More Politics

since the writing staff here at the wine wall is off this morning to a big history-making Obama rally (can't resist the hyperbole, given the hyperbolic nature of this political season), we can't resist the temptation to inject more analysis of the race into our normally food-centered blog.

If you don't read or watch David Brooks, you really should. He's outstanding. Try his column today, which compares the electorates of Clinton and Obama. I don't know how right he is, but the guy is incredibly incisive and insightful when it comes to America, in my humble and sometimes not so humble opinion.

But if you don't like to read, try watching him. I have developed something of a Friday night ritual. It involves adjusting the rabbit ears sometime after five o'clock so that our local pbs station comes in clear. First I watch Charlie Rose, who is someone I didn't discover until a few months ago and now am in love with. He is one of the most amazing interviewers of all time. Watch his finger movements. When he gesticulates, he means it. I have never seen a more careful gesticulator in my life. We have seen several awesome interviews this year, including the one with Bill Clinton. If you didn't see that you missed one of the greatest non-scripted meltdowns of all time. As far as I know, his interviews are filmed live. This year alone he has interviewed most of the candidates. Another great one is the John Edwards interview. That guy is just unflappable. I could watch his lips move and listen to his voice for eternity. Something about these people and their faces. I could read whole treatises on psychology and pathology into them.

But then the kicker is that at six o'clock the Jim Lehrer show comes on. If there's a chunkier news program out there, please let me know. (chunky is a word that my siblings and I invented growing up in the seventies and eighties. It means something like technical, and funny, a little geeky, and utterly entertaining. It's something of a putdown and a compliment all in one).

Jim Lehrer and his colleagues deliver the day's and the week's news in a professional fashion, culminating in a three way commentary with David Brooks, Mark Shields, and Jim Lehrer. It's simply outstanding. It's like a weekly soccer match for me, and I devolve into an emphatically working class when it comes on. If we have no plans later, which has become increasingly rare, I have been known to put on my pjs, housecoat, UGG slippers and hipster hat just to watch it, and take down a shocking number of beers. I am like the lowest common denominator of sports fan. The moron who shovels in chips and often quite bad cheap beer while staring mindlessly at a the screen. The stupid box it should be called. The difference is, instead of watching people bash heads on a football field (something I reserve for the fall only, when my Wolverines shine), I watch people talk about politics. The intelligence (or lack thereof) for both is exactly the same.

Last week we had plans. They involved going to a wonderful couple's home for a cocktail before going to a restaurant for dinner. At 6:25 my wife was tapping her feet at the door. I was drinking beer on the couch. Brooks and Shields hadn't come on yet. They had rearranged the show such that they were coming on much later. I had to be peeled from the television in order not to be late for our date. When we got to their house, they were watching reality tv on a flatscreen the size of our living room wall! I gritted my teeth and did not request that they change the channel. I couldn't do it.

So today (right now, in fact), I am going to change out of the aforementioned costume (Friday's my day off, all day, people), get on the bus that stops directly in front of our crappy apartment building (life's so good right now it's sickening and I often feel guilt), ride it directly to Key Arena (slap me), and wait in line all morning until Barack Obama takes the stage. I will shout and cry and cheer like the biggest moron in the arena. I will come back home and entertain myself until sometime after five o'clock. Tonight, we have no plans.

Caramelization: I Love You

It's Friday and I wanted to write about one of my favorite cooking techniques: caramelization. True caramelization, not the Maillard Reaction that McGee and others describe as the browning of the outside of meats or vegetables. True caramelization is the transformation of sugars. One photo is of some six hour onions I cooked for a french onion soup (they were darker than this by the end). The other photo is a picture of my current favorite dessert: tarte tatin. Caramelization is one of those things I tell my students to take the long way home on- to eschew shortcuts in favor of "long cuts". I think tarte tatin should involve slow caramelization of the sugar with the apples in the pan, unlike many recipes which call for making a caramel, placing apples on top, and placing in the oven. I like the way the apples flavor the caramel and vice-versa. For onion soup, I hate the recipes that call for a half hour caramelization of the onions, because that's really just burning or "Maillard Reacting" them, not caramelizing the sugars that hide deep within the sharp facade that yellow onions show to the world. BTW, I'm trying to take better food pictures by zooming in a lot more, which seems to be preferred by food bloggers and photographers.

When I cooked the onions for six hours, it was last Friday, which for one eleven week span is my day off. It's a glorious day to have off. Today is only my second one, but I am setting a devilish pattern of doing extremely whimsical things. Today I'm thinking about searching out some super wholesome cream with which to make a prune and Armagnac ice cream. (Yes, I have purchased my first bottle of Armagnac. It's going down the gullet every way conceivable).

But back to the onions.

Last Friday I started those little buggers mid morning. I spent the whole six hours in the "other" room, being the single bedroom of our humble (and very cheap! Goodbye San Francisco, Hello Ballard!) apartment. Seattle is a wonderful town to spend the winter in. If I'm lucky I will not get out of my morning outfit (pajamas, thick housecoat, UGG slippers that are oh so cozy, and a fancy new hipster hat I got for Christmas that I will never wear without the housecoat I received alongside it) until late in the afternoon. I love to sit here all day and watch gray clouds move in and out or not, listen to raindrops fruitlessly attack glass, and occasionally stop to see another float plane pulling up off Lake Union as it heads North.

Back back to the beat, y'all.

I sat in the other room writing the whole day while the onions caramelized on the stove. Smelling them as they went from raw and buttery to aromatic, rich, deepening into an apartment-filling glaze was one of the best days I've ever had. I'm used to these things sending all their aromas up into the powerful hood system of a professional kitchen. I could have drowned on the smell of those onions.

When the onions were finished I made the tarte tatin. That was heaven, too. I love the way a light flaky (pate brisee) crust pairs up with the succulent apples. I used Rome. They hold their shape but when you bite into one they melt in your mouth. I also made mock creme fraiche, though just yesterday I read Judy Rodgers treatise on the subject and I wish I would have found better cream. No matter.

All of this Friday cooking was in preparation for a dinner party we hosted last Saturday night. It was supposed to be a dinner party celebrating the pigs we had back in November. I invited over the people I met and became friends with on that project, promising them spit-roasting leg of pork. Like an idiot I didn't realize when I invited them that I teach all day on Saturday and was going to have to rush home just to get cleaned up for the dinner party. Spit-roasting, I love you, too, but you will have to wait. Leg of pork, I guess I don't love you like I should since I sold your succulent meat down the river for a couple of terrines! Oh I how I treat my beloved food. It's a wonder I haven't choked on something yet.

So I cooked on Friday in order to host on Saturday. I broke a basic rule that states that a dinner should flow harmoniously through textures, flavors, ingredients and techniques.

I served two caramelized courses, back to back.
I love breaking the rules.
I hate breaking the rules.
I'm the worse for it.
I'm the better for it.