it? Nope. Yo, that writer dude, Updike or something, just croaked a couple of weeks ago. Did you read anything he wrote? I mean, the guy EARNED BUCKS doing what I'm doing RIGHT NOW. "Cept, well, I ain't Brad Pitt and I ain't married to Angelina Jolie so I guess that's why I'm not an actor.

This Is A Pen. Do you know that that's what the first words of Japanese they use to teach foreigners? Kore wa pen desu.

How pathetic is that? Couldn't they have at least come up with "My Country 'tis of Thee" or some shit? What. "This is a pen?"

Holy fucking christ.

Okay, well, now that I'm on my private soapbox, and YOU'RE the suckers who are reading this, let me just inject a subliminal message: Ever Heard Of Dust Mites? Google it. You just don't want to know about dust mites.

Hello Montreal

Hello Montreal! You still there? Sure as fuck hope so. I did the tourist bullshit here in San Francisco today, y'know, Golden Gate, Muir Woods, Marin, Sausalito, Stinson Beach, and I've done it a billion times but it just never gets any jiggier (hey, at least that's a word I've learned by being here!)

Yallah yallah yallah.

You still there? Because I miss you. Don't ever fool yourself that you're not in the best place in the world.

Loss of Control and How To Deal With It

Well, obviously I'm not a doctor and I don't even play one on TV, but I could sure as fuck fool the hell out of you if I really wanted to. "I think that that tight feeling you have in your chest is probably something that we should look at . . . schedule another appointment with Chantal and we'll take a look at your your test results next week."

Meanwhile: "Chantal, this guy probably has advanced cardiomyopathy and will probably keel over at any point now. He smokes like a chimney and probably his regular doc just doesn't have the heart to tell him. Get him an appointment with Rahal and let's see if he's still operating by next Friday. Have his SGOT and full panel. Might make things easier."

Or hey, now I'm a computer technician. "Okay, well it looks like -- and I'm just projecting because I don't know for sure -- that the head -- that's the actual thing that contacts the platen surface, like a 747 flying 10 feet above the ground in miniature -- has somehow become misaligned. I really can't say for sure but I'm going to look at it more closely. Don't worry, your data will probably be fine."Meanwhile: "Ray, this fucker's computer is fucked. Let's string him along for a while, I might be able to get some bytes out of this. Take his calls and tell him everything will be done by next Friday."


Or I'm a pilot. "Folks, just checking in from the flight deck, looks like we have a couple of people in front of us, I estimate our wait time at around 12 or 15 minutes. Otherwise the ground conditions look good and I don't see why we won't be taking off shortly."


Meanwhile: "Umm, Danny, everything is fucked up on the ground here, just make sure everyone is aware that this might be happening for the next hour or so. The weather in Detroit is fucked."

See how easy it is? Do you see?

It just points out how vulnerable we are and how vulnerable we allow ourselves to be when some charlatan like me can bend your nose a bit and tell you something that isn't.

Why did it take 48 hours to find out how Zach died? How many charlatans did it take to really explain it? If I can pull the wool over you, guess what . . . anyone can.


"It was a massive heart attack, I'm afraid . . . hard to explain in someone so young, but these things happen."

Sign up now at www.pullthewool.com.

Cold in Oakland

Ooooookay, now I’m going to test your collective patience.

Casual readers sign off now, there are no recipes today.

But I can’t sleep, and I know I won’t be able to for quite some time to come. Trouble is, I know of about 30 other people who are not sleeping tonight. I know, it happens to everyone. Maybe many times in one lifetime! I call it the 3 a.m. phone call. I’ve been dreading it, for no explainable reason, for 25 years.

And for 25 years, there has been no 3 a.m. phone call. I insularise myself. I shy away from hospitals, am always the first to beg off if there has to be a hospital visit except in exceptional circumstances: namely, when I’m the fucking patient.

So when it happens, I’m clueless. Totally out of my depth. Gotta admit, I’m a master of denial. Nothing will ever happen to me. I’m Mr. Safest, Locked-Down Dude on the planet. Everything in life to me is a hazard.

Deep frying some chicken? Reminds me of the woman who tried to get rid of her kid’s lice by putting gasoline in her hair and then they were too close to the pilot light on the stove.

