Mexico Builds Border Wall To Keep Out US Assholes

And speaking of the wall, here’s a good cartoon from a Mexican blogger/political cartoonist. The caption reads “Bad Mexico, bad!… It’s cut with cornstarch.”

Ordinarily, we would’ve ridden our bikes, but since our Spain trip, walking seems more enjoyable. (And deep down, I know biking is the lazy option–I like it because it’s one of the few sports where you can sit on your ass.) Walking also makes it seem more like traveling. I may ride a bike at home, but hoofing it is standard whenever I go to another country.

Our destination, loosely, was Tortilleria Nixtamal (104-05 47th Ave.), in Corona. Peter happened to buzz by there a couple of weeks ago on his bike, saw the tortilla press in the window and remembered my chronic lament: Corn tortillas in this city suck. The only kind you can get are the ones made with preservatives. My dad still gets the pure corn, lime and water ones in Santa Cruz; Peter picked up the simple goods in Chicago a few weeks back; but New York, where Mexican culture is still relatively new, is a tortilla wasteland.

So, we set off a-walkin’. A little dull at first, since it’s just our same ol’ neighborhood. But we noticed that the Thai restaurant on 30th Ave. near Steinway (south side) has all-new miniature Thai food-stall dioramas in its window. Adorable–and for sale! And we noticed the newish Bistro Les Minots, where genuine French was being spoken, on the other side of Steinway. And we saw that a deli was having a special on “things.”

We trekked through Jackson Heights, where I happened to see a woman wearing a gauzy outfit in the exact same colors I just painted the dining room, so I felt like my Bollywood vision was based on something real. And we saw more odd art for sale–just $30 for the small ones! And that’s real black velvet as the background.

On 82nd Street, we got a shaved ice flavored with something mysterious and orange and creamy. We passed a movie theater I didn’t know existed, where all the Hollywood hits are subtitled in Spanish, and all shows before 5pm are $5. Maybe I’ll go next week, to practice up before my Mexico trip.

We were momentarily lost, as the street numbers suddenly skewed all wrong–and then we hit Broadway in Elmhurst, and walked past the Taiwanese place we like, with the duck tongues. Tempting–but we had a different goal.

The beauty of wandering aimlessly in Queens is that, except for a few awkward spots where the grid gets bent, you basically know where you are at all times, thanks to the genius numbering scheme known (among urban engineering cognoscenti, anyway) as “the Philadelphia system.” That’s the system that makes most non-Queens-residents have nervous breakdowns when they’re looking for an address like 30-30 30th Avenue. Duh–we know that’s 30th Avenue between 30th and 31st Streets. So, since we were going to 104-05 47th Avenue, we knew we had to go south-ish to 47th Ave, and east-ish as far as 104th Street, and it didn’t matter much how we got there.

Due to our wandering approach, we wound up having dessert first. We first strolled past Timmy O’s (49-07 104th Street) without batting an eye, but the phrase “frozen custard” lodged in my brain. Half a block later, I said, “That might be good! Frozen custard is rare here.” Peter said, “And any place that sells just one thing is usually pretty good at that one thing.” I’d even seen the word “concrete” on the menu inside, indicating St. Louis-style thick shakes.

U-turn. Back to Timmy O’s, and whoa, we are glad we did! They’ve been open about a year, making just vanilla and chocolate fresh every day, plus an additional one or two special flavors. When we visited, they also had cannoli cream (with the wee chocolate chips) and really good strawberry. All rich and eggy, and served just a little soft, so you can really taste the flavors. Timmy even studied in St. Louis, and told us about an ice-cream-hut crawl he did with his class. He thinks the winner there is Fritz’s, not Ted Drewe’s. (I didn’t say it! He did! But now I’m curious…)

So when we got to Tortilleria Nixtamal, just a couple of blocks later, we were pretty full. Kids were playing out front, and invited us in, but we said we’d have to walk around the block first, to work up an appetite. We just managed it–passing Leo’s Latticini, one of those Queens food landmarks I’ve always heard about and have not quite been compelled to go to because it doesn’t involve anything really spicy. Fortunately it was closed, or we might’ve ruined our appetites again.

