philippe parreno: the boy from mars

i saw this at the kunsthalle in zurich; to get to the screening room, you walk through galleries mostly empty except for parreno's extremely bright marquee sculptures. one room was dedicated to a cloud of helium-filled black speech bubbles bobbing at the ceiling. the gallery was deserted, and the marquee at the door to the screening room slowly faded from brilliance to complete darkness while the boy from mars looped, a quiet, serene, and disquieting film made in thailand, apparently on property owned by rirkrit tiravanija. (music at the end is by devendra banhart, whose music is so surpassingly strange i am lost for words.)

microwave vacuum dehydration: experiments in plasma explosion

the latest post from cooking issues is about using a microwave and a vacuum to dehydrate fruit. in building a jerry-rigged microwave vacuum chamber, what they had apparently not thought of was that "under partial vacuum, microwave ovens really, really want to make balls of plasma. I kept having giant balls of fire shooting off the thermocouple. I ripped out the thermocouple. Then I kept on getting balls of fire coming off my oranges." have i mentioned how much i love cooking issues?

geert goiris, blast #3

first infusion

before moving a few weeks ago, i noticed that what appeared to be an ornamental cherry tree in the yard next door was in fact a tree beginning to burgeon with edible, plump sour cherries. the fruit got ever larger and riper, and eventually i had no choice but to ring the doorbell and ask if they would let me pick the cherries that they clearly weren't eating. a few days ago, i made off with a pound; yesterday, remembering the chairs in the back of the old house, another two pounds, this time dark red, drippingly juicy, and on the verge of being overripe. the first infusion is sour cherry, fresh mint, and cherry pits (in vodka). does cambridge need one of these?

peeves

1. writing in library books. even in pencil. i would like to arrive on my own at the conclusion that "NETWORK = POWER!!!"
2. items on craigslist and ebay without decision-critical metadata. who is going to buy a "bike frame, paint chipped in places, with wheel"?
3. unnecessary and unpleasant ornamentation on otherwise functional, well-designed objects. i don't want big purple dots on my hammer handle.
4. PDFs of book pages that are surrounded by enormous black borders (wasted toner!), slightly skewed (unreadable!), and scanned at unnecessarily high resolution (network load!)
5. despatch systems that give 6-hour service windows during which you're expected to be home and then fail to despatch a serviceperson within said window. (verizon, i'm looking at you.)

transpositions

Whether a given problem is similarly shaped enough to be solved by analogical transfers of schemes cannot be decided in advance by social scientific analysts, but must be determined case by case by the actors, which means that there is no fixed limit to the possible transpositions.

william sewell, the theory of structure

on which subject, also see this.

individuality

cultures that honor individuality create diversions that routinely disguise the collective bases of individual identity.

jack katz, how emotions work

more on the hermeneutic circle

You wander about for some time while noticing interesting things, and then you try to find a way out by listening for what the natives suggest, even though you know that in the singularity of your own experience, you will always remain an outsider, even though the natives often can't give directions to the major landmarks in their own hometown, and even though you can never wipe out your own access or ignore theirs, with the result that, when you are finally ready to restate what you think they are saying, you know you still might be led astray.

jack katz, how emotions work

moving and the internet #2

the minuscule modem arrived in an enormous box with the first UPS truck today but the large, multifold setup guide* says (i paraphrase freely): "do not attempt to install or use the internet until your service activation date** or you will be beset by a fate too awful to describe." technology always overpromises and underdelivers.

* same size as the enormous box's footprint. coincidence?

** still SIX DAYS AWAY.

ashmead's kernel

is an old english russet apple "medium size, golden-brown skin with a crisp nutty snap. Fruit explodes with champagne-sherbet juice infused with a lingering scent of orange blossom. Flesh is dense, sugary and aromatic with intense flavor, characteristic of russets."* orangepippin.com (the comprehensive resource for apples and orchards) tells us that ashmead's kernel is a homely fruit (and how) but, with flavour like that, does it really matter? once available here but now, alas, sold out.

