noodsletter #.0002

Not sorry about anything anymore, sorry. (And recipe[s].)

Hello!

If you received this in your inbox, you only have yourself to blame, since it means you signed up for noodsletter. Haha. (Thank you!)

Want to start off with an apology (I know what the subject line is, thanks): The recipe from the first noodsletter had an unforgivable typo; it called for 1 tablespoon of shrimp paste instead of 1 teaspoon. The post as it exists on the Substack site has been corrected, the one that went to exactly one inbox (mine) has not. If anything looks off in a recipe to you, and you plan on making it, it might be best to check the recipe on the Substack site, as that can be updated, whereas there’s no way to update what’s hit your inbox.

Substack doesn’t (seem to?) offer in-post linking (if they do and I just haven’t seen it and you know about it, please send help), but I’ve nevertheless decided that recipes will forevermore be relegated to the bottom of the newsletter. Yes, I understand no one wants to read a novel before a recipe; I am deeply familiar with “where’s the recipe???” discourse. However, I spent all this time on all this other stuff!

That being said, in light of the fact there’s no way for me to put a jump link to the recipe, I will put an asterisk (or two, or three, corresponding to the number of recipes contained in each newsletter) next to each recipe title; that way you can just do a ctrl+F for “*” and get to it immediately. Of course, this only works on desktops, so if you’re on your phone you will just have to scroll.

I will also state upfront what the recipes are. Today’s:

1) Chickpeas seasoned with the one true spice, curry.

2) Tomato pasta.

My one other note is to say the noodsletter is a little light on links today, as I was grievously ill this week, and I haven’t had that much time to work on it, and I have to send this out before I start working this morning! However, the Ghent Altarpiece link is amazing; if you’re going to click on anything, click on that thing.

Extra links next time (rather, I’ll throw in the still-interesting ones I had planned to include here).

See you in two weeks!

A Mess of Clams

The other day while scrolling slack-jawed through a series of Instagram stories I saw a disturbing slide about canned clams.

You know the ones. Every single grocery store in America seems to sell the things, but I can honestly say I’ve never once seen anyone, anywhere, ever, slide them into their basket or hand them off to their irate kid pushing their cart; they just seem to sit on shelves waiting for me to pick them up.

Because I do; I am constantly buying them. In Brooklyn, of course, but also? Boston, once; in Connecticut, many times; I believe I’ve even bought them at some IGA or IGA-type outfit down on the Jersey Shore. The thing you’ll notice about all these places, of course, is you can easily buy non-canned clams; in fact, in every one of these places it would probably be just as easy to find someone who will loudly express their disgust at canned clams as it is to find the things on the local grocery’s shelves. “Only fresh for me!” they might say, or as the Boston chef we enlisted at work to promote a pasta package said (of my canned-clam pasta sauce recipe), “No. Just no.”

My point here isn’t that these anti-canned-clam people are misguided (although they are), my point is I eat a lot of canned clams, a habit/holdover from when my family lived in a landlocked city across the seas in a land far, far away from American grocery stores. And yet, even there, far far away, in a landlocked city several seas’ distance from any grocery store on the East Coast of America, the canned clams we most often ate were these guys:

So, really, I eat and have eaten a lot of Snow’s canned clams. (Listen, this isn’t an ad, I swear.)

The disturbing story slide I saw while scrolling slack-jawed was posted by Anna Hezel, a writer and editor who also happens to write one of three food-related newsletters I’m signed up for (it’s about fish and fish-related news, here it is, go, support the newsletter economy). In it, she claimed that she’d gone through cans of Snow’s Minced Clams and Snow’s Chopped Clams and found little difference between the two. Now I’m deeply familiar with both these products, buy them all the time in fact, use a mix of chopped and minced to make clam sauce on the regular, as it were; I asked myself if it was possible I’d never noticed there was literally no size difference between the two? Maybe?

Turns out, Hezel was right.

