Not technically an aji, as there are no aji chilies. This recipe is pretty malleable. Add scallions, more or less garlic, a tiny fiery hot red chili depending on your tastes. For creamier texture, add a 1/4 cup mayo, yogurt or milk and a little less cheese. Sometimes I see this sauce made with a bit of crackers or bread used as a thickener. If you can find real aji chili, either fresh or dried, or canned, make a paste, omit the herbs and just let the chilies do their thing.

1/2 cup queso fresco, feta or cotija
1 bunch cilantro, stems removed
1 tbsp mint, pineapple preferred
juice of a lemon
a touch of white vinegar or lime
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp sugar
4 tbsp olive oil
3 cloves garlic
1 large jalapeno, seeded, to taste

Add olive oil last and blend until very smooth. Done.

Serving options...
Grilled steaks or chicken.
Salad dressing. Add more vinegar and oil.
Peruvian Causa - crab and potato salad.

Success! A Two raw eggs gives this dish just the right consistency, bringing the salty, spicy, sour and creamy all together. We like our noodles a little spicier at this house, so the flavor of the mentaiko gets a little lost, but you can rinse the kimchi and lightly dry it. Perhaps I may try the saltier masago or tobiko to see if the flavor holds up better next time, plus substitute some actual cream. With two eggs, I'm finding the sauce is just about right. The mentaiko (or masago or what have you) definitely raises the flavors a bit. "New" Kimchi works best if you don't want to do any rinsing and a slight toasting of the seaweed gives the dish a bit of contrast.

The love child of this momofuku4two recipe originally taken from the Momofuku book/restaurant, and the Kimchi Udon from Ginji. I found this first iteration not as creamy as I would like, aka Momofuku version. However, the flavor was close to what I was after. I actually think there might be an egg in the Ginji dish like a carbonara, and not actually any mentaiko, but I will have to test that theory. As it is...
3 blocks of frozen udon
1/2 lb pork belly, sliced very thin
3 tbsp pork fat or butter
2.5 teaspoons kewpie mayonnaise
2 sacs mentaiko, skin removed
1/3 cup kimchi, packed; washed first if too spicy
pinch of salt
1 sheets of nori, sliced into very thin strips
2 green onions, diced

Heat a large pan or wok. Simultaneously heat water in a pot. Meanwhile, combine the mentaiko, kewpie, and kimchi in a bowl. Once the noodles go in the boiling water, very quickly start stir frying the pork belly slices. When the noodles are ready in 1-2 minutes, directly ladle the noodles into pan and remove from heat. Add butter and sauce. Toss till everything is well combined. Adjust seasonings or spiciness and serve immediately. Garnish with nori and onions.

Timing is key with this recipe. You want everything hot, the noodles slippery and chewy, the sauce emulsified, and the pork crispy. Reserve some noodle water in case you need more. Very fine pork slices match the texture of the dish better than thick. Bits of thin beef work as well. Freeze the meat for 20 minutes before slicing. 

After finishing first, Terminal World, by Alistair Reynolds and then, All the Windwracked Stars, by Elizabeth Bear, I realized that both novels are much of the same. Meaning... In the aftermath of apocalypse (or several, as in the case of Bear), on a foregone, poisoned planet (a pseudo Earth), humankind, or a mutated semblance of such, clings wretchedly to life in concentric rings around the epicenter of remaining civilization, a polyglot construction of such towering proportion, hubris, and deterioration, that any comparison registers only, of course, to Baruch's Babel. Reynolds and Bear tend to view their city (not the only, but the only one remaining) as a retreat from the devastation of man, though obliquely because such devastation is always wrought by man as god rather than mortal. God, Him/Herself, is reliably absent and his punishment is meted out as provident punishment.

Thus, Bear's world is haunted by fallen angels, models of perfectly flawed human beings and broken reincarnations of their former selves, condemned to wander the poisoned planet in a self imposed exile for their sins. In contrast, Reynold's angels live at the very top of the city, a symbol both of aspiration and oppression to their less fortunate peers at the bottom. The location of their aerie in the stratosphere both metaphorically and technologically mirrors the belief that evolution equals superiority equals the status quo. Both stories emphasize the disparity of the haves and have-nots from a determinist view of biology, location, and circumstance trumping personal endeavor. There's a top down approach to the devastation, recalling the totalitarian social programs of the Modernists gone awry, the imperfect results of a major social experiment gone out of control.

