Diogenes Does Argentina

Nothing is better for entertaining guests during the cold of a Buenos Aires winter than a great frittata. They're dead simple to make and can be very healthful. Here's how you do it:

Put a heavy cast iron or ovenproof pan on the stove and turn the heat to medium. Put a couple of good glugs of olive oil in the pan. Meanwhile, wash and chop up a head of broccoli, including the stem, which you should slice horizontally. Layer the pieces in the bottom of the pan and then add other veggies and ingredients. Last night, I went with sliced portobello mushrooms and peas. Onions and cherry tomatoes would have been great too.

(At this point, get your oven preheating at 450 F. If you have a broil function, use it).

Let everything cook for a couple of minutes. You can mix it if you think it needs it. Meanwhile, beat a bunch of eggs. I was cooking for four adults, so I used 8 eggs and knew I'd have leftovers.

Pour the beaten eggs over the veggies in the pan and let it continue cooking for a good 10 minutes, till the sides begin looking pretty firm. The top will be wet still. Now is the time to add some cheese on top if that's the way you roll. Almost any cheese will work well. I used sardo last night and have had good success with everything from grated mozzarella to ricotta.

Pop the pan into the oven. If you have a broiler, the whole thing will be done in probably 5 minutes, 10 maximum. If your oven doesn't broil, it will need more like 15 minutes or longer if you've used a lot of eggs (by which I mean more than, say, 5 eggs).

I've got a longstanding issue with my left knee, and I've only recently discovered an exercise that comes close to being a silver bullet: reverse elevated lunges.

The name is a bit of a mouthful, but the exercise is simple: You step up onto a bench or a box and then step off backward with one leg, performing a lunge in reverse down and off the bench or box. I like to take a very thin weight plate (the smallest one I can find) and place it under the heel of the foot on the bench or box, which helps me keep my tibia in a more upright position and significantly reduces wear and tear on the patellar tendon and such.

This exercise has done wonders for stabilizing my knee. One more tip: Be sure to do it wearing minimalist shoes with a thin sole that will put your foot as close as possible to the surface you are pressing off of.

There's a decent video here demonstrating the basics, though it doesn't include the elevation of the heel using a thin weight plate.

If I think too much about this, I'm going to have a heart attack or stroke from the pure rage. Some couple got raided by a freaking government anti-terrorist task force because she made the mistake of searching for pressure cookers (apparently trying to figure out how to cook lentils) while her husband separately was searching for information about backpacks. Two innocuous items that apparently must have tripped the NSA's algorithms and wound up triggering a raid.

Brooks Brothers has a lot of work to do when it comes to improving the fit of their shirts. I own a few of their dress shirts and while I love the patterns and the collars and even the fabric (for non-iron fabric, it's very soft, and even somewhat breathable) the fit leaves something to be desired.

I wear the slim fit, and it's still way too billowy around the waist and in the back. I have one of their shirts in the traditional fit and I might as well use it to sail my boat; the slim fits are not that much better.

I could try the extra slim fit, but really, a guy my size should not be able to fit into an extra slim fit.

I don't know why a brand like Brooks Brothers, which has been clothing American men for decades, can't get the fit of their shirts to be anywhere near as good as an upstart brand like Hugh & Crye, which makes great shirts that fit (the size I wear with H&C is just a tad too short to be tucked in, meaning I need another brand for more formal suit-and-tie situations).

I've been taking the opportunity of late to dabble with a few non-vegetarian recipes, as my compañero en crimen, who eschews meat and poultry and usually fish, has been otherwise occupied.

Last night I roasted a chicken, something I like to do from time to time when the weather is cold. Last night, I I tried a bit of a spin on my usual practice of layering sliced lemon between the breast meat and the skin. Instead, I rubbed coarse salt on the meat and draped it with thin slices of jamon crudo serrano, which is basically a smoked ham of sorts that is very popular here in Argentina.

