Main Fare

*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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Tart Little Piggy

a Food Writer and Her Library