Festival of Nations stories

Hello again, friends!

            So, as many of you know, I participated in Festival of Nations last weekend.  What is Festival of Nations, you ask?  It’s an annual International House tradition that celebrates the diversity of the International House population.  Essentially, the International House hires a number of performers (this year, our own Haniya Yameen on the tabla, as well as taiko, capoeira, various dance groups) and presents them in sets for three hours.  More important, the various nationalities in I-House can form teams to cook dishes emblematic of their region and sell them during the festival.

            Now, you might ask, why did I participate?  After all, we already live in America.  In short, I participated because of the stereotype that Americans do not care about what they are eating and do not know how to cook.  As an American who does, in fact, like to cook (and eat, and read recipes, and follow seasonal crops, and…you get the idea), I wanted to take that stereotype and blow it into little bitty pieces.  Or at least prove that America has regional cuisines the equal of most other nations in the world.

            For the above reasons, I chose to represent the Mid-Atlantic, specifically the Chesapeake Bay.  This is my home region, a land of fertile farms and (once) plentiful fish.  As a native of the District (no, not District 51, the District of Columbia) with roots in Pennsylvania Dutch country and New Jersey’s fishing industry, this area was a given.

            The first step was finding one or two good recipes.  This is not as easy as one might think.  The United States is such a colossal nation that there is no central “American” cuisine.  Each region cooks and eats very differently—for instance, the Dixie South and the Mid-Atlantic (or Texas) are totally different.  This is one reason that the image of “American” cuisine goes to hot dogs and hamburgers; they are universal in this country, despite not really representing any particular region.

            Another problem is that Mid-Atlantic food tends to either be rather blah, very time-consuming, or very expensive.  I needed something interesting, quick, easy, and relatively cheap.  In particular, I wanted to make something with crab.  The blue crab is to the Chesapeake Bay what lobster is to Maine; it is the defining food of the area.  But, like lobster, crab is very expensive.  So finding recipes and a supply was a challenge.

            Eventually I found a cheap(ish) supply of crab meat and settled on crab cakes from Old Ebbitt’s Grill.  A landmark bar in the District, Old Ebbitt’s makes a damn fine crab cake; almost all crab meat, with just enough mayonnaise and cracker crumbs to hold it all together.  Better still, they’re dead easy to make—rather like making crab meatballs.  That was definitely an important factor.  Perhaps most important, this dish encapsulates what has happened to a great deal of American fare.  Once simple bar food due to the enormous supply of crabs in the Bay, it has become haute cuisine due to the severe drop in crab population and subsequent fishing regulations imposed in the Chesapeake.  The same story applies to lobster.  Or brisket.  Or bison.  But fundamentally, it’s still simple, almost working man’s food.

            As a secret treat, I wanted to introduce people to rhubarb.  Now, I can hear a couple of you ask: “What is rhubarb?”  First, I’m going to answer that question.  Then, I’m going to forget you asked it, because everyone should know and appreciate rhubarb.

            Rhubarb is a vegetable that, like celery, has crunchy, fibrous, but edible stems.  The flavor is extremely tart, but somewhat more complex than a lemon; it’s like a mix of lemon juice and aged vinegar, I think.  However, the leaves are very bitter and quite poisonous; be sure to cut them off if you intend to cook rhubarb.

In temperate zones, rhubarb is among the first food crops to start growing, so its arrival comes as a sign of spring.  We’re right in the middle of its season as I write.  Further, many spring sweets use rhubarb as a base.  Of particular note, rhubarb and strawberries are a classic spring combination in American cooking.  A rhubarb pie or crumble is a classic Pennsylvania Dutch spring treat, and though it’s not as delicate or complex as French or Austrian pastry, it is simple, fresh, and honestly delicious.

Okay, question answered.  But you have to experience it to appreciate good American down-home cooking.  So, I decided to try making a rhubarb bar.  It took about an hour of combing Smitten Kitchen to cobble together a recipe I liked: quick, easy, but with a promise to be fabulous.  Like the crab cake recipe, this is included below.

