One thing I am sure of, he thought.

Thanks to Step 1, I have come to a realization about Harumi Murakami's short story "Crabs." It's not about alienation and existential disembodiment at all; it's about Paragonimus westermani!

Don't click that if you've just eaten. Also, don't read the following sentence about the most ridiculous mnemonic ever to hit First Aid: "I don't have a clue why I smell fish in the vagina garden!" Ten points to whoever realizes what that's about*.

Right, dinner.

I'm on a bit of an individual-oven-baked-tureen-of-food kick, so expect to see many pot pies in the weeks to come. There's no need to use a recipe, really. Just cook up some vegetables to the almost-done stage**--I used mushrooms, leeks, celery, carrots, and a few other tidbits--in a roux with a protein, and stir in some broth. If you don't cook them in a roux, make or add a gravy or braising liquid, something to keep everything moist. Spice it with whatever you wish; I used tarragon in this one. Portion the whole mess out into individual oven-safe bowls. Cover with your favorite pastry dough or short crust, and brush with an egg wash if you're feeling fancy. Slit the top to allow steam out. Bake at 375 until the crust is done.

The best part is that you can prepare the filling while listening to immunology lectures the night before assembling the pies.

*Medical students not eligible. Come on, guys, it's a gimme. We've already done our OB-gyn rotations!
**If you're using root vegetables like potatoes, dice them and parboil them, since the short pot pie baking time won't be enough on its own to cook them.

Baby steps

I did pull-ups today! Plural! In a row! Can the snickering, please; my upper body strength has lagged behind my lower body strength for a very, very long time*, and this wimpy little milestone goes a long way toward rectifying that. Day 1 of 2013 also marked day 1 of the Step 1 studying juggernaut. I'm trying not to obsess over the NRMP match statistics. Medical students are always agonizing over how we measure up to each other. Six weeks of putting one's nose to the paper-and-ink grindstone produces enough stress without embracing the sturm und drang of it all. Instead... white girl vegetarian huevos rancheros!

The Field Roast brand sausages (tee em!) don't taste like sausage as I remember it**, but all three flavors are meaty enough to temporarily quell the inanitiated carnivore within. My favorite is the Italian, by far.

Yesterday, I also made my own version of Larabars. The process is easy if you have a good food processor or food mill. I only have a tiny one, so after grinding the nuts and chocolate, I chopped and pulverized the dried fruit using first a knife, then a big wooden paddle I picked up in Chinatown when I moved here. It's surprisingly meditative to pound away at dried dates.

They're tastier than they look.

Ugly ducklings, maybe, that turn into beautiful swans on the
tongue. (God, that was awful. Forget I typed that.)

I first made something akin to these during my surgery rotation, when I'd eat at 4:30 in the morning and never quite knew when (and if!) I'd have an actual meal break until I got home 15 hours later. A sandwich bag with one or two fits perfectly in the back pocket of a pair of scrubs. At least three cups of sticky dates are necessary to bind the other ingredients, but other than that, go wild with whatever dried fruit you like. They require a little muscle to put together. It's a good thing one batch makes enough bars to last... well, not that long if you're me, but theoretically quite some time!

Quinoa date bars
1/3 cup quinoa (I prefer red, but go wild)
5 cups dried fruit, at least 3 cups of which must be dates
1 cup chopped dark chocolate or cocoa nibs or carob
2 cups raw almonds
3 tablespoons nut butter
pinch salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon (optional)

Rinse the quinoa until the raw grains do not taste bitter at all. Bring to a simmer with 2/3 cup water, then cover and cook on low heat until all the water has been absorbed. Allow to cool. Meanwhile, line a 9 in x 13 in baking pan with parchment paper or waxed paper.

Put the salt, cinnamon, quinoa, almonds, and chocolate into a food processor. Process until the desired texture is reached; you can go until the almonds are ground into quinoa-like texture, or leave a few larger nut pieces for crunch. Empty the food processor into a large bowl. If your processor can handle it, grind the dates and other dried fruit (reserving some chopped dried fruit to add later, again for texture, if you desire) and nut butter until a paste is formed. Mix with the almond mixture and grind in the food processor until homogenous, stirring in any reserved pieces at the end. If your food processor cannot handle it, oil a knife blade and your hands and chop the dates as finely as you can. Using a big wooden spoon, paddle, or mortar, pound the dates and dried fruit with the nut butter and almond mixture in a large bowl until everything clumps together in sort of a chunky paste. Put the mixture into the lined pan and spread evenly. Cover with parchment or plastic wrap and pile heavy books on top (or other pans full of heavy books!) to compress the bars. Allow to compress for at least 1.5 hours. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, then slice. Store in an airtight container in the fridge for best shelf life, but they can sit at room temperature throughout the day (or body temperature in the back pocket of your scrubs).

