Chicken and rice are good staple foods, some might even say delicious.  But what dear readers can take these foods so common and make them transcend mere sustenance?  Spices?  No.  An Excellent cook?  No.  A delicious meal requires a companion.  A companion to compliment the subtle flavors and really bring them out so they can truly be experienced.  My goal is to provide the spark that causes something click inside your head and allows you to truly understand what it is you are tasting.

My esteemed colleagues tend to spend too much time talking about the background to their food escapades and less about the flavors, textures, and over all experience of the meal.  My aim is to cut through the clutter and provide you, dear readers, with the essence of the gastronomic experience.

Recently I had the opportunity to visit the Bay Area, my breakfast the first day was, as my fellow writers might say, delicious.  But it was truly more than that.  Imagine, if you will, a plate half covered with lavish slices of smoked salmon.  The other half containing only the freshest slices of red tomatoes and red onions.  In the center a generous serving of dill cream cheese, and on the side a bagel to keep it company.  Each of these stand well on their own, but when they are served together, well, it is something to experience for yourself.  The creaminess of the smoked salmon was cut perfectly by the spiciness of the red onion.  The bagel was the perfect combination of crispy and chewy.  The dill in the cream cheese so perfectly tied all of these flavors together into exquisite ecstasy.  This combined with the perfect glass of fresh squeezed jus d’orange, just enough pulp to coat your mouth as you sip it and just naturally sweet enough to peak the interest of your palate.

Few meals have left as lasting of an impression on me as this.  I hope that the next time you sit down to a beautifully prepared meal you can truly appreciate the thought and effort that a good chef puts into each one of their creations.

The euphemistic word for my family is “blended”. This is of course polite code for “assembled from the bleeding wreckage of several other families”, which turns out to be really a wonderful thing — we now stick together so hard that my little sister’s boyfriend is even more intimidated than you would expect, much to her chagrin and our amusement. But if you think it’s hard to schedule events for conventional families, try triple the average number of kids, and that’s just on my mom’s side.

This Thanksgiving, we were juggling schedules in an effort to schedule a birthday dinner for my stepbrother, who’s come back into town from his current home in Washington DC for the holiday. Saturday evening? No, my siblings and I have to go to our other sister’s baby shower. Friday night? Brother and sister both have events with their significant others. Sunday lunchtime? Nephew’s baptism. And so on — every lunch or dinner was scheduled solid from Wednesday to Sunday.

Finally I suggested we give up on lunch and dinner and try breakfast on Saturday instead. The idea met with a statistically improbable consensus, leaving only the question of the cake — a mandatory ritual here. While as a family we routinely consume several pies for breakfast, planning to have cake first thing in the morning (here defined as “11 am”) seemed a step too far even for us. So I made this:

Mmm, coffeecake. Pardon the built-in-webcam-kwality photo -- turns out I didn't bring the camera transfer cord home.

It is a somewhat bastardized version of this Martha Stewart recipe (turns out that post-turkeyfest we are out of many things), it is so tantalizingly crumbly that I can’t actually remove it from the angel food cake pan it was baked in, and it smells so amazing that I’m honestly worried that someone will give in to temptation and it won’t survive to be consumed tomorrow morning instead of tonight. Go improvisation, and happy belated Thanksgiving to all!

Do you ever ask a waiter for a suggestion at a restaurant, and then completely ignore him and order something different? Its almost as if you were looking for justification for one of your previous choices–its not that you really cared what his opinion was, you just wanted to have someone to blame if what you picked was bad. But this waiter failed to provide you with such a scapegoat. This waiter caught you off-guard. He suggested something from page 5, not even off the chef’s specials list, and now, rather than a “Very good choice, sir”, you’re left with far more fundamental questions than you bargained for.  A question of moral hazard–is he just recommending what’s about to be thrown away? A question of decision making–you wouldn’t stop by the side of the road to ask him for directions; why should you listen to him for something that you will shortly consume? A question of stereotyping–Is he recommending something (spicy/bland) just because you’re (South Asian/white)?

Such were the questions running through my mind as, deciding between the crab and the halibut, the waiter declared, unprompted and with confidence, “May I just remind you, sir, that we are in the height of swordfish season, and it is better than I have ever seen.” What? That wasn’t one of the choices. What game are you trying to play? The crab cakes are a signature dish. And they wouldn’t put that on just anything, right? So should I trust the chef, or should I trust you? Narrowing it to two was hard enough, and now you have to go and do that.

I alternated my concentration between the expression on the waiter’s face and the description of the house-special crab cakes, hoping that either one would reveal to me a sign of the course on which I should proceed, but neither the description nor his gaze changed, until I paused, and a small smile crept on the waiter’s face. He knew that the battle was over, and that he had won. He probably knew from the beginning. My main course would now be both literally and figuratively in his hands. What happened next? Stay tuned for Episode 2: “Something Swordfishy in the City of Cambridge” or “The Swordfish is Mightier.”