A New Plan, Gilbert Ryle, and Posole

Ok, here’s the new plan.

Each Wednesday, I turn in a few pages that attempt to make sense of some article or chapter on a philosophical topic of some kind. Most Wednesdays, others who have also just completed this task gather at my house for dinner. Both the discussion and the food aim to be sensible but innovative, and both are reliably satisfying.

So I’m going to start using these Wednesdays as the material for (I hope) weekly posts. Either I’ll put up the paper I wrote, or some discussion of the topic. Or discussion of some other topic, if I feel like it. And I’ll include recipes for the dishes that we deemed successful at dinner. Or other recipes, if I feel like it. None of this is set in stone.

Here we go. We have some catching up to do.

In "Knowing How and Knowing That," Gilbert Ryle elaborates a view of intelligence as a "skill," and intelligent action as "the exercise of a skill." He admits that an act itself has no distinctive marking of intelligence, since two acts could be indistinguishable though one is performed intelligently and the other is not. But this is because a skill is not a particular event itself, so would be incorrect to talk about it in the ways we talk about events, as being seen or unseen. To possess a skill is to have a particular kind of disposition, and possession of a disposition does not consist in actually being in a certain state, but in the truth of certain statements about what state one would be in if various conditions arose.

But what more can we say about intelligence, other than that we can't think about it in terms of a single isolated instance? Ryle seems to acknowledge the importance of distinguishing intelligent capacities from mere habits, but he fails to give a satisfying explanation of what it is that sets intelligent dispositions apart.

Whenever Ryle sets out to give an account of which counterfactual statements must be satisfied by an individual in order for his disposition to be intelligent, his analysis falls short in a specific way: the criteria that he enumerates are themselves intelligent capacities, so we come no closer to an understanding of the property of intelligence itself. Ryle is adamant that observation of action is sufficient for justifying attributions of intelligence: a chess player demonstrates his competence in chess with the moves he makes on the board, and nothing further is required. But what is it about his demonstration of those moves that makes chess-playing a matter of intelligence? Here and elsewhere in the chapter, Ryle refers obliquely to strategy: the chess player’s competence is shown in “the moves he avoids or vetoes," and the intelligent arguer has to “innovate,” be "on guard," and "exploit opportunities." A mountain climber must be “ready" to cope with any obstacles that come his way. But avoidance, exploitation, readiness, and innovation are all understood as processes that require intelligence, and we're interested in understanding that very concept, not just paraphrasing it. We still want to know, what is it about all of these activities that makes them intelligent ones?

It's striking that Ryle seems to blatantly ignore the somewhat obvious element shared by all of his criteria. Sure, he makes it clear that the player’s moving the chess pieces demonstrates that he knows how to move them – that he knows the rules for the types of moves allowed for each piece. But there is another kind of rule, or at least a feature of chess, that the player has to know to count as knowing how to play, which Ryle essentially leaves out: the player must know how to win the game. He must not just make legal moves, but make ones that will help him achieve his main aim of capturing the king. This omission is the source of the insufficiency of Ryle’s explication of the criteria for intelligence. It is fine to elaborate the specific ways in which an adept mountain climber or marksman would exercise his skill in order to reach his goal, but the key factor that separates these and all intelligent actions from mere habits and other simpler dispositions is that the agent has a goal. To act intelligently, the agent must antecedently grasp what it is to be successful in his endeavor, or what it is to win. Ryle is right to point out that since intelligence is a disposition, we must talk about it in modal language, using "could" and "would" statements. But to accurately capture intelligence, we must also recognize that the relevance of those "would" statements is determined by normative "should" statements. Intelligence must be explained in terms of successes and mistakes, in relation to a goal. Why does this seem to slip past in Ryle's discussion?

The end. Time for some Mexican stew.

Nopalito Posole

1 onion, diced
1 15 oz. can of hominy
1 qt. vegetable stock
1 cup tomatoes, diced
1.5 cups canned nopalitos, drained and rinsed
1 dried New Mexican chili
juice of 1 lime
handful chopped cilantro

Garnishes: diced avocado, crumbled cotija cheese, extra cilantro and lime

Sautee onions until translucent. Add next five ingredients, plus more water to cover if necessary. Bring to a boil, then simmer at least 30 minutes until stewy. Add cilantro and lime, and serve with extra garnishes.

Karadeniz Romano Beans

One of the best ways to satiate an appetite after several hours of climbing Istanbul’s steep hills is to step into a lokanta. At these cozy, informal restaurants, similar to traiteurs in France, the establishment’s offerings are all laid out behind the counter, which is great for the traveler who is less familiar with the names and contents of Turkish dishes than she’d like to be. You can point to and inquire about the various stews, pilafs, and salads and know much more about what you eventually request to have heaped on your plate than you would if you had ordered blindly from a menu.

The food at lokantas is usually simple and traditional, the kind of thing that benefits from being prepared ahead. But when the simplest food is prepared with good ingredients and small, painstakingly made batches, it can impress just as much as a fancy restaurant.

One lunch I had at a lokanta specializing in Karadeniz cuisine (from regions along the coast of the Black Sea) was particularly memorable. I had ordered a stewed romano bean dish that looked hearty and satisfying, but I discovered after one bite that it had much more to recommend it than its nutritional value. There was some subtle ingeniousness to its flavor, soft yet slightly tangy, the herbs and spices blending into a single coherent background, making it difficult to identify and single component.

