Something Old, Something New

The other night, kids are asleep (for a short time) and parents are downstairs on their respective laptops.  Hopefully I can honestly say I was doing work and not idly reading blogs.  I put some music on the stereo to work to (an actual physical Compact Disc^tm on a real stereo system!) and it was pointed out to me that I had chosen the same album to listen to maybe seven out of the last ten times.  "Why do you always choose the same music?" I wondered why also.  The album was "The Paul Motian Trio at The Village Vanguard" which was the first one by that band that I ever heard.  Since then I've managed to collect (I believe) every commercial recording they have released.  Although I'd be hard pressed to choose a favourite recording of theirs, at least one of them would have to be on any desert island disc list I could compose.  World-renowned drummer and mentor Dylan VanDerSchyff once encapsulated what they do (my paraphrase): "They take all the building blocks of music and dismantle them all to nothing, so that they can build them back up themselves." Likewise Brooklyn-based bassist and author Chris Tarry explained "their music doesn't go very wide, but it runs incredibly deep." (again, my paraphrase) Anyway, the point is, that trio has profoundly affected my view of music, both as an artist and as a listener.  But that still didn't address why I listened to that album almost exclusively in the last few weeks.  I'm not particularly unique in having a large music collection: mostly CD's, a few hundred vinyl, the rest in (compressed) digital form. Yet time and time again I find myself returning to the same few albums to listen to.  If the music is strong enough, hearing those familiar sounds again can reaffirm the effect they had on my musicianship, and inspire me all over again.

What does all this have to do with ramen?  Let's find out.

Ladies luuv it!

After many months (maybe years) of talking about it, I finally had a chance to revisit the ramen-ya that started the whole Vancouver ramen craze: Kintaro!  How that chance presented itself is another long and sorted story involving  the current Vancouver pizza craze (Pizzeria Farina, we shall meet... eventually)  What do I order when we're seated at Kintaro?  The usual!  I think I've talked before about the strange yet delicious (and polygamous) marriage of cultures that is cheese ramen; well, Kintaro was my introduction to it, and now that G-Men is closed, it is my only remaining connection to it.

Eating cheese ramen at Kintaro after a long hiatus was like coming home again!  Yum.  Just like I remembered, a light (not too salty) yet rich (thanks to the cheese) miso broth, tender (always order the fatty cut) and flavourful charsiu, and thick chewy noodles. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.  There's nothing wrong with revisiting music that you know is worth it, and there's nothing wrong with ordering another cheese ramen! Well, except maybe if you're on a diet, or lactose intolerant.

But this whole exercise reminded me that I have much more music at my disposal that I don't listen to, but is certainly worth studying and enjoying. Likewise there are many different bowls of ramen to consume! Yesterday I had another ramen opportunity, thanks to some schedule shuffling.  Ramen Jinya (in the old Ezo-giku location near the library) apparently has some lineage in Japan via a robata restaurant in Ebisu.  But the ramen component somehow arrived in Vancouver by way of Los Angeles, and is owned by the same people who run Ebi-ten down the street.  Family tree aside, I tried their shio tonkotsu ramen, which is in the Southern Hakata (Fukuoka) style that places like Santouka do so well.  

Almost forgot to take a pic before digging in!

I definitely enjoyed the fried onion topping which is not something I see often on ramen.  The charsiu was ok but a little skimpy, and with the add-on shoyu tamago (egg), the whole bowl came to over $12, so for what it was it felt a little overpriced.  It comes in a very deep bowl, so although it may contain a regular size serving, it appears to be a small portion when served.  The noodles themselves were accurately made in the Hakata style: thin, straight and al dente.

Although I'll never put away my Paul Motian Trio records (among others), I've been making myself listen to both albums I own but rarely play and to new music I've not heard before.  I'll list some of them with a few thoughts. In the former category:

• "Heartcore" Kurt Rosenwinkel.  I thought that a jazz record produced by Q-Tip would have more of the flavour of the hip-hop legend.  Instead it's just a good jazz record with really hard melodies and harmonies, and very rhythmically straight (stiff?) drum programs.  I wish that someone could treat the drums in Rosenwinkel's band the way he approaches the guitar: the long sinewy melodies, the post-post-post harmonies.  I don't know if that makes sense, but the closest I've heard so far is Eric Harland on "The Remedy" the live Rosenwinkel stuff.
• "Time Out Of Mind" Bob Dylan.  I put this on again after reading Daniel Lanois' autobiography.  Learning about the process was interesting, and attaching the sounds to the stories was fun.  Reminds me of the "Advanced" theory which uses Dylan as a poster child.
• "Which Way is East" Charles Lloyd.  A beautiful double CD of duets with Billy Higgins.  I'd love to know the whole story about this album, I believe that it is one of Higgins' last recordings.  They each play a huge assortment of instruments throughout, but there are enough sax/drum duets to keep my jazz side satisfied.
• "Notes From a Drummer" William Thomas Ensemble. One of my desert island discs is a live recording of Brad Turner playing trumpet with three Portland musicians (John Gross, Tom Wakeling and William Thomas) who came up to Vancouver for week of playing.  That week was my first introduction to Thomas' drumming, and my only opportunity to see it in person.  The recording really resonates with me, and Thomas has a unique, subtle and supportive approach to drumming that I would love to learn to emulate.  When I discovered his own solo recording (via Seattle record label Origin) I jumped at the chance to hear him lead a larger ensemble.  The album is a showcase for his interesting compositions much more so than his drumming, but I still really enjoy hearing someone play with such maturity and depth without an ounce or showiness (is that a word?)

