Something I retained from basic anthropology class has been bugging me lately. Early humans, we were told, were primarily vegetarian. Sure, proto-man would amble across the savanna from time to time and snag a lizard or something, but most of what we consumed was plant matter. I know we all love to gnaw on a reptile, but I was always curious as to what all this vegetation consisted of. Nuts and berries, mostly, I was told.
A bit more reading revels a few specifics; fennel, for example. Evidently we, as a species, have been eating the stuff since we were knuckle-dragging chest-beaters. Brittle grass seeds and starchy plant roots are offered as vague, prehistorical favorites. Soft fruits, honey, possibly the occasional termite. It's difficult to get more concrete answers.
I'm ok with all the generalizations. I don't expect anthropologists to be able to tell me exactly what was for dinner two-and-a-bit-million years ago. What's bugging me, really, is the “berries” part of “nuts and berries.” If, historically, berries have been so plentiful that the wild supply could nourish entire packs of migratory, gangly, fur-clad hominids, why are they so bloody scarce and expensive now?
I mean, seriously, I paid $8 for a 125g punnet of raspberries. Now, I know they had to be hand-picked by virgins at the stroke of midnight during the third full moon of summer and all, but that's extortion. 
The only time in recent memory I've not used a bank cheque to purchase berries was on my last trip home to the States. There, whilst in L.A., I visited one of the many farmers' markets. Though a bit disappointed at the size (the same market, now relocated, used to attract five times the number of vendors), I was thrilled to find a plentiful supply of inexpensive, heady, vibrant berries.
I purchased a selection and scurried off to eat them with the nuts I'd earlier gathered at Whole Foods.
Let's go all primitive with this recipe.
Get cream. Whip. Make thick. Add honey. Eat berries. Me sleep now. You watch cave entrance. Good.
(Actually, I used agave nectar to sweeten the whipped cream. Not so primitive after all, huh?)
A Gripe
Trendsurfing
There is a general trend in the cooking world towards “simple.” One only need flip trough most any food magazine to confirm. Recipes for salads, ten-minuet-dinners, and stir-and-serve meals abound. I can't count the number of food articles I've read that begin with “In today's fast-paced world, who can spend hours in the kitchen?”
This trend aims to combine speedy preparation with a minimum of ingredients and has spawned countless, brightly photographed, completely forgettable cookbooks. One of these I recently flipped through was built around the claim that each dish only contained five ingredients. The book might as well have been entitled “Cooking Without Your Imagination” for all the inspiration between its covers.
Who needs to be told how to toss frozen veggies with a can of cream of mushroom soup and then pour it over pasta? Who needs a recipe for chili cheese dogs that includes canned chili? Who, for the love of god, needs guidance cutting a tomato in half, seasoning it, and baking it in the oven? Someone does, I guess, because the publishing houses keep pumping out the cookbooks. Not you or I, at any rate.
Nevertheless, I'll try my hand at five ingredients, that is if you'll allow me to call a bouquet garni one ingredient. 
I love chicken soup. It's head-cold season in the southern hemisphere and I've been thinking often about the soothing qualities of golden chicken broth. It occurred to me that I could make a stellar soup if I set out to make a prefect white chicken stock. Below is a recipe for stock/soup. It works perfectly for either.
Simple Chicken Soup
2 drumsticks, organic, cornfed, you know the drill
4 carrots, peeled, 1cm dice
2 sticks celery, 1cm dice
1 small brown onion, fine dice
bouquet garni
1 clove garlic, crushed
5 whole black peppercorns
1 sprig thyme
1 bay leaf
First, make the bouquet garni. Place the garlic, herbs, and spices into a muslin bag, or, alternately, fold them carefully into a cheek of onion and tie them together, as in the photo.
Place the prepared veggies in the bottom of a small pot, top with the chicken, and add the bouquet garni. Cover with cold water and bring just to a simmer over medium heat, skimming any fat and scum that rises to the surface. Reduce the heat to low so that the liquid is just “ticking.” It is important to not allow the soup to come to a full, rolling boil, as this will result in a cloudy broth.
Simmer, without stirring, skimming occasionally, for 3-4 hours. Remove from heat and let stand ten minuets. Using tongs, remove and discard the bouquet garni. Remove the chicken from the broth. Once the meat has cooled enough to touch, discard the skin and pick the meat from the bones. Return this to the broth, salt and pepper to taste, and get to eating.
If you are after stock, follow all the cooking instructions above. Carefully strain the stock and discard the solids.
A Short History of Bicycles
A special mid-week post.