When I saw some romano beans at the Beehive Farmer’s Market down the street from my new apartment, I decided to try to recreate the dish, even though I knew it would require a lot of experimentation to get elusive the seasoning right. My first attempt included rosemary, garlic, and onion for aromatics, and a splash of balsamic vinegar for some depth and a balance to the sweetness of the tomatoes. It was good, but nowhere near revelatory. I left most of my spice collection in New York, and cooking with the more limited supplies I’ve gathered here is like switching from a grand piano to a 49-key Casio keyboard. But I believed I could still do better, and the next day I reheated it with some fresh sage, more fresh rosemary, ground sumac, and dried thyme.

Day two’s version was better, and in fact very good. A slice of Acme’s herb slab stood in place of the shopping bag of fresh, fluffy foccacia that came with each table at the original Karadeniz lokanta. Below is the recipe for an approximation of the final version, but if you’re on your way to Istanbul, let me know and I’ll have Katherine take you to get the real thing.

Note: Even more than expected, this is definitely a dish that improves as it sits in the fridge. The last helping, consumed on day three, was by far the best, and a rival to what I had in Istanbul.

Karadeniz Romano Beans

Slightly less than 1 lb romano beans (I happened to have grabbed 4/5 lb)
1 8 oz. can diced tomatoes
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Half a medium yellow onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
6 inch rosemary sprig, chopped
2 large sage leaves, chopped
½ teaspoon sumac
½ cup water
Salt and pepper, to taste

Trim ends of romano beans and cut into halves or thirds, depending on size. In a deep saucepan or Dutch oven (one of which I am now the proud owner, or at least borrower!), saute onion in olive oil for a few minutes until softened and slightly browned. Add salt and pepper, rosemary, garlic, sage, and sumac, cook a minute more. Deglaze with balsamic vinegar, then add tomatoes and bring to a boil. Add beans and water (add more water if the mixture doesn’t cover the beans, then reduce to a simmer and cover. Cook for 50 minutes, until beans are very tender. Let cool in the pot for 15 minutes or so, allowing the stew to thicken.

A Call for Cream

Food and travel both tend to lead to cultural analysis, and I have a question to pose to my homeland now that I’m back: What’s with the lack of proper appreciation for cream?

There is a paucity of knowledge in this country of the various textures, viscosities, and acidities that cream can take on when its fat content and temperature are allowed to roam freely. I blame a combination of the ready availability of Reddi-wip (that’s right, I googled the spelling), an aversion to the idea of fat, and a fanatical fear of bacteria. If you couldn’t get whipped cream in a can, maybe laziness would lead to the discovery that those strawberries will taste great swimming in a pool of liquid cream. Better yet, double cream. But I have a horrible feeling that people around here don’t really know what double cream is.

Squeamishness about pasteurization and fear of fat form the biggest obstacle, the latter inhibiting motivation to try new creamy things, and the former providing an excuse not to. Clotted cream, the ultimate does of milk fat, is very difficult to find in America, and also impossible to make at home, since it has to be made from unpasteurized milk. The milk is heated just below boiling and then left to sit, allowing the cream content to rise to the top. The resulting silky substance is skimmed off for spreading on scones and cakes. They make a similar product in Turkey, called kaymak, which is served in a pool of honey and eaten with toast. Not something you need to have heaps of at every meal, but certainly part of a complete breakfast or special teatime snack.

Then there’s fromage frais and crème fraiche. Crème fraiche is starting to show up more here (Trader Joe’s makes it), and it’s essentially the same thing as sour cream, though I think it has a better texture (maybe it has fewer unpronounceable viscosifying chemicals in it). But fromage frais remains elusive, which is a shame, because it’s a perfect tangy accompaniment to stewed fruits, tarts, or fresh berries. Greek yogurt or softened cream cheese would probably work in many of the same contexts, but there’s still something specific about fromage frais.

Maybe there are completely acceptable substitutes for all of these creamy concoctions, but with a centuries-old tradition of dairy science experimentation, why limit ourselves?

To cleanse the palate, I’ll end with some photos of the impressive produce at the Fatih Mosque street market.

Mulberries

American summers are full of berries: strawberries in shortcakes, blueberries in pies, raspberries in tartlets. But now that I’m back in the States, I’m finding it impossible to track down an incredible berry that I saw on almost every corner in Istanbul: the mulberry.

Mulberries aren’t entirely unknown in this country, but they’re probably a C-list ingredient recognized mostly from their roles in “Pop Goes the Weasel” and specialty store jams. I don’t think I had much of an idea of what a fresh mulberry looked like until I saw them in Turkey, and was extremely surprised to find out that they come in white. Though there are darker varieties, the white ones were common in Istanbul, and have a delightfully maggoty look. Their taste was very mild, similar to figs, and I’m sure their delicate softness makes them very difficult to transport. Which is unfortunate, because I would like very much to buy some white mulberries and convince my German roommates that maggots are used all the time in American cuisine.

