Andy

Matuschak.

square signals

• 2011-09-06

  In defense of “fusion” cuisine

  San Francisco bursts with fantastic international food. Ethiopian, Thai, Japanese, and Peruvian food carts roam our streets every day, vending explosive flavor combinations that are often unknown to local cuisine—except, that is, in “fusion” restaurants, which (often unsuccessfully) derive novelty from culinary combination. Here I’ll advocate fusion, but of a different sort than these amalgamating restaurants practice: not of flavors, but of techniques.

  For instance: we don’t need to eat overcooked meat anymore, ever (sous vide cooking has eliminated this problem), but you will never find a bowl of curry with meat that hasn’t been heated to at least 170°F.

  Then there are the vegetables, so often mushy and flavorless, from the cheapest source available, their color pallid from imprecise cookery. I remember by contrast the first time I made the bœuf bourguignon from Thomas Keller’s Bouchon. He braises beef with aromatic vegetables, then replaces them with a fresh batch before serving—they’ve already lost all their flavor. He cooks each type separately and as it is best prepared: carrots glazed, mushrooms browned, potatoes simmered.

  Salt, too, is fundamental: it increases the intensity of all other flavors. Meat without salt is like a desaturated photo; salt sprinkled on top of cooked meat will always disappoint because the interior remains unseasoned. In quality Western restaurants, meats are generally salted days in advance so that the center of the meat will satisfy. But that’s exceedingly rare in most non-European cuisines.

  

  This weekend, I made a Thai green curry while minding the European cooking principles I’ve learned. For the curry, I infused coconut milk with lime, galangal, green chilis, coriander, cardamom, nama shoyu, shallot, and lemongrass. A typical blend, modulo soy for shrimp paste.

  The rest of the curry, though, was prepared non-traditionally. Restaurants in California talk about being “ingredient-driven” as if that describes a cuisine, but it’s just an attribute—and one that should be applied to all cooking. So I got the best vegetables and meat I could find and prepared them with individual attention and precision. Or at least as much as my dilettantish skills could muster.

  I packed some lovely duck breast in salt well in advance, then cooked it sous vide at 137°F with some of the curry paste. At service, I cross-hatched its skin and slowly crisped it. Then I sliced it thinly against the grain. No bones.

  I sautéed oyster mushrooms over high heat with plenty of room to crisp them slightly. I salted them early and finished by deglazing the pan with a bit of rice wine vinegar. I drained them carefully so they wouldn’t be soggy or rubbery. I tossed cheddar cauliflower in oil, salt, and pepper, then roasted it over high heat until deep golden. I lightly browned golden squash in a hot pan with salt and rice wine vinegar, leaving the pieces with tooth and loads of flavor.

  Then when serving the dish, I warmed all the components in the curry to marry the flavors. But each ingredient retained its nature: it was the first time I’d had squash in a curry that actually tasted like squash.

  So: I know that I can visit Hapa Ramen to get ramen with perfectly cooked pork belly. The folks at Ad Hoc are making precise fried chicken. Now where am I going to find modern masala?

• 2011-08-24

  Subconscious Kindling

  In the first chapter of The Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch writes:

  The role of experiment and observation is to choose between existing theories, not to be the source of new ones.

  I have the most fun attacking questions with no satisfying theories in sight. So: how can we generate novel theories for a problem? It’s critical to recognize that the creation of a hypothesis demands a wholly distinct approach from its evaluation.

  Sometimes I uncover a critical idea by consciously exploring possible avenues, but more often, the realization flashes unbidden, with my attention elsewhere—like a lightbulb out of a classic cartoon. In these cases, I suspect my mind has been churning ceaselessly at some tree of possibilities beneath the surface of consciousness, projecting potential futures, searching my memory for relevant assocations, and evaluating the relevance of its findings before bubbling any useful notions up to my awareness.

  We can propel this part of our psyche along by seeding and predisposing it for this pursuit. By providing kindling. I like to imagine waking up little subconscious drone ants and sending them in every direction, hoping that one will return with something useful later. 

  I find that doodles, in particular, provide especially effective kindling—whatever that means in your field: instinctive improvisation at the piano, whiteboard sketches of systems in engineering, lists of assertions in writing.

