I really dislike bloggers who bleat and bray about abandoning their readers. I did try to write a couple of posts, one about eating pancakes all day that ended up with lousy photos, and one about hole in the wall spots in Berlin that just proved to be too much of an undertaking while my faculties were used up by paid writing work.

If you are not put off by my tone, then I have presents for you….actually for me. The first thing is a book that I ordered off Amazon a couple days before I left Virginia for Berlin. It arrived too late and so Brendan’s parents had to send it to me. Don’t you just love getting a package slip with your name on it? It’s proof that I exist. It’s proof that someone is thinking about me. In this obnoxiously gray month of May, it was like a bolt of sunshine shot through me.

And the book, Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries, is my new bible! I actually used to read this book in the big Berlin book-store chain, Thalia, and with a pen and notebook, take down recipes from it to cook later in the week. It’s unlike any cookbook I’ve ever read. There is this sense of spontaneity and recipes cobbled together from what’s at hand. Real people cook like this and it’s a pleasure to find a book that can be inspirational and simple without being pretentious or pedantic. There aren’t any ridiculous trendy ingredients and you won’t find any step by step photos in here. The photos are more like muted modern still-life’s. You really see the blackened bits that form on the pan after potatoes are roasted, or the purple stained rim of a dish filled with berry cobbler. However you slice it, this is the most beautiful cookbook I’ve ever read.

It was written on a daily basis, and Slater (without being a twit about it) adheres to dishes that are seasonal and ingredients that are local. In May, there is a recipe for five spiced quail with loquats, a cousin fruit to the apricot that I see in the Turkish markets in Berlin. In deep August, there are recipes for salads like: cannelini beans, copa, spinach and mustard; grilled eggplant with mint and sheep’s cheese; and desserts like orange yoghurt ice-cream, and black currant trifle. Autumn dishes are similarly simple but a bit more filling: a ham and butter-bean stew; sweet and sticky chicken wings; pan fried sausages with cream and mustard mashed potatoes; brownies.

Winter is where Slater really shines, though. His recipes are so comforting to read. By comforting I mean they represent that part of you in Winter that just wants to drink to excess and fill up with gobs of stew. The photos are so reminiscent of cold winter evenings where people end up over at your house, drinking beer till all hours and picking out of some huge pot of sausage and lentils, or devouring a lime tart.

The other gift I received was information about a library in Berlin where you can find tons of dvd’s, English books, and music galore. Books are unlimited, and you can check-out up to 10 films for two-weeks at a time. I am gazing longingly at my stack right now. Last night I watched one film, a really amazing British flick about the reality of gay life in 70’s London called Nighthawks.  The film was very spare and visually arresting. There are these really long close-ups of the main character, Jim, just scanning the crowd of men with his eyes. Something about the grainy quality of the film itself and Jim’s freckled skin and slightly thick and unruly eyebrows just works. I was mesmerized. Who knows if I would have found this startling portrait if it hadn’t been amongst the library’s film selection. All I can say is that I am grateful it fell into my lap.

I promised a friend that I wouldn’t give away the secret openly, so if you’re in Berlin and you really want to know, ask in the comments and I will email you the information about this jewel of a library. Tonight I will probably watch Picnic at Hanging Rock, which I’ve heard of but never managed to see.

I mentioned the shop Vinh Loi in my last post about herbs and I just wanted to expound on the deep gratitude I feel for having found it. I have always frequented Asian supermarkets and when I moved to Berlin I had a hard time finding a good one. Grocery stores here play by a different set of rules than American ones. They are smaller, for one thing, and unless they are speciality markets or a very well stocked organic (Bio is the word used here) shop, you can expect to find very little in the way of foreign food-stuffs. The average cheap German grocery chain has a lot of the following: würst, dairy products, a variety of dark and white breads, juices that require no refrigeration, a small selection of fresh pork, chicken, turkey and beef cuts, a pantry section with rices, pasta, and grains familiar to Germany, and then a pickled canned section with a variety of mustards, remoulades, mayonnaise, preserved fish and meats, canned (or more often jarred) fruits, veggies and then a frozen section with frozen meats, pizzas, veggies like spinach and kale, and a pitiful selection of ice creams that taste like nothing. Oh and of course alcohol–beers, terrible wines, and the obligatory Kraüter Likkor (herbal schnapps) with a name like “hunter’s delight.”

These grocery stores are fine for your breakfast and lunch needs but for dinner, they sort of lack spark. German’s are not too friendly to spices and spicy foods. I worked in a restaurant where we tried very hard to avoid the word scharf (spicy) to describe a dish on the menu. Instead we were relegated to descriptions like “chicken with exotic Thai spices,” which always felt a little colonialist to my ears, but it was a paid gig, so I didn’t put up too much fuss.

