I've fulfilled one, at long last. And I was able to do this in my own neighborhood with a woman I just met. They call her: Marla. She works on Lake Street. "Works magic", is more like it! After a lifetime searching for some sufficiently hot Indian, I was led to her. You see, Marla is a favorite of one of my good friends who assured me that Marla could make it happen. Now, I have always been skeptical about this sort of claim. Since my work on subjective experience extends from color to taste, I understand that in the great heirarchy of the senses, many experts have concluded that "the sense of taste may be the most subjective of matters." (See, Dennett, D 1988: "Quining Qualia," Korsmeyer, C. 1999: "Making Sense of Taste," and Odom: "Subjective Experience: Representationalism, and the Explanatory Gap," forthcoming????)
Enough "shoptalk". This is what matters and why: Restaurants often sensationalize their own capabilities at preparing "hot and spicy" dishes by emblazoning the menus with red chili pepper icons. The cute, but seemingly threatening, little peppers are tagged to item descriptions, in multiples, to indicate the ascending degrees of heat available from the kitchen. They have always seemed overtly vague to me. I'm sure, at some point, we all have paused to think about how hot a "4 chili" item really could be. But, while I'd prefer some reliable quantification in the form of scoville ratings, perhaps to be overseen by the state's bureau of weights and measures, with certification - something like the octane levels inspected each year at the gas pumps - I know, it just ain't gonna happen. So, other than the very remote possibility of anything like that happening, we must rely on waitstaff to express heat in gestures: wild eyes, feigned gasping for air while fanning mouth with hand, etc. Or they attempt description in the limited vocabulary for expressing heat in terms of degree, i.e., "really, really, etc., hot". (Such expressions make as much sense as the pepper clusters on menus.) The alternative descriptions are made by ostension to similarly vague notions, such as "hotter than Mexican hot and wasabi hot, but not quite Thai hot." (I'm guessing "Hastings, MN hot" is best kept a local secret, Right? Sshhhhh!) All of this means that, on such matters, you cannot trust the judgment or descriptive capabilities of others. You'll only know how hot the food is when you try it. -- Until, now. Not only did I fulfill my "burning desire" with Marla, she gave me a new comparison adjective; she coined a new superlative as she described to me how most restaurants can't even approach "Marla's hot". HOT - HOTTER - MARLA'S HOT! (And I like the double entendre, too.) All that I can offer, by way of clarifying "MH", is to say that I was, as I seldom have been in my life, about anything, impressed. I submit that her restaurant's slogan, "7 days without curry, makes one weak!" might be augmented, with "7 days of Marla's hot, makes one weak - and there's nothing wrong with that!"
Here's a video tip for eating hot food. Should you imagine that I am overstating my case and order your curry Marla's hot, then have regrets, I'll be at the next table wating for your left-overs. But I will not hand you an ice-cream.
Comming soon: A discussion of "heat mediocrity", chefs who, like some MD's, don't take you seriously, and a challenge for people who read product descriptions on labels. N.B. Since I post infrequently, and because I shudder at the thought of sending any sort of message to everybody on "my list" or whatever they call it, signing on to this blog, I believe, will entitle you to "notices" of new postings. No guarantee that the notices won't bear a resemblance to your garden variety "spam", but I promise (for now) not to write anything about discount meds, or dates "waiting just to meet you!"
A couple weeks ago City Pages published a terrific article about supporting family farms by signing up for summer produce. I learned all about the author/accomplished chef's experitse at sautee-ing things in garlic and olive oil. Also, she HATES: turnips, collards, squash, and celery root. I had to write to thank her. A letter to the editor of City Pages: Dear Editors, I realize that not everyone can be Dara Moskowitz, but the author of last week's piece was more than a little off the mark. Next time you are looking for someone to write about fresh, locally-grown produce, perhaps you can find a writer who is more 'accomplished' than a culinary troglodyte with the palate of an imbecile. No, wait. That's a bit harsh. I live with a troglodytic imbecile and, unlike your columnist, he likes squash, turnips, and collards. And he's only 3. And he's a CAT. Whatever the problem your "accomplished chef" has with her own food aversions, it would have been nice if she had kept those to herself and had instead offered some information about fresh greens and vegetables that didn't have to be drown in oil and garlic.
