something smells fishy

Cooking for one is rarely fun. It’s either too much effort for a single meal, or the leftovers are overwhelming. However, when the person you want to lavish all your homemade love onto is picky about your favorite eats, eating alone can be liberating.

Seafood is my typical restaurant fare since it’s a no-no at home. My vacation was proof: I had shrimp dim sum in L.A., my auntie’s delicious salmon in Long Beach, and lobster and ceviche in Puerto Nuevo. In San Diego, I ate fish tacos again and again. I tend to be picky about fish (unless it’s deep fried, me loves deep fried anything), but I generally love the texture and lightness compared to other meats.

So, back from vacation solo, out came the salmon from the freezer. I hadn’t made a grocery run yet, so I had to rely on pantry and garden to whip this together. The recipes are adapted as noted, and it was a good way to use up my fennel and favas, which I never know what to do with. I tend to just look at them with gratitude for growing. They’re such beautiful plants, one all feather and licorice, the other all earth and texture.

Salmon with Roasted Fennel
(saw this on PBS a few months back)

Enough salmon for two (a little more than half a pound)
1 small fennel bulb, cut into wedges
1 small onion, cut into wedges
2 cloves garlic, smashed
1 diced tomato (I used a frozen one from last year’s harvest)
Some olive oil
Several sprigs of fresh thyme (I included some lemon thyme for kicks)
Salt and pepper
Half a lemon

-Preheat oven to 400.
-Throw fennel, onion, garlic, tomato and thyme into roasting pan. Coat lightly with oil, salt and pepper. Roast for 20 min.
-Add salmon to the pan, squeeze lemon juice on fillets, add salt and pepper. Roast for another 15 min. or so.

Note: If I cook this again, I’ll just throw everything in at the same time. I ate this with brown rice.

Shredded Favas with Lemon Zest
I recently discovered that young fava beans can be eaten with its pod. Yay! Less work for the cook. The stunning Super Natural Cooking has a recipe for shredded green beans. In the spirit of the Pantry Project, I made do with what I had.

3/4 lb. young-ish favas, shredded in the nifty food processor (thanks, Dad)
2 stalks green onion or green garlic, minced
Zest of a lemon, minced
1 T lime juice, 1 T water
Olive oil, salt and pepper

-Saute the favas in some olive oil until covered.
-Steam/fry with lime juice and water for a few minutes, until liquid evaporates and the beans are tender but still bright green. Turn off heat.
-Add green onion/garlic and zest, salt and pepper to taste.

Buen Provecho.

goodbye to all that

So I am officially unemployed. Friends and family have called to congratulate me, even my landlord approved of my decision and didn’t seem to worry about the rent. Only my grandmother protested, saying, “How are you going to pay your bills??” Someone has to be the pragmatist.

Nearly three years ago, during the first night over drinks with a new colleague, I had said the job was, more or less, my dream job. I wanted to get back in the trenches, I wanted to see ordinary people do extraordinary things. I wanted, in my small way, to contribute. I wanted to learn. I wasn’t fresh out of college, but green enough.

It was only the hours that wore on me. Nights and weekends became inescapable. Some weeks were emotionally wearing. Some nights I broke down in my car. Some days I took it out on Buggah.

Yet like any collective, grueling experience, a community formed among my colleagues and I. Unlike actors preparing for opening night, hell week was every week. We fell into a rhythm in the office, a cacophony of venting and teasing, laughter that got us scolded, and the sort of mutual respect among colleagues who depend on each other. We celebrated birthdays and births and holidays. Being new to San Jose, they were my friends; they championed me on my new path. I’m not sure I’ll be willing to work that hard again, and I’m not sure I’ll ever find a cubicle I liked as much.

At my last job in Washington, a co-worker gave me a box of chocolates and a card. It was a token of friendship, which we’ve carried on over the years and on two coasts. I was so touched by that gesture, and was equally affected by the kindness of my more recent departure. One colleague decorated our holiday tree with an Aloha theme, my boss made me a lei of tea bags and her typical sayings (my favorite: “You can’t write them all, Alicia”), a beautiful tote with Day of the Dead art, and a ring the reads “well-behaved women / rarely make history,” among others.

So we ate local food, and listened to live Hawaiian music. I love you like a mango … Drop baby, drop baby, drop, drop `cause I’m hungry. I like mangoes. I like songs about mangoes. And to make it even more local-Filipino-like, we sang karaoke in San Jose’s best dive. We drank whiskey, sang Prince (like it was 1999) and danced to Shakira (’cause my hips don’t lie). Life could be worse.

