Back in London

Sometimes it's like this: you wake up thinking it's three thirty in the afternoon and you've missed a whole day of work and an important two thirty meeting for a flat viewing you've been waiting for all week. You look again and it's really five thirty in the morning, not fifteen thirty, and because it's summer, the window's been open all night and the light's already bright and really it's a Saturday, and so the day opens up like summer vacations used to, the end seemingly stretching far and away.
Or maybe it's like this: rocket, tomato, brie. Breakfast of leftovers. Sainsbury pakoras. Cut the pakora containers in half for two little crumb plates. Mix last night's couscous salad with boiled chickpeas and chopped spinach. Water in pint glasses. No matter if your toes peek into photos & there's hair on the floor.
It is also: a song.
Another: evenings. Sipping lime cordial and soda water on the sunchairs in the backyard, a threnody of train and bird. Long walks through the neighborhood: Brockley, Nunhead, Dulwich, Peckham Rye, Camberwell, East Dulwich and back. By ten, a full crusty moon looming thirty degrees off the horizon. Conversations & foolishness & falling asleep reading.

scallion oil

I may have had an excess of scallions one day, I may have been at a loss for what to do with them, and I may have, in fact, been a little bit lazy on an early summer day. Just a few ingredients, but they certainly conjure up the feeling of backyard barbecues, sun-induced lethargy, and crisp refreshments.

Cold frying in oil is a particularly satisfying way to extract the flavor out of scallions. It's common in Asian cuisine: a bright sizzle as hot oil hits the greenery and out comes all those delicious flavonoids.

A simple summer pasta salad: whole wheat shells, room temp scallion oil, shot of lime juice, bit of mayo, cherry tomatoes, fresh scallions, salt, and cracked black pepper.

dessert pocket

"The dessert menu?" should rarely be refused. A girl I once worked with, Jessica, was one of those people who always asked for the dessert menu, even when we were all rotundly full, belching up beer carbonation and spices. She said you can always find room, many rooms. I rarely indulge in the way she preaches, preferring to stay on this side of comfortably full, but on occasion, the sweet tooth strikes.

I took my friend out on her birthday to Tupelo, a fantastic Southern, Cajun-inspired restaurant somewhere east of Inman square. Fried grits, catfish, butter, gumbo, and collards later, we were faced with that daunting question. I was filled to the seams, but birthdays warrant unrestrained indulgences. We split a slice of red velvet cake. It wouldn't have been so bad had we stopped at this point, but at home waiting was a dozen cupcakes, yellow with chocolate buttercream frosting, made per request. That perhaps pushed us over the limit, overflowing the dessert pocket, making a mess of our tummies.

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Easiest Chocolate Buttercream

1 scant stick butter, softened

1 scant cup confectioner's sugar

5 Tbsp cocoa

1 splash of cream/milk

Combine butter and sugar, beat till fluffy. Add cocoa and cream, incorporate.

fiddleheads

A few years ago, I remember sitting in some loft, listening to an altered jazz piece, trying to grasp this bizarre sound uttered by the trumpet player. It was all bendy and all over the place, reminiscent of plucked strings. When I finally found the words, I explained it as the sound that fiddlehead ferns would make, if they could.

That particular sound and particular instant prescribed the positive feelings I associate with fiddleheads. So when my roomie made a buttery, garlicky pan of fiddlehead ferns late last week, the desire to crunch my way through my very own batch carried over to my next grocery trip. I saw them all glistening and green and fresh, in a tray at Harvest, and fell all over myself getting to them.

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Sautéed Fiddleheads

a few ounces of fiddlehead ferns

butter
olive oil

garlic (1 clove)

salt and pepper

1. Clean the ferns: trim the brown ends, remove the chaff, rinse off the grit.

2. I like to parboil mine briefly, for 1-2 minutes, I think it helps with even cooking.

3. Sauté fiddleheads and chopped garlic in olive oil on medium heat. Cover while cooking for ~3-5 minutes.

4. Salt, pepper to taste. Finish with a pat of butter.

*Note: eating too many fiddleheads will make you sick (nauseous, dizzy, and the like) due to certain substances in the ferns. Cooking fully and eating sparingly will decrease the likelihood of toxicity.

from the deep bowels of my hard drive, i come bearing...

...rediscovered meals from February:

before: a fillet of salmon + equal parts salt & sugar + fresh ground black pepper

after: lox + rye bread + fruits + tomato

before: wonton wrappers + butternut squash puree + salt + nutmeg

after: ravioli + arugula + pumpkin seeds

s e o h y u n g

green

last thursday:

outside

inside

(blend: silken tofu, ginger, celery, broccoli stalks, beet greens, kiwi, & cilantro)

the funny

There's nothing a good bowl of guacamole won't fix...except the important stuff.

A perfect day for a picnic, or a beach date, or frisbee in the park, the last in a string of blessedly warm spring, pre-summer days, leading up to the equinox, convincingly tying up the end of a winter that is just about ready to disappear. And of all places to pick, we wound up in a friend's backyard in Cambridge: a grey, rocky patch of sunless ground conveniently located behind the whale of dumpsters, with just a craggy, body-width crack in which escape was possible. I jest, a bit. The fascination of a Hibachi grill and vegetables kept me sated.

I suppose I am fairly proud that the guacamole I whipped up disappeared within minutes. But avocados are easy sellers. We scramble to get in line for the stuff, so fatty and healthy and delicious, and just enough green to convince you it's a vegetable.

cake with jam: some kind of past-time

The rest of the night was spent gazing at stars while perched uncomfortably on a mesh-iron, overlapping, leaf-shaped structure in the playground by Harvard square. Some vague pedophilic feeling briefly took over when all the mothers and kids promptly ditched the jungle gym shortly after our hulking, vitality-filled arrival. But really, we just needed a place to sit and jest about our friends arguing in whispers on the other side of the park, as if body language, intense stares, and bad looks on faces weren't enough to betray their foul mood. Why do we argue about the silliest things sometimes, deception and ownership and pettiness? I suppose I can't really judge the silliness of any of those things. I'm busy stuffing my face with guacamole and trying not to die shimmying down this all-too-precarious structure...lol