Einstein on the Beach- Knee 1

Hot Date Ice Cream Sundaes

Hot Date Ice Cream Sundaes

This is our banana-enriched version of the Hot Date sundae, served at Poppy restaurant in Seattle. Add a shot of rum to make this even more provocative.

Sunset JULY 2012

• Yield: Serves 4
• Prep time:1 Hour
• Freeze:3 Hours

Ingredients

• 3 ripe bananas, peeled
• 3 1/2 teaspoons sugar, divided
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice
• 2 cups vanilla ice cream, softened
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar

• 1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 1/2 cups (10 oz.) Medjool dates, halved and pitted
• 1/4 cup cold whipping cream
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 6 ounces moist, dark store-bought or homemade banana bread, cut into 1-in. cubes (about 5 cups)
• 1/4 cup coarsely chopped toasted walnuts

Preparation

1. Purée 2 bananas, 2 tsp. sugar, and the lemon juice in a food processor. In a large bowl, fold purée into ice cream, leaving streaks. Freeze until firm, 3 hours.
2. Melt butter, brown sugar, and salt in a medium frying pan over medium-high heat. Add dates and 1/2 cup water and cook, stirring occasionally, until thickened, about 5 minutes.
3. Whisk cream with remaining 1 1/2 tsp. sugar and the vanilla in a bowl until soft peaks form.
4. Divide bread among 4 bowls. Slice remaining banana. Scoop ice cream into bowls and top with banana, dates and sauce, whipped cream, and nuts.

Nutritional Information

Amount per serving

• Calories: 832
• Calories from fat: 37%
• Protein: 8.1g
• Fat: 34g
• Saturated fat: 17g
• Carbohydrate: 134g
• Fiber: 8.8g
• Sodium: 244mg
• Cholesterol: 98mg

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Hot Date Ice Cream Sundaes recipe

Japonica Ice Cream Sundaes

Photo by: Photo: Iain Bagwell; Styling: Karen Shinto

Japonica Ice Cream Sundaes

For this gorgeous combination of green tea ice cream and ripe red plums poached in sweet sake, be sure to use fresh matcha (Japanese powdered green tea) and keep it tightly covered in the fridge--it oxidizes very quickly.

Sunset JULY 2012

• Yield: Serves 4
• Prep time:1 Hour
• Freeze:3 Hours

Ingredients

• 4 cups vanilla ice cream, softened
• 2 tablespoons matcha*
• 1/2 cup plus 1 1/2 tsp. sugar
• 1/2 cup nigori sake*
• 3 quarter-size slices fresh ginger, lightly crushed

• 4 ripe red plums, pitted and cut into 1-in.-thick chunks
• 1/4 cup cold whipping cream
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped candied ginger
• 1 cup crushed sesame candy, such as Loucks Sesame Snaps

Preparation

1. Stir ice cream and matcha together in a bowl. Freeze until firm, 3 to 4 hours.
2. Combine 1/2 cup sugar, the sake, ginger, and 1/3 cup water in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Cook, stirring, until sugar dissolves. Add plums and simmer over medium heat, covered, until fruit begins to soften, about 5 minutes.
3. Transfer plums with a slotted spoon to a bowl. Discard skins and ginger. Return liquid to stove; boil until reduced to 1/2 cup, 7 to 10 minutes. Pour over plums and chill until cool, about 20 minutes.
4. Whisk cream with remaining sugar in a bowl. Fold in candied ginger.
5. Spoon a third of plums and sesame snaps into 4 sundae glasses. Top with a scoop of ice cream. Repeat layering and top with remaining plums. Dollop with whipped cream and sprinkle with remaining sesame snaps.
*Find matcha at well-stocked grocery stores and at breakawaymatcha.com; find fruity nigori sake at liquor stores.

