Food Baby Magazine

FOOD BABY Winter 2016

Issue #1 FOR THE LOVE OF CARBS Coffee, Tacos, Avoacado Toast, Dou Jiang, Ketchup, and more

EDITOR’S NOTE Welcome to the inargural issue of Food Baby Magazine. We are a quarterly journal of food and writing. Each issue focuses on a single theme, and explores that theme through essays, art, photography, and recipes.

For our first issue we will be discussing all things related to carbs. It’s true that cutting chips, cookies, candy, and other carbs from your diet can help you uncover your abs. But if you think eliminating all the carbs is the key to reaching your weight-loss goals, we’ve got a few reasons to reconsider. First and foremost, it taste great! There’s nothing like tucking into a warm baguette straight from the oven.

Second, going too low-carb isn’t just bad for your body, it’s bad for your spirit. So here at Food Baby we say “Fuck it! If it’s good…eat it!”

- Jamie Kao

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Mary H.K. Choi It’s 8am Somewhere:

Recipe: Margarita

Taco Run

Miranda’s Empanadas

Jonathan Gold Burnt Toast and Things in a Bowl

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21 Carolina A. Miranda

Michael Light The Importance of Ugly Fruit

11 Sasha Bos

25 Alberto Nardelli An Italian Guide to Coffee: Sugar is Optional 31 Daniel Cochran The Magic of Dou Jiang 33 Gabriella Paiella Love and Ketchup

Pizza Styles of America 15 Tekla Severin Photo Essay: An Architectural Tour

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Taco Run Text: Mary H.K. Choi Illustrations: Tyler Spangler

You couldn’t always tell. There was never any way of knowing which teachers would give in and let us order breakfast tacos in class. But man, when they did, in that shining moment, those grumpy, egregiously underpaid educators were heroes. Even the tightly wound French teacher from Killeen who only answered to “Madame” Hero.

In the sprawling, four-thousand-kid high school I attended, in a suburb of San Antonio, Texas, the breakfast taco was the great unifier. It didn’t matter whether you were a cheerleader, jock, burnout, goth, or one of only, like, three Asian kids—one being my cousin, another my brother—when you dug into that foil-wrapped food unit, it was like Christmas morning every time.

Only monsters didn’t want to buy into the breakfast-taco run. The deal was that the student who was brave enough to disrupt class and call attention to our collective hankering also had to make the haul. They’d gather money—usually a buck-fifty for each—make a list, and be back in a half hour. That was clutch—the kid really had to make a run for it.

I like my breakfast tacos simple—borderline shitty-simple. Two or three ingredients, tops. And I don’t like them too big. Depending on the spot, your taco might be so measly in its silver circumference that it resembles a relay baton. But everybody knows

nNNnNN... that you’ve got to get at least two tacos, and that three (unless it’s the weekend, when you cop the barbacoa) is usually too much, because it’ll put you immediately to sleep.

cally sliced so stingily thin that you can read a paper through it. The potatoes are diced cubes of starchy whatever. But the one requirement is that your taco absolutely has to be hot. It has to steam slightly so that the flourtortilla congeals just a little, feinting like it might return to its uncooked, doughy state. They’re rarely pretty and only get uglier when you douse salsa on their innards, but Oh Mylanta if they aren’t delicious.

To me, jiggy breakfast tacos are a sham.

For most locals this is an uncontroversial statement. I’m sure there are plenty of a-holes who will want to fight me on this, people with garbage taste who prefer black beans over refried pinto, enjoy “vegetarian” I enjoy places dedicated to their tortillas, and think that eggs core competencies. The fewer fancy any way other than revueltos permutations on offer, the better. are legitimate with their machaca. See, breakfast tacos are to Texans what deli bacon-egg-and-cheese- I get why people love migas. It’s like on-a-rolls are to New Yorkers. It’s vexing a mini breakfast-taco buffet. But for when they put on airs. As a general rule, me, a breakfast taco that you can stuff if your Tex-Mex establishment has $3 into your maw one-handed behind the breakfast tacos and a Flash website, wheel, carefully spattered with watery I’m not fucking with it. No disrespect. restaurant salsa (the equivalent of that real crappy Kari-Out soy sauce I enjoy places dedicated to their core with the panda on the packet), hits the competencies. The fewer fancy permudamn spot. Just don’t forget to get a tations on offer, the better. It always polystyrene vat of horchata to go with starts with scrambled eggs, and the blob it, and save your money for investment of protein is usually fairly unremarkpurchases later in the day, like well able. I always get an egg-and-bacon and barked brisket, cold booze, and a pair of a potato-and-egg. Sometimes a persweet Lucchese boots. functory sprinkle of unnaturally yellow cheese grated by machines turns up, and sometimes it doesn’t. The bacon is typi2