So, back to the tortilleria. They have an honest-to-God tortilla press, visible from the outside, so you could watch it like a Krispy Kreme production line. (Love that it’s made by Manufacturas Lenin!) Inside, the decor consists largely of empty Coca-Cola bottles. Mexican Coke, of course–the good stuff.

We got guacamole, and it is probably the finest I have had in a restaurant–it tasted like there were bits of roasted poblano in there, and the fresh-fried chips didn’t hurt either. A rajas tamale was super-tasty, even though the masa was dense. And a round of crispy-fried fish tacos, using the fresh tortillas…perfect. We took two pounds of tortillas to go (the machine runs every day at 11am–a little early for us, but the tortillas stay warm in coolers all day). They may not be as good as you can get in Mexico, but until they install a grandmother, patting each one out by hand and cooking them on a wood fire–well, these will certainly do.

While we were there, we read some of their press coverage on the walls–turns out our random wander actually covered a well-trod chowhound trail before us–Columbus we ain’t.

We were fairly full, but seeing how our route home was headed right past El Pollo Campero, the Guatemalan chicken franchise, we couldn’t not stop. I know it’s fried fast food, but it’s fried fast food in Spanish–right down to the trash bins that say ‘Gracias’ on them. Plus, it was Fourth of July weekend, and it seemed like we should eat fried chicken at some point.

I get strangely patriotic and a little teary-eyed in places like El Pollo Campero. This is what the future of the US is–having our weird plastic-fast-cheap culture spread out in the world, then brought back to us and made a thousand times better by immigrants. Of course you want a salsa bar in your fast-food joint! And damn, the salsa was good–all smoky-hot with little burnt flecks in it. And the chicken wasn’t bad either–crispy, spicy, and almost certainly involving a dash of MSG, but nothin’ wrong with that.

After our chicken break, it was just a long trek home in the dying light. Peter’s feet began to hurt–the knockoff 99-cent-store “Band-Ages” we’d bought hadn’t really helped. We passed a random street fight, involving the cops and a girl in a pink dress who was stuck holding the family groceries. We survived the long, dreary stretch of car dealerships on Northern Boulevard. We maximized the diagonal of Newtown Avenue, and it was still a good 10 miles all told.

But we felt like we’d been a whole lot further. And this has always been why I’ve lived in Queens in the first place–the travel-without-a-passport effect. In fact, it’s nearly my anniversary with Queens too (11 years–I moved in on the very first date!). Recently, I’ve been having the occasional twinge of longing for Brooklyn food culture and all its chumminess and farm-ness and we’re-making-stuff!-ness. But after the Sunday walkabout…I’m renewing my vows to Queens.

And to Peter too, of course–the only man I know who would enjoy a day like this as much as I did. Happy anniversary, sweets.

(A few other good photos from the walk are at this Flickr set.)

During my May trip, I loaded up my suitcase with pomegranate molasses and Aleppo red pepper paste. I started to get nervous about the pepper paste when I saw Peter wantonly smearing it on his sandwiches. At this rate, it would never make it to its intended purpose, muhammara. (Muhammara is a pepper-walnut-pomegranate-molasses paste that is insanely rich and delicious.)

And after getting zucchini-stuffing instruction on that May trip, I was also itching to break out my weird zucchini-coring gadget, bought on the street in Aleppo in 2007.

I’ll just cut to the chase: it worked like a charm!

First, you pick your firm, evenly shaped koosa (wee zucchini):

Then you set the pointy end in the center:

Then you set to coring:

Twist and push evenly:

Voila!

You can fry up with the insides with garlic and olive oil to make another nice mezze:

The end result, stuffed with rice, currants and pine nuts. Yes, meat is more traditional, but we were already having lamb chops marinated in Aleppo pepper. Yeah, they look a little obscene. That makes them taste better.

We had some grilled eggplant, topped with chopped garlic, basil and pomegranate molasses–a trick I learned on my first trip, in 1999, at a Christian social club in Hama. Though now it seems odd to me that basil was involved. Could I be imagining this part? Anyway, I like peeling the eggplant in the Turkish, zebra style:

Dinner got going before I thought to take real pics of anything else. We had beet greens with garlic yogurt, the aforementioned muhammara, the zucch innards and some boiled peanuts. Not Syrian, but I’d seen the fresh peanuts in Chinatown the day before, and hey, why not? I also made some potato salad, following an admittedly Americanized recipe in the Hippocrene book, A Taste of Syria. Ironically, it’s the first time I’ve ever made a boiled mayonnaise dressing. (Allspice is what made it Syrian.) And there was a big bowl of fattoush, the salad with purslane, mint, sumac and pita bits.

