Category Archives: Funny Iris quote

I created a monster

Last night I was off [tutoring](http://www.826seattle.org), and I left Laurie and Iris with plenty of carnitas. Laurie told Iris she was going to heat some up.

> **Iris:** And some brussels sprouts.

> **Laurie:** No, just pork and tortillas tonight.

> **Iris:** And brussels sprouts!

In a few years when Iris decides she’s unwilling to eat anything other than cheese pizza, I’m going to make her read this over and over.

Laurie made some peas instead, and Iris pronounced them “too buttery.” I’m off to the store for more brussels sprouts.

Now, about those carnitas. They’re incredibly simple to make, and worth doing so frequently. I learned to make them from Jaymes, an [eGullet](http://www.egullet.org/) regular from Texas. Here’s a thread where she discusses her carnita technique in detail.

I should note that by taco-truck standards, these are fake carnitas, and real carnitas are more like what would be called pork confit in a fancy restaurant: pork poached in lard. But these are way easier to make at home. Here’s how I make them:

**CARNITAS**

2 pounds pork shoulder
Vegetables (see below)
Flavorful liquid (see below)
Salt
Salsa
Shredded cabbage
Tortillas

1. Cut the pork into small cubes. I generally aim for half-inch. Place in a saucepan with the vegetables, flavorful liquid and a sprinkle of salt.

2. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally, for two hours. Your goal is to get the pork tender and have the liquid evaporate at the same time. Feel free to increase or reduce the heat, partially cover, or add more liquid, as necessary. It’s not an exact science, and it’s hard to screw up.

3. Once the liquid is nearly evaporated, raise the heat to medium. Cook, stirring frequently, until the bottom of the pan gets a little encrusted and the pork a little crispy. Add salt if necessary. Serve with salsa, shredded cabbage, and warm tortillas. And brussels sprouts, obviously.

**Notes**

**Flavorful liquid:** Good choices here are a combination of citrus juice, broth, and something alcoholic. I usually go for the juice of half a lime and half a lemon, a bit of chicken broth, and a slug of tequila, rum, or beer. You don’t need to immerse the pork completely in liquid, because it will release a lot of liquid as it starts cooking.

**Vegetables:** Definitely onions and garlic (one medium onion is good for two pounds of pork). A minced poblano, chipotle (canned) or both. Herbs, especially Mexican oregano and cilantro, will not hurt.

Goin’ down to Red Line

Today Laurie and I packed Iris off to the park with my dad and did our taxes. When we were done, I called to check in:

> **Iris:** Iris eating Dorothys. And macaroni!

“Dorothys” is what she calls Goldfish crackers, because Elmo’s fish is named Dorothy. The macaroni, it turned out, was from a Guy Savoy recipe, leftovers from a potluck last night. It was made with an immoderate amount of cave-aged Gruyere, I am told. While Iris was gorging on three-star macaroni and its traditional fishy accompaniment, Laurie and I had lunch at Red Line.

Red Line is one of our neighborhood’s great hangouts. It’s in a large, bright space on a weird corner where Olive crosses Denny. At least two restaurants have failed there since we’ve been here, including the Hamburger Mary’s where we had lunch the day in 1995 when we came up to Seattle to look for our first apartment. When Red Line first opened, in 2004, the owners posted a manifesto on the wall indicating that they had performed an exorcism to drive off restaurant-killing demons.

In short, Red Line serves sandwiches, soups, and salads. American lunch. But they do so with an unusual level of skill. They make much better sandwiches than I do, because they’re always on the lookout for the unexpected ingredient that will elevate the sandwich to another plane. The chicken torta, which is what I had for lunch today, has chicken, green chile spread, and a couple of different cheeses, including feta. I don’t like feta, and surely it’s not a traditional part of a Mexican sandwich, but I decided it give it a chance, and it gives the sandwich a faint echo of brine that keeps things interesting, bite after bite.

Similarly, the Texan (my favorite Red Line sandwich) is a grilled sandwich with roast beef, red onions, cheddar, and horseradish. I’m not saying horseradish on a roast beef sandwich is a groundbreaking move, but it’s not how I would have done it. Too bad for me. The Texan also comes with a side of chipotle au jus. (Is it acceptable to use “au jus” as a noun now?) Laurie got the Texan today. She also had a cup of the pozole, a seriously spicy hominy soup.

That Red Line tries harder in the sandwich department isn’t just my imagination. One time, the owners, Katy and Derrick, sat down at the table next to me for a business meeting, and I overheard them discussing plans for adding a grilled cheese to the menu. They had a spirited debate over what cheeses and breads would create a world-class sandwich. They did end up putting grilled cheese on the menu (I don’t remember what components they ended up with, other than fontina), and Iris loves it.

Red Line used to be open in the mornings for coffee and scones, but they cut back to 11am-11pm a few months ago. They were losing money in the morning, probably because of people like me, freeloaders who would come in early, spend hours on the free wi-fi, and occasionally glance up at the beautiful sandwich cook who looked like Hilary Swank. To my credit, I sometimes ordered the frittata.

They’ve also done some cool promotions. For a few weeks before election day in 2004, all coffee drinks were a dollar on Tuesdays. Last year they did an Aloha Week celebration in honor of co-owner Derrick, who is Hawaiian. I got this awesomely messy beef teriyaki sandwich.

