Meet ye at the Rendezvous!

I've blogged before about the rendezvous that is the real reason why most musicians are willing to schlep the road--so that they can see one another again, and maybe pass along a little of the baraka to their students--and about the ingredients that fuel the rendezvous.

In this refrigerator shot: Kathy Morsell's hummus, local pita and tortillas, greens, homemade refritos, organic eggs, home-made yogurt. Black porter, IPA, quinine water, brown ale, a case of pinot noir on the back porch cooling, bottles of Black Bush and Laphroaig; looks like we're well-stocked to make our brothers welcome.

Welcome to the rendezvous.

Below the jump: Mr Man at his leisure.

Good peasant food

Dr Coyote's mock Ma-Po Tofu.

Was reminded of this by an article on a China Ex-pat blog I've been following since last spring's tour. Hadn't had Ma-Po Tofu in years--since Bloomington, anyway, but it certainly is dead-easy, and thus maintains my highest priority for a recipe: that I don't have to follow it, but can more-or-less make it up out of my head.

Start a pot of brown rice. Once at a boil, reduce to low simmer, cover tightly, and leave it alone, for at least 30 minutes.

Meantime, dice 1 block extra-firm tofu into 1/2-inch cubes. Fry over high-heat in 2-3 tablespoons of vegetable oil (olive oil will burn over high heat) with a splash of toasted sesame oil added. Continue until brown and crisped on the outside. About mid-way through the frying process, add a good splash of tamari--but have a cover handy, as at this temperature the tamari will sizzle and splash. Scrape the pan occasionally with a spatula to keep the tofu from burning onto the bottom. You can also add sliced celery, bamboo shoots, asparagus, pepper, or other crunchy soft vegetable.

Whisk together in a mixing bowl some combination of the following: 2 tablespoons tamari, 3 tbs of white wine, 2 tbs white or cider vinegar, at least 1 tbs brown sugar, 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp ginger, a good dose of chili powder, and at least 1 rounded tablespoon of cornstarch. You'll have to whisk hard to get and keep the cornstarch in solution.

Add the liquid to the tofu, stir well, and reduce heat to a simmer. Leave the lid cracked so the liquid can reduce. When cooked down to a thickened gravy texture, you're ready to serve the tofu over the rice. Garnish with ground almonds or peanuts.

Low trans-fats, relatively low-cal, relatively well-balanced (though you may experience a craving for dairy and/or sweets afterward), cheap as hell.

Good peasant food.

Day 33 (Round II) "In the trenches" (icy mofo edition)

Yes: Barack Obama is one icy mofo.

Beyond that: EOB, 8th week of school. We're now more than 1/2 way through the semester. First exams are done, first hurdles of student openness and responsibility are past, mid-semester grades go live over the weekend, because there is no real point in giving freshmen additional time to freak out and scream for mercy in a misguided attempt to pull a grade change--better that they encounter those grades after the window for changing them is past. As a colleague says, very wisely, "They need time to calm the hell down." Many kids, encountering a grade they don't like or which they know won't fly with Mom 'n' Dad, will fire off a scattershot pleading email, not necessarily because they think it will have good odds of success, but simply because it is so easy, in their on-demand mindset, to throw the plea against the wall on the off chance that it'll stick. It takes them so little effort that they'll do it just to play the odds.

Which is precisely why we ignore such "tear-stained emails" (Dharmonia's construction) until the cutoff time is past. In the unlikely event that there has been an error, or even less likely that we will grant a grade change due to extenuating circumstances of which we've previously been unaware, we can always do that after the cutoff date. And, in the much commoner instances of grade-change-requests which have absolutely no justification in any objective factual world, ignoring until past-deadline is a good way to just make the little bastards, as my colleague said, calm the hell down. If the grade-change request doesn't stick against the wall, they'll mostly just throw up their hands and belatedly accept the grade earned, as they shouldd have done earlier.

On the other hand, it seems like a good bunch this year: not too whiny, reasonably good attendance, reasonable good attention, pretty responsive to the jokes 'n' japes. Every year's intake of new freshmen is different and there's no real predicting in advance, but I think what we're seeing here is an eventual manifestation of our enhanced admissions criteria. That is not to say that kids with higher academic achievement are automatically going to be either (a) more talented or (b) more mature/focused in their work--that's putting the cart before the horse. To stretch the metaphor: the kids with higher academic achievement have already--before we get 'em--learned that a focused, mature, and disciplined attitude about work in turn leads to better results (and a better ability to take advantage of whatever talent the universe has given you). Kids with greater academic problems, problems already manifesting in secondary school, are slightly more likely not to have yet learned the self-discipline and work-ethic stuff. As I've said before, music undergrads tend to be way more conscientious and self-disciplined, simply because they've had to learn to be that way in order to learn to cut it on their instruments. Unfortunately, not all of those latter have learned to transfer the lesson from study of an instrument to academic study. We'll do the remediation, but the less remediation we have to do--and the less we have to fight our way through their uninformed skepticism about whether they need to accomplish what we set forth--the easier it is for everybody to progress effectively together.