*Until today, I could deadlift 1.6 times my body weight without being able to pull up my body weight. Pathetic, right?
**although it has been quite a long time...

All within is warm

Distasteful places to be: central Florida, Chechnya, Three Mile Island, New York on New Year's Eve... That's why I'm staying in with kale, creamy vegetable chowder, and freshly baked bread.

I've been following the tenets laid forth in Flour Water Salt Yeast, an early Christmas present, and they work. I didn't buy a Banneton proofing basket, opting instead for a blue faux-wicker trinket purchased in Chinatown for $1.75 and lined with a flour-dusted towel. The bread still has a crisp crust and perfect crumb, and a flavor that belies its four aforementioned ingredients; I chalk it up to the multiple temperature adjustments I made to get the dough to exactly 25 degrees Celsius. Thanks for the tip, Ken Forkish!

Maybe, calmed fortified by all this warm food, I'll wander downtown to the harbor for the stroke of midnight*.

Creamy vegetable chowder
Use any root vegetables you like for this; I'd hate to be authoritarian. Roast the cubed vegetables while you're preparing the base to save time. To make a vegan soup, omit the milk; the potatoes will make it creamy.

1 parsnip
1 turnip
3 carrots
1 large sweet potato
1 fennel bulb, trimmed
2 russet potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 small onion
3 stalks celery
4 leek fronds
1 cup cooked great Northern beans
1/2 lemon
2 tbsp flour
vegetable stock (I used a homemade mushroom stock)
milk, optional
olive oil
thyme
bay leaf
salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 425 F. Peel and cube the parsnip, turnip, carrots, sweet potato, and fennel bulb and toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Roast until browned and tender. Meanwhile, dice the onion and celery and chop the leek fronds, including the white up to 1/2 to 1 inch of the dark green portion. Heat 3 tablespoons olive oil in a large pot or Dutch oven and saute the onion, celery, and leek until the vegetables are soft and the onion transluscent. Add 2 tablespoons flour and mix thoroughly; cook on medium-high heat 3 to 5 minutes, or until golden brown. Stir in vegetable stock, 3 to 5 cups depending on how thick you'd like your chowder to be. Add 1 tsp thyme and a bay leaf. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer, cooking until the potatoes are very soft. Add half the roasted vegetables and puree until smooth. Stir in the juice of 1/2 lemon, the remaining vegetables, and the beans. Heat through and add milk or additional stock to desired thickness. Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve garnished with grated Parmesan and chopped parsley.

*Warning: gastronomic goodwill is liable to evaporate like acetone on a lab bench in the face of slow-moving tourists.

Title credit: Ford Madox Ford

Prayer to the gods of partial credit

I do not have a large house. There are not many cabinets. So why can I not find my cupcake pan? Apologies if you were one of the people on the receiving end of a mass text asking if I lent it to you, but I have to either get to the bottom of this or reconcile with the fact that I'm going insane.

Now, for more amateur photography!

Check out that wrap technique.

The one or two faithful readers of this blog might remember that I'm not a recipe follower, but this one comes from Deborah Madison's Greens cookbook. It deserves a little respect. That's why I made it two or three times before I branched out and changed up her formula for tofu salad sandwiches.

Open wide!

Tofu salad sounds like one of those horrific vegan recipes that drives people away from meatless food. Oh, ye of little faith! This is great, full of fresh herbs and vegetables and capers (or crunchy pickle bits), moistened with Greek yogurt and red wine vinegar, and generally good on the waistline. I recommend stripping the leaves from the celery stalks you use and adding those, too. They taste like a mating of very intense celery, parsley, and ramps.

And then, of course, Andy asked for homecoming cookies. We had some interesting peanut butters in the house thanks to a Groupon for a local peanut butter establishment. Dinner had been the aforementioned low-fat option, so I figured hey, why not totally ruin that health factor with peanut butter cookies.

Product placement!

This is dangerously good.

Here's the thing: I love peanut butter. I love peanut butter cookies. Unfortunately, most recipes give you a weirdly cakey and dry lump that doesn't taste like much of anything. I'm partial to the flat, chewy cookie, and I figured I'd use my dubious baking knowledge to fashion a recipe for one. My highly scientific strategy involved using an egg and a yolk rather than two eggs*, brown sugar and honey only**, and browned butter***. But I accidentally**** used baking powder instead of baking soda. The acid in the powder makes cookies lighter and puffier. I added a tablespoon of milk to the second batch, to little avail. And maybe 1 cup of flour was paradoxically too little? I have no idea. But they were chewy and moist and tasted good, so I'll give myself partial credit on this one. Today gets a zero for healthful eating, though.

