Lamb, by Christopher Moore.

This book bills itself as “The Gospel according to Christ’s Childhood Friend, Biff.” With a subtitle like that, my first thought was, “this is either going to be really hilarious or really, really bad.” The good news: it was not really bad. In fact, it was pretty entertaining, suggesting that Christ may have delighted in bacon (who doesn’t, really- why should the savior be any different?), traveled to the Far East, and even had an compulsive obsession with how sex feels (as described to him by above childhood friend. Moore’s Christ may be a bit of a voyeur, but he’s still an abstainer)… If this sounds hugely sacrilegious, then this probably won’t be the book for you. But if you are somewhat of a heathen like me, love funny books, and aren’t immediately turned off, you’ll be surprised to see how respectfully Moore does his mocking. He mocks in the nicest possible way, just like Jesus would. Joshua (as Jesus is called in the book) is as devout as he is portrayed elsewhere, but here is allowed to have a sense of humor, a sense of irony. He has an edge, which seems a pretty realistic conjecture given the life and death he was in for.

Moore has a track record of taking sacred cows and giving them the treatment through his twisted viewfinder. If you haven’t read Fluke, or, I know Why the Winged Whale Sings, and consider yourself a defender of the environment, then you definitely should pick that one up too. In both books, his satire is of the best kind- gently skewering its subjects while retaining an essential respect for the foundations upon which they were created. What makes Lamb fun is that here, those foundations aren’t necessarily the ones you thought Christianity was based upon.

Read it if: you like the gospels according to Tom Robbins, Douglas Adams or Vonnegut

Don’t if: your idea of a good time does not involve theorizing about the Lord as smart mouth with punky pals.

Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire
Read this memoir of pre 1959 life in Havana if you want to get really, really sad and/or angry about Castro and what he’s done to that island. It’s amazing how similar the middle class in Havana was to what we understand the middle class in the US to have been in the 50s. Eire was the child of a judge, living the wonderful, oblivious life that every kid should be allowed to live- playing with firecrackers, chasing lizards, riding his bicycle. If it wasn’t for the fact that the neighbors had monkeys and his father believed himself to be Henry XVI, you’d never know he wasn’t growing up in your neighborhood. Depending on where you live, that is.

Eire’s writing is shot through with his mixed feelings about his country and his family- extreme love and happy memories as well as disgust and heartbreak over what happened and continues to happen there. Even if you aren’t interested in the political stuff, you will still find much to enjoy about this book. In fact, I think as a childhood memoir it’s more affecting because of the way that young Carlos is aware of the changing times on some level, but still essentially a child, unconcerned with the world beyond his own garden. Eire’s technicolor descriptions of the transcendent joy of car-surfing a flooded seaside road with his father (on purpose!) or hurtling breadfruit at his friends (or enemies, depending on whose hedge they were behind) until the street is a sloppy, bread-fruity mess, offer a glimpse not only into pre-Revolution Cuba, but also into a childhood lovingly recalled.

On Christmas, I got a copy of A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. I started reading it and couldn’t stop. It’s a memoir about drug addiction and alcoholism, told in the most graphic terms and set at Hazelden. Frey is a writer who pulls few punches, sparing no details of his own shitty, self-centered, compulsive behavior while addicted and in recovery. Still, his essential intelligence and twisted but compassionate view of the world comes through the haze, blood and vomit (and there is a lot of vomit in this book), making Pieces a great read.

Next, I decided to write book reviews on G&P, and had spent a few weeks pondering the best way to describe this book for my inaugural run. Then the controversy struck, so now Frey and his book are all over the media, from the Smoking Gun to Oprah to Larry King Live (Sorry, don’t know how to do links yet. But I feel confident that y’all can operate the Google if you’re interested) . I’m taking myself off the case of reviewing the book in depth, as this week it is probably a shallow pool of jurors who haven’t heard something about it, but here’s the jist: People are mad that he embellished his criminal record. They’re angry that he lied to the fairy godmother of authors and the queen of all media, Oprah. They’re pissed off that he’s making money from a book that is apparently not 100% truth.

