The Snack Review – Page 8 – Snacks, Reviewed

An Improvised New Year’s Eve Winter Panzanella

It started with a visit to Zero Zero Pizza with some girlfriends over the holidays. I saw their menu listing for a Winter Panzanella and it made immediate sense to me. No matter that I’ve never tried a regular ‘ol spring or mid-summer or autumn panzanella, and we didn’t order Zero Zero’s that afternoon either. It was enough to get my wheels turning. (I admit part of the appeal is being able to say the word “panzanella” over and over.)

A few days later and with a New Year’s Eve potluck dinner a couple hours around the corner, Kevin and I mostly winged it. As in: Kevin did the bulk of the work while I shouted out guidance from the Internet. Making dishes up on the fly and testing them out on a group of mostly strangers? Ina Garten would probably not approve. But she did teach me the basics of a standard panzanella.

If I were to recreate this, this is what I’d do: chop up a hefty butternut squash into one-inch cubes, toss with olive oil, salt and pepper and a tablespoon of brown sugar. Throw it in the oven set at 400 degrees for an hour, tossing at the halfway point. A half hour into it, put a pan of chopped crimini mushrooms into the oven to roast on another rack. Fifteen minutes before the butternut squash are done, throw a handful of dried cranberries onto the pan and return to the oven. Borrow Amardeep’s lovely Le Creuset to toast one-inch cubes of rustic bread. Bread cubes toasted on a medium-low fire with a little olive oil, salt and pepper in that perfectly regulated heat, even with meh meh bread from Trader Joe’s, will be so good you’ll be plucking them out of the pot to pop in your mouth before they make it into the bowl.

Remove everything from the heat and let it all come to room temperature. Continue to resist the pull of the bread cubes. Lightly mix the squash+cranberries, mushrooms, a couple generous handfuls of arugula, and some torn up fresh mozzarella in a large bowl. Lightly dress with a citrus vinaigrette (olive oil, orange juice, a couple splashes of balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, and finely minced garlic), and just before you’re ready to serve, throw in those bread cubes and give it another good toss. Dip a spare bread cube in some leftover vinaigrette and snack away, because you and your sweetheart have earned it. Serve!

Second Timer’s Granola–With Egg Whites

Immediately after my triumphant first foray into the world of granola, I turned to my on-demand cooking counselor, the Internet, and asked: “How to get those clusters in granola?” And lo, the fine folks at Food52 had recently answered this very question. Armed with their brilliant tip (egg white = binding protein), I set out for another batch, and have made this several times over since. What follows is my recipe for gently clustered pecan almond chocolate chip granola. (And please forgive the blurry photo–still getting the hang of this photographing all my cooking business.)

Chocolate Almond Pecan Granola, With Clusters
Makes 3-4 cups
1 ¾ cups rolled oats
1/3 cup sliced raw almonds
½ cup roughly chopped raw pecans
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
¼ cup olive oil
½ tsp coarse salt
1 egg white
½ to ¾ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 300ºF and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Mix everything, except for the egg white and chocolate chips, in a medium sized bowl.
3. In a separate small bowl, whip the egg white until it’s frothy and foamy, about 3-4 minutes. Incorporate into unbaked granola and mix, then spread into an even layer onto baking sheet.
4. Bake for 30-40 minutes, removing every 15 to stir, until the oats and nuts are toasted to your taste.
5. Remove from oven and cool in the pan until granola is just warm, then stir in chocolate chips. Store in an airtight container.

My 2014 Cooking Resolutions

List-making. I enjoy it almost as much as list-accomplishing. Here’s what I’m excited about for 2014.

1. Try my hand at ingredients and cooking methods I’ve never attempted before. Fish intimidates me for some reason. The same for yeast-y baked goods.

2. Bring more surprise to my daily staples. I’m talking simple surprises here, like tossing sesame seeds into my plates of kale. Or sesame seeds atop my weekly bowls of Korean ramen.

3. Bake a loaf of bread. (See #1)

4. Make this lemon crepe cake. This one’s been on my list since, oh, 2010 when I first saw that stunning photo in Martha Stewart. But 2014 will be the year, yes ma’am.

5. Recreate this Forage barley salad in the above photo. It’s got barley, a ton of parsley, some spinach, button mushrooms and a chili vinaigrette. Fresh, tasty comfort food with a little heat, basically IS my palate. I want this one in my steady home rotation.