This year's seems like a pretty good bunch.

Below the jump: the "Santa Ana" tomatoes that the proverbial Old Guy at the Garden Center said were "the on'y kahn'a termaters that'll grow in Wes' Texis." By God he was right, too: after three years of growing healthy vines but no fruits in the raised beds I built for Dharmonia, these are wonderful: thick-skinned, but with wonderful juicy and chewy innards: absolutely great for cooking, canning, or sauces. Below that, a counter-ful of veggies that I'll turn into various circum-Mediterranean eats: tiny pickling cucumbers, tossed in salt so as to draw out moisture and in turn make them receptive to soaking up the brine for refrigerator pickles; lemons that, with garlic and basil, will go into the Provencal cannelini (white beans)--lemon, garlic, basil, and pepper are the essential combination of flavors for southern French and some central Italian cuisines; broccoli to be sauteed in olive oil in which the chopped garlic on the right has previously been browned; the aforementioned tomatoes (great for sauce, but also--when still warm from the vine--great just slicked and drizzled with a little olive oil and salt); whole-wheat pasta to be dressed with a little garlic, oil, and grated romano cheese.

Good peasant food: cheap, healthy, low trans-fats, mostly-dairy-free. And no animals had to die for it.
Beyond that: prayers for the spirit of Daniel Green, who died entirely too young, for reasons not his fault. One of the very hardest parts of my job is to help young people cope with tragedy and heartbreak that happens for absolutely no good reason: to cope with the reality that the universe simply contains suffering and that we all, contrary to the "Good People versus "Bad People" paradigms of some traditions, are going to suffer. For no good reason.

All we can do is make the most/best of our time here.

Daniel certainly did.

Zen food

Watching How to Cook Your Life, a documentary with Zen cook Ed Brown--a lovely gift from Dharmonia--my hero and the author of the seminal Tassajara Bread Book and Tassajara Cokkery Book, books which I used to read and re-read, just for sense of calm that emerged from his commentary, his recipes, and the wonderful line drawings. I learned to cut vegetables from this book. I learned about Zen from this book. I learned about Shinryu Suzuki Roshi from this book.

My debt to Ed Brown is incalculable.

Here's tonight's menu:

Pre-heat oven to 390 degrees.

Spinach salad:
Wash, stem, and whirl the spinach (preferably fresh, preferably local). Pat dry with a piece of paper towel. Dress with either vinaigrette (1 part red wine vinegar to 7-8 parts high-quality olive oil) or (one of our commercial favorites) Annie's Green Goddess dressing.

Vegan quesadillas:
Heat olive oil in a large iron fry-pan. Add some kind of crumbled tofu, tempeh, "soysauge" or other textured vegetable protein and brown. Add 1 can black beans (without packing water). Warm gently, then add juice of 1/2 lemon and a good shot of garlic (and cumin if you want a more authentically Mexican flavor). Cook gradually until the balance of the liquid is reduced. Add a small quantity (maybe 1/4 the volume of the beans) of tomato sauce or paste. Cover and keep warm.

Warm 4 flour tortillas, either on a a warm cooktop or in another iron fry-pan set on "low" heat, until they are malleable.

Cover a baking sheet with a couple of the tortillas. Spread the beans/TVP on the tortillas. Slice, and layer-upon the beans, soy kase (e.g., soy-based cheese-like substance). Cover with the top layer of tortillas.

Bake for around 15 minutes, until top tortillas are crisped and beginning to brown.

Serve with a decent sauvignon blanc. Pretty nice.

Thank you Ed. Thank you Suzuku-Roshi. Thank you Shogan-Ji. Thank you Dogen Zenji.

Gassho.

Zen food

Years ago, I used to joke with one of the Geshes (teachers) at the Tibetan monastery in Bloomington--Dharmonia's teachers--that I would be a very bad monk but a very good tenzo. In Japanese Zen monasteries, the tenzo (head cook) was ranked third in the organization and was expected to manifest dharma-insight third only after the roshi ("old teacher") and the head monk, the latter of whom was responsible for the day-to-day operation of the community.

