February 2015 – The Snack Review

My Visit to a New York City Farmers Market

Last weekend when I was in New York I got to visit a winter farmers’ market for the first time in my life. I’m a Californian through and through–and I don’t say that in a prideful way. I only mean that I’ve just been exposed to very little else. I didn’t think too much about the experience at the time, but that visit has really stayed with me.

I don’t have any photos because the ones I took were on Snapchat, where they were meant to disappear immediately upon viewing. In other words, I had no intention of holding on to the memories. Instead, here is a photo I snapped on a walk to the train one morning. I believe I took this photo on a day when it was a balmy 19F. After a brutal couple days when temperatures never topped 12F, those extra 7 degrees made a whole lot of difference. Why didn’t I spend the extra $3 for the smartphone-touchable gloves at Target? is the question I berated myself with all week long, as my fingers hardened into a frozen claw every time I needed to look at my phone for directions.

Anyway, the farmers market. I found myself there after lovely Valentine’s brunch with M. I walked up and down the dozen or so assembled stalls to take it all in, and started chuckling. Compared to your average Los Angeles farmers market, it looked like a post-apocalyptic open air grocery. First of all, it was straight up frigid. A woman was walking around in one of those puffy insulated overall snow suits, and even she still looked cold. I myself was wearing just about every kind of fabric in my closet–denim, cotton, wool, down, polyester–and still couldn’t get warm. It was gray. It was windy. What were any of us doing outdoors?

And then there were the vegetables. Most of the vendors sold baked goods, pickled things, coffee, eggs. There were just four stands with fresh produce, and three of them sold only apples. Crates and crates of apples. The fourth sold root vegetables (carrots, potatoes, onions, turnips), and bunches of wilted, frozen kale that looked like they’d been run over by a truck. Oh, and more apples.

It wasn’t too hard to imagine some zombie takeover inching in out of the corner of my eye, or a fight breaking out over the last loaf of bread,
or people exchanging apocalypse-shekels for their foodstuffs.

In LA, where farmers markets are so plentiful, and where the produce spread year round is out of some technicolor dream, that Brooklyn farmers market left me utterly deflated. I snapped some photos and made snobby fun of it with friends. It’s an easy dig to make, just like when people say you’ve got to go out of your way not to get fed a vegan taco in SF (try harder guys).

But you know what I wasn’t expecting? I felt for that kale. It was so cold out, how was anything supposed to grow at all? Of course it’d come up out of the earth yellowed and weakened. It didn’t belong out there, on that sad table. Of course, none of us belonged out there. Kale compassion–that is what I took away from my visit. This and I love you forever LA.

Maialino Olive Oil (Cup)cakes

This is what’s happening right now: Oscar arrivals on the telly, shrimp chips in a bowl on the couch cushion to my left, and soft gloomy rain outside–the kind that’s making me extra excited to be inside waiting on my last batch of Maialino olive oil cupcakes in the oven. I’ve only had two of the 32 cupcakes this batch produced, and I’ll report back once I’ve polished off the other 30, but I can confidently say at this moment: worth all the hype.

I knew from the photo alone that I’d really like this cake, but having made, and now tasted it, I can say that this is like hitting the cake jackpot. First of all, this recipe is a cinch, and almost way too easy considering how delicious the result is. My cupcakes turned out simultaneously light and rich, with subtle orange and creamy olive oil flavors. I broke out the good olive oil (on sale at Gelson’s this week!), and sprung for Grand Marnier (also on sale this week at Ralphs!) for this recipe–both worth it. Now just to figure out what to do with the rest of the bottle.

Notes: I followed a Food52 commenter’s suggestion to bring the heat down to 300F for cupcakes. It ended up taking 23 minutes per batch at that temperature, and by then I was worried about drying them out while I waited for the golden crust to form. Next time I’ll probably wait longer or try them at the recipe’s suggested 350F.