6. Follow that immediately with those roasted carrots and parsnips with crema and pomegranate seeds.

7. More leafy greens, fewer (processed) snacks. Gummy candy is a sometimes snack. Gummy candy is a sometimes snack. Gummy candy is a sometimes snack. If I repeat it enough I might start believing it.

8. Just go for it in the kitchen. My friend and favorite kitchen partner Narinda is fearless in the kitchen (and everywhere else in her life), and I admire that so much. I’ve tended to be a strict recipe-follower, but especially since trying my hand at writing down some of my own recipes, I see that it’s fine to leave the map aside and go exploring without a guide.

9. Start that cooking and food book club. Merging literary life with food and cooking–this is the dream. Los Angeles-based cook/book lovers–you interested?

10. Share it all with you here.

Happy new year!

Food Dreams: Wonderful Foods Boba

After a long day, I need boba the way some people need a hard drink. (This is not to say I don’t occasionally need that hard drink too.) When I’m in San Francisco, the only place I go for my boba is a spot called Wonderful Foods in the Sunset. You’ll know it because they’ve got a new sign painted on the window that says: “BEST TAPIOCA IN TOWN.” Believe them. There may be a half dozen boba shops on that stretch of Irving where Wonderful Foods is, but you’re never going to find the same perfectly chewy boba or the same fresh-from-the-peel banana or avocado or mango fruit smoothies at the rest. Get any of those or the red bean or taro smoothies, or the oatmeal milk tea. Okay or the almond or coconut milk tea. That or the fresh watermelon juice. I’ll stop.

There’s been something of a boba renaissance in the last few years in San Francisco, especially since the frozen yogurt craze finally quieted down. Boba has reclaimed its title as the most popular Asian dessert on this part of what I call Asian Irving. And all around the city, new, more hip versions of boba are being sold. But I actually really like that through the years Wonderful Foods has never tried to reinvent itself. It just is the best tapioca in town.

TV Bites: Aziz Ansari and the Pineapple Bun

I remember being a little taken aback the first time I saw the thick slices of butter that are wedged into bao in Hong Kong. They don’t sell ‘em that way in the U.S. But the thing that really makes me nostalgic for the city are those split-second shots of Hong Kong milk tea. The soft bite of intense, darkly brewed English tea cut with the comforting sweet of condensed milk is pure heaven to me–Hong Kong in a cup. It’s enough to make me want to make my own at home…

Food nostalgia aside, there’s plenty to love about this segment. You go, Mrs. Chan.

Kabaya Watermelon Gummies

Imagine bright watermelon flavor, a textural cross between chewy German Haribos and soft Japanese Kasugai gummies, and the crunch of a finishing roll in sugar, and you’ve got these sweet Kabaya Suika gummies. They are tasty, fun and as a matter of course when it comes to Japanese snacks, adorable.

thanks Di!

On Loving Fast Food and Workers’ Rights Both

I consider myself something of a french fry connoisseur. Matchstick thin, crinkly chubby, curly and seasoned, I know my way around a fry. Some of my favorite french fries are the ones McDonald’s makes. Straight from the fryer, they are, hands down, the best fast-food fries produced in the country. And I say that with confidence even though there are 40 U.S. states I’ve never even stepped foot in.

Those sentences feel like a bold confession, but I’d like to get even more personal with you, if that’s all right, and talk about fast-food workers’ rights. It may seem like a departure from granola and sweet Babette on The Snack House, but it’s an issue that’s as close to my heart as other food topics I care about–like intimate meals with friends and lovingly handed down heirloom recipes.

Today, fast-food workers and their supporters in over 100 U.S. cities protested to demand higher pay and the right to unionize. The photos from around the country are stirring–many people in the cold, some out before the sun rose, coming together to stand up for themselves and others is just plain moving to me.

In this uncertain economy and in an industry where the majority of workers cannot make ends meet on their wages alone, it takes a lot of guts to put one’s livelihood on the line and stand up publicly to demand better treatment. Their courage has me thinking about my role as a french-fry lover in our food ecosystem.

