Another form of direct deposit

My landlord just dropped off a whole roast duck in exchange for some editing work I did for him a few nights ago.

I've never been paid in duck before.

I think I could get used to this.

The Egg

Marcel from Top Chef always irked me, but that didn't stop me from poring over his biography on the Bravo website with a voyeur's delight. Initially I found his response to the "What is your go-to ingredient?" question unspeakably pretentious: "The Egg." With Its Unnecessary Capitalization and All. But it stuck in my head. Months later, I'm still thinking about it.

The Egg.

I must give the man some credit. It's true. The Egg is fascinating. The Egg is also mind-numbingly versatile. The Egg strides purposefully from breakfast to lunch to dinner and onwards to dessert with ease. The color, the flavor, the textural possibilities ...and let's not forget that shell. Eggshells are both works of art and feats of engineering. (Although I have not yet read it, Michel Roux's book apparently does great justice to this ingredient.)

Yes. The Egg.

Recently we had too many eggs rapidly approaching their expiration date. Hard-boiling is always a solid way to buy some time, of course, and Chinese tea eggs are a great twist. They are only marginally more complicated than the usual recipe, which in my family goes something like this after an unfortunate incident a few summers ago:

"Drop eggs in boiling water. Try not to forget and go out for ice cream sundaes, only to return hours later to find a scorched pot, a shrieking smoke detector, and every kitchen wall pasted with exploded egg bits."

And Chinese tea eggs produce far more striking results:

I like to eat these eggs straight up, with just a bit of salt. I think this complements the admittedly subtle flavors that are imparted by the boiling liquid. You'll miss out if you dose each egg with a tablespoon of mayonnaise and a hit of paprika. Just keep it simple.

Chinese Tea Eggs
4 eggs, previously hard-boiled
3 bags black tea (I just used PG Tips; loose tea is fine too)
2 T. soy sauce
4 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 t. Sichuan peppercorns (optional)
A little orange peel (optional)
Approx. 3 cups of water

Use the back of a spoon to lightly crack the shells of the hard-boiled eggs. This creates the marbling effect that will emerge later. Place eggs in pot and add all ingredients except water. (If you are using tea in bags, open bags and empty tea leaves directly into pot). Add water to cover. Bring to boil, then reduce heat and simmer gently, 1.5 to 2 hours. Remove from heat and let stand in liquid one more hour. Remove eggs from liquid, allow to cool, and peel. Rinse them if they are covered with tea leaves, and serve.

Simple foods that stretch

Recently I made two dinners that magically multiplied into many days' worth of hearty, satisfying meals. This came in especially handy last week when my paycheck got lost in the technological wilderness, and my rather ponderous San Franciscan rent check and car payment were due on that very same (un)payday and ...oh my goodness, is it really possible to have NEGATIVE money in your checking account? Indeed it is. Enter the jook.

1) Rice Porridge (a.k.a. Jook/Congee)

I have only passing familiarity with jook. I can count on one hand the number of times I've eaten it, but after SueAnn blessed me a delectable spoonful of her lunchtime jook--filled with succulent, juicy prawns--I became mildly obsessed. For two weeks I thought about jook. I tried to get it at a local dim sum place, but they were out. I considered paying a visit to the adorably named Jook Time restaurant near my house, but I was too lazy to walk that far. Meanwhile, I pestered SueAnn with questions: what time of day should I eat it? What can I add to it? What's the difference between congee and jook?

Finally I just decided to make it myself. One cup rice, 8 cups chicken broth, and a scattering of star anise, ginger, dried mushrooms, and tangerine peel. Bring to boil; simmer one and a half hours. Insert in mouth. If you want to glam it up, add some chicken, duck, shrimp, abalone (SueAnn's favorite), or anything else you want. Jook can take it. The recipe above makes enough for a large family, or one girl with limited funds working at home for a week. I am also told that this is the thing to eat when you're sick.

(Incidentally, I like to tease SueAnn about just how many Korean dishes seem designed with illness in mind. "Don't order that!" she warned us about a soup on the menu at lunch recently. "It's really bland, only good if you have a cold or something." "Jeepers, how many sickroom dishes does one culture need??" I asked. There's even a special word for generalized aches and pains: mumsal. A great addition to the lexicon for a whiner like me.)

2) Pasta
A few weeks ago, my friend James came to visit and returned from City Lights bookstore with a copy of the Chez Panisse Pasta and Pizza cookbook. I fell in love; I had to have it. The recipes still seem completely current and fresh, despite the fact that the book is almost as old as I am. The mark of a good cookbook indeed. Inspired, I dragged out my extremely-infrequently-used Imperia pasta machine and spent a happy afternoon cranking out black pepper fettuccine. The bandaid-sized strip of dough in the photo below should give you some idea of what a novice pasta fabricator I am.

I was amazed at the transformation: a fist-sized amount of flour and one egg became four hearty servings of pasta with mushroom cream sauce. Add a bit of tiny, tender asparagus and lemon, and dinner is served.

Love stinks

Once a week we usually get takeout from our favorite Korean restaurant, My Tofu House. Over the months, I really have come to consider it MY tofu house, despite the fact that we've never actually dined in the restaurant. It's always insanely crowded, so the alternative -- takeout and Seinfeld re-runs at home -- seems much more appealing.

Typically I order kimchi soondubu, a fiery red broth filled with mounds of soft, custardy tofu and bits of beef or pork. Randy gets the sweet, mild beef bulgogi, some of which I then steal from the container and add to my giant bowl of soup when his back is turned.

Our order always include four banchan (side dishes). My Tofu House likes to keep it simple with a selection of pickled cucumbers, kimchi, mung bean sprouts, and radishes. They also throw in one stick of melon gum per person; I have no idea why.

A few weeks ago, however, we noticed that the customers dining in the restaurant were being treated to an ENTIRE FISH as part of their tableside banchan selection. The fish had never appeared in our takeout order.

I wanted that fish.

The thing is, My Tofu House is perennially noisy and crowded. Add to this the fact that most of the staff speaks very little English. I'm not a shy person, but I just couldn't bring myself to grab the arm of our check-out girl and demand that she wrap up a fish for us in between carting around approximately 400 banchan dishes, snipping meat, cracking eggs into soups, seating customers, and running credit cards.

But I wanted that fish.

As the weeks passed, the mysterious banchan fish became an almost mystical dish, out of my grasp and thus all the more desirable. In my head, accessing that fish began to symbolize something much greater. It stood for all those delectable foods that forever remain untranslated and enigmatic on the menus of my favorite Asian restaurants, available only to those customers that can read Thai, or Mandarin, or Japanese.*

Last week Randy went to pick up our order. "Get me a fish!" I called out jokingly as he headed into the rainy night.

When he returned, I asked, "Fish?" Really, I was just teasing. The responsibility for fish procurement should have rested on my shoulders. He doesn't even like fish.

"Check the counter."

And there it was! My fish, gleaming in a fresh layer of Saran wrap, speedily filling our kitchen with the aroma of ...well, a big, smelly fish.

In our house, that's what love smells like.

*Listen to a funny NPR piece about this phenomenon.