Here’s the plan the next time you’re in LA and you’ve got a hankering for a spicy and perfectly spiced Indian snack mix of crunchy peas, peanuts, lentils, cashews, and a dusting of salt and sugar mixed in with deep fried finely shredded potatoes and tikhi sev (they remind me of Indian-spiced finely cut instant ramen noodles) that you can shovel into your mouth all afternoon long.
1) Find some other errands you need to run in Artesia. Because it’s a long way to drive just for some snack mix, and you’re not that snack-obsessed, are you?
3) Buy a pound of African chevdo. A pound! It looks like a lot. But half a pound will go so quickly, some even along the drive home. What if you get back to LA and half of your half pound is gone already? How sad will you be then?
4) Pour your African chevdo into a small bowl and eat it, with a spoon. This tip comes from Manish, who says the correct way to be an African chevdo snack monster is to eat it as if you had a bowl of (dry) cereal in front of you. It’s a pretty fine snack mix, so a lot will fall out of your grasp if you’re trying to be dainty about it and just use your finger tips. Bowl and spoon!
5) Once done, contemplate the possibility of making it at home. Recipesexist, after all. Contemplate some more.
A few weeks back I was overcome by pea-shelling urges, and that led me to this Jamie Oliver pasta. I had a pretty specific idea of what I wanted to make, likely filed away in my mental flavor cabinet (do you have one? I would love to know what’s in yours) by a past viewing of a Jamie at Home episode. It so happened I had just about everything on hand: the parmesan, the lemon, even mint. It was a cheerful and bright-tasting dish. A quintessentially spring pasta.
Shelling peas reminds me of an evening Narinda and I spent debating the best frozen substitutes (lima beans? shelled edamame?) for fresh broad beans for, incidentally, another Jamie Oliver recipe we were tackling. N and I have built part of our long friendship off of our shared affection for Jamie Oliver (Jamie at Home, specifically). When we get together we usually shop for and cook one ambitious dish, and speak in ridiculous British accents (the accents predate Jamie entering our friendship, I feel like I must note for some reason) while we shout kitchen commands to each other and catch up on life. We started this in college and the tradition was cemented not long after when we made samosas–dough wrapping, boiled potato stuffing and all–from scratch. It was an ambitious proposition from the start, and for some reason we never changed course even when it was clear we were in over our heads. We cooked until 4am that night. I am able to recall this because in my delirium I took a photo of the clock.
I was in the throes of one of my usual “but will there be enough?!?” panics while I was grocery shopping for us, and bought probably 5 pounds too many potatoes. Still, we ended up cooking everything I bought, and Narinda worked her dough magic and rolled out enough samosa wrappings to cover the length of my parents’ kitchen counter, and we inexpertly wrapped them into awkward pockets. One by one we deep fried dozens of adorable, lumpy samosas long into the night. We ended up with so many, and so many were so oddly shaped, that we had enough to make the United States of Samosa.
Cooking alongside people in the kitchen isn’t always a joy, but cooking with Narinda is a treat for me. It’s one of the friend traditions I treasure most. We got our life trajectories all wrong though and she moved to the Bay from LA just as I moved to LA from SF, so our plans for world domination via home cooking adventures have so far been put on hold.
Anyway, this Narinda aside is apropos of nothing, except that I miss her. And it feels nice to write about her and us and food and friendship here.
Federal nutrition rules set to go into effect July 1 would force enticing items like cheesy pizza off the à la carte line at Township High School District 214 in Arlington Heights, Ill.—a change that school officials fear might motivate many students to leave campus during open lunch periods to seek unhealthy options at nearby fast-food restaurants.
Rather than comply with the new rules for snacks and other foods, which apply to participants in the National School Lunch and Breakfast programs, the 12,250-student district’s school board voted to leave the federally subsidized meals programs altogether.
The federal government and school districts too are grappling with snack life.
