Cupcakes

If you read the news, you’re surely aware that there’s an obesity epidemic in America. If you rationally analyze the news, you’re surely aware that there are many reasons to be skeptical of this claim, not least of which is the fact that, third grade folklore notwithstanding, obesity is not contagious. Besides, a few adverse health effects aside, a heavier nation isn’t such a terrible thing. The more the average American weighs, the more the average American can weigh and still be average. You must admire my logic.

I think all this hand-wringing is part of a vast conspiracy, possibly perpetrated by gyms (where but in America do people pay to do manual labor?), but more likely perpetrated by evil doctors with sweet tooths who want all of the nation’s cupcakes to themselves.

Don’t let the doctors win.

Strawberry Cream Cheese Devil’s Food Cupcakes
Makes about 24 cupcakes. Serves two shameless gluttons and, if they’re feeling generous, a few of their friends.

Cupcakes:

I followed the Devil’s Food Cupcake recipe at cupcakeblog.com. Be sure to only fill the muffin cups halfway. These are delicious, but unfortunately do not form the muffin tops that are the best part of cupcakes and the worst part of low-rise jeans. Until I find a dome-forming recipe that matches this one for taste, they’ll suffice.

Strawberry Cream Cheese Filling:

• 8 oz cream cheese
• 2 tablespoons strawberry jam
• 1 cup confectioner’s sugar
• 1 teaspoon cherry brandy

Pink Buttercream Frosting

• 1/4 cup reserved filling
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups confectioner’s sugar
• pinch salt
• 1 drop red food coloring

1. Bake cupcakes according to recipe.

2. While they’re in the oven, mix filling ingredients until smooth. Set aside 1/4 cup of filling for the frosting. Put the rest in pastry bag or decorating syringe you impulse-bought at Target.

3. When cupcakes are done, poke a hole in the top of each and squeeze in about a tablespoon of filling. It’s better to do this while the cupcakes are still warm and flexible.

4. While the cupcakes cool, mix frosting ingredients, preferably with an electric mixer, until of familiar frosting consistency. Frost cupcakes sparingly, as buttercream frosting is very, very sweet.

Introducing The Exploited

As you probably noticed, the title of this blog is a play on “conspicuous consumption,” Thorstein Veblen’s theory of the birth of the yuppie. I mean, his theory of the middle and upper classes’ gratuitous displays of wealth.

My (significant) other contributor, Exploited Labour Power or The Exploited for short, took his name from the opposite end of the economic spectrum. He chose the name because once, while I was reading Marx’s take on the plight of Victorian factory workers, I told him it reminded me of his life.

Unlike the writer of this blog, who is guilty of conspicuous leisure, if not conspicuous consumption, The Exploited is a grad student in the sciences. Grad school in the sciences is the opposite of grad school in the humanities. While we humanists work with abstract objects but are judged by real standards (i.e., existence of dissertation), science grad students work with real objects but are judged by abstract standards (i.e., advisor’s opinion). We work five hours a day for twelve years; they work twelve hours a day for five years. We will graduate to adjunct positions at $18,000 a year with no benefits. They will graduate to industry positions at $180,000 a year with benefits they will never have time to use.

It should not be surprising that our criteria for good recipes are also different. He will detail his in a later post. Mine are simple: tastiness and whimsy.

You have already encountered my perhaps slightly unusual definition of tastiness if you’ve tried any of my recipes.

My definition of whimsy requires more explanation, as it is not like that of most food blog writers. I do not think it is whimsical to pair a delightful, citrus-y Sauvignon Blanc with a gruyère and candied ginger quiche. I do not think it is whimsical to sprinkle muscovado sugar on farmer’s market peaches. I think it is whimsical to make perfectly spherical cupcakes that can be rolled in frosting. And to make pancakes out of noodles.

Here is my recipe for the latter:

Noodle Pancake
Serves two.

• about 1/5 lb flat Chinese egg noodles (when dry, they look like coiled linguine)
• 1/4 lb fresh or 1/4 cup frozen spinach
• 1 large egg
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• salt
• pepper
• optional: ketchup and/or mayonnaise

1. Boil noodles until soft. Add spinach when noodles are about halfway done. Drain and rinse in cold water.

2. Crack egg into medium bowl. Add salt and pepper and stir until uniform in color. Add noodles and spinach and stir until coated.

3. Preheat oil in small frying pan. When a drop of water bounces on the pan, turn heat down to medium-high. Pour noodle mixture onto pan and shape into pancake with spatula. Fry until slightly brown on the bottom (about 4 minutes).

