Are there really any two families in the United States that prepare their tuna fish the same way? I would beg to assert that the composition of tuna fish salad is one of the most beautiful regional variations there is. Some people are pickle devotees. Some people swear by bare minimalism.

This is how we make tuna in Pencilhaven:

1. One can tuna, usually the more expensive stuff, white albacore, but I am less picky in this regard than David, other than I always get water-packed, not oil-packed. My childhood brand is Starkist.
2. Two tablespoons mayonnaise, not, I repeat not Miracle Whip, though David would use the nasty crap if he could get away with it. I usually use Best Foods, a.k.a. Hellman’s if you are from some other place in the country.
3. About 1.5 tablespoons pickle relish. The standard American kind: sweet-tangy, with bits of pimento or whatever the red flecks are. I find this to be an essential ingredient in my world: I love the sweet and crunch it adds.
4. A dash of cumin. This is very Pencil-specific.
5. Cracked black pepper.

What I find intriguing is how intensely people react to different tuna formulae. “Oh, god,” I’ve heard a friend say. “Pickle relish?! Foul!”

How does your tuna roll?

Tags: cooking, Food, recipes

Clamor, clamor, little readers / how I have joy that you care

browsing through the tubes so high / like a duck-fiend in the sky

satue, simmer little duck / you cooked well, such was my luck!

I am glad to follow up with some nonsense and finality about my duck. It all came together in a satisfying orchestration: roasted legs, pan-cooked boobs, reduced sour-cherry/sage sauce, parsnip puree and sauteed garlicky spinach.

Highs: The whole picture. But really, the highlight was the 2006 Martello Whistling Ridge Pinot Noir (Ribbon Ridge AVA, Oregon). Run, don’t walk. Best wine I’ve had in months. You can get it at Garrison’s Wines on SE Morrison. Tell Travis I sent you. Medium-bodied, smooth as buttah, not fruity, but not sere and dry, either. Cocoa, coffee, murky but lovely flavors. Great with duck (hah).

Lows: The actual duck was probably not the highest quality of ducks. The breasts, especially, were fairly tough, though I took pains to cook them gently!

Tags: cooking, Wine

It started simply, as most cooking plans do, with not enough foresight and a general craving. Duck. My god, duck. It’s good.

Mr. Pencil and I thus swayed just had to impulsively buy a frozen duck a few months ago with no concept beyond: “Duck, hell yes.” I don’t remember where we got it: Sheridan’s? New Seasons? Either way it was relegated to the freezer and forgotten save for the occasional exchange:

Mr. Pencil: “What are we going to do with that duck?”
Me: “Yeah.”

A very aggressive (if effeminate) cleaning of our fridge and freezer this weekend resulted in Mr. Pencil pulling the trigger and raising the ante: he put the duck in the fridge. That meant it was sitting in there softening, taunting us, gently putrefying. It would have to be cooked, and in short order. There it was, alone on a pristine shelf, kind of glowing with foreign duckiness.

This morning I packed off to work and the first thing I did was find the perfect recipe. Only one problem. I was at work and the duck was still at home.

That’s when the Twittering began:

lyzadanger I need to marinate my duck. I forgot to marinate my duck. And Mr. Pencil had the nerve to go to WORK today so he cannot marinate the duck. about 6 hours ago from twhirl

Marinating my duck was in the forefront of my mind. Distracting enough that I had to bust off home for the afternoon, but alas our wifi didn’t work and I was chained to my library and an ethernet jack:

lyzadanger F#($king wireless doesn’t work at home which means no time to MARINATE THE FUCKING DUCK! Working. about 3 hours ago from twhirl

Thus the afternoon was frantic with, oh, you know, work for customers that they pay us for and stuff and as such the impending marination postponed. I finally found a moment at around 3pm.

Here’s where my hubris really backfired. I’d like to protect you, duck-novice public, should you ever embark on a duck. Because it would be a Shame for it to be quite as surprised as I was. Let me analogize. I see it as akin to when I moved to England and expected things to be familiar and things were similar but in no way the same and it was more disorienting in certain ways than if I’d moved to Zimbabwe, where the differences would be noticeable and much less confusing.

But it was time to cut up my duck.

Duck != Chicken

1. Ducks have a rind. Not skin so much as a half inch of dense…peel…that has to be reckoned with.
2. Ducks look like steak on the inside. So, steak with a “frosting” of fat. This I was ready for.
3. Ducks can actually fly. As such their wing structure reflects this. Mine must’ve been part albatross.
4. Joints are in different places than a chicken. The ragged edges of my duck legs would make Gordon Ramsey yell at me.
5. Duck stock is more like gravy. Duck oil, really. Watch out!

I used our spice grinder to mush up some juniper berries, thyme, rosemary, and orange zest and was able to tweet:

lyzadanger I have successfully marinated the duck. about 1 hour ago from web

What I didn’t tweet was that, while browning the carcass for the stock, I somehow managed to brown the heart. I was so surprised to see it in the pan that I grabbed it with tongs and flung it away. Nothing like flinging a deep-fried duck heart across the room to make you feel like a weirdo.

Later: More duck action; the finished duck.

Tags: cooking, duck, Food, hubris, twitter

Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tus… by Bill Buford

It’s easy to read, full of unusual stories, unusual people and gastronomic adventure, but it makes you feel weird.

You see, those chefs you worship–you watch them on the Food Network, you buy their cookbooks–well, they’re creeps. Not just creeps, but obsessive, sadistic cokeheads.Working in a kitchen is brutal (why would anyone do this?!), and people (especially said sadistic chefs) are cruel to you, and you burn yourself and you sweat and you do the same thing thousands of times in a row and you get paid hardly anything for it. For those who don’t shy away from back-stabbing and misery, this might work.

Buford’s vision of Italy (where you spend a drawn-out last third of the book) as food nirvana seems like the writing of a true disciple, one so bent on finding the truth in his craft that he ignores that he’s surrounded by psychopaths and that he’s developed OCD.

Buford’s a good writer–you won’t be bored or cliche-riddled–and if you’re a foodie (I am), you’ll learn a lot of great new stuff. But you might feel less like Mario Batali is a nice guy. ( )

p.s. This was my 50th book read this year!

Tags: cooking, Food, italy, reading

Our big Thanksgiving meal this year is atypical, and involves a mol�.
A particularly involved mol�. It required an always-exciting trip out
to Food4Less at 82nd and Powell. Going to these edge-of-city
megamarkets is always like traveling, like traveling far away. They
fascinate me, these bastions of thrift with their seven different
brands of fish sauce, their bargain-basement wafer cookies, their
chayotes (both with and without “spikes”), and aisles of Russian
pickled eggplant spreads. You won’t see anything organic, but you will
be able to buy chiles you’ve never even heard of before for this mol�.

When it comes to anything ethnic, these places are miraculous. David’s
insistence on buying a bottle of Thai Pennywort Juice elicited bemused
nods from the cashier.

Just don’t try to find quality “normal” produce or cuts of meat from
“normal” animals that you’d really want to eat. Just because you can
buy pig snouts doesn’t make it a good idea. Well, same with the
pennywort, really.

Tags: cooking, David, international, shopping