while in harrisburg: burritos.

i had the strangest burrito yesterday, at a place called

(the neon sign, which resembles this graphic, caught my eye.)

as for the ingredients,

      * black bean hommos
      * "barbecue rice" [1]
      * cucumbers
      * sour cream
      * salsa of the day

so it was more like a wrap than a burrito. not bad, though.

---

it's a no frills place; a few tables outside, a few more inside, a few window stools and a thin table for loners. i've seen a lot of indie coffeehouses, but this was my first indie burrito joint.

also odd: for those of you who eat meat regularly, they offer a buffalo burrito -- not the sauce, but the animal meat.



[1] which was just rice with bbq sauce; i should have gone for the brown rice.

i said, "bring them back alive."

against my better judgment, i bought two herb plants yesterday:



you see, every plant for which i've cared has eventually died of negligence. [1] my initial thought was to name these two butch and sundance. [2]

then it occurred to me that almost all the plants that i've ever bought have been dead or dying. they're called grocery vegetables.

this improved my mood somewhat, so i have chosen more optimistic names:

reggie, the oregano plant, & rosie, the rosemary plant.

herbs and veg are funny. when they die, i don't feel that bad about it. maybe there's regret that it could have lived longer and i could have gotten more herb out of them.

in contrast, i don't think i could name deer that were about to be shot, or cows destined for the slaughterhouses.

[1] well, except one: i once drowned a plant. the pot was too big, i left it outside, and subsequently a downpour ensued.

[2] that wouldn't work, anyway. i already named my climbing shoes butch and sundance.

desperate times, lacklustre recipes.

last week i flew back into the united states, only to leave 12 hours later to attend a wedding.

i flew back home last night, to a refrigerator empty of anything fresh, much less vegetables. if i had eggs, i'd have fried some. i had even run out of frozen peas!

there is always something, though. it doesn't have to be amazing, but it has to be tolerable. so this is what i made.

---

bean salad.

ingredients
* several handfuls of dried lentils
* 1 can kidney beans
* 1 medium onion
* lemongrass powder
* cloves [1]
* salt and pepper and olive oil, to taste.

directions
boil the lentils in salted water, with the cloves, for 5-10 minutes. during the boil, (1) finely slice the onion while heating a non-stick pan, (2) fry the onion in olive oil, salt, lemongrass, and pepper, until it has color. drain the lentils of water and cloves, open and drain the tin of kidney beans. mix it all, dress with olive oil, and serve warm.

regrets
if i had any parsley i'd have chopped some and added it in. the same goes if i had a fresh tomato or a bell pepper or any sort of fresh veg.

oh well. sometimes one makes do.

---

(readymade) frozen gyoza.

suggestion/warning
microwave them first, then quickly pan-fry them for color. this shortens the cooking time, but due to the moisture from the microwave, beware of splattering saute oil.

oh well. at least i still had some sriracha sauce around, which goes wonderfully well with these things.


[1] if i had bay leaves, i'd have used them. no luck in the pantry.

you call that minimizing? (:

from bitten, the NYT food blog --

there was a post today about how how they were minimizing the Minimalist:

Mark Bittman advocated broccoli rabe with pasta, and Edward Schneider advocates rabe on toast, like a bruschetta.

well, i claim to have further minimized this iterated minimization.

it's happened several times that i cooked broccoli rabe with garlic, red pepper flakes, salt, and olive oil, and ate it straight from the pan.

heck, i even ate with the chopsticks with which i stirred the rabe!

granted, this happened at an instant of laziness. it was 2am and i had planned to fry an egg and boil up some udon noodles to go with it.

by the time the rabe was ready, though, i decided against the extras.

---

this, i think, is not such a strange phenomenon. i grew up in an immigrant cantonese household, where choy was a part of many meals i ate as a child.

also, broccoli rabe is the closest western version to gai lan (芥蘭) (or "chinese broccoli") that i know of, which means that it holds a dear place in my heart.

ironically enough, broccoli translates to "lao fan gai lan (老番芥蘭)" in cantonese, which literally means Western gai lan.

vegetarianism in catalunya.

i'm unimpressed with how vegetables are cooked in catalunya .. or rather, in the campus cafeterias at universitat autònoma de barcelona.

the salads are plain things:
undressed iceberg with a few tomato decorations.

as for cooked vegetables,
i have seen only grayish cadavers,
their culinary lives cut short by a death from zealously boiling waters.

then again, this doesn't mean that catalunians don't understand vegetarian food. i had this for dinner, for example:

clockwise from left: vegetable tempura, hommos, salad, spinach pudding;
middle: spoon of unknown but tasty sauce;
upper-left corner: a local draft beer called cruzcampo.

comments: i suppose that "tempura" has a fancier name, but these were veggie fritters -- good, but not tempura.

the term "pudding" refers, i think, to the british terminology; like yorkshire pudding. it tasted like a mediterranean spinach pie but more substantial and without the puff pastry.

all in all, though: a good meal.

don't be a hero: splurge on salt.

currently i'm in barcelona for a mathematics summer school. the host university has put us up in apartments with fully stocked kitchens .. except for food, of course.

so if i've learned anything from these past few days, it's this:

always buy salt.

it's worth it.
nothing replaces it, not even freshly ground pepper.

today i made a quick soup of new potatoes, lentils, and onions, doing everything i could to infuse flavor. (i didn't buy broth, either.)

i flavored the broth with stalks of parsley.

i made garlic into a paste and stirred it into the soup.

i added pepper to the point where there was a definitive layer,
floating on the water surface.

when it was done, i served it with shavings of cheese on top.

it still tastes bland. it needs salt.