It just goes to show you that you shouldn’t pass up food in unfamiliar colors, or you might miss out on some tasty experiences. I was skeptical that the bright green figs I bought could be in any way ripe, but it turned out that they contained delicious ruby insides, and were very refreshing after hiking to a beach on one of the Princes’ Islands.

Though the summer fruit here in the Bay Area leaves nothing to be desired, I still slightly miss the novelty of Istanbul’s produce, and the fun of asking for it in Turkish. Mulberry is “dut,” and you never get to say anything as amusing in an American market.

Istanbul's Surprise

I just got back from Istanbul, where I spent six days trying to sample all the food I’d heard about and had to try, plus all the food I’d never heard of before, plus all the food I knew and loved and had to try at its point of origin. Of course, in only six days, I came nowhere close to succeeding. I’m going to have to go back.

I don’t have any photos at this point, because I’ve been taking pictures on actual film (yes, you can still buy it at a few select locations) that will have to be developed when I get back to America. I’m going to hold off on posting about the more visually impressive food-related experiences until then: the market near the Fatih mosque that seemed to go on forever, the glitz of the Spice Bazaar, the strange albino blackberries that turned out to be mulberries, the fresh fruit that served as bar snacks with at a rooftop bar with a view spanning two continents – all of these would benefit from photographic proof. So for now I’ll talk about one of the things that surprised me most about Istanbul: the bread.

My first night in the city, we went out for meze, or “Turkish tapas,” as it was explained to me. Being intimately familiar with every menu of Lebanese maza in the 11201 zip code, I expected to be able to predict everything that would arrive at our table. We chose a few items (aubergine puree, sardines, hummus, cucumber yogurt) and I asked Katherine if she thought that would be enough – they were going to bring us unlimited pita anyway, right? Wrong. At least, not quite, she said. In Istanbul, they eat meze with slices of white bread. There is pide, but it’s mostly used as a base for boat-shaped pizza-like things topped with roasted vegetables or ground meat, or for döner wraps. I didn’t fully believe it until the bread basket got to the table, but it’s true: Istanbul, to my surprise, is teeming with leavened bread.

This meal opened my eyes to the fact that Turkish food, at least in Istanbul, has significant Balkan and Eastern European influences in addition to its Middle Eastern ones. A few days later, I had lunch at a lokanta specializing in Black Sea cuisine, which served flavorful fava beans stewed in the pod, and also provided each table with a gargantuan plastic bag of fluffy, foccacia-ish bread. I quickly discovered that bakeries and street carts sell sesame rolls in a variety of shapes (including the ubiquitous simit, a large circular twist), along with fairly decent brioche, and we even found some delicious challah at a particularly nice place in Kurtulus.

Not long ago I was buying a bag of pitas every two or three days. I expected a trip to Turkey to increase that average, but I haven’t had a single one since I left America. But with a simit vendor on every street corner, I didn’t have a chance to miss them.

Summer of Seafood

It’s been upwards of 90 degrees outside for the last few days (although a woman I work with insists that it’s “a thousand”) and at times I’ve thought that unless I plunge myself into the ocean immediately, I won’t be able to go on. There isn’t a very accessible ocean around here, but seafood is pretty easy to get to, so instead I’ve been plunging myself into that.

First, there was the Swedish Midsummer Festival. The lawns at Battery City Park filled with blond heads wreathed with flowers, sipping champagne and flowery Swedish spirits, dolloping pickled herring onto crackers, and enjoying the view of the water (though unfortunately it wasn’t the kind of water you can jump into). The food vendors had all sorts of specialties – meatballs, cured salmon, new potato salads – but the lines were unfathomably long, and our stomachs dictated that we choose the shortest one, which meant we were getting korv: hot dogs. The hot dogs were served plain or topped with skagen, a shrimp salad with mayonnaise and dill, and as a waited impatiently in line, I realized that I’d much rather have a skagen sandwich than a hot dog with skagen on top of it. I requested this, a little nervously, when I finally reached the front of the line, and they very obligingly made my special order. The cool, creamy salad was the perfect end to a sweltering day.

The next afternoon I headed out into the sun again, to check out something that had been on my to-do list for several months. The food vendors at the Red Hook ballfields have gotten a lot of press lately, and their set up has changed since the Health Department forced them to give up their tents and move into trucks. But the food and the atmosphere seem to have remained intact: the shady sidewalk on Bay Street feels like an escape from the rest of the city, and the cooks are still turning out authentic Latin American food, at a pace that suits them. The shrimp ceviche was perfectly sweet and tangy, with a nice heat from the green hot sauce that they add just before serving. I was also excited to try pupusas, a Salvadoran dish of fried maize flour cakes filled with cheese and vegetables or meat. The pupusas platter was an unbelievable deal: one pork pupusa, one cheese and loroco flower pupusa, a pile of chicharones (fried cubes of fatty pork), and a side of bright purple cabbage slaw, all for only seven dollars. The pupusas were the best part; the mild cheese and soft dough were a decadent combination.