  This process sounds much like brainstorming or mind mapping, but I don’t think it is, exactly: those are aids to conscious invention and organization. I’m suggesting something more like rubber duck debugging, a technique in which the simple act of explaining a problem in great detail induces cognitive dissonance during the weakest parts of the explanation.

  As a highly creative act, theory generation benefits from many of the same techniques that bolster artistic pursuits. Besides doodling, I’ve developed theories by exaggerating, by celebrating contrast, and by applying techniques from one field to another unrelated one. Whatever I can do to throw more wood on the fire.

• 2011-08-09

  Second-person self-awareness

  In advice given to prospective students, my former piano teacher, James Boyk, suggests:

  I’m not the teacher you want if you want to be passively turned into a pianist and musician instead of actively turning yourself into one.

  This statement so concisely and wonderfully conveys my position on education and self-improvement. Its attitude absolutely informs the celebration of cognizance in my writing here, but so far, my suggestions in that regard have been for personal action. There’s a role for others in self-awareness, too: my teacher might expect his students to take ownership of their education, but that doesn’t mean he mentors passively!

  The “1 on 1” meetings between employee and manager might strike you as a venue for second-person self-awareness, but these house tremendous opportunity for passivity: generally, the manager suggests how his employee might improve his performance. If only one could achieve mastery simply by following others’ instructions! All we’d have to do is carefully note what our bosses say in those meetings and then execute those directions.

  No, I suspect level-jumping changes originate from within. The teacher’s role, then, is to inspire, to provide objectivity, to develop the student’s taste and understanding so he can find his own weaknesses, and to make sure he can find the tools to defeat those weaknesses once he understands them.

  Many advocate personal professional journals: every day, write down what you’ve done, what you’re going to do tomorrow, what you could do better. I keep one, and I think they’re a good idea. But, to crib again from Jim, a second-person journal can provide incredible perspective and self-understanding. After every lesson, his students email him a detailed summary of what they’ve done, what they’re going to do, and reflections on the lesson’s contents. He then responds actively to the student’s self-analysis, calling out particularly effective or misguided ideas, and guiding their development. He’s published some examples about halfway down this page.

  We exchanged tens of thousands of words in this manner over two years, and I progressed all the more for it. And critically: this practice helped me learn to teach myself—the ultimate goal, since I would be eventually moving away. Now, I just wonder how I can apply this technique to my present pursuits.

• 2011-08-02

  Executing my soup program with excellence

  This past weekend I encountered the following sales pitch for an industrial food service product: “are you ready to execute your soup program with excellence?”

  Corporatese hilarity set momentarily aside, I derived inexplicable comfort from the vision of a mythical fast food franchise owner—ardent and passionate about every aspect of his business—who, reeling with the possibilities of this product, would engage and debate the salesman with wide eyes. Who might share his discovery with his friends (naturally: a set comprised mostly of fellow franchise owners), zealously contending the relative merits of competing industrial soup products.

  I don’t know if this owner exists, but even entry-level employees in my industry (software engineering) often behave like him. I suspect that’s due to—for better or for worse—the exaltation of purpose in one’s occupation: aspiring to do something objectively important, meaningful, or good during business hours.

  I remind myself often how absurdly, outlandishly fortunate I am to have chosen an occupation with a supply–demand curve that makes purpose a conceivable job amenity. If I’d chosen another path, I’d be forced to spend those eight hours a day with utter personal indifference to my success or failure.

  This celebration of purpose, though, comes with cost: if I think my work Matters with a capital ‘M,’ I’ve tied my self-esteem, temperament, psychic wellness to that undertaking. My day-time struggle with a nasty problem will seamlessly transition into detached night-time conversation, my frustrated, churning mind still back at my gray plastic desk under fluorescent light.

  I now suspect the real danger is in a false sense of purpose: in accepting its bleed into after-hours mentally and physically, yoking it to consummate responsibility, equating personal success with the project’s success—all while the work itself does not tally the imagined objective import, meaning, or good.

  Sometimes this behavior is easy to spot. I worry about new college graduates choosing a first apartment a block away from work for a convenient commute. I’m self-aware enough to sharply change course when all my conversations somehow return to software. But unstated attitudes and priorities are harder to catch.