T N R U B S G N I TH IN

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A O T

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L W BO Angeles s o L in e n e c s t s The breakfa

Text: Jo

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The two contemporary modes of breakfast in Los Angeles are exemplified by what Jessica Koslow is doing at Sqirl.

One is Burnt Toast with Things on It. I can’t believe I’m talking like this It’s a burnt baguette and it is the most about freaking avocado toast. I first obvious yet greatest thing to come out heard about avocado toast from New of LA in the past few years. Its being York people, because here in California burnt is important, because that way the idea of avocado on bread is so obviyou actually get toast to taste like someous that it didn’t become a thing until it thing. Heap what’s ripe on it, maybe was a thing on the East Coast. The idea of some fresh mozzarella, maybe some “avocado toast” being eaten extensively olive oil, maybe some ricotta. Maybe you in restaurants by people with yoga mats rub the bread with garlic first, maybe you under their arms is a separate thing from don’t. Maybe there’ll be avocado on it. the natural logic in Los Angeles, which is, 5

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Oh, I have avocado and I have bread: here’s breakfast. In California we have so many different kinds of avocados: different flavors, consistencies, levels of acidity, degrees of creaminess. When my wife, Laurie, was in grade school, she would go on field trips to the groves in La Habra Heights, to see the original Hass avocado tree, the mutant from which untold trillions of avocados were bred. It should be a religious site.

Moving on to Jessica’s second representative mode of breakfast, there are Things in a Bowl. I’ve been thinking a lot about Things in a Bowl lately, because it seems to exemplify so much. There isn’t a specific formula for it. There are usually grains of some sort—farro counts, quinoa counts.

Then a legume of some sort has to be in there. Chickpeas are probably the king of the Things-in-a-Bowl legumes, 6

e v a h I “ o t e m co e t a i c appre it as g n i h t a in my bowl ”

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but you sometimes see white beans or whatever exotic beans the Rancho Gordo farmers have unearthed that week from some Hidalgo village.

same people who enjoy pickling and fermenting things, and the pickles give it a jolt of flavor. And there’s always a sort of strong, and vaguely “ethnic” seasoning in there to finish—chermoula or harissa or something else in the Middle-Eastern–ish vein.

A runny egg almost always comes on top. It’s usually poached or lightly fried.

There’ll be a handful of herbs tossed in there, or those greens that split the What did people do before Things In difference between herbs and greens.

A Bowl? I don’t know. I suppose it has During those brief magical weeks of the supplanted the egg-white omelet. It year when you can get chive blossoms, is definitely superior to that, and the they will appear, as will kale flowers in idea of a hearty breakfast that is low fat their time. At first I couldn’t believe that and gluten free and high in protein and people were -actually trying to sell bolt- happens to have dark, leafy greens in it ed kale, which is generally considered a is widely appealing in this city. And it farm mistake, but I have come to appre- has enough fiber to counteract whatever ciate it as a thing in my bowl. Onions it is that those people need so much ficooked down until they caramelize are a ber for. And it makes you feel like you’ve good thing to find in your bowl. Pickles been good, and your yogini would apof some kind generally make their way prove. And then you are ready to face in there too, because the people who the rest of the day in LA. make Things In A Bowl are the very

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The Importance of Ugly Fruit How grocery stores are contributing to food waste.