Okay, okay, they say overcompensating just retards kids’ brain, hey, let ‘em go on those dangerous-looking monkey bars, fuckin’ LET THEM BE KIDS.

I don’t know what category you’re in. I only know that I’m a worrier, but almost a paranoid worrier. You’d probably laugh at my worries. I’ve sentenced my parents to death for 20 years, but they’re bustling along quite nicely, thank you, in their late 80s.

Whenever I’m in a car (I haven’t driven for 20 years, but I used to be a very good driver) I tend to be the guy who says “We’re hurtling along this street in a very large piece of metal and if anything, ANYTHING should happen to go wrong in spite of my seatbelt and these nice airbags, WE’RE GOING TO BE HAMBURGER.” So naturally I get a bit annoyed at anyone who threatens not to be able to drive properly.

But again, I digress. Look, we all go through life with different risk-assessment agendas. Obviously a homeless person has his own category of risk assessment. We don’t want to die. No one usually wants to die.

But people climb mountains. They dive to 300 feet with just holding their breath. FOR SPORT. Just for the fuck of it! Is that you, or someone you know?

Because I must be in the other bracket. Someone who WANTS TO LIVE. Someone who knows that in two fucking instants, you can go from above ground to below ground. You would simply NOT BELIEVE how easy it is to be here one moment and not the next.

At this point in my life, I get active in taking charge of ANY SITUATION that threatens my being around. If I saw a bank robbery in progress, while I was there, I’d do the math and say Umm, he shoots, bullets might fly, gotta take him down.

But I’ve been unbelievably lucky. Incredibly, storybook lucky. I guess. The only person who ever really died on me was my best pal Miles’ 2 year old sister. We were five or so and no one was watching her and she followed us up the fire escape and she fell through the rails and blood was coming out her nose and ears and her little white dress framed a four-foot pool of blood.

So that’s about it for me. Death is abstract, including my own. So how does that account for my fear of the 3 a.m. phone call? It’s a tiny obsession, almost like if I have a mantra like “Uhh, fuck, get prepared, anything’s going to happen soon, you’re too lucky, you’ve run out of free passes and your darling sister is going to die in a fiery car wreck not of her own making.” After the thousandth time of saying that to yourself, almost like it’s a talisman, an Evil Eye, as it were, and nothing happens, well, you don’t get complacent (if you’re me) but you just feel a bit blessed.

I felt blessed. Until today.

Yup. The 3 a.m. phone call finally came through. Of course, nothing like I thought it would, nowhere near my imagination, my little countless scenarios. Nah, it was predictable. Why? Because it was so random that that is in itself predictable. It wasn’t 3 a.m. It wasn’t my sister. It wasn’t a fiery car wreck.

My brother’s wife sister’s 18-year-old boy, a dude you would have all liked to meet, strapping, happy, healthy, the joy of their family and also ours, articulate, respectful, talented, very handsome, with the whole of the universe ahead of him, just DIED today. We actually don’t even know how. “In his sleep” . . . was something from the coroner.

I was over at his house tonight with Brigitte. Every single person except Brigitte, myself, my elder brother and our best friend was totally out of control. Seeing two younger sisters and their usually affable father just in a world beyond you and I can imagine was a mind-blower.

God, it just brought home that yep, my tiny fantasies of the 3 a.m. call are all too real . . . it was a bit more abstract yesterday but believe me, it’s all too real today.

Here is REALLY hoping that all of us are going to be okay, that all is going to be okay in the end, as I had to tell his shaking, crying sisters while hugging them, with no words except those of the helpless . . .

Fuck, not looking forward to tomorrow.

You hear? Drive carefully. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY. No 3 a.m. phone calls for any of us.

Okay?

Here

Dunno . . . half of you would say "You're crazy, how can you not like being in California in February?"

But two days in and I already miss my Montreal. "How you guys doin'today?" Those dreaded words, from the Shopmart clerk. Cars stopping when you put one foot on the street. Weird. Waiters saying "I'm Patrick and our specials for the evening . . ." weird.

You guys in Montreal, you know what I'm talking about -- it's indefinable. Montreal is just such an incredible place and it still is after 25 years. Everything about it.

So no, I'm not crazy. But I want to be back in civilization as soon as possible.
However, gotta say I love rain in February.

