You know the part in “La Di Da Di” where Slick Rick tells the story about talking to his old friend Sally from the Valley when her mother came along and punched her and stomped on her feet and “slammed the child on the hard concrete?” (Classic Deutschean Jealous-Mother Syndrome.) Well, Sally’s worst injuries might have been avoided if the New Jersey-based DefRugs company had been around back in 1985. I think the Blowout Comb one is the coolest. The EPMD one, too — that famous logo, designed by Eric Haze, that’s tough to beat all big and fuzzy like that. Really, there’s lots here worth taking off your shoes before stepping on.

How To Make Sofrito, The DIY Condiment

by Ben Choi

It’s morning in the American supermarket. As the Sriracha rooster crows, Jemima, a working mother, drops the kids off at Miss Butterworth’s daycare. Liquid-Plumr (call him Joe) dreams of a better life and lower taxes, and it’s all lion dances and bar mitzvahs in the ethnic aisle with Messieurs La Choy and Manischewitz. Corporations are people, too, but it’s worthwhile to keep in mind that even the most storied and iconic brand sauces and flavor bases started out as somebody’s homemade recipe. So let’s come home to Sofrito, the condiment you can make yourself.

The word “sofrito” derives from the Catalan verb “sofrefir” — to fry lightly. A sofrito is generally understood as an combination of herbs and aromatic vegetables (and sometimes spices) lightly sauteed in oil or fat to provide a flavor foundation for multiple dishes, much like the French mirepoix or Cajun holy trinity. But unlike those, it’s a culinary concept that defines itself more by a technique and a flavor profile than by any specific ingredients.

As a result, sofrito casts a rather enormous net upon the culinary universe. There are Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Filipino versions that vary quite a bit. For the purposes of this column, I’m concentrating on Latino-Caribbean sofrito, a staple of Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican and Yucatecan cuisines. You’ve probably tasted it doing the heavy lifting in dishes like arroz con pollo, poc-chuc, and Picadillo. But it can certainly provide a solid foundation for all kinds of cuisine, Latin or otherwise. It’s great in soup, beans, stews, and chili — or even atop scrambled eggs or steaks or chops. Check out my own personal sofrito formulation below, along with some recipes that I hope illustrate its versatility and heft.

What does sofrito bring to the party? It imparts depth and reach; like the undertow beneath the flavor wave. It makes a dish taste substantial, like somebody’s mother made it.

Now, you purists out there will say that sofrito is not, according to Hoyle, a condiment, but more precisely a technique or a method. This is true. In a sense, when I make a big batch of this stuff and put it in a jar that goes in the fridge, or freeze it into little green cubes to use three months from now, I’m storing a condiment that becomes sofrito only at the moment it hits hot oil. Semantics aside, it’s useful to have in the kitchen.

Also, you can actually find what looks like a quality jarred sofrito in stores or online. Chulita’s Famous is all natural and MSG-free and looks quite promising. But first, try out my recipe below, because there aren’t many top-notch do-it-yourself condiments out there. And, let’s face it, as much as you and I might want to stick it to the corporate condiment man, we can’t make Heinz ketchup at home. With sofrito, yes we can!

SOFRITO

(Makes about 5 ½ cups)
1 large yellow onion (or 2 small ones), 1-inch chop
1 large red bell pepper (or 2 small ones), 1-inch chop
4 medium plum tomatoes (about 1 pound), cored, 1-inch chop
6–10 garlic cloves, peeled
1–3 pickled habanero peppers, stemmed and seeded.
5–8 pickled pepperoncini, stemmed
1 large bunch of cilantro, thickest part of stems removed
4–7 blades of culantro (recao)
large pinch of salt

Put all ingredients in bowl of food processor. Run until pesto consistency is achieved, stopping once or twice to scrape down sides of bowl. Fill two ice cube trays with sofrito and freeze for future use. Each cube represents about a fluid ounce (1/8 cup) of sofrito. Put remainder in a jar for immediate use. Sofrito will keep fresh for just under two weeks in the refrigerator.