* for erudite and mildly snarky essays on garden catalogues and their often purple prose, see onward and upward in the garden, by katharine s. white (wife of e.b.)

moving and the internet

just moved, and in the process of painting miscellaneous things. i placed an order for verizon dsl and they have just shipped the modem. activation is scheduled for june 24 which is EIGHT DAYS AWAY. naturally, it is not possible to collect the modem in person at the verizon store in harvard square and still get it for free in this online-only offer they're having. i want the internet back now.

fusion tables and data interchange

google research introduces fusion tables, and it's neat and nifty, but it looks different from when it was first conceived (and when we started talking about it in earnest, during this trip). i guess that's what happens when you leave mid-way. more thoughts to come.

a new source of deliciousness

pomegranate molasses, lime juice, honey, and soda water, with mint. we could sell this at a beachside bar, with fried chickpeas rolled in cayenne pepper, cumin, and dried mint flakes, and make millions.

munich to zurich

[catching up #2; tenses are all over the place, as you might expect]

this first bit written on a quiet, fast, inexpensive train from munich to zurich*, with leonard cohen's the faith** playing on the ipod as we roll through the summer country towards switzerland. this is immeasurably better than flying.

the 3D display at the zurich hb was dark when i got there, so i passed it by and came directly to wollishofen where hk was waiting for me at the tram stop. i rehydrated extensively while she cooked, then we walked down to the lake when tom got back. after dinner, we allowed the food to settle for a decent period before venturing into the lake, which was clear and not as cold as it looked. i bumped into a duck while swimming to the jetty; it looked surprised, bobbed its head slowly up out of the water, then sent a long string of poop into the depths.

* is it really so hard to get this right? spend less money on highways and cars, stop subsidising gas and the auto industry, learn to eat food grown closer to home, tax cars and gas more, build common-gauge rail lines, and good transit systems almost inevitably become reality.

** apparently based on an old basque song. i first heard this at enrique martinez celaya's lecture at the ranch last summer.

munich

[catching up #1] an assortment of thoughts:

1. there's quite a lot of art in munich (i cherrypicked and went to the glyptothek, the moderne*, and the brandhorst).
2. the munich subway train stations have no faregates, only a ticket validator. this is quite nice and for sure reduces cost of enforcement. but such a fare system (essentially self-checking) only works when a few conditions coexist. rule-abiding, non-freeriding users are probably critical, but the incentive structures built into fares is also important. in munich, a single trip in the two central zones runs about EUR2; a 7 day unlimited pass for the same zones is EUR11.50; the fine for not having a valid ticket is EUR40. clearly, the only intelligent decision is to buy the long-term unlimited pass. this encourages high-volume usage and reduces the need for enforcement. the same thing, by the way, happens in zurich (on which more anon). if only we knew which were necessary and which were sufficient.
3. shops close early. you can't buy a band-aid after 8, but you can be drinking beer and eating sausages til well past midnight. on balance, this is a good thing.
4. and what beer and what sausages. holy crap. special mention: thanks to patrick, we made an excursion to the stunningly touristy andechser pub in the old city and had some draft andechser doppelbock. dark in the glass, crisp, surprisingly clean-tasting, very aromatic with citrus and malt.
5. also, the grocery stores sell beer for less than the price of bottled water, less, in fact, than the price of PBR in cambridge, mass. this was a cause of joy in munich and now, as i write this in cambridge, a source of crushing despair. i thought of buying water for the grilling excursion, but the thought perished rapidly.
6. the isar river runs through munich and is remarkably clean and cold. near thalkirchen, there is a gravel bank where enormous crowds gather to grill on myriad disposable grilling devices and drink beers cooled by immersion in the river. our grilling was almost thwarted by defective matches and failure to completely read the detailed instructions on the grilling device. competence prevailed, and we eventually succeeded in attaining perfectly caramelised bratwurst, herbed pork loin, and white asparagus (you know it is spargel-season when asparagus costs EUR4.60 for a half-kilogram and EUR5 for one kilogram), accompanied by copious quantities of toasted rye bread, cheese, and summer beverages of choice, which are
7. either a radler (wheat beer or lager mixed with lemonade or lemon soda) or an apple-soda (exactly what you'd expect). both are quite civilized, much like
8. quark. why have i never before encountered this remarkable dairy product? it is so versatile, delicate-tasting, and available in germany in a panoply of baked goods
9. which include breads! you can buy them by weight, they are baked fresh every day, and they are strong, brown, and full of spices. the pretzels (or brez'n) are chewy, glossy, flecked with salt and, if you're lucky, still warm.

