May 2011

It's Memorial Day weekend. The start of being outdoors all the time. If only the torrential rains would stop we might start working on our tans. (Not.) Or our gardens. But still, the sun will go down (if it ever comes out at all), and then you may be looking for a way to while away a few evening hours not spent on your porch drinking wine and watching the fireflies. As you may remember, I am addicted to fond of high-quality, commercial-free television drama and I have recently been enjoying two new shows that I can recommend without reservation. The Killing is yet another AMC winner (they also have the incomparable Mad Men and Breaking Bad). Adapted from a Danish show of the same name, it stars the laconic and lovely Mireille Enos (above)—whom you may recognize from Big Love, where she played the much-abused twins at Juniper Creek—as a Seattle detective investigating the murder of a high-school girl.
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I'm up to my eyeballs in greenery. We've had SO MUCH rain that the entire landscape is like a sopping chartreuse sponge. The bleeding hearts are blooming, the ferns have unfurled and the weeds are seriously out of control. I'm a little overwhelmed, frankly, what with G laid up in bed and the planting still ahead of me. The storm windows need to come out and the screened-in porch needs cleaning and repair from storms and raccoons... How will it all get done? There's been some mention of a handyman, and I'm looking forward to the moment one actually materializes. Up here in Sullivan County, much is promised and little delivered. Not that I'm complaining. The change in weather has also brought ramps, scallions, rhubarb, asparagus and the prospect of an excellent growing season. Until our own crops start to come in (ages from now, possiblynever), I'll continue to forage from the local farmers markets which are up and running. This past weekend I scooped up 10 bunches of ramps to pickle (recipe coming). Also 2 gorgeous bunches of scallions which I'll use to make Francis Lam's delicious scallion-ginger sauce (recipe also coming), great with dumplings, poached chicken or even as the basis of a salad dressing. The greens from both ramps and scallions I use for a divine, jade-colored pesto.
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Much has been said already about Heidi Swanson, a talented writer, photographer and designer with a popular blog, 101 Cookbooks, and cookbook, Super Natural Cooking. With its gorgeous visuals and original approach to healthy eating, her blog really inspired me to create my own. It helped me realize that there is an audience out there of people eager to forgo fast foods and trendy diets in favor of sophisticated cooking with whole foods. Heidi’s got a great aesthetic, an earthy NoCal sensibility and a soulful approach to living. She’s vegetarian but not in a preachy way, and many of her recipes are easily adapted to include meat (or chicken or fish). She likes bright flavors, seasonal produce and ethnic cuisines. In short, a girl after my own heart. So it was with great pleasure that I received a review copy of her new cookbook, Super Natural Every Day: Well-Loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen, already highly acclaimed in the blogosphere and climbing the ranks at Amazon and on The New York Times' bestseller list. It's a beautifully photographed compendium of her favorite everyday preparations, most of them pretty quick and easy. 
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There's no place like home. It may be true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but returning to a world rendered lush by endless spring rains, to lilacs in bloom, chipmunks underfoot and jubilant birdsong, turned this into an especially sweet homecoming. Jet lag notwithstanding. G, the world's most stoic man, is in considerable pain, not even able to be up on crutches much yet. He's eager to begin rehab and, in the meantime, being from the food-is-love school of cooking, I'm trying to distract him with a steady flow of treats from my kitchen. At first, after a month in Southeast Asia, big green salads were quite the novelty. But the guy loves squid—something I've rarely cooked with—so I decided to attempt the ne plus ultra rendering of this sea creature. Even the very squeamish tend to forget all about about gooey tentacles when presented with a plate of hot, crispy, melt-in-your-mouth fried calamari. With a blitz of sea salt and a spritz of lemon juice, what's not to like? And when I came across a recipe recently on Food52 from the venerable Mrs. Larkin, I decided to give it a go. Some friends were coming over for a visit, and I thought it would be just the thing to serve with a nice cold glass of local riesling.
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G and I are homeward bound! We're getting on a plane tomorrow night, first class on Singapore Air! We're so ready. It's been a strange interlude, living in a hotel in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, watching my husband drift in and out of a morphine haze. I can't say I'll miss the room service food, but I will miss stumbling across exotic ingredients everywhere I go. Like this striking dragon fruit. We drove through a big grove of the cactus-like trees—almost like snakey Medusa heads—that produce this fantastical fruit and couldn't resist stopping at a roadside stand to buy one. According to the New York Times, here, the dragon fruit is having a bit of a moment, increasingly showing up on the menus of renowned chefs at groovy restaurants.
