Today Tom and I were fortunate to receive an early morning visit from my parents, here on a long layover at the MSP airport. With my photography class still fresh, I’ve been struck by the beauty of daylight upon others’ faces of late and have wanted to take just about everyone’s picture. Thus far I’ve avoided approaching strangers, so having Mom and Papá visit was a great opportunity to get in a little more practice.

My mom was lovely today as you can see above and below. The picture at left is one I took last May, before I had any understanding of white balance. I include this one because it gives me hope that the buds (below) will very soon be sprouting into bloom. Papá, who was cold and a little less cooperative than Mom, only appears in the background in the picture above along with his walking partner Tom. Despite the cold, I was thankful for this morning’s cloudy skies–it was perfect light for taking pictures. Tom and I were glad to be able to enjoy the morning away from a desk and wish my parents off to the south of France while living vicariously through the plans (or lack thereof) for their travels. They’ll be renting a cottage and generally enjoying themselves–eating and exploring the villages within short driving distance from their living quarters–not to mention practicing their French. Bon Voyage, papa et maman!

As I was biking through downtown Minneapolis on my way home from work yesterday, I noticed the new exterior at Solera, a tapas restaurant that I have enjoyed many times. I didn’t enjoy the new look. I find the Spanish flag awnings are a bit garish – not to mention nationalistic – compared with the formerly quiet, Gaudí inspired blue and tile. Far more offensive, however, are the new banners hanging vertically down the side of the building that proudly proclaim Solera to be the “Cucina de España”. If you’re not shaking your head incredulously right now, I should explain that “cucina” is the Italian word for kitchen; the word in Spanish is “cocina”. In addition to “kitchen”, cocina refers to cuisine, home cooking and cookery – all things to which Solera would presumably like to refer.

When I first saw this I was sure it was just a printer error. Maybe nobody at the sign company spoke Spanish and maybe the sign was hung in a hurry without checking with anyone at the restaurant. An expensive error, to be sure, but one that would be corrected quickly. I even pulled off the road to try to take a photo of the banners, so sure was I that they would be taken down and replaced with corrected versions before anyone noticed (my iPhone camera, unfortunately, failed to work – but that’s another post).

But then I checked Solera’s website. Here’ a screenshot from the top of the page:

And the page footer:

Apparently, Solera is embracing the “cucina” thing wholeheartedly.

At this point I started to question my own knowledge of Spanish. Maybe this was just a word I wasn’t familiar with – I checked dictionaries and the incomparable wordreference.com, but I couldn’t find anything. Maybe it was Catalan? No – that would be “cuina”. I even called a Spanish professor, but she just confirmed that cucina was not a Spanish word.

Was Solera going for some kind of Italian-Spanish fusion concept, and expressing this through the fusion of the languages in their tagline? Not according to the first sentence on their homepage:

Featuring an evocative menu, authentically embracing the cuisine of Spain, Solera offers an unparalleled experience for social dining in a vibrant, Spanish-influenced atmosphere.

Embracing the cuisine of Spain, sure, but not the language. The menu is pure Spain.

This is even more confusing since the new chef at Solera, Jorge Guzman, is a native of Mexico City, and I doubt he’s the only member of the kitchen staff who speaks Spanish. If the marketing people had bothered to check with Guzman one would think this error might have been avoided.

The idea of marketing raises the possibility that this is all just a cynical ploy for attention, for nitpicking blog coverage like you’re currently reading. They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, and seeing these banners certainly made me stop, and here I am writing this post, playing into their manipulative hands. Mission accomplished. But does this lead me to take Solera seriously as a place to celebrate and enjoy the culture of Spain? Pues, no.

I’m not sure why I’ve become so obsessed, but I’ve been thinking about it since last night and I just can’t make sense of it. If it’s an error, it’s a huge and repeated error that speaks badly of the organization, especially after its recent management change. If it’s intentional, I have yet to come up with a plausible theory for what they were going for. Am I just linguistically ignorant? Can you help me out here?

While I’ve grown in my ability to take pictures of inanimate objects – especially edibles – since Tom and I started marthaandtom.com two years ago, I still struggle with portraits. I’m introverted; when I’m behind the camera with a person or group on the other side, it’s rare that I direct a subject (smile for the camera!) and at my worst I attempt to avoid being seen taking pictures at all. (Creepy!)

From time to time I’m called upon to attend work events and photograph real live people. Later, when attempting to create layouts around these photos (design work is my main responsibility) I sift through my photos of, well, food at the events, and delete, delete, delete. Fortunately for the health of our publications, I’m usually shooting alongside a coworker who is better at getting in people’s faces with a camera.

Enter IFP’s winter class, In Your Face Photography:

In-Your-Face Photography is for the photographer who would like to shoot images of people up-close but is either too timid to approach them and/or uncomfortable directing them.

Coming up on our last session, I’m still learning, but I feel much more comfortable behind a camera with a person on the other side–I don’t even mind if she knows I’m there.

Here are some of my favorites from a class assignment featuring one of my all-time favorite models, my sister, Marcela. Locations include Annie’s, Common Roots Café, and The Aster Café. And yes, my sister is gorgeous.

