Essays

Chop. Roast. Burn. Boil. Ferment. We transform the animal and vegetable world into innumerable forms. Life does this to us too as if we were food: It hacks, blends, sears, and bakes us, turning us from the raw material of childhood into the innumerable forms of humanity. Life chews us […]

Cooking is Transformation

28 Apr, 2014 in Essays / Uncategorized by Madara

How I want to spend my day... — I’ve been thinking about this painting by Lee Price a lot lately: I gave up eating sugar about 5 years ago, about the time that I was taking my comps in grad school and just before my divorce. Prior to doing so, from the ages of about 16-33, I spent […]

The Power of Doughnuts and Transformation of the Human Psyche

9 Feb, 2013 in Essays by Madara

*The following was originally published in the Fairbanks Daily News Miner. I’m always trying to recreate a specific piece of my lost youth: a paella I had while living with a wonderful family in Almeria, Spain on the Mediterranean coast. I honestly can’t remember the details of any other meal […]

Paella and the Reclamation of Youth

19 Jun, 2012 in Essays / Food & Culture / Food History / Main Fare by Madara

Holy effing pig on a pogo stick it’s COLD outside. As I write this post, the temperature outside has dropped to a very cruel -51 F. At that temperature, I think about food quite a lot, but not about cooking… I think about sinking my teeth into greasy, carbohydrate-rich […]

Somewhere Between the Knife and the Pen

29 Jan, 2012 in Essays / Meditations / Recipe by Madara

Professional chefs know that a meal is a kind of performance, the dinner table a place of theater. So for the holidays I made sure to don my best chef’s hat and draw the red curtain on all my best cooking. Now, with the New Year upon us, I notice […]

Food Culture: a Creamy Moral Center

29 Jan, 2012 in Alaskan Cuisine / Essays / Food & Culture by Madara

Just FYI, if you show up on an evening that’s a little slow, and if you appear to be enjoying the food, the chef will probably send over a little extra…

Seuol Sushi Cafe Dessert

9 Dec, 2011 in Alaskan Cuisine / Essays / Restaurants by Madara

Without a doubt the best food in Fairbanks: Seoul Sushi Cafe. The chef is consistently creative, as in these tuna tacos, the food is consistently good, and the service is consistently quirky and pleasant. My only complaint is that I can’t eat there often enough.

Photo Post

9 Dec, 2011 in Alaskan Cuisine / Essays / Restaurants by Madara

(This piece was originally published in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner) Of all the Thanksgiving traditions I inherited from my family, “Always invite someone new” is my favorite. Over the years, this tradition has created some memorable feasts: I’ve reconnected with old friends, made new friends and watched as the “someone […]

Gratitude in a Pilgrim’s Hat

23 Nov, 2011 in Alaskan Cuisine / Essays / Food History by Madara

(This piece was originally published in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner) In 1993, I returned from a brief stint as a nanny in France with a suitcase full of stinky cheese. Nineteen-year-old girls should bring home kitschy black berets or sleek leather handbags, maybe even a snow globe with the Eiffel […]

Stinky, Glorious Cheese

30 Sep, 2011 in Alaskan Cuisine / Essays / Food & Culture by Madara

(This piece was originally published in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner) People are sometimes surprised to find that I don’t own a blender, or a food processor or a spring-form pan. Recently a friend of mine was so appalled that I didn’t have what she referred to as a “proper spatula” […]

The Heart is a Muscle

24 Aug, 2011 in Alaskan Cuisine / Essays / Food History by Madara

According to UrbanSpoon, there are 231 places for me to get a bite eat in the city of Fairbanks. So why is it that when I’m trying to think of a place to have dinner on a Friday night, I can only think of 10 places to eat? Clearly, I […]

Operation “Eat It”

15 Jun, 2011 in Alaskan Cuisine / Essays by Madara

(This piece was originally published in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner) You know you’re loved when someone pit-roasts an entire pig in your honor. During the last three years, Eddie Kim, a poet and the most recent friend of mine to depart from Fairbanks, has become, as another friend put it, […]

Goodbye to All That

31 May, 2011 in Alaskan Cuisine / Essays / Meditations by Madara

(This piece was originally published in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner) In his book “Street Food,” author Tom Kime wrote to “get a feel for the beating heart of any community, and to begin to understand a culture different from your own, you need to understand the food.” He’s right. For […]

Street Food or Something Like It

4 May, 2011 in Essays / Food & Culture / Food History by Madara

Caution: food writing creates a set of self esteem issues you probably haven’t seen since the 10th grade. Once word gets around that you write about food, people start acting funny. When a friend recently heard I was attending a small get together for which he was cooking, he remarked […]

Does This Blog Make My Butt Look Big?