4. Loosen from pan with spatula, then flip. (If this is too difficult, remove from heat, cover with overturned plate, flip onto plate, and slide back into pan.) Fry until bottom is cooked and noodles are slightly crispy (about 4 more minutes).

5. Serve with ketchup or mayonnaise, if desired.

Selling Sel

When I go grocery shopping, I tend to buy whatever’s cheapest. However, once in a while the difference in quality is great enough that it’s worth splurging on the second-cheapest variety. This raises a difficult question. How do you know when the expensive version is actually better, and when it’s just empty marketing?

Easy. Compound French words.

Many French things actually do taste different from their American cousins. Brie, for instance, is a far cry from Velveeta. In my opinion, Yoplait is another worthy indulgence. You’ll notice that both are just one word long. Flowery French phrases, on the other hand, are often invented by American marketers who know that despite all our Freedom Fries, we all secretly want to be French. French is an easy way to sell things to us, especially since being monolingual Americans, we don’t actually understand what we’re buying. (My favorite example of this is a body lotion called Pomme de Terre, which was probably intended to mean “Fruit of the Earth,” but is more frequently used to mean “Potato.”)

Giving your product a French name allows you to jack up the price to a near-European level. How many people do you know who would settle for the $8 dead hen belly in wilted leaves and bacteria-infested milk rather than shelling out for the $17 chat tourné au fromage de chien ? I’m guessing most would choose the expensive rotten cat in dog cheese over the moderately priced Chicken Florentine. (I am not qualified for this thought experiment, because most of the people I know are humanities graduate students who are halfway to being French already.)

You can tell most gourmet food products are scams because they have compound French names. Gourmet salt is just the most recent example. Do you really think fleur de sel would taste so much better than Morton’s had it been called Salzblüte? I know they couldn’t sell Salzblüte for close to $70 a pound.

Many gourmets brag that after a few months of seasoning their pommes frites libres with only the finest fleur de sel, they can no longer tolerate the harsh taste of regular table salt. Fair enough. But what’s the point of spending those few months developing such an inconvenient taste? That’s like getting used to setting dollar bills on fire, then never again being able to tolerate how bland the air smells without the rich, smoky scent of wasted money.

To prove to you that it is possible to make perfectly good food with perfectly cheap salt, I offer you the following Authentic Italian Dish — Italy being the second classiest country by the gourmet’s standards. I personally know an Italian who ate this dish for every meal. Of course, she was two years old, but she was as refined as someone who still frequently peed her pants could be.

Cheap Use of Cheap Salt
Serves one adult or two toddlers.

This is a cheap, easy dish with little nutritional value. I eat it when I’m too lazy to make anything else. Even The Exploited eats it, and he is only allowed approximately five seconds per meal.

• 2 oz. cheap angel hair pasta
• 1 tablespoon (or to taste) cheap olive oil
• cheap salt to taste
• optional: cheap parmesan cheese to taste
• optional: fresh or frozen spinach.
• optional: frozen peas (Warning: not authentic. Consume at own risk of becoming social pariah.)

1. Boil pasta. After a minute or so, add spinach and/or peas if desired. When cooked to your liking (should take about 5 minutes), drain.

2. Add olive oil, salt, and parmesan cheese if desired.

3. Take the money you’ve saved and buy yourself something nice.

The only salt you’ll ever need

Wine

Wine plays an important role in my family’s holiday celebrations, mostly because we can’t be bothered to drink it at any other time. My parents have a modest wine cellar — ok, a plastic wine organization cube from Target — overflowing with the spoils of dinner parties and gifts from people who clearly don’t know them very well. When the family reunites for Christmas or New Year’s dinner, my mother, who hates wine, says, “Why don’t we open a bottle of wine?” We delegate the selection to my father, the family sommelier. He chooses a bottle at random. Then we all drink, pronouncing it “okay,” “gross,” or “rubbing alcohol-like.”

That is all I have to say about drinking wine.

Cooking wine is another story.

The secret to finding a good wine to cook with is not to think about it all that much. If you can actually tell the difference between dishes that use expensive wine and those that use cheap wine, your cooking is too bland. The New York Times backs me up on this.

My favorite cooking wine is mirin (Japanese rice wine). It’s sweeter than mijiu, the Chinese version, and can be purchased for about $6 per huge plastic bottle. You can also pay more for swankier glass-bottled versions, but you’ll be wasting your money

Do not let the word “Japanese” constrain your use of this delicious product. Just about anything is better marinated in mirin; its sweetness makes it especially good for shellfish, as you will see if you follow the recipe below.