I decided to forgo my usual method of embedding garlic cloves deep in the breast meat, and I also failed to tuck sliced carrots under and around the bird. I wanted something lower fuss, as I was tired and not in a mood to be screwing around with a decapitated chicken for long.

Fortunately, the results were quite good. The bird wasn't enormous, but it was a good size and the breasts were very thick. In fact, I had to put it back in the oven after its first 55 minutes for another 20 minute spin, as it hadn't yet fully cooked deep in the meat.

When things were finally done (after an hour and 15 minutes of roasting at 450 F) it was delicious. The skin was extra crispy due to the salty ham right below it, and I couldn't resist snacking on it. I had it all to myself. A previous romantic interest once piggishly deprived me of the skin by scarfing down the entire thing while I prepared a side dish in the kitchen; needless to say, that relationship did not last.

This is a great recipe, particularly for a colder day. If you find yourself alone for the evening, it will brighten things up. If you have company, you will find yourself the toast of your guests.

For those of you who have not already deduced the method from the above, I'll put it in plain speak. It's simple: Get a chicken, put it on a baking sheet or in a pyrex pan, and work your fingers between the skin and the meat. Rub the meat with coarse salt and add a layer of thinly-sliced ham, or slices of a lemon. Make a couple of small cuts in the breast if you wish and embed cloves of garlic. Drizzle some olive oil over the whole thing and then pull the skin tight over the bird once more. Rub more coarse salt over the outside and then add slices onions, a head or two of garlic, and some sliced carrots under and around the bird, if you so desire.

Throw the whole thing in a pre-heated 450 F oven for at least an hour and maybe more, depending on the size of the chicken. Resist the urge to peek at it before at least an hour has passed.

Anthony Weiner is not suitable for any elected office. He does not belong in public life, period. This guy has epically bad judgment. He resigns from Congress for his bad behavior, confesses and professes remorse, and a year later is doing the exact same thing, only at an escalated level (penis pics? Seriously, Anthony?).

Leaving aside the whole betraying his poor wife AGAIN thing, let's focus on the part of this story that most immediately disqualifies this guy from holding office: Horrifically bad judgment. Did he really think he'd get away with it again? Did he think his stupid "Carlos Danger" pseudonym would protect him, or that the 22 year old woman he was dirty talking to and sending photos of his junk would protect him? He was obviously already planning to return to public life; you'd have thought he would have learned his lesson and stopped his bad behavior. You'd have been wrong.

This guy loses a job he loves because of his idiotic misbehavior and then goes and does the. same. fucking. thing. again.

What an idiot!

No one so stupid should be holding office in the United States. This man is a fucking moron and a jerk and a liar. He lies blithely and skillfully and without remorse. He does not think he should have to suffer any consequences for his idiocy. His poor wife. Why does she stay with him?

This recipe is called "Cauliflower a la ingrates" because I made it once for some cretinous children with degenerate tastebuds who did not appreciate it. Ingrates.

Chop a large head of cauliflower and a couple of large yellow onions. Pick some firm green veggies to add in as well; I particularly like brussels sprouts sliced in half. Leeks work well too.

Put all the veggies in a large bowl and sprinkle plenty of turmeric over them. Add olive oil - a lot of olive oil. Mix the whole thing together with a spatula till the veggies are all coated in the turmeric/olive oil. Everything should be looking pretty yellow from the turmeric and slick from the oil.

Add coarse salt (kosher works well, as does large-flake sea salt) and some freshly ground black pepper. If you have other spices you want to add, go for it. I imagine anise would work well, and I've gotten good results from just a tiny pinch of cinnamon. Cumin would also be solid here.

Put the whole thing in a pyrex pan and throw it into a preheated oven at about 415 F and leave it alone for approximately 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook some brown rice and lentils, a cup or so of each.  When they're done, drain any excess water (you want them fairly dry) and mix them together in the bowl in which you previously mixed the veggies. They'll absorb whatever turmeric and olive oil remain.

