Read em While They Last
Two interesting articles from the NYTimes:
1)
Kung Pao? No, Gong Bao, and Nix the Nuts. From the article:
Guizhou province in south-central China is the ancestral home of the dish, and one visit to Guixi, one of Guiyang's most famous restaurants, makes clear that where this popular concoction is concerned pronunciation was not the only thing lost in translation during its migration around the globe. Informed for the first time that something called kung pao chicken is widely eaten in the United States, the restaurant's veteran chef, Wang Xingyun, who was dressed in a white smock, dingy from hours of work with cleaver and wok, expressed his skepticism with the lifting of one weary eyebrow.
"Whatever they are eating there is certainly not authentic," he said.
Of course Mr. Wang, a stickler for ingredients and for technique who has been preparing meals built around the dish for over 30 years, says much the same even about what passes for kung pao chicken in Sichuan, the province right next door, where it is almost equally popular and where the dish began its journey across the ocean to America. "Nowadays it's a mess," Chef Wang announced, leading a visitor on a tour of his busy kitchen. '"Everyone says they can make our food, but they don't even understand its origins."
2)
Native Foods Nourish Again. From the article:
American Indian food is the only ethnic cuisine in the nation that has yet to be addressed in the culinary world, said Loretta Barrett Oden, a chef who learned to cook growing up on the Citizen Potawatomi reservation in Oklahoma. "You can go to most any area of this country and eat Thai or Chinese or Mongolian barbecue, but you can't eat indigenous foods native to the Americas," said Ms. Oden, who has been traveling the nation filming segments for a 2006 PBS series titled "Seasoned With Spirit: A Native Cook's Journey."
One item that won't be featured on her show is fry bread, the puffy circles of deep-fried dough that serve as a base for tacos or are eaten simply with sugar or honey and are beloved on Indian reservations. That bread is fast becoming a symbol of all that is wrong with the American Indian diet, which evolved from food that was hunted, grown or gathered to one that relied on federal government commodities, including white flour and lard - the two ingredients in fry bread.
Thursday
I don't feel a need to do anything for Thanksgiving, or Thankstaking as i sometimes refer to it. Celebrating "family" and "good things" shouldn't be relegated to one measly day revolving around dry turkey and false notions about togetherness (not to mention football, gender roles and genocide). If we don't brave the bus masses and head down to VA, my mom feels slighted - even though Thanksgiving just meant a turkey for my dad and we all ate separately in front of the tv like we always do anyways. If we don't head over to Douglaston, be's whole family gets upset and spends days trying to convince/trick/guilt him into going - dinner equating to a massive affair with extended relatives and numerous dry turkeys, save the one with tomato sauce.
If you declare you're doing nothing for Thanksgiving, all sorts of parents think you're essentially evil and causing them to stress and cry. But if you do "something," even if it's without them, they instantly feel much better. I don't understand this logic - what are we celebrating anyways? - but we did end up doing something on Thursday. It was decided Wednesday morning that we would host a small dinner with other friends who didn't travel either - partly parental guilt, partly to ease the week of bickering between be and myself regarding the holiday, and partly because we do like dinner parties.
A$ (whose mom was also happy she was doing something), Lovella and Arif came over for dinner:
Hummus with fried sage on sesame toast with garlic oil
Plantain chips*
Arugula and apple salad with basalmic vinaigrette
Pan roasted tiny potatoes with garlic
Sauteed broccoli
Roasted butternut squash
Quorn Roast with fresh rosemary and sage
Grilled marinated portabella mushrooms
Herb
StuffingBrown gravy
Fresh cranberry sauce
Mudhouse Sauvignon Blanc, that tasted grapefruity!*
White Zinfandel*
Iced tea with lemon
Pumpkin pie*
Apple pie
Vanilla ice cream
Raspberry sorbet
Pomegranates
*Brought by our lovely guests
Surprisingly, the Quorn Roast was quite similar to processed turkey, specifically the kind found in TV dinners! Dry and dense just like the real thing. I was also surprised at how fluffy and delicious the instant stuffing was. Hits in my opinion: the tiny potatoes and the butternut squash. Things we've made better other times: the broccoli and the grilled portabellas.
As much as i love stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce, i'm deciding that next year the menu shouldn't be bound by any "traditions." Why not make a nice meal comprised of the foods from other cuisines, or of foods everyone likes? And why not eat Quorn Roast, stuffing and pumpkin pie year round? That is, unless we end up at one of the parents' houses next year. Or if we do anything at all.