Ok, I'll run out of time and energy for the latter category, but here are a couple of new purchases on the playlist:

• "Full Circle" Graham Haynes.  As a lifelong Roy Haynes fan, I have to admit I took the efforts of his son on trumpet and cornet a bit for granted.  As if it was somehow easier (and therefore didn't count as much) to play music when your father is a living legend of the genre.  But this was the first time I felt like the younger Haynes sounded like he's developed his own strong voice.  The album kind of reminds me of electric Miles, but with drum'n'bass beats.  I think a few other projects have tried to manage that same mix to varying degrees of success, but this one works well.  I especially liked the shameless synth bass assault (pure sine waves baby!) filling out the frequency spectrum.
• "Town Hall '62" Ornette Coleman.  Kind of cheating since I'm already an Ornette freak, but I just discovered this recording of his trio (Charles Moffett on drums, David Izenzon on bass) which preceded the notable "Live at the Golden Circle" recordings by a few years.  Interesting in that this is some of the first recordings since Ornette started adding trumpet and violin to his repertoire, and that he incorporates some strings into his pieces as well.
• "Transrapid" Alva Noto.  Glitches and beeps, but I love it.  Nothing comes close to those collaborations he did with Ryuichi Sakamoto though; those recordings are the bees knees.

Ok I gotta type less and listen more!

On food and fusion...

...not the nuclear kind, just the cultural one.  Basically I'm trying to find a way to make this post seem like it's not about ramen (although admittedly, like most of the posts on this blog, it is).  But it's soooo hard not to write about ramen!  Okay, let's just look at some first:

This one happens to be from Q Go Ramen (1443 West Broadway).  You most certainly don't need to read another online review of Q Go; about how the portions are huge, how they give you compimentary edamame, about how the broth and toppings can be hit and miss depending on which dish you order (although I've never been dissatisfied myself), as all you need to do is google a bit.  Instead please note that the featured ingredient on this particular bowl or ramen is shredded cheese.

I first learned of cheese ramen from the menu at Kintaro (which I've been meaning to revisit for many months, but oh how I hate lineups, bad for a ramen-lover) and I have repeatedly enjoyed their version, which includes (if memory serves) both finely shredded and thinly sliced white cheese.  Admittedly the cheese itself is generic enough that if we were but a few kilometres south (and saying "miles" instead of "kilometres") we'd be calling it "American cheese."  Fortunately we're not.  The menu listing at Kintaro mentions that "Ladies love it!" prompting Marie to give the nickname "Cheese Ramen" to a certain prominent Vancouver-based guitarist.  I've since enjoyed versions of the dish served at Q Go and G-Men in Richmond.

Now at first, the idea of adding cheese to a bowl of ramen may seem strange.  It definitely did to me at first, and continues to seem that way to Marie.  But it didn't take me long to warm up to the taste, where the fine shreds melt into the (hopefully) painfully hot broth and produce a rich and creamy, slightly tangy texture.  And it got me thinking about how cheese remains a bit of a novelty ingredient in Japanese cuisine.  As lactose intolerance is commonplace among Asian people, dairy is not as widely used as in the West.  In particular, cheese can be a bit of a tough sell for the Japanese palate, in the same way that natto, umeboshi, or takuan (which btw my daughter LOVES) could be for a typical Westerner.  Traditionally speaking, topping a Japanese dish with shredded cheese might be akin to smearing wasabi onto your hamburger bun.  But it's easy to forget that in spite of the purists and impassioned aficionados, ramen is fundamentally a fusion cuisine to begin with.  Although it is undeniably a Japanese phenomenon, ramen in the eyes of the Japanese is a Japanese version of a Chinese dish.  I remember being surprised to see ramen-ya in Osaka that had Chinese-style logos and mascots on the signage, before I knew what ramen really was.  Even the side dishes betray their Chinese roots: potstickers (gyoza/ jiaozi) or steamed pork buns (nikuman/baozi).  Okay, I know cheese is neither Japanese nor Chinese, but my point is that the fusion of cultures can open the door to new experiments.  And this one happens to work.

