Chips on a Sandwich | no. 8 | THE BURNT BITS
Who said burnt is bad?
TASTE: Sure, a carefully balanced dish is great-- just the right amount of salt and acid-- but sometimes being off balance is delicious. Enter the burnt bits. I'm talking about the coveted burnt ends of brisket, charred broccoli, extra-dark toast, blackened and bubbled pizza crust. Where the overwhelming presence of burnt sugars become their own unique flavor that no seasoning could recreate. In Korea scorched rice-- nurungji-- is beloved: a stovetop pot of rice is intentionally overcooked leaving the bottom layer crispy, nutty and chewy-- it's delightful. Especially when hot barley tea is added to make a magical milky soup. It's the same in Spain where the caramelized bottom of paella (a rice dish cooked in a special wide and shallow pan) has its owns name: socarrat. Embrace burnt food-- accidents can taste good!
SMELL: Go anywhere in Vietnam and the smell of sweet flowers mingles with burning incense-- it's intoxicating. From the North to the South there are altars for ceremoniously burning incense everywhere: from ornate temples and to humble sidewalk cracks. Explore Thuy Xuan village in central Vietnam and you'll see stalls full of tightly bound bundles of bright red, yellow, purple and green incense. Making incense is a true craft here: delicate sticks of dried and dyed bamboo are covered with a mix of scented powder. Imagine sandalwood, cinnamon and pine with your nose.
Making incense in Thuy Xuan village.
LOOK: I love charcoal drawings. The thought of using such a simple medium to make works with such depth and feeling is wonderful. Charcoal is made by slowly cooking wood or other organic material in the absence of oxygen. Water and other compounds burn off leaving mostly just carbon. Now one can BBQ or draw. I came across artist Leah Biggs' work and hopefully you'll appreciate it as much as I do. Here charcoal drawings are exceptional.
[Leah Biggs: Anticipation, charcoal on paper]
TOUCH: There's something so satisfying about lighting a match (don't worry, I'm not a pyromaniac). Did you know that there are two kinds of matches? I didn't. Safety and strike anywhere. A safety match needs a special striking surface-- like the side (red phosphorus) of its matchbox-- to ignite. While a strike-anywhere match is more of a badass and just needs a rough, hard surface like a rock or a brick. It will have tiny white dot on the tip while a safety match's end is all one color. Here's an elegant box of matches to have on hand to light what you need to (that's not my business!).
POLL: Marshmallows for S'mores-- golden or burnt? (Waffles won over pancakes by just one vote last week.)