I like spicy food. I would put Sriracha on ice cream if I thought no one would judge me for it. In my day to day cooking life I crave Indian lemon pickle, chili-garlic pastes from China, Thai red curry, wasabi, and all the stuff that goes with it.

I am used to walking into an Asian grocery and finding a giant wall of fresh produce; cheap ginger, bok choy, yu choy and dandelion greens, bitter melon, chayote, and store made tofu swimming in brine. What I found in Berlin was more akin to an Asian bodega. There were big bags of rice, a few vinegars, some soy sauce of dubious quality and sad sad produce withering away in abject despair. These places were dark, dusty and depressing. And worst of all, they were expensive! I don’t mind blowing the dust off a bottle of rice-vinegar if it’s cheap, but I get sort of cranky when I have to ask the question, Is this all there is? I mean, I can deal with the lack of good Chinese restaurants here if I know I can make the stuff at home. But, I couldn’t stay long in a place that didn’t have a decent Asian food shop.

Leave it to my Japanese-American friend Olivia to uncover the wonder of Vinh Loi. It’s cheap, big, and well stocked. It caters to a variety of Asians living in Berlin and it was somehow surprising to hear them speak pidgin German to each other in the check-out line. I recently brought my vegetarian friend Marta there and she literally had to be kicked out because she couldn’t stop shopping. She loaded her bags with vegetarian duck, naturally brewed soy sauce, a variety of Japanese pickles, brown-rice green tea, sweet soy buns, and pickled lotus root. I felt like the proud Senior showing the Freshman the alley where everyone smokes during lunch.

Tonight I’m making cucumber and soba-noodles in spicy peanut sauce with soy-ginger turkey medallions and it would not be possible without Vinh Loi.

Lately I’ve been feeling a little harried and over-stressed.  For all my talk about jogging, doing yoga, swimming and eating healthier, I’ve actually been sort of a lump. I think we all go through phases where our energy is more mental or more physical and it’s hard to balance the two. I know I feel best when I’m getting regular exercise, eating reasonably well and plodding away at projects that I find meaningful, but usually one of these things takes the lead and the other two fall by the wayside.

In an effort to get back into balance, I stopped by the Vinh Loi Asien Supermarkt in Wedding and purchased some herbs to make a tincture to promote health and balance. For those of you who think herbal medicine is hippie bullshit, I can only offer this fact: The Chinese linked stress to illness before Western medicine even had a word for stress. The idea that our organs are more than just processors for our body, but also have emotional links, should be obvious to anyone that has ever experienced heartache but for some reason, Western medicine advocates for specific pills to treat specific problems rather than seeing our bodies as complex webs of interconnectivity.

My first experience with Chinese herbal medicine came in 2005 when I was going through a painful breakup and went looking for anything that would make me feel less anguished. I had a friend who was practicing cupping therapy, and I decided to give it a try. In cupping therapy a partial vacuum is created in cups placed on the skin either by means of heat or suction. When the cup is left in place on the skin for a few minutes, blood stasis is formed and a series of rings are left on the skin where the cups were placed. The therapist then reads the rings and prescribes various herbs to promote Qi flow within the body, to help aid in the reduction of  blood blockages.

Basically this is leeching without the leeches and before you get grossed out remember this: Our blood gets stagnant and our muscles tense and every massage you get is an attempt to help blood circulate in your body, to release tension in the muscles and aid blood flow. Cupping is nothing more than a deep tissue massage.

Unfortunately, I don’t have access to these cups so I went straight to the herbs that I used 5 years ago hoping that, along with some stretching and meditation, they would aid in my recalibration. I found a nifty little pack for under two Euros containing the basic herbs for promoting health. The mix is called Bu Zhong Yi Qi Wan and you need only to boil it for about an hour and then drink the strained broth as often as possible. I made my first batch this morning and I am looking forward to the results. Usually I feel more energized, my mood feels more balanced and my digestion is top notch.

Spring has come to Berlin, along with an ice volcano that’s stopped all incoming and outgoing air traffic to the city. Normally when the weather reaches tolerable levels, the population doubles. It’s as if millions of Spaniards, Italians and Scandinavians sit by their computers obsessively reloading the Berlin weather page, and when the sun icon appears, they book their flights with the speed of stock traders. For those of us that actually survived the brutal, gray, winter, the extra commotion produced by flocks of tourists (just when we’re able to finally go outside and relax), results in just a twinge of resentment.