Two servings of shrimp in less than 24 hours seemed like impressive seafood consumption, but I was about to get much, much closer to the fruits of the sea. When I arrived at Talei’s apartment that night, everything seemed fairly normal: spotless as usual, some friendly faces standing around, an open bottle of wine. Except that the sink was full of live crabs. They clawed vaguely at the sides of the sink and at each other, possibly trying to reach the ones neatly stacked on a platter to ask them why they were so…pink. Talei bravely took on the task of transferring the live ones to the pot, but after lifting one of them out of the sink to find that it was gripping the detached claw of a different crab, she declared that they “had personalities” and she didn’t want to kill any more herself. I volunteered to kill one crab, testing out how I felt about my recent decision not to become a vegetarian. In the end, most of the food preparation was done expertly by Paul, who had more seafood experience than the rest of us.

After an informative demonstration by Hien on How to Eat Blue Crab, the twelve of us started grabbing specimens from the two enormous heaps in the middle of the table and cracking into them ourselves. Crab juice, crab guts, and flecks of crab shell flew everywhere. It was hard to get at the meat, but what I did manage to pry out was delicious: subtly sweet and seasoned by the broth it was boiled in. The orange eggs were easier to find; they had the texture of hard-boiled egg yolk, but with a slightly bitter aftertaste. I don’t know how long we stood around the table, our hands dripping with clam juice, prying open crab after crab. We went through at least three large platters before getting tired of it. And then moved on to oysters.

This seafood-filled weekend was a reminder of the advantages of sticking to coasts, never straying too far from the ocean.

Bagels, the Bread of New York

Seems like I keep coming back to breakfast these days. Back to basics. Back to bagels.

You see, with my departure from this city inching closer every day, it’s reaching the point where I try to cram in as much as possible of the stuff I’m going to miss the most. It’s not that there aren’t delicious bagels in my future – everyone in Berkeley knows that you can rely on Noah’s Bagels, and I’m a huge fan of the avocado, sprouts, and cream cheese sandwich from Lox, Stock and Bagel, not to mention the epic BLT at Manhattan Bagel. But these constructions fulfill a completely different purpose from the authentic New York bagel. Here, the essence of the bagel is its simplicity, its ubiquity, its combination of convenience and quality.

People do become loyal to their favorite shops, but this largely depends on neighborhood. Bagels aren’t destination purchases; it would be ridiculous to use any form of transportation other than walking to procure one (driving a car, needless to say, would be unheard of). When I moved from the Village, I worried how I would survive without Bagel Bob’s on University Place, but then I discovered Bergen Bagels right down the street in Prospect Heights. I worried about leaving that bagel source behind too, but it turns out Montague Bagels is almost as reliable. And the staff get to know their customers, reinforcing cozy the neighborhood feeling. The server at Bagel Bob’s must have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of NYU students each day, but he still remembered that I would probably order a plain bagel with plain cream cheese. I can’t say why my boring predictability would be memorable in any way.

Yes, you can find sub-par bagels in this city, but it’s more difficult than finding decent ones. So I wasn’t at all nervous trying out a new bagel place near where I work in Midtown. But Daniel’s Bagels on Third Avenue seemed to be particularly reputable, as it makes the bagels on the premises. They seem to make a lot of other appetizing baked goods as well – something called “Israeli rugelach” that looked like a chocolate-streaked croissant, and a poppy seed strudel with a full inch and a half of poppy seed filling inside.

I’ve moved on from my days of plain orders, and now it’s always a tough choice between pumpernickel, 7-grain, and occasionally cinnamon-raisin. But Daniel’s had "whole wheat everything," a somewhat rare variety, so I order that, toasted with butter. Supplemented by some carrots, yogurt, and an apricot, it was a satisfying lunch, and a nice excuse to get out of the office and sit in the sun for a few minutes.

Again, I’m not worried that I’ll be unhappy with the bagels in California, and to tell the truth, bagels have been more of a substitute while I’ve been in New York – something to comfort me when the distance of Parisian baguettes and Cheeseboard rolls seemed too much to bear. But as such, they’ve become symbolic of this city, and all the things I’ll miss most.

Another reason I might have bagels on my mind: this mountain of bagels I stumbled upon at Figment, an arts festival held on Governor’s Island every summer. It was guarded by a team of aerobics-outfitted women shouting feminist slogans.

Never Had a Crumpet?

It can seem strange that something as basic as breakfast should vary so much across cultures. But the French are boggled by bagels, and Americans would never go for salad before noon, though Israelis happily start the day with a bowl of cucumbers, watermelon, and feta. When the food itself is the same, the way it's served often isn't: my Slovenian homestay family found it extremely bizarre that I liked cold milk on my cereal, as opposed to room temperature.

Even countries that share a native tongue can surprise each other. When my cousin foisted a plate of crumpets on my roommates, they looked suspicious, but accepted, and later told me to "thank her for the...strumpets?" I actually have a hard time comprehending why most Americans have never had a crumpet. The English muffin made it over, so what happened to its pock-marked cousin? I worry that somewhere along the line, an influential American made a fateful mistake: he tried a crumpet without toasting it, spat out the mealy crumbs in disgust, and vowed never to allow the things to be imported to U.S. soil.

You see, crumpets transform magically in the toaster. At room temperature, their texture is, frankly, intolerable, but after a few minutes in the glow of the electric coils their edges crisp up, encasing tender, piping hot insides. They have a tangy taste that goes perfectly with tart jam or slightly salty butter. Anything you spread on top will inevitably seep into the many holes on their surfaces, turning them into something closer to a glaze-soaked tea cake than a boring breakfast toast.