Calif

You know, I've been doing this Internet thing for a while now. I was in on the first wave, when news stations were still saying "http://www" like it was a mantra. Pages had blinky things on them. Pages were white type on black or purple backgrounds, just because they could be.

I was actually tasked to make the Montreal Symphony Orchestra's first-ever website. Me. Just me, no team of designers. I had to do the code by hand, literally write all the
tags and then import the file into Netscape to see how it looked.

I know. It sounds like the old "I walked twelve miles to school every day" rant.

But the wondrous thing is how it all seems now. It's like starting up a remote country store and running it mom and pop, and that was all there was, and only you, Elmer, had the connections to get the provisions. There was no competition because you were the only thing around.

Even I was completely new to the whole thing. I won't belabor the point, but it was a complete wasteland. The "Internet" was the "Information Superhighway" and hey, I was one of those few who could actually create pages from raw html. Hey look, YOU probably can't even do it now, but trust me, I was one of a very prized breed. It was arcane, like the shit they do now; the language was incomprehensible, yet suddenly, after fucking around with a few tags, a web page could emerge.

So what was my first instinct? To write an online diary. Huh? Why? Why would I write the first thing that came into my head whenever I wanted, and who the hell would ever read it? Well that didn't concern me too much at the time. But in 1995 I just started writing about something close to my heart and it just became a diary. I thought, what the fuck, let's do something so Montrealers will know where to go to eat. Because I wanted to know where to go to eat.

So at first I just cloned Gazette capsule reviews, since I figured, no one reads them anyway but the fucking Gazette wasn't even online, let alone publishing rewrites.

I don't have a clue what the readership for boulevardmontreal.com was, not a clue, but it just morphed into a diary. Just what had happened in the food universe maybe, or somewhere I went, or some kitchen tool I liked. There were no comments and no one emailed me, so I had no idea if anyone at all was reading what I wrote, so I just wrote whatever occurred to me, actually mostly for my own amusement.

I guess other people must have been doing the same thing, but they were hard to find. Then my brother gave me a little Fuji camera for Christmas in 1997 and I started taking pictures of my food. The resto people were mostly nonplussed because I always pretended I was a tourist and took a picture of my partner first but occasionally I'd get hit on, as in, why are you taking pictures?

Aah, I always deflected it. But little did I know that what I was doing was blogging restaurant reviews. The word "blog" was years away from being invented and all I thought I was doing was being Mr. Amateur Food reviewer, and by the way, here's a picture of my curry . . .

Who knew? I certainly didn't. I never said "This could develop into a major thing." I never spied dollar signs. It eventually became montrealfood.com, which was a herculean effort over six months, but never at the root of it was "How can this make money?"

I certainly don't put even close to any effort into it as I once did. But now, not only are people blogging about food of all kinds, recipes, restaurants, cuisines, but they're taking professional-grade, Gourmet magazine quality photos of it. Literally, the sites are a dime a dozen. Thousands upon thousands, with top-notch writing and photography and creativity, just like This Is The Way It Should Be. When I think of the effort required in writing a nice piece, taking majorly good photos for it, framing everything nicely and making it look extremely good, I think of how much time it takes to do that. And most of these folk just do it to amuse themselves, really. No, really.

I think of my free time. I think of people who, maybe do all the sudoku puzzles in all their daily newspapers, who develop complicated avatars for their nightly game of World Of Warcraft, and I think how much EFFORT goes into this stuff.

And I think whaa??? Who could anyone besides me be possibly interested in reading my rants, my raves, my nothings, my little masterpieces (only to me) that I literally used to write for myself; In the old days I literally thought not one single individual on the earth was reading what I was writing. I didn't know what lurkers were, didn't even know the word.

What is my point? I'm not quite sure. I try to make it fun for anyone who happens to stumble across my words, but in the long run, it adds up to petty meanderings, in many ways. It's actually quite selfish, because if I ever did have someone who actually reads what I write, they would be subject to my whim on that particular day. That's kind of not fair; I like to write and I like for everything I say to have a vague point. Well, it seems to make sense to me at the time I'm writing it.

But these days there are amazing writers out there, seemingly doing the same thing I do, except ten times more assiduously, like they looked at your golf stroke and then patented ten improvements on it. I pride myself on my writing skills, but some of these people blow me away. They're funnier, wittier, have an angle and develop it far better than I ever do in my rambling rants, but the kicker is that they do it for free too! The loving care they put into every post makes me feel like some guy under the freeway in a sleeping bag.

