Pictured below is baked macaroni and cheese. Not one of the most creative or complicated dishes in my repertoire, I serve this when there has been a long run of rice or asian noodles. While good in its own right there is a huge flaw, but it doesn’t reside in the creamy sauce and the crispness of the melted cheeses on the top, no clearly it is…. that I made it.

True, I have not made one macaroni and cheese the same way twice but they’ve all turned out to be general successes. Unfortunately, no matter who I serve it to, it never seems to be quite right; I will never live up to the one person that served them their best mac and cheese. Save for my friend whose adoptive mother was notorious for making “macaroni and milk”, everyone who comes up to my table has the paragon of macaroni and cheese deeply embedded into their psyche. It is not so much the technique, but there are certain memories locked in with that perfect mac and cheese that I don’t seem to stock in my pantry.

Elbow, shells, fusilli, baked, stove top, roux-based, boil, boil and absorption, soft noodle, firm noodle, broth based, milk only, cream only, sour cream, no crust, crumb crust, cracker crust, cheese crust, one cheese, three cheese, white cheese, soufflé, black pepper, white pepper, fresh herb, dried herb, no spice, dried mustard, with vegetables, with meat, with meat and vegetables, full fat, low fat, no fat, soul free, soul crushing, crushed garlic, crushed ice, ice cold, cold heart, heart broken, heart ache, head ache, head trauma, traumatic childhood…

There’s a certain happy healthy glow that our green grociers take on at this time of the year. Tender baby vegetables make their way to the market stalls and I troll the bins like a zombie - cash in hand. The long winter and the cold beginning of spring has supressed my horticultural libido. Like those prowling fonricating woodland animals outside my door, I want nay need to fulfill my urges.

At the moment, I’m imagining eating butter yellow pattypan squash. I can feel the satisfying slice into the quartered bite with my incisors. Breaching the waxy skin and delving into the dense sponge of its flesh, pushing the cleaved morsels to back to front with my tongue to experience the whole thing over again. Simply sauteed with butter, salt, and white pepper I get excited; eating something so vital, so sunny, so humble. If I’m lucky, I’ll find small squash, the size of a cherry tomatoes - roast them whole in Spanish olive oil and topped with coarse salt along side a finely roasted chicken.

The crisp skins of both chicken and vegetables giving way to the juicy flesh in an orally scintillating, synestheticically sexual feeling.

Hungry… pattypan squash

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

After a long night of anything, be it drinking, partying, sex,
sleeping; I love the simplicity of garlic fried rice. I try to have
a pot of rice at hand at all times, and when it goes cold it isn’t
the end of the world, it’s just a totally different universe. I get
excited knowing that the cold rice can be enjoyed with soup, made
into dumplings, or turned into fried rice.

While Snuffy buttered his rye toast, I pounded ginger, garlic, and
salt. As he crunched, I fired up the aromatics in a bit of vegetable
oil, browning them a bit, then added the cold rice. Not offering to
share my precious fried rice, he walked away as I mashed big clumps
of rice so that each grain was fried and covered with the flavored oil.

With a well seasoned pan one doesn’t have to worry about rice
sticking, so I let the bottom crisp up and slightly char which gives
the whole dish texture. Fluffy seasoned rice, with crispy bits of
garlic and ginger, and shards of crispy rice. If made properly,
while serving up this rice you can hear the crispy bits pinging
against the bowl.

I finish by topping the whole thing off with a sunny side up egg —
this is Asia’s answer to soft boiled eggs and toast points.

I write this on the eve of Chinese New Year in Eastern Standard Time.

I’m not Chinese and Snuffy keeps reminding me of this fact, ok I’ll admit to that but I’ll happily commodify a culture so long as it recommends me to eat sticky sweet foods. The lovely thing about Asian sweets is… they’re aren’t too sweet. They are all lovely and subtle and don’t leave you in a coma.

sweet sticky sesame balls

egg custard tarts

steamed sponge cake