Why I prefer taste over hearing

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague yesterday, a very smart man, professor of Romanticism, vegetarian, and somewhat obsessive cyclist. He told me this summer that he wants to weigh two pounds for every inch of his height, which would put him at ten pounds less than I currently weigh. He has about five inches on me, so I'm trying to discourage him from this extreme dieting plan.

I digress. We were having the standard, which sense would you give up first conversation. Amazingly, neither of us were high, nor were we eighteen year old philosophy "majors." We both agreed that sight is the most important sense. That seems a given to all except the most die-hard of musicians. He, however, said that he would give up his sense of taste long before his sense of hearing. This seems to me crazy, but perhaps you will think that I'm the crazy one when I say, in all seriousness, that I would gladly give up my sense of hearing before my sense of taste. The interesting this is that we both have the same reason for our very different responses: we both think that our chosen sense is crucial to some essential human experience, and that our lives would be flattened out and nearly unendurable without said sense. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this all is that we both actually used this language, even though we are both post-modernists who believe the entire concept of an "essential human experience" is mystifying bunk constructed by some big eastern syndicate.

I was thinking about this conversation as I made dinner tonight, and I am more convinced of my position than ever. Just to get rid of any unpleasant sense of suspense in this blog, I'll tell you right off the bat that dinner was good, but hardly great. It's just that the whole process confirmed why I love food and cooking so much. Here's the story: my grades are in, and I am officially on vacation for at least a week or so, so for the first time in a while I have some extra energy to devote to cooking. My idea for dinner tonight was a) to try something new and 2) to recreate an amazing dish I had in Florence last February. It was baked crespelle, filled with ceci beans (aka garbanzo beans, aka chick peas) and goat cheese. Crespelle are italian crepes, and traditionally used for cannelloni or manicotti (which are the same dish, just from different parts of the country) -- so much lighter and more delicate than some sort of dried pasta tube! The dish I had in Florence was so beautifully balanced: the beans were smooth and earthy and a little sweet, the cheese was melted and creamy and slightly tangy, and the crespelle themselves were lightly crisped.

I began the experiment with a ceci bean puree that I have made before, and that I love intensely. I sweat onions and carrots (have you all tried the amazing sugar carrots from Green Bluff? They sell them at Huckleberries -- so worth the extra money!) and maybe a very little celery in olive oil, hopefully with a couple of fresh bay leaves and/or rosemary and some flattened garlic. Once they are soft, add a can of Progressive ceci beans, drained, and some chicken stock, and simmer uncovered for about twenty minutes. When you are down to a couple of tablespoons of liquid, remove the herbs, and transfer everything to a food processor (or blender, or immersion blender -- you get the idea), and puree until very smooth. Add more liquid if the puree seems too thick or starchy; the consistency should be like loose mashed potatoes. Add salt and pepper to taste. I use this puree instead of mashed potatoes sometimes, dressed with just a little good olive oil, or, when I'm feeling really fancy, truffle oil.

Now I had my ceci beans, and some goat cheese, so it was time to work on the crespelle. I found a recipe: 2 eggs, 1 1/4 cup milk, pinch of salt, pinch of sugar, whisked together. Then whisk in 3/4 cup flour. Let stand for thirty minutes. Use about 3 tbls per crespelle, in a hot oiled non-stick 8 inch skillet. It took me a couple to get the hand of swirling the very thin batter to get a thin crespelle, and a few more to figure out how to flip them, but they weren't all that challenging. A silicon spatula helped with the flipping. I got about 12 good quality crespelle, which was about twice what I needed for my fairly small casserole and my small amount of filling.

I rolled my crespelle with the cheese and ceci beans, and here is where I went wrong. I should have just brushed with olive oil and put it in a hot oven. But, my head was turned with recipes for manicotti and memories of cannelloni, so I added a béchamel sauce and a little of Tulia's tomato sauce, which some grana on top. I baked it until it was hot and bubbly, and then broiled it until the cheese was brown. The result was tasty and satisfying, especially given my love of all things cheesy, saucy, stuffed, and baked. But, the goat cheese was all but lost, as was the balance and delicacy of the original dish.

