The Rake Magazine

Category: Article

  • Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

    For the Bible Tells Me So, Daniel Karslake’s 2007 documentary on the history of the religious right’s hate-hate affair with the gay community, begins with news footage of a celebrity who was once a household name, but is now long forgotten … and yet, thanks to Minnesota 6th District Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, she is not at all unfamiliar to us. The fallen idol is Anita Bryant, singer of “Paper Roses,” “Til There Was You,” and other hits from that bleak era in popular music between Buddy Holly’s death and the arrival of The Beatles (who, ironically, did an equally bleak cover of “Til There Was You”). In the seventies, Anita would become even more famous for her TV pitches for the Florida Citrus Commission, exhorting Americans to drink orange juice, with everything from toast to cheeseburgers to caviar, with the words: “It’s not just for breakfast anymore!” But, by 1977, the year of the footage featured in Karslake’s film, Bryant’s name became synonymous with one thing: homophobia.

    That year, Bryant founded and became the spokesperson for a grassroots campaign called Save Our Children. She had begun SOC in response to a movement by the Commission for Dade (later Miami-Dade) County, in her home state of Florida, to amend a human rights ordinance so that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation would be outlawed. The amendment was slated for a vote in June, 1977, and Bryant, who belonged to the Northwest Baptist Church, a virulently conservative congregation that also fought against school desegregation, was not about to let gays and lesbians be given the same rights as those minorities her confederates failed to keep out of their schools.

    With the help of her husband, Miami DJ Bob Green, and a little known pastor named Jerry Falwell, Bryant and SOC quickly gained support via petitions, direct-mailings, and phone drives. She also sought support, and gained nationwide notoriety, with public appearances in which she snarled statements like: “If gays are granted rights, next we’ll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters.”

    These words, of course, were echoed in 1998 by recently retired senate minority whip Trent Lott, who said that gays should be put in the same class as shoplifters and drunks (and who, according to the blogosphere, at least, might have left office out of concern for being outed by a rent boy). But the whiff of familiarity does not apply only to Lott. In fact, Anita Bryant bears so much resemblance, in terms of personal, spiritual and professional philosophy — not to mention physical appearance — to Michele Bachmann, that it’s enough to make one, well, bite one’s nails.

    Back in 1977, Bryant launched her SOC campaign with this fearful declaration: “As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically
    reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children." When Bachmann was serving as Minnesota state senator in 2004, she reacted to Massachusetts’ legalization of same-sex marriage with this eerily similar preoccupation in a radio interview: “Little children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal and natural and perhaps they should try it.”

    Unlike the juicer, who made no bones to the mainstream press about her notion that gay people love nothing more than to get their greasy little hands into kids’ pockets, the congresswoman, like most other current anti-gay fundamentalists, insists that she merely wishes to protect the sanctity of marriage. But, as her own personal and professional pursuits have shown, this is a diversionary tact to distract from her and her cronies’ determination to purge society of any gay person who doesn’t want to be “cured.” It’s just that Michele, like others of this peculiar mindset, has learned to be more careful in her language — at least that which she deploys in secular, mainstream settings — thanks, in no small part, to the woman who would be the homophobes’ first celebrity mascot.

    Turning back the clock again to the year that disco — up to then the province of bars and clubs catering to all those sweating, pulsating gay men — took over the world, Bryant and Save Our Children did shore up significant support for repeal of the amendment. She not only became a darling of the religious right, helping to shine the spotlight on Falwell, as well as Phyllis Schlafley and Pat Robertson, but even enjoyed support from the conventional media, including Time Magazine and The New York Times.

    At the same time, she inadvertently galvanized the gay rights movement, increasing its numbers several-fold, and sparking record-setting attendance for pride parades in major cities, most of which used her as an emblem of hate (in fact, here in Minneapolis, an Anita look-alike contest was part of the festivities). A nationwide boycott of Florida oranges began, and the Citrus Commission was inundated with phone calls urging them to dump the woman who so sweetly chirped, “A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine!”

    Barbara Streisand, Ed Asner, and other celebrities spoke out against Bryant, as did former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and President Carter. By the time the Dade County Commission voted in favor of repealing the anti-gay discrimination amendment, Anita and her people had won their political victory. But they also, as The Nation aptly put it, became “the best thing that ever happened to homosexuals.” This was largely due to the hateful one-liners the chanteuse (who, despite a high singing voice, had an intimidatingly low speaking one) would spit out before cameras and microphones, such as: “If homosexuality were the normal way, God would have made Adam and Bruce.”

    The gaining strength of the gay community, and the beginning of the end of her crusade, is symbolized by the footage featured in For the Bible Tells Me So. At a press conference in Des Moines, one of several cities where discrimination ordinance amendments were to be voted on, Bryant discusses the protests and harassment she has received from the people she regards as pedophiles. As she does, a gay activist named Aron Kay rushes up to her and rams a pie in her face. While gasps fill the room, and Bryant’s husband implores attendees not to apprehend the assailant — whose specialty was sending the pastries into rightwing enemies’ kissers — but to pray for him, the singer growled, “At least, it was a fruit pie.” (For the record, it was just cream.)