One more thing: after a lot of thought, I've come to the conclusion that crumpets would not, in fact, be improved by the American tradition of putting peanut butter on everything. Their subtle sourdough taste would be completely overpowered by something so rich. But to the English people smirking right now: just wait and see what I can do with Hobnobs.

Lebanese Festival

When I showed up at Henry and Remsen for the Our Lady of Lebanon church festival, things were just starting up. While volunteers were still busy constructing tents and taping down tablecloths, the grills were already hot, the food tables laden, and the music blaring. These people know how to prioritize.

A long buffet offered all kinds of meat and vegetable options: lamb and chicken kebabs, kibbeh (ground meat and spices) pressed into a huge casserole, dolmas, flaky savory pies, grilled corn, and all the side salads you'd expect. We got a sampler platter with lamb, muhadarra, tabloule, green beans, and fatoush, then lined up for some sajj bread.

The sajj cooking stations were metal domes heated from inside by coals or some other kind of roaring fire, and standing next to them in 90-degree weather tested your true desire for some sajj. The volunteer cooks made it look irresistible, though, laying thin discs of dough onto the hot metal and slathering them with different appetizing fillings from meat sauce to cheese to zaatar paste. When the underside was crispy and slightly blackened, they’d fold them in half and serve them straight off the stove: a Middle Eastern quesadilla. A friend got one of the meat-filled versions, and I asked for a plain piece, just to try it out.

We sat down at one of the long tables and started in on our food, pausing only when some people had to stuff a tablecloth underneath it. Though the platter was more expensive and less generous than most of the Middle Eastern restaurants in the area, it did have a noticeable homemade quality that set it apart. The dressing on the fatoush salad had the buttery sweetness that emerges from the right proportions of lemon and olive oil, and the muhadarra, a mix of lentils, rice, and sautéed onions, was extremely flavorful, much better than many versions I’ve had at restaurants, which tend to be a bit dry. The saaj was different from baked pita, chewier and less bready (which is why the sajj at Fatoush made such good breakfast tacos).

I was too full to reap all the benefits of the dessert table, but I sampled a few bites of a Lebanese pudding flavored with almond and cinnamon and sprinkled with coconut flakes. I wish I could have tried the namoura (also called basbousa), a semolina cake soaked in sweet syrup that I discovered earlier this year at my birthday dinner at Waterfalls, but I might try to make it for an upcoming birthday to make up for this missed opportunity.

I passed by the festival later in the afternoon while doing errands, and it was still going strong. By then the bouncy houses were fully inflated and filled with children, and there was still plenty of food and drinks to occupy their parents for many more hours. I could sense a dance party coming on, since I’m sure everyone was drawn to the event, as I was, by the flyer’s promise of a “DJ ALL THREE DAYS.” I didn’t wait around to find out, but I think the block partied late into the evening.

Waffleschmarrn

Dinner at Die Blaue Gans the other night was more than satisfying: a spicy cheese spread and a tower of potatoes, sauerkraut, and blood sausage were a rich start to a filling main course of pan-fried trout with cauliflower and pine nuts in a buttery white wine sauce. I was nonetheless coaxed into ordering dessert, partially out of peer pressure, but also because “Schwartzwälder Torte” looked fun to pronounce. But when the desserts arrived at the table and everyone saw what was placed in front of Chase, we all instantly wished we had been savvy enough to say “Kaiserschmarrn.”

It wasn’t that the presentation was that spectacular. It looked like, and was, a heap of mangled and nearly-burnt pancakes. But the scent of butter and sugar rising from it set off whatever sensory receptors are responsible for telling the brain “There is something nearby that should be eaten immediately.” I don’t remember if I asked permission before extending my fork; all I remember is the decadent taste of butter saturation and chewy caramelized edges.

“Kaiserschmarrn” is a dessert version of the original “Schmarrn,” a shredded omelet, but the same word can be used to mean “rubbish.” It’s clear, to me at least, that this traditional Austrian dish is the product of incompetence in the kitchen: the delicious result of being unable to flip an omelet or a pancake without destroying it, followed by the chef's giving up and calling it something else. So as I surreptitiously devoured Chase’s dessert, I started thinking about how to make it myself.

But while I pondered whether it would be best to use a cast-iron skillet or non-stick pan, another experiment occurred to me, one that would use up the leftovers from a previous weekend brunch that were now sitting in the freezer. “Waffleschmarrn” seemed like it would have potential – the many edges would allow for even more caramelization.

It was experimental cooking, played entirely by ear. I melted two tablespoons of butter in a frying pan, and zapped two frozen waffles in the microwave for a minute or so, sprinkling them with lemon juice when they came out to make sure they stayed soft. I tore them into irregular chunks and threw them into the melted butter, then added a tablespoon or two of powdered sugar and turned the heat up to high. After a few minutes the edges were crisping up and the sugar was caramelizing nicely in places. I piled all of it onto a plate and spooned some blueberries (also thawed in the microwave) over the top.

I would say the experiment worked. Next time I might brown the butter a bit more and add sugar to the pan before the waffles to get a deeper caramel going, but it was still a very tasty dessert. When you think about it, it’s nothing more than a butter-soaked heap of rag-like breakfast pastry bits, but when you can describe something using the words “butter-soaked” and “heap,” it's clearly not the time or place for skepticism.

