It had a been a while since I'd eaten any organ meats (unless you count Seattle street dogs), so I decided to head down to the International District for some strange.

I recalled something that had piqued my interest at Seven Stars Pepper. Seven Stars Pepper would make up one of the points of Seattle's "Sichuan Triangle" if there were more than two Sichuan restaurants at the intersection. With the helpfully-named Sichuanese Chinese Restaurant across the street, it's more like the "Sichuan-Shortest-Distance-Between-Two-Points."

Don't ask me which is better. I've had delicious food at both, but I like Seven Stars because you can sit by one of its second-floor windows and look out over the intersection. Not that there's much too look at there, unless you get a rush watching motorists make illegal left turns. It's like sitting up in a rig.

You belong to the night

So on that proverbial dark and stormy night I held the menu up and stuck my finger on the spot that said "Hot Pepper Intestine." Whenever I order such dishes in the ID, the server usually tries to dissuade me. This time, she acted like it was nothing. Maybe because I chose a back-up dish, the reliable and delicious dan dan noodles and ground pork with the house-made hand-shaven noodles. That way, if I lost my nerve with the hot and spicy colon blow, I'd be able to salvage the meal, assuming I retained my appetite.

Anyone who's read this blog for the past couple years knows that I'm kind of a swinger when it comes to eating, but that night my stomach didn't feel so iron-clad. I'd been getting lazy in the kitchen, eating cheese and crackers and Subway sandwiches during the past month. And then there was my second attempt at natto, the worst comeback attempt since Guns N' Roses' "Chinese Democracy."

So I waited, dreading the hot pepper intestine, wondering if I'd lost my mojo. This was silly, since I was getting ground pork in my dan dan noodles. Who knows how much intestine goes into ground pork? Pork intestine couldn't be that bad, as long as the kitchen's definition of intestine didn't extend to "rectum." I kept picturing rancid, spaghetti-like coils.

Processing the thing for the process

Instead, I got a spicy stir-fry of carrots, bell pepper, celery, dried chilies, and bamboo with fat chunks of teriyaki chicken-colored intestine sliced lengthwise, revealing the inner groove of digestive voyages. (This is the area that needs to be cleaned very, very well!) Those chunks had the classic, smoky pork flavor, and with each bite, I took in a spurt of heart-stopping grease, which is probably why the dish required no sauce. Their papery outer layer gave way to fatty tissue inside, reminding me of a deep-fried Asian eggplant recipe from my Sichuan cookbook.

Dan dan dan dan dan dan dan dan dan dan dan dan dan dan dan dan

You should share the hot pepper intestine, along with at least one lighter, milder dish to cut the fat and heat of the pig guts. The intestine and dan dan noodles didn't make for a good pairing. The noodles sit in a bath of thick, spicy sesame sauce, similar in taste and texture to peanut sauce. With the check, I got a fortune cookie saying I would enjoy good health. As I hoisted myself out of my chair and slogged out of the place on leaden legs, I could only hope that fortune would come to pass.

Hot pepper intense-tine

How natto can contort even the handsomest features

Am I stubborn? I don't think I'm stubborn. I'm not... right? I'll let a DeVry graduate who owns a cellphone kiosk give me his "if I ran the world" speech, even if he gets his facts from the T-Man. There might be a sliver of truth in there, and stubborn or not, I'm always up for a new angle.

Beacon of open-mindedness that I am, I decided to give natto a second chance. The sticky, fermented soybeans enjoyed across Japan bested me when I tried them several months back, but I'm not one to hold a grudge, even though they had me dry-heaving over my kitchen trash can.

I want to the recently-opened Genki Sushi on Broadway to get dinner with my friend Scott, his wife Tsuyuko and Stella, their baby girl. Genki delivers most of its sushi via conveyor belt, but you can order off a menu, too, and that's where you get the good stuff, such as a natto hand roll.

Cool, I thought. It's been a while since I barfed in a restaurant.

Stella considers the role of natto in her future

Japanese-born Tsuyuko likes her natto, and Scott told me he has to leave the room when she heats it up. He's hoping their half-Japanese child gets her tastebuds from her American side, at least when it comes to rotting legumes.

Because of the smell, Scott has no desire to try natto. I asked Tsuyuko if she could describe its flavor. Did it remind her of anything? She thought for a second.

"Natto is natto," she said.

I had my own answer: bile.