And lest anyone think we were unpatriotic: the ‘Merican flag was flying off the front deck, and we ate off my collection of state plates.

Not that I ever had dreams of a white princess dress, but after continued exposure to the minutiae of Tori Spelling’s signature cocktail, ways to insert your ethnicity into your ceremony, ways to insert your dog into your ceremony, gifts for your bridesmaids and other nuptial-alia… Just the thought of even the tiniest bit of wedding planning made me die inside. (And the word ‘nuptials’ still makes me gag.)

In much the same way, my other off-and-on copy-editing gig, at Us Weekly, has made me very, very sure I never want to be famous.

Well, OK–I don’t want to be Lindsay Lohan famous or even Meryl Streep famous. I cannot face having to smile at random people with cameras as I’m walking down the street. Nor the idea of some stranger coming up and saying, “Omigod! Omigod! Can you sign my T-shirt?”

I could stand being, say, Noam Chomsky famous. I would never recognize him on the street. Even if I did, what would I have to say to him? Smart, unrecognizable and with an air of intimidation–that kind of famous seems manageable. But still…why?

And it makes me wonder… Have the people who so desperately want to be famous–all those people clambering to get on reality shows–have they just never traveled?

Because let me tell you: Go stand on a corner in downtown Cairo, looking perplexed at the traffic and maybe wearing shorts. That’ll give you a taste of paparazzi-level fame in a heartbeat. It helps if you’re a woman, and have fairly light skin and maybe a little jiggle. But even without all that, you will still know what it’s like to have everyone in a five-block radius want a piece of you. Not necessarily in a sexy way, or in a money way, but just in a total-fascination-omigod-I-cannot-look-away way.

I have never been anywhere comparable to Egypt, where, for some reason, foreigners are still a totally mind-blowing phenomenon, even though they’ve been visiting the country for thousands upon thousands of years. You could make a good argument that Egypt has been courting tourists since ancient times, and yet still, no one is the least bit blase.

By contrast, when I was just in Spain… No one gave a damn. It was a little odd. I’d walk into a tiny bar in the middle of nowhere, and no one would bat an eye. I know I previously bragged about how I can pass as a Spaniard, but on the first trip I was with my white-haired mother (no dye job–obviously foreign) and on the second trip I had very obviously walked from the next village. No one even gave us a second glance. Ho-hum.

The strange emptiness I was a little embarrassed to feel may be what past-their-prime stars feel like when they go out in public. “Will they recognize me today?” they’re thinking, as they stroll the aisles of the drugstore. “Did that woman just double back to look at me again?” The closest we got to the glow of fame in Spain was occasionally in a tiny village, we’d be wandering around lost, and we’d pass an old man whose eyes were nearly bugging out of his head as you could see him thinking, “Ooh! Talk to me! Me! Ask me directions! Pleasepleaseplease!”

But in my experience, the sweet spot of famous–all of the respect, none of the sycophants and grabby crowds–is best simulated in Syria and Greece. Here, you’re accorded great respect and welcomed heartily. If people know something you may be interested in, they come up and introduce themselves. As a traveler, of course, these things are bit more pedestrian than VIP lounge access or whatever, but still, it’s nice to know where the best local spring water can be found, or which watermelon to pick from the roadside vendor.

And people give you lots of nice free stuff. In fact, I think this is much better than standard Hollywood fame. I would so much rather have a free glass of licorice drink than a crappy swag bag with a T-shirt and a few “luxury items” I’m never going to use. Extra sprigs of mint on my falafel sandwich, a “pay me next time” from the mini-pizza dude, a personal recommendation of the meaty pasta sauce from the train-station-cafe waitress–all these things make me feel like a Very Important Person.

