This month’s challenge was a lot of work, a TON of calories, but so incredibly delicious…baklava! The challenge part came with the phyllo dough: we had to make it ourselves. It was very time-consuming (it took me about an hour to roll out 18 sheets) but very gratifying, and surprisingly easy since the pictures, directions, and video that Erica provided were really excellent.

Erica of Erica’s Edibles was our host for the Daring Baker’s June challenge. Erica challenged us to be truly DARING by making homemade phyllo dough and then to use that homemade dough to make Baklava.

I made a few alterations to the recipe she provided:

• my glass dish was 8″ x 8″, so I increased her recipe by about 50%
• I used a bit less honey and more sugar, since I didn’t want honey to overpower the flavor of the dessert
• I omitted the almonds and just increased the quantity of pistachios and walnuts
• I cooked the allspice berries in the syrup instead of adding them to the nuts
• I added cardamom and a dash of homemade walnut liqueur to the syrup, and only used the zest of the lemon; I omitted the cloves (didn’t have any!)
• I used a combination of butter and olive oil for buttering the layers of the phyllo

I was too afraid to make any alterations to making the phyllo and I’m glad I didn’t. They turned out very good.

The baklava came out absolutely delectable – fragrant, rich, not too sweet. The texture is closer to the traditional baklava I’m used to – with a flaky but moist top layer of phyllo. Most of the commercially-available baklava here has a crunchy top (maybe a different style? Arab, maybe?) but when you pour syrup on top of the baklava, it does get moist, and this is what I’m used to.

One picture here – 3 more after the jump:

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This month’s challenge looked overwhelming (and very, very egg-heavy) at first read, but was actually a pleasure to make and eat. Not that I didn’t f*** up part of it – my meringues were downright bizarre – but the showpiece (the chocolate marquise) and the caramel accompaniment were delectable. They were a hit among my friends, including B., whose birthday it was and who got a candle plunked into the the middle of his marquise square.

The May 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Emma of CookCraftGrow and Jenny of Purple House Dirt. They chose to challenge everyone to make a Chocolate Marquise. The inspiration for this recipe comes from a dessert they prepared at a restaurant in Seattle.

A marquise is similar to a semifreddo or even ice cream, except that it relies more on egg yolks and eggs than cream to give it its velvety texture. The custard is made by pouring in boiling sugar into a frothy yolk/egg mixture, and a chocolate base, this time with some cayenne and pepper for some extra zest, is added at the final stage for flavor. I personally think folding in the whipped cream wasn’t absolutely necessary, but it did give the marquise a bit of a rocky-road like appearance.

I also loved the tequila (OK, I used mezcal, which we had just bought in Mexico) caramel, which I drizzled onto the plate under the marquise. My meringues were just too odd and burnt from the broiler, more like toasted marshmallows. I thought I had had almonds at home and was planning to make the spiced almonds accompaniment, but I didn’t end up having them after all. They would have added a nice touch, but they were optional and I was under a bit of a deadline.

Walking up Market St towards Castro, crossing Octavia Blvd.

In front of me, a very short, bespectacled homeless woman, carrying her sleeping bag, muttering to herself. She basically looks like a shorter version of Fran Lebowitz. Equally neurotic.

“I don’t like Brazil nuts. (mumble mumble) I don’t like Brazil nuts. I don’t like Brazil nuts. (mumble mumble) I don’t like Brazil nuts. (mumble mumble)…”

This continues until we reach the Gay and Lesbian Center. She stops. Reaches for the door handle, but then stops herself. Continues walking.

“I don’t like lesbian Brazil nuts. (mumble mumble) I don’t like lesbian Brazil nuts. I don’t like lesbian Brazil nuts. (mumble mumble) I don’t like lesbian Brazil nuts. (mumble mumble)…”

….

My other favorite freaks: the screaming BART station lady and the crazy cat guy

Proof that in the world of new media, previous transgressions that prove that you’re a bigoted asshole will not necessarily be held against you. Keith Rabois works at Square, the credit card gadget for iPads and smart phones.

Mr. Rabois, in what he later characterized as an attempt at demonstrating the importance of free speech, harassed a Stanford professor while he was at law school there, repeatedly calling him a gay slur and, Ayatollah Khomeini-style, wishing death upon him. (“Faggot! I hope you die of AIDS!” and “Can’t wait until you die, faggot.”)