More Praise for Condensed Milk

Time to use up the rest of that can of condensed milk.

And by lucky coincidence, there's an interesting article in the New York Times about the fondness for sugary canned dairy products in the Caribbean, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Someday I'll get around to laboring over a tres leches cake, but for this weekend I decided to go with brigadeiros, a Brazilian confection made by heating condensed milk until it thickens into a chewy fudge.

Though the NYT article gives some worthwhile recipes, I can't totally understand its lamentation of how condensed milk has been shunned by Westerners for so long, or its claim that it's only just now coming to be appreciated. Personally, I've been appreciating condensed milk for a long time. At one fortunate period in high school, Canned Foods must have been selling eight-ounce cans of it for about six cents each, because my mother came home with around 50 of them. After she reminded me of her favorite childhood recipe of fried bread with condensed milk, Katherine and I took to pan-frying slices of bread in butter and dipping them into a communal bowl of the wonderfully sticky milk. It became a common afterschool pasttime, despite Marc's looks of disgust.

But I was introduced to condensed milk long before high school, as evidenced by a quote from one of my favorite books at age five:

"Pooh always liked a little something at eleven o'clock in the morning, and he was very glad to see Rabbit getting out the plates and mugs; and when Rabbit said, 'Honey or condensed milk with your bread?' he was so excited that he said, 'Both,' and then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, 'But don't bother about the bread, please.'"

But the New York Times did introduce me to this foolproof way to make fudge. Regular brigadeiros are flavored with cocoa powder, but Brazilians are well aware that combining rich, buttery sweetness with coconut is a great idea, so I imagine this type is quite popular too. I had to adjust the recipe to the amount of condensed milk I had left, but I wish I had been able to make a bigger batch. All kinds of colorful garnishes, like crushed nuts, colored sprinkles, candy-coated fennel seeds, even a small amount of fleur de sel, could make a very whimsical fudge ball platter.

Coconut Brigadeiros

1 cup sweetened condensed milk

1/2 cup coconut milk

2 tablespoons butter

2 teaspoons corn syrup or agave nectar

1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut, divided

Combine all ingredients except 1/2 cup shredded coconut in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer, whisking constantly, until mixture thickens and starts to come together into a ball (about 10 minutes). Pour into a bowl and allow to come to room temperature, then cool in the refrigerator for at least four hours. Using a teaspoon measure, scoop fudge and roll into balls about 3/4 inch in diameter. Roll in the remaining shredded coconut to coat.

Snow Day Coq Au Vin

What do you do when work ends early due to inclement weather and you find yourself with an entire afternoon and evening free? Well, first, you get yourself out of the muddy slush-swamp that Midtown has become, and back to the muted serenity of Brooklyn. Then, as the snow rises higher and higher against the window panes, you think of something warm and rustic to make for dinner, something special enough for the occasion of a historic blizzard but rustic enough to make the apartment feel like a log cabin. And something that will take up the whole afternoon.

Obviously, you make coq au vin. At least, it was obvious to us. The brilliance of coq au vin is that it manages to be elegant without the slightest hint of pretension: it puts delicious use to the cheapest parts of the chicken and it doesn't require particularly skillful culinary maneuvering (it will probably taste good no matter what), but it ends up seeming lighter and more delicate than the potato-based peasant food you might make instead. It could be that the pearl onions and the ruby tint of wine give the impression of luxury, or that quartering tiny brown mushrooms and tying together a bouquet of fresh herbs produces images of Shakespearean wood nymphs. I'm not sure. The point is, a pot of chicken and vegetables simmered in a wine-based broth for two or three snowy hours has the power to turn a Snow Day into a European Vacation Day.

Like I said, it's not hard to do. You'll need four chicken thighs, some vegetables, a bottle of the cheapest red wine, and a few bunches of herbs. First, season the chicken thighs with salt and pepper, then brown them in a wide pan. Sauté some chopped carrots and peeled pearl onions (chopping off the ends and boiling them for a minute will help the peels come off) in a large pot, adding minced garlic for a minute or two at the end. Put the chicken thighs in the big pot, pour in a little more than a cup of wine, and about the same amount of chicken or vegetable stock. (Measurements aren't important, use just enough to cover everything.) Throw in a few spirgs of sage, rosemary, and thyme, and add a dried bay leaf. Bring everything up to a boil, then lower the heat and cover the pot. Leave the kitchen to discover what day-time TV is like.

After an hour or so, or between magazines or worthwhile TV shows, heat up the pan used to brown the chicken and sauté some quartered mushrooms in that delicious leftover fat, until they've exuded all their juices, shrunken to an even more endearing size, and started to brown at the edges. Add them to the pot about 20 minutes before you deem the whole thing pretty much done (we let it simmer for about two hours, but if you get desperately hungry before then I'm sure it would be ok to cut off the cooking earlier). Finally, take the chicken and vegetables out of the pot with a slotted spoon and place them in an attractive (Ikea) serving dish. Turn the heat to high and reduce the liquid to a satisfying thickness, adding a tablespoon or so of flour if you want. Pour the sauce over everything in the dish (don't worry, the chicken is underneath there somewhere).