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Though there are some male purveyors in the markets here in Yogyakarta, the majority of them are women. Many are old, very old, with frail frames, deeply lined faces and tiny, gnarled hands. Others are robust, middle-aged and full of high spirits, greeting a foreigner with a cheery "Hallo, madam!" They are clearly industrious and capable, eking out a living without the benefit of much education, I would imagine. In a city that is 70% Muslin, many women wear the head scarf, the hijab. Most favor traditional batik clothing over Western dress. I was captivated by their faces, their pride, their joyful spirits. I'm careful taking their pictures, though, as I'm aware it can be an imposition. I either ask permission, which is generally granted but often elicits a self-conscious pose; or I try to snap discreetly, which is a bit catch-as-catch-can. Here follows my tribute to these ladies of the market.
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Food is everywhere here in Yogyakarta. Rickety carts offering noodles and soups and fried this-and-that line virtually every street. Fruit stands overflow with piles of black-skinned mangoes, bunches of red bananas, scaly snake fruit and enormous purple grapes. Girls ride by on bicycles rigged up with wooden boxes that hold bottles of colored drinks to mix and sell on the spot. Yes, it's hot and grimy but the ingredients look fresh and everyone is eating with gusto. Westerners are so afraid of Third World street food, but meanwhile we are washing our own e coli-imbued beef with bleach. Take a look at these market photos and tell me you wouldn't want to sample the wares.

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Foods markets, especially in Third World countries, are where you can really see what the people are all about. In Yogyakarta, the “traditional market,” as my driver Toto referred to the place where locals shop for food and dry goods, is an open-air, multi-level building teeming with humanity—sullen youths smoking clove cigarettes, wizened old ladies hunched over baskets of shallots, krupuk sellers, batik-clad matrons shopping for fish, the occasional leathery homeless man brandishing a tin begging cup. Around the perimeter of the market are countless little stands where vendors and cooks ply their specialties: fresh salads, soups, fried tofu and tempeh, cow skin crackers, grilled satays, iced coconut drinks with green cam cau jelly, sweet cakes made from glutinous rice flour. There is a general din composed of the constant roar of motorbikes, the swishing of beans though bamboo strainers, the clang of metal spoons and the sweet melodies of caged songbirds. I am never happier than drifting through such a place, absorbing it all (even the scary smells), tasting what I dare, interacting when I can and marveling at this daily life that is so unlike my own. I took so many pictures that I’ll spread them over a few posts. This one features the many strange and exotic foods I came across (but did not eat) at Beringharjo market, which was built on the site of a former banyan tree forest in 1758.
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Wayang, “theater” in Javanese, is the word used to refer to traditional Indonesian shadow puppets. Though beautifully rendered and colored, the puppets are held up behind a screen so only their outlines are visible. These intricate plays of shadow and light are often based on romantic tales, especially adaptations of the classic Indian epics The Mahabarata and The Ramayana. Some of them also depict local happenings, current events or other secular stories. Performances are generally accompanied by gamelan, an orchestra composed of metallophones, xylophones, drums, gongs, bamboo flutes and strings. The puppets are made in various styles, with perhaps the best known being the wayang kulit, crafted from parchment-like sheets of dried water buffalo hide (kulit). As with batik, UNESCO designated wayang kulit a “Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity” in 2003, making it incumbent upon the Indonesians to preserve this precious indigenous art form.
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With my trusty driver, Toto, in an air-conditioned Toyota minivan, I ventured forth into the heart of Yogyakarta to do a little shopping. Beneath sulky grey skies, the city was smelly and palpably damp. Our hotel is in a rather unattractive neighborhood close to the airport, and the view out the window included some classic Third World sites: shanties with corrugated-tin roofs; entire families perched on a single motorbike, the parents with helmets and the barefoot babies without; scrawny chickens strutting in roadside ditches. The strange dichotomy between progress and tradition is perhaps best summed up by a poster I saw for a local technology convention, featuring an ox-drawn cart laden with the latest computers and electronics. Even the batiks for which I was shopping are evidence of this tension, an ancient craft now more and more being executed with mechanized techniques. Of course, I was in search of the real deal, the artisanal, hand-printed and –dyed version that is so much harder to come by.
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