* what is a pinakothek? it is a mystery.

density and vacuousness at the museum brandhorst

a conversation about great museums a few nights ago reminded me of the brandhorst, which i visited in 2009.

image by art-magazin

after a brief interlude for a stunning andechser doppelbock (dark and clear, with a crisp, malty flavour, plenty of acidity, and the aroma of citrus--thank you patrick), we headed back to the maxvorstadt* to see the new brandhorst museum, designed by sauerbruch hutton. the outside is clad with a bi-coloured steel skin covered with a layer of vertically-affixed ceramic rods glazed in a variety of different colours. the intent was to both shield the building from sun heat and to reduce reverberations from street noise; these objectives achieved, the skin of rods also gives the building an appearance of shifting colouration such that, from afar, it looks more like a collection of rectilinear masses of pure colour than a building.

the collection is from udo and anette brandhorst, yet another pair of tremendously-wealthy art collectors. the brandhorst collection focuses on contemporary artists from europe and north america; they have a stunning number of cy twomblys, and have in fact built the cavernous and beautiful upper galleries expressly to display their collection of twombly's giant rose paintings, a large proportion of the lepanto cycle, and many of his sculptures. i blame my poor education and exposure for my inability to see the slightest sense of wonder, insight, technical development, or rich meaning in these works. fortunately, the profound vacuity of the upper gallery was redeemed by the museum's superb construction (the inside was all limed oak, high ceilings, plastered walls, and frosted glass) and two paintings crammed into the ground floor gallery.

the first, by sigmar polke, is painted on glazed synthetic cloth such that the canvas becomes translucent and reveals the framework of the stretcher behind it; additionally, there is a section of canvas that has been printed with colours handprints and stitched in. the imagery is of a tree bare of foliage and a mountain in segments, both with perspective slightly messed up and represented as blown-up gravure lines painted on with clearly drippy paint--from a great distance, the tree and the mountain appear to have the tone and shade of paint but close-up they are clearly both line art and painting. the title is the three lies of painting which gives rise to a host of possible interpretations given the transparency and intentional fragmentation of the canvas ground and the numerous conscious and explicit pieces of trickery in the painting.

sigmar polke, the three lies of painting, image by the museum brandhorst

the second, by eric fischl, reminds me a little of sargent's el jaleo in the isabella stewart gardner museum. living room #3 (spinning) is part of his krefeld series in which he hired two actors to live in restored mies van der rohe houses and painted a series showing snapshots of their lives. this one is one of the best. the titanium white in the faces creates an irresistible sense of powerful light off to the left, and the sense of movement in the gown suggests an expanse of time, a prior history of interaction, and a durable mood all condensed into an unmeditated and transient moment. this has some connection to the tea ceremony concept of 一期一会.

eric fischl, the living room #3 (spinning), image by the museum brandhorst

john singer sargent, el jaleo, image by carol gerten

margaret was saying [and here, you can read what margaret actually said, which is actually about a completely different thing that i do agree with] that the unique value of paintings is in their ability to do what photographs cannot do, in the same way that the unique value of the novel lies in its ability to do what films cannot do. i think this may be a specifically correct judgment given a particularly good painting and a mediocre photograph, but i can think of many good photographs that are better than mediocre paintings and good films that are better than mediocre books. perhaps a more precise and generalizable rubric is that representations of objects and events are valuable in so far as they capture and can communicate a sort of density of meaning, and they are more valuable the more intense, the more dense they are. these two pieces by polke and fischl (and the flavin and sandback pieces in the pinakothek, and the installations of fragmentary statuary in the glyptothek) are dense with what irene winter calls affective power, the way the numerous pieces by twombly are not.

* margaret also notes that: "In the interests of strict accuracy, the Brandhorst is not at Königsplatz. It's in Maxvorstadt. Königsplatz is a square, not a district. The Glyptothek, meanwhile, is definitely at Königsplatz." 'tis.

pinakothek der moderne

pinakothek der moderne was designed by stefan braunfels and has some truly amazing cast concrete facework. unfortunately, the modern section was mostly underwhelming. fortunately, i could have spent at least four hours in the contemporary galleries.

there were many john chamberlains, though the best one was acme thunderer, placed in a hallway drenched in light from floor-to-ceiling windows.


john chamberlain, acme thunderer, image from the american patrons of the pinakotheks.