Nutritional Information

Amount per serving

• Calories: 580
• Calories from fat: 37%
• Protein: 10g
• Fat: 24g
• Saturated fat: 13g
• Carbohydrate: 76g
• Fiber: 6.8g
• Sodium: 127mg
• Cholesterol: 79mg

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Grilled Flank Steak, Onion, and Peppers

Photo by: Photo: Iain Bagwell; Styling: Randy Mon

Grilled Flank Steak, Onion, and Peppers

Steve Freidkin, the chef at Texaz Grill in Phoenix, shared this technique with us for instantly "marinating" meat. By making small slashes in a diamond pattern over both sides of the steak, the flavors of the lemon and spices sink right in.

Sunset JULY 2012

• Yield: Serves 4 to 6
• Total:30 Minutes

Ingredients

• 1 flank steak (1 1/2 lbs.)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, divided
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon chili powder

• 4 tablespoons melted unsalted butter
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1 medium onion, sliced into thirds
• 1 red bell pepper, seeded and quartered
• 1 yellow bell pepper, seeded and quartered
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves, minced

Preparation

1. Heat a grill to high (450° to 550°). Using a sharp knife, score steak on a diagonal across the grain, making parallel lines about 1 in. apart. Turn steak and repeat to create a diamond pattern. Flip steak over and repeat scoring on the other side.
2. Combine 1 tsp. salt and the spices, then sprinkle all over steak. Drizzle meat with butter and lemon juice and rub flavorings into slits.
3. Grill steak, turning once, 8 minutes total for medium. Let rest. Mix onion and peppers with oil, garlic, and remaining 1/2 tsp. salt. Grill, turning often, until softened, 5 minutes. Cut vegetables into strips; serve with steak.

Nutritional Information

Amount per serving

• Calories: 295
• Calories from fat: 45%
• Protein: 33g
• Fat: 15g
• Saturated fat: 6.3g
• Carbohydrate: 6.7g
• Fiber: 1.4g
• Sodium: 319mg
• Cholesterol: 66mg

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Grilled Chicken Bánh Mì

Photo by: Photo: Annabelle Breakey; Styling: Karen Shinto

Grilled Chicken Bánh Mì

The classic Vietnamese sandwich has lots of variations, but our favorites, like this one inspired by the bánh mì at Lynda Sandwich in Westminster, California, combine a generous pile of fresh herbs and vegetables with a sauce that has plenty of personality.

Sunset JULY 2012

• Yield: Serves 4
• Total:45 Minutes

Ingredients

• 2 boned, skinned chicken breast halves (1 1/2 lbs. total)
• 4 tablespoons hoisin sauce, divided
• 1/2 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder
• 1 tablespoon reduced-sodium soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
• 2 tablespoons lime juice
• 1 tablespoon Thai or Vietnamese fish sauce

• 4 sandwich rolls or 1 sweet baguette, cut into 4 equal lengths and split lengthwise
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 1/2 English cucumber, cut into 2-in. matchsticks
• 1 medium carrot, cut into thin matchsticks
• 4 ounces jicama, cut into matchsticks
• 1 red Fresno or red jalapeño chile, halved lengthwise and sliced
• Cilantro, Thai basil, and mint leaves

Preparation

1. Heat a grill to medium (350° to 450°). With a sharp knife, halve chicken pieces horizontally almost all the way through, then open up like a book. Put chicken in a bowl and add 2 tbsp. hoisin, the five-spice, soy sauce, and 1 tbsp. oil, tossing to coat.
2. Grill chicken, turning once, until cooked through, about 10 minutes. Let rest 10 minutes, then slice diagonally into wide chunks.
3. Mix remaining 2 tbsp. hoisin and 1 tbsp. oil, the lime juice, and fish sauce in a small bowl; set aside.
4. Spread the bottom of the cut side of each roll with 1 tbsp. mayo. Fill sandwiches with chicken. Top each with cucumber, carrot, jicama, chile slices, and herbs. Drizzle each sandwich with some of the reserved lime dressing (you may have some left over).

