Cooking Prep: Boy George became popular during the early 80s as the androgynous lead singer for the band Culture Club. To be honest, I think his image was the one thing going for the band, because I found the music to be a very boring version of the New Wave movement. With the exception of Karma Chameleon, every one of their songs sounds like the soundtrack to the last scene in every B-movie comedy from the 80s. 
How I remember Boy George is a bit different than most people. Growing up in the small northern Maine town of Fort Kent in the mid 80s, there were about four things an 8-year old Tony Wilbur gave a shit about: The Dukes of Hazzard, carrying out my responsibilities as Student of the Month, not accidentally freezing to death in the winter, and The A-Team. While my memory from 1986 is a bit hazy, since I never missed an episode of The A-Team, I almost certainly saw the episode called Cowboy George, featuring Boy George. Probably the worst cameo in American television history, but the picture of Boy George with Mr. T is priceless. Stuff like this only happened in the 80s, and I miss it.
And let's talk about Karma Chameleon for a moment. You may remember when this song topped the US charts in February 1984 - almost 30 years ago to the day. What you might not know is how bad the video is:
Apparently this video is set in 1870 Mississippi, and tells the story of a very strange cross-section of society all waiting for a riverboat. When the riverboat arrives, everyone boards and proceeds to gamble - except for Boy George, who decides to hang out on the deck and creepily sing at the people from just outside the cabin window. By the end of the video, a thief and gambling cheat is discovered on the boat, and is forced to walk the plank of the Chameleon. Moral? Karma's a bitch. Don't cheat and steal, or Boy George will make you walk the plank.
I haven't had time to fact check the video, but I think there could be one or two historical inaccuracies between the video and how Mississippi in 1870 really was.
Post-Culture Club, Boy George has kept himself busy with solo work, a fashion line, doing every drug he can get his hands on, and prison time for imprisoning male escorts. Even with his busy schedule, he has also found time to pull together a macrobiotic cookbook. For those of you who are still fans, Boy George will be at the Royale in Boston on Saturday, April 19. Run, don't walk, to get tickets!
Cookbook:
Apparently you can't judge a book by it's cover anymore? What the cover of THIS book doesn't tell you is that these recipes are mostly vegan and macrobiotic. I have no problem with that, but Boy George uses ingredients that I'm not sure even Whole Foods carries. Here are a couple examples: amasake, bancha twig tea, kanten, mirin, and wakame - to name a few. Not even that shop in Gremlins where the father buys Gizmo the Mogwai would carry this stuff. I'm all for trying new things, but this was not the night for it.
Choosing three recipes proved to be a bit difficult, because in addition to wanting to use ones with ingredients that I knew I could find during only one (inexpensive) supermarket stop, I also wanted it to taste good. In the end, we chose very basic, yet understandable recipes.
Amber and I headed over to America's Food Basket to buy the groceries. Truth be told, we drove way past Stop and Shop by accident, and so we decided to give AFB a shot. At first glance, one might think that this Food Basket is for all the Americas - North, Central, and South. On the contrary, according to everything from the website, to my grocery receipt, to every blurb I could possibly find regarding this store on the internet, they just screwed up the sign. Amber and I are certainly not ones to let an erroneously-placed apostrophe get in the way of some great bargains, and so we were happy to shop there. Somehow this place ended up being much less expensive than Stop and Shop and Market Basket, so I plan to continue my shopping here. Plus, they sell exotic vegetables and roots you never knew existed from countries you've never heard of. A word of advice: look the other way when you walk through their meat department.
While we were shopping, we even managed to track down a few 'appetizers'. Amber got herself some fresh 'French' bread (tasted nothing like French bread), and I found some hot pork rinds. I haven't had a pork rind in about 16 years; the last bag I bought was the British equivalent - pork 'cracklings' - from the County Arms pub in Winchester, England during my study abroad. They weren't nearly as delicious as I remember them, although the were certainly hotter.
Theme For the Evening: Bad math and metric conversions
Cooking Companion: Amber Thacher, long-time friend and 80s music enthusiast.
Recipes:
Parsnip and Pear Soup
1 tbsp sunflower oil
1 small onion, sliced
sea salt
350g parsnips, chopped
100g pears, chopped
coriander leaves, for decoration
Heat the oil in a 2-litre saucepan and add the onion. Add a pinch of sea salt. Saute over high heat for a minute or so. Add 1 tbsp water and continue to saute for another minute. Add the parsnip and 1 litre water. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium, simmer for about 10 minutes.
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| holding parsnips, confused by metric |
Add the pear and cook for another 5 minutes until the parsnip is soft. Remove from the heat and put in a blender or food processor. Process until well blended, and then return the mixture to the pan. Add more water, if the soup seems too thick, and reheat. Season to taste with sea salt and simmer for 1-2 minutes. Serve garnished with the coriander leaves.