and the moderne was more than redeemed by a pair of installations placed side by side through the genius of the curatorial staff. from the stairs to the second floor, a green glow can be seen emanating from one of the galleries. this turns out to be an enormous, high-ceilinged room filled with a dan flavin fluorescent tube sculpture. the green light is remarkably penetrating, such that the tubes begin to vibrate slightly after just a few seconds of observation as parts of your retina become violently overstimulated. the galleries visible through the two exits turn pink, as does the light from the skylights, the way everything turns blue at sunset during the blue hour.


untitled (to you, Heiner, with admiration and affection), image from asymptotia

exiting the flavin room in a pink haze, green tubes seared into our retinas, we then came on fred sandback's pink flamingo, two thin columns of pink yarn descending from the ceiling in a white room that, to green-accustomed eyes, vibrated in shades of pink. at the same moment, a man in a pink shirt and a woman in pink pants came into the room. their shadows blocked out the green light from the entryway for an instant, in which time the sculpture flashed the deep, saturated colour of lawn flamingos. a magic moment.

the glyptothek

having spent many (but perhaps not quite enough) of the last few days dozing by the riverbank, we decided that today, being hot and muggy, would be a fine day to see the museums of munich. the glyptothek in koenigsplatz, recommended highly by no less august an individual than irene winter herself, was the first on the list.

it is a small museum with walls of exposed whitewashed brick and a floor of large grey flagstones, with maybe 9 connected halls around a sunny, tree-ful central courtyard. i don't know if i've ever been in a museum as obsessed with material and with displaying statuary with such care and restraint. each pedestal is carefully and beautifully made--most out of a fine-grained pale-grey granite--with the dressing marks still on every face, but with the corners honed to a fine bevel. when the light comes in through the windows, the pedestals achieve the same soft tone as the marble of which many of the statues are made and seem to disappear.

as in the case of the dog below (in front of a horst thuerheimer drawing) many of the fragmentary pieces appeared to be in the process of flying apart, held together only by the edges of their silhouettes.

image from the glyptothek and antiken sammlungen

the pediment sculptures from the east and west facades of the aphaia temple at aegina were both installed a little above head level, on an unadorned blackened steel and granite base with two corner blocks of granite providing the suggestion of the shape of the pediment that would have been behind them. these fragmentary figures of greek and trojan warriors were originally installed in a different configuration which has since been revised.

the group from the western pediment, image from the university of regensburg

there is an entire room of greek and roman busts installed at various heights, creating the impression of walking through a silent and motionless crowd. it was all extremely satisfying.

london to munich

to munich in 20 minutes on an easyjet ticket that cost $44. incidentally, the streetnet on upper street is a beautiful thing.

london

having procrastinated for days on 3 sizeable papers, i was in the uncomfortable position of writing the bulk of all of them over the last 5 days. i turned in the last paper 20 minutes before hightailing it home to get my bag and leave for the airport. there's still one paper to go but the year is almost over and the summer is dimly visible.

the flight into london got in 20 minutes early, just in time to catch rush hour on the tube. i got to central london by 9am and got out at baker street. it is overcast, cool, and humid, and there appear to be waterfowl everywhere.

the end of term

is always the worst time of the year.

the week in review

whenever deadlines loom, i become spectacularly creative in developing ways to do anything but the work that's due right now. this week i,

1. revisited the best lentils in the world: partly to prove replicability, partly to procrastinate, mostly as a contribution to the quantitative baker's intense middle eastern dinner tonight.
2. discovered the breakfast of champions: killer black beans made from rancho gordo's midnight black beans (steve sando, the founder, gives me constant life envy). tacos made of fresh corn tortillas, avocado, black beans, and cholula=magnificent.
3. procrastinated using food chemistry: to avoid writing the many papers i'm writing and use up the latest avalanche of lemons in the delivery box, tried an all whole-wheat flour lemon cake. flavour is excellent, texture dense. maybe next time with whole wheat pastry flour (does that even exist?) and more milk.
4. procrastinated using hoped-for construction opportunity: 3 hours in conversation with tw and someone who makes paraphernalia for aerial silks, talking about the aforementioned large dining table. it was neat, as always, to observe and participate in the multivariate optimisation process of iterating through construction problems and mediating between design and construction priorities. on the other hand, also a little disappointing to have an idea be realised by someone else with a different sense of priorities in construction or for someone else with a different sense of priorities in aesthetics. as an unintended consequence, i also
   
5. found good coffee and good espresso drinks: after my constant grousing (for example, here and here) about the absence of good espresso drinks in cambridge, i was surprised by simon's coffee shop. they made me an excellent latte, the better for being unexpected, using beans from barismo, a roaster in arlington that seems relatively obsessive. more taste testing is required before a more considered pronouncement can be made about either.
   