Despite that, I felt obligated to give natto another chance. Why? Because I'm a well-traveled, culturally-sensitive, global citizen. Wink wink.

I distrusted my first natto experience. I must have gotten an inferior brand. Maybe I should have stirred it more (you're supposed to stir it). Maybe I should have put egg in it (many Japanese eat natto with eggs). Maybe I should have taken a Xanax first.

The waitress, who had given me an approving nod when I ordered the natto hand roll, brought it over. It was a cone-shaped nori roll, with a tan splotch of natto nestled in the rice. It had that sweet, freezer-burned smell that I remembered from before. Not a good sign. I bit into it anyway. Come on, I thought, taste good.

It didn't.

I managed a couple more bites and threw the remaining arrow point of the roll onto a plate. I might have said that I couldn't take it anymore.

At that point I wanted another one of the hot dog rolls I had eaten when we first got there. Hot dog sushi: sketchy and weird, but it tastes like home.

It's just hot dog, egg, and rice. Why wouldn't that taste good with wasabi and soy sauce? It does.

From The New York Times:

'Mr. Ross first brought a group of San Franciscans together to chow down on cooked insects a year ago, and he was surprised when the guests started buzzing around him for raw samples. "I was like, 'O.K., go for it,' " he said. "And then that just led to this very weird erotism moment when people were practically hugging each other while eating these live insects." The spirit of the moment overflowed, leading, in a few cases, to groping and kissing in a corner.'

When you eat Asian, you have to deal with fishy odors. That's how it goes. The up side is that once you get a mouthful of the dish, it usually tastes better than it smells. And you will discover that you need the burning-coals-under-your-feet initiation to experience exciting, complex flavors.

So if the waiter brings you a steaming plate that smells like a dirty diaper, get over it!

That's what I had to do at 663 Bistro, a standard, decent International District Chinese restaurant.

I ordered stir-fried lotus root with vegetables, not knowing how things were going to go down, and the waiter brought me this hot pile of slenderly cut lotus root in a cornstarch-thickened soy-based sauce with ginger, carrots and zucchini.

And that reference I made to diapers above? Insert here.

There it sat, stinking up the place, but I was paying for it. I had little choice but to give it a try.

So that's what I did, and it was great. I asked my waiter, and she told me the smell came from some kind of dried fish used in Chinese cooking for flavoring. The fish gave it a nice saltiness, but the lotus root itself yielded the most pleasure. It was all about texture. If it had any flavor of its own, I couldn't detect it through the ginger, the sauce, and of course, the fish, but the way it crunched, like a really dense, less fibrous apple, gave me great satisfaction. If I had picked up one of those tidy little discs in my fingers and broke it in half, I'm sure it would have made a nice snap.

In her book "Land of Plenty," culinary expert Fuchsia Dunlop describes lotus this way:

The lotus, or water lily, is a traditional symbol of spiritual enlightenment for Buddhists because its roots lie in mud and filth but its stems reach skywards to blossom in pure, exquisite beauty. The plant also has many culinary uses. Its seeds are made into sweetmeats and its leaves are used in various dishes.

Hello all,

Thanks for reading. I should have posted something sooner, but I've been busy with a side project this month. I thought I'd be able to write a couple posts this month, but it just hasn't happened.

I should be back in September. The weirdness must go on.

I went over to the Broadway Sunday Farmers Market today and stumbled onto a real gem: saskatoon berries. Also known as serviceberries or shadberries, these deciduous fruits grown on shrubs and trees and can be found near water.

I didn't bring my camera to the market, so no pics of the booth and the guy, but they came from a forager who also picks mushrooms and whatever else he and his assistants can find.

Saskatoon berries resemble cranberries in color, blueberries in texture and figs in taste. The vendor recommended making a pie out of them, but I've just been eating them from the container all afternoon. I bet they would make a good pie though, something rich and sticky like mince.

According to him, these fruits come out for only three weeks a year in this area, so I would recommend trolling the local farmers markets and seeing if you can find them.

Sask it up!

During my summer internship at a Cambodian newspaper, one of the American reporters brought some durian back to the office. She offered pieces of the spiky, football-sized fruit to the staff in the newsroom, and then informed us that it would be out on the deck.

That's the deal with durian. It stinks. Once you open it up, it stays outside.

But it's popular all over Asia. Last weekend, I met a guy from Taiwan who said it was known in his country as the "king of fruit."

