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Miscellaneous

Four great hip-hop documentaries

I've mentioned these to a couple of people now, and figured that rather than re-typing the list again and again I should just have the list here.

I can't say these tell the true story of hip-hop from an insider's perspective, because, uh, I'm not an insider. What I can say is that from an anthropological, documentary point of view, these are a terrific way to get some understanding of the visual art, music, literature, and dance of hip-hop culture. In fact, that's a pretty good way of ordering these.

Links go to Netflix for easy adding to one's queue.

Visual Art: Style Wars
First broadcast in 1983, this is the original hip-hop documentary, the first time the culture was given a serious documentary treatment. It's mostly focused on graffiti, but with some material on dj'ing and b-boys. If you watch this first you'll recognize material from this in several other videos. This video is responsible for my on-going mixed feelings about graffiti -- I'm not wild about property damage, but I find the work fascinating. Don't miss the interviews with many of the artists, 20 years later, in the special features.

Music: Scratch
Turntablism -- scratching and all of the other associated things DJs do to records -- is covered in great depth and energy here. Interesting trivia from the film: DJ decks -- two-turntable units with a fader -- are now outselling guitars.

Literature: Freestyle
Freestyling, improvisational rap, is an amazing thing to hear -- and they've got some terrific moments here. Rapping in rhyme, with the beat, playing with the rhythm... I could watch this video (and the excellent special features) again and again.

Dance: The Freshest Kids
This film, the one I've seen most recently, is also possibly the most complete. It shows B-Boying (also called breakdancing) in a broad historical context, from the earliest days in the Bronx to modern times. There's even a section with modern b-boys and b-girls recognizing the historical origins of b-boying -- from the vaudeville-era Nicholas brothers to Sammy Davis Jr.

Oh yeah -- if you didn't do it already, go back and click on that Nicholas Brothers link, just above. It's terrific.

Oh good lord yes.

Cold Heat: Heavy Funk Rarities, Vol. 1: 1968-1974. Yes, it's as good as the title makes it sound.

Margaret Cho is like a god to me.

I just needed to say that. We watched CHO Revolution tonight.

Potato and Leek Tart (Turta d'patàc e pòri)

This was the sleeper hit of all of the dishes I cooked for New Years' -- possibly because it's basically mashed potatoes in a crust. But mighty tasty.

For the pastry:

• 7 1/2 tbs unsalted butter
• 1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 egg yolks
• 3-4 tbs cold water (or even a few more tbs, if necessary to get it to come together)
• Extra virgin olive oil

For the filling:

• 1 pound leeks, white and pale green only
• 1 tbs salt
• 2 lbs potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
• 1/2 cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 large egg
• freshly ground black pepper to taste

Make the pastry: Cut the butter into the flour and mix together quickly, being careful not to overwork. Stir in the egg yolks and the water. Put the dough on a lightly floured boad and knead very briefly, no more than 10 strokes, until the ingredients come together. Rub a few drops of olive oil in the palms of your hands and shape the dough into a ball. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour.

Trim the leeks and rinse out any sand. Coarsely chop the leeks, then toss with the salt and set aside for 30 minutes to soften.

Bring a saucepan of lightly salted ater to a rolling boil and drop in the potatoes. Let boil for 10 minutes, or just long enough to soften them but not cook them through. Drain immediately and chop coarsely.

In a large bowl, mix the salted leeks and chopped potatoes together, then add the cheese and toss to combine. With a fork, beat the milk and egg together, then stir into the mixed vegetables. Taste and add salt, if necessary, and freshly ground black pepper.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Remove the pastry dough from the refrigerator and roll out on a lightly floured board in a circle large enough to cover the bottom and sides of a 9- to 10-inch quiche pan or straight-sided pie tin, leaving about 1 1/2 inches of pastry hanging over the edge of the pan. Turn the vegetable mixture into the pan and smooth the top. Now fold the edges of the pastry over the edge of the filling so that it is partially covered. Paint the exposed pastry with a very little olive oil.

Bake 45 minutes in the preheated oven. Remove and let cool slightly, to somewhat warmer than room temperature, before serving.

DAE's notes:

• I baked this in a spring-form pan, which allowed me to remove the sides when I served it, which looked rather nice if I do say so myself.


• I'm planning to use this basic idea and see what I can do with, say, sweet potatoes, or turnips and onions or something.

From Nancy Harmon Jenkins' Flavors of Tuscany.

In which I invent a yiddish-cajun culinary term

Cooking a triple batch of latkes last night, and getting a little giddy:

"Aren't some of those a little burnt?"

Nah.

"That one, there?"

No, no, it's not burnt. It's just a little, uh, geschwarzlik. Some people prefer them that way.