It’s tough for me to dream up dishes with a blank slate. But give me a few swipes through Instagram or the passing suggestion of a few flavors and I can fall into a dish really quickly.
That’s what happened here after I was paging through Janice Cole’s “The Chicken and the Egg.” She’s got a recipe for baked eggs with goat cheese and mint pesto. It’s a lovely looking dish that she puts in a salad plate-sized shallow ramekin (its technical name, anyone?). Toasted bread topped with goat cheese and a bit of pesto with a raw egg settled atop it all, then baked.
That bit of inspiration was good enough for me. I’d just packed an old kimchi jar full of pesto I made to salvage some basil before it went bad. I didn’t use a recipe and apparently was in the throes of a garlic frenzy while I was whirring it up so the pesto, which thanks to our crazy old fridge is so strong it’s now frozen into a sliceable paste, is like a punch to the mouth. (I love it.) I had plain yogurt. And where she called for hazelnuts to sprinkle over the top of it I had raw walnuts. The other big difference is that my ramekins were much smaller in width and much deeper. They’re probably about three inches tall, so I the dish became a savory bread pudding of sorts. Non-stick spray inside the ramekin, toasted slices of sourdough, a dollop each of yogurt and pesto, then another layer of everything all over again before I topped it with the two eggs, gave it some salt and pepper and threw the chopped walnuts over it. 350 in the oven for about 20 minutes.
That centered yolk was perfectly done, but the top right one? As firm as an Easter egg’s. I need to do more troubleshooting, but I’m not sure, given the dimensions of the ramekin, if it’s even possible to get around the unevenness. Still, I loved it. It was a crazy hearty meal. And certainly adorable, which as everyone knows is half the battle.
There’s so much to love in the piece. The story was not just about the regional diversity and sheer enormity of the food scene, and the segment producer Erica Mu wasn’t talking to (with all due respect to Jonathan Gold, who Mu namechecks) outsider reviewers who are anointing this or that restaurant the best place for this or that “authentic” Chinese dish. The story is focused on Chinese people who are themselves exploring notions of authenticity and who see Chinese cuisine as a tether to home, as a reflection of themselves, as an expression of their cultural identity.
There are great scenes in it, and fun quotes too. My favorite: “Yelp is not credible regarding Chinese food,” says a Chinese food blogger who blogs exclusively in Chinese.
“I eagerly took advantage of that privilege of childhood which allows beauty, luxury, and happiness to be things that can be eaten: in the rue Vavin I would stand transfixed before the windows of confectioners’ shops, fascinated by the luminous sparkle of candied fruits, the cloudy lustre of jellies, the kaleidoscopic inflorescence of acidulated fruit-drops–green, red, orange, violet: I coveted the colours themselves as much as the pleasures they promised me. Mama used to pound sugared almonds for me in a mortar and mix the crunchy powder with a yellow cream; the pink of the sweets used to shade off into exquisite nuances of colour, and I would dip an eager spoon into their brilliant sunset. On the evenings when my parents held parties, the drawing-room mirrors multiplied to infinity the scintillations of a crystal chandelier. Mama would take her seat at the grand piano to accompany a lady dressed in a cloud of tulle who played the violin and a cousin who performed on the cello. I would crack between my teeth the candied shell of an artificial fruit, and a burst of light would illuminate my palate with a taste of black-currant or pineapple: all the colours, all the lights were mine, the gauzy scarves, the diamonds, the laces; I held the whole party in my mouth. I was never attracted to paradises flowing with milk and honey, but I envied Hansel and Gretel their gingerbread house; if only the universe we inhabit were completely edible, I used to think, what power we would have over it! When I was grown-up I wanted to crunch flowering almonds trees, and take bites out of the rainbow nougat of the sunset. Against the night sky of New York, the neon signs appeared to me like giant sweetmeats and made me feel frustrated.”
