What I Bought at the West Side Market: The Great Kipper Experiment

So you're all curious about what happened with last week's purchases at the West Side Market, right? Here's the story....

I. The Easy Part
Although Carole made the excellent suggestion of eating the orange-honey almonds with blue cheese and figs, I found myself just nibbling on them all day long. I did find they went surprisingly well with Stockyard Oatmeal Stout.

II. The Great Kipper Experiment Disaster
First of all: geek alert. I, like many Americans, was first exposed to kippers through Red Dwarf -- "smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast" being the tagline of Arnie Rimmer's infinitely more heroic alter ego, Ace. So ever since about age 12 I've had this prurient curiosity about people who would eat fish for breakfast.

So last weekend I diligently Googled kipper recipes. I learned that a kipper is a smoked herring and that they're especially popular in Manx cuisine. I even went to the Cleveland Public Library downtown and got out a book on Conversational Manx to see if I could learn any impressive phrases about kippers, but the closest I found were:

S'goan ta'n skeddan ec y traa t'ayn.
The herring are scarce at present, and

Row monney skeddan eu? Cha row.
Have you had much herring? No.

That didn't exactly bode well.

I then went through a series of missteps. The first was that I'd bought vacuum-packed raw kipper fillets rather than the fully cooked, ready-to-eat tinned variety that most recipes seemed to call for.

So I decided I'd substitute the kippers for smoked haddock in this traditional Scottish finnan haddie recipe, despite my reservations about mixing mustard with milk. I decided to make this with smashed potatoes and Irish soda bread in a sort of pan-Celtic tribute to my ancestors.

However, their spirits were obviously displeased.

I knew the situation was dire when I unpacked the kipper fillets and noticed that they were not boneless. (Really, I should've noticed this beforehand.) At this point, I'd already gotten myself into the mood by drinking a few Guinnesses, which was a bad idea.

Fact: I am terrible about fishbones. I have no idea what to do with them. It's a mental block. So, fishbones + alcohol = "Ohhhh fuuuuuuddddge." Except, like Ralphie, I didn't really say fudge.

By the end of the "deboning" process -- and I use that term lightly because there were lots of bones left in the remaining mangled fish pulp -- I was starting to wonder if I should order a pizza.

The next thing that went wrong was with the mustard-milk. I should not be allowed, legally, to use milk in any recipe that requires heating it, because I stop paying attention and the next thing I know, it's curdled.

Last week my dad was complaining, as old coots will, about what he considered inadequate media homage to the Blizzard of '78 (which was undoubtedly Nature's way of welcoming me to Planet Earth).

Thirty years from now, I can imagine myself saying something similar about the Great Kipper Disaster of '08.

The end product was so similar to a giant pot of cat barf that we ended up throwing it away. This was the first true culinary disaster I have ever had. I suppose everyone gets one.

III. Oily Dead Things
Determined to make things right, I went to Mediterranean Imports on Wednesday and bought myself a tin of kippers, which is what I should've done in the first place.

Since my English friend Clare suggested I eat the kippers on toast, I decided that's what I should do - nothing fancy. This recipe suggested eating them on toast with lemon-lime marmalade, which I couldn't find, unfortunately. So I bought a jar of bitter orange and a jar of key lime marmalade.

In order to appreciate kippers on toast, you have to get over the slight feeling of revulsion you get as you peel back the lid of the tin and are confronted with what can only be described as oily dead things. I toasted four slices of my leftover soda bread and tried the following configurations:

1. Kipper + butter
2. Kipper + butter + lime marmalade
3. Kipper + butter + bitter orange marmalade
4. Kipper + butter + a combination of the two marmalades

The clear winner was #2. Smoked fish and lime are quite nice together.

