Restaurant at the end of the Universe

Yesterday, for my forty-second birthday, my parents treated me to dinner at the Restaurant at the End of The Universe. I’ve wanted to go since I was a kid. Milliways, of course, is the Restaurant at the End of The Universe, an extraordinary tour de force of son et lumiere and haute cuisine on an island electromagnetically anchored just a half-hour before the heat-death of the Universe.

And that’s where we had lunch yesterday. For my forty-second birthday.

To say that this is impossible is to sort of miss the point. There are many things about Milliways that are impossible — its physical and temporal locations, to name two. The astronomical cost of the food and drink, for another. The discreet, almost unmarked, but very stylish entrance on a side street in New York City leading directly into a startling display of tourists, celebrities you’ve never heard of, and a remarkable staff of waiters, busbeings, hosts and hostesses. The sommelier speaks Bocce. Fluently. Not like it’s a second language to him.

Drinks— a pan galactic gargle blaster for me, swirling and firey like a supernova.

The first course? Jamon, or ham, from two completely different worlds: one lean and red, formerly thick muscle; the other pink and beribboned with pure white fat, artfully arranged on slate — paired, through the generosity of my co-diners, with a wild mushroom soup and a tarte of bacon and creme fraiche. Second course: a stew of sorts, made with bacon and shrimp, and a froth of cream and sea urchin from some mysterious ocean on an enigmatic planet. My traveling companions had duck — which was very well-behaved as it introduced itself; and a slice of tenderloin from a genteel cow who nevertheless insisted on being paired with a purée of eggplant.

Dessert: our waiter, never having officially determined who the birthday being was, brought us four desserts: a slice of chocolate tart so elegantly laid out on a plate, it looked more like the seal of an angelic being than a food. A chilled cheesecake served with strawberries and ice cream, in which the cheesecake was so artfully served that it was impossible to tell what was cake and what was ice cream until plunging one’s spoon in. Tiny cookies from a destroyed culture on some distant planet orbiting a third-rate sun, served with dipping sauces made of ice cream, fruit, and burnt sugar. And a birthday “cake” consisting of three thin layers of chocolate, each the thickness of a sheet of paper, with pâtés of pistachio, mango, and caramel holding them together. A single raspberry the color of a dying sun supporting a single candle.

An impossible meal, in an impossible place, with loving friends: life, the universe…

Everything.

Welcome in, 42.

Levain — second try

Levain — second try
Originally uploaded by anselm23.

Levain, the holy of holies of French country bread, is made by
harvesting yeast from organic grapes eight to ten days before you
begin baking. Once baked, it yields a chef, or starter, which is used to make successive versions of the same bread. Mine is a little flatter than I intended. I did not renew the wild yeast with new yeast. I think that the bread itself still looks extraordinary. I wish I had retained more of the bubbly liquid that makes the chef, but it goes rancid fairly rapidly. In the meantime, I have six starters waiting for attention, in addition to this one — who provided a daughter of her own.

I haven’t tried it yet. But it is simply the most beautiful bread I have ever made.

Review: The Omnivore’s Dilemma

The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan, is a history of four meals. Pollan, a food writer, records his encounters with four meals, and the food chains that brought them to his mouth.

The first, a McDonald’s meal for four consumed in a moving automobile, recounts the rise of the industrial food web… cheap industrial #2 corn, CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), lethicin and xanthan gum and high fructose corn syrup, and the industrial-agricultural system that brings that food to his car. The second meal, a conglomeration of organic edibles from Chile, Argentina, California and Florida, demonstrates the marriage or organic values to industrial technique, and the creation of bagged spring-mix salad. The third meal, made of ingredients raised on the ultra-organic, ultra-local Polyface Farm near Charlotte, VA, illustrates the story of slow food and the local food movement. The fourth meal, a collection of ingredients hunted and foraged from Pollan’s wider neighborhood in northern California, displays the potential of a Pleistocene-style hunter-gatherer meal where a story underlies each ingredient and each dish at the table, and all the food is consumed with deep consciousness of its origins.

Ancient Recipes: Snicker Doodle

Among the things that’s been littering the top of my dresser for years is a recipe card labeled Snicker Doodle, in my grandmother’s handwriting on one of her personalized recipe note cards. Mom thought she had the cards made in the 1980 for Mimi, who is my father’s mother. However, the recipe is almost certainly older than that.

I tried making it this morning, and I made it with 4 tablespoons of butter rather than shortening. The result was something more like coffee cake than the bar-cookie I remember, but it was still delicious. Herewith, an ancient Watt family recipe, deliriously simple to make.

Snicker Doodle

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup milk
• 2 cups flour
• pinch salt
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 4 tablespoons shortening (melted)

1. Beat eggs. Add sugar to eggs.
2. Mix dry ingredients together.
3. Add to egg mixture alternating with milk.
4. Add shortening.
5. Mix well.
6. Pour into 8″x8″x2″ greased pan.
7. Sprinkle top with 1/4 cup sugar & 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon & 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg on top of batter.
8. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes. Serve warm.

Comments
For a variety of reasons, this first recipe reproduction didn’t quite turn out as expected. It was more like a coffee cake than a cookie. I didn’t use shortening (presumably Mimi meant Crisco? I’m not sure), but butter instead. The more serious problem was that because of a school duty I had to take it out of the oven a few minutes early; thus the center was undercooked and the whole cake-like feel to it collapsed into an overly doughy center. Since I used a glass (Pyrex) pan and not metal, the butter in the batter was enough to keep it from sticking to the sides of the pan. If you try this recipe, please comment and let me know the results.