The irony? If my (notoriously accurate) gaydar is right, Keith is as queer as a $3 bill. Of course, this should come as no surprise to anyone who’s witnessed the hypocritical implosions of the likes of Ted Haggard and Larry Craig in recent years.

And judging by the childish defensiveness of some of his tweets, Keith might be hiding more than his sexual orientation. His 4th-grade Twitter bravado is the electronic version of a penis car.

UPDATE: Loathesome self-hating homosexual Keith Rabois no longer works at Square. Why? He married a beautiful young woman and took a year’s paternity leave to take care of his baby children.

Of course I jest. He hired some boy toy guy, sexually harassed coached him, and then was sued by this young man (ingrate!). He was then hired by Bill “Falafel” O’Reilly Vinod Khosla. We wish Mr. Keith “Faggot” Rabois all the best!

I was raised Catholic, but by the time I entered college, had abandoned Christianity altogether. I went through a long period of being “nothing in particular,” identifying as atheist and agnostic, while dabbling in Buddhism and (more) Taoism, before finding my spiritual home in Judaism.

Before you start worrying, this post isn’t going to try to get you to convert to Judaism. Jews don’t do that!  Judaism is not a proselytizing religion (i.e. it accepts converts, but does not go out to seek them). Something else that Judaism is not is dogmatic. This is an important distinction that undergirds my choice to leave Christianity.

Christianity (and Islam) are dogmatic religions; that is, they have a dogma, or a set of required beliefs. If you don’t believe something required (that Christ is your savior), then the religion threatens you with eternal punishment.

Think about what this means. You are required to make yourself believe something, under threat of punishment. Think about how difficult, if not impossible, that really is. Jesus is always scouring your thoughts, trying to detect any doubt and send you down to the 9th layer of Hell if he finds any. This is little more than mind control.

I’ve been watching the Twilight Zone recently, the original series created and hosted by Rod Serling (unsurprisingly, a Jew) and saw this episode last night (“It’s a Good Life” – part 1 – part 2 – part 3) . The whole “think happy thoughts!” and “put it out of your mind!” attitude displayed by the perennially frightened villagers captures the essence of Christianity to me. The cornfield is nothing more than the threat of hell.

When people don’t feel the freedom to let their mind explore, much less say out loud or print an unconventional opinion, they are in prisons of their own making.

Maybe I’m just getting old.

We just saw Thor last night. After seeing the trailer the previous weekend, I had no interest whatsoever in seeing it. Then my partner said it got 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. I begrudgingly agreed to go.

By the time we got out of the theater, the RT score had dropped to 78%. And that didn’t even include my panning of it!

Here’s my unorganized thoughts on this trainwreck of a movie:

• You have to be a brainless meathead to appreciate the one-dimensionality of the plot. Seriously, no nuance, nothing that makes you think, nothing clever whatsoever. A three-year-old would roll his eyes at the storyline.
• Hollywood has GOT to stop emphasizing this Mormon idea that the fairer you are, the more morally good you are. You can just know who the good guys are by the color of their hair and skin nowadays (I think the Karate Kid was the last movie to run against this paradigm, and that was about 30 years ago). Orphan was the last movie that reminded me of this (the dark girl with the foreign accent tries to kill the blond, blue-eyed American girl…really?!)
• The cast is 99% white, with one token black guy and one token Asian guy. OK, maybe because it’s about Norse mythology, and no one is more lily-white than the Scandinavians. Except that one Asian god. And they make both the black and Asian guys’ eyes lighter.
• I’m not sure why a Norse god of the Middle Ages speaks modern British English with the occasional Victorian turn of phrase. Maybe the actors can’t pull a Scandinavian accent off? And why do Norse gods use English as their native tongue?
• A clever FX budget-saving technique: throw in a lot of “camera movement” and noise during the fight scenes, so people won’t realize the animation is cut-rate. I noticed this in Iron Man 2, too. Wasn’t that a Marvel film, also? Hmm….
• Just because a character on the screen laughs at his lame joke doesn’t mean we’re obligated to laugh at it, especially when it’s not even remotely funny. I know this is a matter of social conditioning, but still. And just because it’s delivered with a British accent doesn’t mean it’s wit.
• It’s not unusual for Hollywood to pick a female lead because she’s pretty, even if she lacks any charisma or acting talent. Maybe we should be celebrating the objectification of male leads with Chris Hemsworth’s casting as Thor as a milestone. Great body, not much else. Oh, crap, I forgot about Matthew McConaughey.
• Was the pressure of having delivered an Oscar-winning performance in Black Swan just too overwhelming for Natalie Portman, that she had to act in something brainless next? Or did she have a mansion in the Caribbean that she wanted to buy?
• You might wonder if Kenneth Branagh’s directing skills are what ultimately made Emma Thompson divorce him. I did. Thor is as overrated as Dead Again was.