6. was thwarted by the ever-present minor failure of intersubjectivity: started reviewing this massive sourceforge association dataset; has many of the things i want but missing a few critical things for a full-on analysis. nathan, ever-obliging, is going to try and patch it next week.
7. had a flash of insight: frames and selective association might be the real-world functional equivalents of the d-dimensional lattice structures network theorists keep modeling but empirical researchers always fail to find. obviously, this bears more thought.

consequently: 0 down; 4 papers to go, 1 paper to review.

the kindle DX, e-book readers, and the halls of academe

here in the sociology department, we've been discussing ebook readers since december. every graduate student and faculty member in the natural and social sciences can be seen on a daily basis hauling around large stacks of printed, dog-eared, torn, coffee-stained PDFs.

some of us resort to extreme measures to reduce the number of pages we print. for a 290-page article, i once printed 8 sheets to the page. i cannot recommend it as a reading solution. what i really need is a good e-reader for these stacks of PDFs: all i want is a large screen (at least 90% of letter-size), the ability to annotate (for PDFs, ideally generating a new PDF text layer), some kind of standard connection system (USB would do), and a sensitive design for the shell. sell it to me for under $275, and i'll be happy for at least a month.

except, i've been waiting for such a thing for literally years now. the original kindles are great for reading books, except i will probably never read a book for pleasure on the kindle. kindle 2 is slightly better designed, but still way too small to display full-page PDFs well, and anyway they lack native PDF support--having to go through a complicated email conversion process just to read a PDF is not cool. the irex iliad reader does everything i need it to but the shell is poorly-designed and i would have to sell a kidney to pay for one. i went and poked at the sony reader at a best buy; it does almost everything, including supporting PDFs natively, but is too small for full-page PDFs and something about the design of the shell again spoils it for me. once again, it is more money than i would shell out for something i didn't love deeply. plastic logic's reader looks and sounds like it could be the real deal, but of course has been delayed to market several times and do i really want to buy the first version of anyone's reader?

so when i saw the kindle DX*, i immediately sent a volley of emails off to the many and various people to whom i've complained about technology's propensity to overpromise and underdeliver. is it possible that amazon has finally made something that inadvertently gives me everything i want in an e-book reader? there's no way to tell, of course: it isn't available yet, and it costs almost $500 (plus i would feel compelled to shell out for the 2-year extended warranty, a mere $109 extra). with the thousands of pages of PDFs i'll have to read over the next 4 months, this is a travesty of cosmic proportions. someone at amazon please read this and send me a unit to test.


* i find it incredible that the kindle DX is being contemplated as a viable replacement for hardcopy textbooks and newspapers--as many people have pointed out, kindle+textbooks is not cheaper than used textbooks+selling textbooks, and newspapers aren't dying off because people need a better thing to read them on than paper.

tvålpalatset

i was walking back from the subway the other evening when i saw a cup of coffee on a sidewalk table with a perfect latte fern on top of it. the owner of said cup emerged from inside the building to inform me of the existence of a cafe with excellent coffee just around the corner, which is how i found tvålpalatset (trans. soap palace), located in the first-floor rooms of what used to be the meeting rooms of a boxing club. under the cafe is a labyrinth of skylighted, marble-floored echoing spaces carved out of rock. the owner, who looks like andy from the mv glassworks. now rents these out to conferences and his son runs the cafe and an espresso school. so i'm sitting in the second room, painted completely white with wide-plank scrubbed fir floors. the room is three times longer than it is wide, the ceiling is higher than the room is long, there are marble-topped tables and overstuffed red and blue (the shade you associate with gainsborough and the french monarchy) cut-velvet armchairs, and a large, cream-coloured swedish tile furnace stands in the corner.* they brew beans from åre coffee roasters, and i'm having good lattes for the first time in months.

* these look great and are also magnificently efficient. the masonry surrounding the firebox is designed to absorb heat from the heat source and then radiate it back slowly and evenly over many hours.