A third of the earth’s food is thrown away, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. That number is higher in the United States — up to 40 percent of our food winds up rotting in landfills — and higher still for produce: a full 52 percent of North America and Oceania’s fruits and vegetables are tossed not into salads, but garbage cans.

And a huge percentage gets wasted only because it doesn’t meet supermarkets’ aesthetic standards. Tomatoes have to be perfectly red and round; carrots, orange and straight. That puts a lot of fruits and vegetables in a no-man’s land — unbruised and unspoiled but not quite perfect enough to sell on a shelf.

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Consumers, the thinking goes, will always err on the side of congruity, picking the perfect over the misshapen.

But the guys at Imperfect in Emeryville, California, want to change that. By offering boxes of cosmetically challenged fruit and vegetables for 30 to 50 percent less than what you’d pay at the grocery store, they hope to change the way we see and buy our produce.

In 2015, with the help of Imperfect’s third cofounder, Ron Clark, who spent the better part of ten years building one of the nation’s leading produce-recovery programs, they founded Imperfect. I sat down with the Bens to get the story behind the business.

Cofounder Ben Simon got his start in the food-waste movement as a senior at the University of Maryland, when he founded the Food Recovery Network. The FRN redirected food from on-campus sources like dining halls and sports stadiums to homeless shelters in the area.

After graduation, Simon teamed up with Ben Chesler, who established FRN’s second chapter, at Brown, to tackle systemic food-waste on a bigger scale. Their advisors, like the food-waste activist Jonathan Bloom, all pointed to farms as the beginning of the food-waste problem.

What was the process of setting up the network out here?

Ben Simon: I wasn’t sure it we could pull it off. But when we got our first shipment of ugly produce in and I knew we had people who would want it, I knew we were onto something. The most gratifying part is meeting our customers.

Why California?

BS: The massive concentration of produce here is a major factor, and the weather. Most Californians are really receptive to our concept. It helps that there’s a food culture; people care about where their food is coming from. They want to be able to vote with how they’re buying or what they’re putting in their bodies.

What have been Imperfect’s biggest challenges so far?

BS: Sourcing organic produce in the Bay Area. The majority of the farms we worked with are conventional, so we haven’t been able to offer it. We’ve been in contact with a bunch of organic farms, and in January we’re rolling out a completely organic mixed box. People also want choice. 60 percent of people who discontinued their orders said choosing what went into their boxes was important to them.

We thought that the way to democratize a CSA, to make it accessible to everyone, was to offer really low prices.

Elsewhere, Imperfect’s been tied to a so-called ugly produce movement. What exactly does that mean?

Text: Michael Light Illustration: Jamie Kao

BS: We always say that it’s what’s on the inside that counts. The ugly produce movement is about consumers coming together around that idea and embracing it however they can. From a business perspective, we’d love to see big grocery stores going through us, but if they don’t, it would still be an amazing step forward.

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Pizza Styles of America Text: Sascha Bos

Illustration: Sunra Thompson

Pizza is as American as apple pie. Which is to say, it’s not from here but once it arrived, we latched on and never let go. for inclusion in this list, a pizza must be rooted in a specific region, have unique characteristics that distinguish it from the other styles on the list, and be sold at multiple establishments in the same region. Also — it must have toppings. No sauce or cheese? That’s just bread.

One Dollar Pizza

AKA One dollar slice New York style Origin New York City Where to get it $1 Pizza Slice, 2060 Lexington Avenue (at 125th St.)

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Although high-quality pizza arrived in this country via New York, the city is famous for a style best described as dollar slice. It appears that once Neapolitan pizza came to the city and was enlarged from individual to family size, an entire pizza was too large for on-the-go eating, and pizzas began to be sold by the slice. With an emphasis on portability, the dollar slice is thin designed to be folded in half and devoured en route to wherever it is that busy New Yorkers are always going.