Vegetarian Thanksgiving and Misc Food Notes
1) Thanks to
OB for the kind words (specifically related to my pomegranate picture on flickr)! I have to definitely check out
Cones. According to OB:
now what is really really good - as the children say - is some chilled pomegranate seeds as the topping for your lilikoi, aka passion fruit, sorbet from cones
2) On the subject of pomegranates, did you know that November is National Pomegranate Month? We've been savoring a particularly delicious one with a
POM label from Stop & Shop. It was the juiciest & sweetest one that either of us had ever tasted. Unfortunately, when we went back for more they looked terrible so we got 3 tasty ones from Chinatown instead. Many of the street vendors are selling pomegranates at 3 for $5 or $5.50. We've also recently seen small dragonfruits (magenta-skinned large egg-shaped fruit with white flesh and black seeds inside) which i'd first seen at various Hong Kong street markets.
3)
Tabasco is releasing a new Sweet & Spicy hot sauce next month. No mention on their website yet, but their newest catalog devotes a full-page to describing it. For the record, i grew up on original Tabasco, i love their Habanero one (very hot but not as insane as
El Yucateco's XXXtra Hot Mayan Style - try it if you enjoy the sensation of your esophagus burning the whole way down!), i like their Garlic and Chipotle flavors, but i dislike their Mild Green sauce. It's way too mild and pretty worthless in my opinion.
4) Last night i made a meal with Farmers' Market mini new potatoes and brussels sprouts. The potatoes were so tiny - on average they were the size of a marble! Neither of us cooked with potatoes so small, much less seen them for purchase! I ended up sautéing them with the skins on in some oil and garlic with rosemary = so delicious. The skins were so thin and crisp, the insides were so potatoey-perfect. We're definitely getting some tiny potatoes again this fall, but sadly the vendor told us they don't sell in winter since the cold freezes them. Get em while they last! As for the brussels sprouts, they came still attached to the stalk! I quickly boiled them in salted water and then stirred them around in butter, salt & pepper. I read on
Cooking for Engineers that the childhood horrors of brussels sprouts can be attributed to over-cooking, which releases sulfur and other noxious smells. We both really enjoyed the brussels sprouts cooked in this way, simple and fresh. See link above for recipe.
5) Check out the free, downloadable Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce at
randomWalks.
6) We tried two flavors from
Echo Farm Pudding: Miracle's Chocolate and Royal's Rice. Verdicts: be thought the chocolate was "very good" while i thought it was "excellent;" be thought the rice pudding was also "very good and better than supermarket brand," while i thought it was "overcooked and mushy." Next up i plan to try the coffee, tapioca and pumpkin flavors.
7) I attended the
CACF banquet at
Jing Fong a few nights ago. During the 8 course meat & seafood meal, they brought out two special dishes for us vegetarians at the table: a thin noodle dish with mushrooms and a delicious braised eggplant dish. I'd never tasted eggplant so wonderfully textured and flavored. I think it was the ONLY dish that was completely finished at the table; everything else was divided up and taken home in boxes. be especially liked the 1st course of shrimp but he claims the eggplant dish was secretly his favorite. Sadly, the lo mein dish (course 7?) contained chicken but the noodles looked excellent, probably hand made.
8)
Dude sent me an interesting link for
vegetarian-friendly Thanksgiving meal tips. Here's
another one from about.com. Definitely helpful stuff for cooks who've never prepared a meal with a vegetarian/vegan in mind. My 99 cents:
a)
Tofurkey is quite terrible and most vegetarians/vegans don't need a fake turkey or turkey substitute anyways.
b) Read the labels of store-bought stuffing, prepared rice mixes and gravy carefully - "vegetable flavor" sometimes still contains chicken fat, beef flavoring, gelatin etc.
c) The majority of side dishes can easily be made vegetarian (the only thing you're substituting/leaving out are bits of meat, lard, gelatin, meat broth & stock, giblets, marrow) but for vegan guests, you'll need to also use animal-free butter, milk, cheese, egg replacers and sweeteners. All of these products can be found at a gourmet or natural food market.
d) When making a vegetarian/vegan dish, be sure the quantity is enough for everyone to try! It's terrible being the lone vegetarian at a dinner with only one friendly dish ... that's inevitably been demolished by all the meat-eaters! Keep in mind that carnivores/omnivores will also eat the vegetarian/vegan dishes.
e) Even if you can't or don't want to make new dishes from new recipes to accommodate vegetarians/vegans, it's SO EASY to make traditional Thanksgiving recipes vegetarian. It's so simple to reserve a portion of the mashed potatoes before you add the meat gravy or butter, or to leave the marshmallows off of a corner of the sweet potato casserole.
f) The most annoying thing at any meal (besides having only carrot sticks to eat) is being interrogated by other people about why i don't eat meat. Also, don't think you can simply talk someone out of being vegetarian/vegan, that small bits of bacon "don't really count," or that choosing not to eat animal products will equate to an early death. I'm still shocked in this day and age that people can't seem to respect other people's personal choices, irregardless of whether it's due to religious, ethical or health reasons.