And yes, I know that on some level I’m a tourist here too. I even feel for the Berliners (born and bred) who have to listen to my loud drunken English conversation in cozy off-the-beaten-path bars they believed were immune to American takeover. But, at the same time, I’ve been here long enough that I feel entitled to a bit of breathing room.  Therefore I, like many others here, am truly grateful to Iceland for its geothermal pyrotechnic display.

To celebrate the first truly warm weekend, I made zucchini, asparagus quiche. I sliced up half of it, packed it in a bag along with a pink blanket, a couple of Berliner Pilsner’s, a cucumber and a bottle of Sriracha, and headed to the canal to eat alfresco with friends. The sun made us lazy and nostalgic. We rolled up our pant legs to reveal our pasty, dried out legs. Our eyes smiled beneath our sunglasses. We put off responsibilities for the rest of the day and just sat there, discussing the weather through the sun-dappled lens of a Renoir.

The lack of air-traffic noise coupled with an unhurried atmosphere, convinced me that we should all return to boat passage for our transatlantic travel needs.  Poking around the internet, I found that the average length of a cross-Atlantic journey is about 3 days. Considering that jet-lag takes about three days to get over, this seems like a fair trade. Plus, maybe covering that much distance should take 3 days! There might be a reason our brains cloud up when we endure a 10 hour flight from Frankfurt to Los Angeles. There’s just something wrong about the speed of planes, something unsettling.

Of course, due to the overwhelming need to get places right now without planes, when you click on freightertrips.com, you get the following message:

Has Your Flight Been Cancelled Due To Volcanic Ash?
Please note that it is almost impossible to jump onboard a passenger cargo ship at a moments notice, most shipping lines will need a MINIMUM of about 2 weeks just to process a booking. Combine this with a wait for the next available departure and the length of the voyage itself and it is going to take SEVERAL WEEKS to get home this way. You will almost certainly get home far quicker by just waiting for flights to resume during a weather window.

Guess I’m not the only person out there that has sea voyaging on the brain. Still, I think when the ash settles, I’ll investigate this method for my future travel needs. It’s certainly a “greener” way to go. Those huge freight ships use gasoline to get up to speed, but as soon as that happens, they just coast on their own momentum.

And think of all the cargo you wouldn’t have to pay for! For cargo reasons alone, it might be more efficient to take a boat. I could even bring my Le Creusets’ with me in one haul! I wouldn’t be reduced to wandering the airport like a sweaty post-apocalypse fashion victim due to the extra clothes I had to fish out of my suitcase and wear because my luggage came up slightly overweight.

In the meantime, I’m just grateful that I don’t need to go anywhere. I’m content to have my quiche and eat it too.

Zucchini,  Asparagus Quiche: 

For Crust:

This dough is called “pâte brisée” in French (pronounce “pat breezay”). It is the base for all quiche and pie recipes.

• 250 grams of flour (1 and 3/4 cups or a little over 1/2 pound, unbleached, all-purpose)
• 125 grams of unsalted butter (1 stick)
• 1 egg
• 1 tea spoon of crème fraîche (or sour cream if you can’t find it)
• 1/2 tea spoon of salt.

The base ingredients are the flour, salt and butter. The egg and crème fraîche are here to help them stick together (plus the egg will give the crust a nice golden color).

First sift the flour over a large bowl and add the salt.

Cut the butter in tiny cubes. Incorporate the butter to the flour with your finger tips (you can’t really use a spoon here… You could use a pastry blender but you’d loose all the fun of making your own “pâte brisée”). The dough will feel like coarse sand grains between your fingers.

Push the flour and butter mix on the sides of the bowl, digging a hole in the center.

Break the egg and pour it in the hole in middle of the bowl. Beat it a little with a fork then use a wooden spoon to incorporate the flour little by little. Add the crème fraîche or sour cream and mix again until the dough is homogeneous. Use your hands to knead the dough and form a ball of the same weight.

Place the  dough in plastic wrap and let it rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour before using or freezing.

Let the dough warm up a little before slicing.

Slice the dough into uniform slices, about 1 cm thick.

Place these slices into a 9 inch pie pan, or spring-form so that they roughly cover the bottom and sides of it.

Press them until they cover the base and sides uniformly. Pinch a little here and there to make up for weak spots or holes.

For Filling:

•  6 eggs
• 1 small container of cream
• 2-3 tbs. butter
• 3 zucchini (quartered and sliced fairly thin)
• one bunch asparagus (roughly diced, discounting tough ends)
• 1 leek (slice in rings, soak in water to clean, then rinse)
• 4 tbs. roughly chopped chives
• 1/2 cup cubed sharp, white cheddar cheese
• 1-2 tbs. mixed salt and  ground black pepper

Fry the zucchini, leeks and asparagus over medium heat until just soft. Add half of the salt and pepper to bring out the taste.

Allow the mixture to come to room temp.