Gurn Fun (捲粉)

There’s not been much in the way of adventurous eating lately, but there has been a lot of travel. I spent 7 days in New York City and ate almost as many Pret sandwiches. (Work’ll do that to a girl.) I celebrated Valentine’s Day on my own at Eataly, where by virtue of being a solo diner amidst a sea of couples I was treated to a lot of unexpected attention. As in: immediate seating, a small plate of amazing cheese and tomatoes on the house, pity small talk from my seatmates at the bar, and, uh, an invitation from a man to meet up on the 14th floor.

I celebrated Lunar New Year by myself two nights ago up in the air, after scarfing down airport McDonald’s. I never eat so fast as when I’m eating chicken nuggets and last night I came up with two theories why: the first, I usually get fast food when I’m desperately hungry, so I’m in devour mode. Also, McDonald’s just never improves the longer it sits in the bag. The faster you eat, the better. All that to say, it was a more depressing than entertaining way to ring in the Year of the Sheep.

The last big cooking thrill I had was just about a month ago, in my Auntie Margie’s kitchen. She’s 80 years old, and can run circles around everyone in the family. She was making gurn fun (捲粉), and I asked if I could come by and learn. It’s a labor intensive snack that I rarely (more like never) see offered in restaurants. “Because it’s too much work!” was Auntie Margie’s answer when I asked her why. Gurn fun, in my family’s interpretation, is a rice noodle roll filled with barbecued pork, red pickled ginger, pickled cucumber, cilantro, green onions, and scrambled egg all chopped into a gorgeous confetti. There’s actually not that much “cooking” involved (unless you’re making your own damn noodles, and Auntie Margie said our family gave that up two generations ago).

When I got to her apartment before 8 in the morning, she’d already been up for hours. She goes to a noodle factory in the Mission to get freshly made sheets of rice noodles and had come back with 20 pounds worth. (Big family = big portions.) She’d chopped up all her ingredients–a hard job, the most laborious part of the whole recipe–and she doesn’t let just anyone help. My aunt Fun Bew Yee, who’s been assisting Auntie Margie longer than I’ve been alive, told me she was recently demoted when her minced cha siu wasn’t fine enough.

My family came to the U.S. in the late 1800s, and what’s left of the Chinese we speak can be pretty odd. Something happens, I think, when people migrate. They bring the language and customs of that time and in their new homeland those traditions and words, protected from the inevitable shifts of culture back home, can become frozen in time. Auntie Margie told us about going to the noodle factory in the Mission for the first time after her favorite Chinatown source closed down, and not being sure exactly where on the block she could find the shop. She asked another elderly Chinese lady on the street, in Cantonese: “Do you know where I can buy some bak fun?” The woman gasped in horror and shooed her away. Auntie Margie was perplexed. It was only later that she learned that bak fun, today, refers to heroin. She’d had no idea. You mean it doesn’t mean white rice noodles? I retold the story to my Uncle Barry, and he gave out a great, hearty laugh. He came to the U.S. from China as a teen, and he says he’s always trying to update his wife’s outdated Chinese. “I’m gonna remember that one,” he said.

Auntie Margie said she scrambled two dozen eggs, and it took her over an hour and a half. Try for something close to light egg crepes, she explained. Just enough oil so the pan is greased, “Chinese is always best,” she said, tapping her time-worn frying pan with a pair of chopsticks, medium-low heat, ladle in the egg, rotate the pan till the egg covers its entirety, and then wait. Wait some more. Flip once, then transfer to a plate and cool before slicing into the thinnest egg ribbons. Anchored by the salty barbecued pork, and tempered with the sweetness of the ginger, and the bright kick of the green onion and cilantro, the rice roll and fluffy egg bind it all together into a perfect one-bite morsel. Gurn fun is a once a year treat in our family, and as Auntie Margie ages, something that’s all the more special.

My Auntie Doris says that whenever she learns a new recipe, she forces herself to make it as soon as she can. The only way to really know a dish is to make it on your own away from your teacher, she says.

So…. where would one get fresh sheets of rice noodles in LA?