After your veggies have been in the oven 30 minutes, pop them out and add the rice and lentils to the pyrex. Mix the whole thing well and put it back in the oven for another 10-15 minutes.

Get a bag of the coarsely ground cornmeal stuff used to make polenta. Avoid anything marked "instant" or "quick." You want something coarse.

Put probably two cups or so of the cornmeal stuff in a bowl and mix in some freshly ground black pepper and chunks of a firm cheese. I used sardo the other day and it was good. The best thing would be shredded sharp cheddar, but I can't find that easily here in Buenos Aires. Also, add in an ear's worth of corn, fresh and uncooked and sliced off the cob.

Once that's mixed, heat some milk in a saucepan until it's steaming. Whisk some olive oil into the milk and whip it a bit. Then pour that into the cornmeal and stir it in.

You want the entire mixture to be wet but not totally inundated. Liquid should be visible up to about the top of the cornmeal mixture, but not higher than that. Let it sit for 15 minutes so; the cornmeal will absorb some of the moisture, though the whole thing will still handle pretty wet.

Once that's had its 15 minute timeout, get a good heavy-bottomed pan heating up on the stovetop. I know I sound like a broken record, but a well-seasoned cast iron pan is your best friend, as usual. Bring it to medium heat and pour in plenty of oil. I actually prefer to use canola oil for this instead of olive oil; the higher smoking point of canola oil means you have a little more temperature to work with. That being said, keep things around medium. There's no reason to go hot on this.

Once the oil has heated up, go ahead and form a patty out of the cornmeal mixture, kind of like you would while making a burger, and put it in the pan. The oil will start frying it right away and things will cook pretty fast. Think probably in the range of 3-4 minutes per side. The patties will get a deep golden color creeping up the edges when they are ready to be flipped.

Whisk two eggs in a bowl with milk and a couple glugs of olive oil. When you've beaten it quite well, start slowly pouring in chickpea flour, whisking all the while. Don't let the mixture get too thick; it should be thinner than cream and thicker than milk.

When you've reached that consistency, stop adding the chickpea flour and start whisking vigorously for awhile till the batter is very, very smooth.

Meanwhile, fire up the stove and put a good, well-seasoned cast iron pan over medium heat. Add olive oil to that and pour in the batter when it's hot but not yet smoking.

The crepes will cook relatively quickly, so be sure to flip them over before they get burned. The more well done they are, the less soft and foldable they will be. So, get them off when they are a bit browned but not totally dark on each side.

I will admit up front that I absolutely love Westerns. As a kid, I used to watch Shane from time to time and I always thought highly of it, even though in those days I wished it had more action. The movie that really got me started on oaters though was The Cowboys, an old John Wayne classic that has sadly been largely forgotten. I became a Western junky after watching that movie, and I still haven't entirely let it go.

I wasn't planning on seeing The Lone Ranger for several reasons. For one, I have zero familiarity with the original show or characters; they meant nothing to me, despite my fondness for Westerns, and all I knew was that they had a slight whiff of '50s cheesiness about them. Also, the trailer for this movie was genuinely awful. It looked like a heavy handed, joyless train wreck (literally - lots of crashing trains in this movie).

Fortunately, I am lucky enough to be romantically involved with an exceptionally intelligent, interesting and beautiful young woman whose movie tastes overlap with my own but occasionally differ. This means that I end up seeing movies I would resist watching if left to my own devices. Last night, the young lady dragged yours truly to The Lone Ranger, and I am glad I saw it.

For starters, let me admit that this movie is a mess. A huge, huge mess in fact. Clocking in at 149 minutes and filmed partially in Monument Valley, one of the most breathtaking locations in which a movie can be shot, this is a movie that goes big. Very big. The budget seems to have been somewhere in the neighborhood of $250 million; I'm not surprised. You can see they spent a lot of money making this picture, and spent it well. It's a beautiful movie.