While waiting, beat the eggs, cream until thick and golden.

Mix in the chopped chives, the rest of the salt and pepper and the cheese.

Combine the zucchini mixture with the eggs and stir to incorporate.

Pour the filling into the pressed quiche-crust pan. If it looks like it will overflow, stop pouring. You want the filling to be level, or slightly below the crust.

Bake at 200 celcius/ 400 fahrenheit for 30 minutes and then check every 10 minutes till done. If it starts to look like it’s getting too brown on top, cover with foil and let it continue covered. You’ll know your quiche is ready when the top is firm.

Let cool before slicing.

I am working on an article about  the composer John Cage’s secret life as a mycologist and in my research I came across these beautiful water-colors by a German couple who live in Maulbronn, which is located in southern Germany. Here is a link to their website, http://www.wandernundzeichnen.de/

Doesn’t this make you want to go out and hike? I keep looking out my window, at the construction workers on my corner and I feel totally exasperated by the fact that I’m not in the woods. City fever, it’s a real problem.

I really love their 70’s naturalist style. I used to be obsessed with the painter Neil Welliver, who lived in Maine and sketched every day (no matter what the weather was like) in the woods near his home. His images were so stark and un-idealistic but really beautiful in their minute descriptiveness.

There is so much art that needs to be thought about. Sometimes it’s nice to have images appeal to you without that sense of carving away at your brain through some sort of conceptual canal.

Scandinavians have a close relationship to the suppression of hysteria. Dealing with long winters and relative cultural isolation is ingrained into their DNA the same way that lactose and alcohol intolerance is ingrained into the Japanese. Scandinavians, at least ingestion-wise, however, are the complete opposites of the Japanese. They seem suited to a diet of dairy and alcohol. Having grown up in the US, I have always been fascinated by the pure snowy world of Scandinavians. I fantasized about living with them in their spare and modern homes. When I closed my eyes I saw them batting their white eyelashes at me, offering me fresh milk from a silver pail and Aquavit from a stoppered bottle. These fantasies took place in austere blonde-wooded saunas or in the geo-thermal baths of Iceland where the mineral rich water glows an eerie blue and steam rises into the air like  magic smoke.

The fantasies of my adolescence gave way to world travel and my eventual settling down in Berlin. Now that I am here, I am surrounded by people from the long, finger-like countries to the north. I hear Swedish, Dutch and even Finish when I’m on the trains and I can easily purchase the stinky Danish cheeses, pale butters and herb infused liquors from these places that once seemed as exotic and mysterious as Mongolia to me.

Recently I went to the first of thirteen shows at a temporary art space in Kreuzberg called, simply, Dreizehn (Thirteen).  The artists responsible for this series are mostly Danish and their group show on April 2nd, provided an overview of their work, which will soon be divided into solo shows spanning the summer months and ending in September.

What unites these artists is an unyieldingly formal style and an absence of color. They seem motivated by the aesthetics of the banal, which depending on how you view it, can be a very Zen like exploration or an unfinished emptiness that makes the work easy to cast aside. Take, for example, Judith Fegerl’s work Spannung (which in German means voltage and excitement):

The image was created by pulling copper wires taut and securing them behind inlaid aluminium strips. For most of us, excitement or voltage are not the ideas that come to mind when we look at Fegerl’s work. It looks more like something that a desperate prisoner would make in their cell with the bits and pieces of carefully culled materials they are able to accumulate. It’s the sort of thing that would be wonderful to stumble upon in an apartment that you’ve just moved into. The delicate permanence of the work seems like proof that people are resourceful, aesthetically minded beings. Fegerl shares something with the practitioners of Arte Povera; austere minimalism, born out of an industrial environment.

Mitzi Pederson’s instillation is another example of the careful balance between the ephemeral and the non-existent. Her piece, along with the rest of the show, called into mind this lyric by the Scottish band Belle and Sebastian, who grew up in a similarly austere northern environment–Colour my life with the chaos of trouble cause anything’s better than posh isolation. Pederson chose to “color her chaos” with iridescent strips suspended above our heads. The bleak fluorescent light that saturated the room, turning everyone’s face into a sordid mixture of reds and greens, was also caught by the undulating strips of Pederson’s installation and reflected back as something whimsical.

