Secrets.

Last weekend, a friend invited Mike and me to a secret wine club event. That's all I can say.

Just kidding. The "challenge" was to bring a wine you've had before and a small dish to pair with the wine. We had met the club leader earlier in March at a local winery in Berkeley, and she definitely knew her stuff about wine. For example, she mentioned that she loved Donkey and Goat's orange wine.

"What the heck is orange wine?" I asked, thinking that wine made from actual oranges might be interesting but a little bizarre. Fermented oranges? Hmm...

"Oh no, it's a white wine that's been fermented with the grape skins and seeds for a short period of time," she replied.

I thought that was called a rosé, but I was wrong (gasp!). Orange wines involve using white grapes that are allowed to sit with the skins. To make a rosé, red grapes are separated very quickly from their skins.   Learn something new every day!

So anyway, when we got our invitation to the wine club event, we figured we should really bring our a-game. After some discussion, Mike and I decided to make sliders, and not just any sliders, but special sliders of course! We went to the local Mexican store to buy a ribeye steak and short ribs to grind into our burgers. We cooked the burgers in the sous vide, a fancy word for a temperature controlled water bath, so that they remained nice and red, perfectly cooked, and then fried them to give them a nice, brown outside. Then Mike melted shredded cheese combined with a little sodium citrate (to make super smooth cheese) on a sheet pan and cut out round slices. And no burger would be complete without a bun - a homemade bun freckled with black sesame seeds. Then we added caramelized red onions and a little Dijon mustard to round out the flavors.

On Friday night, we did a test run of these burgers along with a French Malbec the sommelier at a local wine shop suggested. While a delicious red wine, it stained our mouths like no other! We decided the burgers needed tiny adjustments (more salt) but were quite pleased with the way they turned out.

We took our sliders over to our friend's friend's apartment for the main event on Saturday evening. Our sliders were a hit, and others brought amazing dishes and wines too. Some had emotional connections to their wines (i.e., they made it themselves) or knew the winemaker. And our friend and her boyfriend brought bacon jam. Bacon. Jam.

It was a great evening - good food, good wine, and new friends that also appreciate our cuisine snobbery. Once you've had bacon jam, you can't go back.

What's your favorite wine and food pairing?

The weekend and a little bit of spring.

Here's what we've been up to lately. First, spaghetti alla carbonara from The Kitchn:

A little bacon, a little egg, a squeeze of lemon, and sautéed arugula makes for a delicious comfort dinner after a long day in the lab. 

After dinner on Saturday, Mike pulled out three sticks of butter, a bunch of flour, chocolate and almond trail mix (seemed random), and a little bit of borrowed yeast from a friend. "What in the world could you be making?" I asked, shocked at the amount of butter softening on our kitchen table. 

"Guess."

"Is it for cinnamon rolls!?!" 

"Close...," Mike teased. After a while, I gave up and started reading my new book, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. Great book so far. Have any of you read it?

Mike's "borrowed" timer kept going off throughout the evening, and he would get up, pull the dough out of the fridge, roll it out, and fold it over a couple times. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Finally, he asked me to help him. "Well, are you going to tell me what you're making?"

"Croissants!" That's right, chocolate and almond croissants. He separated the chocolate from the almonds because he didn't want to buy bags of each. He cut the rolled out dough into twelve rectangles, and we filled the middle with the chocolate or the almond spread. Then we rolled the dough over and let them rise overnight.

When I woke up in the morning, a little sleepy even though it was nine o'clock (stupid daylight savings time!), I could smell the croissants baking. It smelled like a French bakery, although I've never been in France or in a French bakery, but I imagine it would smell like croissants. 

I dragged myself (i.e., sprinted) out of bed and headed for the kitchen. And there they were, golden brown with chocolate or almond filling slightly flowing out of the ends. Which one did I choose to eat first? Chocolate, of course! Don't be silly. We paired our croissants with some delicious Tonx coffee and Rachel Martin on Weekend Edition Sunday in the background. Two croissants down, ten more to go...

Finally, a little bit of spring has popped up in our backyard. Last year I bought two ranunculus plants (what's the plural of ranunculus - ranunculi?), and I swiftly killed both of them. Or so I thought! One of the plants made a comeback when it rained this winter and now it's blooming again. Beautiful pink and white flowers. Have you started any seedlings for the coming gardening season? What do you normally plant or do you have a non-green thumb - would that be a red thumb or a black thumb?