If you don’t like everything as sweet as I do, any leftover white wine will serve for seafood, and any red wine for red meat. (I generally don’t marinate chicken in wine.) The only wine bad enough to ruin a dish is the kind actually marketed as cooking wine, since it must contain enough salt to put off even the most desperate teenager.

Mirin-ade for Shrimp

For about 1/2 lb. shrimp.

• 1/4 cup mirin
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• pinch pepper
• optional: pinch cumin
• optional: 1/2 teaspoon garlic
• optional: pinch ginger powder

1. Stir all ingredients together in bowl.

2. Coat shrimp, cover, and let sit at least 1/2 an hour.

3. Drain off marinade before cooking shrimp, unless you also want to use it as a sauce.

Authentic and inauthentic Chinese food

Because I learned to cook from a Chinese woman, namely my mother, many of these recipes will have an unmistakeable Chinese influence. None of them are to be mistaken for authentic Chinese cuisine.

However, if you still crave authenticity, I’ll let you in on a secret. Producing an authentic meal has little to do with the cook’s knowledge, and everything to do with the diner’s ignorance. Let me explain. Chinese chefs have government-issued identification cards to settle any doubts they may have about their authentic Chinese heritage, so they have no qualms about bastardizing their cuisine in whatever manner they see fit. Thus, if you define authentic Chinese food as whatever Chinese people actually eat, it has no stable referent: authenticity can never be possessed, only lacked. Luckily, this makes serving authentic food easier than ever. Simply make sure the dishes you’re serving at your next dinner party come from a culture that your friends are unfamiliar with. Then, if they complain about your cooking, call them racist.

Besides, “authentic” food isn’t usually as good as inauthentic food. I have eaten a great variety of Chinese dishes in China, and few of them were as good as the Chinese recipes my mother tweaked to fit her American-born husband and children’s tastes. Still, since you insist, I’ll offer one sacrificial recipe:

Authentic Chinese Recipe
Serves six.

This is a dish I tried in Yunnan, in Western China.

• 24 slimy creatures with six or more legs
• 6 bamboo skewers

1. Grab creatures with bare hands. Wash them in gutter, if at all. While they’re still writhing, skewer on sticks.

2. Barbeque five minutes each side.

3. Sell for 1 yuan/skewer.

Suitable multi-legged creatures

Try, by contrast, this less authentic means of serving slimy multi-legged creatures:

Special Ketchup Shrimp
Serves two.

This is one of the first recipes my mother taught me. When you serve it, don’t tell anyone the special ingredient. After they call it the best shrimp they’ve ever had, announce its ketchup content with glee.

• about 1/2 lb. large shrimp
• some soy sauce (“About how much?” “Little bit.” “Give me a number.” “Maybe one tablespoon.”)
• maybe 2 tablespoons rice wine
• maybe 4 tablespoons ketchup
• maybe 1 teaspoon ginger
• not supposed to have garlic, but you like it so I add one teaspoon
• 1 pinch sugar
• 1 green onion, chopped
• optional: 1/2 cup frozen peas, boiled and drained

1. Shell and devein shrimp. Butterfly if you’re me, keep intact if you’re my mom. Marinate in some soy sauce and wine for about 1/2 an hour.

2. Make the sauce by whisking together (read: stirring with fork) soy sauce, ketchup, wine, and sugar in a small bowl. Set aside.

3. Heat some oil on high in a frying pan. Add garlic and ginger and stir fry for a few minutes. Add shrimp and green onions and stir fry for a few more minutes.

3. When shrimp are almost done, lower heat. Add sauce. Stir until shrimp are coated and cook for about two minutes.

4. Add peas if you want, and serve with rice.

Special ketchup shrimp

Sustained silent eating

Eating in Berkeley is conspicuous consumption in the most literal sense. The city, with its ubiquitous sidewalk cafes and perennial picnic weather, is designed for public mastication. This is no accident, for every mouthful you take in Berkeley is an opportunity to make a statement, whether political, philosophical, artistic, or affirmational.

I, for one, think it’s rude to talk with your mouth full. Hence a website devoted to silent eating: eating meant to be done in private, perhaps with relish, perhaps with a pinch of shame. These recipes advocate no particular food movement, slow, fast, or bowel. This is not to deny that my resistance to the gourmetization of my sandwich has any political undertones, or that there’s any degree of irony in using such a public medium to record my private recipes. It is only to insist that my primary motivations for this particular act of rebellion are, in reverse order, annoyance, a lifestyle that allows for a little too much procrastination, and a love of tossing unpretentious ingredients together and tasting the results.