    Within months, Save Our Children would collapse, and Bryant’s performing and pitching career would come to a screeching, terminal halt. The Citrus Commission, and the many corporations for which she was a spokesperson, refused to renew her contracts. By the early ’80s, she was making pathetic attempts to renounce her hate-mongering, insisting the whole campaign was the idea of husband Bob, whom she divorced in 1980. This rapid fall taught many, if not all, antigay crusaders to be more careful in how they spoke to those outside their inner circles (Falwell and Robertson would continue to have a problem with this, especially after 9-11).

    Thus, Michele Bachmann, who began her life as a “fool for Christ” around the time of Anita Bryant’s brief tenure as chief fool, made sure, by the time she ran for national office in 2006, to focus on the preservation of marriage and deny any links to homophobic institutions — even if those links were very much a part of her adult life.

  • Oh, Our Wretched Uteri

    I saw the ad recently when, after a long, tiring workday, I was passing the evening as I often do: Snuggled up to the boyfriend on the sofa, flipping through an issue of Vanity Fair, and only vaguely paying attention to the television. But then a singsong remake of “We’re Not Gonna Take It”—yes, the Twisted Sister strain—snagged my ear.

    I looked up to see a montage of smiling beauties. A blonde office-worker reclined in her swivel chair and used her strappy high-heel to boot at a floating word: Irritability. A kick-boxer jabbed at moodiness. Inside a fitting room, a shopper popped bloating as if it were a balloon. Finally, a sexy young thing strutting down a city sidewalk jumped in the air and dunked the phrase feeling anxious. “Yaz is the only birth control proven to treat the emotional and physical premenstrual symptoms that are severe enough to impact your life,” promised the voice-over. Oh, and it makes your skin look better, too!

    “That strikes me as an irresponsible way to market birth control,” I said to my boyfriend. But of course, he didn’t particularly see my point. The medical establishment says birth control pills are safe and, by and large, the populace seems to agree. In fact, hormonal contraceptives have practically become a staple of contemporary living: like the timesaving microwave oven, so indispensable that it’s nearly pointless to argue their detriments. But how did the Pill ascend from mere contraceptive to all-encompassing lifestyle drug?

    In the beginning, this pharmaceutical innovation was targeted to married women. But early adopters in the ’60s discovered the pill’s power against menstrual cramps. Soon, unmarried women caught on, feigning debilitating cramps wherever there was a need for a prescription. Still, the drug was not without its side effects: nausea, weight gain, and, in many cases, an obliterated sex drive.

    Such word-of-mouth marketing among consumers—and, just as important, between pharmaceutical companies and physicians—held sway until 1997, when deregulation enabled the companies to begin advertising directly to consumers. When I joined the fake-cramps crowd and started taking Loestrin in 1992, I wasn’t told this particular drug would also diminish my periods. But that’s exactly what happened (after three years, they disappeared altogether). Back then it was alarming; nowadays, of course, Loestrin’s ads boast: “The pill with a short period.” Then in 1996, when a physician suggested somewhat half-heartedly that Ortho Tri-Cyclen might clear my complexion, I jumped at the chance to change prescriptions. This claim—“clinically proven to help your skin look better”—is now featured front-and-center on the Ortho Tri-Cyclen website, providing teenagers and other single women with another handy excuse to start dosing.

    It’s what good marketers do, right? They pick up on consumer trends and exploit them to the benefit of their companies or clients. We, the people, shape the messages of these ads and those messages, in turn, shape us. These days women are sold birth control for every reason except preventing pregnancy. It seems like anyone with stomach pain or pimples is taking a contraceptive, whether she’s sexually active or not. In fact, this is likely how Big Pharma gets away with marketing to “good girls.” Today’s birth control ads invariably feature slender, hyperactive youngsters (often swimming or wearing white pants); the implication is that our periods prevent us from looking so beautiful and engaging in such fun, not that these beautiful, young things might be having sex. It goes without saying that menstruation is an annoyance, if not a curse, as it was once called. But I wonder whether today’s birth control marketing puts even more perfectionist pressures on women.

    The message: Not only must we be professionally successful and effortlessly hot, we must also be cheerful, energetic, and sound of mind—even when it’s that time of the month.

    The most radical marketing developments have come in the past few years with Seasonale, the pill that limits menstrual periods to just four per year, and now Yaz, which seems to cure everything inherent to the female condition: the monthly bouts of moodiness, fatigue, increased appetite, and water-retention that often go along with our periods.

    These ads prey upon a particular cultural prejudice—that having this messy, punctuated hormonal cycle is not just a grave inconvenience, but a curable medical condition. Seasonale enables women to plan their periods around vacations or, in the case of a woman I know, running a marathon. As for Yaz, it starts to look a lot like an antidepressant. Of course, the insinuated correlation between femininity and mental illness is nothing new. (The etymology of “hysteria,” derived from the Greek for uterus, says it all.) I can’t help but wonder why the Yaz ad, which goes the furthest in characterizing women’s bodies as diseased, hasn’t triggered mass outrage or, at the very least, a few thousand bouts of extra-menstrual irritability. Perhaps our birth control is a little too fabulous.