But the plot is a mess, there are way, way too many themes and motifs crammed in, and there are long segments where the movie seems to wander aimlessly. Johnny Depp is great as the freakazoid Tonto, and Armie Hammer is solid as The Lone Ranger. The supporting cast is excellent, too: Tom Wilkinson shows up to play his usual slimy villain, William Fichtner is nearly unrecognizably creepy (and let's face it, dude's already creepy as hell on a good day) as a cannibalistically-inclined villain, Helena Bonham Carter shows up as the madame of a brothel, and look, there's Stephen Root sporting muttonchops.

The movie references a lot of different Westerns. It most directly parallels the great Once Upon a Time in the West, while other plot threads pay homage to The Searchers (which made better use of Monument Valley than any movie ever has), the 1939 Jesse James flick that starred Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda, and also pretty much every movie that ever involved Kevin Costner and a horse and a gun.

It's a shame that this movie has flopped so badly. It's not great, but it's fun and worth seeing, and it's too bad that it was dead on arrival. This pretty much means that the Western is now in permanent residence at Boot Hill, which is a shame. Westerns are part of our founding American mythology, and this is a Western that actually dares to subvert that mythology and raise uncomfortable questions about race and genocide. It seems a sad truism though that the cowboy has gone the way of the dodo, replaced first by GI grunts in WWII flicks and then by superheroes and now by various characters fighting the never-ending supply of zombies at the movies.

I'm straying slightly off-script here but I made this last night and it was so good that I have to share.

Get yourself to your local dietetica and pick up a big bottle of coconut milk. You can thin it just a bit with water; I dumped it into a big soup pot and added maybe 1 part water for every three or four parts coconut milk. Get that simmering on medium heat, but don't bring it to a boil.

Meanwhile, in a small frying pan, heat plenty of olive oil till it's hot but not smoking and add some sliced dried chili peppers or chili flakes or some such spicy thing. Let that simmer for just a minute before adding plenty of turmeric to the oil. Stir that in well and when it's evenly mixed and heated, pour it into the coconut milk in the soup pot. Stir everything well.

Meanwhile, start adding in vegetables. Yesterday, I used a packet of pre-chopped veggies I got at my verduleria, which included red pepper, thinly-sliced white onion, etc. It was perfect for this use. I also included some white button mushrooms (no idea if that is what they are properly called or not; I just think of them that way) sliced in half, a leek, plenty of celery, and a head of broccoli, which I put in right before taking the whole thing off the heat. I also used a packet of fresh chickpeas, which was not at all traditional and completely delicious.

The whole thing simmered for probably a half hour before it was good to go. As I mentioned, the broccoli went in last.

The lime! I'm forgetting the lime. I squeezed in an entire largeish lime at the same time the oil with turmeric and spicy stuff went into the coconut milk. That part is important; don't forget the lime.

Put a heavy-bottom frying pan over medium heat. Cast iron works best, but a good copper-bottom pan will work well too. Cut a half-inch to an inch (depends on how rich you want this to be) off a stick of butter and drop it into the pan.

While the butter's heating up, wash and slice into halves approximately 1 cup of brussels sprouts.

When the butter's getting hot, start swirling the pan a bit to keep it from burning. The butter will start taking on a deep brown color as various stuff within it caramelizes. When the butter has all turned quite brown (again, keep the pan moving so that it browns evenly and doesn't burn) drop in your brussels sprouts. Use a large enough frying pan so that they will all fit in comfortably; you never want to crowd the pan.

Let the brussels sprouts cook on medium heat till they start turning very dark green and then browning. Turn them over and wait for the same thing to happen on the other side. When they are done, remove them from the pan and toss in some walnuts broken into halves or quarter. Keep these moving and watch them as closely as you would a baby in a bathtub; they will burn on you very quickly if you're not careful.

When the walnuts are nicely (and evenly) toasted, toss them with the brussels sprouts. Chop up a quarter cup of dried figs and add them to the mix. Then, do the same for goat cheese. I like goat cheese feta best for this recipe, but meltier varieties will do just as well.