In case you are interested, here are some of the kipper recipes I found on The Internets:

Devereau & Sons Isle of Man Kipper Recipes (dig the fishie with the chef's hat and mixing bowl)
Mackenzie Limited Kipper & Haddock Recipes
BBC Food: Kipper Chowder
Kipper Toasts
Fifty Manx Recipes: Fish

Stay tuned next week to see what I do with these:

Rose hip jam, $5.50 for a huge jar at Mediterranean Imports, and
Roasted Pistachio Oil, $11.99 for 8.5 oz., also at Mediterranean Imports (I splurged, I know....but I'd bought a bottle of Romanian pinot noir for $4.99 at Athens Pastries the day before, so things evened out, right?)

What I Want to Be When I Grow Up

This morning I was thinking about Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver, which was the first book I ever read that meant anything to me. I first read it the same week I graduated from high school, in 1996, and I read it at least once a year for the next eight or so years.

The passage that came to mind was this one, from chapter 9, "The Bones in God's Backyard." In a letter, Hallie Noline tells her sister, Codi, a story about a shrimp farmer she witnessed in southern Mexico, where she stopped on her way to a volunteer position in Nicaragua:

He had a pole over his shoulders, with the bucket of shrimp hung on one side and on the other side a plastic jug of water. Every time he sold a kilo of shrimp he'd pour out that much water and drink it, to balance the load. I watched him all the way down the bay and thought, I want to be like that. Not like the man selling the shrimp. Like his machine. To give myself over to utility, with no waste.

I started thinking about this passage while reading this article in the New York Times.

New Weekly Feature: What I Bought at the West Side Market

After an email exchange with the Cleveland Bachelor (who also lives in Ohio City) I've decided to do a new weekly feature here.

Every Friday, I'm going to buy 2 things I've never had before at the West Side Market. (One just seemed too lonely.) I'll tell you what I bought, and then next week, I'll tell you what I did with them. (And if you've got suggestions, please leave them in the comments!)

To start, here's what I bought today:

1. Orange-honey almonds from the Mediterranean Import Shop (.68 lb @ $5.99/lb = $4.07)

2. Kippers from Classic Seafood (.72 lb @ $5.99/lb = $4.34)

And away I go....

Oh No!

Dennis dropped out.

I didn't expect this to happen, which means I actually have to look at Clinton, Obama, and Edwards (shudder) and figure out whether I'm going to be voting in the primary at all.

This is very difficult for me because I'm really a one-issue voter, and that issue is universal healthcare. And, well.... Do I go with the least of three evils, or just not participate? Will it really matter?

My So-Called Goulash Recipe

Because one of my loyal readers asked for it, here is my goulash recipe.

First of all, I should say that I am not Hungarian. (I'm not really anything, my ancestors having retained virtually no old world traditions.) But glancing through my high school yearbook would reveal that I grew up with lots of children and grandchildren of Hungarian immigrants, so somewhere along the way I picked up a sort of affinity for Hungarian things in much the same way that I (eventually) learned to like New York style pizza.

(To preempt any slurs against my, er, authenticity, I freely admit that I only started drinking Tokaji after reading His Dark Materials. Happy?)

I started making my own goulash in New York, where there is virtually no Hungarian presence (living in New York will really make you appreciate Balaton - let's hope they don't get squeezed out by increased rents at Shaker Square). It was a little bit homesickness, I guess, plus I had done some kind of extended project about the Magyars at work.

But most of all, Jim's mom had gone on a trip to Budapest and what did she send me? Two little sacks of red cocaine (er, paprika). Lord almighty, the red dust languishing in the back of my cupboard went down the incinerator chute.

Incidentally, my mom used to make goulash, but it was 100% American goulash, with macaroni noodles and ground beef and tomato sauce. I vaguely remember that my sister and I would run and hide if goulash night was announced -- the sight of a cooked green pepper sent me into a psychological tailspin.

This is not my mom's goulash.

MY SO-CALLED GOULASH RECIPE FOR NON-HUNGARIAN HUNGARIAN ENTHUSIASTS
This is probably the perfect winter meal. It should be served over egg noodles sprinkled with fresh dill, maybe with a nice cucumber salad to go with that and have some onion rye from Theresa's at the West Side Market.