New York Neapolitan

AKA Neapolitan American Origin New York City Where to get it Di Fara Pizza, Lombardi’s Pizza, Totonno’s Pizzeria Napolitana

First introduced to New York in 1905 by Neapolitan imigrant Gennaro Lombardi, New York-style pizza mirrors Neapolitan pizza’s thin, foldable crust and sparse toppings, but it differs from the Italian model in a few key ways. The pizzas are usually much larger, designed to be sliced rather than served whole. Proper New York pizzas are baked in coal or electric ovens, rather than wood-fired ones, and have a crisp crust from tip to edge, with none of Italian Napoletana’s soupy middle.

Sicilian

AKA Detroit style Italian bakery style Origin New York Where to get it L&B Spumoni Gardens, Prince St. Pizza

When sfincione made its way to New York via Italian immigrants, the Sicilian was born. It has a thick, bready crust topped with mozzarella (something you’d never find in Sicily) and tomato sauce—sometimes in that order. It’s baked in steel pan, giving it a crunchy bottom, and cut in squares for by-the-slice ordering. In Italy, you’ll find it at bakeries, but in America, it’s spawned an entire genre of pizza parlors.

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California Style

AKA Gourmet pizza Origin Berkeley; Los Angeles Where to get it The Café at Chez

California-style pizza is defined not so much by its method of preparation as by the inventiveness of its toppings and its departure from what every other state thinks of as pizza appropriate. it’s Wolfgang Puck, and his original Spago pizza chef, the late Ed LaDou, who put California pizza on the map with novelties like the barbecue chicken pizza.

Panisse

Greek Pizza

Origin New England Where to get it George’s Pizza House, Harwich Port

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Greek Pizza isn’t pizza topped with olives and feta, or Mediterranean-inspired in any way. It is, strangely enough, a style found mainly in Greek-owned New England establishments. Greek pizza is topped with cooked tomato sauce (often laced with tomato paste and oregano) and a combination of easy-melting cheeses. A spongy, greasy crust meets a crisp-fried bottom in this New England classic.

Deep Dish Pizza

AKA Chicago style Origin Chicago Where to get it MyPie Pizza

Deep dish was invented in 1943 at Pizzeria Uno. To distinguish themselves from the other pies in Chicago’s Little Italy, owners Ike Sewell and Ric Riccardo made a larger, deeper pizza, baked like a casserole in a high-sided pan. The pies come with the sauce on top, so that the cheese doesn’t burn during the long bake time.

St. Louis Style

AKA Tavern style, party cut Origin St. Louis, Missouri Where to get it Imo’s Pizza

Featuring an unleavened, ultra-thin cracker-like crust and a topping of Provel, St. Louis–style pies are large and cut into numerous square tiles. Thin crust and square cuts can be found throughout the Midwest, but Provel makes it St. Louis. Get it with sausage, mushrooms, onions, green peppers, and bacon (“The Deluxe”) at its birthplace, Imo’s, for a true St. Louis experience.

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An Architectural Tour 15

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Interior architect Tekla Severin takes us through the details of some peculiar buildings, through a variety of eras and from Scandinavia to the Amalfi coast and the United States of America. This tour is sure to work up some appetites.

Photography Tekla Severin

A checkered floor from a favourite diner, mint choc-chip sundaes all round

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This fisherman’s hut, photographed here on a brisk winter’s day, is located in Norway — in an area famous for its salmon

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This jalousie window opens up to a Swedish summer afternoon, a view to be enjoyed with a generous helping of spaghetti and chives.

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A winding stairwell in a Haussmann apartment, leading to an evening of blue cheese and wine on the terrace

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This opulent drape masks a glamourous happeing on the Amalfi coast, one with a delightful turkey supper.

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Margari Mirand Empa

ita da’s anadas Text: Carolin a

A. Miranda

Illustration: K

elly Kao

Make the Filling Make the filling a day ahead of time. You want the meat filling to be thick and cold, and easy to manage when you put it into the dough. If the pino is warm when you make the empanadas,it will be difficult to seal them. It will be a mess.