I suppose “literally no size difference” is incorrect, but the differences are pretty miniscule. There are, by my count, a paltry few larger pieces of clam that could possibly fit into the fantasy of the clams being roughly chopped, whereas there’s a ton of material in the “chopped” clams that I could easily see having been run through a clam meat grinder.

I emailed Snow’s, which is actually owned by Bumble Bee Seafoods, of canned tuna fame, which in turn is owned by FCF Co, Ltd., a Taiwanese seafood conglomerate, of being the third largest purveyor of tuna products fame, and asked, “What’s up with the whole ‘chopped’/‘minced’ fantasy? What size are these things supposed to be?”

The very patient PR person who handles these requests for Snow’s/Bumble Bee/FCF answered, eventually, cryptically:

Chopped – 5/8”

Minced - 3/8”

Needless to say, these aren’t that different at all! Two-eighths of an inch? Come on!

However, it seems like these sizes would produce more differentiated products if they were if the chopped 5/8” was used as a lower limit, you know? That’s clearly not the case.

That being said, as I was going down internet clam holes to “research” this mystery, I discovered that this product I’ve been mindlessly shoveling into my face for most of my life is actually quite good, in an ethical sense, as it were, or at the very least it isn’t freaking awful for the planet. In a lot of their promo materials, Snow’s/Bumble Bee/FCF claim to be very concerned with sustainability, which, you know, who knows?, but it seems with respect to their clam products, they are, since they’re made with MSC-certified quahogs from sustainable Atlantic fisheries.

And you know what? They taste fine, and make a pretty good clam sauce.

I Take A Lot of Pointless Pictures of Food

A reminder that beef tendon is the best (from a noodle soup from E-Noodle, one of the few solid Chinese options in my neighborhood).

This is a shrimp burger I made this week, with American cheese and mayo. It was outrageously good. If anyone is interested in a recipe for it, I’ll do it, but I have things to say about eating shrimp so you’d have to endure that, too.

Instant hot cake mix is an example of how Japanese processed food tech is light years ahead of ours. Bisquick cannot.

My wife said, “These are like cartoon pancakes.” They are! I’m pretty sure a defining feature of Japanese sweet stuff is a heavy use of dextrose.

These were interesting, but as with all fancy Pocky, they made me feel ill after eating-yes-both packs, like an animal.

I will review these next time. A true noodsletter!

A Bit of Book

The next morning over breakfast in our hotel, Aleksandra - that was this angry woman’s name - leaned in over the croissants and said:

‘The true God is an animal. He’s in animals, so close that we don’t notice. Every day God sacrifices himself for us, dying over and over, feeding us with his body, clothing us in his skin, allowing us to test our medicines on him so that we might live longer and better. Thus does he show his affection, bestow on us his friendship and love.’

I froze, staring at her mouth, shaken not so much by this revelation as by the tone in which she said it - so serene. And by the knife that glinted as it spread layers of butter over the fluffy insides of her croissant, back and forth, methodical, relentless.

‘You can find proof in Ghent.’

She extracted a postcard from her hodge-podge bag and tossed it onto my plate.

I picked it up and tried to glean some meaning in the proliferation of details; I might need a magnifying glass to do that, though.

‘Anyone can see it,’ said Aleksandra. ‘In the middle of the city there’s a cathedral, and there, on the altar, you’ll see an enormous, beautiful painting. In it there are fields, a green plain somewhere outside of the city, and in that meadow there is an ordinary elevation. Right here,’ and she pointed with the tip of her knife, ‘here is the Animal in the form of a white lamb, exalted.’

I did recognize the painting. I’d seen it a number of times in different reproductions. Adoration of the Mystic Lamb.