It's one of those experiences that brings to mind jingoistic, colonial era phrases, phrases like "the Oriental mind" or "the mysterious East." When an Asian describes as delicious a fruit that smells like a hot dumpster on a summer day, you begin to wonder if he could be wired differently.

Of course, this is nonsense. Even in Singapore, a Mecca for en-durians, the government has banned the noxious fruit from public transportation.

I wonder if anyone has ever made "durian knuckles"

Durians grow on trees that can grow over 100 feet tall. You don't want to be under five pounds of armored, densely-packed pulp when it drops from that height. My theory: because of its putrid smell and indifference to the human skulls it might knock on its way to the forest floor, durian intrigues people. Women love it, men want to be it. When you subdue a durian, you conquer nature and absorb its powers.

I've eaten durian several times, and although I initially ate it to show off, I've come to like it. The aril, the custardy flesh that grows around the seeds, is creamy and sweet. It reminds me of caramelized onions, with an aftertaste of maple syrup. Being a Vermonter, I welcome the flavor of sweet, boiled sap in any form.

So it's not so foreign after all. In the jungles of Thailand, we find something that reminds us of home.

Last Saturday, I got the urge to buy a durian and sample the fruit to passers-by outside my Capitol Hill apartment building. You know, get the man on the street angle. It was a rare Seattle sunny day, so I'd get the yard sale runoff.

I went to the friendly Lam's Seafood Market in Chinatown. An employee explained the thorns should be spread further apart. Tight clusters of thorns would mean smaller sections of pulp inside. I saw some that had cracked at the top, and he said they would be okay to eat. Even so, I feared the fruit inside would be dried out and asked for one without cracks.

My durian, which weighed about seven pounds, came in just under nine dollars. It had shipped frozen from Thailand, and the outside smelled like cantaloupe. I had seen unfrozen durians at Lam's, but they cost about three times as much. I'm sure they're better, whatever "better" means for a fruit that smells like rotten gym clothes.


On the bus with my durian: in protest against Singapore's repressive segregationist fruit policies

At the bus stop, I met Jude, the Taiwanese student who informed me durian is known as the "king of fruit" back home.

"It increases the energy of the body," he said.

In Phnom Penh, one of my Cambodian friends told me that durian is a "hot" fruit. This mystified me, because he did not mean "hot" as in "warm" or "spicy." I have since become familiar with Traditional Chinese Medicine, which classifies foods in terms of heat and cold, but these terms relate to energy, not temperature. Chinese doctors prescribe "hot" or "cold" substances depending on the patient's ailment and physiology.

Jude's reference to energy coincided nicely with my Cambodian friend's assertion of heat.

Despite the durian's royal status, Jude told me he'd never eaten the fruit. I asked him why. He looked away, grinning bashfully and shaking his head. It was like he felt guilty for hating it.

***********

I wondered how this was going to go, the random guy with a table outside the random apartment building asking people to ingest a foreign fruit with lethal spikes and a nasty stench. On the other hand, if I offered chocolate chip cookies, they'd probably think I was trying to trick or seduce them. You know, strangers with candy, Hansel and Gretel, Mark Foley. But I wasn't sugarcoating anything. "Here's something nasty. Eat it and tell me how much you hate it."

My neighbor Sean, a frequent barbecuing conspirator, offered to take pictures and video footage while I hawked the putrid produce. I began cutting up the durian as the guy at Lam's had instructed, starting at the top and making tent-wire incisions down the sides. It was like cutting into a pineapple, with the spines adding an element of danger.

As soon I penetrated the skin, the reek of refrigerator-that-lost-power-overnight wafted into my face. It wasn't as strong as I'd expected. The fruit was still cold from the freezing, perhaps blunting its legendary powers to bring Western tourists to their knees.


Exposing the inner funk

John, the co-manager of the condo complex next door, took a break from his garage sale to check out my social experiment. He found it intriguing, but said he would leave the sampling to braver souls.

His verdict on the odor: when you put fish remains in the trash, and what they smell like the next morning.

Sean asked me for a chunk. He chewed it for a few seconds and headed for the trash. His critique was succinct: "I don't want that in my mouth."


Cold, creamy durian flesh

Our sampling went on like that, although the test subjects showed more restraint with their descriptors.

"The initial taste is kinda almost rancid," said Adam, the first sampler. "And afterward it's kind of sweet and good."