Without milk

With milk

The recipe below is what I feel I should have used to achieve the desired result. Let me know how it goes.

Honey nut cookies
1/3 cup whole wheat flour
1/3 cup white flour (ish; it might have been a little more)
1/3 cup cornmeal
1 stick butter
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup chopped toasted almonds
2 tbsp honey (or 3, if you're not using peanut butter with honey in it)
1/4 to 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice
1 egg plus 1 egg yolk
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Heat the butter over medium-low heat in a saucepan without stirring until totally melted. Continue to heat, swirling occasionally, until the solids and butter are nut-brown and fragrant. Pour over the brown sugar, peanut butter, and honey, and allow to cool to room temperature. Beat until smooth and add the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk. Beat until thoroughly incorporated. Toss the almonds with the dry ingredients and fold into the butter mixture until just blended. Bake for 5 to 8 minutes in a 350 degree oven; the cookies should be underdone in the center. Allow to cool on the baking sheet until they're firm enough to be handled.

*Egg whites make for drier, puffier cookies, while the fat in the yolk tends to help cookies spread.
**white sugar = crispy cookie; moist sweeteners = chewy cookie
***In addition to being delicious, it makes for a looser, spreadable dough.
****Long story. I had a cupcake pan moment.

Recrudescence

Oh, hey. I know, I know: "You don't call, you don't write," and so on and so forth. There's a good excuse. I spent the last year, roughly, on a whirlwind introduction to clinical medicine with a grade 5 learning curve. And then, in case you haven't heard, there was a hurricane. In the interests of spending less time on the Internet, I ditched both Facebook and this blog just after finishing the semester. While Facebook still doesn't hold that much appeal, I missed posting what I cook. And believe me, I've kept cooking. There were so many things I didn't photograph, like the mastiha semifreddo I finally got around to making, or the souffle roll. But here's a small sample that did get captured:

Buckwheat chocolate budino with red wine caramel and plum
and dark chocolate discs

Vegetarian French onion soup

Red lentil-crusted tofu with a saffron coconut sauce and pea
shoots, over a bed of spiced pearl couscous

Parmesan creme brulee with mostarda and a Parmesan crisp

Individual goat cheese and peach cheesecakes

The finished product, with a lime-mint sauce

Flourless chocolate cake with redcurrant sauce, slivered
almonds, and glacee currants

Strawberry creme tart. Andy did the knifework for the top!

 We also got guinea pigs!

This is Creta.

This is Malta.

They've since grown up.

And so, a little more than a year after my abrupt hiatus, I give you Christmas dinner:

Cod poached in homemade wild mushroom broth. The spice
secret: a touch of turmeric in addition to the thyme, garlic,
caramelized onions, and bay leaf. I swear it works!

Fennel and Napa cabbage slaw, initially intended to be
fennel and endive slaw. There's a homemade orange aioli
(thanks to my mother-in-law), almonds, and olive relish with
orange supremes on the side.

Butternut squash macaroni and cheese, garnished with
spiced squash seeds and kale chips.

A simple arugula salad with pomegranate seeds, walnuts,
and a citrus and olive oil dressing.

In my defense, this was the worst plating of the lot, and I'm
not sure why I photographed this one. It's buckwheat chocolate
cake with homemade cranberry sauce, creme anglaise, and a
masterfully made salted almond brittle, thanks to my mother-in-law
once again. There are also candied orange peels on top.

I wish I could write about what this last year has been like, but too much has happened to even begin to encompass in a novel, much less a blog post. The only thing I can say--and perhaps the most important thing--is thank you to, in no particular order, and with many individuals in overlapping categories: my friends, my family, my classmates, Andy, my patients, my attendings, my residents, the guy at NY <3 Bagels who knows my order by heart, the guy at the farmer's market who knows not to trim my beet greens, and that one security guard who never makes me swipe my ID. The people at NYU and Bellevue who banded together in ways I never thought I'd see under incredibly stressful conditions. The people at Johns Hopkins who welcomed me last-minute when I needed to leave New York for a little bit. And the 26th St. gym, for keeping Andy and myself from getting type II diabetes thanks to the rich desserts and piles of fruit candy consumed during those weeks and weeks of 18-hour days. All of you have given me the privilege of a future in medicine.

