Chickpea to Cook

Sometimes it’s the old favorites that call your name.

While dining at Kincaid’s, an upscale steak and seafood eatery in Bloomington, Minnesota, I promised my friend Jessica that if she passed on their famous steak offerings and ordered the Lobster Mac ‘N’ Cheese her experience would appear in my blog.

So here it is…a gourmet twist on the unglamorous American comfort food that usually comes in a blue box from Kraft.

With a melted medley of Gruyere, Cheddar, and Fontina cheeses, this dish is so sumptuous you’ll polish off the last bite quicker than you can say, “Velveeta.”

Mixed in with the macaroni are bite-sized pieces of lobster. The dish is also served with two small skewers of the shellfish.

And, just so there’s no confusion that this isn’t the mac ‘n’ cheese of your childhood, the pasta is drizzled with truffle oil.

Still don’t see the difference? You will when the check arrives: $23 for Kincaid’s Lobster Mac ‘N’ Cheese–enough to buy 20 boxes of the other K’s variety.

But sometimes it’s worth it to indulge your inner child with some food the grown-up will enjoy as well.

…and I am still awake. That’s right, do not adjust your computer monitors, this post says 4:55 a.m. and I am awake and blogging. Obviously since I average one blog post a month, you can tell how bored and desperate I am at this point.

Whoever said caffeine isn’t a drug has never tried Persian chayee. That is some potent s**t, and I’m like the newbie who can’t handle the high. My older relatives have a continuous drip-feed of  into their bloodstreams and it seems to have little effect on them. It’s a staple of life, in fact. I don’t care what time of day you go over to my grandparent’s house–they will have a kettle of water boiling on the stove.

Persian tea has a very distinct flavor. Some variations have a hint of cardamom mixed in with the black leaves. It is fragrant and full-bodied. People drink it with numerous sugar cubes, traditionally held under the tongue.

To brew the perfect pot of Persian tea, follow this recipe. You will need a large metal kettle with a removable lid and a small tea pot that will fit on top of the kettle.

1) Fill the kettle 2/3 full of water. Bring to a boil.

2) Put two tablespoons of loose leaf tea in the tea pot, fill 2/3 full of boiling water, and place the tea pot over the kettle.

3) Lower the heat to low, and let the tea steep for a good 10 minutes.

4) Pour the concentrated tea into a cup (about 1/2 full if you like a strong cup, which the Persians call por-rang or “full of color”, less for a weak cup or kam rang, which means “little color”.)

5) Fill the rest of the cup with hot water from your kettle.

6) Stir in sugar cubes and enjoy (in moderation and hopefully before 6 p.m. if you want to sleep that night!)

They suck. I try a new one every time I go grocery shopping and no matter whether I buy Chef Boyardee or something a little more upscale like Dave’s Gourmet, I’m just never satisfied.

Can somebody please tell me when Spaghetti-Oh’s sauce started to taste bad? I used to love the stuff as a kid.

Anyway, I had high hopes for Dave’s Gourmet Red Heirloom Tomato Pasta Sauce. I bought it at Whole Foods for around $6.  It was fine, don’t get me wrong, but nothing to write home about (although here I find myself blogging about it….odd.)

It was much more runny than normal tomato sauce and I hoped that meant that it was going to be naturally flavorful without all the preservatives. Sadly, it lacked the garden freshness I was looking for. No zip, no nothing.

I will say it was much better than the next jar I bought, which was Delallo Sundried Tomato Pasta Sauce–imported from Italy and made form San Marzano tomatoes nonetheless.

I have half a jar left in my fridge and I am tempted to just throw it away. It tastes like chunky tomato paste. I could have saved myself the $6 or however much it cost and just bought a tin can of Hunt’s.

Could it be that I am being too picky? Will I be relegated to making my own tomato sauce from scratch or eating my pasta with olive oil and parmesan cheese forever?

If anyone has an exceptional canned tomato sauce, please send me your suggestions.

Until then, my quest for the best tomato sauce continues….

There’s something real and earthy about eating roasted corn on the cob. It’s one of my favorite festival foods: the slightly smokey, charred flavor contrasting with the sweet juices inside the kernals make it worth my while to wait in long lines and pay $3 an ear. 

But not even I was prepared for the new corn on the cob experience I was to have two weeks ago at the Dia de los Muertos Festival in Los Angeles. We’re talking butter, salt, lime juice, chili powder, and (gasp!) mayonnaise.

It’s corn on the cob, Mexican style, and I swear it couldn’t have been better or more authentic if I had bought it off a street vendor in Tijuanna. Instead I nibbled it under an almost full moon in a Hollywood cemetery that was decked out for the Day of the Dead.

The kernals were slightly charred and glistening with butter when the vendor handed me the cob. The first one he had given me was too black–if it’s too burnt you can’t get a full appreciation of the sweetness. This piece was just right.

I saw others douse their cobs in lime juice and dash it with chili pepper. I did the same, and then added a thin line of mayo to one side. It made the corn so moist and succulent, I wondered how it had taken me so long to find this combination.

Roasted corn will never taste the same again.

I wasn’t really supposed to do this. But these luscious Merlot grapes were hanging plumply from the vine everywhere I turned during my visit to the Firestone Vineyard. When nobody was looking, I just had to pick one. Ok, two.

I was at the vineyard on a beautiful September afternoon just before harvest, which means these tasty fruits were nearing their optimal sugar content.  As a budding wine enthusiast, I thought it pertinent to my wine education that I sample the ingredient in the raw.

I snapped a tiny round fruit off the vine, its sticky, blood red juices oozing onto my thumb and index finger. When I popped it into my mouth I wasn’t ready for the complexity of flavor. It was tangy and sweet, slightly crisp and juicy.

It tasted so good, I didn’t want to swallow. Easily the best grape I’ve ever put in my mouth.

It was wine in chewable form. I can’t say it tasted just like a pour out of a bottle of course, but I have a hunch that if the Flintstone vitamins were to come in “Merlot” flavor, this is what it would be like.

Did I just compare a Merlot grape to children’s vitamins?

Anyway, you get the drift.

A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot where it’s being boiled

“Why are you doing this to me?”

The cook knocks him down with the ladle .

“Don’t you try to jump out. You think I’m torturing you. I’m giving you flavor, so you can mix with spice and rice and be the lovely variety of a human being.

Remember when you drank rain in the garden. That was for this.”

Grace first. Sexual pleasure,  then a boiling new life begins, and the Friend has something good to eat.

Eventually the chickpea will say to the cook, “Boil me some more. Hit me with the skimming spoon. I can’t do this by myself.

I’m like an elephant that dreams of gardens back in Hindustan and doesn’t pay attention to his driver. You’re my cook, my driver, my way into existence. I love your cooking.”

The cook says, “I once was like you, fresh from the ground. Then I boiled in time, and boiled in the body, two fierce boilings.

My animal soul grew powerful. I controlled it with practices, and boiled some more, and boiled once beyond that, and became your teacher.”

Rumi, September 30, 1207-December 17, 1273

This blog melds two of my biggest loves: writing and food.

I eat, I write. I cook, I write. I dine out, I write.

It’s that simple.

I hope you came hungry.