The cold storage probably did deaden the taste and smell a bit. This factor, along with the first sunny weather we'd had in more than a week, opened up people's minds and mouths.

"Well, the garbage goes away after a bit," said Adrienne after a few chews.

I gave her a couple tablespoons worth, but what she consumed could have been measured in angstroms.

Liz, a Queen Anne resident on her way to some rooftop sunbathing, thought she had stumbled upon breadfruit from her home state of Hawaii. Although both fruits have the same studded armor, breadfruit is starchier, while durian is creamy.

"I like it about as much as [breadfruit], which is not that much," she said.

Our neighbor Anne, who took a few photos for this post, declared, "It tastes like an onion smoothie."


L.M.L.Y.D.

Tananya, a woman from Thailand, wouldn't touch the red-headed, frozen stepchild of her beloved King.

She explained the differences between the fresh and the shipped.

"It's more sour and bitter," she said of my prized exhibit. When imported, durian "becomes not hard."

In other words, limp and mushy.

Offering the frozen durian to a native Thai was like giving a visiting Southerner Kentucky Fried Chicken. "Here you go -- home-cooking! Doesn't this bring you back to ol' Dixie?"

I appreciated Mary, who came after, for her more forgiving comments.

"I feel like it would be good for baking."

That's the spirit. Thank you, Mary.

Special thanks to Sean Moore and Anne Blackburn for taking photos

Coffee paraphernalia. The tall one in the back is the Oji, a Japanese cold-brewing device that takes 6 hours to brew at 42-43 drops per minute.

Long before I became the Gruesome Gourmand, my heart belonged to the mug. As a teenager, I counted time in refills at the local pastry shop in Montpelier, Vermont. At night, I continued the jittery journey at Julio's, a Mexican restaurant that put up with minors who drank refill after refill between shivering smoke breaks on the winter sidewalks.

You might think I'm brewing pots of Oolong tea to go with my Asian experiments or reclining on the couch with a basket of fried crickets and beer. No, coffee is the liquid muse for me. Give me a smoky, sooty shot of espresso with blond crema highlights, and I will purr.

I attended Caffe Vita's free PBS (Public Brewing School) demonstration on a Saturday morning at their Capitol Hill shop. In Seattle, I hear a lot about roasting, but not much about brewing. It excited me to learn about different brewing methods. And it gave me a reason to write about coffee. I have written about Greek coffee, which tasted good but left a bad flavor in my mouth.

At Caffe Vita, our host, Andy, brought about a dozen coffee devotees past a 1930s' cast iron German roaster, up to one of those crow's nest offices that looks down on the factory floor. Aside from all the desks and coffee gadgets (e.g. a mini roaster for sampling new shipments of raw beans), they had set up the place like a classroom, with rows of chairs facing a table set up with brewing apparatuses.

Non-enthusiasts might roll their eyes and groan, "What difference does it make? Coffee is coffee." As I learned, it makes a huge difference. I took part in a controlled experiment. Andy used the same beans, Guatemalan Finca Nuevo Viñas, for the whole presentation, and each contraption yielded different flavors and textures.

I'll briefly describe each device, which might seem remedial to some of you, but I'm trying to make this democratic. Believe it or not, I know people in Seattle, not just Sanka-sipping grandmas, who still think a Styrofoam cup of six-hour-old jet fuel is good enough.

But first, some general information about coffee brewing.

-Most home, automatic drip machines don't get the water hot enough to adequately extract flavors from coffee. The devices in this post give you more control over the heat, as you'll see.

-Andy suggested using a burr grinder, which chops up the coffee uniformly. I have a blade grinder, and I compensate for its irregularity by shaking and tipping the grinder while it runs. It's kind of ghetto, but it helps.

-The finer the grind, the more surface area, the more flavor penetration. This sounds like a good thing, but with most brewing methods, you want a coarser grind -- the 5 or 6 setting on most grinders. With espresso, the water passes through quickly, so you use a fine grind to extract all the coffee essence you can. But with drip methods and French presses, the coffee and grounds spend more time together, and you don't want to over-brew.

-Never buy pre-ground coffee. Grind it yourself.

-Buy small quantities of beans, no more than a pound at a time, and store them at room temperature in an airtight container.

-Never wash your coffee apparatus with soap. Soap takes off the residual oils that season your equipment. Just use water. If there's lots of residue, or the equipment hasn't been used in a long time, some mild soap or vinegar is okay. It's best to rinse out your equipment after you use it.