Bread Recipe

I’ve made bread for a bunch of people this holiday season, and people are always amazed. Frankly, it’s not that hard to make good bread. Your first three or four loaves always come out weird, and there are some tricks to making loaves that look pretty, but mostly it’s sinning boldly that produces good bread.

At the moment, I’m using a version of Mark Bittman’s fastest yeast bread, which I usually double, as follows:

3 cups of white flour
3 cups of whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons honey or sugar
4 teaspoons of instant yeast (incidentally, buy it in bulk from a Whole Foods or co-op… not Fleishman’s)
2 teaspoons salt (Morton’s or fine granuled salt, not heavy sea salt or blocky salt)
2 cups coolish-tepid water
1/4 – 1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 – 1/2 cup something (flaxseed meal, cornmeal, oats, hempseed, etc.) [optional]

1. Combine the dry ingredients. Stir them together, so that the Add the water all at once, followed by the olive oil immediately. Mix them thoroughly in the bowl until you have a slightly sticky concoction that grabs your hands in worms or ropes.

2. Dump remaining flour and the lump of dough out onto a clean countertop. Knead the ball — push the ball flat with the base of the palms of your hands, and then fold the back half on to the front half. Give the ball a quarter turn, and repeat. Do this for 3-10 minutes until all the flour is worked into the ball. Add water or flour by the tablespoon if the mix seems either too dry or too wet. It shouldn’t be either, really, but there’s always the weather to consider when making bread.

3. Divide the dough in half. Shape each dough-mound into a dome-shape (called a boule) or a log-shape (called a batard). Boules cook better in this recipe, but batards have a Francophilic, phallic charm that’s hard to avoid. Work the seams of the boule or batard onto the underside, and place on a cookie sheet or pizza stone (I use a cookie sheet). Cover the bread dough with a damp towel, and put it in a warm place in the kitchen. This is important. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

4. Go do something else for 15-20 minutes. Don’t peek under the towel. This is also important.

5. Uncover the dough, which should be larger by a quarter to half again its original size. Brush the top of the dough with water, whisked egg yolk, or not as you please. Dust with coarse salt, sesame seeds or poppy seeds, as you please. Put the dough on its cookie sheet or pizza stone into the oven and cook for 15 minutes – no more! Turn the oven down to 350, and cook for another 30-40 minutes depending on how irregular your oven is. Mine is electric and relatively new, so it’s reliably 30 minutes every time. Let sit for 10-12 minutes cooling on a rack or on a non-hot surface in the kitchen after you take it out of the oven.

Sliced bread is a horrific invention which should not be visited upon homemade bread. Slice one piece at a time and eat it as appropriate to the number of guests. Enjoy!

Coventry Farmers’ Market

Coventry Farmers’ Market
Originally uploaded by anselm23.

I got to ring the opening and closing bell at the Coventry Farmers’ Market this past Sunday. Mostly because I had the biggest voice among the people on staff that day. It was fun.

It was the heirloom tomato festival this weekend. A tomato variety can be considered heirloom if it has been cultivated for more than 50 years. These tomatoes rarely travel well, and have to be eaten within a day or two of being picked; usually within hours of being picked is much better.

Buy local produce. It’s better for you, and it tastes better too. Plus you get to meet your neighbors at the market, and it’s a great place for quiet activism.

July Full Moon Dinner

The first Full Moon dinner was such a success, we’re going to try doing it again on July 29, only this time with fire spinning and other celebratory-type stuff. And this one may be a birthday party for someone or other, too.

Please save the date, if you can.

Salt roasted Pecans

8. Salt-roasted Pecans
Originally uploaded by anselm23.

Here’s another recipe: Salted Roasted Pecans.

The recipe is over on Flickr, but the essential process is this:

1) using a cookie sheet with a raised edge, drizzle about 2 tablespoons of olive oil onto the sheet.
2) add about a tablespoon of butter, roughly divided into 8 pats to distribute around the cookie sheet.
3) spread a pound of unroasted pecans or other nuts — it works great with walnuts and cashews — on top of the olive oil and butter.
4) Add salt. I use coarse sea salt, but YMMV.
5) Bake in the oven for about 5 minutes at 300 degrees F.
6) Open the oven after five minutes and stir the pecans around on the cookie sheet, to coat them in the melted butter, olive oil and salt.
7) Cook another five minutes.
8) After they have a chance to cool, pack them away in small containers… because otherwise you’ll eat a pound of them in one sitting.

Friday Full Moon Dinner

Don’t have plans this Friday? Missing the countryside?

Come to a Full Moon dinner and art-time at my place this Friday… food is strictly pot-luck.  Bring a journal for writing in, drawing supplies, painting stuff, whatever makes you happy.  Shall we say, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.? It is possible that there will be fire-spinning and poi later at Leah’s place, about twenty minutes further into the wilds of Connecticut, afterward. 

Worcester readers should know that I am about a 40-minutes-to-an-hour drive from Java Hut.

Please contact me through comments or off-list to RSVP…

Cover Broccoli

Cover Broccoli
Originally uploaded by anselm23.

This is one of the photos in a brief, 5-photo essay explaining how I make garlic-sautéed broccoli. It’s simple, easy, and short. It takes me about 5-7 minutes to make.