The Trojan Horseradish

Getting on the Boat

2011-12-07T08:01:00.000-08:00

My flight landed in Puerto Plata, D.R. Monday morning, November 21. I zipped through customs and out into the sunny parking lot where Chris Small and Ryan Smith were waiting for me with a hired driver, Nino. We drove along winding roads to Luperon, a small village on the north coast of the island. The roads were crowded with animals, cars, motorbikes, vendors, trash, and pedestrians.
We reached a small wooden dock where we loaded a small dinghy with my luggage, which consisted of only a medium backpack, a handbag, a ukulele, and a guitar. We also had several bags of groceries and ice from a supermarket in Puerto Plata. We nearly sank the little boat down to the water line as we held tight and motored out into the harbor. Ryan's sailboat, Ventana, was waiting there, at her mooring, where she'd been at rest since June. Ryan and his partner and child had left for the storm season to live and work on San Juan Island, Washington, for the summer and fall and now we three would pilot this ship back out to sea and across the Mona Passage to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Ventana is a 35' single-masted sloop sailboat with a fiberglass hull, built in 1963 per the Alberg design, among the first generation of fiberglass sailboats. Although not intended for long-term ocean cruising, Ryan had outfitted his boat with additional cabinetry, a highly efficient water-maker (desalinizer), a solar panel and wind generator, an array of batteries and an 110 Amp alternator. Technological additions include a small array of 12-Volt car-type plugs, a DC-to-AC inverter, a Wi-Fi antennae and router, a speaker system connected to a car CD player, built into the woodwork, and a GPS-powered navigational system on a netbook in the cockpit.
With all of this, plus our laptops and musical instruments, we felt like we were really cruising in style. Our amenities, as I would learn, pale in comparison to the luxury of many of the vessels we encountered. Vast expensive vessels fill the harbors and yacht clubs of the Caribbean equipped with more creature comforts and luxury accouterments than I have ever had at home. We were, comparatively, roughing it old-school with our hank-on sails and compact cabin space and early 60's rig.
I made myself at home, despite an odd mix-up of comforts and annoyances. Absolutely everything has a place, and often several things must be moved to get to the thing you want. There is a delicate order of operations to each endeavor on-board. This includes water use, using the head, taking a shower, stowing groceries, preparing a meal, going swimming. It is vitally important to keep salt water out, and to preserve energy and water, and to keep everything tightly stowed, and to kill any and all cockroaches on sight. Chris pointedly warned me early on that the boat beats you up. Bumps, and bruises, and scrapes are an accepted part of life on the boat. We are all frequently hitting our heads, getting our fingers smashed, getting smacked by cabinetry or loose objects, and stubbing our persistently bare feet. And that's when the boat isn't moving. Underway the rocking and pitching on the waves sends us careening from one side to the other of the cabin or cockpit, swings doors in our faces, launches kitchen items and tools through the air, splashes sea water in our faces and has us slipping and gripping our way along the deck. I would estimate we've each sustained an average of 2.5 moderate injuries per day. I'm not even going to talk about sunburn and bug bites.
I have taken well to cooking on the boat, even underway. The kitchen contains an oven, a 3-burner gas stove, a sink, a cutting board, a cooler, and some spices. What else does one need? I will go into detail on some of the things we've cooked and eaten later on (with photos, of course).
Now, I've been living and sleeping aboard Ventana for two-and-a-half weeks and it feels like home. Even the motion is becoming unnoticeable. I am eating and sleeping at least as well as I do at home. Our consumption of rum and cheap Caribbean lager is substantial, but I believe justified, and we are perhaps deficient in at least Vitamin K. What I would give for a crispy bunch of lacinato kale right now...

Another America

2011-11-27T15:38:00.000-08:00

I am writing this from Bahia Boqueron, Puerto Rico. I arrived via sailboat yesterday after crossing the Mona Passage from the Dominican Republic.
The Mona Passage is, more or less, the raison d'etre of my invitation to board Ryan Smith's sailboat, the Ventana. It is a long time at sea, eastward into the Trade Winds, with little to no communication and nowhere to anchor until you've finished. It is important to carefully chose an appropriate "weather window" in which to make the cross. We had such an opportunity this week and seized upon it.
I have just spent 75 hours at sea, by my clock. Three nights and two days. There was time when no land was visible under the sun in any direction. I have sailed before, but nothing like this. I felt the oppressiveness of the unending motion upon me after we left our anchorage in Luperon, Dominican Republic. I did not believe that I would get sea-sick. I have never experienced motion sickness. Not in boats, on airplanes big and small, nor motorcycles, rafts, or roller coasters. Somehow this was different. I felt ill immediately and had to cower in the corner of the cockpit to close my eyes and lean against the canvas 'dodger' while the boat bobbed up and down violently and without rhythm.
We motor-sailed through the night, against the wind, against the waves, into the obscurity of a sea greater than 2,000 meters deep. No phone. No internet. No appetite. No stomach to read or play music. And no turning back. That was Wednesday, November 23rd, my 28th birthday.