Good Addition
The last time i was at Whole Foods i picked up a free booklet called "Twenty-four Bruschette," which was full of ideas and tips on entertaining with rustic breads and toppings. I was intrigued by the "Middle Eastern Hummus and Fried Sage Leaf" recipe - i love hummus and make it often, but i'd never heard of fried sage or any deep-fried herbs for that matter! be liked the idea too, so i blended up a batch of hummus (recipe
here) while he experimented with deep-frying fresh sage leaves at various temperatures. We used a mix of grapeseed and olive oils in a small pot, frying about 20 leaves total at various temperatures and for differing times, ranging from 1-2 seconds to 10-15. At 350 degrees the leaves quickly burned but at around 220 for a few seconds the leaves turned out just right. After draining on paper towels they were crispy, translucent when held up to light and very flavorful. They added a nice aroma to the hummus, which we spread onto toasted Parisi bread. (The original recipe also called for a drizzle of garlic-infused olive oil; we were sad we didn't have any but it sure sounded amazing!) We're definitely going to make hummus with fried sage leaves again.
Corn on the Cob Soda
You read that correctly. It's that time of the year again - Jones Soda is now selling their infamous
Holiday Pack of unusual soda flavors. The National Pack consists of: Brussels Sprout with Prosciutto, Cranberry Sauce, Turkey & Gravy, Wild Herb Stuffing and Pumpkin Pie sodas; the Regional Pack is: Broccoli Casserole, Smoked Salmon Paté, Turkey & Gravy, Corn on the Cob and Pecan Pie. I can't say i'm not intrigued by the Pecan Pie Soda, even after reading this
in-depth taste test of last year's flavors (which were: Turkey & Gravy, Cranberry Sauce, Green Bean Casserole, Mashed Potato & Butter and Fruitcake.)
Anyone down for a taste test?
CHIK'N
A few nights ago be made a yummy dinner which included the new
Morningstar Farms Meal Starters CHIK'N Strips. I love fake meat and consider be and myself to be connoisseurs. That being said, we both proclaim CHIK'N Strips to be the best fake chicken we've had so far!
Chik Patties are good and so are the fake chicken nuggets from
May Wah, but both of them are for specific purposes: breaded sandwich patties and nuggets for dipping, respectively. Some people really swear by
Quorn brand but we found the "Chicken-style recipe tenders" to be dry; however both their "Naked cutlets" and "Chicken-style cutlets" are quite good. As for the CHIK'N Strips, they ended up quite juicy and had a good texture. Since it's in strip form, you can add them easily to pasta or stir-fries and season them however you want. Additionally, unlike some fake meat, CHIK'N is 100% vegan (contains no animal products) and 1 serving has 21 grams of protein. Right now it's not on their website yet, and we've only seen CHIK'N in one supermarket in Queens (that's the Northern Blvd Stop & Shop, btw) but hopefully it's a hit and won't get discontinued like Morningstar's delicious fake meat "hot pockets!" Now the search is on for a decent fake bacon...
Mint KitKat
I think chocolate goes so well with mint, so naturally i really like these new mint KitKats. We bought a bag full of mini ones and i'm sad to say that they're half-gone already. I was telling be that if we ever make it to Tokyo or London again, we'd better attempt a KitKat hunt to get all the possible varieties offered!
Coffee KitKat
Waiting in line at the deli with 2
IZZE Pears and what is staring at me but Limited Edition Coffee KitKats! When i opened the package during the boring movie we saw tonight, a wonderful rich coffee aroma wafted out. They certainly are delicious but i wished the coffee flavor was more pronounced. There didn't seem to be any coffee-flavored wafers or filling inside; rather the milk chocolate coating was scented and lightly flavored with it. Definitely a nice change from regular KitKats but i wished it had a stronger coffee flavor. For more KitKat info, check out this
informative article from Wikipedia.
KitKat Mania
Happy 32nd year to baby
L! Good luck with NaPoBluMo!
We have a big cobalt blue glass bowl filled with assorted KitKats! No trick or treaters came by to relieve us of our regular and Halloween KitKat bounty so i combined them with the new bag of mini Mint KitKats we just bought from the supermarket. Oh yes, and i still had a handful left of the Orange & Creme KitKats from the summer (here's my
review) - all four different varieties made for a quite an attractive assortment, too bad i didn't have any mini dark, milk and white ones too!
The Halloween KitKats are orange-colored white chocolate on the outside with dark chocolate wafers and cream on the inside. I was surprised i liked them so much, and after eating a regular milk chocolate KitKat i professed i loved the Halloween ones more for sure!
Picture and review of the mini Mint KitKats to come!