CHILLED CUCUMBER AVOCADO SOUP

(Serves 2–4)
1 large English cucumber, seeded
1 medium avocado
¼ cup onion, minced
4 tbsp. (or 2 frozen cubes) sofrito
½ cup cold water
juice of 1 lime
2 tsp. Champagne vinegar
2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 tbsp. additional extra-virgin olive oil for drizzling

Place all ingredients except for olive oil in bowl of food processor. Run until smooth, adding 2 tbsp. olive oil from chute while running. Chill in refrigerator for a couple of hours, a little less if using frozen sofrito cubes. Drizzle remaining oil over individual servings.

SPICY TORTILLA SOUP

(Serves 3–5)
1 tbsp. olive oil
½ medium onion, fine dice
2 small carrots, ¼-inch dice
1 stalk celery, ¼-inch dice
chili powder (scroll to bottom for recipe)
1 clove garlic, minced
½ cup sofrito
2 bay leaves
6 cups fortified chicken stock
1” x 1” piece of Parmigiano Reggiano rind
juice of 1 lime
1 small split-breast chicken, poached or roasted, shredded
salt and pepper to taste
canola oil for frying tortilla ribbons
3 corn tortillas, cut in half and then cut into matchstick ribbons and deep-fried until golden brown
pinch of salt to season tortilla ribbons while still hot
2 medium avocados, cut into ¾” x ½” pieces
½ cup grated Monterey jack cheese
1 lime cut into wedges for garnish
cilantro shamrocks for garnish

Heat olive oil in a 3-qt. saucepan over medium-high heat. When oil is shimmering, add onion, carrots and celery to pan. Saute for a few minutes, until slightly soft. Stir in chili powder and garlic, continue to saute for a minute or so. Add sofrito and bay leaves to pan, stirring to incorporate; saute 2 minutes more. Add chicken stock and bring up to a boil. Add cheese rind, and lower heat to low. Simmer partially covered for 30 minutes.

While soup simmers, shred chicken breast by hand and prep your tortillas, avocados, and garnishes.

When soup has simmered enough, remove and discard cheese rind and bay leaves. Add lime juice and chicken; salt and pepper to taste. To serve, ladle into bowls and garnish with avocado, cilantro, tortilla ribbons and lime wedges.

ROPA VIEJA

(Serves 8–10)
2 tbsp. beef tallow, bacon grease, or lard*
2 lbs. flank steak cut into 3” x 2” pieces
1 large green bell pepper, ¼-inch dice
1 large yellow onion, cut in half, root-to-shoot, and then sliced very thinly crosswise
1 tbsp. dried oregano
1 tbsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. dried thyme
½ tsp. achiote paste
⅔ cup sofrito
5–8 cloves of garlic, minced
3 bay leaves
1 tsp. smoked Spanish paprika
6 oz. tomato paste
6 fl. oz. dry white wine
1 14.5-oz can of diced tomatoes, drained
1 ½ tsp. Better Than Bouillon beef base
2 ½ cups hot chicken stock chicken stock
⅓ cup pimento-stuffed manzanilla olives, rinsed
¼ cup non-pareil capers, rinsed
2 tbsp. Champagne vinegar
¼ cup cilantro leaves, chopped
cilantro shamrocks for garnish

* I know this sounds crazy, but I actually strain-and-save any extra rendered beef or bacon fat in the freezer. If you don’t have any on hand, just fry up about a half-pound of bacon (that you can use later) or buy the smallest amount of lard you can find.

In a Dutch oven or pressure cooker, over medium-high heat, render tallow/grease. When fat is hot, brown steak pieces in batches, about 3 minutes on the first side, about 2 on the second; setting browned pieces aside on a plate.

While steak is browning, place chicken stock in a microwave-safe bowl or glass measuring cup; heat on high power in microwave for two minutes or so, or until stock is about the temperature of very hot tea. Dissolve beef base in hot chicken stock.