French Press

What it is: The French Press is a glass decanter with a removable plunger top. It produces a strong brew with heavy "tongue" (the beverage's density and texture) with sediment at the bottom.

Origins: Unclear, possibly invented in 19th century France. Patented by an Italian in the 1930s.

How it works: You add grounds and hot water and let them marinate together for four minutes. You depress the plunger, which strains the grounds out of the water and shoves them to the bottom, leaving behind a strong, slightly chewy brew.

Tips:

For measurement, pour whole beans into the dry decanter. When you can press the plunger all the way down so the ball sits flush on the top, you've got the right amount.

Use a coarse setting for the French Press, a 5 or 6 on most grinders. Because the grinds and water sit together for a relatively long period, you get a strong brew. The coarse grind also prevents the coffee from slipping through the mesh.

Heat the water to 200-205 degrees. That means boil it and let it cool for 30 seconds before dumping it into the pot.

After pouring in half the water, give the grinds 2-3 spins with a non-metal spoon (metal can crack the decanter). Known as "turbulence" or "aggravation," this releases flavor. Too much stirring can over-brew the coffee and make it bitter.

Ideally, you should drink French press coffee within 20 minutes. Even through the mesh screen, the grinds are still in contact with the coffee, adding strength and bitterness.

Chemex

What it is: The Chemex is an hourglass-shaped glass decanter that uses paper filters. You will get a "cleaner" brew than with a French press or a reusable filter because the paper filter won't let any coffee sediment through.

Origins: Invented in 1941 by German chemist Peter J. Schlumbohm. He lived in the US and based his design on laboratory vessels.

How it works: The Chemex works like a drip coffeemaker, except you boil the water in a kettle and pour it in yourself.

Tips:

For 2 ½ cups of water, use 5 tbsp of ground coffee, ground on setting 5. Heat the water to 200-205 degrees, just below boiling. Measure out the water before heating it up so you don't have to worry about how much to use during brewing.

Pour hot water onto the filter to wash away dust or residues. Pour hot water into the pot and dump it out before brewing. This heats up the pot and readies it for brewing.

After you put the grounds into the pot, make a dimple with your finger in the center. This allows the water to saturate the grinds evenly.

Add water steadily, not all at once. It should take about four minutes to brew. Pour water over the sides of the grounds to extract flavor evenly.

The pitcher has a "belly button" in the side of the glass. This tells you how far up to brew. When the coffee hits this mark, you're done.

Pour over Melitta-style drip

What it is: This is the more familiar version of the Chemex: a conical, paper filter sits inside a plastic cone, which rests atop a glass pitcher. Andy used a hemp paper filter, which has less "paper" flavor than standard disposable filters. Like the Chemex, the pour over will make a clearer and less muddy coffee than a French press.

Origins: Melitta isn't just the standard filter brand we all know and love. It's the company started by Melitta Bentz, a Dresden, Germany housewife who invented the paper filter in 1908.

How it works: Like a manual drip coffee maker, except it's BYOW: Boil Your Own Water. (Hilarious, I know.)

Tips:

Heat up your apparatus with a bit of hot water and dump it out. Wet the filter to wash away dust.

Make one fold along each edge of the filter, along the seams. Water pours faster through the seams than the rest of the filter, so folding evens out the brew speed.

Grind the coffee on 5 (medium-fine). Use 1 tbsp of grinds for every 4-6 oz of water. Measure out the water before heating it up so you don't have to worry about how much to use during brewing. Heat the water to 200-205 degrees.

Pour water over the grinds in increments. Let it brew for 30 seconds after the initial pour before adding more.

Bialetti

What it is: A two-chambered aluminum pot, heated directly on the stove, that brews bottom-to-top. This was my favorite. I already owned one when I went to the class, but I went out a few days later and got a larger size. Capable of producing crema, the rich, blond foam you see in espresso shots, the Bialetti brews a heavier, deeper cup than all the others.

Andy quoted Vivace owner and roasting guru David Schomer as likening good espresso to "sticking your tongue into velvet pajamas." The Bialetti doesn't make true espresso, since it doesn't exert sufficient pressure on the grinds, but the description suited the brew.

Origins: Legend has it that Italian inventor Alfonso Bialetti, who started marketing his device in the 1930s, was inspired by washing machines that used steam and vacuum pressure. According to the Bialetti website, more than 90 percent of Italian households use the flagship model, the Moka Express.