But again, the question of whether I was looking at something that was white, and simply absent of color, or  whether I was experience whiteness, as something resplendent nagged at me. Perhaps it was the overall lack of irony or sincerity throughout the show that made this question so hard to answer. Take the artist Simon Lindhardt’s paintings:

From across the room, these shapes brought to mind bullets, nipples or pussy-willows. Up close, the competition between the symmetrical placement of these shapes within the a-symmetry of their size created a tension which was hard to shake off. The imperfect symmetry, however, was answered by the precision of the painter’s execution. Lindhardt, rather than use digitally produced images, hand-painted them. It’s astounding that he was able to get them as tidy as he did, but at the same time, it might have been just as interesting to see digitally produced images, and to have seen a bunch of them. Despite my association with cartoonish nipples, or bullets, it seems that Lindhardt’s intention was to whittle these paintings down to a pure formality devoid of connection to anything human, therefore turning himself into a machine in his ability to create such perfect images.

In a show dominated by quiet, subtle art, it was a relief to see Claus Larsen’s work. Larsen uses mechanics to convey something aesthetic. His work is often simple but it’s always lively and playful.

In this instillation, a small gear turns a bicycle chain round and round over a tile floor. The grease from the chain marks the floor as it rotates. Of all the artists, I think Larsen really made good use of his space. He considered this odd island of tile on a wood dominated floor and turned it into a useful platform for his work. Sound was also a welcome feature in an otherwise silent show. In addition to the hum of the motor,  there was also a lovely clinking noise as the chain gathered and looped over itself.

Whether this show was a reaction to over-stimulation, or an ascetic rejection of the  saturated city of Berlin, it forced me to reconsider my interpretation of Scandinavian culture.

After weeks of waiting for the European release; weeks spent obsessively reading every review, interview and article I could find, I finally saw Greenberg. I had read about the opening scene–a close up of Greta Gerwig’s face as she coasts through Los Angeles, running errands for the family she works for. Despite knowing what that shot would look like, and what she would say, I still felt thrilled to be there, dazzled by the carefully crafted Baumbachian universe; the gestures, the soundtrack, the clothing, the intimacy of each face on film, and of course the dialogue.

Baumbach is a very literary-minded director and watching his films reminds me of reading the best parts of a Jonathan Franzen, Dave Eggers or David Foster Wallace essay. There’s a richness of language that mixes pithy observations with everyday expressions; the profane with thoughtful meditation. When someone does this really well, it’s like being shown a mirror of your own educated-class neurosis.

And, make no mistake,  this is a very elitist view to reflect. It’s organized around the principles laid down by Woody Allen in the 70’s: that beautiful, fascinating and flawed people, speaking to each other in a pretentious, ironically-humorous way, will keep an audience hooked for years. I am one of those people and I just can’t feel that bad about it any more. Show me City of God, for example, and I can appreciate it. I can get caught up in that world and marvel at the spectacular sun and nefarious darkness of it all. But show me The Squid and the Whale and I will watch it over and over until I’ve internalized it. I just understand that language better.

With Greenberg, I couldn’t have felt more included if I’d tried. Set in LA, my birthplace, it follows a character that returns to that polluted paradise after many years in New York. Most of the film is set in  the Silver Lake/ Los Feliz area where I spent a summer working as a cook and boozing it up with my co-workers after shifts. This neighbourhood often gets compared to Brooklyn because of its hipster quotient, and Florence (played by Greta Gerwig) is for all intents and purposes, categorizable as such. But thankfully Greenberg doesn’t obsess over that kind of name-calling.

The film is about Roger Greenberg, a man who has made it to 41 with little to no coping skills and more anger than he knows what to do with. Which brings me back to David Foster Wallace, another man who struggled with how to cope in a world overrun by ignorance, hatred and tackiness.

Recently, I read the commencement address DFW gave to the graduates of the Kenyon College class of 2005 and more than any article or interview I read about Greenberg, this speech informed my understanding of the film. Entitled, ‘This is Water’, the speech began with an outdated corny joke (see also Annie Hall):

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

The speech then goes on to explain how the obvious fact of life is often the hardest to keep in mind. That fact in this case, is that we are alive, incredibly enough, and that we have to be mindful of that as much as possible rather than let ourselves believe that we are “lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation.”

Greenberg, like DFW struggles with this mindfulness. In one memorable scene, his friend Ivan repeats the old adage; ‘Youth is wasted on the young.’ ‘I would go even further,’ responds Greenberg. ‘I would say life is wasted on people.’

Misanthropes are easy to cast aside when they’re old and grumble about taxes. It’s harder to dismiss someone who has not yet solidified into this unlovable state. If he had become famous (one of the central arguments upon which the film spins) perhaps Greenberg would have been a celebrity cut from the same cloth as Anthony Bourdain: a more or less miserable, sarcastic guy who found salvation through food (music in Greenberg’s case) and uses his soap-box to educate others about how small their palettes are. Or maybe he would have ended up like DFW: struggling with his fame and so distressed by life that, despite the depression medication, he ended that life before the age of 50.