In the last decade the local and sustainable food movement has made enormous strides in changing the conversation around food. Today, considering the sourcing of ingredients (local? organic? chemical-free? sustainable?) is a central part of food ethics. It’s a hip (and expensive) privilege to eat locally sourced, sustainably grown beets and pork and farro. But when I see these courageous fast-food workers and groups like ROC United I see an effort to expand our food ethics a little wider to include consideration of not just the food itself but also the people who farm, harvest, cook, deliver, stock and serve the food, whether it’s organic or not. Are those people treated with dignity and respect? Do they get bathroom breaks? When they get sick or injured, can they take time off work without fearing they’ll lose their jobs? Can they work without fear of being sexually assaulted? For far too many food workers, the answers to these questions are no and no and no and no.

Striking fast-food workers are calling for a $15 minimum wage, a hefty increase from the current federal minimum wage of $7.25, but one that some economists–and more importantly to me, workers themselves–say is necessary for the large swath of U.S. workers who make up the growing low-wage economy to stay afloat. I listened to a debate on the radio today about the economic feasibility of such a wage increase, and got so annoyed at the clearly partisan nature of the conversation that I tuned it out. I regret doing that–I’m not an economics expert, and I’d like to hear rebuttals to claims that raising the minimum wage will just encourage further automation of low-wage work.

But in the immediate, what do today’s protests mean for us consumers on the other side of the counter? Where is our place in this debate? I’m starting with the basics today. For me that means listening to, and sharing with you, the calls for better treatment from people who make the fries I love so much.

photo by Steve Rhodes (via Flickr/Creative Commons)

Easy First Timer’s Granola

An old friend named Corina, herself a pro baker, once told me that if your dish takes good raw you know it’s going to taste great cooked. This was, if I remember correctly, why she insisted on trying all her cookie dough. Sound logic, if you ask me.

I was thinking about that kitchen wisdom as I was making this granola. Granola is not unlike fried rice, I discovered. Whatever you like (or happen to have on hand) goes! The original recipe calls for coconut, I had none. The recipe wanted dark brown sugar, all I was light. Again I swapped out fancier dark chocolate for regular old chocolate chips. No matter. When I snuck a few bites of the oats prior to their toast in the oven, I knew the finished product would be a keeper. Thanks, Corina, for that wise advice.

p.s. This was my first time making granola! With that whopping one experience under my belt, I pass on to you this pro tip: you’re going to want to stay in the room to catch the wafting smells of oats and nuts while they roast. Heavenly.

Chocolate Almond Pecan Granola
(adapted from xobreakfast)
Makes 3-4 cups

1 ¾ cups rolled oats
1/3 cup sliced raw almonds
½ cup roughly chopped raw pecans
1/3 cup light brown sugar
¼ cup olive oil
½ tsp coarse salt
½ to ¾ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 300ºF and line baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. Mix everything, save for the chocolate, in a bowl and spread onto pan.

3. Bake for 30-40 minutes, removing every 10 to stir, until the oats and nuts are toasted to your taste.

4. Remove from oven and cool in the pan until granola is just warm, then stir in chocolate chips. Store in an airtight container.

Movie Bites: Babette’s Feast

Can the loving decadence of a haute French feast thaw hearts hardened by years of puritanical self-denial, unrequited love and too many harsh Danish winters? In Babette’s hands, the answer is yes.

This was a sweet movie, good rainy day fare.

I’m pretty ignorant about wine. I lean toward that which is sweeter, and cheaper, and when I do partake I’m usually satisfied with one glass and tipsy by the second. But Babette’s careful attention to the pairings underscored their central role in French cuisine. Every course had its wine accompaniment, and Babette was fastidious about each. I couldn’t help thinking though, if I were so lucky to have been a guest of Babette’s I’d have been drunk and under the table before the quail ever made it out.

Food Dreams: The Park’s Finest

I wrote about The Park’s Finest for Colorlines earlier this year and ever since, when I get a craving for MEAT–as in all caps, I’m not messing around MEAT–what I usually mean is I want to go to The Park’s Finest. The restaurant is a paean to the wonders of barbecued meat. In fact, Kevin refers to The Park’s Finest as “The Meat Palace.”

The restaurant, in Los Angeles’ Echo Park, is known for exceptional Filipino-style American barbecue. We’re talking tender smoked cuts of beef, pork and chicken, with every bite full of delicious, slow flavors that you can season with pungent and sweet-spicy sauces. Every visit is a treat. We get a couple meat dishes–the beef shortrib is always one of them–along with some rice, their signature cornbread bibingka of course, and we’re set. (No need to bother with vegetables here.) Just thinking of that rounded beef rib right now is making me hungry.