Here’s what I want to say about A Million Little Pieces- I don’t care about the controversy, even if Frey has amended his own truth. Who hasn’t, after all? Can I enjoy the Stones when I know that Mick and Keith have been, and probably still are, complete asses? Why yes, yes I can. I could have read this book as either fiction or non-fiction and still come away with a greater understanding of addiction and recovery. If that’s not good enough, it’s a story that draws you in, brutally and sometimes heartwrenchingly pounds its message home, and leaves you feeling grateful not only that the author made it through, but that you did as well. This book is not the greatest work of a generation - whatever the hell that means - as some reviewers have said. Even so, it does propel you on to the conclusion of the story, torturous and redeeming at the same time. In life, torture and redemption can dramatically be the flip sides of the same coin. More importantly (for this reader), they also can be dueling characteristics of compelling fiction. So I think A Million Little Pieces is worth reading, whether as memoir, non-fiction, fiction, whatever genre works for you. The facts of Frey’s criminal past may or may not be true, but the story of a fucked up kid trying to get out of hell renders this book impossible to put down.

So I’m thinking a new feature of Gin & Phonics might be book reports. It doesn’t fall under the “gin” category, it’s more of a “phonics” thing. Specifically, me, spouting off about whatever I’m reading. You see, here at the Shogun Manor, the main forms of relaxation are video games and reading, and you won’t ever find me rocking the video game joystick, that’s the husband’s territory (yes, I know there aren’t really joysticks in the old school way anymore, but Frogger on Atari was the last time I did any meaningful videogaming. Except for the winter of the magic mushrooms of Super Mario World, but the NES didn’t have joysticks anyway, and I have only the haziest of memories of that).

I have a tendency to remember the way a book makes me feel, but totally forget what actually happened, who wrote it, what the title is, etc. I love talking books with people, but my tragic inability to retain the more refined details of a story makes me often a less than engaging book conversationalist. “You just read The Lovely Bones? Cool! I read that when it came out, it was the one that had a sort of a heaven place and something about a bus station? Yeah, I thought that was a good one, kind of wistful, made me think family and the afterlife…” I end up feeling like a total dumbass because either the conversation peters out or whomever I’m talking to starts mentioning specific scenes from the book and I have only the vaguest memory of them. I’m hoping that maybe I can do more justice to the books I read if I write about them. Besides, ideally, pausing to write after a book will stave off the urge to hit a bookstore right away, so maybe this little venture will leave more resources for trying new restaurants (I’m convinced I am on a wanted list at the Minneapolis Public Library due to youthful return policy indiscretions and am afraid to go back, so I pay for my reading material. Does anyone know about the statute of limitations on unreturned books?). All for the good of the local restaurant scene, see?

Coming soon: a bit late to the party, I’ve just read the biggest recovery memoir of 2003. Hazelden, here I come. Metaphorically, of course.

Made some foods last night, as I am want to do on monday nights. I busted the champagne bottle on a cook book I have had for about a month or so, Thai Cooking from the Siam Cafe. Time to expand my range of Southeast Asian cooking skills. The wife is shaking me down to make some Indian food, but hell, Thai is a happy medium. It is insanely complicated like Indian food tends to be, right? Especially compared to the deliciously simple and elegant Vietnamese cuisine.

So, about that Pad Thai. Looks pretty good, doesn’t it? My Pad Thai looks pretty much like it is supposed to… but, taste wise. hmm. needs a little work! I am not exacly sure where I went wrong, but I have a deep suspicion that the tamarind concentrate I used was not a suitable substitute for the tamarind paste the book called for. Very very sweet. Everything else was perfect, as far as texture goes, but this dish ended up sort of being a dessert dish. With hot peppers. Mmm peppers. Not bad reheated for lunch though, with a healthy application of soy sauce.

-shogunmoon

So, anyone here like to cook? Well, I do, and I am going to tell you all about, at great length, and without regard to your patience level, how much I like to cook. Capisce? I kid, I kid… but trust me, we are going to be talking about some really tasty and relatively easy to make foods.

It all started back a few months ago when I received the June copy of Gourmet Magazine. It had those saucy Vietnamese recipes in it, and damn they were GOOD. So, I was left with no choice but to attempt to create some more of the stuff myself. Another factor that led to my interest in Vietnamese cooking was Anthony Bourdains “A Cook’s Tour” wherein the man gushes about the food and the culture. Bourdain is not one to gush about something that doesn’t deserve to be gushed about, so I have the fullest confidence in his assessment. If you have not read his books, I am ashamed of you. Also, since I was getting real sick of the rather boring stir fries I was working with, I figured a healthy dose of Real Deal authentic Vietnamese food was in order.

That is where Mai Pham steps in. Her book, Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table, is a great place to start not only with Vietnamese cooking, but Southeast Asian cooking in general. She outlines all the herbs, sauces, and equipment you need with a generous selection of descriptions, pictures and illustrations. This book, while perhaps not for the true novice, is one that someone with fairly humble culinary skills can get a handle on, for the most part.