Now back to the pot. When all the beef has been browned and, add pepper and onion to pot and saute for about 3 minutes or until softened. Add oregano, cumin, thyme, achiote paste, and sofrito, stirring well to combine. Saute for two additional minutes. Now add garlic, bay leaves, paprika, garlic, and tomato paste. Stir well and continue to apply heat for another minute or two. Add white wine, stirring continually and scraping bottom of pan. After about a minute, stir in diced tomatoes and stock. Now reintroduce beef to the pot, along with whatever juices have collected on the plate. Cover and bring pot up to a boil. If using pressure cooker, seal cooker and set at high-pressure.

When pot has come to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low and simmer covered for about 2 ½ hours. Alternately, when pressure cooker has achieved high pressure, reduce heat to medium-low and allow to cook under pressure for 50 minutes

Remove fork-tender beef from Dutch oven or pressure cooker and place on a large platter or a cutting board. Working with a fork in each hand, shred beef thoroughly. Return shredded beef to pot along with olives, capers and vinegar. Bring to a boil and simmer uncovered for another 20 minutes. Stir in chopped cilantro leaves, and salt and pepper to taste. Garnish and serve with rice.

ARROZ CON GANDULES (RICE WITH PIGEON PEAS)

(Serves 4)
1 slice thick-cut bacon, chopped
1 cup long grain white rice
2 tsp achiote paste
¼ cup onion, minced
¼ cup green bell pepper, minced
1 tsp. ground cumin
⅓ cup sofrito
bay leaf
½ tsp turmeric
1 ¼ cups chicken stock
1 15.5 oz. can of gandules (pigeon peas), well drained
pinch of saffron, about 7 threads

In a large cast-iron skillet over medium to medium low heat, slowly render and brown bacon, stirring occasionally. While bacon cooks, rinse rice thoroughly and, using a strainer, drain rice even more thoroughly. Set aside.

When bacon has browned, raise heat to medium-high and add onion, bell pepper, cumin, sofrito, bay leaf and turmeric. Saute mixture for about a minute, stirring with a wooden spoon. Add rice and saute for about another minute. Transfer contents of skillet to a rice cooker or a saucepan with a tight-fitting lid. Add saffron, chicken stock, and gandules. Salt to taste and cook just as you would a regular pot of rice.

INDIO POLENTA PUDDING

(Serves 6–8)
3 cups 1% milk
½ cup corn grits (polenta)
2 tbsp. butter plus more for greasing souffle dish
⅔ cup molasses
2 tbsp. all-purpose flour
½ tsp. ground cinnamon
¼ tsp. ground ginger
½ tsp. ground allspice
pinch of nutmeg
½ tsp. kosher salt
1 tbsp. sofrito
1 egg, beaten

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 6-inch souffle dish. Heat the milk in a medium saucepan to just below boiling over medium-high heat. Slowly pour in polenta while whisking vigorously. Reduce heat to medium and continue whisking steadily for about 10 minutes until grits are quite thick and fluffy. Remove from heat and whisk in 2 tbsp. butter. Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together all remaining ingredients. Incorporate molasses mixture completely into polenta, whisking continuously until well-integrated. Pour mixture into a greased souffle dish that will go into the oven for 1 hour and 15 minutes, rotating at the 40-minute mark. Promptly remove from oven at end of cooking time and allow to cool. Don’t be upset if the center caves in a little, this is inevitable. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup.

Previously: Fish Sauce and A Collection Of Great Vinegars

Ben Choi lives in the SF Bay Area with his wife Erica and dog Spock.

“Forget anabolic steroids in easy-to-swallow tablets, or EPO in clean syringes. Ancient Olympic dopers got their pre-Games hormone boost from chewing on raw animal testicles.”

It is okay to drink blue cocktails again, so long as you aren’t particularly concerned about concepts like “dignity” and “self-respect.” [Via]

by Emma Garman

A series dedicated to explaining Britain’s manufactured celebrities to an American audience.