    Now that the male pill is in trials, a sick, moody, and yes, female mind starts to wander: What groovy side effects might it offer? Already, it’s been shown to curtail libido, just as the female pill does. Might it cure other pesky byproducts of manhood, such as aggression, overconfidence, and snoring? For the sake of all that’s good and decent, one hopes scientists can engineer it to tackle back hair and Male Answer Syndrome, that sex-specific compulsion to present as fact all educated guesses. And if there’s any justice in this world, rather than causing fellows to accumulate fat around their hips, perhaps this new pill will trigger muscle loss in, say, their biceps.

  • We Like Ourselves So Much We’ll Have Seconds!

    Ah, the all-American hot dish—when you think about it, it’s a surprisingly spot-on analogue to the American people. Both contain three primary ingredients: meat, starch, and some sort of binding agent. Both have protective exteriors, yet their innards are tender and rife with all manner of improbable juxtapositions and mysteries. And, just like people, hot dishes come in all shapes and sizes. Some are for breakfast, some for supper. Some contain unusual ingredients, like pimientos, and some don’t. Virtually all of them, however, can be categorized as quintessentially Midwestern exotica—sort of the culinary equivalent of the Fargo accent. Riddle us this, then, fellow Americans: If you were a hot dish, which concoction would best capture your personality and tastes?

    How do you generally greet loved ones?
    Handshake (1 point)
    Nod of the head (2 points)
    Bisou, bisou (3 points)
    Smothering embrace (4 points)

    Another cold weekend is on tap. How do you spend your Saturday night?
    Go for supper at the VFW (1 point)
    With a six-pack of Old Mil and pay-per-view wrestling (2 points)
    Paging through Finnegan’s Wake and sipping brandy (3 points)
    Drinking herbal tea and scrapbooking (4 points)

    Someone gives you an unusual gift. What do you exclaim upon opening the package?
    “Well, that’s different.” (1 point)
    “What the flyin’ fudge is it?” (2 points)
    “Omigod, did you get this at Bibelot?” (3 points)
    “I LOVE IT!” (4 points)

    Now total up your points and find the corresponding hot dish below.

     

     
    Meat Loaf and Potato Casserole
    (3 to 4 points): You’re a stoic Midwesterner with a decent disposition—until you’re asked to eat your vegetables. This peas- and carrots-free dish features all your favorites: beef, potatoes, eggs, milk, and cracker crumbs. No Funyuns in this bad boy! Ketchup is optional but highly recommended.

     

     
    Chicken A La King
    (5 to 7 points): This traditional dish covers the basics—broth (thank God for bouillon cubes!), chicken, mushrooms (canned), rice (instant), and pimientos (out of the jar)—but it’s all gussied up with a name so preposterous that it could be ironic, which it isn’t. And, you know, pimientos have a way of commanding more respect than they truly deserve—just like you, come to think of it.

     

     
    Cassoulet
    (8 to 10 points): There’s nothing too ambitious in this baked dish of sausage, kidney beans, tomatoes, onions, and carrots. Except, that is, for the fancy name, which pretty much means “hot dish” in French. For your part, while you might put on a few airs, at heart you’re really a no-nonsense, salt-of-the-earth type.

     

     
    Tamale Pie
    (11 to 12 points): This fiery recipe, while encouraging improvisation, calls for ground beef, tomatoes, peppers, cornmeal, and, if you’re feeling extra daring, pepper jack! If you really want to go to cheeky extremes, top it off with Fritos and Cheez Whiz. You’re whimsical and highly creative, with a passion for Southwestern cooking to boot.

     

  • Ripeness Is All

    We all, they say, have one book in us. God knows what mine would be. How about Good Wine Needs No Bush: Political Maunderings of an Expatriate Oenophile? Or perhaps Latin Love in a Cold Climate: Memories of a Minnesota Classicist.

    These are merely titles in the mind. More intriguing are authors who produce one brilliant book and only one—vox et praeterea nihil. What fresh dragons of injustice did Harper Lee slay after she killed her mockingbird? Search me. Peter Beckford was a Georgian foxhunter of broad and elegant taste. He was partly responsible for introducing Clementi, the pianist, to polite English society, and yet his classic Thoughts on Hunting in a Series of Familiar Letters to a Friend are the only thoughts I know he committed to print.

    Until last week I had always thought of Rose Macaulay as another such auctor unius libri, all her unread early work leading to the great triumph of The Towers of Trebizond, the funniest book ever written about an Anglo-Catholic suffragette traveling around Eastern Turkey on a camel. Then I found, in a second-hand stall (in original dust jacket, some damp staining, slightly foxed), The World My Wilderness, the story, published in 1950, of Barbary, a farouche seventeen-year-old art student, allowed to run wild through the wasteland of ragwort and fireweed, ruined banks, and roofless Wren churches that was the Square Mile of the City, the historic and commercial heart of London, in the years following the Blitz.

    Barbary knows nothing about the centuries of commercial effort and bürgerlich devotion whose archaeology lies romantically at her feet, though she turns an honest penny painting watercolor postcards of the ruins to sell to rubber-necked tourists. She also turns several dishonest ones: shoplifting, stealing ration books (food and clothes were rationed in England for years following World War II), going with army deserters, and generally being the despair of her amiable if rather upright father, an eminent lawyer whose hair one imagines growing daily grayer beneath his barrister’s wig.