But just as important: I don’t feel obligated. Getting crazy famous by definition means being blown all out of proportion–and when people find out you’re Just Like Us, well, they might be disappointed. And I imagine that could get nerve-racking for the famous person, leading to boozing, extensive therapy and Scientology. When you’re traveling, the attention you’re getting is based exactly on what you look like, right then, to the locals. If you’re not as thrilling as they’d hoped, well, that’s kind of their fault.

My dad has talked about traveling in Turkey in the 1960s, where he and my mom were often the most exciting thing to hit a village in years. People would come out and line the streets to look at them, and then when they got back to their hotel, people would be waiting, just to hang out and look at them some more. There were some long, awkward hours in their hotel rooms, while the locals waited for them to be interesting. That’s borderline bad famous, in terms of too much attention, but it’s also manageable–if these hotel-crashers got bored and left, so much the better.

So next time you feel like you’re not getting the public love you deserve, buy a plane ticket. It’s cheaper than a personal assistant, a Malibu mansion and the rehab you’d inevitably need after you made it to Hollywood. And in a foreign country, no one will take a photo of you while you’re eating.

I’m a huge fan of constraint-driven creativity. Georges Perec fascinates, algorithmic psychogeography intrigues, The Five Obstructions delights me like nothing else.

But since I am, alas, not a filmmaker, my obstructions are to be found (or not found) in my fridge, and it’s what’s there (or not) that has made me devise my best dinners.

Or, I should say: not necessarily my best dinners, as in everyone at the table swooned, cheered and carried me around on their shoulders. But my best dinners, as in cooking put me in a relaxed, mindful state and the result was my vision, realized just as I had imagined, and all the choices I made in the process turned out to be the right ones. When I wash up the dishes after a couple hours of cooking and eating like this, I feel like I accomplished a small something.

When I wash up the dishes from a dinner where I followed a few recipes, and they kind of hit the spot, but everyone gushed about how good they were–enh. My head is too cluttered from looking back and forth at the typed-up stuff, and all the second-guessing of the recipe.

Double alas, however, I do not have an iPhone to download the (inevitable) Oblique Strategies iPhone app. So I will have to go analog. In preparation, I’ve just requested Eno’s book, A Year with Swollen Appendices, from the Queens Public Library.

Now how can I get Lars von Trier to come over and whip me into shape?

I wish I were cool enough to say, “Oh yeah, Omar Suleyman…I’ve got all his bootlegs.” But I am too busy wallowing in old-school nostalgic Arabic music, like fellow Syrian Sabbah Fakri.

But Omar–he’s speaking to the kids today, rockin’ the rural style and gettin’ the ladies to do some serious jiggling.

Also, there’s a separate set from our afternoon of “fonting”–kind of like birding, but looking for obscure fonts. And boy, there are some doozies in Granada. (AV, why did you never mention this? It seems so right up your alley… And the Auto Escuela Dorado right by your apartment!)

The photos contain the juiciest anecdotes, but let me just say, in brief: Peter and I may actually live to hike again. It’s hard to believe, but we enjoyed ourselves. Peter was such a convert, in fact, that he walked home from the East Village the other night. I’m not giving up my bike anytime soon, and I still feel a little embarrassed about being seen in public with a backpack (ooh, a matching backpack with Peter’s, no less! That’s what happens when you emergency shop on the day before your flight). But it was a good trip.

And as a guidebook-updating gig, it was fantastic. I could only travel so fast, and was not expected to travel any faster, which is the exact opposite of any trip involving a car and an impractical number of small towns. But I still didn’t manage to buck the Curse of the Missed Swimming Pool. This occurs whenever I have a night planned in a really nice hotel, and I think, “Ooh, maybe I’ll just be able to check in and chill out by the pool that afternoon!” No. Inevitably, my schedule gets jacked up, and there is no swimming or sunning or anything, after I check in at dinnertime, totally pooped. On this trip, it meant that the night we were scheduled to stay at the really lovely place, we got lost near the end of the day, finally found our way, slogged through the river bottom and clambered up the hill just as the sun set and a cold shadow was cast over the pool. We swam anyway, but it wasn’t what I had envisioned.

If you’re planning a trip to New Mexico, or you just came back from there, or you just like the place, I heartily recommend this book. The concept — a guide to all the visual icons, from architecture to food to landscape — is so brilliant that it could change guidebook-land forever.