As has long been accepted by all right-thinking individuals, chick lit is to blame for modern society’s cruelest scourges, from the re-entrenchment of patriarchal attitudes to the rise of the $15 cocktail to my exhaustive familiarity with Jennifer Weiner’s opinions. Yet in our beleaguerment, we might have overlooked an even direr side-effect of those pastel-colored volumes, one that throws into disarray the very laws of existence.

I’m afraid there’s no easy way to say this, but it appears that chick lit plots are escaping from the confines of their pages and becoming real, like some dystopian nightmare conceived by Ridley Scott. Observers of British political life will be aware that last year, Tory MP and Leveson Inquiry star Louise Mensch married her second husband, Red Hot Chili Peppers manager Peter Mensch, in a secret New York ceremony. Eerily, the blushing bride’s debut novel, Career Girls — published in 1995 under her maiden name, Louise Bagshawe — features a plot in which a Jewish music mogul dumps his American wife, the mother of his three children, for a “willowy, blonde, coldly determined” Oxford graduate named Rowena. As Ms. Bagshawe’s lapidary prose makes clear, it was an irresistible union (that said, readers of an even slightly delicate disposition should feel free to skip ahead to the next paragraph).

He couldn’t tear his eyes off Rowena, her long, slender legs tumbling out of a light blue Krizia dress, her firm thighs shimmering in reflective hose, her small breasts clearly visible through the white Bill Blass shirt she’d chosen that morning. Her long hair fell loose and sleek around her shoulders, and her eyes were wide, her lips parted.

For weeks now she’d been like a trembling reed in his presence, so brimming with desire he could practically smell it.

Whew! It took sixteen years, but eventually life precisely imitated art (well, “art”). Those personally connected to Louise and her literary ilk are thus advised to bear in mind that, just when they least expect it, their lives could be turned upside down by whatever unholy force the trashy bonkbuster is apparently capable of unleashing. (In retrospect, we should have known that Candace Bushnell’s marriage to her ballet dancer was doomed the moment that Carrie and Baryshnikov broke up in the final season of “SATC.”)

Bagshawe’s composition of Career Girls wasn’t the first time she’d exerted her preternaturally powerful will in order to manifest her heart’s desire. While at Oxford University, where she studied English literature after attending a Catholic boarding school, she happened to catch a TV documentary on Def Leppard (a legendary 80s hair band, youngsters). Forming an instant pash on the band’s manager — yes, Peter Mensch — she manufactured the “Oxford Rock Society” out of thin air, nominated herself president, and invited him to speak at a conference. After some persuasion he agreed to attend, along with Sharon Osbourne, who, displaying the inimitable charm we’d all one day know and love, called Louise “a persistent bitch.” But, regrettably for our resourceful young madam, when her dream-man arrived in Oxford, he was newly married.

Still, it was thanks to Peter, who helped her get a job at EMI, and Sharon, who got her a job at Sony when she was fired from EMI, that Louise enjoyed a brief career in the music industry before churning out a few novel chapters and winning a publishing deal at the age of 22. She has now written fifteen “romance novels” with titles like Glamour, Passion, Glitz and Destiny, earning millions as a result. Each opus takes her about six weeks to write, a task easily squeezed into the parliamentary summer recess — although since becoming a Conservative Member of Parliament in May 2010, she’s toned down the explicit sex scenes. Offending her stuffy constituents isn’t the issue as much as the Honourable Member’s recent full-throttle embrace of the Catholicism she was raised in; she has also said that in “these straitened times” readers are less interested in “bedroom and boardroom” stuff. (Let us hope that predicting literary trends never falls among her multifarious enterprises.) So her next novel, Decade, will be “more literary,” she promises.

Not that Hilary Mantel and Co. should lose any sleep: Mensch’s demanding schedule means that she’s unlikely to trouble the literary prize circuit any time soon. The 41 year old shares custody of her three young children with her first husband, an American property developer, and on top of her duties as MP for Corby (an unglamorous town in the Midlands) and her position on the government’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee, she’s just launched Menshn, a social networking site, pitched as an alternative to Twitter, with the tagline “Talk on Topic.”

