Momofuko

The book 'Momofuko' is a book that you could have in your kitchen or in your living room. It is gorgeously produced with fabulous photography. The concept 'Momofuko' is the tale of a whole new kind of restaurant(s) and in this cookbook David Chang tells that story well. If a little abruptly. With the occasional f--word. And some grammatical blips. But he also tells it engagingly, as if you were in a conversation with him and he was telling you about a series of events that have happened to him over the last few years. There are recipes, there is philosophy, there are diatribes, and there is almost a diary of the events leading up to each new venture. I liked reading this, and I sense that the recipes are strong. Maybe not doable, but strong. I am not, for example, going to be singing the hair off of a pig's head. The mantra that noodles are king and then moving forward from that idea is one that apeeals to me. He toots his own horn as well as sharing the credit for the venture's success. It is an added bonus to know one of the chef's (Sam Gelman at Ko is an Iowa City boy) and to read his praises is very nice. Here is a sauce that can be used in a number of different ways--a pantry staple, so to speak--use on noodles, on vegetables, always have some on hand.
Ginger Scallion Sauce
2 1/2 cups thinly sliced scallions (greens and whites; from 1 to 2 large bunches)
1/2 cup finely minced peeled fresh ginger
1/4 cup grapeseed or other neutral oil
1 1/2 teaspoons usukuchi (light soy sauce)
3/4 teaspoon sherry vinegar
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt, or more to taste
(Makes about three cups)
Mix together the scallions, ginger, oil, soy, vinegar, and salt in a bowl. Taste and check for salt, adding more if needed. Though it’s best after 15 or 20 minutes of sitting, ginger scallion sauce is good from the minute it’s stirred together up to a week or two in the fridge. Add to any kind of noodles, and top with things that stir in--the cookbook has all sorts of ideas on this.

Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers

This is the first book by this author that I have read. He apparently has a reputation for meshing the world of science into his fictional stories. That does occur in this story, and to my taste, to an extent that is a little bit pedantic, but not unwieldy.
The book has three swirling, co-occuring narratives. The overarching story is that there is a woman with a highly traumatized past, Thassa Amzwar. She is a Berber Algerian who has seen countless people die, including some closest to her. She is not dismissive of the trauma, nor is she in denial about them. She simply appears to be unaffected by them in a way that disturbs her teacher. She is too happy for his taste. She is happier than anyone he know, and she is always happy. it doesn't wax and wane, it is a constant. She is tremendously engaging, the center of every group she is part of. The book doesn't point this out, but her popularity doesn't have a detrimental effect on her personality. She is not entitled because of it, which makes her even more attractive. He wonders if she is ill, and consults a psychologist about her, who reassures him this is not mental illness.
It is at this point the book takes a leap, a blend of an improbable attack on Thassa combined with an improbable response to a comment that Russell makes. He unwittingly unleashes his thoughts about her onto the world. The improbable thing is that someone, in this 24/7 era of information overload, actually listens. With disasterous consequences for both Russell and Thassa. It works, this spin out of events, and the book's perspective is that you can forsee each ensuing disaster just a moment before it happens, so the reader feels pretient. Always a nice feeling, and it keeps you hurdling onward to the end. The book is exceptionally well written, so even though I might quibble about the science, the story itself is a finely woven one that is both hyperbolic and believable, a rare blend.

What Would I Wish?

I spent the weekend in a very pretty place. I wouldn't wish to live there, but I would wish to spend more time there. I have never thought very much about what I am doing in life, or what I want to do, so thinking about what I might like to do when I retire, or when I work less (which is how I would structure my "retirement" if I get to choose). There are people and places that I do not get to often enough with things as they stand now, and I would enjoy changing that. I think it is easy to get out of the habit of traveling to favorite spots, but that getting back into that habit is attainable.
So far, 2010 is shaping up to be a good year for reading, writing, and film viewing. Surprisingly, our exercise equipment is getting quite the workout early on, and with some enthusiasm, which had been lacking in 2009. It is hard to get too many things going, but I do think once you have a good rhythm, it is easier to add to it.
Here are a few things I would like to enhance my commitment to this year:
1. Cooking for friends.
2. Camping in National Parks.
3. Quilting.
4. Travel, both near and far.
5. Home repair and improvement projects.

Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed

We have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand.”
So wrote the great economic iconoclast John Maynard Keynes, in an essay titled “The Great Slump of 1930,” published in December of that year. Thirteen months had passed since the crash of 1929; the world was living, in Keynes’s words, in “the shadow of one of the greatest economic catastrophes of modern history.” Keynes comes off well in this story, by the way.
The lords of finance who constitute the title of this book are the four central bankers who dominated that postwar era: Benjamin Strong of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Montagu Norman, the longtime head of the Bank of England, Émile Moreau of the Banque de France, and Hjalmar Schacht, who headed the Reichsbank. Ahamed says he got the idea for this book when he read a 1999 Time magazine cover story headlined “The Committee to Save the World,” about Alan Greenspan (then the Federal Reserve chairman), Robert Rubin (Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary) and Lawrence Summers (Rubin’s No. 2). He realized that in the 1920s, the four top central bankers had acquired a similar mystique and fame. They were sometimes described as “the most exclusive club in the world.” He decided to tell the story of “the descent from the roaring boom of the ’20s into the Great Depression” by “looking over the shoulders” of these four men. And so rather than bemoan our modern tragedy, Ahamed, a hedge fund manager, decided to write this cautionary tale, where we know both the beginning and the end of the story.
I am not a big fan of non-fiction books, but from a literary point of view this is a beautifully written book. Ahamed has a gift for storytelling that many a full-time author would envy — the decision to build “Lords of Finance” around these four men was brilliant, and he carried it off well. Each of them was a powerful personality, with the full range of strengths and weaknesses, insights and eccentricities. Because much of the book concerns decisions, for instance, to raise or lower interest rates, you need great characters to pull the story along, and Ahamed not only has them but also knows how to make them come alive. Strong is the domineering American; Schacht the arrogant, headstrong German; Norman and Moreau the prideful Europeans. Strong and Norman became close friends, and their letters to each other are a rich source of material.
I am no finance whiz. I probably could balance my check book but I do not. This book was remarkable in it's ability to pull one of my ilk along with the story. I am sure there were many details in the book that I failed to understand the importance of, but this book made understandable financial concepts and the interconnectedness of the world even a century ago--the world was pretty dang flat before Thomas Freidman declared it so. If you read only one non-fiction book this year, let it be this one.

Gobi Taktakin

I spent another wonderful weekend in Weston, and had the usual array of inspired food. The sheep-milk cheese is always a highlight of any visit to Green Dirt Farm, but this cauliflower dish was a close second.
Gobi Taktakin
1 head cauliflower, chopped into very small pieces
2 T olive oil
1 tsp. cumin seed
1 tsp. sweet curry powder (or more to taste)
1/4 tsp. cayenne
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup or more fresh cilantro, chopped
1/2 red onion, chopped finely
1 fresh lime

Use a large frying pan which will hold all the cauliflower in a single layer. Preheat the pan for 30 seconds over medium-high heat, then add oil and heat about 1 minute. Add cumin seeds and saute 30 seconds, then add cauliflower and spices and cook 10 minutes, stirring only occasionally so the cauliflower gets slightly browned.
Take off heat. Add most of chopped cilantro and stir, then put on serving dish. Top with the rest of the chopped cilantro and the red onion and squeeze fresh lime over prior to serving.
This is adapted from Mark Bittman's cookbook "Best Recipes in the World", which is another of Bittman's successful cookbooks.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I hesitate to write about this book. On the one hand, I am amongst the last to read it, so how could I possibly have anything fresh and new to say about it. Secondly, the controversy stirred up by a white woman writing about the treatment of African-American maids in the 1960's American South appears to be ferverent. But I am going to cautiously put my toe in the water, none-the-less.
First off, this is a good story. It may have no bearing on reality, but it is a good tale well told. At it's simplest,that is what fiction is--it may go on to be something bigger than that, but it doesn't have that obligation to be truly accurate. Some of the reviews I have read have focused on Ms. Stockett being white, that her white protagonist comes off best in the novel, that the maids have uneducated dialects. All true.
I was surprised by the notion that you couldn't write about what you aren't. I guess I feel that all is fair when writing fiction. It is not as if J.K. Rowling is a witch, entitling her to write about the wizarding world. The danger is that it won't ring true, but I don't think that happened here. I have heard dialogue very much like what Ms. Stockett portrays in the rural South of the 21st century. No reviewer I have read has mentioned that while there are clear disadvantages to writing from a viewpoint that you don't live in, there might be an advantage as well--that what it lacks in the experience of being black in America might paradoxically be an aid in telling a story that the majority can listen to. That you know what parts people will find hard to hear and work to make them understandable.

Did the author get it wrong? I don't think so, at least not in the big picture. She writes about privileged women whose social structure is very much like a high school girl cat fight. No surprises there. Their treatment of the help doesn't sound much different than the portrayal upper class New Yorkers in "The Nanny Diaries".
Are the risks of speaking up overstated? Again, I don't think so. The violence of the civil rights movement and the animosity seen in the American South is well-documented in both the National Civil Rights Museum and the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum (housed in the places that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr was born and died). Anyone who doesn't think it was brave to even walk in a march for civil rights should walk in the monument 'Racist Dogs' in Kelly Ingram Park, north of the Baptist church where a KKK bomb killed four young African-American girls in Birmingham in 1963. Artist James Drake's work depicts snarling police dogs made of scrap iron leaping inward from two walls on either side of the park's narrow walkway. You can stand between and imagine the terror when civil rights marchers were assaulted with the canines and water cannons -- which, by the way, are also in the park, and can be pivoted to point toward a sculpture of two marchers. I found it terrifying.
'The Help' takes a group of women that many of us do not know and humanizes them. We are sympathetic to even the angriest maid.

