This week was the full feelings buffet. Remember, you can always come back for more: Celeste Ng called How to Make Yogurt in Manila by Grace Talusan ‘beautiful and moving’ (on the Twitter machine) so you don’t have to take our word for its awesomeness. “Things That Are Meant To Make You Feel Safe And […]
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Buttered This Week: Aug. 15-21
The Butter
Aug 21, 2015
Women Who Cook: Dismantling the Myth of the Bitch in the Kitchen
Food
Aug 20, 2015
To be a woman who dares overstep her place in the physical or the digital worlds is to be branded a target by men, men who wish to return to halcyon days: of women only seen (except when they shouldn’t be) but not heard, of apron-donning, of apple-cheeked ma’ams bowing to their every whim. For these men, food — or rather, feeding — is the second most important women’s work (with the first being to create/carry/raise the man’s children), and the domestic kitchen is the only place a woman should be when she isn’t tidying up the homestead or on her knees.
Note “domestic,” since every woman-in-the-kitchen joke should include an asterisk that of course, you wouldn’t mean the professional kitchen, as those are still dominated by men. A 2014 study found that 95% of executive chefs (those running the kitchen) are men, while a 2005 study cited in Deborah A. Harris and Patti Giuffre’s book Taking the Heat: Women Chefs and Gender Inequality in the Professional Kitchen puts the percentage of men working as sous chefs (second-in-commands in the kitchen) at 82% and as line cooks (the ones you see sweating and running behind burners) at 66%.
Where do women dominate? Of course, at pastries: Flowery, delicate, intricate pastries that would collapse under strong, calloused man hands. But dessert is only the powdered cherry on top of beautiful man food (aka the stuff you pay for) rather than home food (aka the stuff your mom makes you because she has to — because she’s a woman, because she belongs in the kitchen, etc. etc. etc.)
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Subsistence
The Butter
Aug 19, 2015
When I was a kid I spent the better part of August standing with my grandfather on the spongy dirt floor of his basement, canning tomatoes and making sausages amid the smell of mold and mud. Even in the dead of winter, when the earth was frozen and the atmosphere static, the basement’s mustiness was inescapable. If you only went down there for a minute— to grab a jar of pickles or bring up an extra folding chair for Sunday afternoon dinner—the unplumbed scent burrowed into your skin and your hair. In late summertime its bouquet became heavy and shifting, creeping up the back steps and into the hall. In summertime the air seemed to be an entity all its own and I couldn’t wait to be inside of it.
My grandfather was a stoic, hunched-over man whose fingers trembled with Parkinson’s disease for as long as I knew him. He lived in a plain, milk-colored house in an indiscernible town in rural New York State. It was the kind of place you drive through and don’t notice, but it was within its bowels that I first filled up on death.
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How to Make Yogurt in Manila
The Butter
Aug 18, 2015
“Tita,” my eleven-year-old niece says. “Why are you always talking about yogurt?”
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I am living in the Philippines on a Fulbright fellowship for half a year, so the only way I can see my loved ones back home in the U.S. is through videochat. The twelve-hour time difference and the spotty online connection in my Manila condo means that when we do appear on each other’s laptops, the moment is precious. I hadn’t realized, until my niece pointed it out, that my main topic of conversation with her is yogurt. Specifically, my obsession with inoculating warm milk with culture and fermenting it into yogurt.
For the first time since I was three years old, I am living in the country where I was born. Sure, I’ve gone back to visit every decade or so, but those were family vacations. The Fulbright makes it possible for my husband and me to experience daily life in the place where I came from.
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A Recipe for Black-and-White Cookies
Food
Aug 07, 2015
Previously by Lisa Yelsey: A Recipe for Cake Pops and A Recipe for Rugelach.
HI. My most recent baking project was to make black-and-white cookies! Everyone in my family likes them, but none of us can agree on a good place to get them. The only real consensus regarding exactly what makes these cookies good is “not stale,” and not-stale versions of these cookies are surprisingly difficult to find.
Just like all the other foods people vaguely mention to me, I threw myself into perfecting black-and-white cookies with a single-minded focus. Despite loving them for my whole life, I only recently found out that they are considered to be New York-specific. After evaluating a lifetime’s worth of black-and-white cookie experiences and reading roughly one million articles on them, I realized that no one agrees on what makes the best black-and-white cookie, what the best recipe is, or where they actually originated. I also found that if you ask people for their thoughts on black-and-white cookies, they start telling you their philosophies on vanilla versus chocolate and refuse to answer any other questions.
A friend of mine apparently eats three-quarters of the vanilla half, then half the chocolate, then finishes the vanilla, then ends with chocolate. My mom only eats the vanilla half and leaves the chocolate halves in various locations around the kitchen. My older brother’s story about how he eats black-and-white cookies would take me several paragraphs to explain to you. I’ve opted not to analyze anyone’s personality based off this question.
After a series of trial-and-error batches and many late-night forays into food science, I’ve created an ideal black-and-white cookie recipe that I am pleased to share with you.
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The Three Havanas of Durham, North Carolina
The Butter
Jul 28, 2015
My mother is a sweet, humble woman until you get her to speak of Cuban food. To her, a Cuban immigrant, cooking is as much a part of the soul as any religious experience; a more logical way of approaching Transubstantiation, perhaps, though we are not at all religious. Had the Catholic Church been founded by Cubans, the wafer would be replaced by pastelitos guayaba, the wine with a cafecito. She calls the sofrito the Holy Trinity of Cuban cooking: the bell pepper, the onion, and the garlic. Combine these with olive oil, let them simmer, let the onion skin uncurl and loosen, let the pepper seep and soften, let the crushed garlic’s juices spread and join them all.
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It is difficult to mention Cuba without discussing politics, whether directly or indirectly or handling questions as though the mention of being Cuban makes you a representative of the entire culture. (Yes, my family is Cuban; no, I am not a Republican; yes, I have opinions about the embargo.) So really, food is much easier to deal with. It’s an act of giving and love, as it is throughout many cultures.
But for my mother, cooking Cuban food is an act of remembering we are alive, this carrying of a culture that we are far away from; first the country, then the exile community in Miami where she grew up. For my mother and me, cooking is an act of giving yourself and sharing the culture you love to others.
I often wonder if this is why my mother is so picky about Cuban food being “right.” It’s not just the authenticity of the food. It’s the very real message in this food and its preparation: I’m alive; I remember.
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In Honor Of This Summer Squash Casserole, Which Is To Die
Humor
Jul 28, 2015
I’ve gathered you all here to say goodbye to a caring husband, wonderful friend, and supportive side dish, Summer Squash Casserole, who as we sadly learned today, is to die.
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If White People Food Were Described Like “Exotic” Food
Food
Jul 27, 2015
These potato dumplings are charmingly known as “tater tots” in the regional dialect.
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