Before you ask, no, the name has absolutely nothing to do with her own, it’s simply a play on the word “mention.” Menshn distinguishes itself from Twitter by restricting the subjects open to discussion and — well, I’ll let its creator and non-namesake explain: “There are lots of forums but what they don’t do is live chat about something. If a new poll has come out at the height of the US election season and I want to go and obsess about it I can go into a (chat) room and talk to my fellow devotees about that or who Romney’s vice presidential pick is going to be, for example.” Now, your columnist is assuredly not au fait with web innovation, but doesn’t the concept of a live chat room seem slightly shy of groundbreaking? Anyhow, Menshn — which, in another radical selling point, allows 180 characters instead of 140 — has now gone live in both the US and the UK, to decidedly mixed reviews. (“I found it was awkward to use, extremely narrow in its focus and full of little glitches and slightly unintuitive moments,” wrote tech reporter Bobbie Johnson.)

The freewheeling, unpoliced character of other social networks is an issue close to Mensch’s heart. Having used Twitter to bolster her public profile, often tweeting many times a day from the House of Commons, she recently endured the site’s nasty flipside. In May, when the Culture, Media and Sport Committee released a report saying that Rupert Murdoch was “not fit” to lead a major international company, Mensch vehemently but quite mystifyingly declared on various news shows that, unlike her left-wing fellow committee members, she considered Murdoch senior to be a “great newspaper man” who was “obviously fit to run a major company.”

Cue a deluge of Tweets calling her a slut, whore, bitch and cunt and threatening physical violence — basically your standard issue chorus of ungrammatical misogyny. Mensch, of course, is made of jolly stern stuff, so she wasn’t cowed or even particularly ruffled, although she did draw attention to various abusive Tweets by “favoriting” them. “I don’t care at all about it,” she insisted. “Totally water off a duck’s back, but it might not be to someone who’s not a politician. Someone not so thick-skinned might be hurt by that, but it doesn’t bother me.” In demonstration of her rhinoceros hide, when footballer Joey Barton tweeted that she was “a fame hungry careerist” with “the personality of a crushed snail,” then acknowledged that the feeling was probably mutual, Mensch shot back “No, not mutual — I don’t think about you at all.”

Ironically, it was Mensch’s hyper-articulate questioning of the Murdochs during the Leveson Inquiry session on phone hacking that originally threw her into the international spotlight (which was even brighter than it might have been, thanks to her questions coinciding with that epochal moment when Rupert was pelted with a pie and Wendi landed one on the assailant). While Mensch’s co-interrogators waffled and equivocated, she maintained the air of an intimidating school principal cross-examining a couple of delinquent teenagers, the arguable highpoint being when Rupert Murdoch told her that no, he hadn’t considered resigning. Her supercilious response: “Why not?”

Inevitably, Mensch’s high-profile probing into media wrong-doing incurred reprisal. A few days after her questioning of the Murdochs and News International CEO Rebekah Brooks, she received an email from “David Jones Investigative Journalists,” accusing of her of various indiscretions, including taking drugs with violinist Nigel Kennedy when she was an EMI publicist. Mensch went on the attack, publishing both the email and her response to it, which among other airy assertions said: “Although I do not remember the specific incident, this sounds highly probable… since I was in my twenties, I’m sure it was not the only incident of the kind; we all do idiotic things when young…Most importantly, I have not the slightest intention of being deterred from asking how far the culture of hacking and blagging extended in Fleet Street.” Kennedy himself went on record to recall having “some great times” with Mensch, adding: “Louise is pretty scary and I would warn anyone that it’s not a good idea to mess with her.” And like magic, a scandal that could have destroyed her career ended up working in her favor, with even a Labour MP saying on TV that he did not care what Mensch “did in nightclubs in the 90s.”

