The Interesting WayWe were recently up near Lock & Dam #7 on the least industrious of our rivers. I did not have the opportunity to walk it, but I should have ample chance in the coming months, and it seems that the foot of this particular pool is well visible from all sorts of interesting places to waste a meal or a day, watching the slow dances of traffic on the water. Instead of spending time at the river, I was up in the fields above it, fussing with charcoal and grilling meat, much to the annoyance of the neighbor's cat. I have not yet fully learned the fine art of walking away from the thing and just letting the food progress, but I am getting better.
All of the dams on the aforementioned river are fixed crest dams, low berms of stone that lurk to impede the flowing course, invisible from upstream and a pretty flecked cascade from down. They are very simple structures, humble in their strength, gently coercing a quiet river into simple steps. They are old-fashioned, dignified things, except perhaps when they are abused to fling Bruce Willis skyward in a boat. They have shortcomings, in that they are utterly useless for active concerns such as flood control. They are subtle. I like them quite a bit .
On the outflow, downhill river, the first lock and dam is of the fixed crest variety, but instead of a type known as a gated dam (on both the main and back channels). Instead of defining the river with its height, gated dams soar above the surface, sending vanes and plates into the air and putting up a wall to box in the view. Gated dams offer a bit more flexibility in managing flow, but they are still not really meant as flood control structures, and I find them ugly.
It is a little sad, then, that the US Army Corps of Engineers is consolidating two pools behind fixed crest dams on the other, workhorse river, putting all that flow behind a gated dam. It is progress, I suppose. An interesting footnote to all of this was the recent demolition of one of the old, fixed crest dams being replaced. I never would have expected them to blow it up the interesting way, but they did.
The Qualities of Mercy, DessertWhat with a fresh influx of cookbooks, we were recently given cause to roll together an evening of sugar-fired madness. I didn't really participate in any of that; I left the sweeter things to CR, and also to Mr. Ingonish, whom we invited along. My only job that night was to throw together some Bi Bim Bap, which I did, and I have only two things to say about it: that pepper garlic paste is somehow impossibly tasty after a maddened, sprinting attempt to get through the rest of the jar, and the stirring. The stirring is important. We will get to that.
CR made the less extensively modified of the two attempts at dessert. We have long been investigators of heatful things for eating, and there are several very good recipes for such things in a little book called Burning Desires, by W. Park Kerr. He doesn't bloody muck about with the sweet things, either, and stuck in the slim section at the back of the book between Grilled Peaches with Burnt Sugar Sauce and the lilting Grilled Bananas 'Foster' smugly sits a recipe for Ultimate Banana Pudding. He isn't kidding, although the thing is somewhat misnamed; what he has you build is really a banana Tiramisu, which turns out to be a fine, fine thing. CR added a bit of cognac for an extra jolt, as she is wont to do, and her instincts were proven well. A good dessert indeed.
While all of this was going on (I watched the two of them battle for counter space from the safety of the table) Mr. Ingonish was pulling together the pieces of a Chocolate and Chile Torte, as culled from the pages of Anna Thomas' The New Vegetarian Epicure. This is at its base a chocolate flourless nut-and-egg cake with a bit of pepper in to make it bright, with a chocolate glaze to top it. Mr. Ingonish is the variety of gentleman who rathers his desserts to tend more toward the elephant driving the bus school of weight: he would claim that the cake was a little low because the almonds were not ground finely enough, but I have other notions (and, I should say, it was good like that). The recipe asks for the clean heat of pasillas; Mr. Ingonish fished rumply anchos from our cupboard. The recipe asks for a half cup of refined white sugar in the cake, to accompany the brown; Mr. Ingonish left that out, apparently by accident. The recipe did not ask for any ginger whatsoever in the glaze, but Mr. Ingonish put a bunch in anyway. The resulting cake was bitter, sweet, smoky and with tang from pepper and ginger both. It was a little dry. It was a stunning success. It was fantastic.
We had bowls in front of us, one piece of both for each. We were using bowls, because we are both too stupid and too impatient to allow things to cool and set, as we are every time. We were eating the cake and the pudding from our bowls, first this and then that. Then someone had the notion to have a bit of both in the same bite. This led to a chain reaction of scooping, mixing, lauding, and eventually all of us became intent over the table, stirring madly, stirring.
In essence: Ultimate Gingered Chocolate Banana Chile Pudding Torte.
We just got another Marcel Desaulniers book: it is completely off limits until next weekend. At least.
The Night Is LargeOne of the wonderful things about shortwave radio are the startling little moments. In general, shortwave is not the cleanest of mediums; there is almost always a deep sub-current of static and wash that the words ride on, and sometimes, if the station is distant or weak, the noise underneath can swell up and founder the station, pulling it away and down into a random fate. I was listening to Radio Netherlands the other day and the station was fighting bravely, coming up for moments and then sinking back down again, a bit like talking to someone on a playground swing. They were running down notes for upcoming programming, and I was treated to hearing this:
shhhzzzhhhhzhzzzMan making love to a watermelon!ssssshhhzzzzz
We do not have a shortwave radio in the car (would that we did!); we rely on more standard signals from the sky, or more often various fixative bits of music we bring along and feed to the thing like an angry god. The other night it was raining hard and dark as we returned home from wherever, running south and west at all allowable speed and perhaps a bit more, alone on the wide unlit road. The road is an incongruous stretch up there, improbably wide as it sweeps and lows through and over largely empty patches of tree and farm. At night, there are few lights visible in the hills, and less so when the rain obscures them in their distance. It is not so strange to be alone on that road at night.