How it works: The coffee sits in a metal strainer between two sections that screw together. Heated water from the bottom chamber passes through the grinds through a spout in the top.

Tips:

Fill the bottom chamber up to the interior markings with water.

Use a coarse grind, 5 or 6. Drop the strainer into the bottom chamber and fill it with grinds, but don't pack them down. If you do, you will create intense pressure that could uh, be bad. Screw on the top chamber.

If stove temperature is too hot, the coffee will brew too quickly and extract less flavor. I like to use medium or medium-high, which takes about ten minutes for a 12 oz machine.

Season your Bialetti when you buy it. Brew a couple batches and throw them out. Let coffee sit in the top chamber for a few hours to let it season. Wash only with warm water.

Vacuum pot AKA Siphon pot

What it is: Two glass chambers, vertically stacked, heated from below by an external source that pushes the water from the bottom chamber to mix with the coffee grinds in the upper chamber. It produces a clean, sharp brew that brings out intense fragrances -- to me, an Indian curry.

Origins: Born in 1830s' Berlin. European and American tinkerers played with the design throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

How it works: All kinds of physics that I don't understand. Vita's vacuum pot sat on a halogen burner that heated the water in the bottom chamber. The pressure forces the water into the top chamber, where it mixes with the coffee grinds. One third of the water remains below. The mixture above is stirred to create a whirlpool effect to facilitate extraction. The water and grinds bubble together for about a minute. The heat is turned off, reducing the pressure in the lower chamber. The coffee sucks back into the lower chamber, where it mixes with the un-brewed water.

Tips:

Using this strange and wonderful device takes some practice. Delicate and temperamental, it probably depends on the model you use. Check out this site here, written by a vacuum pot aficionado. The size of his collection is pretty scary.

In the end, this is what it's all about. Sitting outside the coffee shop, looking cool

The betel leaf is an intriguing thing. It looks like a standard leaf, arrowhead-shaped and green. But depending on who you ask, it's either a medicine, a breath freshener or a stimulant. Used for centuries in South and Southeast Asia, it's ceremonial and social. It's usually wrapped around an areca nut, also a stimulant, which makes your saliva red. Like chewing tobacco, it may give you cancer.

I don't know if you can find betel leaves in the States, but you can find wild betel leaves, a relation that won't make your heart race. They are used in cooking. Because I'm getting old and boring, these interest me more than their speedy cohort.

I've run across a couple recipes for a Vietnamese dish called thit bo nuong la lot: beef in wild betel leaves. "La lot" refers to the leaf, which is wrapped around spiced up ground beef and broiled. Andrea Nguyen, the award-winning cookbook writer who provided the recipe here, says beef in la lot is a snack. But if you're a single-dwelling occupant with a lot of chuck and a branch of wild betel leaves, it's dinner. A damn tasty dinner.

But it won't get you high.

You'll find the recipe here. Don't lose it. This page should be a World Heritage Site.

You can find most of the ingredients in any supermarket, unless you're out in the sticks. Seattle has a good-sized Asian population, and a probably greater mass of Asiaphiles (do they outnumber hipsters?), so there you'll find lemongrass at the better grocery stores. But I recommend going to the Asian markets, where it's cheaper and fresher.

Those are the only stores to find la lot. I got mine at Ming Tam's Grocery (next to Tamarind Tree). Funny thing, they weren't even out. I asked the manager, who had an employee fetch them from the back. She dug them out of a box and let me pick what I wanted.

I'm no professional -- cook or otherwise. But I pulled off this dish, easy. It took about an hour and a half, but if you get help, you can halve that. It's worth it. What else do you have to do, watch smug chef-leberties on the Food Network cook meals you wish you could eat? To hell with the new improved Domino's. Do what I do: turn off the TV, put on some Richard Hell or Wu-Tang or Funkadelic and rock out. Or trip out on some Eastern classical music, you know, Zakir Hussein's relentless tabla beats or the jagged tones of Japanese Gagaku.

Your life isn't over yet. Get in the kitchen, beeyotch!

Here we go.

Chef Andrea provides two spice options for the ground beef. I went with the second because of the lemongrass. Lemongrass is lemon perfume. It's always a good thing.