Every destination needs one — just think of all the times you’ve been traveling and wondered what a recurring symbol/dish/car was all about. The guide to New Mexico has entries for bolo ties, pawnshops, mesas, hogans and even lowriders. Perfect reading for pre-trip education, or while sitting on the patio back at your hotel at night.

Entertain yourselves with the new Cooking in Real Time episode, all about…whoo-hoo, sloppy joes!

And re: the book title, I am crushed we didn’t think of Ducking Felicious in time. This is why I need Josh and Larra on speed dial. (I was explaining the dilemma to a British couple in Spain, and that was their first suggestion. The Brits–they are a little wittier.)

Forking Fantastic it is, and I got the galleys a couple of days ago. The cute factor with the new title is a little high. Somehow, Forking Fantastic thong underwear does not have quite the same appeal as F-ing Delicious underwear. A whole marketing angle lost…

11:59. Spain pics in a few days.

As I leave for the airport, there is still a kerfuffle over the title of mine and Tamara’s cookbook, which some of you may’ve heard about via Facebook last week. I am still deep-down appalled at the idea that American book-buyers allegedly can’t handle seeing the letters “f-ing” on the cover of a book (let me be clear: nowhere on the cover would “the fuck-word,” as the witty Joanna calls it, actually have appeared), and yet many much broader social indecencies seem to be no problem at all. Also, that plenty of men have books with bad words in the title, but apparently it’s just too shocking over in the girly cookbook stacks.

Also, though, I live in New York City, where expletives hang in the air thick as smog. So what do I know?

But crisis = opportunity, and all that. So the boss of a friend of ours suggested Forking Delicious. Dorktastic! We went with that.

Alas. Some ladies in Philadelphia have been using the phrase for many years, and even though I don’t see any step toward copyrighting or trademarking on their website, well, I guess it wouldn’t be fair. Plus, they only live in Philly, so it’s just a train ride away to rough us up in a dark alley. There are more of them than there are of us.

So, now. Leaving for airport in one hour. Title still up in the air. Fucking, arg, I mean Forking Fantastic is the top choice.

The one nice thing about this whole process (have I mentioned, the title had been settled for more than a year? and the last time we got nervous about it, three months ago, they assured us it would be totally fine?) is a friend of mine dug up this book, while searching for other obscene titles:

Fuck It: The Ultimate Spiritual Path

Premise is that “fuck it” is the Western equivalent of Eastern Buddhist detachment, etc. I feel so enlightened already! I’ll be breathing deep and saying “fuck it” all the way to the airport.

Probably not too much posting in Spain. We’ll be in the ass of nowhere most of the time, getting sunburned and eating ham.

Just entertain yourself by answering this poll, please. I’m curious…

Here Is Havana

Peter and I and a few other friends went to Cuba in 1996, I think it was. (Surely it’s OK to say this, and the statute of limitations has run out by now?) We were so mentally unprepared, it’s comical in retrospect. At the time, though, it was an extremely rough trip.

We didn’t fully grasp, for instance, that it would be impossible to get more money once there…and we didn’t know quite how expensive it would be. It was very difficult to get off the “official” tourist track, and the attendant 1-to-1 exchange rate. But even if we had, well, there wasn’t anything to buy with Cuban money anyhow. Our second week, we got by on one meal a day, and we rolled up to the airport with nothing but our exit tax in our pockets.

The situation was grimmest when it came to food. I still shudder when I think about the creepy, greasy fish we were served at the one restaurant we found where we could pay in Cuban pesos. My sentimental attachment to Communism was pretty well chipped away on that trip, when I realized that the system truly just failed at feeding people, much less giving them the real, simple pleasure that can come from delicious things to eat every day.

I hope this has changed a bit in years since. When we visited, farmer’s markets were just starting up, as a very controlled experiment. The few times we got fresh produce, it was fantastic. But, whoa, that was so not a trip about kicking back on the beach and eating fresh pineapple. Still, when I returned to the Dominican Republic, I was appalled at the slums and the advertising everywhere…and I really appreciated the pineapple on the beach.

So, looking forward to reading Conner’s reports, as it sounds like various policies have changed since I visited. I especially want to know about the food!