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In a large saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat. Sauté the onion, garlic, and paprika until the onion starts to become translucent. Do not let the onions get brown or get completely cooked — this will make the filling dry. the beef and mix 2 Add with the onions. Add the

broth and bring the mixture up to a simmer. Add the cumin,chili powder, and salt, as well as the jalapeños. the heat down to 3 Turn low. Cook, uncovered,

for about half an hour, stirring occasionally. The onions will slowly release their juices. The mixture should look like a fine hash, a very juicy hash. Taste it, and add more salt, cumin, chili powder, or paprika, if needed.

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the heat to medium.

4 Turn When the mixture starts

bubbling, start adding the flour a little at a time, stirring constantly. Don’t stop stirring, or you will get clumps. Once the juices are the consistency of thick gravy, stop adding flour. This step will help make the stuffing easier to handle later.

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Let the mixture cool, then hold in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Make the Dough

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Heat the oven to 180°F. And in a large bowl, mix the flour, salt, and baking power with a fork.

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Warm the milk in a pan or in the microwave, but do not bring it to a boil.

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Add the melted butter to the dry ingredients, mixing well with a fork until completely combined. Start adding the milk a little bit at a time. When the dough starts to hold together, you’ve added enough milk; you don’t want it to be sticky, or it will be very difficult to roll.

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Knead the dough for 3 – 5 minutes in the bowl. The dough shouldn’t stick to your fingers; if it does, sprinkle flour in until you get it to the desired consistency. If it’s crumbly, add more milk. The dough should be springy and smooth. Cover the dough with a clean kitchen towel and put it in the oven. This keeps it warm and pliable.

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Start rolling the dough right away

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Form the Empanadas You will need a clear, dry counter surface; space in the refrigerator for storing; and a f luted pastry cutter. a tennis-ball-sized 1 Take hunk of dough and roll

it out in a long, oval strip. It should be about 5 or 6 inches wide, but much longer, and the thickness of a very thick flour tortilla.

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Down the length of the dough, place 4 – 5 individual mounds of beef filling, egg, and olive, at least an inch apart.You want to give yourself enough room to fold the dough over the mounds.

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Fold the dough tightly over the meat. Seal edges with warm water. Press the dough firmly around the empanadas so that they seal

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Once the empanadas are sealed, cut them into a half-moon shape with a fluted pastry cutter, reserving any excess dough.

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Lay the empanadas in a cool, dry place. You want them to sit in the open air so that the dough dries and solidifies for frying.

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Once the empanadas have had a chance to dry, transfer them, facedown, to a paper-towel-lined sheet pan so the bottom of the empanada has a chance to dry, too.

The empanadas should be in a single layer; do not stack raw empanadas one on top of the other. Place the tray, uncovered, in the refrigerator.

Fry the Empanadas

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Pour canola oil to about 2 inches deep in a large, deep pot. Heat the oil over medium-high heat.

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While the oil is heating, prick the tops of the empanadas with the tines of a fork. This will prevent them from inflating or exploding.

When the oil is hot, place an empanada in the pot. If it sizzles and crackles, then the oil is ready. If it doesn’t sizzle, take the empanada out and wait a few minutes

Fry the empanadas for several more minutes until both sides are golden brown.

Drain the empanadas on a plate lined with paper towels to soak up the extra oil Serve them while they’re still warm!

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Once the oil is ready, place small batches of empanadas in with the tine marks facing up. Give them enough room to float in a single layer in the pot. When they start browning around the edges (usually after 4 – 5 minutes), flip them.

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Sant’Eustachio Il Caffè Rome, Italy

“But if you see someone in Italy topping anything involving milk froth with chocolate powder they are probably tourists.�

An Italian Guide to Coffee: Sugar is Optional

Coffee is so much a part of Italian culture that the idea of not drinking it is as foreign as the idea of having to explain its rituals. These rituals are set in stone and not always easy for outsiders to understand.

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While many cafes around the world serve coffee containing caramel, syrups and cookies, Italians would regard these concoctions as breakfast or even dessert.

Italians aren’t the only Europeans to tweak their coffee with liquor. Probably the most renowned such beverage is Irish coffee, a mix of whiskey and coffee topped with cream - although some may argue it ruins all three.