Anyway...

Dinner and a movie.

The other day I got a gchat from the husband asking me to pick up some things from Trader Joe's. I clicked on the link from Serious Eats and was salivating as I read the ingredients: Israeli couscous, lemon, feta, fennel, and red onion. Mike had to give an exam that night and it dawned on me that he would not be cooking. Whoa, whoa, whoa, I have to make this? I've gotten so used to Mike cooking dinner and me washing dishes (well, most of the time...). No problem, I can figure this out.

I picked up everything we needed from Trader Joe's and set to work. I chopped up the fennel and red onion to roast while watching HGTV. Side note: We've become addicted to shows like Love It or List It and Property Brothers. Can you say nesting? I use the term nesting loosely because there are no announcements, Grandma! I coated the fennel and red onion in olive oil and tossed with pepper and salt. Into the oven it went to roast. I set the timer (a timer we "borrowed" from lab) so I wouldn't forget them in the oven. From there I started the couscous, which requires sautéing in butter and adding it to hot vegetable stock. The timer went off for the roasting vegetables and I pulled them out to turn. Put them back in the oven to cook a bit longer... and I didn't set the timer. I also didn't have a timer on the couscous. Oops! I started working on some other things (i.e., watching HGTV) until I realized I had left everything on the stove and in the oven. But you know what? It turned out just fine! I don't recommend this method of cooking, but I'm thankful it turned out great.

When Mike got home around 9:30, we decided to just make grilled cheese and soup and enjoy my creation as a date on Friday. To go with the couscous, we bought chicken breasts and roasted them covered in onions and lemon, a perfect compliment.

That night we watched a hilarious movie: Lars and the Real Girl with Ryan Gosling and Emily Mortimer. The movie is about a super awkward guy named Lars who lives in the garage of the family home, which is occupied by his brother and pregnant wife. Lars doesn't really have any friends, except for an obnoxious office mate and a cute girl with a crush on him. One day a very large package arrives at the garage for Lars, and later that day he informs his brother and sister-in-law that he has a visitor. They are so excited because Lars barely interacts with them so they invite Lars and his guest over for dinner. The problem is that the guest is a life-sized, anatomically correct sex doll that Lars ordered off the internet. Hilarity (and some sadness) ensues. I really really enjoyed the movie and if you have Netflix, you can stream it on demand.

What movies have you seen lately? What's on your Netflix queue?

Pork butt.

The other day, I was heading to the grocery store and asked Mike if he needed anything.

"Yeah, can you get me about 5 pounds of pork butt?" he said.

"For what?" I asked. And then I realized I should never question a man asking for pork butt because something delicious is going to come from it. So off to the store I went and found a nice hunk of pork butt for my man.

Mike's Miracle Hangover Cure

A couple days later, Mike put the pork butt in the oven and slow cooked it overnight. He's teaching an 8 am class so he's always up before me. So at 6:30 in the morning, half awake, I hear him stirring in the kitchen, and I smell the delicious pork he's taking out of the oven. I'm almost asleep again when he shows up with a piece of the pork in his fingers.

"Here, you want to try it?" Uh, of course. And it was wonderful and left me wanting to eat all 5 lbs.

So what did we do with 5 lbs of pork? What didn't we do! First Mike made a breakfast hash after a late Friday night out with friends with cubed potatoes, bacon, pork, scallions, and a poached egg, which we called "Mike's Miracle Hangover Cure".  Then that night we made bánh mì sandwiches, named after the Vietnamese word for bread. We filled the sandwiches with jalapeños, asian cabbage slaw, pickled carrots, and of course, pork. And last night, we made pork barbecue sandwiches with cole slaw.

bánh mì sandwich assembly

And we still have 3 pounds left. Anyone want to come over?

What's your favorite pork recipe?

P.S.

Chinese Oreos

Since I feel bad completely abandoning the reason I started the blog in the first place, here's something interesting I found out:

Oreos are the most popular cookie in China. No joke. It wasn't easy for Kraft to enter the Chinese cookie market. For one thing, Americans like their cookies super sweet and that just doesn't fly in China. They also had to repackage the cookies because the average Chinese person can't afford to buy three sleeves of Oreos at once. Kraft also changed the shape of the cookie (which seems like sacrilege to me) into a wafer stick that matched other popular cookies.