Or, of course, there is the other possibility; that despite a record contract, Greenberg was never destined for fame.  That failure and disappointment were inevitable for him no matter what he’d chosen in the mid 90’s. If that’s the case, which I think it is, then Greenberg is a film about making the best of life despite failure and disappointment. Hinging your success and your identity on one decision you did or did not make is a road that leads to paralysis. Entering the world, though it may feel like entering a freezing pool, is the only way to thrive and survive. Greenberg couldn’t swim, but I’m sure he could learn. It’s about getting comfortable enough in water to trust your instincts.

This Tuesday I joined my friend, the artist Anna Adam, and her partner Cantor Jalda Rebling for their annual Passover Seder. Jalda and Anna are founders of the progressive Jewish congregation, Ohel Hachidush, which began in the late 90’s in order to provide a place for the international, multi-faceted Jewish community in Berlin. Given the open stance they take on what it means to be Jewish, their Seder’s are always filled with a lively mix of Jewish Scholars, lesbians, Germans, and Americans. Many of the guests would consider themselves to be all of the above. One of the guests was all of the above and the mayor of Emoryville, California! But, enough about the politics of religious identity…We came there to eat and cook and that’s what we did, by God! We cooked enough for an army and we all left totally stuffed.

The recipes we cooked blended Sephardic and Ashkenazi traditions. The Moroccan Carrot Salad was a good example of the Sephardic fare on offer. It mixed carrots, vinegar, cinnamon, parsley, lemon juice, sugar and lots of lemon zest.

My salad offering was something that I came up with at last years Seder. It combines many of the fruits and vegetables we associate with spring. I call it an Asparagus, Mint and Strawberry Salad, because those three ingredients are essential. Last year I used green asparagus and I think that worked better than the more fibrous white asparagus I substituted with this year. This salad is usually accompanied by a simple blended vinaigrette that combines strawberries, honey, mustard, brown sugar and white wine vinegar.

Throughout the day, as we cooked and waited for guests to arrive, we discussed art, food, the situation in Israel, love, marriage, and our plans for the future. There aren’t too many women in Berlin that can continue to crank out such a stupendous meal while engaged in deep conversation. Talk about multi-tasking!

The number one dish at the Seder, for many years running has been the Sicilian Mashed Potatoes, which Anna is famous for. I was able to track her as she moved like a tornado from one step to the next. Here is the recipe:

STEP 1:

While a full pot of potatoes are boiling in salted water, combine 2 diced chilli’s of moderate heat, 6 cloves of minced garlic, and a tablespoon of minced ginger in plenty of olive oil and place it on the stove at medium heat (turning down if it starts to burn) until garlic is golden.

STEP 2:

When the chilli, garlic mix is done, set aside and dice a jar of sun-dried tomatoes. Drain a jar of capers (2 if they’re small jars) and place the drained capers with the diced sun-dried tomatoes. Pick the leaves from one package of basil and roughly chop, set in a separate bowl from the capers and tomatoes.

STEP 3:

Dry roast 1-2 cups of pine nuts in a non-stick pan on medium heat until the color is golden to brown and be careful to keep moving the pan around so that the pine nuts don’t burn.  Check the potatoes and if they feel soft (if a fork easily separates one in half), then drain them and set aside.

STEP 4:

Now that you’ve got your  components chopped, browned and fried, mash the drained potatoes with the chili-garlic mixture adding more oil if the consistency is too flaky. Next mash in the sun-dried tomatoes, capers until incorporated. Quickly add the roasted pine-nuts and basil. Finally, add salt and pepper to taste.

I realize after looking at these photos that I was in a very “under the microscope” photographic mood. So much of what we ate was texturally unappealing to look at, and trying to zoom in even closer didn’t exactly help the situation. I apologize if these photos are reminding you of unintentional dorm-room science experiments from your college days. Probably the biggest culprit in the tasty-but-ugly department is Haroset, the mortar that built the pyramids. Haroset is a key symbol of the Seder plate and its mixture of apples, honey, wine and cinnamon makes it one of the most delicious. But, as you will witness in the next photograph…it’s not exactly appetizing to look at.

O.k., I promise no more science photos from here on out. Once the 40 guests arrived and the table was set and Jalda had gone over her Hagaddah in order to lead the Seder, we began the difficult work of drinking copious amounts of wine (the phrase ‘raise your 5th glass’ is actually found in every Hagaddah), eating pure horseradish, counting out the 10 plagues, and singing very long repetitive songs in Hebrew. Following the story of the Jewish flight from Egypt, we proceeded to dig in with abandon. It may have been conducted in German, and it may not have included any of my relatives, but after the 5th glass of wine, it felt exactly like the Seders of my childhood.