"Geschwartzlik?"

Yeah, you know... blackened.

Miz Becky will undoubtedly prefer if I admit that this was not in fact a conversation with her... it was entirely within my own skull.

Tonight's dinner: sort of a ragout

Tonight, with very little in the cupboards, and a garden full of vegetables we haven't managed to use yet, I improvised. Onions, garlic, olive oil, and a can of good tomatoes, plus a zucchini and a pattypan squash from our garden, plus some basil and oregano from our herb bed, plus the end of a bottle of balsamic vinegar, all went together very nicely.

Served over polenta (because we had it in the cupboard), in a DAE-thrown bowl (for maximum home-grown points), it was pretty damn good.

A rare shopping tip

Despite my distaste for consumerism... I feel compelled to pass on that Calphalon is discontinuing their commercial nonstick line, which means that you can pick up their very fine, heavy duty 12" omelet pan at Amazon for $29.99, down from $115.

It's a conversation, people

Another good one from Chabad.org:

Faithful Questions

You don't learn by having faith. You learn by questioning, by challenging, by re-examining everything you've ever believed.

And yet, all this is a matter of faith -- the faith that there is a truth to be found.

It is another paradox: To truly question, you must truly have faith.

What denomination?

Ok, there's plenty to talk about from the last couple of days, politics, culture (Goodbye, Spuddy), and nekkid clowns, but instead I'm just going to post this out-of-season joke*:

A woman goes to the post office to buy stamps for her Chanukah cards.

She says to the clerk, "May I have 50 Chanukah stamps?"

"What denomination?" replies the clerk.

The woman says "OY vey! Has it come to this? OK give me 6 Orthodox, 12 conservative, and 32 Reform."

* Miz Becky, you see, has this habit of skipping over my e-mails and not reading them until months and months later. I forwarded this particular joke to her back in January. She finally read it today, I remembered how funny it was, and here we are.

L'shana Tovah

And happy new year! 5764 already. It seems like it turned 5763 just yesterday.

May we all see more peace and understanding in the new year.

Lost in Translation

First, a vignette: I'm heading through the lobby of the Seven Gables looking for a water fountain. An employee is blocking the way of a young woman holding a brown paper bag.

"You can't bring that in here."

"Uh, no, I need to..."

"You can't. It's outside food."

"No, I need to -- "

He cuts her off. "You can't bring outside food into the theater."

She turns slightly pink. "No, it's, uh, kinda... girl stuff."

"Oh." He steps back and looks over to the door, nervously. "OK."

Lost in Translation was really quite wonderful. A lot has already been written about it -- Elvis Mitchell's review in the NY Times is good, as is Moira's article on Ms. Coppola.

There's only two things I'd like to add: first, that anyone who's ever been alone in a strange city, trying to figure out how to fill the hours between whatever it is you're there doing — or trying to figure out what you're doing with your life in general — will understand these characters.

The second thing is to mention how beautifully this movie is filmed. Every shot is a demonstration of the cinematographer's art. Whether that's due to Lance Acord or Ms. Coppola herself (who is quite a good photographer, on top of her other talents) I don't know — I suspect it's both — but I'm probably going to have to see it again just catch the plot elements I missed the first time around because I was so enthralled with the visuals.

Capsule review: Alternately melancholy, funny, and romantic. Go see it. I loved it. I'm going to see it again.

Haupia bread pudding

Haupia, a Hawaiian coconut pudding, makes a mighty tasty topping to a good bread pudding.

This recipe is an almagamation of a few things. My mom sent me a recipe for haupia bread pudding a few months ago, but I didn't like the bread pudding part of the recipe very much. I borrowed a bread pudding recipe from Cook's Illustrated, but it wasn't quite right to be topped with the very sweet haupia. So I adjusted... and here you are.

Bread Pudding Ingredients
4 large eggs
1 large egg yolk
3/4 cup sugar
3 cups whole milk
2 cups heavy cream
3 tablespoons bourbon
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon fresh ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
About 8 cups of large-ish chunks of bread -- 1" pieces or so. This is great to use up any slightly dry ends of bread you have on the counter; I store them in the freezer until I need to make bread pudding or stuffing or something similar. If you're buying fresh bread, I'd use something with a little tooth, but not too much -- somewhere between wonderbread and a dense black bread. Challah is excellent for this.

Haupia ingredients
2 cans coconut milk
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup cornstarch (yes, that's one cup)

Making the bread pudding

1. Whisk eggs (and yolk) and sugar together in a large bowl.

2. Whisk in the milk, cream, bourbon, vanilla, nutmeg, and salt.

3. Pour the liquid mixture over the bread and mix them together well.

4. Cover and let stand in the fridge for at least 20 minutes. If you're using a heavier bread, like a crusty italian artisan bread, you'll want to give it more standing time. For a morning event, I like to mix it up the night before and let it stand overnight.