I always go in for one thing, and come out without about eight (it helps that there’s a 99-cent ATM in there too). This time, I was waiting for my feta to get bundled up when I saw the oxymeli.

I say “the oxymeli” as though I knew what it was. But no. It was in with the vinegars. The label says it’s a combination of sweet wine, currant vinegar, figgy stuff and honey. There are actual little chunks of fruit in it too. There’s not too much on the Web about it–it seems like it’s a modern reinvention of an ancient recipe, made by just one company, Liostrofi. (Classicists, help me out!)

I fed some to our visiting genius-bartender friend, who promptly declared, “It’s shrub!” It does taste a little like something a spry 95-year-old man has been drinking every morning his whole life, and credits with keeping him fit. And I’m not surprised that a lot of the other info about it online seems to come from SCA types (a slippery slope, food history…).

Anyhoo, it’s delicious! I used it instead of balsamic vinegar to macerate some strawberries, and it was lighter but more complex. I heartily recommend it…if you can find it.

And because our pantry is overstuffed, I have to manage it the same way I do my clothes, tossing old to make room for new. The victim this time was a bottle of Rooh Afza, appealingly billed as “The Summer Drink of the East,” and smelling of rose and “fragrant screwpine.” Alas, it didn’t taste like much but sugar, and even its pretty label and ridiculous bright-pinkness couldn’t save it. Buh-bye, Rooh, and thanks anyway to Hamdafd Laboratories of Pakistan (though I love the sound of a drink made by Something Laboratories, don’t you?). According to Wikipedia, Rooh Afza used to be something more elaborate. It’s a mild understatement to call this version “less complex.”

Oh, but I lie. I snuck in another new thing, without quite purging something else. It’s a bottle of mulberry syrup from Syria. It was a risky thing to bring back, considering it could have made a horrific mess in my luggage. But it’s intact (if now even already a third consumed), and in a drink-mixing frenzy over the last few days, I found it goes well with gin, and with bananas in a smoothie. Now that’s versatile–a real keeper.

My mother has this saying, “It’s hell having a good time.” Best uttered near the tail end of a party, when exhausted, or when the logistics of entertaining oneself prove very challenging.

Also, to oneself when lying in bed, bloated with delicious food.

I signed up for a culinary tour of Syria because I love Syria and I love Syrian food. Makes sense, right? Let’s just say I didn’t really think through the implications of the phrase “group trip”–ie, that we did everything as a group. And that was a lot of things, and never really included naps.

Maybe I do more stuff in a day when I’m on a research trip, but, hey, that’s work. Syria was my big vacation. So when I had to roll out of bed the first day after just five hours of sleep, it felt a little rough. Actually, it felt like karmic payback for nearly wrecking my mother during my research trip to Spain.

Granted, I’m inherently lazy, and there’s something to be said for making me do stuff. But, ohhh, I never thought I would complain about having to eat so much in such a short time. But here I am.

What we ate was remarkable. It happened to be the season for rose-petal jam, so there was quite a lot of that. Also, of artichokes–though I think the Syrians are so into sour that they sometimes forget salty, and artichokes need a lot of salt; some we ate were quite bland and didn’t have that special zing.

It was also the season for desert truffles, or kama’. I’d never had them before, and I started to get worried that we wouldn’t get any, because it was supposedly near the end of the season. Not to worry–at a massive dinner at the Club d’Alep, they were served two ways. I could only muster a couple of bites, though, because yet again, I’d managed to eat too much that day, and each bite of that dinner felt like it might be my last, before a Monty Python-esque explosion.

They were intriguing. Nice dense mushroomy texture, with a mellow, kind of all-purpose spring-vegetable taste that lasted a surprisingly long time. Nothing at all like European truffles, of course, but then neither are Mexican truffles, or huitlacoche. “Truffle” is the new “Riviera,” in terms of creative naming.

We also tasted quite a lot of varieties of kibbeh. I rarely order it myself, because it just doesn’t seem all that interesting. But we had a very nice grilled rendition, filled with a molten center of pomegranate molasses and nut paste, and the more I looked around, the more varieties I saw and tasted.