The one time that Mensch’s formidable poise deserted her was when a Guardian journalist asked her directly if she’d had a facelift. “My God,” she said. “Um… OK… I’ve always wondered what I would say the first time somebody asked me this question. And without denying it, I’m going to refuse to answer your question, because as soon as I do that you become the minister for mascara. I’m not going to talk about my various and sundry beauty treatments, of which there are many. My beauty secrets are between me and my… as I say, various, er, therapists.” Those words triggered a frenzy of excited headlines and endless speculation about her looks, her surgical enhancement of those looks and, in more serious corners of the media, whether it’s legitimate to focus such attention on a woman who’s technically not a celebrity, but a lawmaker and public servant. The debate was reignited when Mensch said in a GQ interview that it was sexist “to trivialize a woman politician based on her appearance” — an unacceptable attempt to have her cake and eat it too, in the opinion of certain commentators, since in the accompanying photographs she’s wearing a nice outfit and some make-up.

For all her protestations, Mensch will be acutely aware that the media interest vital to any public career — be it in showbiz or showbiz for ugly people — is fueled by the perception of contradictions, in which she corners the market. A twice-married Catholic who’s made a fortune from writing about sex, Mensch is also a socially liberal right-winger, a pro-life feminist and, now, a web entrepreneur who on more than one occasion has called for social media to be censored. All of which helps ensure her continuing media ubiquity, which has become so unrelenting as to be a regular punchline. “You’ve got to page 32, and thought you had managed to avoid Louise Mensch,” ran a subhead on a recent Independent story about Menshn. “Sorry!”

So now that she has this unparalleled platform, what exactly does she plan to do with it? Despite Mensch’s regular and unconvincing demurrals about being politically ambitious, those who know her believe that her sights are set on the ultimate prize: becoming Prime Minister. She makes no secret of the fact that Margaret Thatcher is her longtime idol and role model, and given that her ferocious drive seems to easily equal the Iron Lady’s, Mensch’s occupation of 10 Downing Street is a perfectly feasible prospect. As she retorted to the journalist who grilled her about plastic surgery, “It’s my life. I can do what I want.” Only a fool would imagine otherwise.

Previously: Pixie Lott and Roman Abramovich

Emma Garman no longer lives in her native UK, but she still watches lots of its TV. She’s also on Twitter.

“Food could be love of a sort, but chocolate won’t text to say it misses me during the day.”

Apparently there is a World Middle Finger Day, and apparently it is today. So, uh, fuck you. That’s what we say to celebrate, right? [MAKES GESTURE WITH FINGER]

★★★ Moderate yet oddly demanding. The humidity persisted, still without real heat. All that moist air felt fresh and pleasant outdoors, but if you were fooled into letting it into a room, things got confoundingly stuffy — an inside-out version of the lurking, context-dependent discomfort when you misjudge and wear bluejeans on a warm day. The sunlight, too, was not quite reliable: now tempered by high clouds, now scattered into a harsh white blur. There were little bright-peach dotted smears of cloud at sunset, like accidental paintbrush marks. In the dark came a distant popping and rumbling sound. Thunder, breaking the dampness? No: At the southernmost edge of the window, where the glass met the frame, refracted golden sprays of fireworks flared over the harbor.

“[Musicologist Alisun Pawley] found that pub-goers most enjoyed crooning high-energy songs sung by male vocalists with high chest voices and fewer warbles (these qualities describe something known as an anthemic vocal performance). All the popular songs spent at least four weeks on the UK music charts. Crowds that engaged in sing-a-longs were normally younger and the later it was, the more likely it was they would sing. ‘The later on in the evening, the more people sang along and we largely relate that to alcohol,’ she says.”

Following in the footsteps of Kanye West, Big Boi and Jay-Z and Prodigy from Mobb Deep, Das Racist MC Kool A.D. makes the seemingly unlikely but increasingly effective connection between rap music and ballet dancing. Produced by Durham, North Carolina’s Hueism Pictures, the video accompanies a track from Kool A.D.’s mixtape 51, which came out in April through the clothing company-cum-record label MishkaNYC. I’m pretty sure “Al Green” is code for “pot.”