What should you drink with this? Ouzo. (Yes, really!) My dad tells a story about a restaurant in East Berlin where he used to get a bowl of goulash and a glass of ouzo on cold, rainy evenings. Try it, you'll like it!

adapted from A Well-Seasoned Appetite (a good cookbook for eating seasonally)

2 Tbsp. butter (why use teaspoons when you can use tablespoons?)

1 large onion, sliced

3 large Hungarian wax peppers, sliced
(this is where it gets scary, people - real Hungarian peppers are unassuming, pale green things with a vengeance. If you want to use Italian peppers, which are a little smaller, fine - but you won't get the heat. You can also use fewer Hungarian peppers, or a combination of Hungarian and Italian, but don't use green bell peppers...you're going to cook the hell out of this stuff, and overcooked green peppers are just unholy.)

A few palmfuls of sweet Hungarian paprika
(yes, you read that right...the original recipe called for 2 Tbsp but I believe in using as much paprika as is humanly possible. Paprika is, after all, the star of this dish. Use the best paprika you can. Not McCormick.)

1 tsp. caraway seeds

1 pound beef stew meat
(I think I've been getting mine from the stand across from the bratwurst place)

1/4 cup flour

1 cup white wine

1 cup stock or water
(I just use water...I never have stock around, and if you're using good meat and good paprika, it'll be fine.)

salt and pepper to taste
(I always use more than the recommended amount of salt. I think I inherited some kind of salt deficiency - my dad salts his pizza - so seriously, use your own judgment.)

A few palmfuls of chopped fresh dill
Egg noodles, for serving (I like the wide curly variety)

1. Cook the onions and peppers in butter in a large stew pot until very soft, about 10 minutes. Add the paprika and caraway and stir until fragrant.

2. Dredge beef cubes in flour and toss in the pot; allow to brown a little bit, maybe 5 minutes.

3. Add liquid and bring to a simmer. Cover and allow to simmer for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, adding more liquid and adjusting seasonings if need be.

Supposedly serves 4, but in my house, it's more like 2.

Five Reasons to Love the West Side Market

1. Urban Herbs has fancy finishing salts in bulk, so you don't have to spend a lot of money just to try something luxurious and different.

2. Real Hungarian peppers. I kid you not, I could never find real Hungarian peppers in New York, not anywhere. I had to make goulash with Italian peppers. (Wussy goulash.) [note: don't start with me about whether "authentic" Hungarian goulash should be made with peppers, unless you want to hear about how "authentic" Hungarian goulash should also be properly prepared with bear fat. I don't get into cooking squabbles; maybe when I'm 80.]

3. An abundance of oranges. In a fit of nostalgia for my extravagant New York lifestyle, I broke down and looked at the FreshDirect site yesterday to see what I was missing. You know what I'm missing? Paying $1.29 per orange. Yeah, you read that right. Not per pound, per tasty spherical orange fruit. On Saturday I paid $2 for 10 of those juicy little planetoids at the West Side Market.

4. Stroopies. Get them at Mediterranean Imports. You can eat them as is, but why do that when you can rest them on top of your steaming cup of coffee, tea, or hot chocolate until the syrup inside melts into something warm, gooey, and delicious?

5. Rabbits: the edible pet. I've never seen rabbit sold anywhere else in Northeast Ohio, but on the weekends they've got 'em at Kaufman Corners.

Authenticity, Part Three

This morning I listened to Jim Gilmore, co-author of Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want on the Sound of Ideas.

(Thanks to Ed Morrison's post on BFD for alerting me to this...I'd gotten out of my Sound of Ideas habit. Why? Because - and this is frightening, people, so brace yourselves - I've found that even when you have all the time in the world, as I do right now, you still can't get a handle on all the ideas that buzz around in your head. So, I've had no room to hear the sound of anyone else's ideas, thanks very much.)

Anyway. I've been crawling through this book for the last two months. Frankly, reading it makes me feel like I'm drunk as a skunk and stuck in the middle of an elaborate, philosophical shell game. ("Where'd he put reality again? Under that one, there? Uhhh, my head hurts....")

But listening to the show, particularly the opening discussion about which presidential candidates seemed the most authentic (Huckabee, with his cornpone accent and whimsical anecdotes about growing up in the South), reaffirmed my suspicion that authenticity is just the new "slumming it."