  Having worked twenty-seven of the last thirty days, I’ve found I needed this brisk reminder: to attribute only as much meaning and intrapersonal attention to my work as to balance the purpose it delivers.

• 2011-07-26

  Vegetable stock: my secret lover

  After learning how to season food correctly, homemade stock is the single best thing anyone can do for his cooking. A stock is a liquid extraction of complementary flavors, a broad palette upon which sharper splashes of color may be painted.

  Stock is about balance and intensity of flavor. Making a mushroom sauce? If you were to just purée some cooked mushrooms, the isolated flavor would taste harsh, but add some stock and it will gain balancing sweet and vegetal notes. Those carrots need more flavor? Simmer them in stock instead of water: stocks are distillations of elemental flavors. They can be diluted or concentrated at will.

  I credit stock with much of my ability to impress in the kitchen. They’re as much cooking technique as they are ingredient. But, you keen, they’re too hard to make! They take too long! Nay. Sit down. Let me tell you about my favorite stock. I make it almost weekly, and it’s so easy that I am positively mystified why every cook in every household isn’t making this elixir regularly. Let me tell you about vegetable stock, and let me tell you how to make it.

  

  I made nasturtium soup this weekend, and the subsequent dinner’s conversation remained imperturbably anchored to how unbelievably tasty it was. Yet it consisted of nothing more than nasturtium leaves puréed with vegetable stock, with a nasturtium flower for garnish.

  Consider how else you might make this soup. You’ve got some nasturtium leaves: fine. How will you turn that into a soup? You’ll need to add some liquid, clearly. Looking around the internet, I see a minefield of misguided ideas. Steep the leaves? That will diminish their brightness. No, they need to be puréed uncooked. But with what? Cream? That will dull the leaves’ radish-y spice. Chicken broth or stock? The flavor of nasturtium is too delicate: you’ll overpower it. Thicken with potato? We don’t need filler here. Water? The result will taste thin and incomplete, lacking sweetness and umami.

  Purée the leaves with vegetable stock and it will taste like a garden. It will taste like it smelled when you went back there to pick the nasturtium. It will taste like sitting in a park in spring. And then the horseradish spice of the leaves will give you a hearty, well-rounded slap and bring you back to the kitchen.

  Making vegetable stock

  Get three large carrots, an onion, two leeks, and a bulb of fennel. Peel the carrots and onion; discard all but the white and light-green part of the leeks. Wash the leeks and fennel. Chop everything up finely and put it in a big pot with a few glugs of oil.

  Now you’re going to sweeten up these vegetables by cooking them over low heat. You don’t want to brown them—that will make a darker, richer variant of this stock, which should be bright and clean. Add a large three-fingered pinch of salt to draw out the vegetables’ juices and turn the heat to low. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about fifteen minutes. Taste an onion. It should be quite sweet.

  Add enough water to cover the vegetables, then add that amount of water twice more. Bring the water to a bare simmer and then let it cook for forty-five minutes.

  Strain the stock. That’s it. Store it in your fridge, but the stock will lose its brightness after a few days. That’s why, when America’s Test Kitchen set out to find the best grocery store vegetable stock, they concluded that all of them were unusable.

  This stock provides a mostly neutral foundation for flavor. You can adjust for its intended purpose readily and improvisationally. Want grassier flavors? Add half a bunch of parsley. Heartier? Brown the vegetables while sautéing them. Asian flavors? Add ginger, a little lemongrass, and star anise. And so on.

  How else you might use this stock

  Reduce the stock by half, add salt and some fresh lemon juice; and you will have the best vegetable broth you’ve ever tasted. Add a bunch of fresh, perfectly-cooked summer vegetables immediately before serving and you will wow people. One friend, tasting in disbelief, asked how much honey I added to make it so sweet. I told him “three carrots.”

  Make risotto with it. Cook pasta in it. Any vegetable which you would normally cook by simmering in water (carrots, potatoes, turnips, pearl onions…)? Cook them in this with a healthy dose of salt. Make a fantastic sauce for any dish by puréeing a complementary, perfectly-cooked vegetable with reduced stock. Season it and use it in place of store-bought chicken broth: that stuff tastes like industrial chemicals.

  Once you’ve got this down, no one will have to persuade you to learn about chicken, veal, pork, fish, and mushroom stocks.