5. Preheat oven to 325 degrees; butter the bottom and sides of a 13x9 baking dish.

6. Pour the bread mixture into the baking dish, smooth the top, and bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until it's mostly firm but still jiggles slightly in the middle.

7. Let cool for 45 minutes. Don't be dissappointed when it sinks a bit; that's the way it goes.

Making the Haupia and topping the dish

1. Mix the sugar and cornstarch together in a pan. Add the coconut milk.

2. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat.

3. STIR CONSTANTLY. It won't thicken, and it won't thicken, and then suddenly it'll be library paste and if you're not stirring religiously it'll stick to the bottom of the pan and burn and you'll be making excuses for your cajun haupia.

4. Once it's thickened -- you're looking for the consistency of, say, library paste, or maybe a thin yogurt -- pour it over the bread pudding. Allow it to set for 10 minutes or so, and serve.

Mighty tasty warm, still very good cold. So rich but SOME ‘ONO YEAH BRAH?

Leo's Coney Island, Bloomfield Hills, MI: 6/17/2003, 2:06pm

Bare bones. Wonder bread. No garnish. Plastic tomatoes. Iceberg lettuce.

Leo's appears to be a local, uh, greek/deli chain.

Cosi, Birmingham, MI: 6/16/2003, 2:10pm

Freshly made flatbread (baked right in front of you in a brick oven! with trimmings to snack on!), split open. Good tomatoes. Only one layer. Comes with house-branded "kettle-style" potato chips.

Turns out Cosi is a chain. I figured it had to be, with the potato chips.

OK, what the hell is this. First thing this morning, you post two Jewish-related entries, and then you post a picture of a sandwich with bacon in it???

Well, to really explain this, I'm going to have to go all the way back to the 1950's. My Dad (if I remember correctly, and surely he will be good enough to comment and correct my story if I'm wrong) has just gotten his BA at Columbia. Having been fascinated by maps his whole life, but never having gone outside the confines of New York state, he takes a Greyhound bus trip around the country. As a bit of a cultural study, he orders a "burger with everything" everywhere he goes, to see what that means. Some places, it's just a burger with lettuce and tomato. Some places, it includes a fried egg, or bacon, or other heart-stopping treats. But it is indeed different everywhere.

Call this, then, a continuation of that study. It's harder to order a burger with everything -- thinly differentiated theme burgers abound, with their own specific names. The Buckaroo! The River Burger! The Deluxe! The Shelly Burger! The Old Fashioned! Rarely is there a simple "burger" with a list of potential additions, any more.

But many diners offer a club sandwich -- and none of them are the same. Voila! My own version of the cultural study. The basic theme of bread, turkey, and bacon is consistent, but the details change.

(or, as Miz Becky said, "So basically a club sandwich is a BLT with bacon? What's so funny? Oh... uh... I mean, with turkey. Shut up.")

Now, Dad just enjoyed the differences, and told the story to an impressionable son with latent sociologist tendencies. And I used to just order them, eat them, and try to remember the differences. But now that I have a database-driven, categorized, public place to store them, and a digital camera to capture them... well, obviously I had to post the pictures. I had to. Don't you see?

I'm not obsessive! I'm not!

What are Jews all about, anyway?

An interesting essay from Douglas Rushkoff:

The reason Jews have such a hard time explaining Judaism, "the religion," is that we aren’t about beliefs. All we really have is a process–an ongoing conversation. You get initiated, a bar or bat mitzvah, by proving you can read the Torah and speak somewhat intelligently about it. No statements of faith required–just literacy and an opinion about what you’ve read earn you a place at the table. Then you get to argue with the old guys.

That’s right: Judaism boils down to a 3500-year-old debate about what happened on Mount Sinai and what we’re supposed to do about it. Judaism is not set in stone; it is to be reinterpreted by each generation. All that’s required is a continual smashing of your false idols (iconoclasm), a refusal to pretend you know who or what God is (abstract monotheism) and being nice to people (social justice). In a sense, Judaism isn’t a religion at all, but a way human beings can get over religion and into caring about one another.

Sounds good, anyway.

But like so many latent Jews in America today (we account for more than 50 percent of the total), I had a hard time finding places where this sort of Judaism is still practiced. They exist, but more likely in an apartment living room or school basement than a sanctuary. The vast majority of messages coming out of mainstream Judaism concern post-Holocaust issues such as the dangers of intermarriage, the threat of assimilation and the need to protect Israel.

I don't agree with everything he says... but that's the point, isn't it.

(via the head heeb)