Here are the ingredients (minus the la lot, which I'll get to later):

Pretty standard. Oyster sauce, scallions, fish sauce, ground beef, lemongrass, salt and pepper. The Madras curry powder surprised me, but I saw it in a couple of the Asian markets, which are geared toward East, not South, Asia. Curry powder is just a mix of spices, including such fragrant wonders as garlic, cumin, cinnamon, cloves and allspice.

I had lemongrass on hand but had to defrost it. A reliable source told me to keep the stuff in the freezer. It didn't take long to thaw. I just let it sit under cold, running water for about 15 minutes. Lemongrass is already hard enough, so a lemongrass ice cube wouldn't do.

Both that and the scallions needed mincing. Nothing like mincing with a dull cleaver, stray scallion chunks pinging off the walls.

I added the lemongrass and scallions to the beef, along with the sauces and spices. Once I had churned it all in, my little closet-kitchen smelled like a pho restaurant. The sweet scallions, warm, hearth-like scent of curry powder and sunbeams of lemongrass cut through the gloomy Alice Cooper track playing through my computer.

All the best cooks say to use your hands. Get into it. Vent your frustration. I know you hate sitting in that cubicle all day, taking orders from halfwits as varicose veins colonize your neglected muscles. Pretend it's that HR guy's face right after he said you were spending "a little too much time on the Internet."

In a way, I'd ended up with sausage, except I'd be using leaves instead of guts for casing. Next up, the wild betel leaves, AKA la lot. I cleaned and separated them from their stems. Some were a bit ratty, but I got about 20 from the bunch, plenty for the recipe.

They are glossy, but matte underneath:

This is the technique. You roll the meat into logs, put them on the matte side of the leaf and roll the leaf over the log. Now, here's where Andrea gets slick. She suggests piercing the leaf with the remainder of the stem to hold the roll in place. It's standard to use skewers, but this way they're easier to eat. Wooden skewers can stick and tear up the package when you're pulling them off.

Putting them together was surprisingly easy. You would hear a pop when the stem went in. Some of the stems were too long, so I had to cut a couple with a knife, otherwise they would puncture through the other side. Some of the more wilted leaves had mushy stems. In those cases, I did use a bamboo skewer to get the holes started.

Before broiling, I had to make the dipping sauce, nuoc cham. This is the traditional Vietnamese condiment used for everything, from spring rolls to salads to noodles to burning tires. It's sweet, sour and spicy, made with fish sauce (which has the confusingly similar name nuoc mam), lime juice and sugar. You can also add garlic and chili peppers.

Don't do what I did. I've made nuoc cham before, but it's been a while, and I needed a recipe. But I didn't find a recipe - I found a gauntlet. I was crushing limes, garlic and chilies in my mortar and pestle and I ended up with a pulpy, over-spicy glop. So take Andrea Nguyen's advice and use this recipe here.

I put the logs on a baking sheet and into the oven on broil. They gave off a sweet smell that reminded me of jackfruit. It could have been the leaves or the spices. Maybe it was a neighbor baking a pie. Who knows.

They finished fast, in about six minutes. The leaves shriveled around them like they'd been cooked in a vacuum sealer. The meat was juicy. I knew I was going to have a good time shoveling these things down my throat, without shame, alone in my kitchen.

Mine all mine. The American Dream.

Despite their bovine origins, the meat cigars tasted like a vibrant pork sausage, probably because of the spices. I think these flavors must have masked that of the leaves because all I noticed was their perfect chewiness. Generally, leaves of this type are too fibrous. You'd be pulling stems out your teeth. That's the magic of la lot.

The dipping sauce, as I said, had too much acidity and heat. Believe it or not, I added fish sauce to mellow it out. But it worked well with the 'gars, making them hot and citrusy, although it was just enhancing characteristics that were already there. I had some leftover dressing made with coconut milk and fish sauce that made the rolls kind of creamy. Like chicken tenders with ranch dressing, the sorority girl standard.

Beef in la lot anticipates summer. It's like barbecue you make in your oven. It's as good as anything I've cooked over a flame. If you have people over, make a lot. You will fight over them, brother against brother, a savory Civil War.

I just love that word, boondoggle. So newsy.

Kraft, which owns Australia's yeasty spread, has been playing ping-pong with a naming contest. A spin-off product has gone from iSnack 2.0 to Cheesybite... Check it out here.

This happened late last year, but hey, it was in Australia. It takes a while for down under phenomena to make it over here. Question is, how's this Cheesybite taste? Anyone want to send me some?