Now, the organization.  In retrospect, I should have mustered more aid to my cause.  However, all this was happening at a very bad time for me, so I only barely obtained the materials in time, and had no time to request aid.  Nonetheless, it all got done, largely by doing it beforehand.  The beauty of crab cakes is how easy they are to make and how easy they are to freeze.  The same was true of my rhubarb bars.  So, I put everything together the night before, froze it, and cooked it the day of (amid chaos, as some can attest).  Took maybe three, four hours by myself, would have taken about half that with help.  It didn’t help that I had overscheduled that morning.  But, whatever.

The event itself was great.  I got a much better sense of the I-House community that day than I had from hanging out in the lounges.  That’s partly because I am terrible at hanging out, so I don’t do it much.  It’s also because I didn’t have the time or energy to hang out for most of the year, for academic and personal reasons.  That’s the subject of another post.  But in any event, the event was great.  Lots of delicious food, engaging banter, interesting people, and a chance to proudly represent my home region.  I wish more people had come.  Also, I wish that I’d handed out the rhubarb bars earlier.  Too many people were full at the end of the event, so even a week later I’ve still got a quarter tray of bars left!  By the way, if you want some, ask me for some.  I’ll be happy to hand some out.  Or make more.  Or both.

Okay, prelude over.  Now for what you all actually care about (the recipes).

Old Ebbit Grill Crab Cake

This is pretty straightforward.  The initial recipe came out a bit salty, though, so in the future I’d drain and rinse the crabmeat more thoroughly.  Old Bay is a very salty seasoning, too, so you may be better off trying to mix your own.  The recipe for homebrewed Old Bay is on the Internet, although the official recipe is secret.

Makes four servings.

• Ingredients
• One pound (0.454 kilogram) jumbo lump crab meat.  Do not use backfin.  You get what you pay for here.
• 1/3 cup mayonnaise
•  2 teaspoons Old Bay seasoning
• 1 tablespoon chopped parsley
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
•  4 saltine crackers
• Method
• If crabmeat is canned, drain it thoroughly.  Pick over crabmeat for shells and cartilage.
• Mix the mayonnaise, Old Bay, parsley, and mustard together until smooth.
• Thoroughly mix the crabmeat into the mayonnaise mixture.  Do not break the crabmeat into smaller lumps.
• Crush the saltines into crumbs and mix them into the crab mixture.
• Form the mixture into four patties.  To cook, pan-fry or broil until the cakes are golden brown.
• Serve with a side of vegetables.  These make fine sandwiches too, but really should be eaten straight.

Rhubarb Bars

This recipe was an amalgamation of two Smitten Kitchen goodies: Blueberry Crumb Bars and Rustic Rhubarb Tarts.  I took the pastry dough recipe from the blueberry crumb bars and used the compote recipe from the tarts in place of the blueberry filling.  If I do say so myself, the results were fantabulous.

• Rhubarb vanilla compote
• Ingredients
• 1.5 pounds (0.68 kilograms) rhubarb stalks, washed and trimmed of leaves and root ends
• 1 cup dark brown sugar
• ½ vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
• Method
•  Cut rhubarb stalks in half lengthwise (unless they’re very slim) and then on the diagonal into 3/4-inch chunks.
•  Put 3 cups (about a pound) of rhubarb into a large, heavy-bottomed pot; save the other 1 1/2 cups.
•  Add the brown sugar, vanilla bean seeds and pods to the pot and turn the heat to medium low. You want to start at a low temperature to encourage the rhubarb to release its liquid. Unlike most compotes, this one adds no water.
•  Cook the rhubarb mixture, covered, for about 15 minutes, or until the mixture is saucy.  Remove the cover and increase the heat to medium, cooking an additional 15 to 17 minutes, or until the rhubarb is completely broken down and thick enough that a spoon leaves a trail at the bottom of the pan.
• Discard your vanilla bean pods and add remaining rhubarb chunks to the compote.
• Remove compote from heat and allow to cool.
•  Pastry
•  Ingredients
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
•  3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup cold unsalted butter (2 sticks or 8 ounces)
• 1 egg
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
•  Zest of one lemon
• Method
• In a medium bowl, stir together 1 cup sugar, 3 cups flour, and baking powder.
• Mix in salt and lemon zest
• Use a fork or pastry cutter to blend in the butter and egg. Dough will be crumbly.
•  Combination
• Pat half of dough into the prepared pan.
• Pour cooled compote over dough in pan and spread it evenly.
• Sprinkle other half of pastry dough over the compote.
• Bake for 45 minutes, until top is slightly browned.
• Allow pastry to cool completely before cutting.
• Devour.