Some day I'll make a list of links to the kinds of sites I'm talking about, but you've already been to them.

So what's left? Rantier rants? Christ, I was taking pictures of my airline meals in 1995 and see what happened with that. Missed all the boats and quicker folk than I saw the potential in all of this, but you know what?

I like to be stuck in 1995 and have someone like you read my diary. It's very little effort to write it and that's what it is--the same way it was in 1995. The endless ramblings of some guy you don't know with no particular agenda, far too many bad words, a childish temper and pictures that suck.

That makes me feel better. See?

Cooking the Books

Now that I really think about it, my cookbook collection is actually quite pathetic. I swear it used to occupy three of these shelves, but I culled, I culled . . . had to, to make room for the glassware hanger on the shelf below and the “bar” on the shelf below that.

But It’s interesting to look at what I decided to keep. It’s a little randomized since the last rearrangement of about two months ago, but I did try to keep it in rough categories.

What do you need cookbooks for, in this age of the Internet and ten million recipes online? It’s a legitimate question. I find I go to the books less and less these days — it’s just so much easier to enter “Beef Rendang” and come up with a gorgeous photo and an intelligent recipe, rather than thumbing through stacks of books.

But let me tell you, last summer, of which the sun is currently the only stark reminder, I went through almost every cookbook I have. Again. Just sat on the balcony, drank beer, listened to jazz, read recipe after recipe after recipe. Had my little yellow stickits and I’d mark the ones that were interesting. Day in, day out, all summer. I must have gone through them all at least once. Try telling THAT to the Internet.

So I guess they must still be my little children . . . how many times I sat there in the fading twilight listening to Bill Evans with the tiny lantern lighting the pages as I drank a frosty Cuivrée and perused recipe after recipe . . . priceless. And I know I’ll probably do it again next summer, like a kid reading Explorers On The Moon for the nth time.

So what did I keep? They go back, in some cases, 14 years. Top shelf, right: I went through a period of wanting to pickle things. There’s the Joy of Pickling, Clearly Delicious . . . pickling things is very, very great fun in the pantheon of kitchen adventures. So they stayed. The New Basics Cookbook. Okay, I’ve never actually made a recipe from it, but sometimes re-reading how to make mashed potatoes comes in handy, even if this is not the book for it. (In the way that the Kama Sutra is not a fantastic guide to making love).

Then I kind of grouped my meat stuff, the grilling, the “steaklovers”, the Burger book.

Don’t misunderestimate me . . . I like reading this stuff more than I like cooking from it.

But I egress.

Then there’s a series of little gems: the “Top Secret” series of cookbooks, now over a decade old, in which this dude Todd Wilbur took it upon himself to deconstruct popular restaurant favorites. I swear, the sauce for my hamburgers today comes directly from those books. And if I ever want to make an onion flower I’ll know where to look.

The steak stuff is good, but steak is a very flaky customer; you can’t recipise steak. The best you can do is deal with the side efforts and sauces. But I would still thumb through them for inspiration. Then I have my uncategorizable books . . . fondue recipes, various Montreal restaurant review books (even in French!) and a gift from Gazette critic Lesley Chesterman. Then, for whatever reason, I have various Bon Appetits and Gourmets, accountable only by OCD hoarding behaviour, and then the best bunch of all: Cook’s Illustrated magazines and annuals. Those are like looking through a book about Michaelangelo but also all his tips, tricks, and standup routines.

The second shelf is my most beloved, beginning with my pet nemesis of the culinary world: baking. Hey, let’s make a deal: I’ll pickle, you bake. Done.

And then there’s The Best Recipe, an absolutely indispensable tome from Cook’s Illustrated. As is Italian Classics. Which leads me into Italian territory, and the Wiseguy Cookbook . . . . Henry was a schlub but he knew how to cook (with, no doubt, a gun to the head of his editors).

And then the series that I so adore . . . Asian, starting with Japanese and ending with a completely disproportionate amount of Indian cookbooks. One stands out and should be the bible for any student of Asian cooking: The Complete Asian Cookbook by Charmaine Solomon. There’s stuff in there even I’VE never heard of.

