Still in California II, with photos

As previously mentioned, I have been spending the 2 pre-departure weeks at my older brother's house, where I have been dividing my time between cooking, religiously keeping up with The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and occasionally reviewing Japanese. Cooking has been an adventure, not only because I had never made most of the things I've been trying out, but also because halfway through a recipe I inevitably find myself missing some vital piece of cooking equipment that had not even occurred to me. This has forced some creativity and a lot of patience on my part, including but not limited to straining ricotta through an old T-shirt for lack of any cheesecloth, baking bagels 2 at a time in a toaster oven, and trying to beat 5 egg whites to form "soft peaks" by hand, with a fork. I would say, though, on the whole, that I have been rather successful. I think.

My first foray in gourmet cooking was with homemade ricotta. I had tried making it in Pyle, my cooking co-op at Oberlin, once before with the help of friends, but making it on my own was an intimidating step. Since I didn't have any cheesecloth and couldn't find any at either of the 2 local grocery markets, I thought I'd use the bandanna that I accidentally brought home from Oberlin to strain the cheese. Everything appeared to be running smoothly, and I was feeling pretty good as I poured the curdled milk mixture into a bandanna-lined colander to drain. It seemed to be draining pretty slowly, though, so I tried to adjust the bandanna to make things run more quickly. The next thing I knew, half of the cheese had been dumped out into the sink. Horrified but determined, I tried to scoop as much cheese back into the bandanna as I could. The thing is that there was still some water-logged cat food stuck in the sink's drain from an earlier change in the cats' water bowl, and I tried to avoid the pieces, but when I sampled the ricotta that I had saved, it tasted distinctly...fishy. Still determined, I dumped it all out and walked back to the market (actually I ran, because I was mad) and bought a second round of milk, cream, and lemon, and returned to the house. This time I used an old cotton T-shirt in place of the bandanna as it felt much more water-permeable, and sure enough it was a success. It had a nice creamy flavor and texture, and I would certainly make it again, provided there were no bandannas involved.



A successful batch of ricotta

The next day I made a pizza, featuring the ricotta on top. The whole wheat crust came from here, my favorite food blog. I think pizza needs a stronger cheese than ricotta, but nonetheless it was very easy and it tasted good.



It would have been better if those were basil leaves instead of spinach

Next up was whole-wheat bagels. They were rather a lot of work given how few bagels the recipe produced (8, to be exact), and they were still nowhere near Ess-a-Bagel. (But what do you expect.) They weren't bad. They came out rather hard and dry though, and I'm not sure if that was primarily due to problems with kneading or the flour that I was using, or something else in the process. The recipe called for bread flour, but since I didn't have any I substituted 3 cups of whole wheat flour and 1 cup of all-purpose flour. Maybe that was the culprit. Anyway it was worth a try.



Bagels waiting to be boiled


An especially attractive bagel, upon completion

I also tried making chocolate truffles and bacon-corn-maple cupcakes. The truffles came out very handsomely and I heard that they tasted good. I used Alton Brown's recipe from the Food Network website, which was fairly straightforward. Unfortunately I was so sick of chocolate by the time I had finished making them that I just could not bring myself to enjoy them. My plan is to make more of them and bring them as a gift to my host family. The idea for the cupcakes came from here. Weird as they may sound, they actually weren't that bad. I don't think I would make them again, but still, not disgusting. I had seen a few stories of bacon cakes around, and I decided it was time to try them for myself. They were not as fluffy as I had expected. The recipe suggested beating the egg whites to form stiff, glossy peaks with a mixer, but all I had on hand was a fork and a bowl, so needless to say, I did not quite get them as aerated as one might hope. I think I did well for what I had though.



Truffles, not by Andrew


A small army of cupcakes on the only open surface in the kitchen


Side view of a cupcake

But wait, Mariko is eating bacon? I figured that I better return to full-scale omnivorery for the next 5 months after a 6.5 year hiatus so as not to alienate my host family in Japan. I heard that vegetarianism is practically un-heard of in Japan, and since I am supposed to have dinner with my host family every night, I figured it would be best not to inconvenience them with the burden of cooking an entire separate entree every night. Plus, Japanese food is delicious.

Hopefully I have not bored you too much by now. Thank you for reading this far.

In terms of life outside of food, well there hasn't really been that much. Most days I spend at home with the cats. I did get to see some old friends from high school this past week, though, which was great. I felt so luxurious sleeping on a fold-out mattress for a night, since otherwise I have been sleeping on a small and rather hard sofa, which I estimate to be about 2/3 as comfortable as my cats' bed. Plus it was nice to see them. On Sunday my mother's side of the family got together for a New Years' (or as they say in Japan, お正月, osho gatsu) dinner celebration where I stuffed myself with delicious Japanese food and then went into a food coma. (Wait, I thought I was done talking about food.) I really should be getting more exercise.

Alright, that's more than enough for now...I think I'm going to go take a walk before it starts raining again.

Edit: Oops, too late, already pouring. Wow thunder.