Also, the cookies are 50 cents, even the one with chocolate on the outside and a peanut butter center.

At one point, Iris became so enamored of Red Line that it turned into her nightly bedtime song for literally months. It changed every night, but here’s one version, with annotations.

*Goin’ down to Red Line*
*Gonna get some almond*1
*Almond will be hot*
*Dada will cool it*
*Gonna see the fire*2
*Fire burned the sandwich*
*Gonna see Ben*
*Drinking some beer*3
*Goin’ down to Red Line*
*Gonna bring my Iris*

1. Steamed milk with almond.
2. They have one of those ovens with fire in it. It’s not actually wood-burning, but it looks like a wood-burning pizza oven. They would never let the fire actually burn a sandwich, but it makes a good lyric. *My sandwich fell into a burning ring of fire…* etc.
3. Ben is a friend of a friend who came along to Red Line one night and got a beer. I also got a beer, but for some reason Ben drinking the beer made a huge impression on Iris. Did I mention Red Line serves beer and wine?

**Red Line**
1525 E. Olive Way
(206) 328-9559
11am-11pm

**Update:** Apparently Derrick is no longer associated with Red Line. Too bad.

A drinking life

Like many kids her age, Iris has her first- and second-person pronouns reversed. “Dada, pick you up,” is something I hear often. Hang onto this thought.

I’ve been enjoying Rick Bayless’s new book, Mexican Everyday. It’s an clever hybrid. Like most “weeknight” cookbooks, it assumes you don’t have a lot of time. Unlike most of them, it assumes you have access to fresh poblanos and tomatillos, dried guajillos and cascabels, fire-roasted canned tomatoes and cold-pressed corn oil.

Tonight I made chipotle meatballs and cucumber salad with guajillo dressing. The chipotle meatballs are pork meatballs, bolstered with mint, garlic, and panko bread crumbs, baked in a sauce of pureed canned tomatoes, chipotles in adobo, and garlic. They were excellent, and I’m already looking forward to a sandwich of the leftovers, if Laurie and Iris don’t scarf them all.

For the dressing, I toasted a couple of guajillos and some garlic cloves in cold-pressed corn oil, then pureed them (including the oil) with white wine vinegar. I halved an English cucumber lengthwise and scooped out the pulp with the spoon, then sliced it into thin half-moons and tossed it with the dressing. Iris loves cucumbers, and I miss the days when she couldn’t quite pronounce the word and would say “cumbers.” The corn oil is pretty strong stuff, and I couldn’t swear I tasted the chiles in the dressing, but it was a good foil to the rich meatballs.

Iris helped me put the dressing on the cucumbers, and I explained that sometimes a sauce is called a dressing. Later as I was spooning some chipotle sauce onto my meatballs, I said, “Dada loves sauce.”

“No. Called dressing,” corrected Iris.

Obviously this dinner required beer, so I had a bottle of Shiner Bock. After dinner Iris got down from her high chair and headed off to play with Brio trains.

> **Iris:** Come play some trains.

> **Me:** I’ll come play as soon as I finish my beer.

> **Iris:** Dada, bring my beer in the living room.

Question Time

We have entered a new and dangerous phase in Iris’s development: she has just learned to ask questions. A couple of days ago, Laurie and Iris were playing with fennel seeds in Iris’s kitchen. Iris wouldn’t stop eating the seeds, so Laurie went to put them away, but the little spice jar they came in was nowhere to be seen. “Maybe Dada knows where it is,” said Laurie.

So Iris ran over to my chair and said, “Where’s the fennel seed jar?” Only she didn’t say it like that. She said, “WHERE’S THE FENNEL SEED JAR?” like you might say, “YOU SPENT A HUNDRED DOLLARS ON *WHAT?*”

Today Iris invented a game where we put two chairs in the hallway and they represent Grandma’s car (the only car Iris ever rides in, since we don’t own a car). Iris drove around to a restaurant and a store picking up and dropping off various things. First she went to the Chinese restaurant and got some pancakes. Then she came over to me and held out her hands. “Iris need some bagels and pork,” she said.

Which means Iris has the same approach to Judaism as I do: she’s in it for the jokes.

Iris reads The Art of Eating

The Art of Eating is one of the strangest food magazines on the market. Give the average food journalist an assignment to write about, say, polenta, and they will go down to Whole Foods and buy a bunch of cornmeal, then compare recipes from Marcella Hazan and Lynne Rossetto Kasper and come up with a couple of serving suggestions. That’s how I’d do it, at least. Ed Behr of _The Art of Eating_ would start in an Italian cornfield, talking to a careworn farmer who laments the loss of the old ways. Behr would explain at length why polenta isn’t as good as it used to be and why the polenta you’re eating is crap.

I haven’t actually seen an article about polenta in AoE, but I’ve seen Behr give this treatment to various wines, Belgian beer, steak, and many foods that will coincidentally place him in one of the more picturesque reaches of Italy or France. He’s a dogged reporter, and his style is almost absurdly dry. In short, you want to hate Ed Behr, but you can’t, because you know he’s right.

We just got the new issue of AoE, and the cover story is a classic Behr piece on Comté cheese, which is the French equivalent of Swiss gruyère. Inside is a photo of large rounds of Comté aging on racks. Iris picked up the magazine this morning and said, “Big stack of cheese! Maybe mouse eat it.”