So we went, in our privacy and dry warmth from the wet against the glass in the roof, moving behind two ardent lights, always searching. We let the radio run the conversation for us, looking out into the depth outside and pulled along by the kick drum and the Medina Guitarron, the horns slipping in behind almost unnoticed over the road noise. We made the radio louder and sped on into the darkness, heading towards home, and I am glad that this particular slice of the American dream lives yet.
Sign Under TestOne of this summer's projects is slated to be northern-style homemade pasta. We have already managed this a bit and gotten good results for it. It is possible that this path may end up somewhat wider than expected, as the summer that was to be spent in investigation of Greek cookery which in turn ran to explorations of the foods all around the rim of the Mediterranean, dominos falling westward, the last skittering through Lebanon and into the interior. It might even be a similar experience to the brief feints with French Cheffery, occasions almost always soon fading away for lack of patience. I do not think this will be the case: fresh pasta is easy to make with the pleasingly low-tech glinted help of a hand cranked machine, and as with most simple things made fresh from good stocks, very very good to eat.
One of the things I like about bread is that the short list of stuff that goes into it: good flour, good water, good yeast and salt. One can add other things, but those are the minimum. Fresh pasta in the northern style is even simpler: good eggs and good flour. A bit of oil or water can be added to smooth things out, but most claim such things are optional, and some would even go so far as to cry heresy of such practices. At minimum: eggs and flour mixed, kneaded, rested, and rolled.
(I will put here that this sort of pasta is a very different sort of beast from the stuff at market in boxes: that pasta is generally a mixture of flour (usually harder) and water, and is a very different thing. Not a worse thing.)
As with bread, the tricks are found in the manipulation of the stuff; the dough needs a good stomping before it rests, and it must rest a good while before it's ready for its thinning. We have used a machine to make our dough thin and flat in many steps and pieces, and again to cut it to ribbons to hang upon the dowel slung over the coffee making shelf. I have it in my head, however, to by summer's end learn the art and craft of hand rolling to a hopefully palatable level. I also hope to play with shapes like farfalle, which look reasonable, and tortellini, which are more than likely to leave me strung out on the floor, dusted with semolina and counting the stains on the ceiling. We shall see. We can make good noodles, and that might be enough. As usual my guides are many, but a pretty good one is Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, by Marcella Hazan.
The most spectacular effects so far of a good, multi-course freshly done pasta dinner are the simplicity of most of the dishes, the deeply mixing flavors, the bottles of wine passed forth and from among friends, and the way the meal lingers as arms fall over the backs of chairs, free hands hunting morsels from the field on the table. We made that dinner last for four hours, somehow, and the results certainly demand further investigation, if only for that.
On distant horizons I see promises of Asian noodle craft, but not for some time yet.
This evening's minor triumph in a small batch of (more or less) cinnamon almond praline. I do not think I have the mind to be a candy maker.
Angrily, The Trees ShakeOne of the more or less charming aspects of living here in this confluent place are the easily turnable out of ordered seasons. This works both ways: the beautiful indian summers are as charming as can be. As a counterexample, we may take yesterday, a day of cool sun and gentle warmth, a bath of promises of spring and greening and happy hot day followed on by today, with the crumpled fleeting grey of the clouds above and the threat of temperatures below thirty, and another round with the stiff mittens of horror the weather persons jovially call a 'wintery mix', right before their stern warnings about safety and care. They call for snow tonight. It is not surprising, really, to have bits of scant snow as late in the season as this in this place. It is just...poor. I am saddened a little that I have been on this earth enough years to be able to say, with this turn of the stars, that this year we have had enough of that with some authority. My fear tonight with the forecast for frost is for the apples.
The most telling difference between the spring of yesterday and the autumn of today is the sense that the earth is once again closing up shop. Hardwood burns in fireplaces, and the air that carries the smoke past is cold and wet. It all feels as if it is winding down again, the thick plumes of the flowering dogwoods and the forsythia were merely teases. They claim we should have our spring back by tomorrow, or Thursday.
For now, Sophie Ellis Bextor will do what she can to save us, if only by proxy.
Sandwiches last night were well-seasoned flank steak on bread smeared with a highly assertive Irish Blue cheese, along with the rest of the basil. That was pretty good.
The Tracks Do Not Propel UsOn the way to market, as we approached the wrought bridge we heard the rumble of the locomotives, first as a low thrum beneath the feet and then breaking into clarity through the trees. We ran like children to the bridge to catch a glimpse of them before they disappeared around the embankment, but even as we ran the clamor faded, and we stood upon the bridge, grasping the rail and panting, looking down past our dirtied shoes to the tops of boxcars unending, whisked from beneath us and away, all evidence of the great motors fading into the noises of the evening.
If we were younger, we might have stayed to watch them. We might have even stayed to see a caboose, or the simple red flashing marker that ignobly replaces them these days. The trains are long, most times, and we might have stayed to see evening turn twilight turn night, all over a river of freight moving west. We did not, this time, for the market was closing, and we needed the milk for tomorrow.
The market was brightly lit and noisy with color and cheap music. When we emerged from there, blinking back the oncoming darkness, the rumble was already absent, the metal squeals memory. Someplace in the far distance a whistle blew, but we could not say if it was that train, our train, or even a train at all. We went home.
All content under copyright by the author. Dancing is permitted. The strange deltic glyphs in the sand under tidal flow are a pleasure to watch in their deepening. Offer not valid in Kansas. We put it down and then we lost it. It all happens in the corner of the eye. Commentary accepted at comment@goob.com, although the traps are agressive and the pointy bits simply drip with dark liquour. We have a dog, but we do not own it. Thank you.