-Simone de Beauvoir, in the opening pages of “Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter,” dreaming of a sophisticate’s Willy Wonka world. Candy never sounded so magical.
More fun with root vegetables. I’m easing myself back into cooking after being on hiatus from the kitchen for a couple weeks. I’ve got a few flavors on my mind (the light curry from Lemonade’s curry cauliflower salad, the recipe for which already exists on the internet!) and some recipes that I’m slowly gathering ingredients for (cream of tartar and a cooling rack, for snickerdoodles and frozen seafood, for a particular kind of Chinese fried rice). At the moment it’s just about making the most simple of food for myself.
Enter this carrot salad, a favorite of mine from Orangette, way back in the day. Fresh, bright, portable and healthy. This salad is the platonic ideal of airplane travel food, just as Molly describes. I remember once being on top of my life enough to make this for myself before a cross-country plane trip. I ate my carrot salad with so much self-satisfaction on that trip! Alas, the rest of the times I’ve made this have been when I’m going nowhere in particular, and it’s fantastic. It’s great the next day, too, just as Molly says.
I love the bite of the garlic and tang of the lemon juice against the sweetness of the carrots. The whole thing is a lot of fun to eat. Note: the dish is a great opportunity to work on your knife skills.
I’ve been thinking about a banchan that’s not uncommon to get in Korean restaurants, boiled skinned potatoes glazed with a lightly sweetened soy and served chilled. They’re a perfect counterpoint to crunchy, pungent kimchee and spicy everything else, a great humble dish. I’ve also been studying a cookbook by Harumi Kurihara (Japan’s Martha Stewart/Donna Hay/Nigella Lawson!) I got a few years ago at Kinokuniya, and have been trying to bring some of her clean, pared down flavors to my cooking.
This dish doesn’t come close to either of its inspirations. But! I’d make it again and even serve it to loved ones, and it was easy enough to make in a few minutes as a small lunch. Its closer cousin is this Furikake Chex Mix–which is the reason I have corn syrup in my pantry to begin with. (This dish does in fact beg to be named “soy-glazed” something other other, but such a move would P.F. Chang-ify this dish in a way I cannot bear! So:)
Sweet Potatoes, With Furikake
Ingredients:
1 sweet potato
1 tbsp butter
1.5 tsp soy sauce
1 tbsp light corn syrup
aji nori furikake
1) Wash and dry sweet potato and stab small holes in it with the tines of a fork or a paring knife.
2) Wrap sweet potato in a damp paper towel and microwave on high for five minutes, then flip over and microwave for another five minutes. Remove from the microwave, peel off the skin and chop into medium bites.
3) In a medium skillet, melt butter, then stir in soy sauce and corn syrup on low heat. Toss in sweet potato cubes and mix until sweet potatoes are glazed and slightly caramelized, 3-5 minutes.
Call it desperation or a flash of inspiration, but the other day, with a real hankering for a filling breakfast that wasn’t eggs, I took out my steel cut oats and tried my darndest to turn them into jook.
I cooked the oats according to the instructions, boiling two cups of water and stirring in half a cup of McCann’s until smooth before bringing down the heat and cooking on low for half an hour. Except before turning it down to simmer I added a little splash of soy sauce, sesame oil and minced garlic. I sauteed mushrooms, chopped up some green onions, and threw them on top of the oatmeal when it was done, along with some ichimi togarashi and furikake. That was it.
Friends, it was fine. It was not going to taste bad–though oatmeal, and especially steel cut does have a particular flavor that might have interfered with the soy sauce and sesame oil. I might try something with less body like Quaker’s. It was not revelatory. And it was sure quicker than making a pot of jook.
But on my last few bites it hit me. What I really wanted was some Chinese porridge.
Culinary achievements, dim sum edition. Dim sum is so labor intensive, but readily available around these parts that it’s rarely cooked at home. But when I saw Classic Deem Sum in a used bookstore in Atwater Village I knew it was coming home with me.