Mai Pham also prefaces every chapter with a nice little story about her experiences returning to Vietnam in 2000. She grew up in both Vietnam and Thailand, but had to flee to the US in 1975 during the fall of Saigon, as a teenager. She left her grandmother in the doorway of her ancestral family home sobbing and banging her head against the door frame. Needless to say, an extremely grim situation.

The book starts off with her returning to Saigon to see her grandmother, who is still alive and living in the same house the family fled 25 years before. Each chapter starts with a little anecdote about the author’s many return visits to her homeland, and include some nice photos taken by her. It ends up being a sweet love letter to her grandmother. Indeed, the vegetarian section is all about the grandma, as she stopped eating meat early in her life when her husband died, and she went without meat so she could afford to raise her family alone.

Each recipe also starts with a little story. Things like the author visiting a noodle shop that she remembers as a kid, and finding it still there, with the daughter of the original proprietor running it much as it was 25 years ago. She explains, through the recipes, the differences in cuisine between Northern (Hanoi, home of phở), middle (Hue, the old Imperial seat of Vietnam,) and Saigon (Ho Chi Min City, the largest and most cosmopolitan of the cities in Vietnam.) You get a good sense of true Vietnamese culture, a nice break from the American ideal of the Vietnamese as VC soldiers in black pajamas roaming through jungles.

This book definitely helps with what can be a most daunting task, shopping at an Asian grocery store. Mercy me, they have chickens with heads still on! They have bins full of duck and chicken feet! The Vietnamese definitely share something with the French- pride in the national cuisine, and a penchant for eating every little bit of an animal once they slaughter it. You will have a hell of a time cooking anything in this book without visiting one, so if you do not live in a city with a sizable Southeast Asian population, it’s mail order city, sweetheart.

Me, I went to Shuang Hur, a fairly large shop across the street from Quang, on Nicollet avenue. I had very little trouble locating all the sauces and herbs I needed. The herbs at Shuang Hur are very inexpensive. Prices that grocery stores and co-ops charge for herbs are nothing less then criminal extortion. You will get three times the herbs for half the cost compared to those crappy plastic little boxes you see elsewhere. On my way out, the young fellow at the register told me about how he liked eating at all the restaurants on Nicollet, including the Taquerias, the greek place, Harry Singh’s, and Pho Tau bay. Thanks for the tip buddy! The cost of my groceries? About $20.

Actually cooking from this book was very nice. Mai Pham has no problem comforting you, and holds your hand every step of the way. It almost seems as if she is there in the kitchen with you. She goes into great detail with not only the shopping list of items and equipment that you need, but the recipes themselves. I tried quite a few of the recipes in the book, ranging from the Bun noodles salads served with grilled meat and fresh herbs to a stir fry with delicious lemongrass and chilies, and I tell you what, every one of them came out perfect, with one exception… er, let’s just say my spring roll rolling technique needs more then a little work. All in all, very nicely flavored stuff, and pretty dead-on compared to the dishes at Vietnamese restaurants.

The one thing I have not attempted is the Vietnamese national dish, phở. It requires that you make stock first, which is no big deal. I generally make my own stocks… IN THE WINTER. It has been 90 degress on a daily basis for a few weeks now… But the stuff is good. I would recommend the phở at Pho Tau bay… they have some serious air conditioning.

Sooo, ladies and gentlemen, Mai Pham knows what she is talking about. If you have the urge to create for yourself delicate and ultra fresh foods with a nice balance of hot and cold, sweet and sour, savory and salty, frequently all in the same dish, there is no better place to start.

This book is phở-king good stuff!

***

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pho

Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table, by Mai Pham

Shuang Hur Oriental Market

2710 Nicollet Avenue South

Minneapolis

612.872.8606

Here is a list of what I tried, just to wet your pallette a little. Yea, I am a bastard.

Ga Bop, (Hue Chicken Salad) 79 Yummy! Cold summer salad. Great on the rice noodles

Dua Leo Ngam Giam, (Cucumber Salad) 81 This is very simple, and on of my favorites.