404ed

this is the only http 404 page i've ever enjoyed.

stockholm

i got home later than my usual bedtime last night, after stopping in on detroit's third anniversary party (cake, beer, and nostalgic photographs in a bomb shelter under the vestertorp train station, south of stockholm city center). detroit is a shared studio space for emerging artists relatively close to odenplan; in a city as expensive as stockholm, it is a marvelous thing.

the weather in stockholm has been improbably good this week. for the fourth morning in a row, cloudless blue skies and brilliant sunlight. today, it bounced off the bright yellow buildings across the street and into the apartment, finally waking me up by 11am.

the warmth and light brought everyone out into the parks. we stopped for a coffee at a waterfront cafe in hornstull that has apparently been destroyed three times by radical political and religious right-wingers, then walked along the sodermalm waterfront until we got up into the neighbourhood south of folkungagatan where i got another latte and we sat in the park under the church and ate ice cream for a few hours in the sun while moa's friend's daughter harassed other park-goers under the guise of being friendly. after some discussion, the swedes decided that the ice cream known as hjortron (a tangy ice-cream with pale yellow preserves with large seeds swirled through it) is made of cloudberry, a berry prized across the far northern latitudes for its rarity. i woke up long enough to agree, then fell asleep again. in the spring, this city is easy to fall in love with.

keflavik, iceland

so here we are, on a long layover in keflavik, on our way to stockholm. the indignities of flight delays are mitigated by business class lounges, but only marginally. (side note: viking and thule are both beers brewed in iceland. they taste essentially the same.)

many years ago, i took a train from new haven to south station. it was a sunny day in spring, around this time of year. along the way, the train passed slowly through many small towns in new england, visible beyond the chainlink fence protecting people from the tracks. in many of these pass-throughs, i saw small children standing, hands on the fence, looking through to the trains rumbling past. living on an island is a lot like that.

the day of two breakfasts and baked good reciprocity

the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley.* or so says robert burns.

1. wednesday last week, the rumour mill is set afire with talk of a sunday morning blueberry pancake breakfast featuring fresh maple syrup at the clover food lab. expectations at an unreasonably high level, a small cadre plans an expedition.
   
2. thursday, rucker emails from the big apple. she's in town for a signet shindig over the weekend. i suggest pancakes with fresh maple syrup on sunday morning. she counters with the signet's southern breakfast featuring creamed mushrooms, cheese grits, and allan benton's country ham (last seen at hungry mother), cooked under the supervision of matt lee. committed to pancakes and fresh syrup, i am foiled. the disappointment is crushing until i remember: fresh maple syrup!
   
3. friday, word arrives from a trusted source that pancakes will be postponed on account of anticipated bad weather. the disappointment is crushing until i remember: ham brunch is now a go! does it matter that i am not a member of the signet?
   
4. saturday, at the first backyard barbecue of the season, conversation turns to weekend breakfast and the S&S deli vs danny's diner. clearly, only empirical data will permit us to distinguish the superior candidate.
   

this is how it comes to pass that one eats two breakfasts on a bright and cloudless sunday in cambridge. my alarm failed to go off this morning at the appointed hour but the sun coming through the window woke me in plenty of time to make it to danny's diner at 8.30am. the eponymous danny has passed beyond the veil but his diner continues to put out magnificent, inexpensive breakfast: their corned beef hash is great and goes well with banana nut pancakes. tony's denver omelet and chocolate chip pancakes were also satisfying in ways that only diner omelets can be.

shortly later, i was in the signet, interloping with a mimosa and a plate loaded with grits from the old mill of guilford, creamed mushrooms, and thin-sliced country ham from allan benton. this ham bore no resemblance to the junk in bad sandwiches: it was dry-cured, salty, with fine-textured fibre, and dense, complex flavour. i bet almost anything that ham bone would make staggering soup.

then, to clear out the perishables in anticipation of a week away in sweden, i made an orange ginger olive-oil cake. not long after it went into the oven, i got an email asking if i would like some freshly-baked apple walnut olive-oil cake. does a dog have fleas? we arranged a ride-by exchange of baked goods on mass ave. with the benefit of a side-by-side tasting, i got the better end of the deal.