I think that many great things in the world of food are the result of adapting one culture's cuisine to the ingredients or palate of another.  There are of course numerous exceptions too, like the abomination that is "Pacific Rim fusion": people throwing wasabi or mirin on anything and calling it "Asian-influenced" but that does not deserve our focus here.  I think I may have mentioned a similar thread talking about banh-mi earlier.  I'm curious to find and identify more examples of successful cuisine fusions that have made a long-standing impact the same way that banh-mi or ramen have.

Alright I'm almost determined to write next time about music instead of just food and justify the latter part of the name of this blog.  Right now I'm listening to Chicago Underground duo records ("Axis and Alignment" and "Synesthesia") and marvelling at how two people can play multiple instruments and make music that sounds improvised and composed at the same time.  How do they overdub or multitrack such well-formed improvisations?  Seems like a logical impossibility.

not dead yet - turkish pide

Although I've let a significant length of time pass, I'm determined not to let this blog die a dishonourable death.  It merely brings to light the fact that these pages were brought to life during a short (4-day) period in which I actually had time on my hands to kill, and that circumstance simply does not apply to real life.

The other day during the whole what-am-I-making-for-dinner rigmarole I decided on something pizza-like, but did not have anything to make tomato sauce with: namely, tomatoes.  (Coincidentally, in the most literal sense of the word, my mother claims that she was thinking pizza and was trying her best to telepathically send that thought into my brain...)  I remembered an experience while staying in Istanbul where our hosts decided to order in on a whim; it wasn't even mealtime, but they felt we needed to experience this particular aspect of Turkish cuisine.  They phoned their local favourite, and within a short while a delivery arrived at our door: elongated rectangular cardboard boxes.  We opened them to find a new kind of Turkish delight: pide.

FYI, it's pronounced kind of like how we say the word "pita" but with a bit softer t/d sound, even though it looks like "p-eye-d"

It really is basically a Turkish pizza: the dough is essentially the same yeasted flat bread, and you order different toppings as you like and can commonly order it for delivery.  However, pide don't usually rely on a tomato-based sauce, and more noticeably, they are shaped into long boat-like figures capable of holding more substantial fillings rather than merely toppings.  Two particularly distinct toppings we tried in Turkey were egg (cracked into the boat in the last few minutes of cooking) and pastirma, the smelliest most garlicky cured beef ever.  Like many delicacies, pastirma is an acquired taste, but once you get it, you really get it.

So I decided that eating pide a few times in Turkey qualified me to make my own here at home (arrogant, I know).  Basically I just made pizza dough, which was easy enough, and rolled them out into long rectangles (actually my daughter helped considerably in the rolling out).  Next was layering some toppings (I borrowed from some Italian classics, but mostly just threw in whatever I had in the kitchen that would work - improvising!): mushrooms, bell pepper, some very dry salami, shredded cheese (I think I had asiago and jack cheese that day) some olives and anchovy fillets.  Then the ends of the rectangle were folded up into points and the sides were folded partially over the toppings.  I brushed the outside of the boat with egg wash and threw them in the hottest oven I could muster (the LED said 550F, who knows how close I actually got to that).  After the pide had a few (maybe 5-10 min) to let the dough bake, I took them out to crack a raw egg into each one, then tossed them back in for a few more minutes to let the egg almost set.  Aside: I don't own a pizza stone, and the floor of my oven to too filthy to put things directly on it, but I do own a fancy baking sheet thingy that has maybe a vacuum layer inside it or something?  I'm not quite sure about the construction, but it is the most amazing thing ever, keeping the heat distribution even throughout the oven no matter what I'm baking.  If I knew what it was,I would wholeheartedly endorse it to you, whoever you are.

Of course after pulling it out of the oven I was too eager to serve it, and so I silced it into pieces before remembering to take this picture, but you get the idea:

salami and egg pide

I kind of like how the toppings go in reverse from a pizza, with the cheese hidden in the lower decks of the boat, and having the egg add richness so that we don't really miss having lots of meat, just a few pieces of something salty (dry salami or anchovy) to give it some bite.  FWIW the dough was made with a mix of organic unbleached white all-purpose and some local hard red spring whole wheat acquired through the amazing grain co-op Urban Grains.

Hmm, maybe next time I'll write about Japanese pizza: okonomiyaki.  Especially since there is no decent okonomiyaki served in Vancouver to my knowledge (except my house maybe).  Although I'd love to be proven wrong there.

P.S. I just finished reading Jeffery Steingarten's latest article on hand-pulled noodles in NYC.  Inexplicably, the table of contents in Vogue blurbs about Steingarten eating "pasta" and not Chinese noodles.  The article reminded me that the Sha-lin Noodle House on Broadway is closed, thanks to a neighboring fire.  Does anyone know if they have set up shop in a new location or anything?  Are there any other hand-pulled noodle shops in the city?