The closest Italians come to ruining coffee and making it excessively rich in sugar is with chocolate (or even Nutella in some households). But these are all usually branded as pudding, consumed at the end of a healthy Mediterranean meal not something to grab on the way to work. One is the marocchino, which Sugar is optional. Zero to one teaspoon originated in Piedmont, and consists max. But there are of course variations of a single shot of espresso blended with to the single shot. But there are variasome cocoa and milk froth. Other more tions to the single shot. Some will add “imaginative” coffee drinking habits also a spoonful of milk foam: the macchiato. include the use of flavoured or whipped It should not be confused with the simi- cream (which is originally an Austrian larly named bucket of milk and caramel idea), pouring an espresso over ice available in other countries. cream — the affogato — or mixed into zabaione. But if you see someone in Others will take their coffee long, Italy topping anything involving milk adding warm water to the espresso, froth with chocolate powder they are the Americano. For the morning hours probably tourists. there is the option of a cappuccino (an espresso with steamed milk poured These are the basics. There are then in and then topped with foam). It is several subcategories.They primarily important to note, however, that the revolve around personal taste such as cappuccino is a breakfast food. Such coffee to milk ratios, the optimal milk an arrangement becomes unacceptable temperature and the choice of whether – sinful almost – after noon. However, to consume an espresso in porcelain or in the north of Italy, coffee is someglass (al vetro). And of course, some like times “corrected” with liquor, il caffé their coffee decaf, il deka. corretto.The preferred choice is usually grappa but it varies between regions. This is coffee. Everything else is pretty Other popular options include sambuca, much a soft drink. brandy or cognac. Some are known to Text: Alberto Nardelli even correct with limoncello or wine.

In Italy coffee is synonymous with espresso. Ask for a coffee in a bar from Trieste to Palermo and you will be presented with an espresso. You may drink it seated (usually more expensive), or standing, al banco.

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The Magic of Dou Jiang Text: Mei Chin Photograph: Daniel Cochran

Growing up, I was grateful that I did not live in Taiwan, where my mother attended school six days a week, and where students were beaten for each math problem they got wrong. To this day, the only thing that I am jealous of from my mother’s childhood is her breakfast, because I wish it had been mine.

The Taiwanese city of Tainan, where my mother lived as a little girl, is a streetfood paradise: old women would barbecue cuttlefish, peddlers dish up braised beef shank and noodles, and sugared fruits glisten on display. When my mother and her sisters waited for the school bus, they would eat piping hot xian dou jiang, or salty soy milk, which the neighborhood vendor had pressed from soybean pulp just hours earlier.

Strewn with piquant pickled vegetables and delicate, ivory-colored dried shrimp smaller than a fingernail, and graced by a ribbon of sesame oil, xian dou jiang was creamy and frothy like a cappuccino, but savory like a chowder.

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Croutons made from youtiao (Chinese savory crullers) floated on the surface.

Xian dou jiang’s base is soy milk. Soy beans being as much the backbone of Chinese civilization as gambling, chopsticks, gunpowder, philosophy, and rice.

My grandparents were always notoriously health-conscious, and xian dou jiang was the only street food they allowed their children to eat because, as all Chinese believe, soy is very, very good for you.

When I first went to Taiwan, I was in my twenties. I ate my first xian dou jiang standing with my mother in Tainan, at a counter in a bare-bones vegetarian buffet that catered to the congregation of the Buddhist temple across the street. My xian dou jiang came in a paper cup, emitting puffs of

heat in the sticky and humid morning, garnished with shallots that had been thinly sliced and deep-fried to a snap.

That first morning in Tainan, my mother watched me, bemused, as I slurped and sweated through a cup of xian dou jiang. “I’m glad you like it,” she said, Like Taiwan, xian dou jiang is not particularly pretty on the surface. The vinegar curdles the soy milk, and the dried shrimp’s beady eyes peer out from under the foam. Pickles bob on a surface slick of chili and sesame oil, and strips of youtiao melt into custard. It is a mishmash of sour, salt, funk, and cream, both eye-watering and appetite-awakening. Like Taiwan, a bowl of xian dou jiang is strange and honest, and a culmination of many elements, even though some of which clash. To me, it tastes like home.