In part this is a practical recognition--in a cloistered community, issues of nutrition and of appealing food take on a heightened visibility and influence, able to materially advance or impede the community's work. But it's also a reflection of the very real--if less measurable--impact of bodily well-being in enhancing the ability to concentrate and reflect. Over the years, Dharmonia and I have had pretty extensive contact with several different cloistered communities: in addition our revered teachers and friends at DGTL, also the Sisters of Providence at St-Mary-of-the-Woods, a geriatric facility where the ancient nuns would creep around on their walkers so as not to ruin the takes as we recorded medieval music in their sanctuary; and the Franciscans of Chicago, the music of whose patron saint we recorded and for whom we raised money in the wake of the earthquakes at Assisi, and I can attest to the large role that good food played in their quality of life (plus, there's nothing like playing medieval music for people who get the Latin puns).

Similarly, some of the most extraordinary experiences of spiritual community I've ever encountered have been in the company of trusted friends and of food made with love. Years ago, we played the Taos Inn (not one of my favorite gigs--too full of the artsy rich and the scuffling servants for my taste), and then adjourned after the gig for an extraordinary Middle-Eastern after-hours feast cooked by Kathy Brown, a Zen practitioner and master cook. And there've been hundreds of others like that, down through the years, and I can attest to the powerful sympathetic magic and good mojo resulting from the combination of close friends and food consciously cooked with love. One basis for my dislike of most restaurant food is my conviction that, in most cases, it is not realistic to expect that somebody may $7.25 to cook at a Denny's or a Chili's should invest much positive energy in the food; why should they?

On the other hand, it is a fundamental reason why I like to cook for people I love or who need help. Every year at Thanksgiving, Dharmonia and I host what we think of as the "Orphan's Thanksgiving," when all the kids who are too broke or whose parents are too far are marooned in whatever town we teach in, and we invite them in and feed them. I do it with the Celtic Ensemble, with my grad students, and with band mates, and it nearly always positive energy.

It's also why I like to cook for myself and my wife.

Tonight was one of the more gratifying experiments. Dharmonia and I are back on the vegan tip (we're vegetarians for ethical reasons but at-home vegans for health), and that means a lot of beans, whole grains, raw food, and as much soy product (especially tofu) as the body can stand--for some people, not very much at all. For somebody who likes to cook world cuisines, it also means a lot of Central American, East Asian, and especially Mediterranean recipes, suitably adjusted with whole grains (brown rice, whole-wheat pasta, etc) and without dairy products or eggs. Some times it works better than others--shout-out to the Silk Road Cookbook right here--but tonight it was, dare I say it, top-notch.

Here's the run-down (I have no idea what to call any of these, as I made 'em up).

Ed Brown's perfect brown rice:
Wash 1.5 cups of brown rice until the water runs clear. Cover, in a lidded saucepan, with enough filtered water to cover the rice to about 1 thumb-joint's depth (don't ask why--just add enough water so that the rice is covered, and you can touch the tip of your thumb to the rice, with the water covering your thumbnail).
Bring to a boil (uncovered), cover, and reduce heat until the water is just simmering with the lid on tight.
Thereafter, do not mess with it: leave it alone, do not peek under the lid: simply let it cook until everything else is done. No matter how long it takes, the rice will only improve by being left alone.

Tuscan roasted green beans and tofu with slivered almonds:
Preheat oven to 400%
Sprinkle roasting pan with high-grade olive oil.
Cut 1 12-oz block of tofu into 1/2-inch cubes and arrange loosely in pan. Sprinkle with tamari and place in oven. Roast 15 minutes, until tofu is browned.
Meanwhile, wash and stem the beans. Combine olive oil, juice of 1 lemon, slivered almonds, garlic and basil, and toss beans in the mixture.
Add green beans to roasting tofu; sprinkle the remaining olive oil/lemon infusion over the combined beans and tofu.
Return to oven for another 10 minutes (do not overcook--beans should be bright green with touches of caramelized brown).

Mock-Moroccan (?) lentils with artichoke hearts:
Combine 3/4 cup dried green lentils (wash them first) and 1 cup water, with a splash of olive oil, in a tightly-lidded small pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce and simmer until lentils are soft (about 20 minutes).
Meanwhile, chop 1 small (10-oz) jar of pickled artichoke hearts reasonably small.
When lentils are soft, add chopped artichoke and about 3/4 cup tomato sauce, as well as basil and black pepper to taste, and bring to a simmer. Allow to cook down.

Don't ask me why these worked. But they did.

Departure: 8 days and counting.