hyphenated cuisine.

Well, not too much fascinating cooking going on here at the moment, mostly trying to pull up out of my remoulade nosedive. My excuse: I've been extremely busy for the past couple weeks, and to be perfectly frank, relentless asceticism is not what you're looking for after 16 hours in front of the computer. At least I wasn't. So, back to cleaning up the old act this week, back to the hardcore no-dairy bit, etc.

A smidgen of link roundup, then (not sure where my English phrasing is coming from). Stuart sent me this rather interesting NYT article about hyphenated Chinese food, kind of in the same vein as my Indo-Surinamese-Chinese-Dutch explorations a while back. I'll hopefully elaborate on the old post at some point, and I'll also maybe address European-Mexican hybrids (which, according to at least one close friend, I am obsessive about).

While I was reading the first NYT article, I found another mildly heartbreaking article by Gabrielle Hamilton of Prune in NY. I was first struck by her writing a few years ago in an issue of Food & Wine...she has quite a distinctive tone, simultaneously self-assured and self-deprecating. Anyway, the story is about a moderately blind man coming in for an interview and not admitting that he has a problem seeing. Very sad.

Finally, good ol' Clotilde over at Chocolate & Zucchini seconds my enthusiasm for smoked pimiento. Well, in truth, she just reveals her own fondness for this double secret ingredient without referring to my post at all...unsurprisingly, since Clotilde is not my mom, and my mom is my only regular reader. Regardless, it's a bittersweet moment for me, kind of like when your favorite band gets too popular and you know their next CD is going to be ruined by "better" production, or clumsily opaque lyrics, or calculated poppiness, or any of 1000 things that can go wrong with the music you love. Although these things are unlikely to happen to smoked pimiento...I'm just bummed that it's lost its double-secret status.

call me irresponsible.

Oh dear. It's been, well...six weeks since my last post here, which usually means I've either fallen off the no-cholesterol wagon, or I've been spending too much time with my other site.

Happily, it's the latter this time around, although I did have a dangerous fling with dairy this week, mostly out of necessity. A friend who came back from America with a pile of fresh corn tortillas needed help getting rid of them, so we engineered a "show up and cook" kind of thing in which I made some pretty amazing chicken mole enchiladas (I made the red chile and mole sauces at home and brought them with). They may have been the best enchiladas I've ever had...not too cheesy, not too heavy, lightly sauced, really good if I do say so myself.

And yesterday Mara needed pasta, so i tasted some of her tortelloni di noci with garlic, creme fraiche, and pecorino...which is really just a bowl of heavenly, creamy, creamy heaven. And one big huge no-no for me. My understanding of the recipe (an appetizer portion for two):

mara's tortell(i/o)ni di noci with garlic, creme fraiche, and pecorino.

12 tortelloni or 24 tortellini of your choice (she uses tortelloni di noci, filled with walnuts and pecorino)
1/2 cup creme fraiche or sour cream
1 large clove (or 2 if you can stand it) of good fresh garlic, crushed
1/2 finely grated pecorino romano

Put some pasta-boiling water on the stove and salt it lightly. While waiting for it to boil, stir together the creme fraiche, pecorino, and garlic in a saucepan (without heat). You should have something resembling creamy, garlicky heaven. When the pasta water boils, throw your pasta in and cook according to the directions on the box/bag. When cooked, strain in a colander and add to saucepan with creme fraiche mixture. That's it. Serve with more pecorino and crusty bread, and then don't aim your mouth at anyone until the next day.

Serves 2 as an appetizer.