In San Francisco, Yank Sing is practically a dim sum institution. My sister-in-law’s mom actually used to work at Yank Sing, and she sends over batches of red bean-filled sesame balls (jeen deuih) so crispy fresh and perfectly spherical that they don’t look like they could have come from a home kitchen. I was certainly inspired by her homemade treats when I decided I’d make something from this book. Classic Deem Sum was printed in 1985, and has recipes for just about every dim sum basic–from spring rolls to taro dumplings, pillows of beef wrapped in rice noodles and crispy turnip cakes–along with hand-drawn illustrations showing how to pleat perfect shrimp dumplings and squeeze fish paste balls out of your fist. I love everything about this book, right down to the Chinese romanization that’s intended for Cantonese speakers.
It being dim sum (or deem sum!), it’s hard to find a recipe in the book that doesn’t require making your own sheets of rice noodles or pounding out your own fish paste or firing up a pot of hot oil for deep-frying. I’ve got a few recipes marked for when I’m feeling more ambitious but in the meantime I started with stuffed tofu. The recipe is actually terribly easy. It took me about 45 minutes, start to finish, and I was just putzing around the kitchen.
Even better, this dish didn’t require anything beyond Cantonese kitchen basics to bring it to life. There was no need to haul myself over to SGV to pick up any new ingredients. I did swap out the suggested ground pork for ground turkey and left off shrimp and cilantro, but that’s all your call. It’d probably also taste great with some chopped up water chestnuts in there, too. I will say: of all the ingredients in the stuffing, the tapioca starch is probably the most important. It lightens the meat and smooths out the texture of the stuffing so it’s not like eating a meatball inside a stewed tofu triangle. It’s more like a stuffed tofu pillow.
We’re talking serious Chinese comfort food here. Make a pot of rice, a plate of veggies and there’s dinner for two.
Stuffed Bean Curd (Yeung Daufoo), adapted from Classic Deem Sum by Henry Chan, Yukiko Haydock and Bob Haydock
Stuffing Ingredients:
4 fresh shiitake mushrooms, finely chopped
4 ounces ground turkey, minced
half of a beaten egg
2 tbsp minced green onion, green and white parts
½ tsp finely minced ginger
2 tsp tapioca starch
2 tsp Shao Hsing wine
1 ½ tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
1/8 tsp salt
½ tsp sesame oil
a dash of ground white pepper
1 tbsp chicken stock
1 tbsp oyster sauce
Bean Curd Sauce Ingredients:
1 ½ tbsp oyster sauce
1 ½ tsp sugar
¼ tsp salt
a dash of white pepper
½ tsp sesame oil
¾ cup chicken stock
1 tbsp Shao Hsing wine 2 tsp cornstarch mixed with 1 tbsp water
1 container firm tofu
cornstarch for dusting oil for pan-frying
1) Mix together stuffing ingredients thoroughly until pasty. Refrigerate until ready to stuff.
2) Prepare bean curd sauce. Combine all sauce ingredients except for cornstarch/water mixture) in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer. Once it’s bubbling, stir in cornstarch/water mixture. Simmer while stirring until sauce thickens. Remove from heat and set aside.
3) Drain liquid from tofu container and slice tofu block in quarters, and then cut each quarter diagonally into triangles.
4) Cradle a triangle in your palm and scoop out a pocket (about 1 tbsp) along the diagonal angle.
5) Dust each cavity and cut surface with cornstarch.
6) Fill each cavity with stuffing mixture, mounding it up to cover the cut surface.
7) Heat a large heavy flat-bottomed frying pan to hot and coat the bottom with ¼ cup of oil.
8) Place the triangles, filling side down, in the pan and fry at medium heat.
9) When filled edge is brown (about 4 minutes) turn the triangles onto their flat sides and pan fry.
10) Pour bean curd sauce over the tofu. Cover and simmer for 8-10 minutes.