If you think my lambasting of Thor means I hate everything out in the theaters right now, you couldn’t be more wrong. I really enjoyed Source Code, and The Adjustment Bureau wasn’t half-bad, either. But Thor is going to make me trust my instincts about all other Marvel movies I see trailers for. (And the Captain America one I saw looked absolutely ridiculous)

Let me dust off my rusty Polish skills and translate one of the poems of my favorite poet, Wislawa Szymborska, who won the Nobel Prize in 1996. (Sorry, had to convert all the Polish letters to their closest English equivalents, since WordPress fucks them all up…)

Sto pociech

Zachcialo mu sie szczescia,
zachcialo mu sie prawdy,
zachcialo mu sie wiecznosci,
patrzcie go!

He wanted some happiness
He wanted some truth
He wanted some eternity
Just look at him!

ledwie rozróznil sen od jawy,
ledwie domyslil sie, ze on to on,
ledwie wystrugal reke z pletwy rodem krzesiwo i rakiete,
latwy do utopienia w lyzce oceanu,
za malo nawet smieszny, zeby pustke smieszyc,
oczami tylko widzi,
uszami tylko slyszy,
rekordem jego mowy jest tryb warunkowy,
rozumem gani rozum,
slowem: prawie nikt,
ale wolnosc mu w glowie,
wszechwiedza i byt poza niemadrym miesem,
patrzcie go!

He could barely distinguish dream from consciousness
He could barely guess that he was himself
He could barely carve a hand straight out of a fin, a flint and a rocket
Easy to drown in a teaspoon of the ocean
Not funny enough to laugh at the emptiness
He only sees with his eyes
He only hears with his ears
His speech personal record is the use of the conditional
He criticizes reason with reason
In a word: almost nobody
But in his head, freedom, knowing it all, and existence beyond just unintelligent meat
Just look at him!

Bo przeciez chyba jest,
naprawde sie wydarzyl
pod jedna z gwiazd prowincjonalnych.
Na swój sposób zywotny i wcale ruchliwy.
Jak na marnego wyrodka krysztalu
-dosc powaznie zdziwiony.
Jak na trudne dziecinstwo w koniecznosciach stada
niezle juz poszczególny.
Patrzcie go!

Because he probably does exist, doesn’t he?
He really did come into being
Under one of the less sophisticated stars.
In his own special way quite full of life and jumpy
Like the poor outcast of a crystal, quite seriously curious.
Like in a difficult childhood in the needs of the flock
He stands out in not a bad way
Just look at him!

Tylko tak dalej,
dalej choc przez chwile,
bodaj przez mgnienie galaktyki malej!

Keep on going on, but only for a moment
Just a blink of our small galaxy!

Niechby sie wreszcie z grubsza okazalo,
czym bedzie, skoro jest.
A jest – zawziety.
Zawziety, trzeba przyznac, bardzo.
Z tym kólkiem w nosie,w tej todze,w tym swetrze.
Sto pociech, badz co badz.
Nieboze. Istny czlowiek.

You have to wonder how it will eventually turn out,
Who he’ll become, what he already is.
And he is – stubborn.
Stubborn, you have to admit, very.
With this ring in his nose, in this toga, in this sweater.
A hundred comforts, if nothing else.
The poor guy. A real man.

This challenge was great. First, it involved maple, and who doesn’t love maple? Second, I finally learned how to make a mousse. The hazelnut mousse I attempted in January was a disaster. Third, it was clever and all of our guests this past Sunday loved it (and they also were eating a friend’s delectable chocolate pot de creme, so the competition was fierce) Finally, it was kosher for Passover, so I didn’t even have to violate commandments against chametz to participate!

The April 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Evelyne of the blogCheap Ethnic Eatz. Evelyne chose to challenge everyone to make a maple mousse in an edible container. Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 27th to May 27th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!