Every year, for a few weeks in July, I become something of an insomniac. The reason: Le Tour, live coverage in the middle of the night. Le Tour de France is a beautiful race; it is an epic of simple, pure, grueling, joyful athleticism and I am fascinated with it. There is something hypnotic about the motion of all those bicycles, the passing countryside, which then builds to the adrenaline rush sprint finishes. I love bicycles. I commute to work every day on my bike, go for weekend rides with my family, and use it, in general, to get around. In honor of Le Tour and bicycles, I give you a short history of (my) bicycles (in Australia):
Bicycle #1. When I moved to Australia, I brought with me a beautiful '69 Schwinn beach cruiser. It's candy green, has huge whitewall tires, cruiser-style handlebars, and chrome fenders. I had it shipped by sea because I could not bear to part with it. It sits now in storage – as it has only one gear and weighs about one metric tonne.
Bicycle #2. Upon retiring bike #1 I adopted the bicycle of my wife's former boyfriend, which he had long ago abandoned in her family garage. In need of a fair bit of grease and no small amount of adjusting, I managed to creak to and from work on it for some time.
Bicycle #3. A friend leaving Australia for home in England donated his mountain bike to me, pitying, I am sure, the sorry state of bike #2. I rode his mountain bike for a few months until I was hit by a car on the way to work. Diagnosis: cheaper to buy new than to fix. As a social experiment I later left the totaled bike on a Sydney street corner near my house, to see how long it would last. 20 minuets later, at my first check, it had disappeared. Back to bike #2.
Bicycle #4. Purchased on the cheap from a large department store as a replacement for bike #2, which was still squeaking and grinding and generally not working well. After only a few weeks riding #4 to and from work it was stolen. Someone cut the chain while I was sweating my ass off in the kitchen. Bastards.
Bicycle #5. Unable to face bike #2 again I immediately purchased another department store special. This little wonder kept me going for about half a year and a job change. Armed with a larger lock and a thicker chain I hoped to keep it for some time, but I managed to snap the crankshaft one night on the way home. The part was under warranty, the labor was not. Estimated bill: 150% of the purchase price.
Bicycle #6. A kind coworker sold me a replacement bike for a fraction of what he paid for it. At that point it was the nicest of the bikes I had owned – full suspension, ultralight frame, all shimano parts. It would have, no doubt lasted years had not someone with both access to the building garage and bolt cutters liberated it for themselves.
Bicycle #7. I ordered this one for an amazingly low price from an online discount clearance site. As you can imagine the amazingly low price correlated to the amazingly low quality. The wheels were flimsy – I bent one nearly in half getting nudged by a taxi – the derailleur questionable, and the bottom bracket, well, squishy is what I would call it. It was useless within a month.
Bicycle #8. Frankenbike. Frustrated with the loss of bike and money, I decided to resurrect bike #2. I stripped it down, painted, and rebuilt it using a combination of what I could salvage from the broken bikes and new parts. Lacking only a better set of handlebars, I rode the bike with some level of success for a few months.
Bicycle #9. A friend, upon hearing of Frankenbike's handlebar situation, invited me over to see if the ones he had hanging unused in his garage might work. Instead of just the handlebars, I left with the entire bike they were attached to. The old Trek 21 speed road bike was my most loyal bike. I rode it for three years. On it I had countless altercations with taxi drivers who can't be bothered looking before they enter traffic, dropped both wheels into a drainage grate (replaced them), was run off the road by a woman changing lanes and chatting on her phone, had a tire explode like a gunshot in the summer heat (replaced them), wore out the bottom bracket through constant use (replaced it), and was sideswiped by a bus (doing a fair bit of damage to me and absolutely none to the bike). I had only recently replaced the aging break pads when the bike was stolen at the end of my work night, while someone was watching it for me. Le sigh.
Bike # 10. I've got a new bike. I sleep next to it. It's safer that way.
Viva La Tour, the Greatest Race. And Viva Bicycles too, especially all of my former ones that must still be out there somewhere.
How do I bring this all around to food? Thinking about Le Tour and bikes and my morning commute, I present the only respectable breakfast a cyclist (commuter, racer, sleep-deprived fan, thief, or frenchmen) should eat:
Café et Croissant
No recipe. I've gotta ride.
The Fear of Death
Michael Ruhlman, in Charcuterie, describes the experience of eating raw-cured meats as an internal conflict where “your body knows it's raw and forbids it but your brain knows it's excellent and safe and wants it....” I have never experienced this. I happily munch away on jamon as I would hot-smoked bacon. Give me kingfish sashimi or pan-roast it. I prefer my quail medium-rare, and I've been served (and eaten) very rare pigeon. I'll eat steak tartare, so other raw beef isn't much of a stretch.
I'm aware, of course, that I am taking a risk. Sure, I could easily get sick, but I'm not willing to give up the flavor. Besides, I, and many other people, subject themselves to the same kind of risk eating runny egg yolks, homemade mayonnaise, or chocolate mousse. No one seems overly concerned about the possibility of contracting salmonella from raw eggs.
Do I know that prosciutto is absolutely raw, aged, salted meat? Do I know that, in the curing process, these meats often grow molds that are later scraped off? Do I know that with a bit of bad luck I might find myself particularly ill? Yes. And I never git it a passing thought. As much as I like Ruhlman, I can't say I remotely feel the way he does.