Thanks to Nalini for the use of her camera. And that concludes this year’s Seder. See you all next year.

 I lived in Baltimore from 2006-2007. That isn’t a particularly long time to spend in a city, but it made an indelible impression on me. If you are familiar with the work of famous  Baltimore director John Waters, then you know how aesthetically fascinating the city can be.

“I would never want to live anywhere but Baltimore. You can look far and wide, but you’ll never discover a stranger city with such extreme style. It’s as if every eccentric in the South decided to move north, ran out of gas in Baltimore, and decided to stay.”
—John Waters

 And if you’ve ever watched The Wire, then you know how heartbreaking Baltimore can be. What’s amazing is that the beauty, the strangeness, and the heartbreak start to blend together until you’re not sure whether you want to smile or weep.

There is a certain impulse to want to save every building from further dilapidation. But that impulse is complicated by the fact that beautiful buildings are being gutted and renovated to suit some outdated yuppie real-estate fantasy.

Or they’re just torn down and replaced with cheap monstrosities.

And then you have to wonder if saving buildings instead of people is all that useful in Baltimore.

So Baltimore becomes a lesson in surrender. You can’t fix everything. You just have to cherish the jumble of the grotesque and the classical.

Recently they’ve begun covering plywood boarded-up windows with decals of fake windows.  When the plastering job reveals the plywood underneath, the effect is really post-modern.

That weekend the weather was beautiful and the light, as the sun set, made everything and everyone radiant.

Despite being down at the heel, Baltimore is rich in symbolism. Edgar Allen Poe lived and was buried in Baltimore. He lent the city the raven, which is the name of Baltimore’s football team. The oriole is another famous bird of Baltimore, the state bird in fact, and the name of the national baseball team. The word “believe” is a slogan for Baltimore and I think it’s a pretty useless slogan. There’s something condescending about it. Sometimes you find it altered to “behave” which seems more appropriate.  Other slogans that refer to Baltimore are; “Baltimore: The Greatest City in America”; “Charm City”; “Mobtown”; “The City that Reads”; and fittingly, “The City of 1000 Slogans.”

Despite the kitschy attitude Baltimore tries to cop–the Hampden beehive and cat-eye glasses thing–something of the macabre Poe still lives on. After a couple of drinks at Club Charles (or Club Chuck, as it’s referred to) things take on a ghostly hue. They say Club Chuck is haunted. It definitely has a “time standing still” quality to it that is only enhanced by alcohol consumption. But the spectral feeling you get when you’ve been drinking there seems appropriate. I think Baltimore is best appreciated under the influence.

Station North, the heart of Baltimore, is the place I’m most familiar with. When I go back to visit, I like to see all the old familiar landmarks. Even the ones I’ve never dared set foot in.

Art Deco makes a regular appearance in Baltimore. Sometimes it can be easy to miss. But when you find it in unlikely places, you have the sense that you’ve stumbled onto a real hidden gem.

This was a liquor store in the Lake Montebello neighborhood of Baltimore. It might surprise you to know that not two doors down from this rough looking place they opened an up-scale and popular charcuterie restaurant.

 This winter it snowed like crazy and the only solution was to shovel everything into low traffic areas. There are plenty of those in Baltimore. The picture above was taken in a deserted shopping mall courtyard. The thawing snow, dirt and trash reminded me of an evil  spirit from one of Miyazaki’s films.

 Somehow everything is iconic and larger than life in Baltimore. The snow is a monster and the gas storage tanks in Dundalk (right outside of Baltimore city), look like pendulous tits or grenades.

I will never forget you, Baltimore. Each time I visit I am reminded of the limitless possibilities that exist for that which is passed over. Art is exploding out of your boarded up windows and I can’t help feeling like a curator when I’m with you, Baltimore. You keep my eyes open and let my mind wander.

I’ve never been squeamish about oysters. When I was a child my parents would order oysters and champagne for special occasions and perhaps because they always required so much pomp and circumstance to eat, I always associated them with luxury. Always eager to expose myself to the finer things in life, I was therefore determined to like them.

Of course, any foodie worth their salt is familiar with M.F.K. Fisher’s incredible prose poem, Consider the Oyster, and when I read this book at the tender age of 17, I was  convinced that oysters were the most sophisticated food in the world. I was also more or less certain that eating them every chance I got would bring me closer to sophistication myself. As I got older and the allure of oysters on the half shell gave way to the hearty appeal of an oyster po’boy, I realized that I needn’t feel beholden to an image of oysters as fancy food. Eating something raw with cocktail sauce can be just as delicious as having it fried and slathered with tartar sauce.