The inevitably scourging of both worlds is credited to the well intentioned but ultimately inadequate plans of those that decide (makers with small M), an apology of sorts for cultural hubris, as well shabby execution by the rest of us ignorant plebes. However, despite the allure of technological innovation and starting from square one to set things right, the narratives' main allure originates from an evaluation of what advancing socially and technologically actually means to us. Accordingly, I'm coming to see Steampunk (or in Bear's case, Steampunk-esque) as more than simple revisionist fantasy. Rather it is important that the fallout of our industrialization is conveniently wiped away and the memory of describing Asians as Oriental have been erased. Those holes in the narrative fabric of Steampunk act as gauge, measuring what "progress" actually means; which human programs have come out intact, why we ever needed them at all, and what we regret of our history. While there is a sense of willful nostalgia that exists like a layer of ornamental tarnish over the basic mechanism of Steampunk, these two authors have obviously picked up on the importance of that tarnish as an opportunity to evaluate social decay as malaise. If the victors get to rewrite history, they can never completely erase it. Steampunk gives the survivors an opportunity to address the interstitial space that cannot quite be explained away.

The premise of ABC's tv show Castle - intelligent yet winsome novelist turned NYPD homicide consultant to poker faced procedural hotty Kate Beckett - is laughable, but realism aside, this mystery crime series has just gotten better and better with age. While charges are partially true that the character of Beckett is an old routine, that Stanic plays her a little too stoic, that sometimes the romance falls short of drama, it is also true that the puppy dog and dominatrix relationship between our two leads works out just fine. Wisely, the writers have steered away from steamy narrative dissections between these two characters, and instead most of the sparks are funneled into the casual camaraderie of professionals on duty, may-hap with a little physical attraction but a lot of respect. Underlings, Esposito, the real man's cop, his goofy partner, Ryan, and spitfire medical examiner Parish, add to the dynamic of daily group banter.

Castle himself, gets the bulk of our attention, turning his relationships with supernaturally goody goody daughter and self absorbed actress mother into murder case resolving insights. Fillion, perfect in the role of charming rake, is a rarity, a handsome man with lots of personality, and the directors exploit his comic timing to fantastic effect in what is essentially a funny show about violent death. Accordingly, the writer know their strengths and give us fans a lot of service. For instance, Fillion's appearance in the space cowboy costume of one Malcolm Reynolds for the Halloween episode, and his steam-cyber arm on season 3, episode 4 "Punked" as in "steam-punked". In an installment where Castle conjectures that an antique bullet might in fact be evidence of a time travel murder, the writers have the victim driving a cosplay Delorean. Gotta love that attention to detail, the irreverent reverence to subcultural phenomenon, and the nicely wrapped package.

This Yale Press coffee table book features deliciously large photos that show design detail with great clarity. Considering the intent of the author to prove American designers have innovated as much as their international peers, Mears unfortunately describes garment construction textually when a simple pattern image would have illuminated the same point in a more concise way. Perhaps the publisher believed a lay audience wouldn't respond as well to flattened models, but some of the more architectural designs actively insist on a plan view. However, her narrative on how dressmaking and tailoring have evolved in response to a particular lifestyle is invaluable to an understanding of new silhouettes and approaches to American design. I especially appreciated the cross section of Charles James' Clover Dress.

Taken from a Fashion-Incubator posting regarding pattern frustrations.

"It is quite natural that we should adopt a defensive and negative attitude towards every new opinion concerning something on which we have already an opinion of our own. For it forces its way as an enemy into the previously closed system of our own convictions, shatters the calm of mind we have attained through this system, demands renewed efforts of us and declares our former efforts to have been in vain." --Arthur Schopenhauer

 "The traits of work that makes someone happy:

1. stretches a person without defeating him

2. provides clear goals

3. provides unambiguous feedback

4. provides a sense of control"
--The Economist as cited by Penelope Trunk.

Despite the moderator's attempt to steer the discussion towards a mundane dissection of undergraduate level humanities theory, New York Times writer, Cathy Horyn, managed to land a few gems on the topic of critical thinking and fashion during yesterdays installment of Stanford Humanities Department Arts Critics in Residence Series.