    In fact the only thing that would prevent a right-thinking person from wanting to apply a stout boot to Barbary’s bony little behind is the fact that she learnt her unusual manners in an excellent school and while struggling for a good cause. Before coming to London she had been brought up by her divorced mother, a louche lady who had settled in the Côtes du Roussillon, not far from the Franco-Spanish frontier, just before the War. She stayed there for the duration, so Barbary had spent her formative years as a runner for the Resistance, dodging the Gestapo, sleeping rough on the maquis. Her mother, an easy-going artist, keen on painting and a quiet life, had never interfered. It is Barbary’s mother, in fact, who remains in the mind as a character, what the French call un type. You can savor her in your mind’s eye, lolling pneumatically on a chaise longue, an amber cigarette holder in one hand, a glass in the other, well-read, seductive, lovely to look at, delightful to behold, but perhaps a little overripe. One wonders if perhaps she is what Rose Macaulay herself feared she might become as she grew older: delightful but directionless, sunk in sin. She need not have worried; the published letters of her later years suggest a formidably crisp old lady, whose daily ritual involved early-morning mass and a cold open-air swim in a London park, followed by copious correspondence, much of it concerned with the technicalities of mediaeval Latin verse.

    Overripe, though, is the word for the Pepperwood Grove Old Vine non-vintage zinfandel that sits in a glass beside me as I write. For all that (it comes from the big California firm of Don Sebastiani), this is wine with strong character—some of it the sort your mother warned you to avoid—per Yeats, caught in that sensual music all neglect monuments of un-aging intellect. The color recalls deep red lipstick, the kind that leaves an indelible mark on a shirt collar; the sweetness rising from the surface is redolent of the end of summer, the bubbling vats of black currants being boiled into jam. (How distant summer seems. Où sont les confitures d’antan?). The taste is chewy, like well-hung mutton (for which it would make a better mate than red-currant jelly). The grittiness that lingers on the palate is flecked with sensations of black pepper. Best of all, its percentage of alcohol by volume (13.5) exceeds its price in dollars. I shall pour myself another glass and take a long, hot bath.

  • A Great Big Flip

    He’d been a groom before; I hated the idea of a puffy white dress. So we had a ceremony at the courthouse and left abruptly the next morning for Paris. I’d like to say it was impossibly romantic. But among the magical nighttime moments in the Louvre courtyard, there was plenty of bickering concerning the correct path to the Panthéon. After one particularly nasty exchange, I stormed ahead on the Rue Mouffetard, only to be halted in my tracks by the sweetness wafting from a street-side window. A man with thick arms plied a crêpe from a hot pan and slathered it with Nutella; I quickly ordered two. When my husband finally caught up, I handed him the warm confection. We shared a silent, wide-eyed moment of bliss with that first bite and continued on, hand in hand.

    It wasn’t the first time I’d used a crêpe to save the day; and it certainly wasn’t the last. But who can blame me? With a small list of ingredients, the options for sweet or savory fillings (not to mention almost endless topping possibilities), and a nearly fool-proof batter, it’s a versatile creation that belongs in every cook’s repertoire. In my family, crêpes have become the ultimate grab-and-go food: pour, flip, fill, fold, and see you later.

    The French obviously have a close relationship with the crêpe. During Candlemas in February, they have a tradition in which a preparer must flip a crêpe with one hand while holding a coin in the other. A successful flip portends a year of good fortune. Originating in Brittany, crêpes were originally known as galettes crêpes, or flat cakes, and were customarily made with buckwheat flour and used like bread.

    Today, the buckwheat version is sometimes called galettes de sarrasins and is customarily used in savory preparations.
    But it’s the sweet crêpe that lures most food-lovers. Whether for dessert or brunch, a delicate pancake filled with berries, chocolate, sweet cream, or simply butter and sugar is hard to refuse. My own mother used rolled crêpes covered with sugar to wedge eggs into my early, extremely limited diet. But as of late, my attentions have turned to the savory crêpe, including heartier versions made from whole wheat flour and laced with herbs. Softly folded around any number of ingredients (mushrooms and Gruyère, halibut and leeks, squash and chèvre with sage), crêpes allow you to skip the bread and ditch the pasta, all while lending an air of refinement.

    There’s no mystery to the mix, a basic batter of flour, eggs, and milk. Even with all the potential permutations and additions, it’s almost impossible to screw up. Check out the three pages dedicated to crêpes in the Larousse Gastronomique, where you’ll find recipes for sweet crêpes that call for sugar, vanilla, and cognac as well as savory recipes with beer. As for my own concoctions, no matter how off-the-cuff, each has yielded a wholly edible pancake. I think that’s the true magic of the crêpe: It can be anything you want or need it to be. If I was set upon by four hungry dinner guests and had only a sparsely stocked pantry, crêpes would not only suffice, they would surprise and satisfy.

    Patience may be the final ingredient—even an experienced crêpe chef knows the first of the batch will be an ugly one. But once you master the skill, the only mystery left is this: Why on earth haven’t you made these treasures more often?

    Savory Mushroom Crêpes

    For Crêpes:

    1 c. buckwheat flour
    1/4 c. all-purpose flour
    1/2 tsp. salt
    1-1/2 c. milk
    4 eggs
    1/4 c. melted butter (plus a touch for the pan)

    For filling:

    3 T. butter
    2 c. chopped baby portabellas
    2 T. freshly chopped thyme
    Shredded Gruyère

    Sift flours and salt together in a medium bowl. Slowly whisk in milk until blended. Whisk in eggs until smooth, then stir in melted butter. Cover and chill batter for at least two hours, giving it a quick stir before using.

