Mowgli-Approved Dal Recipe

Toor dal, a/k/a pigeon peas, are our bean of choice for dal-making.

My husband Mowgli (not his real name, I mean come on, that would just be silly) is an infamously picky eater. In fact, he's so picky that I sometimes consider changing his blog name to "The Man Who Will Only Eat Five Things," but that's just a mite cumbersome. True, but cumbersome.

This July, the usual hot-washcloth-in-the-face effect has been blissfully absent, and yes I know I just jinxed it, sorry about that. But it's been close enough to soup-eating weather that yesterday morning, my thoughts turned to dal.

As I work full-time, and dal takes a couple of hours to make the way we like it, crock-pot dal seemed the way to go. I'd never tried it, but if you've read about my massive dosa failure, you know I don't shy from a kitchen challenge. Also, beans are cheap.

So without any futher ado, I present to you this blog's first practical offering: a Mowgli-approved dal recipe.

Get your crock-pot out; if you don't have one, get ye to a Target and shell out 18 clams like I did.

Put 4-6 cups of water in the crock (4 makes a thick dal, more makes it thinner). Wash 1.5 cups of beans (lentils, toor dal, moong dal, yellow split peas, whatever, doesn't really matter) and add them to the water.

Add the following spices:

1/2 t. turmeric
1 t. ground cumin
1/8 t. cayenne (or a couple of dried red chiles if you have them)
2-3 curry leaves -- totally optional, you won't miss them if you don't know what they taste like, and they're only available at Indian or international groceries.

Turn the crock on low and go to work, or sleep, or whatever. Mine went for 9.5 hours and was just fine.

When you get home, or wake up, turn the crock off and add about a teaspoon of salt. Remove the chiles and curry leaves if you added them earlier. If you're feeling fancy, add 1 teaspoon of garam masala and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. For the record, I did neither last night, though I had both on hand, and it was still delicious.

Start your rice, and get out a small frying pan, some cumin seeds, ghee (butter or oil will work, too) and an onion. Dice the onion and saute it over medium heat with a teaspoon of cumin seeds in 2 tablespoons of whatever oil you choose. You want the onions to turn out soft, but not brown, so count on at least ten minutes of cooking time. Add the onion mixture to the soup, stir it in, add more salt if you like, and enjoy over rice.

The onions should be just a bit more done than this.

Travelogue: The Czech Republic

Kutna Hora, more commonly known as "the bone church."

One of my oldest St. Louis friends is married to a guy who has a Ph.D in folklore, has written an award-winning play, and has spent a lot of time in the Czech Republic over the past 17 years. Naturally, he also has a blog about art and theatre and culture, which you should go visit. He’s also a founding member of Bad Soviet Habits, an arts collective that “seeks to reach new audiences by finding and promoting new work, new artists, and unconventional spaces and projects.”

He is an interesting, funny and gracious dude, and kindly answered my questions about his experiences in the Czech Republic while he was in the middle of an 8,000-hour work week.

When did you first go to the Czech Republic and why?

I flew in in January ’92, just after I graduated from college mid-year. Not the best time, either weather-wise or color-wise, to first arrive there. Gray gray gray, Although my friend Richard treated me to a crêpe (palacinka) on the street that was amazing. They're hard to find now.

I’d studied in Spain my sophomore year of college, and when I graduated I knew I wanted to travel again, learn another language (one different from the Romance family), to live outside of the U.S. I’d been very lonely in Spain, where I’d known no one to begin with, and in this case I knew at least one person. So it was very arbitrary in terms of destination, but it happened to fit many of my criteria. I think I was the only American in ’92, and probably one of the few English speakers who had difficulty landing a job teaching English.


How many times have you been back? Is it different every time you go? If so, how?

I lived there for 18 months the first time, traveled back twice to visit friends in the late ’90s, then started studying Czech formally at Charles University in Prague in advance of applying for grants. I lived there again while doing dissertation research in 2001, and have been back 2-3 times since then, most recently to perform in the Prague Fringe Festival this past May.

Czechs used to say that it would take one year out of communism for every year under communism for them to become a “normal” nation (their word) again. The country is changing quite slowly, but the city of Prague is very different. It has become a European capital – in the same way that New York City couldn’t be anywhere but in the U.S. but is hardly representative of the U.S., or Paris is completely French but not representative of French life.

Prague is European with a strong Czech accent. The clothing is much more European – it’s harder to tell what someone’s nationality is based on their dress. That’s a recent phenomenon, the turnover’s just been in the past two years, an ex-pat friend tells me.

Meanwhile Brno, the capital of Moravia (the second “state” that is the CR) is [undergoing] a much slower change. More Czech (or Moravian) with a hint of Italian investments. If you go to the little towns, things don’t look different at all. I expect the residents find it changed, but as a visitor, it doesn’t seem like much has happened.

From a trip with the in-laws last year, in a pub in the Prague neighborhood of Vinohrady near the Flora metro station. "Tasty."

Leftovers From Life in Japan

In the kitchen of Yoshida House, circa 1990. This clown still owes Sam and me money.

Yesterday was full of errands that derailed my usual sensible eating schedule, and my lunch was late, substantial, and topped off with an ice cream sandwich (I'm a little addicted to those at the moment). So around nine last night, I found myself in need of a snack that would be substantial enough to serve as dinner without being heavy or unhealthy. In a scene straight from my teenage years, I opened the fridge, stood there with one hand on the door handle and the other on my hip, and gazed at the shelves, waiting for a sign.


It didn't take long for it to dawn on me that we have both yogurt and bread, and I happily grabbed them and found a suitable bowl. As I tore the bread up into lima-bean-sized bits and glopped yogurt on top, my mind drifted back to where I learned this combination: Tokyo. In a gaijin house in a suburb called Oizumi Gakuen, to be precise.