To be continued...

I know I know

2010-07-19T00:08:00.000-07:00

So...
been a while, to my zero readers out there. Is this blog doomed? Has it long been dead?
No way! I've got a mind to get down and dirty with some great food, agriculture, and chemistry writing. I might even include some original poetry. So hang on peoples.

Does this work

2009-11-27T00:07:00.001-08:00

I just remembered how my friend at freeze_or_burn had done some cooking pictures with me last summer. I don't know if I can embed a flickr stream on Blogger. If anyone has succeeded in this, let me know.

Fresh Halibut

2009-09-24T11:00:00.000-07:00

Last night in Portland I did what I usually do when I get stressed out: cook dinner for my friends. I went to a local grocery store and found fresh, never frozen, line-caught halibut fillets on sale for $10 / lb. I decided I wanted to bake it with a sort of provencal medley of sweet onion, carrot, zucchini, leek, and basil. I remember serving halibut on a bed of mixed greens and artichoke / potato mash at Steps Wine Bar and wanted to replicate that. Instead of artichoke, I wanted parsnip. There were no parsnips available "yet" so I grabbed a healthy looking celeriac bulb and some sweet potatoes. The chaotic improvisation set in and I found myself with mashed rosemary sweet potato and a pile of raw shredded celeriac. Now what? Maybe I can fry this... potato pancake? Yes! I mixed it up with some seasoning, a couple eggs and a handful of bread crumbs. The veggies were diced small and sauteed in an iron skillet before being transferred to a glass casserole. I cut the halibut into portions, seasoned it, and seared the pieces skin-down for a couple minutes before placing them on the veggies in the casserole. I put this in a 325 F oven for a slow juicy finish while frying the potato pancakes. I made a fresh aioli with egg yolk, canola, garlic, lemon, and thyme. It was all served on a bed of greens and topped with a "salsa" of ripe yellow heirloom tomato and red pepper. Delicious. We ate at around 10pm, which has been my typical dinner time when I embark on these "projects". It's a really nice way to extend my welcome as a guest when I buy groceries and do some cooking. A part of me really just wants to design a self-sustaining way to travel, cooking wherever I go, and getting food, lodging and gas money in return. If I did this, it would have to be a show, a video blog of sorts. This is an ongoing fantasy, that perhaps, especially if my job-seeking luck is slow, will be realized.

Road Trip 2.0

2009-09-21T13:23:00.001-07:00

First ,an update of my life. I recently resigned both of my jobs ,an an trace analyst at an envirnmental lab ,and as a brunch cook. I am leaving Seattle today on a 2+ week motorcycle trip through California and Oregon. I'll be looking at graduate programs in biochemistry and also visiting some people and hiking/camping. This is all very exciting. I hope to post details of my trip here along with some more biochemistry and food stuff.
Experimentally, I've added this Loopt widget to my homepage with location and photo updates. More to come soon.

Making Ice Cream

2009-04-06T23:33:00.000-07:00

Now that spring is here and those long sunny afternoons are returning, it is time to make use of my KitchenAid ice cream bowl. I used to think that ice cream was as simple as mixing milk with a flavor of choice and cooling the mixture in motion. There's a bit more science to it. Real rich and creamy ice cream is made by first creating a custard. Milk is cooked with sugar and then tempered into egg yolks. This is cooked gently for a short while, cooled, and then cream and flavor ingredients may be added. Today I chose cinnamon vanilla.

The result was fantastic. Ice cream, like so many other culinary concoctions, is fairly simple but has the potential to be truly amazing. It is best when quality ingedients are combined with proper technique. My first attempt was a total failure because I let the mixture get too hot after tempering in the egg yolks. The protein coagulated and I could smell the scrambled egg even before I saw the orange chunky horror in my saucepan. I calmly tossed this out and started fresh. The egg-milk-sugar mixture should not be heated above 170 degrees F.
For quality assurance I use good organic whole milk, fresh natural eggs, evaporated cane sugar, real vanilla extract and fresh cinnamon (well, not too old).