The flavor of an oyster is illusive because so much depends on the terroir of the oyster’s environment. I have been to restaurants where there were so many varieties I just ordered a couple of each and made snap judgements about flavor without having a real sense of where they came from or how they would taste freshly harvested.

Recently I was visiting my boyfriend’s parents on the eastern shore of Virginia and we were able to do just that–harvest oysters from right off their dock on the Chesapeake Bay, clean them, shuck them and eat them all in one day. The process was work intensive but so worth it! In case any of you find yourselves faced with this task, here are a few photos and notes to help you pretend expertise.

Here is the beginning of our journey. Brooks and I scaled the rocky edge of the creek and cleaved oysters from the rocks. They were often hard to loosen from the rock itself and it took a hammer and an expert eye to pry them without damaging their shells and the meat inside.

The next step involved cleaning the oyster shells and scraping off barnacles.  I was the volunteer for this job and it was very hard work. I began with an eye toward thoroughness but by the end, I was happy if they were clean-ish.

Because we didn’t eat the oysters for at least a few hours after they were cleaned, we had to put them back into the brackish creek water. Now that the oyster shells were cleaned, there was no danger of them regaining a slimy shell. Dipping them into the creek for their final “swim” allowed them to retain their particular, fresh flavor until we were ready to open them.

Here are the instruments of torture we used to get the shells open. Oyster shucking is a tricky business. You need to be able to feel the shell opening in small increments until it gives way enough to be able to slide your knife around the perimeter. At the same time, you need to visualize where the meat is because you don’t want your knife to hack the poor creature to death. It’s all very Zen. Brooks was the Mister Miyagi to my Karate Kid and I spent a lot of time watching him open oysters without managing to open too many myself. In time, I may learn. Wax on, wax off.

Ladies remember, just because you’re shucking oysters with the boys, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be elegantly manicured.

The sweet meat of success! If you look closely, you can see the oxygen bubbles still being produced by this unlucky bivalve.

Not sure this is the image people have in mind when they talk about oysters being aphrodisiacs but, I can assure you the experience was positively sensual. How to describe the flavor, is a bit of a struggle. I agree with M.F.K. Fisher when she wrote, “An oyster will taste like what the taster expects, which of course depends entirely on the taster.” I can say that they were milder than most oysters I’ve had. There was something creamy about the meat. The liquid in the shell had less of a briny quality than a pure, fresh water taste. You know how sometimes when you’re really dehydrated water can taste sweet? Well, that sweet-water flavor was present in every part of these oysters.

We made really simple Mignonette and cocktail sauces as accompaniments. Both were good. Here is the recipe we used for the Mignonette:

• 1 tablespoon coarsely ground black peppercorns
• 1/4 cup red wine
• 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1 teaspoon caper juice
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped shallots
• Salt to taste

One way to get around the problem of shucking fresh oysters is to throw them on the grill and let the heat loosen the membrane that attaches the top shell to the bottom. Of course, you end up encountering a second problem; dealing with piping hot shells that need to be opened lickety split so that the meat inside doesn’t roast too long. Overall, we managed to keep most of the oysters between rare and medium rare with just a few sacrifices to the gods of overcooking.

This is what grill roasted oysters look like. We put them over a bed of salt so that the shells wouldn’t bang around and spill out juice. Roasted oysters are really delicious. I’d never had them before and I think the smoky flavor worked especially well with this sweet and mild oyster variety. I still think I like raw a bit better though.

Finally, we saved a few oysters to make Oysters Casino.  I am a huge fan of 1950’s party food and this was an ultimate 50’s recipe. It just makes you want to have a dry martini and tap your toes to Henry Mancini. We had them with a very crisp Chilean Sauvignon Blanc, which was a good match as well. Also, if you know people that are grossed out by the idea of eating oysters, this is a good recipe to coax them with. Just say bacon, parsley and butter and defy any warm blooded mammal to disagree with that!

Oysters Casino:

• approx. 20 oysters on half shell
• rock salt
• 1 cup butter
• 1/2 cup chopped green onion, about 1 bunch of 6 to 8
• 1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped green bell pepper
• fresh lemon juice
• salt and pepper
• 6 strips bacon, partially cooked, cut in fourths

Fill 4 or 5 pie pans or other baking pans with rock salt. Arrange oysters on shells on the rock salt in the pans. In a small mixing bowl, cream butter; blend in onion, parsley, and green pepper. Add a teaspoon of lemon juice and add salt and pepper to taste. You can also add Worcestershire sauce if fresh lemons aren’t available. Spoon butter mixture onto oysters and top each with a small piece of the partially cooked bacon. Bake at 450° until bacon is crisp and oysters have curled at the edges.

Not to rub it in or anything, but this was the view culminating oyster challenge 2010. Drink it in shuckers!