At least, not about meat. I've been giving all this a bit of thought lately because I did experience the brain-gut conflict he so eloquently wrote about. I feared for my health more than a bit recently when I ate wild mushrooms. 
Pine mushrooms to be exact; ones I gathered from a small pine grove in a rather large city park. In parts of Europe these mushrooms are also called saffron milk-caps, as they “bleed” a bright orange milky substance when cut. They were accidentally imported to Australia on the roots of European pine trees and can now be found during the damp autumn months in many of the forested regions around this country. 
Pine mushrooms are prized for their delicate flavor and amazing, firm texture. They are so firm, in fact, that they are the only mushroom I would rather slow cook than sauté in a smoking hot pan. Occasionally they are available at markets, as people gather and sell them, but I can't describe the joy at finding your own pushing up through the pine litter.
Which brings me back to Ruhlman's brain-gut conflict. I brought my mushrooms home, cleaned them, researched just to make sure I had the correct mushrooms, cooked them slowly in butter and a bit of stock, and began to have second thoughts. The fact is there are wild mushrooms that can kill you. Most notably is one with the attractive moniker “deathcap” which, evidently, poisons your liver so severely that transplant is offered as the only treatment. 
I knew I was safe to eat the pine mushrooms, but something primitive in me wasn't quite convinced. The result was a meal seasoned with danger and fear and triumph.
They were delicious.
And for those of you who know me and asked me, for the sake of my health, not to eat mushrooms I picked in the park... sorry. I'm terrible at following instructions. Please don't be angry.
Wild Pine Mushrooms on Sourdough with a Fried Organic Egg
100g pine mushrooms, gathered, trimmed, brushed clean, and sliced
50g butter
1 eshallot, fine dice
1 clove garlic, cracked
100ml chicken stock
chopped parsley
handful of mizuna
In a small pan on medium heat, melt the butter until it begins to foam. Add the eshallot and garlic and sauté gently until the eshallot softens. Add the pine mushrooms and cook for a couple minuets more. The mushrooms will absorb most of the butter. When they just begin to color, add the stock. Bring to a simmer and cook until a thick sauce has formed and the mushrooms are soft but still firm. Remove the clove of garlic and discard. Season and stir in some chopped parsley. Top with a few leaves of mizuna.
Serve on lightly toasted sourdough. And, since we're on the subject, fry an egg sunny side up, so that the yolk stays nice and raw.
Just a note: I hate using chopped parsley as a garnish for the sake of “color on the plate” as I know many chefs do. However, I love the green, slightly metallic, bitter taste of parsley. Use the herb for flavor people. It actually tastes like something.
One more thing: I suppose I should do the responsible thing and point out that gathering mushrooms is dangerous and you probably shouldn't do so if you aren't some sort of psychic ninja robot, or at least really sure of yourself.
On Sous Chefs
A commercial kitchen is a tiny, sovereign nation. Each has it's own set of laws, observances, and customs that the poor citizens must obey or risk severe and cruel punishment. Nearly all of these little, over-heated, autonomous dominions are ruled by marginally psychotic, rageaholic head chefs. The rest of the kitchen hierarchy, from the ground up, goes something like this: kitchen hands, apprentices (though in many kitchens these two may be reversed), cooks, chef de parties, sous chef(s), head chef.
Less like a vice president than he is a partner in crime, a sous chef provides the important link between the kitchen staff and the head chef. He is responsible for quality control, ensuring the head chef's dishes are executed properly, ordering, rostering, sometimes menu planning, costing food, and doling out punishment.
The relationship between a head chef and his sous often reminds me of that between Capitan Ahab and his three mates Starbuck (first), Stubb (second), and Flask (Third). In particular I am thinking of their meal ritual. Ahab is seated and served first; only then can Starbuck seat himself. When Starbuck has received his meal, Stubb is allowed to sit and receive his. Finally, Flask is welcome to join. At the end of the meal, the men must finish and leave in the opposite order so that Flask has the shortest amount of time to eat, and, should Stubb finish early and stir, must abandon his meal altogether.
It is important that this tiny reminder of the power structure on the Pequod happens in the confines of the Capitan's cabin, as the crew should, and generally does, see a allied leadership.
So to in the kitchen. Regardless of whether or not the head chef burnt the pine nuts, or the sous chef did or did not remember to order a box of cucumbers, the pair present a united front in an effort to maintain order in their tumultuous little kingdoms.
Imagine then, how frustrating it is that my little sous chef's favorite word is “NO!”
He is, however, a lot of fun to work with. 
Sous Chef Apron
You'll need one re-usable shopping bag.
Using the scissors, cut out one of the larger panels of the bag, cutting outside the seams, to form the apron. Cutting outside the seams ensures that the apron will not fray. 
From the remainder of bag, cut the seam itself away from the rest of the fabric to make a long, u-shaped cord. 
Cut the cord in half. Poke a small hole halfway up each side of the apron and tie a piece of cord into each.
Fin!
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