Then, almost last, a book (I won’t call it a cookbook) that I consider the best book written about food of all time: A Mediterranean Feast, by Clifford Wright. It’s more like a saga of Mediterranean food, obviously decades in the making . . . even if you don’t like hummus you’ll love this book.

And then my little niche books: rice and noodles, mustard, onion & garlic, The Potato Cookbook.

All my little children, and all bursting to be reread on the balcony with dimming sun, beer and jazz next summer.

Crevettes Marseillaise Pastis au fromage

Here's that shrimp recipe I was promising you. It's entirely improvised; I didn't base it on anything I'd read. But obviously it has its predecessors.

Key here is to flambé the pastis at two stages; when the mushrooms are cooking (they'll absorb a LOT of pastis flavor) and when the shrimps are sautéing (they absolutely suck the stuff in, it's incredible) but to be careful -- hair and eyebrows are at risk. Use a long kitchen match and don't use as I did a midget cigarette lighter. The only reason I have my eyebrows is that food in my kitchen knows very well who's boss.

The pearl onions are a major pain to peel but they taste great. If you can get them frozen, use those.

Ingredients
10-20 very large raw jumbo shrimp, peeled, deveined, tails removed, brined for 30 minutes
I cup finely chopped shallots
Lots of large garlic cloves, finely minced
5-6 cremini mushrooms, sliced
10-20 cipollini (pearl onions, peeled)
Small container crème fraîche
Whole milk
Flour
Chicken broth
2 cups hard cheese, preferably asiago, aged cheddar or Marechal au Lait Cru, grated
Compound herb butter from scratch (butter, sautéed chopped shallots, garlic, Italian parsley)
Red pepper flakes
Pastis as needed
I package good dry linguine (Barilla or Rusticella d’Abruzzo) or any fresh pasta not named Olivieri
Italian parsley
Basil

Method
Sauté shallots in compound butter till translucent. Add pearl onions and sauté about ten minutes, stirring constantly. Add some garlic and sauté a further three minutes. Remove. Add compound butter and mushrooms. Sauté on medium heat until mushrooms have lost their water and are beginning to brown.

Carefully, splash some pastis on the hot mushroom mixture and be standing by with a kitchen match or barbecue spark lighter. Stand back and flambé.

Remove and add to shallot mixture.

Add the container of crème fraîche and about 1/2 cup of milk to the pan and bring to simmering boil, stirring constantly. Stir in a scant tablespoon of flour and continue stirring. Slowly add chicken broth on a medium simmer, perhaps 1/2-to 3/4 cup. Remove from heat when sauce coats back of a spoon. Add cheese and stir in until thoroughly combined. Mix in one tablespoon of pastis and two tablespoons of chopped Italian parsley. Cover.

Start water for linguine. Water must be the salinity of the sea.

Clean and rinse soaking shrimp. In new, clean stir-fry pan, melt at least two tablespoons of compound butter on medium heat. Add more garlic and about a tablespoon of red pepper flakes. Mix thoroughly and bring to a simmer. Drop in shrimp and distribute evenly. Now, about one minute after dropping in the shrimp and not having turned them over, increase heat slightly and splash pastis generously in the pan. Light pastis with aforementioned kitchen devices and let flame out.

Turn shrimp over, cook a further minute or so and remove to bowl with shallots and mushroom mixture.

Cook linguine to not even al dente; it must be slightly hard at the center. (In the ten minutes or so between being drained and being on your plate it will come to be fully cooked, and NOT MUSHY). Drain and remove to sauté pan. Now add the cheese/crème fraîche sauce and bring to a very slight simmer. Chop basil and Italian parsley. Add the shrimp and all other ingredients and serve before I come over there and do it for you.

ChefNickChallenge #2

Seeing as how I'm disappearing to the Land O' Plenty (Calipornia) on Friday, I wanted to perhaps repeat this challenge about three years ago, just to see how far we've come along.

The challenge: to find within ten minutes' walking distance of the place you live the following ten items, in no particular order:

1. A salad spinner
2. Mirin
3. Chipotles in Adobo sauce
4. Arugula
5. 12-year-old Scotch
6. Serrano chiles
7. Sushi-grade tuna (not from a sushi shop)
8. Galangal
9. Freshly-sliced salame from a real sausage.
10. An espresso pot

I can safely say that I can get exactly six items from this list in 2009. This is better than the three I could get in 2006.

You?