* this was significantly more apropos when i began writing this. now, not so much.

lentils

public service announcement: i have discovered the best thing on the planet. it is brown lentils with carrots and onions, charred kale, and rice, with feta and garlic yogurt. warm, spicy, slightly minty, round from the yogurt, earthy from the lentils, with a slight bitterness from the kale--it is a perfect dinner.

lentils
1/4 large white sweet onion
olive oil
dash each mint, cumin, cilantro, cayenne, fennel seed, mustard seed, dill, cinnamon
1 cup brown lentils
2 carrots
3 cloves garlic
black pepper
pomegranate molasses (dark honeys like buckwheat or tarweed are decent substitutes)
salt

reduce the onion to a 1/2 inch dice. after doing so, in a heavy casserole on high heat, warm about 1 tablespoon of olive oil. add the spices. when the fennel and mustard begin to pop, add the onion and stir. a powerful and promising aroma will permeate your kitchen. reduce the heat to medium and let the onions do their thing. meanwhile, rinse your lentils and drain. bring the heat back up to high and add the drained lentils. stir again. the aroma will now be significantly less promising, and reminiscent of wet earth and pouring rain. add enough water to cover the lentils. when the mix comes to a boil, reduce the heat to medium again and cover, leaving a slight gap for steam to escape. do not add salt or pepper yet.

peel and cut carrots into 1/4 inch half-rounds or whatever shape strikes your fancy; after this, peel and finely mince the garlic. after you have completed these onerous tasks, inspect the casserole again and top up with water to just cover the lentils. at this point, reduce the heat to medium-low and add all the garlic, then re-cover, again leaving the merest hint of a gap. when the lentils are softened but not yet tender, add the carrots. continue to cook until carrots are soft but still firm to the bite and lentils are soft but not mushy. (total cooking time can be anything from 25 to 60 minutes. dried pulses vary widely in cooking time, so keep on checking; it's an excuse to taste.) add about a teaspoon's worth of pomegranate molasses, stir to mix, then season with salt and fresh pepper, remembering that feta is a salty cheese.

i had this with steamed rice (jasmine, for preference) and chopped kale charred in a hot skillet with olive and walnut oil--both excellent in their own right. but what made the lentils into the stuff of myth was first the addition of the garlic and yogurt sauce from the zucchini pancakes, and then the sprinkling of feta over the top of everything.

the container for the thing contained

Whereas nation states have always distinguished themselves from others by means of a thick exterior boundary on the perimeter of a territorial 'container,' they have also maintained the illusion of an interor without borders, a national space kept open by the political public sphere where differences are subordinated by the constitutional state. With the rise of the contractualization of citizenship, an interior border now duplicates that of the exterior. Only those who have borne the burden of internal social exclusion for centuries--first from slavery, then through racial apartheid--are immune from the compensatory allure of the nation.

margaret somers, genealogies of citizenship

this makes me think of hugh of st. victor, quoted by edward said:

the man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land.

zucchini

apparently, some people who cultivate the zucchini plant are overwhelmed by its plenitude, to the point where they creep up to porches in the dead of night to leave bags of the squash hanging, unwanted, from doors. i have never had this problem but, even if i did, zucchini pancakes are clearly the solution. the ny times recently had an article about zucchini pancakes but i found their version rubbery and insufficiently delightful. these i inflicted on the unsuspecting crowd at tory and elizabeth's easter dinner last night; happily, the modifications i made this morning (much less egg, much less flour) produced a truly transcendent version, delicate and crisp.

pancakes
2 medium zucchini
1/4 cup onion
1 egg
1 tablespoon dry dill (or 2-3 if fresh)
handful crumbled feta (large lumps are sort of nice)
handful grated parmesan

after grating the zucchini and the onion, salt liberally and allow to drain for about 10 minutes, then wring as much water out as possible. wrapping the mass of shredded zucchini in a clean towel helps. zucchini shrinks dramatically when wrung out. this is normal. in a medium-ish bowl, mix the zucchini and onions with the egg, dill, feta, parmesan. the mixture should be an appealing spring green and be a slightly runny mass. proceed now to make the sauce.

sauce
5 hefty cloves garlic
dash each cayenne, dry mint, cumin, black pepper
1 cup whole milk yogurt (thick greek style is best)

peel and mince the garlic, combine with spices and yogurt, refrigerate. this stuff will also slay a good lamb burger.

assembly
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder

after putting the sauce to bed, dust off your local cast iron skillet and heat a tablespoon of oil in it. add the flour and baking powder to the zucchini and eggs. resist the urge to overmix. drop about a tablespoonful of the batter into the hot skillet and flatten it out (3" diameter is a good size). an 8-inch skillet fits 3 of these at a time. allow one side to brown before flipping using a thin metal spatula. drain on wire rack on top of newsprint or paper towels, and serve with sauce. these deflate in a particularly dispiriting way when they are allowed to get cold.