I wasn't disappeared! Though the government have legislated themselves permission to deem undesireables "enemies of the state," and take us (the undesireables) into custody, I wasn't. Maybe they haven't caught up to me yet, despite having the NSA read my blog. It must be my secret code formed entirely out of food terminology. Ha! I learned something this weekend. There is a direct correlation between Happy Hour(s) and the amount of money I spend when attending. First, let me say I've never actually found "Happy Hour" in Minneapolis to be anything more than "Moderately Pleasant Chunk-o-Wasted Time, Nearly 4 hours in Full." So much for false advertising and my gullibility. That said, there is a parallel between the Happy Hour(s)/Cash Vacuum and Low Fat or Sugar Free food/weight gain. See if this example follows the rule: I go with a friend for sushi. We arrive at 6 o'clock and are told that Happy Hour ends at, hmmm 6! We proceed to look for another establishment in which to partake of the, let's call it, "Irritated and Willing to Entertain the Possibility of 'Happy Thoughts' Hour." No such luck. We stop for a beer to kill time before another sushi joint. With still a full hour to the start of IWEPHT hour, we decide to order some items that will not be featured in the Happy Hour Specials. Lo and behold, we trounced that wait and Happy Hour arrived just for us to get 2 dollars knocked off the only item we could still stomache after gorging and throwing down $40 each. Moral of the story: Eat at home, think about all the money you've saved. This makes me happy. Should this strategy fail you, as it often does me, check out ThriftyHipster
Man alive! I heard about this on the radio and thought, "So good to live in Minneapolis where law and order are a priority." Right? If that sounds like sarcasm, check out the latest exploits of the feds in their vigilance protecting those among us who would flout the law and their "own personal safety" to engage in illegal activity. Oh, c'mon! After that crack down on the 'spelt' bread (wink, wink) sold over at the French Meadow, it's good to see that not even Surdyk's is above the law. From what I gather, this is all to protect us from ourselves. After all, there must be a good reason to keep people from buying and consuming things as they damn well please. $$$$? Next installment: How this would have gone down Philadelphia.
If I recover from being a shut-in, it will be thanks to that old Minneapolis stand-by Eli's. It's a classic, though it doesn't any longer feature the charms of Angie. You gotta love a surley pregnant girl who takes your order by pulling up a bar stool and moaning, "Christ, what's it you guys want now?" then carrying back a tray of beer balanced on her belly, and presumably on the head of the kid-to-be. That oughtta be a requisite pub feature. Now, having ventured out to Philly last week, the "grass-is-always-greener" phenomenon struck me. I realise that the best crowd in Philly were displaced from the old "Northstar Bar" after its closing. Most of them were in attendance at this fabulous wedding I'd been invited to. So I got to see them assembled like a reunion of the displaced. I was shocked to find that they had scattered to new locations rather than moving en masse to another bar. Right? The closing of both the old Northstar on Popular and China Rice House on Walnut Schtreet means I'll be forced to find new haunts in that city - well, other than my hauntiest: Bonner's. Going to Bonner's was really just like sitiing in the extra living room I always wanted, only with more beer. So my suggestion is that Minneapolis bar owners "get their hand off it" already and open a real joint with a horseshoe bar. Then hire a real staff who'll pour my drink before I sit down, insult me, and offer some gossip about shenanigans from the last night's attempt to close on time. Oh and a couple of retiree cops who come in at 1:00am with fresh hot pretzels in a paper bag would be nice, too. UPDATE: A couple weeks ago, I stopped in to The Bulldog and before I sat myself down on the stool, there was a Jameson with beer chaser on the bar. Who knew? I felt like Sally m.f. Fields: "They like me! They really like me!"
There's a short piece (scroll down to "Evil Tines" in the most recent Smithsonian, May 2006) about forks. Certainly, it's short- it could not have been an epic tom about forks. Or mightn't it? Says that forks only became commonplace starting about 200 years ago. Prior to that, some kind of church dictates were in opposition to "forks." (And again, I say, "Church, FIND A CAUSE.') The article goes on to describe how forks were "a European affectation" not embraced in America until 1820 or so, when Rockefellers, Carnegies and Morgans made them fashionable. -You just know they wanted to keep the help in thrall and guessing, mh-hmm. Ultimately, there were something like 150 different varieties of forks included in a single dinner service flatware pattern. As I see it, the Smithsonian article is not inconsistent with processes described by philosopher Carolyn Korsmeyer, whereby styles and habits of the "elite" are augmented once the masses aquire them. Korsmeyer describes how pieces of meat in the time before refrigeration were a luxury, even for royalty. When the common people (the-m-asses) began to include meat at meals, the well-to-do found it fashionable to dine on aged meat. (Not dried, mind you. This was meat left to sit, lying around in the summer: rancid-ass, skeevy, measly meat is what they ate!) They could afford to have enough of it. They didn't have to eat it all at once.* That'll show them peasants! So, back to forks: Then, in 1925, Hoover had to go and ruin that separation of fork users from opposable-thumb and prehensile-tail gruel eaters by citing a silver shrotage and limiting total pieces in any pattern to 55. (IMHO, that 150 forks-assortment would make for good wedding gift revenge! - You'd be able to pick out the set of four "Belgium Octagon Screwpine Leaf remover Forks", and though suffering the cost, you'd relish the fact that the happy couple would need to be lucky enough to receive a set of welder's tongs, masks, and asbestos gloves among their gifts in order to smelt and make practical use *your* lovely selection. Too bad, if they didn't have those items listed on the registry.
