Camberville Cuisine

“So, what’s with this crazy construct? Well, it’s all about evenness. We want each chip to have the exact same amount of each ingredient. But we don’t want the chips to be stuck together into a big, gummy mess on the platter.” He covers the rack with chips, sprinkles the onions and cheese mixture over the chips, and places one slice of jalapeño pepper on each.

– Alton Brown, Tortillas Again (hat tip: Good Eats Fan Page)

So my friends and I went to go see Alton Brown speak at the Coolidge Corner Theatre tonight. Snarky, smartass, nerdy, pretty much exactly as expected.

Afterwards, we waited in line at the Booksmith to get autographs for our books, and a certain one of my friends voiced the question: “Mr. Brown, the episode where you make nachos. Do you really make them like that? Placing them individually on a sheet, giving each of them the precisely correct amount of ingredients, and making sure the jalapeno topper is in the right spot?”

Alton’s response: “Yes … I’m not well.”

Bonding over technology with my local farmers and artisans is awesome, even in a torrential downpour. The sandwich guy at the Harvard market this week and I geeked over our iPhones together and exchanged app recs. (He also melted Taza chocolate squares into my Elvis sandwich, so I am a big fan of his right now.)

Of course, technology has its drawbacks when it is not quite ready to deal with a situation. Such as Hyoun trying to look up the ingredients for gang poongi, aka Korean fried chicken. Because this is transliterated, there is no established English spelling – the g’s could be k’s (or multiple g’s or k’s), the “oo” could be “u” or “o” (the Korean alphabet has too many variants on the o-vowel, in my opinion), the ng might be just an n, there might be spaces between each of the syllables or there might not be.

For the spelling “gan pong gi:”

Hyoun: “I found a menu so we can order it if we live in LA, but not actual instructions on how to make it.”
Hyoun: “I also get ‘YuGiOh hardcore sex,’ so that’s, uh, pretty awesome.”

We eventually found a recipe labeled ggan pung gi, and Hyoun’s knocking it out in the kitchen right now, but man, language is hard.

YOU GUYS, I’M ON YOUTUBE. I’M, LIKE, FAMOUS OR SOMETHING.

So a couple of weeks ago, I hadn’t decided what to have for dinner that night.

Then I got a message from my friend Martha, looking for a volunteer videographer for the Taste of the South End happening that night.

I think you can all guess how quickly I responded back. ;)

I consider being paid with pork and beef rillettes, kitfo, steak and tuna tartare, various flavors of mousses, bagna cauda, profiteroles, assorted cookies, and Picco’s cinnamon ice cream a more than equitable exchange. ;) If Micha hadn’t introduced me to Picco last month, that ice cream would have shot it up to the top of my MUST TRY list. It’s better than even Christina’s, and I ♥ Christina’s.

Also, I got to see Mumbles Menino slurp down an oyster. That was amusing.

The thing about ambient awareness is that you can get a tweet* from a friend in Minneapolis mentioning that she just had custard.

This makes you go, “Custard! Yum! I want some!”

Then, after a little research, you realize that you can’t get custard in Boston, even though you can get pretty much anything else you want in terms of iced desserty pleasure.

Then you start thinking about the boy from St. Cloud who introduced you to custard when you went to visit him in Kenosha, and wondering what the heck he’s up to, even though he failed to take you, the cheesehound, to the Cheese Castle.

The roasted nuts guy at the Harvard Farmers’ market who also carries Christina’s Ice Cream even brought kalamansi lime sorbet to the market the other day! Which pleased me immensely.

But sometimes, you just want custard. Dammit, Tammy.

Yes, I’m on Twitter. I babble about food a bit more frequently there. Maybe I’ll figure out a way to import my food-related tweets here somehow?

… is not kosher for Passover if you’re an Ashkenazi Jew. Just sayin’. :)

It’s been gorgeous here all weekend. Hyoun woke me up Saturday morning with:

Hyoun: THERE IS SUN. Let’s go to the Valley! I want Judie’s for lunch!
Lynne: Ooh! … wait, we have to be in Allston at 5 pm for Seder. That’s only like six hours from now …
Hyoun: I drive fast.

We drive out anyway. Viva Pioneer Valley Food Runs for popovers and certain questions being popped:

After this, of course, I am bouncy and squeeish and we make record time on our drive back from Amherst to Allston, where Laura is graciously hosting the first Seder, and boy howdy did she reset the bar for food rather high. Of course, she used to be a professional chef, so she has an excuse ;)

It was all delicious, but I was so giddy I only remembered the following:

- There weren’t enough yarmulkes; thank goodness for the presence of two rabbi’s sons to declare the roof a blessed head-covering for all of us.
- Liane made horseradish jelly, which was pretty darned good. I’d eat it on all other nights.
- Apparently, Manischevitz Jello shots bounce. Next year, we’ll go one better – make them in Star-of-David cookie cutter molds, so we’ll have properly Jewish Jello Jigglers for Pesach Time.
- Amanda was the only newbie this year and thus the only one required to eat the gefilte fish, but it was so popular we actually didn’t have enough for everyone. Buh?
- I managed to mostly contain my squee until after dinner, when Hyoun and I made our announcement. Well-planned that I’d see so many of my local friends immediately after we got engaged. Good job, honey! ;)

Reporting back on the second Seder at Craigie Street Bistrot: YUM. When local asparagus comes in, I am so duplicating the asparagus dish I had last night; I’ll just need to learn how to make gribenes. Which tasted rather like chicharrón (fried pork skin, about as nonkosher as you can get!) to me, so, um.