Nutritional Information

Amount per serving

• Calories: 514
• Calories from fat: 36%
• Protein: 42g
• Fat: 21g
• Saturated fat: 3.3g
• Carbohydrate: 41g
• Fiber: 3.7g
• Sodium: 1382mg
• Cholesterol: 114mg

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Grilled Chicken Bánh Mì recipe

Make-or-Break Verbs By Constance Hale

Make-or-Break Verbs

By CONSTANCE HALE

This is the third in a series of writing lessons by the author.

A sentence can offer a moment of quiet, it can crackle with energy or it can just lie there, listless and uninteresting.

What makes the difference? The verb.

Verbs kick-start sentences: Without them, words would simply cluster together in suspended animation. We often call them action words, but verbs also can carry sentiments (love, fear, lust, disgust), hint at cognition (realize, know, recognize), bend ideas together (falsify, prove, hypothesize), assert possession (own, have) and conjure existence itself (is, are).

Fundamentally, verbs fall into two classes: static (to be, to seem, to become) and dynamic (to whistle, to waffle, to wonder). (These two classes are sometimes called “passive” and “active,” and the former are also known as “linking” or “copulative” verbs.) Static verbs stand back, politely allowing nouns and adjectives to take center stage. Dynamic verbs thunder in from the wings, announcing an event, producing a spark, adding drama to an assembled group.

Static Verbs

Static verbs themselves fall into several subgroups, starting with what I call existential verbs: all the forms of to be, whether the present (am, are, is), the past (was, were) or the other more vexing tenses (is being, had been, might have been). In Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” the Prince of Demark asks, “To be, or not to be?” when pondering life-and-death questions. An aging King Lear uses both is and am when he wonders about his very identity:

“Who is it that can tell me who I am?”

Jumping ahead a few hundred years, Henry Miller echoes Lear when, in his autobiographical novel “Tropic of Cancer,” he wanders in Dijon, France, reflecting upon his fate:

“Yet I am up and about, a walking ghost, a white man terrorized by the cold sanity of this slaughter-house geometry. Who am I? What am I doing here?”

Drawing inspiration from Miller, we might think of these verbs as ghostly verbs, almost invisible. They exist to call attention not to themselves, but to other words in the sentence.

Another subgroup is what I call wimp verbs (appear, seem, become). Most often, they allow a writer to hedge (on an observation, description or opinion) rather than commit to an idea: Lear appears confused. Miller seems lost.

Finally, there are the sensing verbs (feel, look, taste, smell and sound), which have dual identities: They are dynamic in some sentences and static in others. If Miller said I feel the wind through my coat, that’s dynamic. But if he said I feel blue, that’s static.

Static verbs establish a relationship of equals between the subject of a sentence and its complement. Think of those verbs as quiet equals signs, holding the subject and the predicate in delicate equilibrium. For example, I, in the subject, equals feel blue in the predicate.

Power Verbs

Dynamic verbs are the classic action words. They turn the subject of a sentence into a doer in some sort of drama. But there are dynamic verbs — and then there are dynamos. Verbs like has, does, goes, gets and puts are all dynamic, but they don’t let us envision the action. The dynamos, by contrast, give us an instant picture of a specific movement. Why have a character go when he could gambol, shamble, lumber, lurch, sway, swagger or sashay?

Picking pointed verbs also allows us to forgo adverbs. Many of these modifiers merely prop up a limp verb anyway. Strike speaks softly and insert whispers. Erase eats hungrily in favor of devours. And whatever you do, avoid adverbs that mindlessly repeat the sense of the verb, as in circle around, merge together or mentally recall.

This sentence from “Tinkers,” by Paul Harding, shows how taking time to find the right verb pays off:

“The forest had nearly wicked from me that tiny germ of heat allotted to each person….”

Wick is an evocative word that nicely gets across the essence of a more commonplace verb like sucked or drained.

Sportswriters and announcers must be masters of dynamic verbs, because they endlessly describe the same thing while trying to keep their readers and listeners riveted. We’re not just talking about a player who singles, doubles or homers. We’re talking about, as announcers described during the 2010 World Series, a batter who “spoils the pitch” (hits a foul ball), a first baseman who “digs it out of the dirt” (catches a bad throw) and a pitcher who “scatters three singles through six innings” (keeps the hits to a minimum).