Tim Burton's 9

This movie is what 'Wall-E' wasn't and what 'The Road' is. A bleak post-apocalyptic vision with a glimmer of hope. There are nine small humanoid homonculi created by the scientist who touched off the world destruction problem to begin with. He creates these little guys as a last ditch effort to save the planet from destruction. The best of what he has to offer, but split up into nine parts, and the hope is that enough of them will work together to put a stop to the destruction, and move forward. So while the scene is bleak, the nine remaining inhabitants have quite different viewpoints, as well as different skills for survival. Some work together, some work independently, but in the end they manage to find agreement, and a way to start over. There is a talisman involved, a mystery, and a fair amount of adventure. It is brilliant in it's simplicity. Even if it fails to examine the steps that lead up to world destruction. Don't miss it.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

'Cutting for Stone' is a novel too big in scope in some ways and too narrow in others to be a great novel. That said, it is a very good novel, and worth reading because it has elements that are not easily found.
It is the story of two brothers, born to a father who is unable to love them and a mother who dies having them. They are twins, born literally tied together. They have to be surgically seperated at birth. It is the last act their father does for them as children. The book is set in Ethiopia and the cultural and political landscape are par tof the story, as is the state of medical care in the country.
The boys, Marion and Shiva, are raised by two physicians who knew both their parents, and they raise thema s their own. Ghosh teaches Marion and Hema teaches Shiva--and this is the path in life they take, one that divides the brothers. The story is well told, and it is strongest when it is medical. The emotional side is not as well attended to, though I do agree with the New York Times reviewer, that the author cares too much, not too little. He can't stand far enough back to allow us to see what he sees. Genital mutilation and post-partum incontinence are attended to within the story, but we don't get enough of the back story in either case to form opinions on what the author wants us to know as a result of this story. In some ways, I want to hear Shiva's side of the story to make better sense of what happened. The same goes for the Eritrean part of the story--where do the characters stand? It is hard to say, which is a weakness of the book. None-the-less, this is a new and different voice worth watching.

Potato Gnocchi

In preparation for a week in Rome, we have been eating wonderful handmade Italian food for over a week. One of the things that is much easier to have an excellent experience with at home is gnocchi--in a restaurant they can be ethereal and they can be like lead. You never know. At home, you can make them heavenly every time.
Potato Gnocchi
2 lbs Russet potatoes
Salt to taste
1 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
Steam the potatoes until tender all the way through but not falling apart (a kitchen knife passes all the way through with some resistance). It's important that the potatoes not be overcooked. (Overdone, they will absorb too much water and take up so much flour that the gnocchi will sink like heavy little stones to the bottom of the stomach.)
As soon as the potatoes are tender enough, pass them through the ricer into a large bowl.

Add a healthy pinch of salt and all the flour to the potatoes, working in the flour with a wooden spoon; then knead the dough gently for about 5 minutes on a lightly floured board or wooden work surface.
Divide the dough into 5 to 8 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a rope about 3/4 inch in diameter and 8 to 10 inches long. Cut each snake into regular pieces about 3/4 inch long. Continue until all the dough has been rolled and cut.
Roll each gnocco (yes, that's the singular of gnocchi) along the tines of a fork to impress the soft dough with a pattern--this creates more surface to capture sauce.
Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a rolling boil and drop in the gnocchi. (Do this in two or three batches if it's easier.)
Boil the gnocchi until they rise to the top, then remove them with a slotted skimmer and transfer them to a heated platter or bowl.
Serve immediately, with a Butter and Sage sauce.

Adam

This is not your typical romantic comedy. First, it fits better in the space between drama and comedy. Then second, because it doesn't have either the typical story or the typical ending. It is a story about two people, each of whom has something that the other needs at a particular moment in time. They fully devote themselves to the giving of what they have to the other person, to the best of their ability, and then at one point it becomes clear that they must part. But they are both better for their time together. The perfect romance that doesn't pan out. Both sides win, no one is bitter. You almost never see it--not in real life, not in fiction, not in film.

Adam is awkward, deadpan, and says things that are true, but you really shouldn't say them. A lot of the social landscape is occurring well above his head, and while he knows that, he has trouble responding differently. For example, his father dies very early in the movie, and he appears to have little or no response to it, other than crossing "Dad's Chores" off his to-do list. Beth moves into an apartment in his building, and they begin a friendship with each other. He would like it to be more. So he tells her he feels sexually attracted to her. Which makes her bolt. So he tells her--he has Asperger's syndrome. Then they progress into a relationship that makes sense for him, and it also does for her, given the circumstances of her life and that she needs someone who is safe and won't cheat on her or lie to her. He also isn't quite capable of the intensity of emotion that she needs, but that is okay for a time. The ending could be bittersweet, but it isn't. It is sweet and nice.