‘His true identity was discovered - his bright luminous figure draws the gaze, causes heads to bow before his diving majesty,’ she said, pointing at the lamb with her knife. ‘And you can see how from just about everywhere there is a procession flowing towards him - those are all these people coming to pay tribute to him, to gaze upon this humblest, humiliated God. Here, look at how the rulers of countries are making their way up towards him, emperors and kings, churches, parliaments, political parties, guilds; there are mothers and children, elderly folks and teenage girls…’

‘Why do you do this?’ I asked.

‘For obvious reasons,’ she replied. ‘I want to write an exhaustive volume that leaves out no crime, from the dawn of the world to our time. It will be humanity’s confessions.

She had already gathered the excerpts from ancient Greek literature.

From Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Jennifer Croft.

“News”

Fitzcarraldo Editions is having a 7th anniversary sale until this Sunday (8/29). The 40% off essentially means free shipping to the US.

The van Eyck lamb:

Here’s a funny story from about a year ago about the restoration of its face, which apparently a lot of people thought was laughable.

You can view the entire Ghent Alterpiece on this website in amazing detail. (The internet is amazing!) Zoom in on the lamb face.

An interesting study on eating fermented vs. high-fiber foods and the effects on your microbiome. Really!

Some compelling ramen content. It might not seem like it at first, but it is.

“Once for three weeks,” Katharine replied. “My father and mother were in Italy, and something happened so that I couldn’t join them. For three weeks I lived entirely by myself, and the only person I spoke to was a stranger in a shop where I lunched—a man with a beard. Then I went back to my room by myself and—well, I did what I liked. It doesn’t make me out an amiable character, I’m afraid,” she added, “but I can’t endure living with other people. An occasional man with a beard is interesting; he’s detached; he lets me go my way, and we know we shall never meet again. Therefore, we are perfectly sincere—a thing not possible with one’s friends.”

This article about scientists messing with mosquitoes genetics is very much worth reading, but it starts with “If you could have just one superpower, flight or being invisible to mosquitoes, which would you choose?” What? Flight!

Mexico may be the key to growing tomatoes in a world upended by climate change.

Chef Pillai has opened his restaurant in Bengaluru.

If you don’t know who Chef Pillai is, he has the best Instagram account.

“The gods damn that man who first discovered the hours, and—yes—who first set up a sundial here, who’s smashed the day into bits for poor me! You know, when I was a boy, my stomach was the only sundial, by far the best and truest compared to all of these. It used to warn me to eat, wherever—except when there was nothing. But now what there is, isn’t eaten unless the sun says so. In fact town’s so stuffed with sundials that most people crawl along, shriveled up with hunger.”

“In the arms race between biology and biotechnology, the weeds are winning.”

‘Break Up Big Chicken’

“Australia suffers a mouse plague every decade or so.”

“WHERE IS THE RECIPE?”

Recipe 1* - Chickpeas

I realize I should offer some prefatory remarks for these recipes beyond these silly recipe titles (titling recipes is arguably one of the worst and most important parts of my day job!), but…who needs ‘em? For this? Ah, well, here:

This is essentially how I make chana masala when I don’t want to use mustard seeds (I have this absurd belief that you can’t use mustard seeds without hing, no idea why). It’s dry-ish, very spicy, and quite sour because of amchur, which in a respectable food publication I’d translate for you in parens with “(or dried mango powder).”

You will need cooked chickpeas, and their cooking liquid. The way I cook chickpeas is as follows: Soak in salted water overnight or for 8 hours (yes, I soak, because I enjoy quality food), drain, place in a pressure cooker with ample fresh water, half an onion, a rib of celery, a carrot, a few cloves of garlic, and enough salt to season the water until it tastes nicely seasoned. Bring to pressure and cook 7 minutes, shut off heat, and let pressure release naturally.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon ghee or neutral oil, such as canola

2 teaspoons cumin seeds

12 fresh curry leaves

1 medium yellow onion, minced

1 teaspoon salt

1 inch ginger root, peeled and julienned

3 cloves garlic, smashed and minced

5 fresh green chilies, sliced

2 teaspoons tomato paste (I use estratto di pomodori from Gustiamo. Yes, it is expensive. Yes, it is Italian. Yes, it makes delicious chana masala.)