If you’re interested in an IFP course, you’ll find current photography offerings on their website.

As I was wracking my brain trying to come up with a Saint Patrick’s day post for this blog that wasn’t corned beef and cabbage – because I had to post something, right? – I kept coming back to bangers and mash. I’ve never been to the Emerald Isle, and while like many Americans I boast of substantial Irish heritage – real or imagined – unfortunately the recipes of the homeland did not make their way down the generations to me – I guess there are only so many ways to prepare blighted potato. Bereft of any reference from travel or tradition, I turned to the Internet.

It’s pretty easy to find recipes for bangers and mash with a search; after all, it’s just sausages with mashed potatoes and maybe some onion gravy. But my searches also revealed a disturbing truth: while there were cursory references to “Irish” bangers and mash, the dish was mostly called “British pub grub”. The British?! No! How could we celebrate Saint Patrick’s day eating the food of the hated oppressors, the colonizers? The blood of my ancestors boiled at these revelations as my blogger gut sank knowing I didn’t have a post for Saint Patrick’s day.

But further research and reflection calmed the rage and doubt. After all, many recipes did refer to the dish as a British and Irish favourite. Many authors seemed to suggest that the dish emerged some time around World War I – 1919 to be precise, which is when the first reference to sausage as bangers is cited by the Oxford English Dictionary. This also happens to be the year the Irish Republic declared its independence from those hated British, the year in which the Irish war for independence began. Could those recently invented bangers have been the thing that emboldened the Irish patriots to cast off the yoke of servitude?

Like most food origin stories, the 1919 creation of bangers and mash shouldn’t be taken too seriously. It’s useful from a linguistic perspective, representing the beginning of the use of the word bangers, heretofore a word for dynamite, to refer to sausages, but thinking culinarily, do you really think it took humans until the 20th century to realize that sausages and mashed potatoes are a delicious combination? More likely, this dish has been enjoyed anywhere people share a love for sausage and potatoes, and on that score Ireland certainly qualifies. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

Bangers

There’s no canonical sausage for this dish; the spirit of it is to use whatever sausage is available locally that you like. In my research, Cumberland sausage often came up as popular in the British version of the dish. I found a recipe on the highly trustworthy sausagemaking.org from none other than forum user “sausagemaker” himself, who claimed to be Cumbrian. I was just excited to find a British sausage recipe with no sage in it.

Sausage:

• 60% pork shoulder (346 g)
• 15% pork belly (232 g)
• 7.5% breadcrumbs (58 g)
• 15% water (116 g)
• 2.5% spice mixture (19 g)

Spice Mixture

• 72% salt (13.9 g)
• 13.5% black pepper (2.6 g)
• 4.5% nutmeg (.9 g)
• 4.5% mace (.9 g)
• 4.5% coriander (.9 g)

Follow standard sausage-making procedure: dice the meats and freeze them for 30 minutes, then grind them once through the coarse plate. Mix in the spices and grind again. Mix in the rest of the sausage ingredients.

Cumberland sausage is unique in that it is not twisted into links, but rather is sold by the inch from a large coil. This makes for some fun times in the frying pan, let me tell you.

To cook the stuffed sausage, I first poached it for twenty minutes in 150ºF water (following this ridiculous recipe) before browning it in a skillet.

Mash

Boil a few russet potatoes in their skins. Pass through a ricer and fold in warm milk and butter until just smooth.

Onion Gravy

• One large onion, sliced thin
• 3 T butter
• 3 T flour
• 1.5 cups beef stock
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Melt the butter in a skillet and add the onion. Caramelize over medium-low heat. Stir in the flour. Gradually stir in the beef stock and bring to a simmer. Add salt and pepper to taste.

To serve the whole dish, nestle pieces of cooked sausage in a mound of mashed potatoes and spoon on a healthy portion of gravy.

In a world where many people don’t get enough to eat, the fact that Americans waste nearly half their food represents a moral failure. What’s more, with the economic crisis in this country family food budgets are stretched tighter than ever; American families can ill-afford to waste so much. A lot of this waste results from overbuying: stuffing our refrigerators with more food than we can possibly eat before the crisper drawer starts to resemble the cast of Night of the Living Dead. Also responsible, though, are some of the bad – wasteful – habits encouraged by recipe writers that have us discard perfectly good ingredients.

Take chicken skin. Quite a few recipes that call for skin-on chicken parts, browned to contribute to the fond only to remove the skin before continuing with the dish. It makes sense – if the chicken skin was left to stew in the pot it would become flabby and unappetizing, and probably add an unsightly layer of fat. But the implication of the “remove the skin” step is that you should just throw it away. And you’re throwing away a gold mine.

Last night, as I was making a paella with six skin-on chicken thighs, I saved the to-be-discarded skins on a plate. As the paella was steaming, I heated up some schmaltz (saved from a roast chicken a few weeks ago) in a non-stick pan. In went the chicken skin, fried until crisp. Just like that I had the perfect appetizer – think pork rinds, except tastes like chicken – that left me a satisfied and ethical diner.