Some recipes say to serve it with egg noodles, but I prefer it (like most things) with large amounts of crusty bread on the side. It also goes nicely with mulled wine, and since the discount rack at Warehouse Wines has produced some disasters lately, you probably won't want to drink the rest of that bottle unadulterated anyway. After a plate of coq au vin and a mug of hot wine, your core temperature will be primed for venturing into the blizzard in search of snowmen.

Haggis in the New Year

While in California for Christmas I had the opportunity to check out another gem hidden in the El Cerrito Plaza, a German and English specialty foods shop called the Junket. The store’s shelves were stocked with all the classic favorites – lemon curd, Marmite, digestive biscuits – and the prepared foods looked appetizing too, particularly the potato salad and the ham sandwiches. Wandering the aisles of specialty food stores can be exciting and inspiring, but the prices of imports usually mean that an item has to be especially worth purchasing. Lemon curd and potato salad I can make myself, but I did come across one thing at the Junket that I couldn’t resist paying for: a can of haggis.

I had never tried haggis before, and I realized that even though it's an icon of Scottish cuisine that people love to "ew" at, I didn't have a good idea about what it was. I knew that it's usually cooked in a sheep's stomach, which, I'll admit, does give the impression that the Scottish are purposefully trying to gross people out. But canned haggis is (obviously) skinless, and its contents remained a mystery to me. From reading the ingredients, it seems like there's nothing not to like: lamb heart, pork fat, oats, lamb liver, port, salt, and dehydrated onions. I suppose some people might be turned off by the lamb heart, but a slightly open mind would recognize that those are reasonable ingredients to combine.

I was eager to try it, but unsure about preparation and presentation. Wikipedia and the can label offered a variety of instructions, like heating individual servings in the oven with a teaspoon of whiskey poured on top, or spooning it over fries, or scrambling it with eggs, and all sources were clear that it should be consumed either with brown ale or Scotch whiskey. In the end I spooned some out of the can and heated it in the microwave, which created a surprising amount of steam and caused it to render a fatty, bubbly liquid. When the steam had subsided, I tried a cautious forkful. As you might have predicted from the ingredients, haggis is incredibly rich. Its combination of internal organ flavor, fat, and salt triggers the primal human compulsion to eat as much protein and lipids as possible, but something about the taste and texture made me think I didn’t want to keep eating it much longer. It's delicious, but it's also the epitome of "a bit much." The texture is smooth and creamy like pâté, and I think the best way to serve it is on a piece of crunchy dry toast.

There’s a lot of haggis left in the can, but even though it’s only January 2, I may have reached my haggis quota for the year. It’s definitely worth trying, so I invite anyone who’s interested to come have a taste.

What's for Pudding?

Most meals in the Elliott/Dolan household of my childhood ended with an aura of defeat, followed by cries of “What’s for pudding?” This would confuse any poor non-family members who happened to be present, who had already been confused enough by whatever my mother had put on the table, whether it had been a heap of ungarnished shredded carrots, a pile of baguette cubes with a side of olive oil, or an inconsistently microwaved TV dinner. “What’s for pudding?” must have seemed syntactically jarring, and the thought of being forced to accept a pudding cup in a flavor that my mother found “interesting” was probably almost too much for our pitiable, uninitiated tablemates.

They needn’t have been so worried. “Pudding” is just what the English call the dessert course, and there never was any. Every Christmas, however, my mother would buy a packaged Christmas pudding, a tough, dense dome of dried fruits and stickiness. Years of store-bought Christmas puddings convinced me that I didn’t like them, but my grandmother’s homemade pudding, flambéed and doused in brandy butter, was a real revelation. This year I wanted to try making one myself, and I thought persimmon would be a nice seasonal flavoring. Little did I know, steamed persimmon pudding cake is actually a traditional American dessert, therefore (I thought) perfect for our cross-cultural British-American vegetarian Christmas.

Steaming a cake on the stove is actually no more difficult than baking it, and because my attempt succeeded so well, I’m convinced it’s foolproof. The batter is fairly typical, moistened by persimmon puree and lightly spiced with ginger and cinnamon. I folded in walnuts and raisins at the end, and poured it into a buttered Pyrex dish fitted with a lid. I raised the dish off the bottom of a large pot using the cylindrical part of a jar lid, and then filled the pot with water to halfway up the side of the Pyrex dish. The water should have been added before the dish, since some of it got in through the top, but it didn’t make much of a difference – remember, the whole thing is eventually inverted onto a plate anyway. The pudding took a little over two hours to steam and was ready to be taken out and cooled just before we sat down to dinner. Forty-five minutes later it came out of the dish without incident, a caramel brown color and deliciously moist. It is lovely with heavy cream or ice cream, but we were very fortunate to be able to dunk it in Rob’s homemade eggnog.

The only problem with this pudding was that there weren't nearly enough leftovers. Next time I’ll use a bigger dish, maybe for a fig and honey version. You can find the recipe for the original here.

[Other highlights of our vegetarian Christmas included a stuffed turban squash topped with a forest of romanesco. Unfortunately all of the pictures of it turned out a bit blurry, and don't capture the prismatic spikiness of romanesco.]