Meals, Health, and Reclaiming Time

Before you ask, no, this is not an attack on the American diet per se.  It is a discussion on how we eat today, not what.  And I hope that, by the end of it, I will convince you that what I say has merit.

First, some background.  My family has always eaten together.  As long as I can remember, we’ve eaten meals, particularly dinner, as a group.  There are exceptions, of course—if my parents are on a business trip, or if I or my sister or brother had a night with friends—but as a rule, we ate family dinners.

By the phrase “family dinners,” I mean that came downstairs at the same time, sat at the same table, and ate the same food.  There were no televisions.  There was no radio.  There might be music, but it was strictly background.  Our only method of sensory stimulation was each other and our conversation—and, of course, the food.

Now, this had a couple of effects.  First, we developed tight family bonds.  We know each other, and know we can depend upon each other for support when necessary.  Second, it forced us to stop for a little while.  We needed to shop, sit down, and share time together every day.  And we learned how to make time for that.

Now, here is a dirty truth about America: we have forgotten how to make that time.  We are constantly on the move; we study and work to madness.  This is part of the John Henryism of our society, in which we believe that anything is possible if we work harder.  This is where the billable hour comes from; we believe that more time = more value = more success.  We sacrifice the meal as part of this.  Witness the advent of the working lunch.  Witness the encroachment of extracurriculars and schoolwork on meals and social time.  We are obsessed with more, more, more, more, more, because society tells us that if we’re not pulling 60 hours of work a week plus three hobbies plus two hours of exercise a day, clearly we’re inadequate, and who has time to eat or sleep anyway?

The fact is, though, that the billable hour is a stupid idea.  Study after study after study shows that more time does not equal more value.  Any student can tell you that when studying, there is a beautiful period of two to four extremely productive hours after which, you stop focusing.  You read, but you stop processing the information.  You can’t see the obvious solutions.  Your brain, in short, needs rest.

This is why the Ten Commandments include the Sabbath law.  This is the reason that most successful cultures maintain a tradition of daily rest.  Witness the coffee break in the Northeast, the espresso stop in Europe, the siesta in Spain, the teahouse in China.  The human being is not a machine; he (or she) needs rest every few hours in order to continue working well.  For a very long time, in common life, that rest took the form of a meal.  Not food; a meal.

Let me explain what I mean when I say “Not food; a meal.”  It is entirely possible to eat without revitalizing, or even to drain further.  The working lunch is one example.  Eating while working does not revitalize.  Your brain is still working—indeed, it is working harder, since now you must navigate two tasks instead of just one.  So, food per se does not provide the mental energy and strength to navigate daily life.  If I want to regain energy, what I must do is step away from the desk, leave my current task, and do something else.

Additionally, eating alone often depresses energy rather than boosting it.  Eating alone is, frankly, an incredibly lonely experience.  Such an experience saps energy rather than boosting it.  And it is easy to be lonely in modern society.  It is frighteningly easy to be planted in the middle of a crowd and be completely, utterly, and hopelessly alone.

So, when I say, “a meal,” what I mean is an experience shared with friends, family, or even friendly strangers.  When presented with friendly faces and good conversation, even the darkest mood often lightens.  The promise of the family or friendship dinner is not just the food; it is the group, the conversation, the feeling of belonging.  The basic instinct of belonging in a group comes out in the meal.