    Heat a non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. When pan is hot, brush lightly with a little melted butter. Lifting pan from the heat, pour in just enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan and swirl to coat the surface. When the cake firms up, loosen the edges and flip. After a few seconds, transfer crêpe to a warmed baking dish in a 200-degree oven.

    Meanwhile, sauté mushrooms in butter with thyme until deep brown and soft. Add salt and pepper to taste.

    Place crêpe in a clean pan over medium heat. Top with shredded gruyère, and remove just as cheese is melting. Top one half with a spoonful of mushrooms and gently fold closed.

  • Satan in the Litter Box

    I hate my cat. Cat people, save yourself the trouble of emailing me. And, rest assured, this is not a one-sided kind of a deal. The cat hates me, too. I know it is childish and wrong for me to hate the cat. After all, it is not her fault that I bought her. I should feel sorry for her. Imagine, being purchased by someone you hate and not having the thumbs to do anything about it. Poor, sweet, evil baby.

    My cat is very beautiful, and people who come over to my house—cat people, that is—are beside themselves when they see her. They coo and moon like it was Angelina Jolie who just ambled into the room after taking a dump. “Who is this gorgeous one?” they say, stretching their spines sensuously. (Scritchy-scratch.) Or “Ooooooh, look at that pretty kitty!” (Caress, stroke.)

    Cat people, listen to me. I have never nor will I ever mistreat or neglect this wee beastie. If you want me to believe you when you say that cats have personalities just like humans do, then sure; I’m with you. Because then you will have to agree with me when I tell you that, without a doubt, some of them are total cat-holes.

    Having one cat does not make you a cat person. Having three or more does. Maybe you have a cat or a cat person in your life. I have four cat people in my life. They are all physically beautiful, well-educated people, but other than that, they come from different neighborhoods and socio-economic backgrounds. The wealthier cat people, I have noticed, can sort of mask their cat person-hood by claiming eccentricity. This doesn’t fly with those of lower income. These cat people just seem all the crazier for choosing to scoop poop and de-lint in their spare time, and for spending what disposable income they have on food, litter, and all manner of feline accessories.

    Cats cost about three hundred dollars a year to maintain. They have a projected fifteen- to seventeen-year lifespan. If you have three cats, this adds up to a grand total of $13,500. I understand that it is nice to come home to “someone.” But please try to think outside the litter box for a second. Nine hundred dollars a year might purchase you a shot at human companionship. You could take a life-enriching class. Get out and meet people. A painting class, maybe. You could even paint pictures of cats.

    Cat people, you love to speak of the companionship that these tiny terrors offer, but have you ever stopped to notice that there are no “man’s best friend” genre movies starring cats? Could Old Yeller ever have been made if the script called for an orange tabby? How come there are no such things as bomb-sniffing cats? Or seeing-eye cats? “Cats are too smart for that.” I’ve heard that one before. Tell it to Judge Judy. Cats are inherently wicked, self-involved pleasure seekers. If being a wicked, self-involved pleasure seeker equals smart, how come we’re so quick to call Britney Spears stupid? Britney Spears would totally be worshipped in ancient Egypt. And look what happened to the ancient Egyptians.

    Furthering my argument: The next time you go out for dim sum, check out the animals on your placemat. You’ll find a pig, a goat, a rat, even a snake! There is no year of the cat in Chinese astrology. They have a dragon. A pretend animal was better than a cat.

    Plus, cats have got that otherworldly, spooky vibe. Nostradamus was a cat owner, ditto Aleister Crowley. I don’t think it’s just black cats—all cats are bad luck. There is no good-luck correlation to cats. People don’t carry around lucky cat’s feet. Unlike horse manure, if you step in cat poop on a city street, it doesn’t mean that you are lucky.

    Cats are the opposite of heroic. You always hear modern folktales of devoted dogs who were tragically separated from their owners and sniffed their way cross-country from Nebraska to Vermont, making their way back to little Billy. People write love songs about dogs. “Lily,” by Pink Martini. “Queenie’s Song,” by Guy Clark. “Old King,” by Neil Young. What songs are there about cats? “The Cat Came Back.”

    As I sit here tonight, daubing my five-inch laceration with a sterile alcohol pad from the first-aid kit, these unkind thoughts about my cat comfort me. On the upside, it is nice to have a face (even if it is three inches wide and furry) upon which to superimpose all of my earthly hatred and anxieties. On the downside, it means putting up with violent and bloody surprise attacks in my own home. I am the bumbling Inspector Clouseau, and she is my Cat-o.

  • Hotcakes in Hell

    It is a fact that I have never made a decent pancake.

    My children could tell you this. For years, when they’d have friends sleep over and I’d offer—in the morning—to whip up my special whole wheat-and-yogurt pancakes, I’d get an urgent “No! That’s alright. We’re not hungry.” Then they’d sneak off to devour a box of cereal in the basement. Yet when I arrived at Hell’s Kitchen for my first day of work—because as a restaurant critic, I felt I should know what it’s like on the other side—I was put on griddle duty. I think Steve Meyer, lead cook and co-owner, believed I would do the least damage there.