Vietnamese Sandwich on a Chinese Bus

The banh-mi craze has been going on for a while in New York, and with any luck they’ll soon become as ubiquitous across America as bubble tea. Everyone who’s tried one will probably tell you that they’ll eat a Vietnamese sandwich anytime and anywhere, but I sense whispered rivalries building up in this city as more and more banh-mi shops spring up. My first was purchased at Nicky’s in the East Village, and I’ll always be partial to their “Classic” sandwich, a buttery baguette densely stuffed with three kinds of pork, which warmed and filled me up on an otherwise-bleak winter day in 2008. The decadent combination of pate, ground pork, and roasted ham, contrasted with fresh carrots, cilantro, and jalapenos, is what makes the banh-mi a work of genius, in my opinion.

I’ve ordered the same thing at a tiny place on Broome Street, which offers a slightly cheaper and much, much bigger version. I was happy with what I got – like I said, you just don’t say no to a Vietnamese sandwich – but the bread was drier than the Nicky’s baguette, almost dangerously crusty. Not a bad option if you want to spend $3 on lunch and dinner combined, but I’d probably just spend an extra dollar and go to Nicky’s.

It’s very hard, in fact, to convince me to go anywhere but Nicky’s. But Paris Sandwich, a small establishment on Hester Street, has such a fanatical following (on the internet, at least) that I was willing to give it a try, and $4 of my hard-earned money. All reviews gushed about the bread, which is baked on the premises every hour, and I was guardedly hopeful that I would discover a source of fresh baguette that didn’t require a passport and plane ticket.

I planned to take the Chinatown bus to Boston last Friday, and a sandwich seemed like a good thing to bring on a four-hour bus ride that only stops at an Arby’s in New Haven. So before making my way to the Lucky Star pick-up point, I stopped by Paris Sandwich, a small but difficult-to-miss storefront with some very prominent signage. I decided on a shredded chicken bahn-mi, since I was branching out anyway, and it was handed to me promptly by a brisk bahn-mi server.

I made the bus with plenty of time thanks to this efficiency, and tried out the sandwich. Maybe it was the choice of chicken, a fairly unassuming flavor in comparison to a trio of pork, but the baguette was certainly the most memorable component. It was nice and soft on the inside, with a crackly crust that provided the perfect shell the other ingredients. Paris Sandwich has not, I have to say, fulfilled my quest for a real French baguette: the crust did not have the required shellacked sheen, and it was drier and dusted with some kind of cornmeal. But it was delicate and fresh, far from the offensive “Italian loaf” sold at so many delis around here.

The sandwich had the typical organization of a banh-mi: the meat stuffed into the uncut side of the baguette, strips of carrot and daikon and sprigs of cilantro running the length of the thing on the other side, topped unevenly with jalapenos to keep you guessing about how spicy the next bite will be. Eating one of these is always undignified, since unless you have perfectly placed incisors, you will inevitably fail to get a clean bite, and end up with an entire cilantro stalk or string of carrot hanging from your mouth. I was grateful that the bus wasn’t crowded, so there was no one next to me to witness this struggle or be showered by the layer of crumbs that I brushed off my jacket when I had finished.

Paris Sandwich is certainly worth going back to, although it came nowhere near to topping Nicky’s, and I certainly learned from the one I got that there’s no reason to stray away from the pork version. Honestly, I’m more excited about the prospect of buying a bag of mini-baguettes, which they sell for 85 cents, and taking them home to slather with butter and various other condiments.

New Mexican Hatch Chilies

Usually, I approach the airport security check with bored confidence, my contact solution, water bottles, personal packs of propane, and other forbidden liquid conveniences left at home or packed safely in my checked luggage. But on the trip back from San Antonio last weekend, my heart beat a little faster than usual. We were transporting an insulated bag full of frozen Hatch chilies, which were in a solid state when we left the house but (I worried) could dissolve at any minute into a spicy illegal soup and be confiscated by greedy airport personnel. Thankfully no one stopped us, but they would have faced some harsh confrontation if they had. So, although I had never heard of Hatch chilies a few weeks ago, I now have a freezer full of them. Sometimes life is kind.

Hatch chilies, I have since learned, are a particular appellation of pepper, grown exclusively in the region of Hatch, New Mexico. Every year their harvest is accompanied by a local festival and chili cook-off, followed by large-scale stockpiling – the chilies actually improve (meaning they get spicier) the longer they’re kept frozen, and New Mexican chili enthusiasts buy pounds and pounds to last them throughout the year. The enthusiasm has spread to Texas, and my fortunate connections there hooked me up with several bags of roasted Hatch chilies, some of which were a milder version, and a few raw ones to experiment with.

The spicy roasted chilies need very little help to make them a delicious accompaniment to any number of foods – all I did was puree them with a diced tomato and some lemon juice to dampen their fieriness just enough. The smoky flavor from the specks of black char seeps into the salsa the longer you let it sit, and is balanced by the acidity and heat. It was great on top of tamales and jicama. The milder raw chilies were perfect in a salad with quinoa, carrots, and lima beans; they had the crunch and astringent taste of green bell peppers, with a slightly meatier flesh and a tingly spice that appeared almost as an afterthought. I’ve got enough chilies left for a dozen other experiments, and about ten months to come up with something spectacular to present at the Hatch Chili Festival cook-off, in case I decide to attend.