1 tablespoon garam masala

1/8 teaspoon turmeric

2 cups cooked chickpeas

1 cup nicely seasoned chickpea cooking liquid (or water, if you use canned chickpeas, but you will need to add salt to compensate)

2 teaspoons amchur

Cilantro, limes, chilies, and slices of raw red onion, for eating.

1. Heat ghee or oil in a 3-quart saucepan over medium heat until just beginning to shimmer. Add cumin and curry leaves (be careful, they will splutter and spit). Add onion and salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are beginning to brown, about 11 minutes.

2. Add ginger, garlic, and chilies and cook, stirring constantly, until it smells amazing, about 30 seconds. Add the tomato paste and break it up a little with a wooden spoon, and cook, stirring constantly, until the contents of the pan take on a reddish tinge (you don’t want to cook this to rust). Add garam masala and turmeric, stir to distribute, and cook briefly to bloom spices, about 30 seconds to 1 minute.

3. Add chickpeas and their liquid and, using wooden spoon, stir to dislodge any stuck bits at the bottom of the pot. Increase heat to high, bring liquid to a boil, then reduce heat to maintain a steady, bubbling simmer, and cook until liquid mostly evaporates, about 5 minutes.

4. Taste for seasoning; add salt, if necessary (it’s necessary if you didn’t cook the chickpeas yourself in salty water!), then add amchur and stir to distribute; the mixture will thicken up once the amchur is added. Taste again and adjust seasoning. Serve immediately with cilantro, limes, chilies, and raw red onion, either with a pile of white rice or some roti or paratha. If you’ve got some plain yogurt or dahi around, make a raita, the meal will be even better.

Recipe 2** - I’m Sick of Tomatoes

Yes, a pasta with tomato “sauce” recipe. I just had a ton of tomatoes lying around and I was sick to death of eating them “simply,” but I couldn’t let go of “the idea of simplicity,” so I made this and it was pretty good, although my wife says if I’m going to include this as a recipe for other people to make I should note that it is *quite* salty.

It is *quite* salty.

Ingredients:

643g chopped tomatoes (from, I don’t know, 3 medium-sized nice tomatoes?)

5g salt

2 teaspoons good olive oil

1 teaspoon sherry vinegar

3 tablespoons butter

1/4 of a white onion, minced

3 cloves garlic, smashed and minced

250g pasta

35g Parmigiano-Reggiano

1. Toss chopped tomatoes with salt and place in a strainer set in a medium mixing bowl. Set aside for about 30 minutes.

2. Transfer chopped tomatoes to clean mixing bowl and toss with sherry vinegar and olive oil. Reserve tomato juices expressed from chopped tomatoes for making sauce.

3. Bring a 3-quart saucepan of lightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta.

4. In a 12-inch skillet or a nice big pasta saucing pan, melt butter over medium heat. Add onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until onion has softened and become translucent, about 3 minutes. Add garlic and cook, stirring constantly, until it smells amazing, about 30 seconds.

5. Add reserved tomato juices, increase heat to high and bring juices to a boil. Cook until juices reduce slightly, about 1 minute. Reduce heat to very low and keep warm.

6. When pasta is 2 minutes away from being cooked to your liking, add 1/2 cup of pasta water to tomato juices, increase heat to high, and bring mixture to a boil.

7. Transfer cooked spaghetti to sauce and toss and stir pasta until sauce is emulsified and clings to spaghetti strands, about 1 minute. If at any time the pan or the pasta look dry, add pasta cooking water a tablespoon at a time and continue to toss and stir to create an emulsified sauce. Turn off heat.

8. Add cheese and toss and stir to incorporate cheese into the sauce. Add marinated tomatoes and toss pasta to distribute them evenly. Serve immediately.