According to the first caller (and Gilmore) George W. Bush, with his bad grammar and down-home mannerisms, "seemed authentic." Should we glorify a perceived lack of education as a natural, desirable state? Especially when -- by the book's own standards -- rich, Yale-educated Bush is "fake, fake, fake."

I wonder, is Jim Gilmore himself authentic? He lives in Shaker Heights, after all. Shouldn't he live someplace like Collinwood in order to have real street cred?

I finally figured out what January is for...

...and February, too, by the looks of it. Thanks to Not Martha for the tip!

My So-Called Nostalgia

In the interest of living New Years Resolution #1, stuffing my head full of stories, I've been slowly making my way through all the old episodes of My So-Called Life.

Talk about a can of worms.

It's pretty easy to find, out there on the Internets, that a lot of people my age took that show to heart in much the same way that people took Harry Potter to heart.

When they canceled My So-Called Life, it was a clear signal that television wasn't meant for people like me.

Remember the sometimes useless, sometimes fascist Principal Foster? Did you ever notice that he had a framed photo of Bill Clinton on the wall behind his desk, and an old-fashioned paddle on the opposite wall?

Remember The Substitute? Didn't we all want to have a teacher like that?

Remember when we all dyed our hair that color? Remember when we used to wear plaid flannel shorts over tights? Remember the long flowered rayon dresses with combat boots and denim jackets? (God, I've got to stop. I'm going all young Dick Feagler on you.)

But what I loved best about MSCL was that the interior of Angela's high school was so depressing. The bathrooms were filthy, broken-down, garbage- and graffiti-strewn. It wasn't the cheery, sparkly, whitewashed suburban high school of today. It could've been my high school. My high school must have been designed specifically to suck the cheer out of you. It was dark and shabby. It was grimy. But it wasn't like normal grime, either. Remember Ghostbusters II? Where there's that goo underneath the streets that feeding on all the bad feelings of unhappy New Yorkers? That's what that grime was -- it was psychic grime, the residue of generations of adolescent misery.

Sheesh. Just thinking about it makes me feel like I need to go have a smoke.

Analysis of Last Night's Public Hearing on Hush Nightclub

We spent last night at the public hearing about the proposed Hush Nightclub (operated by the former owners of Heaven & Earth, on the East Bank of the Flats), which is seeking to transfer their liquor license to the former Moda location. (Read about it in the PD if you want.)

After remarks by Councilmen Joe Santiago (Ward 14, my ward, the ward the nightclub would be in) and Joe Cimperman (Ward 13), who brought a stack of complaints he'd received about Moda and kept just for this occasion, we heard the presentation by Heaven & Earth operators Mack Danzey and Eric Buckner. Then Karl Johnson of Ohio City Near West Development read our questions, which had been submitted on 3x5 index cards (I personally submitted a stack of 5.) And then the floor opened up for comment - we heard from residents, other local business owners, and the West Side Market Tenants' Association, which opposed the club.

Before the meeting I called my friend, a longtime nightclub-goer with a high tolerance to the seedy underbelly of society (she works in marketing), and asked her about Heaven & Earth. What kind of people go there? "Oh, young twentysomethings. College kids." But they claim they're going to market toward a "mature" crowd. "It doesn't matter who you market to. It's who shows up."

Here are my reasons for opposing this nightclub:

1. I live on West 25th, and so do a lot of other people. And judging by last night, a lot of us don't want to deal with the noise disturbances a nightclub would cause.

2. I don't want this place to become a nightspot destination for people who used to go to the Flats. Sorry, but find some other neighborhood to trash. As the angriest of my neighbors said last night, "this is a historic district," not a slum. I'm afraid a nightclub of that size, which was formerly in the Flats, would attract the "slumming it" crowd.