Horyn, breaking from dated women's wear reporting of fashion, ascribes her critical style to the demands of the designers themselves. In the 90's, supplanting the relatively easier to understand world of Vogue reportage that included heritage designers such as Yves Saint Laurent and Calvin Klein with his wildly accessible marketing campaign, was an era of "difficult" clothes, conceptual garments that virtually that insisted upon intellectually driven discussions post runway.

Some examples: Rei Kawakubo's "lumps and bumps" grotesquery, the Japanese designer envisioning the 21st century silhouette that referred to our mobility, phones and backpacks included; the Belgian avante garde; Chalayan's deconstruction of the body as habitat; the work of stylists delving into street and grunge, or the unique eye of Helmut Lang that diverged from New Look and classic Haute aesthetic manner of seeing. Such defiance of fashion mandate in favor of individuality, encouraged avant garde designers to explore self-conscious expression and process technical inquiries in public view as finished product.

"I want to be the real 21st century designer." --Alexander McQueen as related by Cathy Horyn.

Witness the late Alexander McQueen, who combined technology and modernity with the personal that resulted in an artist's rendering of madness and death. He applied these themes not only to the way garments were worn, but how they were constructed. Each collection begged dissection in terms of cultural meaning, not simply, "What is beautiful now?" but also "What is femininity?" And fruitful discussion required the same language used to understand iconic art pieces.

Elaborating on the way technology has transformed fashion writing, Horyn describes the liberation of a journalist from deadlines and page limits through the advent of blogs. The freedom of occupying a new conversational space with the reader - one in which the instantaneous nature of blogging performs a "stream of conscious[ness]" relationship between the meta muse of theory, current events, tv, and celebrity - offers up a kind of mirror for the ephemeral nature of fashion itself while engendering a similar brevity in content. Although people tell Horyn that they are hungry for depth and detail, publishers and marketers continue to argue that consumers want pictures and loath language. Such emphasis on speed and soundbytes, a new kind of working mode that hearkens back to the pre-institution of big media itself, has replaced classic narrative reportage and effectively diminished the kind of critiques that elevated the work of fashion in previous decades. Pressure to compose concise quips drives a quantitative over qualitative approach to talking about fashion.

On the implications of Twittering...

"Twitter is a haiku... I dont want to get too involved with Twitter. It kills your mind." --Cathy Horyn

To sum, Horyn stresses that the audience has grown wider, more diverse, and as such, the modes of writing must succumb to the variety of information consumption available. In this case, how does, I have often wondered, a professional reporter compete with the likes of Tavi and her bevy of bedroom commentators? Horyn stresses the primacy of basic journalism; gaining access to demonstrations of construction technique, gathering insight into ongoing and changing modes of production, picking out the best pattern makers behind the scenes, and reflecting on the relationship with potential constomers watching the show. An examination of Alaia's introspective obsession with ruching and how the master fits his clients, can shed light on the process of iterative design, application at a manufacturing level, and eventually modes of consumption.

But if information has become shallower, so too fashion as it becomes broader. Horyn points out that globalization tends to cater to globalization rather than regionalism and that despite the number and scope of proliferating runway shows in every country, western aesthetics continues to dominate. To aggravate the trend, designers have opened their runway shows as direct buy web shops, designing easy-to-fit, wearable clothes with wide reaching appeal. The paradigm of the couturier, the designer as artist, lapses into oblivion as a confluence of economic factors limits truly innovative creativity in the face of financial risk.

Over time, Horyn has come to define herself as anti-commerce, because the runway has become, or perhaps returned to being, a promotional tool rather than a forum for challenging ideas. But if fashion critique has declined, it's because fashion itself has become less challenging. The contemporary industry, she intimates, is consolidating and reductive, show over substance, veering away from the notion that clothes matter over presentation. We are full circle from what's new, to what's IN. Horyn admits that a good show still has relevance, the  ability to cultivate an aura of milieu as Galliano did with his "Twins" motif. She states that designers have a keen eye for when a difficult concept can be presented. But these are not those moments, and the days of McQueen "having something to say" with and about the staging a live stream show are perhaps over, or at the very least, out of fashion.