I made the maple mousse exactly as described, with no alterations, while I opted for the nut cup, made of walnuts, since, as a vegetarian, the bacon option just wasn’t my cup of tea. The flavors complemented each other very nicely, and this just easy enough to make again.

Most of the time, I go to the movies for some pleasant mind candy—frilly enjoyment that helps me get my mind off the mundane inanities of my life. But, occasionally, sometimes I feel a cerebral craving for something mentally meatier: a good mindfuck.

What’s a mindfuck? A movie that plays with your mind, confuses you, and leads you on. It’s not just a movie with a twist ending (like M. Night Shyamalan’s brilliant The Sixth Sense). Mindfucks are borderline-incoherent, dreamlike, and surreal. They’re often shot in the perspective of the main character, who might be struggling with a mental problem, or they might be dreaming. The tempo is strangely off. You wonder if what’s happening is really happening, or if they’re manifestations of the narrator’s twisted mind. The impatient and dim-witted are annoyed by mindfucks; the intellectually curious are transfixed by them. Guess which group I count myself among? *blows on fingernails, buffs them on his shirt*

Here’s my list of the top 12, along with some very basic commentary. I’ll obviously leave out the spoilers, since they are all worth watching.

1. Mulholland Drive – Anything from David Lynch’s twisted mind is bound to mess with your head, and this movie is no exception. I’m a bit afraid to watch more of Lynch’s movies, in the same way I’m afraid to try coke.

2. Jacob’s Ladder – Adrian Lyne’s Vietnam War movie is ostensibly a commentary about military testing of psychoactive drugs, but this might be one of my favorite movies of all time due to the unexplained twist ending and stunningly creepy visuals.

3. Fight Club – If you’ve ever read anything by Chuck Palahniuk, you’ll know that he integrates plot twists with gritty character development. Pair that with the brilliant direction by David Fincher, and you have a real winner in this flick.

4. Inception – Christopher Nolan’s mindbender was one of the hot movies of 2010, but, even though it was snubbed at the Oscars, is still worth a viewing if you’re a fan of this genre. A complex storyline will almost absolutely force you to have to watch this more than once.

5. The Cube – This Canadian movie has probably the worst acting of all the movies in this list–it feels like it was a bad stage production taken to movie form–but it’s still an interesting plot that keeps you guessing until the very end. It even had a sequel with even worse acting than the original.

6. The Machinist – Seeing the hunky Christian Bale wasted away was an oddly satisfying visual treat (seeing him bulk up again for Batman Begins). His lack of ability to eat or sleep properly is conveyed beautifully in the movie, so much so that when the plot turns leave you with more questions than answers, you begin to wonder if you’re just sleep-deprived or suffering from low blood sugar.

7. Twelve Monkeys – Makes great use of all the evitable paradoxes that arise when you have time travel. Terry Gilliam seems to borrow from Monty Python colleague Palin’s Brazil with all of all the sorts of weird steampunk stuff we imagine will be in the future, and that hipsters are jizzing over now.

8. The Spanish Prisoner – David Mamet’s screenplay ports over into a similarly sparse movie featuring Rebecca Pigeon and Steve Martin. Relies less on the paranormal and special effects (there aren’t any), and more on conspiracy and paranoia.

9. Eyes Wide Shut – I love the ponderous pacing of Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, which is just slow enough to add to the uneasy eeriness of the movie. Maybe this is what it’s like to be inside Tom Cruise’s head.

10.  Vanilla Sky (Abre Los Ojos) – Cruise seems to have a thing for dramatic mindfucks. Both versions of this movie–the Spanish original, and the American remake–feature Penelope Cruz and grapple with the idea that some things can’t be bought.

11. Memento – Much like the famous Seinfeld episode, Memento‘s scenes run backwards. Considering there’s a complex mystery involved, there’s a whole lot of mental gears whirring as you watch the movie, accept the premise, and start storing scene information in an attempt to make sense of it all.

12. Requiem for a Dream – The perils of drug abuse are brought to the fore with a haggard and worn Jared Leto and Jennifer Connelly. Dark, brooding, and deliberately confusing (I’m talking about the movie, not Leto), you’re left with a bad taste in your mouth, a sick feeling in your stomach, and a vow to never watch a movie like this again. Until you see the next mindfuck trailer.