My gaijin house closet. That's a tiny fridge at the bottom left -- an important accessory if you want to count on finding your food where you left it.

"Gaijin" means "foreigner"; a gaijin house is a rooming house for non-Japanese, a place where nobody looks askance at tall, loud, rude people, beacuse everyone is tall, loud and rude, and taking delight in educating each other about the ins and outs of surviving in a foreign land. Ours had perhaps six 8' x 10' rooms per floor, each with a sink, and one toilet per floor. The telephone, shower and kitchen were communal. It was not glamorous, but it was fun, friendly, and most importantly, cheap. When my brother and I first arrived, there was only one room available, so we shared for a while. He still complains about the noise I made when I flossed my teeth.

Sam (not his real name) and I found that room thanks to a connection we'd made during a flight from Ulan Bator to Beijing. Our black market Trans-Siberian ticket had ended up stranding us in the capital of Mongolia, and we consequently found ourselves on the weekly flight to Beijing. It was an open seating situation, and the man next to us, who had just been filming highland games in the countryside, happened to have lived at Yoshida House, or knew the manager, I forget which. When he heard we were going to Tokyo, he scrawled a name and phone number on a scrap of paper.

So back to the yogurt and bread. I learned this combination from an Israeli man a few years older than me, fresh out of military service and engaged in the time-honored tradition of selling junky Thai trinkets on the street. I don't know if the dish is typically Israeli, or just something this one guy did, but I saw him eating it all the time in the communal kitchen, tried it myself once, and liked it enough that I still eat it.

Spot the dog in the garden at Yoshida House, circa 1990.

Just now, on a whim, I searched for Yoshida House. Not only is it still up and running, but it has a lovely website. It looks a lot cleaner than I remember it, and the people look classier, too. I'm glad it's still there; maybe I'll go back for a visit someday.

Photopost: Trans-Siberian Express

Roughly 20 years ago, my older brother Sam (not his real name) convinced me that going walkabout in Europe and Asia right after graduation would be just the thing to do. As usual, he was right.

These photos were taken by him during his journey west on the Trans-Siberian Express to meet me in Germany (he had just spent a year studying in Nanjing). I myself took that same train back east with him a few weeks later, and took these photos of his photos this morning.

Enjoy.

International Cocktail Hour

Last week I was grocery shopping with my husband Mowgli (not his real name) when he started prowling the liquor aisle. I knew what he was looking for: Hpnotiq. And no, that's not a string of typos, that's how some brand guru decided to spell it -- you can check out the bottle below for confirmation.

Now, if you've met Mowgli, you may know that his favored hard liquor is Wild Turkey. Being a man who's confident in his choices, he does not care one fig that others find his love of both Wild Turkey and Hpnotiq incongruous.

Despite the fact that it is bright blue and can accurately be described as tasting like a SweetTart, "Product of France" proudly adorns this blend of vodka, cognac and "exotic fruit juices." The stuff is so beloved by the patrons of our local grocery store that it was behind the service counter, from whence it is difficult to steal.

Back at home, we delivered it to the fridge. I cozied up to my Sunday night show with a small amount of the stuff, but was not enjoying it as much as I might due to the tart end of the SweetTart factor. Later, I perused the fridge for a mixer, and my gaze fell on the bottle of super-sugary Indian mango juice we had also picked up.

And thus the green concoction on the left was born. I like to think of it as the Shazam because that was the thought in my head when I realized how well the two liquids would go together, but I'm taking suggestions for names.

Japanese Prints in a loo in The Lou

It’s not every day that art makes me gasp, and before the 4th of July, it had never happened to me at a party – and certainly not in a bathroom.

A friend’s boyfriend, an artist himself, has two Toshi Yoshida prints hanging opposite his toilet. One is of a wisteria vine, and the other is a pink Mount Fuji. I was shocked not only by the unlikely placement, but by the sheer beauty of the colors, lines and composition. Unable to believe what I was seeing, I examined them for a good five minutes, oblivious to everything else.
Back in the kitchen, as I was helping myself to more chips and dips, I made a bad joke about how awful they were and suggested he give them to me. He declined my offer. The following week, still intrigued by them, I asked him a few questions about their history and what they mean to him – and why they’re in the bathroom.

The location has to do with his desire to keep them together as well as practicality – he has a lot of artwork, and they struck him as perfect for the bathroom. They came from an estate sale in upstate New York, where his family vacationed every summer. His father owned an antique shop in Daytona Beach, Florida, and would drive up with the family, but drive back in a U-Haul filled with that year’s plunder.

When his father passed away, he didn’t want much from the shop, but since he had always been attracted to those prints, he asked for and got them. Part of what he liked was their quietness, their amazing simplicity of color and design, the understated mastery that had so impressed Monet and his contemporaries. But he had also liked the way they transported him emotionally, allowing him to travel while standing still. He’s a traveling kind of guy, always up for new people and new experiences, and always enjoying coming home to everything in its right place.

He mentioned that to his dad, they were just merchandise, and that the shop was never terribly successful – people don’t go to Daytona Beach to buy antiques. Given a different location, the prints might have sold, and he wouldn’t have inherited them. And I wouldn’t have had that astonishing moment in a bathroom on the 4th of July.

Photopost: Parisian Chocolate Wrapper

In May, a friend went to Paris and kindly brought me back two kinds of chocolate. The dark niblets went straight into my snack drawer and were gone within the space of a week. The milk medallion with the Eiffel Tower on one side and the Arc de Triomphe on the other went into the enormous bag I carry back and forth to work and was promptly forgotten until Bastille Day rolled around this week.

Good thing, too, because had I eaten it right away, I might have been so eager to get at the chocolate that I wouldn't have noticed how amazing the foil packaging is. Enjoy, mes amis!