3. A nightclub wouldn't benefit the neighborhood economy as much as something that was open during the day. Did you know that Mike Shea, the owner of the Alternative Press, had been trying to buy that building? For the sake of argument, let's say that the Alternative Press did manage to buy the building and use it for their offices. Well, all of their employees (judging by their contact page, it looks like they've got at least 20) would be around during the day and on their breaks, they would go get coffee at Talkies, have lunch at Nate's and Phnom Penh and the Monastery. They would stop off at Dave's and the West Side Market to pick up a gallon of milk and some sandwich meat. They might open accounts at one of the many banks up and down West 25th. They would sift through the record collection at the Bookstore on West 25th. But nightclub-goers couldn't pump any of that money into our local economy, because all of those places would be closed.

4. If I'd wanted to move to the Warehouse District, I would have done. But I didn't, and I didn't because I didn't want to be around all the bars. I knew I'd hate it. And I've wanted to live by the West Side Market for my entire life.

All of that aside, I thought the owners of Heaven & Earth presented their case as best they could to a hostile crowd, and -- frankly -- I think they seemed like decent guys who wouldn't "pull a Moda." That wasn't exactly my concern, after doing a morning's worth of research on them.

My biggest concern is that this neighborhood is just too residential to support a nightclub with a capacity of 550. That's 500 people spilling out onto West 25th at 2 AM for the listening pleasure of hundreds of senior citizens at Riverview Towers and the residents of the Metzner, Merrell, and Fries & Schuele buildings. Let me tell you, if the capacity was 99, I might've been convinced. But 550? No way.

Who came off the worst during the meeting, however, were not the club's proposed operators. The owners of the building, Rialto Corporation, did a lousy job of playing to the crowd's sensibilities. When a resident expressed concern for the safety of his children, Rialto Corp. responded with, if you have children, you shouldn't live in the city. When a resident described how, during the Moda Affair, she used to call Joe Cimperman's voicemail at 4 AM and hold it out her window so he could hear the noise disturbances she had to live with, Rialto Corp told her that if she didn't like noise at 4 AM she shouldn't live in the city. (By his own admission, this guy lived "in the country," which drew a lot of booing and hissing.)

You know, even though I oppose the nightclub, if Danzey and Buckner get their license transfer, I'll go over there and welcome them to the neighborhood. If they'll be a good neighbor to me, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. I just would rather see something else in that space.

Shaker Heights

I've been so distracted and disturbed thinking about the New Year's Eve incident in Shaker Heights that I've decided to just stop trying to do my work and see what kind of sense I could make of it. Probably not much.

My experience with Shaker Heights began in 2002, when I was hired as the YA librarian at the Shaker Heights Public Library. Mostly I worked in the Teen Center on the 2nd floor of the main branch at Lee and Van Aken. I grew up on the West Side, and didn't have much experience with the East Side. After about a month, I'd concluded that the rich were richer and the poor were poorer and they lived in closer contact with each other and that often didn't work out too well, same as all throughout history.

From 2003-4, I lived at the Ashby stop on the Blue Line, close to where this poor fellow got beaten up. I walked around there in the dark all the time because I worked evenings and thought it was silly to drive to work when the drive time was quite literally 20 seconds. My first thought while reading about the incident was not Dick Feagler's "phew! Thank God I moved away" but "I wonder if I'd recognize any of those kids." Because the library was full of kids.

Shaker Heights was one of the weirdest experiences of my life. There were old white ladies who used the word "colored." There were white yuppie moms who did their kids' homework for them. The kids who used the Teen Center, 100% of whom were black, probably didn't respect me because I was a lousy disciplinarian rather than because I was white but when I yelled at them to be quiet or stop hitting each other they'd laugh and say "little white girl thinks she's black." When my assistant asked some kids to leave because they'd been tearing up magazines, I got a call from an angry parent who told me that "the library was racist." I didn't know what to make of that. I still don't.

I liked a lot of the kids, but I also couldn't stand a lot of them, not because they were black, but because they acted like jerks. Not that I'm oh-so enlightened (Jim and I say that our kids will have good hair but probably be dumb as fenceposts), but I have a feeling there are some white people who think they don't like black people but who really just don't like jerks (who does, really) and so when they see a black person acting like a jerk they glom onto the blackness and not the jerkishness as a justification for their dislike. To take an example from the world of catty womanhood, it's like, when you don't like someone's attitude, and that someone happens to be fat, you make mean comments about their fatness even though you might have a really good friend who's also fat.