Horyn reminds us that for all its transient nature, the real impact of a fashion moment is something gradual and almost primeval, an evolutionary process of ideas that proliferate over time. For instance, how Raf Simmons redefined a generation of menswear, or how Margiela's minimalism has permeated our approach to modern dressing. Those insights are a blip glossed over by the propulsive forward thrust of technology. The reporter's task according to Horyn, is to take a mundane observation, and then scribe a cogent, contextualized response that helps us understand who and where we are.



On a personal level, I came to fashion awareness during the apparently halcyon days of high concept. Perhaps I didn't fully understand Rei Kawakubo's bumps, nor all of Chalayan's references at the time, but the aesthetic of the Japanese Avant garde, Ackerman's subdued constructivism, Australian-Japanese Akira Isogawa's beautiful cross cultural textiles, and McQueen's tortured elegance were instilled early on. Their sensibilities mirrored my awe and aversion to the Town and Country elitism of the old Haute, scrambled the body centric ideals to which my awkward teenage form could never compare, transcribed all the nascent rebellion and geeky glasses modern artsy-ness that I couldn't express. After more recent seasons of boredom -costume lady edwardian dressing, Project Runway, retro pastiche, return of the pretty, preppy, and wandering through the shops not falling in love with anything - Horyn made me realize my longing as a case of "It's not me, it's them". If not for my slim wallet and my no place to go, I would have slung a piece of avant art on my body long ago. As things lie, suitably professional or California beach bum defines what some would call a "wardrobe". Not a lot of designers sell avant on the rack. But behind all the t-shirts and jeans, a coveted bottle of Alexander McQueen fragrance is hidden in my closet. If his creations aren't actually advertised by my actual corpus, I ought to display that cracked heart in the open as a reminder to stick by my instincts and be brave otherwheres.

On losing weight, deconstructing and reconstructing perspective on fashion, inhabiting the body and ostensibly, participating in the decisions that are your life...

"John [Abroon M.D.], I got myself into the bakery section, I think I can find my way out." --Cathy Horyn in Fashion, the Mirror and Me

Random Notes:


2000 - McQueen in tandem with Chalayan. Apocalypse.
loss of individuality
constructed identity
buyer performs the clothes
death of the author

I made the magical cheesy puff bread constructed from choux dough from the Tartine baking book, which resulted in accolades among all testers. Remember to poke the puffs immediately after leaving the oven or they will go flat. Plenty copy pasta on the interwebs, so I won't repeat it here. Unfortunately, my camera is still having troubles and my picture of beautiful puff choux are nil. However, I can attest that the recipe is perfect and works even if you forgot to add the thyme, or your inexperienced sous chef pours egg wash all over the baking sheet. I can also attest that 3 year aged sharp cheddar cheese from costco works just as well as fancy gruyere. So there.

A little short on sauce for our taste, I added a bit extra garlic and salt and another can of crushed tomato puree. I also reduced the amount of parmesan in the meatballs as they were plenty rich enough for my yin yang twin. That said, I enjoyed this dish from Ina Garten a lot.

Meatballs


1/2 lb ground veal
1/2 lb ground pork
1 lb ground beef
1 cup fresh bread crumbs, crust removed
1/4 cup seasoned dry bread crumbs
2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 large egg, beaten
1/2 cup water
vegetable oil
olive oil


Place the ground meats, both bread crumbs, parsley, Parmesan, salt, pepper, nutmeg, egg, and 1/2 cup warm water in a bowl. Combine very lightly with a fork. Using your hands, lightly form the mixture into 2-inch meatballs. You will have 14 to 16 meatballs.


Pour equal amounts of vegetable oil and olive oil into a large (12-inch) skillet to a depth of 1/4-inch. Heat the oil. Very carefully, in batches, place the meatballs in the oil and brown them well on all sides over medium-low heat, turning carefully with a spatula or a fork. This should take about 10 minutes for each batch. Don't crowd the meatballs. Remove the meatballs to a plate covered with paper towels. Discard the oil but don't clean the pan.