3 May, 2011 in Essays / Main Fare / Recipe / Salad by Madara

Drinking season is almost upon us. Or, well, the summer drinking season. Perhaps my perspective is slightly skewed from hanging around too many MFA grad students, but it seems like Alaskans drink a lot. I know more than a handful of folks who brew their own beer, wine, or mead. […]

Drinking in Alaska: Don’t Bork It Up

7 Apr, 2011 in Essays / Main Fare / Recipe by Madara

First of all, the News-Miner, our local paper, asked me to write a monthly food column, and I was more than happy to oblige. My first one is out today, a short little piece on Salmon Cheesecake. Second of all, I want playlists. Dinner party playlists to be exact. I […]

Food and Music

6 Apr, 2011 in Essays / Main Fare / Pork / Recipe by Madara

“People ask me: Why do you write about food, and eating and drinking? Why don’t you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way others do? The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry.” —M. F. K. Fisher, Gastronomical […]

A Food Blogger’s Manifesto with Carrot & Beet Salad

5 Apr, 2011 in Essays / Main Fare / Side Dishes by Madara

(This piece was originally published in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner) According to a Hollywood legend, Marlon Brando intentionally flubbed his lines repeatedly while filming a restaurant scene for “Guys and Dolls,” forcing Frank Sinatra to eat bite after bite of cheesecake, a dessert Sinatra apparently hated. Sinatra stormed out in […]

Squash Skepticism About Savory Cheesecake With the Addition of Salmon

5 Apr, 2011 in Essays / Main Fare by Madara

Michael Manly Miles was hard drinking and hard working, angry and funny, fearless and reckless, one hell of a farmer, and one loyal son of a bitch. If he hated you, you probably had it coming, and if he loved you, well, he loved you with a fierceness that most […]

Bread Pudding, Funerals, and the Power of Communion

22 Mar, 2011 in Essays / Recipe by Madara

My students eat dog. OK, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s not exactly a lie. Last week my World Lit class spotted the bags under my eyes and took advantage of the situation by asking off topic questions and making distracting statements. This kind of thing […]

Stuck in the Middle with Balut

8 Mar, 2011 in Essays / Main Fare / Sandwiches and Burgers / Southern Food by Madara

What do you make for a man who was raised on a Midwestern farm, spent time in the Navy, and now writes poetry and runs ultra-marathons in Alaska for his birthday? You dig the grill out from under the snow, fill up your propane tank, and make him a […]

The Best Burger a Midwestern Farmboy Ever Ate

6 Mar, 2011 in Alaskan Cuisine / Essays / Main Fare by Madara

Something about being a parent brought out a fine appreciation for The Rules in me. Even the most carefree eccentric artistic types will turn into whip-cracking fascist tyrants when they find another towel on the bedroom floor, only minutes after telling a child to hang up the towel when […]

Baking Bread and Breaking Rules

2 Mar, 2011 in Essays / Recipe by Madara

Well. I’d had it. I’d finally wept enough over the distance of Southern food, the geographic distance and the emotional distance, so on Saturday, in recognition of the completion of UAF English Dept’s Graduate Student 6 Hour Comprehensive Examinations I threw together (with the help of a few friends) a […]

Alaska Style Southern Food Fest

24 Feb, 2011 in Essays / Pork / Southern Food by Madara

I’m homesick. I would give my right pinky for some boiled peanuts right now. The kind sold hot from the cooker in a styrofoam cup. I would peel them, eat their meaty insides, and throw the shells out the window on I275. Then I’d stop at some other roadside stand […]

Georgia Boiled Peanuts: Nostalgia in a Styrofoam Cup

9 Feb, 2011 in Essays / Southern Food by Madara

Banana Nirvana: Thai Style Banana Cake

27 Jan, 2011 in Essays / Main Fare / Thai Food by Madara

Fairbanks has my brain in its icy claws; the temptation to eat donuts and birthday cake by the truckload is powerful. It’s been -30°F (and colder) here for weeks and weeks and weeks. We’ve had a few days here and there of temps above 0°, but from Thanksgiving until now […]

Moonsets and Moonpies at Thirty Below

19 Jan, 2011 in Essays / Main Fare by Madara

Reading a good recipe inspires my taste buds in much the same way that naughty pictures can inspire, um… carnal desire. I’m going to stay away from the idea of food porn for now, since I think the visual representation, while not in a category by itself, is a category […]

Language and Appetite: How to Write a Sexy Recipe

12 Jan, 2011 in Essays / Main Fare by Madara

“Blues is a natural fact, is something that a fellow lives. If you don’t live it you don’t have it. Young people have forgotten to cry the blues. Now they talk and get lawyers and things.” –Big Bill Broonzy I’ve been thinking about Ganesha quite a bit lately, the pleasant, […]

Ganesha’s Plate of Sweets: Upside Down Blues Cake

5 Jan, 2011 in Essays / Recipe by Madara

This year I’m making a couple of traditionally inspired dishes for New Years Eve. The first dish is called Hom Big-Jon, a play on Southern Style Hoppin’ John. It’s supposed to have a penny somewhere in it for the lucky person who finds it in his bowl, but I can […]