It is after this mixture is cooked and cooled that it gets poured into an ice cream "maker". Whatever tool you may have is just a method for gently mixing while cooling. Even after this step, my ice cream needed a couple hours in the freezer to really solidify. All of this tempering and cooling and mixing business is really about one thing: texture. If you are patient and give it the love it needs, this will really pay off. I would also advise not to skimp on the fat because come on, it's ice cream.

Cinnamon Vanilla Ice Cream
Yields One Quart

1.5 cups whole milk
3/4 cups sugar
3 egg yolks
pinch of salt
2 cups heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp cinnamon

The Glory of Whole Roasted Fish

2009-04-03T01:32:00.000-07:00

Despite everything I wrote in my post Confessions of a Reluctant Omnivore, I have been experimenting with a restricted diet for several weeks. It's sort of a lent thing, sort of an ecological footprint thing, and sort of a getting back to my roots (literally roots, tubers, rhizomes and such) thing. I've been mostly vegetarian since the end of February. The most notable exception being my St. Patrick's Day corned beef which I brined at home, but more on that later. My commitment has been to avoid the flesh of terrestrial omnivores, just temporarily, to keep things fresh and give myself time to rethink ethical omnivory. You see, I was getting lazy. I was falling into that common trap of ex-vegetarians: start with the feel-good meats and slowly slip back into eating absolutely anything, any time, without really trying. So, I've countered that with the delicate anti-laziness that is seafood cookery. Yes I said no to terrestrial vertebrates, that means fishes and snails are fair game. The best way to eat fresh fish, apart from raw and with sticky rice, is whole and roasted on the bone.

The other day I got a beautiful whole red snapper, gutted, but intact. This is a great specimen for such a rustic and tasty meal. Red snapper is not only full of flavor, but it is usually just the right size for a skillet and two hungry people. I take some inspiration here from Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook. After figuring out how to scrape the scales off using the back of my knife, and hacking the fins like a clumsy oaf, I rubbed the fish with salt and pepper and set it aside. I filled a hot skillet with fresh veggies such as fennel bulb, carrot, onion, and potato. Then I added some wine, brought it a a simmer, tossed the fish on top, and shoved the thing in a 250 degree (F) oven. The reason for the low temp is to keep everything moist. 20 minutes or so in there was enough to make the fish flake right off the bones when handled but still VERY juicy.

The whole point of this process is that it is very very delicious and very very easy. As long as you're willing to dig in with your fingers and work around the precious little fish skeleton, eating whole fish is a fabulous experience. Plus, it's cheaper by the pound than all those boneless pre-cut fillets everyone sells.

I am VERY concerned with the ecological impact of commercial fishing and have just signed up for newsletters from the Blue Ocean Institute. They are doing some very good work and are giving away free pocket-sized guides to selecting sustainable seafood products.

I have been hosting a Fresh Fish Friday dinner at my house each week and trying something new every time. This has been a really tasty and exciting challenge so I will continue to post on the topic.

Beet red

2009-04-01T20:03:00.000-07:00

My life is full of oft-neglected things. Yesterday I came home to some softening potatoes and beets that silently cried for my attention. Actually I imagine they'd rather I left them alone to sprout in the cupboard than face me and my knives and grater and fry pot. Many of us foodies know the pleasure of spending the afternoon working on a culinary project with a few ingredients. There's a simple therapy evoked when you work by hand, slowly, alone in the kitchen with a warm French press and the din of listener-supported radio. The idea is to make sauerkraut except with beets instead of cabbage. I keep calling it beet-kraut which isn't right (sauerzuckerruben?) and it is very good and very simple:

Take a few beets. Peel them if you want to (I did, but they weren't from my garden). Shred them up. Add a little or a lot of salt (or none). Put them into an earthen crock or a big glass jar or perhaps a small clean barrell and compress them until the juices that escape are enough to cover them completely. Find a plate or something that fits on top and press it down with, say, a big jar full of water, or other heavy objects. Wait a few weeks. Now eat, or seal away in sterile jars.

What is this all about? Well, it's not a pickle but a ferment. The microbes are already present on the vegetable that will help it to sour. Contact with air will cause unwanted airborne microbes to grow which is why we keep the vegetable shreds submerged in water. The salt helps too. It staves off unwanted bugs, pulls moisture out of the plant cells, and affects the osmolarity of the brine, not to mention the flavor. If some colorful blooms of growth appear at the surface of your brine, gently spoon them out and add a little more water if needed to keep everything submerged.