Sauce

1 tbsp good olive oil
1 cup yellow onion, chopped
1 1/2 tsp minced garlic
1/2 cup good red wine, such as Chianti
2 28 oz can crushed tomatoes
1 tbsp chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

For the sauce, heat the olive oil in the same pan. Add the onion and saute over medium heat until translucent, 5 to 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 1 more minute. Add the wine and cook on high heat, scraping up all the brown bits in the pan, until almost all the liquid evaporates, about 3 minutes. Stir in the tomatoes, parsley, salt, and pepper.

Return the meatballs to the sauce, cover, and simmer on the lowest heat for 25 to 30 minutes, until the meatballs are cooked through. Serve hot on cooked spaghetti and pass the grated Parmesan.

A belated picture of candied pecans.

"Be your best self". --Darryl Philbin

"Imagine concentrating on a challenging modern painting that becomes just a little bit different every time you shift your attention from one detail to another, or try to impose a frame on a running river, making it a finite, enclosed work of art yet leaving its kinetic quality unsullied, leaving it flowing freely on all sides... It has been done. Steve Reich has framed the river." --Tim Page

She's put the spell on me, that Elizabeth Bear, with her tersely modulated prose and bitter lovemaking. All the Windwracked Stars, a cyber-norse apocalypse story, and the tragic prequel, By the Mountain Bound... Good Stuff! My favorite scene? Glistening toadstools in a barren land.

Also occult sorcery, wampyr, steampunk, and Victorian politics collide in New Amsterdam, a fetching novel that sets a stage of mystery and intrigue that leads to Seven for a Secret.

For anyone living down the shame of a fallen souffle or recovering from a disastrous holiday dinner; Sensible, funny, durable kitchen lessons from chefs who have gone through a whole lot to get where they are, creating the most amazing dishes at the top of the food chain through refinement after persistent refinement, and sometimes by grotesque accident.

'Such is the nature of the passionate cook, even at the fledgling stage. And, as Samuel Beckett so succinctly put it, forbidding us to dwell on our disasters or give up, "Try again, fail again, fail again better."'--Tamasin Day-Lewis.

Sure, there's only really one hot week out of the year, but of course the Bay Area would be home to some serious ice cream; Marianne's - chocolate malt with a buttermilk base, Mitchell's - halo halo flavor, the It's It oatmeal cookie and mint chip sandwich. For artisan flavors inside the foggy city proper, look to the salted burnt caramel at Bi-Rite or the infamous pepper(as in black peppercorn)-mint ice cream at Humphrey Slocombe, both crafted from a base of Straus milk ice cream that comes from Tomales Bay happy-California cows.

This Alastair Reynolds novel is rife with verbose exposition, redundant in presentation, weak on dimensional characterization, poorly paced, with an utter lack of satisfying concrete prose. In short, an overlong mess with a very well reasoned premise. Why am I still reading this bloated book? Well, Alistair Reynolds throws out compelling ideas with a whiff of noir and techno-dystopia sci-fi, and in this case steampunk, cowboys and angels are tossed around too, but without any overly reverential genre aping. The effect is a new flavor of cybershake for our modern times and sciences with a big melancholy payoff in the end. So, I continue, sighing over each sentence begrudgingly, wishing Reynolds would develop a better command, or at least more of an interest in his words as he does in exploring his immense technical knowledge and imagination.

On the cover, this image of the spire city really helped me to understand what the world was about, how it was constructed, etc. A rare confluence of illustration and story. Although, some niggling part of me feels that I shouldn't need the picture for explication purposes.

"These are the last things. A house is there one day, and the next day it is gone. A street you walked down yesterday is no longer there today. Even the weather is in constant flux. A day of sun followed by a day of rain, a day of snow followed by a day of fog, warm then cool, wind then stillness, a stretch of bitter cold, and then today, in the middle of winter, and afternoon of fragrant light, warm to the point of merely sweaters. When you live in the city, you learn to take nothing for granted. Close your eyes for a moment, turn around to look at something else. Nothing lasts, you see, not even the thoughts inside you. And you mustn't waste your time looking for them. Once a thing is gone, that is the end of it."

Suicide groups, melamine milk, middle class apathy, vicious hunger, despair and disillusionment; approximations of these current events are both described and foretold in Paul Auster's seemingly timeless, placeless depiction of human society gone to shit. In the Country of Last Things has the raw atmosphere of Jerzy Kowalski's Painted Bird, highlighted by Auster's signature symbolic play, but the book skews experiential rather than intellectual.