Imagine the challenge of writers who cover races. How can you write about, say, all those horses hustling around a track in a way that makes a single one of them come alive? Here’s how Laura Hillenbrand, in “Seabiscuit,” described that horse’s winning sprint:

“Carrying 130 pounds, 22 more than Wedding Call and 16 more than Whichcee, Seabiscuit delivered a tremendous surge. He slashed into the hole, disappeared between his two larger opponents, then burst into the lead… Seabiscuit shook free and hurtled into the homestretch alone as the field fell away behind him.”

Even scenes that at first blush seem quiet can bristle with life. The best descriptive writers find a way to balance nouns and verbs, inertia and action, tranquillity and turbulence. Take Jo Ann Beard, who opens the short story “Cousins” with static verbs as quiet as a lake at dawn:

“Here is a scene. Two sisters are fishing together in a flat-bottomed boat on an olive green lake….”

When the world of the lake starts to awaken, the verbs signal not just the stirring of life but crisp tension:

“A duck stands up, shakes out its feathers and peers above the still grass at the edge of the water. The skin of the lake twitches suddenly and a fish springs loose into the air, drops back down with a flat splash. Ripples move across the surface like radio waves. The sun hoists itself up and gets busy, laying a sparkling rug across the water, burning the beads of dew off the reeds, baking the tops of our mothers’ heads.”

Want to practice finding dynamic verbs? Go to a horse race, a baseball game or even walk-a-thon. Find someone to watch intently. Describe what you see. Or, if you’re in a quiet mood, sit on a park bench, in a pew or in a boat on a lake, and then open your senses. Write what you see, hear and feel. Consider whether to let your verbs jump into the scene or stand by patiently.

Verbs can make or break your writing, so consider them carefully in every sentence you write. Do you want to sit your subject down and hold a mirror to it? Go ahead, use is. Do you want to plunge your subject into a little drama? Go dynamic. Whichever you select, give your readers language that makes them eager for the next sentence.

Next from me: Pitfalls of passive construction.

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Constance Hale, a journalist based in San Francisco, is the author of “Sin and Syntax” and the forthcoming “Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch.” She covers writing and the writing life at sinandsyntax.com.

Music Lessons Benefit Babies, by Jef Akst

Music Lessons Benefit Babies

One year olds smile more and communicate better if they participate in interactive music classes with their parents.

By Jef Akst | May 11, 2012

Flickr, Dan Wheeler

 

Music heals the souls, and it can also affect the brain, especially when experienced at a very young age, according to a study published in Developmental Science. One-year-old babies, not yet able to walk or talk, showed positive response to interactive music classes, smiling more, communicating better, and showing altered brain responses to music.

“Many past studies of musical training have focused on older children,” Laurel Trainor, study author and director of the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind, said in a press release. “Our results suggest that the infant brain might be particularly plastic with regard to musical exposure.”

The study placed babies into one of two groups—those that participated in an interactive music-making classes where they and their parents learned to play percussion instruments and sing lullabies, nursery rhymes, and songs with actions, and those that spent that time playing with toys while listening to recordings from the Baby Einstein series. After 6 months, babies who participated in the interactive classes “showed earlier sensitivity to the pitch structure in music,” Trainor said. That is, they preferred music that stayed in key. Babies who had been playing with toys did not show such preferences. “Even their brains responded to music differently,” Trainer said. “Infants from the interactive music classes showed larger and/or earlier brain responses to musical tones.”

The two groups of babies also showed differences in non-musical skills. Those that had participated in the interactive classes showed better communication skills, like pointing at objects and waving goodbye, and smiled more. They were also easier to calm and seemed less distressed in unfamiliar situations.

“There are many ways that parents can connect with their babies,” study coordinator Andrea Unrau said in a press release. “The great thing about music is, everyone loves it and everyone can learn simple interactive musical games together.”