    I was stationed between Meyer and his second-in-command, Pepé Yupa. A forty-five-year-old Ecuadorean national and former roofer, Yupa started at Hell’s Kitchen six years ago as a dishwasher and rose quickly to become a line cook. He speaks little English, but he reads the order tickets lined up in front of the heat lamps in a flash. All day, he and Meyer communicate in a hybrid Spanglish mixed with metaphor, a private language I had no hope of deciphering.

    Besides making pancakes and lemon-ricotta hotcakes, my tasks included finishing the huevos rancheros—a favorite at Hell’s Kitchen—with cheese, heat, salsa, and sour cream (in that order), and calling out orders to the kitchen crew as they came off the printer. This last job entailed scanning each ticket, compiling the various items in my head, and reciting them in a particular order, which, despite multiple reminders, I could never recall.

    I did pretty well at the second job: topping the huevos rancheros with a handful of shredded cheddar and sliding the plates under the coils of a huge Salamander oven. The problem was I would become distracted: New orders flowed in ceaselessly, guys kept edging behind me yelling, “Benedict WALKING!,” and a constant scroll of soap operas played on the television overhead. Once or twice, I noticed the rancheros I’d started beginning to smoke.

    When it came to pancakes, I’d toss a little melted butter on the griddle, then ladle on the batter. But I consistently poured either too much or too little, so my pancakes were thick and lumpy or weirdly long and thin. Finally, Yupa took over. “Like this, honey,” he said, scooping, dumping, flipping, and producing a perfect stack. “See?”

    And I nodded, though I didn’t see at all. My hands were sticky, which I hate; sweat was running in a steady stream down my back; and there was no pattern I could discern to this work: It would be screaming busy for twenty minutes, then preternaturally dead for ten. I always chose the wrong time to use the bathroom.

    At five-foot-three, I might have complained about working in a kitchen where everything is overhead. Except that Yupa is the same size, and he managed somehow—moving, stretching, reaching, lifting, and catching with a Kirby Puckett-style grace.

    Only very good friends with great humor and sky-high risk tolerance would let me attempt to cook in their restaurant. I became a food critic not because I’m a frustrated weekend chef but because left to my own devices, I would prepare nothing but plain yogurt with fruit, peanut butter sandwiches, and popcorn. But Meyer and majority partner Mitch Omer not only allowed me to stay that day, they asked me to return the next.

    “You come back?” Yupa said when I arrived. He looked stunned. It was Saturday, the day Hell’s Kitchen routinely serves five hundred people by noon.

    “I want to learn,” I said. “Pancakes mejor.” I’d spent the night before practicing several phrases in Spanish with my husband, who lived in Barcelona for years. But at 7:30 a.m., after a single cup of coffee, the only word I could recall was the one for “better.”

    By nine o’clock, it was clear my pancakes would not be mejor. And the orders were coming in so fast Yupa finally nudged me gently out of the way.

    I spent the rest of the shift melting cheese over huevos rancheros and stepping to the side when the real cooks needed to sail through unimpeded. Then I would watch, and this, I must admit, was the best part. Communicating in a language I was beginning to understand, they danced and wove amongst each other and tossed things through the air.

    When I left Hell’s Kitchen at two p.m., more tired than I’ve been since the last time I gave birth, Yupa asked, “You come back tomorrow?” I shook my head and he grinned, then stuck out his hand and said, “Bye, honey.” Despite his best effort, I still cannot make a decent pancake.

  • Take the Chill Off

    It’s winter. You’re cold, you’re broke, and you spent the entire month of December eating too much. You made a few New Year’s resolutions, and you want to keep them. You don’t need a bunch of fine dining recommendations.

    You need soup: warm, filling, and cheap, it’s the perfect antidote to cold, fat, and broke.

    I’m not talking about those red and white cans of Campbell’s that have impoverished the very concept of soup for so many, or even that little cup of tomato basil that comes with the soup-and-sandwich special. I’m talking about a meal in a bowl, from one of the many cultures around the world where soup is celebrated.

    Take China. Odds are when you think of Chinese soups you think wonton, and the typical wonton soup at Chinese restaurant these days is a disgrace—thin broth and soggy pasta dumplings with a tiny bit of minced meat at the center.

    The real wonton soup is a whole different kettle of dumplings. It has a rich homemade stock and fat pouches filled with minced pork, mushrooms, and more; and it’s cooked to order, so the wontons are firm, not mushy.

    But wonton soups are just the beginning. My favorite Chinese noodle soup is beef brisket, typically made with big chunks of stewed meat and tendon in an aromatic broth scented with star anise. As you eat, you slurp, and the hot, aromatic steam rises into your nostrils.

    The newest and most stylish of the restaurants that serve Chinese meal-in-a-bowl soups is Pagoda in Dinkytown. They let you design your own soup: You select a broth (chicken or pork), a noodle (the four options include Japanese udon), and as many fillings as you want from a list that includes beef brisket, curried squid, beef balls, fish balls, and more. It costs $3.95 for noodles and broth, plus a dollar more per ingredient.