Thoughts: This was absolutely the highlight of the meal - and so simple to make, too! My curiosity was piqued, because I had no idea what the combination of pear and parsnip would taste like. We substituted olive oil for sunflower oil, because I wasn't about to purchase a bottle of it for just 1 tbsp. I strongly recommend this recipe for my vegan (that's you, Karen) and non-vegan friends alike. It has a very sweet and earthy taste, and both the fruit and the root blend well together. And you also get to use the blender, which is always fun! It ended up being a bit watery, but I imagine you can just thicken it by simmering it longer, or just adding less water to the initial production. Don't rely on just this for a meal, because you will be hungry again about 8 minutes after you eat this. After all, 100g of pears is one pear, and 350g of parsnips is 3 parsnips. That, and 1 small onion is all you're eating!
Lorenzo's Pasta
500g organic spaghetti
2 tbsp olive oil
3 large cloves garlic
450g jar organic sugar-free tomato sauce
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp maple syrup
black pepper, to taste
30g fresh basil, chopped
Cook the pasta according to the packet instructions. Drain and rinse very lightly with boiling water.
While the pasta is cooking, heat the oil in a large saucepan and fry the garlic for a few minutes over a medium to high heat. If you don't like garlic, remove it from the pan now - the oil will have taken only a subtle garlic flavor.
Add the tomato sauce, maple syrup, and black pepper to the pan. Cook for 3-4 minutes then add the chopped basil. Add the pasta to the sauce, and toss well before serving to coat the pasta in the sauce.
Thoughts: Booo-ring. As you can see from the picture, we tried to make the pasta exciting, but it just wasn't happening. This is what happens when you are stuck with only one main that you actually want to cook. We didn't even really want to cook it. This was by far the most normal recipe in the book, and also the most plain. We also substituted a regular jar of tomato sauce for the organic one, because it was cheaper. Perhaps this completely goes against the spirit of this cookbook, but whatever. This also made the maple syrup overkill, because the sauce was already sweetened just fine by delicious high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Mmmmmmmm. Basil and garlic makes everything taste great, and we made it un-vegan at the end by sprinkling some parmesan cheese on it to give it a kick. Skip this recipe, folks. Or better yet, just boil pasta and add spaghetti sauce without a recipe like everyone else. 
Jammy Tarts300g 80% wholemeal flour (preferably organic)
1/4 tsp sea salt
100ml corn oil
50ml maple syrup
4-6tbsp sparkling mineral water
sugar-free jam of your choice
Preheat the oven to 200C/gas 6.
Combine the flour and the sea salt in a mixing bowl. Mix the oil and the syrup in a jug and then add it to the flour. Slowly, add enough water to form a dough. Knead lightly for a minute with your hands. Try not to work the pastry too much or it will be tough: it should remain powdery. Put the pastry in the freezer for 5 minutes.
Remove the dough from the freezer. Spread a little flour over the worktop and gently roll out the dough to a thickness of about 7-8mm. Using a 4cm round pastry cutter, stamp out 15 or so rounds. Place each pastry circle in a muffin tray, and make a little depression in the pastry with your thumb. Fill each with 1/2tsp of jam.
Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes.
Thoughts: We had some major substitutions on this one. Most were intentional, but we made a few mistakes as well. We didn't use organic wholemeal flour. Sorry, Boy George. I also thought we were safe using olive oil instead of corn oil. Turns out, 100ml is a shitload of olive oil to use in a recipe that calls for corn oil instead. We opted for sugary jam instead of sugar free - because we had it. Amber forgot to include the sparkling mineral water, so we used regular tap water. Since we didn't have a rolling pin, Amber used what we had available and put a rum bottle to work. We also didn't have cookie cutters, so she used a Sam Adams beer sampler instead. I get the feeling that she would have cooking chemistry with Coolio.
Despite all of the substitutions, the cookies were...OK - maybe a bit bland, perhaps? They actually tasted like something that would pair nicely with tea. Definitely more of a tea biscuit than an Oreo, but I'll take what I can get. I think this recipe would have been much better if we had used the actual ingredients.
Here is a picture of Amber and myself celebrating with a job well-done:
Verdict: Soup was wonderful, pasta was eh, and cookies were hmmmm. OK overall, but not our best. DO NOT USE THIS COOKBOOK IF YOU CANNOT DO MATH. Amber and I spent much longer than we should have trying to convert grams to ounces to cups. It's important to note that neither of us can do math beyond what is needed to do our taxes or to calculate how many touchdowns are needed to take the lead in a game. I don't know if Boy George punished us with gram measurements because it is the system the British use, or because the closest measuring tool he had on hand was his drug scale. Either way, download a measurement converter app long before you leave your house for the grocery store if you want to get in on this cookbook (spoiler alert: you don't).
Grades:
Cookbook Variety: D- (B- if you're vegan and can find all the ingredients)
Cost: A (boxed pasta and pasta sauce are very cheap. everything else is reasonable)
Ease & Time of Preparation: A (everything was easy to make - cookies were the most challenging)
Taste: B- = (soup carried the meal)
Bonus Grade:
Ease of recipe metric conversion: F+
Overall Grade: C- (A- for vegan math teachers)
Overall Grade: C- (A- for vegan math teachers)
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