The first time I tried this I was touring Blue Moon Farm on Waldron Island and Rebecca Moore gave me an enormous red beet, the biggest I'd ever seen. "Nobody will buy it," she told me. "I'm going to ferment it," I exclaimed. It seemed funny but I was serious. This is a great way to increase the flavor and shelf-life of the less loved vegetables among us. The absolute best resource to turn to when it comes to fermenting anything is Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz. I met Katz 2 years ago at the Synergy Sustainable Living Conference and he certainly stoked my fermentation ferver.

Confessions of a Reluctant Omnivore

2009-01-17T16:41:00.001-08:00

I suffered an almost typical conversion to vegetarianism as a teenager. One day I was staring at an unappetizing heap of processed lunch meat when it dawned on me. "We're eating chopped up dead animal parts." It just seemed wrong. The evidence was everywhere: factory farm conditions, diet-related illnesses, environmental detriment, and so on.

I happily abandoned meat without really thinking about the bigger picture and soon confronted the fact that a healthy vegetarian needs to do more than just pick the meat off of things. One must pay close attention to food and its composition: amino acids, B-vitamins, iron, etc. This kind of scrutiny usually opens the gateway into a long journey of nutritional self-education. One thing was certain: I needed to learn to cook my own food.

My personal gastronomic journey had begun. I went crazy for all those things I ignored as a child: kale, quinoa, hummus, fresh sprouts, nutritional yeast, sesame, tempeh... I began eating fish and shellfish while traveling in Chile. It didn't seem right to refuse. I learned and asked more questions of my self I decided that eating animals isn't fundamentally wrong in any situation. In fact, in terms of health and environmentalism, the questions go way beyond the simple Plant vs. Animal debate.

It is more challenging but ultimately more rewarding and meaningful to look at the complex picture. Local family raised meat seems many times more sustainable than imported processed soy products. So why do so many environment & health conscious people choose the processed soy?

If we're speaking purely in numbers of souls involved, the industrial production of grains involves a tremendous scale of cute-little-animal destruction. Think of all the food and material provided by just one large mammal, especially if its grass-fed and didn't require the destruction of wild habitat. I know: most of our meat is produced in ways that are incredibly, rediculously, immorally destructive to the environment and yield unhealthy products to boot.

This is my advice:

Support local family farms and butchers. Seek them out. Make friends with these people. The best way to increase the welfare of livestock is to support the folks doing it right.

Learn how to handle, prepare, and store animal products. I will always remember the day a chef-friend gave me a bloody sack of raw venison and I stayed up all night reading the Joy of Cooking and Alton Brown. The effort paid off. The result was delicious and heart-warming. Anything you learn to do on your own will save you money. Think you can't afford to buy local grass-fed products? Learn how. It's a very empowering process.

Once I turned my ecologically-inspired vegetarianism into total all-out foodism I abandoned my former squeamishness. I cannot stress enough the beauty and value of the nasty bits: marrow, organs, tongue, casings, lard, blood, gelatin, sweetbreads, trotters, cheeks... exploring these aspects of an the animal is not only fundamental to the food traditions of every culture on earth, it the responsibility of any conscious omnivore.

The "don't ask don't tell" mantra of many meat-eaters and their insistence on cheap ready-made products is what's wrecking havoc on a global scale. It is usually this behavior that drives many of us to forgo meat altogether. I believe in a third way. It is a growing movement and some prominent chef-authors have been saying so as well. Mark Bittman and Jamie Oliver come to mind. So come on and try it, I dare you.

New Year New Ideas

2009-01-01T15:33:00.000-08:00

Hi. 2009 is going to be a really great year. The Information Age and its growing collective of networks is poised to conceive of creative solutions to several of the varying aspects of THE REALLY BIG MESS WE'RE ALL IN. To "Work on stuff that matters" was the prescription from Tim O'Reilly in his 'Thoughts on the Financial Crisis' message. This is about applying our creative resources toward real things because we cannot afford to be bloated Narcissists amusing ourselves to death.

The Trojan Horseradish is my New Year's Resolution. It is a place to explore global issues of food, chemistry, hunger, ecology, agriculture and economics. A major theme will be the rethinking of networks from which we draw our nutrition -- which spans the globe and all spheres of ecology AND economics. Let's look at food production, distribution and processing. Let's look at hunger and dietary diseases. Let's share recipes and techniques for surviving the aforementioned MESS. But let's do it in good taste with style and finesse.

My goal here is to hunt data and gather ideas, pick them and prep them, cook them down and serve a smorgasbord of bites that are of value to the new creative producer/consumer.