Friday, April 04, 2003

So last night I got one of those talks from my mother.  It went like this: “I’m very concerned that you’re not taking care of yourself.  You look tired, and for the first time I can see you’ve gained weight; you just aren’t vibrant. You need to take care of yourself.  Go to the dermatologist.  You’ve been coming off a bad winter in New York, you’re working too hard, you aren’t eating well, and you’re nearly thirty.  And you should stop doing the electrolysis and do the laser – it’s ruining your skin.” Nearly thirty.  Ouch. Now let’s be clear here – I’m not vilifying my mother here (Hi, mom.)  This came out concern, and everything she says is true.  Her speech did not send me into a spiral of despair or anything. But still.  It’s a good thing Eric was cooking last night. One step in the right direction for taking care of yourself is eating Asado Placero Sinaloense from Diana Kennedy’s “The Essential Cuisines of Mexico.”  Eric was not pleased with it, I think mostly because it was not what he was expecting.  Diana Kennedy, being a crusty old colonial bitch, writes in the preface to this recipe, “I must say at the outset that this dish did not ‘send’ me.”  I think Eric chose it just to spite the old broad.  And I can see why she perhaps didn’t like it much.  The thing is, Asado Placero is more a beef salad than a stew-ish thing, which was what Eric was hoping for.  But I think that’s a positive.  Certainly it was about time for me to eat something light, without a single smidge of butter in it.  For Asado Placero, Eric cubed up some beef stew meat and roughly chopped an onion and some garlic.  He put the ingredients, with some salt in a pan and covered with water, then simmered for forty-five minutes or so.  He boiled some potatoes in another pan, and some tomatoes in a third, until the potatoes were tender but still slightly crisp, and the tomatoes were soft.  He peeled the potatoes and diced them, and fried them up with the drained meat until they were lightly browned.  The tomatoes he threw into the Cuisinart with a jalapeno pepper, a clove of garlic, salt and oregano, and blended until smooth.  This became the sauce, which we were just to plop on top.  Also to go on was blanched, shredded cabbage, lettuce, and a mixture of sliced onions and beets soaked in vinegar.  The beets were something of a sticking point for Eric, which is funny because he’s the borscht man, and I historically hate the things, though I’ve come around on them recently.  He somehow thought the beets were going to make it weird – plus he seems to have a grudge about all the shirts he’s had ruined at the purple hands of beets over the years.  Which I think that’s a little unfair to pin the blame on one vegetable, given Eric’s track record with shirts and stains of all persuasions.  Anyway, so we scooped up the beef and potatoes, plopped on tomato sauce, lettuce, cabbage and the onions and beets. And it was good.  Fresh tasting – like a salad with beef and potatoes, which is my favorite kind.  Eric said it seemed somehow Korean, and I think he meant the look and mouth feel of it, rather than anything about the taste, per se.  Lots of bright colors, lots of different components that stood out one from another, rather than melting into a goopy whole, like much Mexican food seems to do. I can see some ways to make it better – the beef should be chopped finer than we did it, or even shredded, and the potatoes too – but I thought overall it was groovy, exactly what I needed when buried up to my neck with worries about my cholesterol count and the effects of massive amounts of lamb on my complexion.  One step in the wrong direction for taking care of yourself is watching “The Mexican” which is the single longest movie about a trip to Mexico in the universe.  Don’t you hate it when you can see a good script, the script that attracted all these goddamned big stars, still weakly rattling the bars of the chaotic and unhappy jailcell of a movie it’s been sentenced to? But that is neither here nor there.  Excuse me.  I have a shopping list to make.   8:02:43 AM    comment []