Sounds like I'll be writing more about food and culture... Have suggestions? Post a comment!

Back.

I have decided to start blogging again as a distraction from all the other things I'm supposed to do, like graduate, find a job, and doing dishes (I hate doing dishes!). Instead of blogging about the plight of Chinese workers, I'm going to write about something I actually know about: food! And not just any food - my husband's cooking. For those friends reading this and have enjoyed some of his cooking, you know that he's a damn fine cook and, in my opinion, a fine lookin' man.

What inspired my decision to blog again? While I was working on some lab stuff, I asked Mike what he was up to. He replied, "Making Oreos." That's right, he was making homemade Oreos. I asked him why and his answer was that he wanted cookies he could dunk in milk. If I had that urge, I would walk over to the 7-11 a block away and just buy cookies.


I hope this gives you an idea of the environment I live in, and why I will be 200 lbs in a few years... More culinary adventures on the way I'm sure.

Retraction.

Two months ago, This American Life (TAL), my favorite radio show of all time, ran a radio story about Mike Daisey's monologue and played part of his monologue on the show. This is the same monologue that made me start my blog. Since TAL is a journalistic show, they did their best to fact check Daisey's story. The only person they were unable to talk to was his translator, Cathy. Daisey told TAL that her real name was not Cathy, and that he had a cell phone number for her but that the cell phone number did not work anymore. TAL took him at his word and didn't pursue it any further.

This week, This American Life issued a retraction of this story. Turns out that his translator's name IS Cathy, and a China-based reporter from Marketplace tracked her down after having questions about Daisey's story. Cathy was unable to corroborate much of his most compelling stories. Examples: Daisey opens the show saying that the Foxconn plant was surrounded by security guards with big guns. But in China, no one other than the police and military is allowed to have guns. Cathy says she has never seen a gun in real life, only in the movies and TV. If these security guards had guns, she would remember. Daisey claimed to meet many underage workers that spoke to him in English about the working conditions. Cathy does not remember meeting any underage workers. Daisey told a sad story about workers who were exposed to hexane and shook so much from neurological damage, they were unable to hold a glass. While it's true that workers in other plants in China did suffer from hexane exposure, Cathy says they never met anyone with these symptoms. The list goes on and on.

When Ira Glass confronts Daisey about the lies, Daisey does admit that he made up some things or changed the timeline for theatrical effect. And even though Glass and other producers of TAL emphasized to Daisey that what is said on TAL needs to be absolutely true, Daisey allowed them to air parts of the monologue that he admits to making up or embellishing. 

Yes, Daisey's monologue is for theater and does not have to meet journalistic standards. But once it crosses the line from theater to journalism, things get fuzzy. When I saw the show, I believed every word of Daisey's monologue. There is no "disclaimer" that his story is not completely factual, and the way it's told, well, you don't question it. He says "I saw this," "I was told this," and "I am telling you this happened." You take him at his word, and what he says really affects the way you perceive work conditions, Apple, China, everything. And it didn't just affect me, it affected thousands of people who saw the monologue, heard it on TAL, or talked with someone who heard/saw the monologue.

I'm incredibly happy to hear TAL call out Daisey. But the question remains: should we feel guilty about Chinese working conditions? Is it really as bad as Daisey describes, even if he didn't see everything he claims? Many of the scenarios he describes that he didn't witness have happened in China, and when you combine them into one monologue, it makes for a very compelling, tragic story. In rare cases, some workers have committed suicide or been injured and killed in dust explosions. That hasn't changed. But China is a developing country with millions of workers who migrate to the city for work. And migrants want to make money for the families they left behind, so they may want to work incredibly long hours for more pay. That doesn't make the conditions ok. Daisey's story has raised awareness of the working conditions and has forced Apple and others to be more transparent in their inspection reports. Does that make Daisey's fibs ok?

I still don't know how to feel about all of this. Is it ok for me to buy stuff made in China? Should I feel guilty when I open my Macbook? I do know that I shouldn't let such emotional, heart-wrenching stories cloud my ability to separate fact from fiction.

What do you think? Leave a comment below!