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I learned to love ketchup from my grandfather.

He had a notorious sweet tooth, and this was the closest he could get to eating as much sugar as possible. And so he would apply ketchup on every meal he could, regardless of whether or not the dish in question called for it.

My grandfather discovered ketchup in a place are two starkly different when he uprooted the maternal side of things; my family knew that because my family tree from Egypt and planted they weren’t the former did not mean it in New Jersey, in 1977. My mom was they couldn’t enjoy the latter, that in sixteen, my uncle was twelve, and my doing so wouldn’t diminish who they grandparents heading toward middle age. were before they came.

Theirs is a story that feels familiar—an The same however, cannot be said for upper-middle class family settles in the my dad, born and bred in Milan, who U.S. and finds themselves encountering came over in his late thirties for a job more hardships than opportunities—but that was only supposed to last for a many of the memories that my mother year. The plan was never to stay, but he speaks of, even the bad ones, are puncmet my mom, a beautiful young thing tuated with the ten years his thrills of new junior, and they accepted the convenience of food discoveries. they got marinstant American cuisine When the family ried. Perhaps couldn’t afford to pay their heating bills, because this wasn’t where he thought they’d spend the night hanging out and he’d ever be, and because the rest of his sharing fries at their local twenty-four- family stayed firmly abroad, he held so hour McDonald’s. My grandmother still tightly onto his food traditions that they made ta’amia, ful medames, koshary, and became suffocating. Convenience was almolokheyya, but she and my grandfather ways the enemy. Every Friday, we ate an also accepted the convenience of instant elaborate antipasto spread (and God forAmerican cuisine and so Steak-umms, bid the person working the Stop & Shop Lipton’s onion dip, and sweet, sweet deli counter didn’t slice his prosciutto as Heinz ketchup were added to their thin as humanly possible). Every Sunday repertoire. To be of a place and to be had a pasta lunch, during which we had 34

“ When I eat ketchup, pouring generous blobs of the stuff next to (or directly on) anything that calls for it, I often think about how his habits are reflected in mine.”

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to eat our salad after only our pasta, an Italian eating habit I find irrevocably fucked up. Grating cheese on seafood would have gotten all of us kicked out of the house. Don’t even get him started on mustard, mayonnaise, and, God save us, ketchup.

When my father was on a business trip, my mother, sister, and I would splay out on the couch and snack on soft, plump SuperPretzels microwaved with a thin, perfectly rubbery coating of processed American cheese. I’d eagerly wait to sleep over at my grandparents’ house during weekends, where I would devour Knorr alfredo pasta sides (I’m really sorry, Dad) for dinner and Breyers Neapolitan ice cream for breakfast; my grandfather and I would slather ketchup on whatever we thought called for it.

I’m ashamed that I don’t remember as much about my grandfather as I’d like to.

I look at photos of us when I was a child and draw a blank: he is an old man, but a younger old man, robust and smiling, with a lush moustache. I can only conjure up the last few years we spent together: I remember being simultaneously amazed and repulsed by how translucent his skin became, uncomfortable with how feeble age had rendered him. I remember when the Parkinson’s got so bad it migrated to the muscles around his mouth and even eating became difficult. I remember when the dementia hit and I asked if it’d be okay if he didn’t attend my high school graduation. He died eight months later.

When I eat ketchup, pouring generous blobs of the stuff next to (or directly on) anything that calls for it, I often think about how his habits are reflected in mine. Our generation and language gaps meant that we were never destined to have much in common, but we share this: an affinity for a specific flavor, a zeal for a condiment that wasn’t built into our cultural blueprints but that we both learned to love anyway.

Text: Gabriella Paiella

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF & CEO

WRITERS

Jamie Kao

Jonathan Gold

jamie@foodbaby.com

Mary H.K. Choi

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Kelly Kao kelly@foodbaby.com EDITOR Moises Martinez moises@foodbaby.com ART DIRECTOR Li Hui Ting lihui@foodbaby.com DESIGN DIRECTOR Mohini Khadaria mohini@foodbaby.com

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