Why a meal, you may ask?  Well, consider this: our places of meeting, greeting, and gathering are frequently restaurants, cafés, bars, and the kitchen.  That is no accident.  Humans grew up around the hearth.  Indeed, many studies indicate that we literally evolved around the hearth; that cooking food shrank our gut, enlarged our brains, and fundamentally changed our way of life.  Perhaps most important, the sharing of food and drink smoothes differences, softens edges, helps reconciliation, builds trust and friendship.  I’m not certain how, but if I had to guess, I would say that sharing a meal signals an induction into the tribe.  It is a very visceral act of sharing, an ancient way to say “Yes, you belong here.”

The issue is, as a society, many of us don’t belong anymore.  Consider that the percentage of Americans with no religious affiliation has jumped from 2% to 17% in the past two decades, particularly among the educated white elite, and even more particularly among the male part of that elite.  That is a loss of identity.  We no longer belong to a church.  And that loss is not unique to the churches any longer; we are more isolated from everything.  How many of us know our neighbors?  City council?  Roommates, even?  As the world has shrunk, it has become more atomized.  As we travel more, we lose the ability to build long, lasting connections.  And so, we have a class of people in the world that no longer belong anywhere. And that is a terribly lonely state.

For the above reasons, it is easy to be lonely in modern society.  I suspect this is one reason that we see the advent of social networking sites, or why the rate of mood disorders such as depression have risen so rapidly.  Of course this is not the only reason, but it is a factor.  To be lonely for a long time is depressing.  To not belong to a group is depressing.  Quite literally depressing.  Many studies have shown that not having a stable social network means a higher chance of depression, greater likelihood of illness, even a shorter life expectancy.  I know.  I’ve gone there.  I’m still looking for the way out.

The collapse of the meal is, like it or not, both an effect and a cause of this problem.  To share a meal is, as I said, a very basic and essential way of saying that a person belongs.  But in order to have such an experience, one must belong—or at least, have a group to which you want to belong.  One cannot create it from nothing.  You must find others to share it with.

The thing is, though, that most of us have others with whom we would like to share a meal.  The challenge is who, and when.  As part of the individualization and atomization of society, we no longer have a set schedule as a society.  People have activities all over the map, and they grab food when they can.  They don’t have time to sit down to eat a meal with friends.  Sharing a meal with a friend has become so rare that it comes with an element of romance attached.

I have to ask: does it have to be so complicated?  Why has eating, one of the most basic and fundamental experiences of being alive, become so rare, so difficult, so troublesome that people are working on food replacement pills?  Why, in short, have we allowed ourselves to become so busy that we cannot even care for our health and our relationships?  Can we really say that this makes us happy?

 As for the time argument—most of us do have time to share a meal.  We have far more time in our schedules than we think.  You may even find that, by stopping, resting, and recuperating, you have more time.  You will work better.  You will work harder.  You will have something to anticipate.  You will have a goal.

I suspect that some people will read this and think it is an excuse, that we should work more.  Yet, I would pose the question: why?

Why do we need to work more?

Why should we work more if we make enough money, work enough hours, have met our goals of productivity for the day?

What if what we want cannot be obtained through more hours at the office?

What if, in fact, work are compromising what we really want?

Is work, per se, redemptive somehow?

In short, is work the end goal of working?

I value work.  I try to work very hard on my studies and my research.  But I don't work for the sake of working.  I work for a goal that is separate from the work itself, be it discovering a new scientific law, starting a new student group, or anything else.  And one of those goals is to have time.  Time to sit.  Time to think.  Time to meet friends, to talk, to laugh, to share something.  Because like it or not, we are social animals.  We do not just like social interaction.  We need it.  Or we die.

Few and far between are the people who, on their deathbed, wish they had spent more time in the office.  Most of us wish we spent more time at the hearth.