So, hard to chalk this one up to a complete success, and yet it contained so much of what I love about food: the wonderful memory of Italy, and that big boisterous dinner with all my friends old and new from the conference. I remembered Marc trying to explain to Jeremy why Proust is the greatest modern novelist, and what is going on with the madeleines. I remember Mike's great ribbolita, a tuscan vegetable soup thickened with vegetables, and Erik's perfectly grilled swordfish. I remember Pat, the quintessential host, keeping the wine flowing and the toasts coming. And, I was able to be creative in my own small way -- researching some parts of the recipe, winging others on experience and hunch. At the end, I had something satisfying to share with Jeremy (he liked the finished product more than I did, I think). I know that, for many people, maybe even the majority, music offers this kind of rich experience, a blending of aesthetics, intellectualism, and memory. I like music, a lot, but what it offers me is just ambience compared to food.

Try the ceci puree. It's really good. And try the crespelle next time you are in the mood for cannelloni. They are totally worth it.

Comfort food.

I've been thinking about comfort food lately. It's the season to need comfort, as everyone in Spokane knows. And, as everyone in Spokane knows, it is not that it is getting cold, that snow is in our near future, or the overcast skies that makes us need comfort: it's the time change. Thanks to Daylight Savings, it gets dark at 4:30 in the afternoon, and that is just not right. It took me a while to figure out why it gets so dark so early in the winter in our fair city. After all, we are no farther north than Seattle, and their days do not get quite so short. My father finally explained to me that it's because we are so close to the time zone line. If we lived in western Montana, it would get dark at 5:30 instead, and that feels at least slightly more civilized.

Comfort food generally refers to the high calorie food made from readily available, lower price ingredients. In other words, it is peasant food. Comfort food tends to be high in starches and carbohydrates and fats, both of which have a high calorie to price ration, and meats tend to be cheap cuts slowly braised until they are rich and tender. We turn to it because it is incredibly satisfying. It fills us up, the fat delivers richness and flavor, and the carbs convert to quick energy. Heck, even the napping that comes when that quick energy burns off and we crash feels good this time of year. Plus, we have nothing else do to with our weekends except cook a pork butt roast for nine hours now that it is too cold to be in the river but not cold enough to be on the mountain.

Comfort food is great if you have the calorie output of a peasant laborer, but it is not so good for us city-dwelling moderns. It is especially cruel that we crave these comfort foods at exactly the time of year when we can't be outside all evening taking advantage of all that Spokane does have to offer. So, the question becomes: what can we eat that is fully comforting but won't turn instantly into our clothing not being comfortable? I am not particularly health- or diet- conscious in my cooking or my eating. I believe fully in Julia Child's approach: better to have a small amount of something worth eating than a large portion of flavorless, textureless diet food. However, this approach fails when it comes to comfort food, since so much of the comfort comes from feeling satiated and full.

So, I offer my own spicy squash soup. If you roast your own squash, it takes a while to make, and it has the full mouthfeel of a higher fat carbohydrate. It is nearly fat free, and I'm pretty sure it is low calorie. I was so proud of what I thought was a unique combination of spices that I had put together, until I started cooking a lot of Indian food and discovered that I had reinvented a pretty basic garam masal. Next week, I have this great idea for this round thing that I think could have big applications in transportation . . .

Spicy Squash Soup

2 cups (about) squash puree

2 tbls. canola oil

1 large onion

1 cup apple cider or chicken stock

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp cumin

up to 2 tbls brown sugar

1/2 tsp cayenne

1 cup plain yogurt

Start with your favorite of the hard orange squashes. I've made this soup with butternut, golden butter, hubbard, even acorn. Turn it into a puree. My preferred method is to roast it, which means cutting the squash into either halves or quarters, removing the seeds and strings, and putting it in a hot oven until soft, usually around 45 minutes. Scrape the flesh out of the skin. If you are short on time, you could microwave the pieces until it is soft, but I don't think that concentrates the flavors as well.

Once you have your puree, slice your onions into thin slices, and caramelize in the oil. Take this slowly, so that you get a consistent, deep brown color. To these, add the spices and toast for about a minute. Then add squash and apple cider, and stir to combine. Absolutely all of the listed amounts are approximate. Add enough cider or stock so that the consistency is where you like it (I like mine about the consistency of a bechamel). Taste, add sugar, and adjust until the spices are in balance, which means you should taste some heat, and you should not be able to tell when the cumin ends and the cinnamon begins. The sugar should bring out the flavors, but be careful not to turn this into pumpkin pie filling. If you use a sweet apple cider, then you most likely won't need the sugar at all. Make sure you add enough salt to bring out the savory-ness of the soup.

Once you have the flavors balanced, let the whole thing simmer about twenty minutes. Stir in the yogurt and heat through. If you are using fat free yogurt, don't bring the soup back to a full boil or it won't be smooth. You can either serve it as is, or you can blend it with an immersion blender to make it bisque-like.