I slept in the next day. No work. No worries.

blog-o-rama

I love reading blogs and other random places in the web-universe that I visit to feed my obsessions. For example, I’ve never met her, but I like her insights about books. And this guy talks about writing, too. As I embark on my own writing journey, I learn that my MFA efforts may be indulgent. Regardless, I can still entice my creativity every week of the year.

There’s a lot more titillating food porn in the blog world, too. For example, there’s the local newspaper’s award-winning food section, or this sleek-design site of a San Francisco foodie. It made me want to buy her book, and check out her other mighty endeavor. Further north, there’s more recipe goodness. Then, there’s everything you need to know about walking the wok. When it’s time for pretty pictures and desserts, this has got me smitten. Then there’s a woman after my own heart, a spam aficionado.

A few friends have started blogs, too, a personal history of sorts, and I’m thrilled. We can record life as we live it. We can get lost in the vastness of outer-web-space, but the words are there and they matter, somehow.

If you’ve got too many to keep up with, I find trusty Bloglines does the trick.

the pantry project

I’m cheap. I rarely buy anything at full price, or even new. I refuse to pay for cable, and will scour the web for days hunting down bargain air fare. I sell my read books on Amazon and I’ve been trying to hawk a pair of Pumas on eBay.

Yet when it comes to food, I don’t skimp. When I began to teach myself to cook, I believed that a well-stocked kitchen made the difference between dinner at home and pizza delivery. Match that with my cookbook obsession, and I was trolling the aisles to find the pantry ingredients that would transform my cooking from bland to scrumptious.

Sure, you can make a meal with olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper. But I came home with garam masala, rice vinegar, and macadamia nut oil. There are countless dried noodles in my cupboards — udon, soba, pasta, egg-flavored Chinese noodles, and the cellophane noodles for the Chicken Long Rice that’s yet to be made. There’s an array of beans and grains, a freezer full of sofrito for Buggah’s Puerto Rican dishes, tomato sauce from last year’s harvest, coconut milk formed into ice cubes, and every weird veggie meat I could find at the Asian market.

These could languish there for a while, wait until I noticed them. But time is running out. I’m moving, and it seems silly to pack the teff flour with the television, the raw honey with the radio. I remembered this article in the San Francisco Chronicle in which a staffer takes a spin on Spring Cleaning. Instead of throwing out the old food stuffs, she concocted dishes from her pantry.

Last month, the Chronicle ran a story about people who were eating locally on the cheap. These folks did really well, supplementing local produce with goods from the freezer, and foraged from plants. With no (real) foreseeable source of income, using what I’ve already got sounded like a good plan. I’ve got a garden, and as anyone who knows me from childhood, I’m not above stealing fruit.

Thus, The Pantry Project was born. I use the word “pantry” liberally here, meaning anything I would have to throw out. And to start things off, here’s something I whipped up last week, inspired by Jamie’s Dinners. The mix of fish and olives reminds me of Sicily.

Puttanesca

Pantry: Penne, dried basil, red pepper flakes, canned tomatoes, black olives and tuna

Pasta for two
1 can tuna
Juice and zest of half lemon
Generous pinch dried basil
14 oz canned tomatoes
Olive oil
1 garlic clove
Pinch red pepper flakes
Handful black olives
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

-Boil pasta in salty water.
-Drain tuna, marinate with lemon juice and zest, some basil, olive oil, and black pepper.
-Heat some olive oil in a pan, add garlic until it smells good, add pepper flakes. Add in tomatoes, olives (I just mashed them with the side of my knife), and tuna, simmer until the pasta’s done.
-Drain pasta and add to sauce. Add salt if needed, though I find the tuna and olives give it enough flavor.

Note: This is really good with fresh basil and capers, neither of which Buggah will touch. Also, a nice swig of white wine would do well with the sauce, but we were drinking red that night.

the closing door

At work, I’ve been the farewell party planner. I’m note sure why. Perhaps it was always just easy to be the one to send out the invite and to call the restaurant. So many people have left, we’ve had goodbye burnout. No more karaoke. No more cards to sign.

But this time it’s my turn. One more week and then I’m free. I’m finding it bittersweet, overwhelming. What becomes of a worker bee that’s no longer working? What becomes of a writer no longer on the payroll to bang her head against the screen?

So here I am, at the crossroads of this great transition. Back to Hawaii, back to school, back to not working all the time. I imagine there will be hours I will not know what to do with myself, and there will be hours that I am grateful for. I’ll chronicle them here, from my obsessions in the garden and kitchen, to my woes at writing and being poor again. May following my heart lead me somewhere. May one door close to open another.