    Pagoda also offers several kinds of congee, the savory rice porridge that is the ultimate comfort food. Some people find it bland, but at its best, it’s deceptively simple and wonderfully nuanced, studded with chewy shreds of pork and slippery morsels of gelatinous preserved egg, and scented with slivered ginger, chopped green onions, and aromatic fresh coriander. Other top spots for traditional Chinese noodle soups and congees include Hong Kong Noodle, Keefer Court, Shuang Cheng, Village Wok, Relax (the former Yummy), and Mandarin Kitchen.

    By now most American gastronomic adventurers are familiar with at least one or two soups from the Vietnamese repertoire: pho, the beef noodle soup from the north; and hu tieu, made with roast pork, shrimp, and squid (originally from Cambodia). The many variations of pho range from a simple rare sliced beef with rice noodles to a combination of sliced beef, brisket, tripe, tendons, and meatballs. Regardless of type, it should be served with fresh chopped coriander on top and a side dish of basil and other fresh herbs, bean sprouts, and lime wedges.

    Moving beyond pho and hu tieu, many better Vietnamese restaurants also offer bun bo hue, a hot and spicy noodle soup from central Vietnam; and bo kho, an intensely flavorful beef stew (misleadingly described as curry), which can be ordered with rice noodles, egg noodles, or a French baguette. For the truly adventuresome, Quang serves chao long, a rice porridge made with pork intestines and other innards, on weekends. My other favorite spots for Vietnamese soups include Pho Tau Bay and K-Wok in Minneapolis, and Ngon Bistro, Trieu Chau, and Hoa Bien in St. Paul.

    If you like it spicy, it’s hard to beat the selection at Peninsula, the Malaysian restaurant just up the street from Quang. Their beef curry soup with egg noodles is intensely flavorful without being overpoweringly spicy, but my favorite is the nyonya laksa, a curried coconut-milk soup brimming with tofu, chicken, shrimp, bean sprouts, and rice noodles. You can also find a decent version of curry laksa soup, along with a few other Malaysian dishes, at K-Wok, the Vietnamese/Chinese restaurant at Cedar and Riverside. And for a terrific selection of hearty Cambodian noodle soups, both spicy and mild, visit Cheng Heng, on University Avenue in St. Paul, where you’ll find distinctively Khmer versions of Vietnamese pho and Thailand’s hot-and-sour tom yum.

    Japan gave us ramen, the instant noodle soup packets that are a mainstay of college dorms and employee lunchrooms. You can find a more refined version of ramen, topped with roast pork, bamboo shoots, and fish cake on the lunch menu at Origami, but most other local Japanese restaurants base their soup repertoires on two other traditional noodles: fat wheat udon, and chewy brown buckwheat soba.

    My two favorite spots for Japanese noodle soups are Midori’s Floating World Café in Minneapolis, and Tanpopo Noodle Shop in St. Paul’s Lowertown. Tanpopo’s nabeyaki udon is a composition with the elegant simplicity of a haiku: noodles, shrimp tempura, sliced chicken, fish cake, Japanese omelet, and seaweed, presented steaming hot in a pottery bowl.

    Korea has very cold winters, and the best of the Korean restaurants around town, like King’s Korean, Mirror of Korea, Kum Gang San, and Hoban, all offer soups to warm your innards. Mandoo kook is Korea’s answer to wonton soup—dumplings filled with beef, cabbage, and tofu (ingredients vary) served in a clear flavorful broth. My favorite, cham pong, is made with spaghetti-like noodles and mixed seafood (typically, shrimp, octopus, and mussels), as well as napa cabbage, green onions, onions, and carrots. Adventuresome eaters will want to try kimchi chigae, a very spicy stew of fermented cabbage, tofu, green onions, and pork in a hot pepper broth.

    Asian cuisines, of course, don’t have the lock on great soup. The most famous Mexican soup is probably menudo, the spicy tripe and hominy soup traditionally served as a hangover cure. (A word to the squeamish: Even though I shy away from liver, kidneys, and most other organ meats, I actually like tripe, which has a mild flavor and a pleasantly chewy texture.) Many restaurants serve menudo only on weekends, but Pancho Villa and Tacos Morelos make it every day. Beyond menudo, Pancho Villa offers a traditional caldo de res and caldo de pollo (stewed beef or chicken in broth with big chunks of vegetables), and a spectacular caldo 7 mares (“Seven Seas”), full of shrimp, octopus, mussels, squid, and crab legs, swimming in a spicy red broth. I also enjoyed their pozole, a traditional soup made with pork and hominy that dates to pre-Columbian times. Order it rojo—red—for the extra kick of chili peppers.

    Kramarczuk’s Deli on East Hennepin in Minneapolis usually has about half a dozen soups on hand, including the classic Eastern European winter-beater, a beet and cabbage broth. This hearty version also has lots of chunks of stewed beef. It’s a bright rose color when served, and changes to a lascivious shade of pink when you stir in sour cream, as is the custom. A bowl of this borscht, with a few slices of rye bread and butter, and you are ready to face a Ukrainian winter, or a Minneapolis snowstorm. For variety, try the sweet and sour version at the Brothers Deli in downtown Minneapolis, where you can also find pretty good chicken noodle and matzo ball soups.