Matthew Barney meets AvP

On Friday, Andy and I went to see a dance performance by Shen Wei's dance company. It was mind-blowing. Since the Park Avenue Armory's arts performances are pretty much obligated to include something amusingly high-concept, the third piece allowed audience members to walk among the dancers (who were mostly naked, so don't bring the kids unless you deem them mature enough to appreciate topless male and female dancers rolling around in paint*) and appreciate the union of technology and humanity** that is going to be driving Shen Wei's next artistic phase, or so the program says. In any case, the second piece, Folding, was by far my favorite. Like I said, mind-blowing. You can watch several YouTube performances, like this one. However, the most amazing piece also included what I found to be the performance's only perceptible-to-a-non-dancer-or-dance-aficionado flaw: very silly headgear. Andy likened the head coverings to squash; I imagined them as what would happen if Matthew Barney remade Alien versus Predator. They were downright distracting from the ridiculous choreography.

Other note (and skip this one if you have a weak stomach): I accompanied three of my classmates this morning in shadowing an autopsy at the medical examiner's office. Aside from experiencing fresh organs, substantial amounts of blood, and a man whose long bones had been harvested for grafts***, I noted that of the cadavers we encountered, nobody was older than 46, and nobody's BMI was anywhere near normal. This stands in stark contrast to the quite elderly, usually practically cachectic cadavers in the anatomy lab. Hmm.

Now, food! Two days' worth to blog about today:

Brown sushi rice with seared tempeh and a marinated Asian vegetable salad****.

Farmhouse vegetable soup from Cook's Illustrated, with whole-wheat bread.

In deference to Cook's Illustrated, I'm not going to post the recipe. They do ridiculous things like use forty-five pounds of ground meat to find the absolute perfect meatloaf recipe. For this recipe, the tester made at least ten varieties of vegetable soup to find the perfect balance of umami and nuttiness and fatty deliciousness (lemon-thyme butter to finish is the secret!). For that, I'll pay for a subscription.

One note, though: the recipe calls for cabbage and parsley. I forgot to buy both, so I used kale. It's a cabbage relative, and it's got that fresh tang of parsley. Other than that: totally faithful to the brilliance that is this soup.

*It's artistic, not voyeuristic, I swear to you.
**Including projected T1-weighted cranial MRIs!
***Have you ever bent someone's boneless arm? No? Never thought I would, either.
****I found a massive daikon for a dollar. And layed the smackdown on a woman about my age who tried to insist that the watermelon radish I was teaching Andy about was not, in fact, a radish. Score.

Fungi gone wild

It's cold. Again. I'm still wearing flip-flops*, but this counts as soup weather.

Cream of wild mushroom! Well, mostly wild. Thirty-three percent tame, actually. The porcini are dried and from a Whole Foods bin; the shiitake and cremini were from farmers market bins and are purportedly woods-gathered or whatever. Either way, they were great in soup form, especially with shallot croutons (read: shallots fried in brown butter) and whole wheat artisan-style bread. And then about a pound of spinach, a persimmon, and a mango for dessert. I felt fancy, so I abandoned the behind-on-studying mentality and actually passed the soup through a wire strainer a couple times to make it smooth.

Cream of mushroom soup
3 cloves garlic
1/2 oz dried porcini
12 oz fresh cremini
8 oz fresh shiitake
3 large shallots
2 to 3 tbsp butter
about 1/3 cup white wine
3 cups water
1 1/2 cups milk
a dash of soy sauce
sage, thyme, nutmeg, salt, and pepper


Bring the water to a boil and put in the dried porcini; let sit while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. Mince 2 of the shallots and the garlic. While the butter is melting in the bottom of a pot, slice the third shallot thinly. Just as the butter begins to sizzle, fry the shallot slices in the butter. Remove when they're toasted to a dark golden brown. Add the minced shallots when the butter is fully browned and cook until translucent. Add the garlic, salt and pepper to taste, and the chopped fresh mushrooms; cook until the mushrooms have stopped exuding liquid. Add the wine and reduce to about 1/3 of the original total volume of wine and mushroom liquid. Add the porcini broth (but not the porcini themselves), soy sauce, sage, thyme, nutmeg (you only need a little of each, especially the nutmeg), and bring to a boil, then reduce and simmer until all the mushrooms are very soft. Puree, strain, puree again, and strain again. Stir in the milk and heat gently until the soup is warm. Adjust salt, pepper, and spices to taste.


*and will continue to do so until it actually endangers my toes.