i'll be honest: i was only looking for ostrich egg recipes (1 ostrich egg = 22-24 chicken eggs) when i chanced upon these. but they were too good not to share.
the premise is that a lot of classic recipes named after musicians (anything tetrazzini, rossini, melba, for example) were centered around eggs. eggs berlioz. eggs bizet. eggs meyerbeer. real recipes that you can look up and actually make. but then it was noted that 20th century composers never make the list.....
Eggs Carter: Break an egg into a pan with a multitude of other ingredients, and place on the stove. Continually and simultaneously vary both the temperature and the cooking time. The dish is done when the aggregate intervals of the other ingredients allegorically crush the individuality of the egg.
Eggs Partch: Build your own oven. Calibrate both the thermostat and the timer to non-Western scales of your own invention. Then bake the eggs at 943 degrees for 17,000 minutes, or until the yolks are set. Top each egg with a slice of peyote.
Eggs Strauss: Give an egg to a singer. Cover with the orchestra.
Eggs Reich: Heat two pans to slightly different temperatures. Start frying two eggs, one in each pan, at the same time. As each egg is done, take it out and put in another one. Breakfast is over when the pans are back in phase.
Eggs Cage: Heat up your frying pan. Turn it off. Think about what not eating eggs tastes like.
Eggs Philip Glass: Would it get some eggs for the omelet. And it could get for it is. It could get the frying pan for these sous chefs. And it could be were it is. It could Emeril it could be Emeril it could be very fresh and clean. It could be a pancake
Eggs Mahler: Obtain 432 eggs. Claim you have a thousand. Cook as many of the eggs as time permits. Invite people over. When they've had enough eggs, give them some more eggs. This really only needs to be done about once every twelve years.
Eggs Babbitt: Insist that people would find your licorice, peanut butter and pocket lint omelet absolutely delicious if they only had been to advanced culinary school and "understood" it.
Eggs Satie: break an egg into a large glass of cognac. Repeat 841 times.
Eggs Boulez: Arrange a row of eggs; multiply the first three eggs by the second two eggs. Add butter and whip to a soupy but opaque consistency. By the way, cooking eggs any other way makes you inutile.
all i can say is: HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHA!
Friday, March 30, 2007
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Frostbite
no, not me, silly. after all, it's 50 degrees outside. nevermind that it's supposed to snow over the weekend. palm sunday...i wonder how jesus would have reacted had the hebrews pelted him with snowballs instead of hailing him with palms.
no, the frostbite refers to the state of most things in my freezer (minus the crawfish tails!) after a very hectic week last week, i finally opened the freezer door to discover a few dehydrated, pale chunks that will take a brilliant mind to 1) identify and 2) make palatable again. see, as a poor college student (emphasize POOR), i do not have the luxury of tossing something out just because it has the consistency of pemmican (mmmm.) after all, if the tibetans can bravely dry an entire leg of yak outdoors and then gnaw the dried meat OFF THE BONE, so can i! here is a list of the jerkified relics to be found:
1) salmon. there was just enough orange peeking through all the white for me to guess that this was fish and not some horribly miscolored, misshapen steak. although you never know. i cannot decide between buttering the heck out of it in an effort to revive it, or simply tea-smoking it like my original plan.
2) "stir fry vegetables." apparently i opened a package of these handy, albeit untasty morsels a while back to save time. conveniently labeled for times like these! but despite my innate asian frugal nature, these will be donated to the confused squirrels outside who can't decide if the ground is thawed out enough to bury nuts.
3) pork rib? probably still frightening that i have thawed it out and still am not quite sure what it is. it doesn't smell bad, but it looks dreadful....the colors haven't changed much, but the surface is dry dry dry dry dry. i am hoping intensive braising might rehydrate it, or that i can use it as a soup bone.
4) tilapia! easily identifiable because it is whole, fins, head, tail, and all. this last item gave me some comfort----if in the odd event we were completely buried by a blizzard and we all died, and nobody could find the city of cleveland for 400 years, one lucky paleoanthropologist in the future would discover my freezer and write: "they ate REAL FOOD!"
no, the frostbite refers to the state of most things in my freezer (minus the crawfish tails!) after a very hectic week last week, i finally opened the freezer door to discover a few dehydrated, pale chunks that will take a brilliant mind to 1) identify and 2) make palatable again. see, as a poor college student (emphasize POOR), i do not have the luxury of tossing something out just because it has the consistency of pemmican (mmmm.) after all, if the tibetans can bravely dry an entire leg of yak outdoors and then gnaw the dried meat OFF THE BONE, so can i! here is a list of the jerkified relics to be found:
1) salmon. there was just enough orange peeking through all the white for me to guess that this was fish and not some horribly miscolored, misshapen steak. although you never know. i cannot decide between buttering the heck out of it in an effort to revive it, or simply tea-smoking it like my original plan.
2) "stir fry vegetables." apparently i opened a package of these handy, albeit untasty morsels a while back to save time. conveniently labeled for times like these! but despite my innate asian frugal nature, these will be donated to the confused squirrels outside who can't decide if the ground is thawed out enough to bury nuts.
3) pork rib? probably still frightening that i have thawed it out and still am not quite sure what it is. it doesn't smell bad, but it looks dreadful....the colors haven't changed much, but the surface is dry dry dry dry dry. i am hoping intensive braising might rehydrate it, or that i can use it as a soup bone.