[Once, though, I overheard one of the kids I couldn't stand the most say to his friend, "that lady's nice. She helped me with my homework last year." So I didn't know what to make of that, either.]

There were a few patrons, white and black, whose antics were more than enough to make me flee to New Jersey (where there were more awful patrons of a different kind waiting for me). Most patrons, white and black, were pretty kind and asked engaging questions and said thank you when we gave them answers.

My coworkers, white and black, were awesome. We were one of the few public libraries that hasn't succumbed to the evils of centralized collection development, and we put together a damn fine collection of books.

I thought Shaker Heights was a good place to live. I'd live there again. I'd send my kids to school there, if I had kids. I didn't realize I liked Shaker Heights until I lived in Queens, and on summer evenings I'd get off the F-train 4 stops early so I could walk home via Forest Hills Gardens, which reminded me of Shaker Heights. I hope people who live there, white and black, like it enough to fight for it.

I don't really have a conclusion. Feel free to criticize anything I've written here. It's just a slice of my life experience.

Cheers & Jeers, RBCA Style

JEERS...to Dick Feagler. I'd been a fan of Dick for way too long, and he finally proved to me that it's time to retire.

CHEERS...to Marybeth McDermott, who, despite the savage beating of her husband while out for a walk in their Shaker Heights neighborhood, is quoted in the PD as saying, "I'm not putting up a For Sale sign anytime soon."

CHEERS...to Philip Morris, for publicly calling out old Dick on his own public backwardness.

Public Meeting on the Old Moda Space, January 9

If you've been on West 25th Street lately, you may have noticed that the "For Lease" sign on the old Club Moda marquee has been taken down.

In case you don't remember what happened with Moda, refresh your memory here.

According to the OCNW, Heaven & Earth Nightclub, formerly of Old River Road on the East Bank of the Flats, has applied for the transfer of their liquor license to the old Moda location.

According to Ken Prendergast's Dec. 27 story in the West Side Sun, their timing was suspicious. Here's an excerpt:

The application was made in November to the Ohio Division of Liquor Control. If there is no community response to a liquor license application or transfer within 30 days, the liquor board automatically approves such requests, said Ward 13 Councilman Joe Cimperman.

He said...council members planned to go on holiday recess for half of December and had no time to pass a resolution to object to the transfer before the liquor board's Dec. 27 comment deadline.

"They tried to sneak it through," Cimperman said. "I tried to work with them to find a new location that's club-appropriate. I feel I've been stabbed in the back."

Cimperman got the liquor board to extend its deadline...to January 26.

Please be advised that there is a public hearing on this issue on January 9. Here are the details from OCNW:

* When: Wednesday, January 9th at 7:00 pm 
* Where: The Lutheran Hospital Auditorium (the Castele Learning and
 Conference Center)

Please use the entrance of the Lutheran Hospital Spine Center building,
located at Franklin Blvd. and Fulton Road. There is ample free parking
available in the Lutheran Hospital lot on the NE corner of Franklin
Blvd. and W.28th Street (enter off of W.28th). Once inside, follow the
signs to the Castele Learning and Conference Center. 

Councilman Cimperman will be in
attendance. Although the property is located in Ward 14 (Joe Santiago's
ward), there's no word as to whether Councilman Santiago will be there.

As a resident of Ward 14 and member of the Bridge/Carroll/Jay block
club, I can say that if Heaven & Earth tried to go behind Joe
Cimperman's back, they're really starting off on the wrong foot.

Resolutions

I dislike New Years for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that I still can't figure out what January is for.

I never keep resolutions, probably because the ones I make are too complicated. So this year, there are only two, and they're easy:

1. Read more. I want to live according to this quote by Ray Bradbury:

"If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful."

2. Plan my Grand Tour. I should've taken one while I was in college, or at least before I got married, or at the very least before I exited my twenties. Oh well.