Goi Cuon, (Rive Paper wrapped salad rolls) 95 Good, but man, the rolling is hard

Bun voi rau thom, (Rice noodles with fresh herbs) 119 Mmmm.

bun bo xao, (lemongrass beef) 120 Super tasty stir fry. Hint- Make sure your lemongrass is FINELY diced, otherwise it will be crunchy in the dish.

com chien, (fried rice) Odd take on fried rice, uses ketchup and butter!

ga xao xa ot, (stir fried chicken with lemongrass and chilies) 145 Super tasty! I served it with the fried rice and cucumber salad. The wife was most pleased. This is the picture I took of it.

Accompanying Sauces.

Nuoc Cham, Dipping Sauce, you can serve this with pretty much anything

Tuong goi cuon (Bean dipping Sauce, page 28)

Nuoc Mau (Caramel Sauce, page 34)

Vietnamese Rice Noodle Salad
Vietnamese Caramelized Grilled Pork

Recently, in a bout of consumerist frenzy, I subscribed to several magazines, covering a wide range of topics. If we combine my magazine titles with the ones Christie gets, we may as well be the public library. In addition to Saveur and Gourmet Magazine, we also have Harper’s, The Progressive, The Economist, Vanity Fair, and Protoculture Addict. (Note, yes I am a rabid Anime fan, and at some point will probably scribble about Ghost in the Shell or Neon Genesis Evangelion for your reading pleasure.) We also religiously purchase Cooks Illustrated when we spot it at the grocery store. That is a lot of reading to get done, but dammit, it does get done. Well, I must admit I have never read Harper’s cover to cover, but who has?!?

Now, Saveur and Gourmet always have fun little recipes. Mind you, they never seem to be much depth in them. Them seem more like vehicles for rare ingredients and techniques to experiment with and add your personal touch to… basically recipes for chefs. These magazines are sort of the Yang to Cook’s Illustrated Yin. For those of you that don’t know about cooking magazines and/or are not a proficient cook, Cooks Illustrated is for you. They go into extreme depth analyzing traditional recipes, deconstructing and reconstructing them for your pleasure. They then tell you how to recreate the best they came up with in exacting detail. Even though I have a lot of experience cooking, I use Cooks recipes more then any other, especially for dinner parties where I want less experimentation and more sure fire goodness. Just double the garlic and black pepper!

Anyhow, the June 2005 copy of Gourmet had some nice looking recipes in the “Quick Kitchen” section, including a recipe for a Vietnamese Rice Noodle Bowl, and a companion recipe for Vietnamese Caramelized pork. If you have read some of my previous posts, you might remember my writing about the Jasmine Deli and the killer noodle bowls they whip up cheap. Since the recipes were so simple, I figured… why not?

First up was the shopping. Went out to the usual places to get my stuff. I actually had most of what I needed, so I went to the Co-op to get the rice noodles and herbs. Oops, got pad thai noodles! No big deal. Brought all my stuff back to the kitchen, decided I was going to cook after a few minutes of Knights of the Old Republic… You know how that goes. 8 hours later I went to bed.

A note about fish sauce. To make sure your fish sauce is Vietnamese, look for Phu Quoc and Phan Thiet on the label, as these are the two great fish sauce producing regions there. You also might want to look for fish sauce with nhi or thuong hang on the label. Fish sauce is a little like olive oil, in that there are separate grades of the stuff. nhi and thuong hang mean that it is the good stuff.

Make sure you read the article I linked, and check out the website in general. It is called Viet World kitchen, and they know a hell a lot more about Vietnamese cooking then some gringo from the midwest ever will.

The next day, I set about cooking. First up, pounding the pork loin chops. Pound pound pound. Slit Slit Slit. Cut into strips. Caramelize the sugar. Add the fish sauce. Add pork to sauce. Grill Pork. Moving right along.

The noodle bowl was fairly simple to do. Soak noodles, Boil for a minute, then add the stuff. add herbs

So, when all was said and done, it it was time to spoon it up and slurp it down. They were awesome! The whole idea of using herbs almost like greens works well. The noodle bowls are topped with roasted peanuts, and they add a nice crunch to the whole deal. The pork was a nice tangy flavor. Next time I make this, I will cut the pork pieces even smaller and thinner, and probably grill them over charcoal. This time I just used a grill pan.

All in all, these are very very simple recipes, and highly recommended. I assure you, I will be making this one again, soon.

This is where mosemose and his buddy off the rails will post about such illustrious topics as good food we have eaten, fantastic new businesses that have opened, and whatever else we want to chat about. Since we live in Saint Paul (mosemose) and Minneapolis (Off The Rails) a large percentage of our posts are likely to be centered around the twin cites area here in our beloved rustic minnesota.