Sweets

One night mid-trip, I was lying in bed, again in some digestive misery, and it dawned on me that my money would probably have been better spent on, say, a trip to China, where I really do need someone to lead me around and translate, and to explain the food to me.

And then I woke up the next day, and we went to Pistache d’Alep, a fancy bakery, and visited the kitchens. Not being a huge sweets fan, I wasn’t expecting much. But, whoa. Words cannot begin to convey the complete niftiness of the industrial equipment at work, and the depth of craftsmanship in all the meticulous handwork. I put up a whole separate Flickr set just for the bakery trip. Don’t skip the videos.

After having my mind boggled by all the weird sweets-producing technology, we had coffee (and more sweets!) with Willy Wonka himself, who used to live on Long Island. His right-hand man, Hassan, expounded on food in a philosophical way that reminded me of Ali.

We absolutely must eat seasonally, he said, because our health comes from nature–not only is it wrong to eat oranges in the summer, he said, it’s bad for your health too. While he was saying this, however, this was going on outside the windows of the cafe:

I cannot explain…

Getting Schooled

The other really outstanding thing we did was go to the house of a woman chef for a cooking demonstration and big lunch. I could’ve sat there for days and watched her stuff eggplants. We occasionally were put to work, but kind of botched it. Here she is impatiently emptying out a mis-stuffed eggplant and refilling it the proper way.

I also learned the dirty secret to muhammara, the red-pepper-and-walnut paste: sugar. Loads of it. Also, citric acid. Apparently all the restaurants use citric acid instead of lemon juice, because the flavor doesn’t go off as fast. Of course purists frown on this, but still fascinating to know. Will mentally file with judicious use of MSG.

Solo in Damascus

After that was all over, and I bid fond adieu to my fellow travelers (the actual group part of the ‘group trip’ was excellent), I got on a train back to Damascus. On previous trips, I’ve spent just about all my time in Aleppo, so aside from a memorable nap in the Umayyad Mosque and some excellent blackberry juice just outside it, I had little impression of Damascus.

So it was a double treat to explore a new city, and to do it completely on my own terms with no schedule whatsoever. I really just wandered aimlessly for three days, eating street snacks and taking photos.

I did get a good scrub at a hammam, and drank myself nearly sick on frozen lemonades and mulberry juice. My last night in Damascus, after the one lemon slush I really didn’t need, I collapsed on my bed in a mild sugar shock.

Some random observations: Syrian men are exceedingly polite (I even witnessed a man chide his son for making flirtatious noises at me–export to Egypt, please!), but they are also giant hams. Some of the most fun I had was taking pictures of all the guys who begged me to. I was very glad to have a digital camera.

Syria seems like a notably less paranoid place than when I first visited 10 years ago. Change is happening. And here’s hoping the US doesn’t somehow screw it up with some ham-fisted negotiations.

It’s also a far less cheap place than when I first visited. That’s probably rough for Syrians, but OK by me–it used to be embarrassing how cheap it was. Now it’s on par with Egypt, roughly.

Syria is still the only place in the world I’ve gone back to just because I like it so much–if it’s possible to have a crush on a country, I suppose I do. And I’d still go back–maybe next time in the fall, for a whole range of different seasonal treats.

For photos and more anecdotes, see my Flickr set.

Check out the Flickr set here.

That, however, does not include the real highlight of the trip, which was a visit to the basement lair of Pistache d’Alep, a sweet shop in Aleppo, where we got to see how all the various thready, flaky, crispy, crunchy, nutty things were made. It kind of blew my mind. So there’s a separate Flickr set all for that, which includes this video:

I love the music that happens to be playing in the background of the first clip. It really set the tone for wacky sweet shop hijinks. Imagine that on endless loop, a battalion of sixteen-year-old boys running around, giant bubbling cauldrons, flour hanging in the air and bizarrely specific industrial machinery, and you have a small hint of what it was like down there. Oh, plus, add lots of butter.

Man, we’ve been operating in the bush leagues. We still turn our crank by hand. Out in the Chicago suburbs, though, you just sit back and watch the spit turn itself, giving you more time to muse on man’s eternal connection with fire and meat.