4) tilapia! easily identifiable because it is whole, fins, head, tail, and all. this last item gave me some comfort----if in the odd event we were completely buried by a blizzard and we all died, and nobody could find the city of cleveland for 400 years, one lucky paleoanthropologist in the future would discover my freezer and write: "they ate REAL FOOD!"
Monday, March 26, 2007
Whole Foods
this blog is about all the things that DON'T keep me up at night---nothing deep, nothing serious, nothing depressing. it IS about the things that keep me sane and distracted. now, i have a recital tonight. perhaps if i were a "serious" musician i would be entering some sort of semi-voodoo ritual to ensure that i am in that precise frame of mind in which musical genius comes pouring from my fingertips. but that sort of thinking has led me to crash and burn at the last few public performances, so here is plan B: distracting myself from myself.
ok, so back to Whole Foods. their grand opening in cleveland was this past week; my roommates and i chanced upon them on saturday, our first day off (minus the practice sessions) in weeks.
even though Whole Foods is based in texas, from which i hail, i'd never been to one. even if i had, back then i wasn't near the wanna-be foodie i am now...the treasures within would have been lost on me. treasures such as....
1) ostrich and emu eggs. $20 a pop, not cheap, not practical---i don't have the first clue as to what to do with one, except egg somebody i truly despise. but still! i never thought i would say i was a size queen, but in this case, who can resist?
2) fiddlehead ferns. my first encounter with these were in taiwan, where, due to translation/nomenclature issues, i came to the conclusion that nobody had any idea what we were eating. imagine my delight, then: "THERE THEY ARE! AND THEY'RE LABELED!!!"
3) maitake mushrooms. ever had the taleggio cheese/maitake sandwich from Craftbar in NYC (one of tom colicchio's restaurants)? 'nuff said.
4) taleggio cheese! you all can guess what we've been making at home for snackage! but, seriously---they carry LOTS of cheese---stinky cheese, pretty cheese, UNPASTEURIZED cheese. i would profess to be a cheese connoisseur who could discuss the finer points of various methods for aging, cooking, inoculating, brining/salting, curing, etc etc---but then i would be lying.
5) crawfish! or merely their tails. and frozen, shipped from houston. FOR ME, this is a huge deal....gumbo is my therapy (making it, and eating it). it's difficult enough to find okra in this godforsaken midwest, but crawfish are unheard of...at least for eating. one of my roommates, from minnesota, refers to them as the "bugs in the creek." or "crik," as she would say.
now, the other finds are no less wonderful, but mostly less rare. we are blessed to have the west side market and a small chinatown (really, chinablock) that have supplied us with most of our needs...squid, fresh fish, crabs, razor clams, and eel, goat and lamb and unsmoked pork hocks and belly, freshly made chorizo and filled pastas and gnocchi, and a wonderful assortment of chinese vegetables (minus the elusive "tswan chi," which i recently found out was the madeira vine). there are more, but that's another blog.
so....if you've ever ticked me off the in past and you open your mail one day to find a REALLY HUGE ROTTEN EGG? good chance it's from me.
ok, so back to Whole Foods. their grand opening in cleveland was this past week; my roommates and i chanced upon them on saturday, our first day off (minus the practice sessions) in weeks.
even though Whole Foods is based in texas, from which i hail, i'd never been to one. even if i had, back then i wasn't near the wanna-be foodie i am now...the treasures within would have been lost on me. treasures such as....
1) ostrich and emu eggs. $20 a pop, not cheap, not practical---i don't have the first clue as to what to do with one, except egg somebody i truly despise. but still! i never thought i would say i was a size queen, but in this case, who can resist?
2) fiddlehead ferns. my first encounter with these were in taiwan, where, due to translation/nomenclature issues, i came to the conclusion that nobody had any idea what we were eating. imagine my delight, then: "THERE THEY ARE! AND THEY'RE LABELED!!!"
3) maitake mushrooms. ever had the taleggio cheese/maitake sandwich from Craftbar in NYC (one of tom colicchio's restaurants)? 'nuff said.
4) taleggio cheese! you all can guess what we've been making at home for snackage! but, seriously---they carry LOTS of cheese---stinky cheese, pretty cheese, UNPASTEURIZED cheese. i would profess to be a cheese connoisseur who could discuss the finer points of various methods for aging, cooking, inoculating, brining/salting, curing, etc etc---but then i would be lying.
5) crawfish! or merely their tails. and frozen, shipped from houston. FOR ME, this is a huge deal....gumbo is my therapy (making it, and eating it). it's difficult enough to find okra in this godforsaken midwest, but crawfish are unheard of...at least for eating. one of my roommates, from minnesota, refers to them as the "bugs in the creek." or "crik," as she would say.
now, the other finds are no less wonderful, but mostly less rare. we are blessed to have the west side market and a small chinatown (really, chinablock) that have supplied us with most of our needs...squid, fresh fish, crabs, razor clams, and eel, goat and lamb and unsmoked pork hocks and belly, freshly made chorizo and filled pastas and gnocchi, and a wonderful assortment of chinese vegetables (minus the elusive "tswan chi," which i recently found out was the madeira vine). there are more, but that's another blog.
so....if you've ever ticked me off the in past and you open your mail one day to find a REALLY HUGE ROTTEN EGG? good chance it's from me.
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