Hom Big-Jon: Thai Inspired Hoppin’ John

31 Dec, 2010 in Essays / Main Fare / Side Dishes / Thai Food by Madara

In Alaska, no matter how hard you try to maintain your sense of “civilization,” ultimately the natural world overwrites the man made world: snow and ice cover up the lines on the roads and drivers follow the grooves left behind by braver pioneer drivers; parkas, hats, gloves, and scarves cover […]

Fairbanks, AK: Hipsters and Foodies Need Not Apply

30 Dec, 2010 in Essays / Uncategorized by Madara

It’s easy enough to eat the leftovers from successful parts of Christmas dinner, but what about the spectacular failures I came up with? What was I to do with the giant vat of Southern Style Mac & Cheese, (henceforth the “Rubber Style Mac & Cheese”)? What is it they say […]

Dessertes de la Table: a Fancy French term for “Leftovers”

27 Dec, 2010 in Essays / Main Fare / Recipe / Side Dishes by Madara

I now have access to a Super Secret Family Cookbook from a Danish Grandmother in the Midwest. The Danish Grandmother came to America in 1933 when she was 16 years old. And she came alone. Her recipe book is filled with things that a Southerner finds strange: kolaches, fastnachts kuchle, […]

Where My Shorties At? A Postmodern Spin on an Old ...

23 Dec, 2010 in Essays / Main Fare / Recipe by Madara

Thai food is not only Fairbanks’ favorite cuisine, it’s also turning out to be a theme in this blog. Thai flavors are as ubiquitous as snow, so it’s no mere coincidence that when folks leave this place, they are sentimental about many things and Thai food usually ranks in the […]

You Can’t Go Home Again: Part III in a Series ...

21 Dec, 2010 in Essays / Recipe / Thai Food by Madara

Solstice is the cul du sac of winter, a place where the disappearing sun goes to turn around and return home. Winter solstice is a psychological balm for those of us living in Alaska. It marks the end of loss. Tomorrow we will begin to gain daylight, slowly at first, […]

How to Fatten Hansel in Order to Eat Him for ...

20 Dec, 2010 in Essays / Main Fare / Sauces by Madara

Thai Curry, Round 2: Last night I visited my friend, a well known (but paradoxically private) poet who will henceforth be known as the Kitchen Vixen. The Vixen lives, like many people in Fairbanks, in a cabin with no running water and an outhouse. I love cooking with her in […]

Cabin Curry: How to Avoid the Outhouse at -25F.

19 Dec, 2010 in Essays / Main Fare / Seafood by Madara

First of all, it’s still -37°F here, and we are down to 3 hours and 44 minutes of light. The sun will rise a paltry 2.1° above the horizon today. Second of all, I got quite the culinary shock yesterday. After all the bitching I did in my last post […]

Where Can I Get Durian Fruit In Fairbanks, Alaska?

17 Dec, 2010 in Essays / Main Fare / Seafood by Madara

“I want to shake off the dust of this one-horse town. I want to explore the world. I want to watch TV in a different time zone. I want to visit strange, exotic malls…I want to live, Marge! Won’t you let me live?” -Homer Simpson I teach college English in […]

Eskimo Ice Cream and the Appeal of the “Exotic”

13 Dec, 2010 in Essays / Recipe / Seafood by Madara

I try not to be bitter over my exile in this Winter Wasteland. I try to love this place the way some of my friends and colleagues do. But I. Just. Can’t. It’s dark here. Nothing is easy in the cold. My footing is still, after 15 years in Alaska, […]

Drunken Winter Crazy Cookies

9 Dec, 2010 in Essays / Uncategorized by Madara

Imaginary Jamon Seranno Tapas: 1 small loaf of artisan bread 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, warmed in a pan 1 package *jamon serrano, or prosciutto ham 20-30 salt cured Moroccan olives Thinly sliced Manchego cheese 1 tsp each of rosemary, crushed red pepper, and sea salt *I can’t get […]

Christmas In Exile and Dreams of Jamon Serrano

6 Dec, 2010 in Essays / Side Dishes by Madara

This guy I know, henceforth known as The Hot Boyfriend, is an absolute animal, tearing into a plate of my Gruyere scalloped potatoes the same way he tears off my clothes…with lusty enthusiasm. He’s a poet and an ultra runner (no small feat in Fairbanks, Alaska) who comes to my […]

A Lusty Salad of White Shrimp, Campari Tomatoes, and Ginger

16 Nov, 2010 in Essays / Seafood by Madara

On cold winter weekends I occasionally marinate myself in tequila (you would too if the sun only made a cursory 3 hour appearance each day), but during the week I soberly teach English at the local state University. As adjunct faculty I come into contact with a new round of […]

Mexican Train Style Pork

15 Nov, 2010 in Essays / Main Fare / Pork / Recipe by Madara

Butterscotch Syrup for French Toast 1/2 cup brown sugar 1 tbsp real vanilla 1/4 cup water 1/4 stick of butter 1/4 cup cream or half & half I usually throw these all into a cold pan together, slowly bringing up the heat and whisking until it comes to a boil. […]

Butterscotch Syrup: Seals up Old Wounds

13 Nov, 2010 in Essays / Recipe / Sauces by Madara