Really, the most illuminating thing to see was the fire: they build it on the ground, off to the side of the meat, in two separate piles of wood (no charcoal). This way you can control how much heat the shoulder and the leg are getting separately, and the center, with the loin, doesn’t get too cooked through.

Anyway, go see the pics. More illuminating than anything I can describe here.

Just a few phrases to get you excited about clicking over:

aged manchego
supermarket souvenirs
creepy clowns
cuttlefish snuff
tortillitas de camaron (really!)
tomato dresses

Go!

Poor Miss Parsley. She feels herself losing her toehold in the society of the Upper East Side. And I think, in these troubled economic times, we can all relate to that. Just yesterday, downward mobility was the subject of breakfast conversation.

Miss Parsley is inventive, though, and cooks and forages to save money, as well as to cheer herself up. And the recipes in this book are all quite accessible and delicious. But that hardly does the book justice–it’s really a wonderful document of NYC life, and I feel proud to have had a very small hand in it. (I know Parsley’s alter ego, and provided light copy editing services.)

Your copy, printed on demand, is available here. Or you can pick one up at The Corner Bookstore (91st and Madison) or Kitchen Arts & Letters (on Lexington).

Maybe it’s just the thing for Mother’s Day? You know, just to show that even though you’re actually not doing quite so well as your parents, you’re still managing to feed yourself…

In the meantime, you may content yourself with SALTS: The Society for the Appreciation of the Lowly Tinned Sardine. The helpful folks sent me a link months ago–I’m finally leaping into action. I’m a huge canned sardine fan, having been raised on them enthusiastically enough that I thought it was normal to take them for school lunch. No one ever wanted to swap with me, but their loss.

Also, if you need some more home-cooking inspiration, visit Cathy Erway at Not Eating Out in New York. If you’re not hopelessly out of the Brooklyn food loop like I am, you probably already know about her. But it is great to see someone take the leap to home cooking (especially in NYC), and rock it in such a short time. Totally coincidentally, she has a book coming out this fall, from the same publisher as ours and Tamara’s. And I like that a lot of her food skews Asian-y, because I don’t cook that way much.

And in that same vein, yowza, thanks Eric Gower, aka The Breakaway Cook! His food is the kick in the pants I need–I’ve got a pantry full of spices, condiments and assorted syrups, and a lot of days I do precious little with it. His blog might also be the way I break into Japanese food, which I’ve failed with before because I can’t get the underlying rules. I promptly ordered his cookbook, and am very excited to see it.

Between that and my Syria trip, this summer, it’s gonna be hot in my kitchen, for sure.

Preorder a copy for Mother’s Day, perhaps?

First, I was planning a big trash-talk smackdown, pro-wrestling style. I’d gotten halfway into my spandex unitard and was starting to tease out my hair, and then I had a twinge. That developed into more of grad-school-y relativist approach. Now I’ve backed down from saying the Amateur Gourmet’s omelette was WRONG. It’s just different. Different in a way I wouldn’t want to eat.

So I devoted this week’s Cooking in Real Time episode to a polite, positive corrective.

Don’t get me wrong–I love the Amateur Gourmet video. It’s totally entertaining. Adam Roberts is hilarious, and so is his neighbor. The clip is goofy, and I’m a sucker for goofy. There should be more TV shows with talking pasta boxes and not-slick-looking people.

It’s just that…uh, if you follow the AG’s advice–and that of Chef Dude Whoever–you’ll wind up with a crappy omelette. (Unless it’s Opposite Day–in which case their advice will turn out a lovely tender omelette with perfectly melted cheese and a nice soft texture in the middle!)

Fine, I understand–TV is entertainment first. Or, really, money-making first, then entertaining, then maybe if you learn a little something you’re lucky. But caring so little about the end result (whether your omelette is nice and fluffy and soft or just a blob of scrambled eggs shaped in a circle with some cheese slapped in there) seems like bad practice.

If the Food Network cares so little about the actual food, perhaps it can change its name to the Fun and Money Network? I’d settle for that.

I also get that the Food Network has to cover its ass and tell you to cook your eggs all the way through. But if you do that…well, again, you wind up with something that’s a bad omelette.

But, good lord, there is no legal reason to tell people to beat their eggs for 2 or 3 minutes! That is just a silly waste of time. See the video for the right different way.