    Speaking of which, for first-rate chicken noodle soup, head to Yum! Kitchen & Bakery in St. Louis Park, where you can add matzo balls à la carte. Yum! also offers a delicious creamy, chunky tomato basil soup and a hearty gumbo, served over rice and brimming with andouille sausage, chicken, shrimp, and okra.

    One more favorite spot for soups is the Fireroast Mountain Café. Owner Lisa Piper makes two a day, at least one vegetaria
    n, ranging from smoked beef with roasted poblano to apple-parsnip, potato-leek, and chicken-and-veggies-with-rice varieties. Combine that with one of Lisa’s terrific homemade desserts, like the signature Mexican chocolate cake, or apple spice cake with walnut topping, and you’ve got a hearty lunch—plus change from a ten-dollar bill. (Full disclosure: Lisa and her husband/co-owner Dave Clark are friends.)

    If you work your way around the Cities to all of these restaurants, that should be enough soups to keep you going ’til spring, but it’s hardly a complete list. If you have favorites to add, drop me a line at iggers@rakemag.com, and I will add them to my Breaking Bread blog.

  • Peripa-tech!

    This month, all sorts of lucky boys and girls are sporting shiny new
    electronic doodads, freshly delivered from Santa and other thoughtful
    gift-givers. It’s good timing: A hot-pink Motorola RAZR or aquamarine
    laptop does much to cut through the gray midwinter cloud cover, not to
    mention spruce up many a gloomy coffeehouse interior. In fact, around
    these parts, tech accessories are one of the few acceptable ways to
    incorporate fluorescents this time of year—especially if you’re in
    possession of a Y chromosome. Cell phones and iPods are only the most
    common of these gizmos; clothing and accessories designers have also
    devised a crop of stylish new ways to ferry—and flaunt—these devices.
    Somewhere deep in our cargo pants are additional treasures: pocket
    shooters (a.k.a. super- skinny digital cameras) in bright metallic
    hues, even USB drives encrusted with Swarovski crystals. Who knew
    gadgets could be so decadent?

    See Peripa-tech slideshow featured in the left column. 

  • Deborah Stein’s Playlist

    It might seem strange that Deborah Stein sees more rock shows than she does plays, but it does much to explain the genesis of the Minneapolis playwright’s own new work, God Save Gertrude. A theatrical rock concert in the style of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Stein’s play also manages to riff on one of the stage’s most familiar tales, Hamlet. Never mind the overexposed prince and his poor, dear Ophelia; this time it’s Queen Gertrude going under the metaphorical knife. She’s a punk rocker now—replete with her own all-girl backup band, the Shortcuts, and a wardrobe of asymmetrical spiffs by local clothing designer Laura Fulk. Asked what kinds of tunes informed such a spectacle, Stein—whose list here is weighted toward live tracks—noted that her taste tends toward artists who can “tear out their heart and give it to us as a glorious, noisy gift.” Just like her Gertrude.

    1. “Tomorrow,” Patti Smith
    This is an outtake at the end of the last track of Land, a collection of greatest hits and B-sides. I think it’s from a New Year’s Eve show; she’s exhausted, her voice is shot, everyone is drunk. “Now I’m gonna sing a little song for my mother,” she says before launching into “Tomorrow” from Annie. Yes, that Annie.

    2. “Success,” Iggy Pop and David Bowie.
    They’re basically just taking the piss out of each other, making themselves laugh.

    3. “Art Star,” Yeah Yeah Yeahs
    Karen O puts on a sick live show, and this track (from the self-titled EP) exemplifies the experience. You can practically hear her sticking the mic in her mouth as she roars on the chorus.

    4. “The Man That Got Away,” Judy Garland
    Judy opens herself up raw for the audience, letting us see every crack and fissure.

    5. “Jersey Girl,” Bruce Springsteen
    This 1981 live recording is a real heartbreaker. You can hear the kids in the audience [at the Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey] recognize themselves in this Tom Waits cover. They go nuts when Bruce hits the chorus.

    6. “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis,” Tom Waits
    I get chills every time I listen to this one. It’s basically a mind-fuck, where he gets you to sympathize with the narrator and then, in the last verse, yanks the rug out. I wish I could write a play that pulled off this trick!

    7. Most recent mind-blowing live show: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
    For the sake of choosing one song, I’ll go with “Ballad of the Sin Eater”—that build of “you didn’t know they could hate you, now did you?” sounds like it could go on forever, which is how it feels to see Leo live. There’s a certain excitement generated by both the best live music and the best theater—something unexpected or virtuosic, happening in real time in front of you.

    8. Most recent song on “repeat”: “Oxford Comma,” Vampire Weekend
    So catchy I almost can’t stand it. But I also can’t stop myself from starting the song over before it’s even finished.

    9. Favorite local band of the week: The Shortcuts!
    All-girl, adorable, and fierce. They’re playing in my show.

    10. Best recent use of music in film: “Sonata for a Good Man” by Gabriel Yared, in The Lives of Others
    As it is played during a crucial moment in the story, one character quotes Lenin on Beethoven: “If I keep listening to it I won’t be able to finish the revolution.”

    God Saves Gertrude runs January 25–February 10 at the Playwrights’ Center, 2301 E. Franklin Ave., Minneapolis. For more information, visit www.workhauscollective.org. For tickets, call 612-332-7481, ext. 20.