Monthly Archives: April 2007

Chicken curry

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Curry

This chicken curry is in my Vietnamese mom’s style, which is different from, say, quick cooking Thai versions, in that it’s a stew that simmers for a while.

I eat it primarily with crusty french bread to sop up the juices, and jasmine rice when the bread runs out.

  • 1 entire chicken, cut up into pieces. Chop up each thigh and breast half into at least 2 pieces, bone intact. The bones make the gravy
  • 2 or 3 russet potatoes, chopped into 2 x 2 inch chunks
  • One yellow onion, chopped
  • 4 cloves of garlic, minced
  • Small knob of ginger, minced
  • 6 or 7 kaffir lime leaves
  • 1 stalk of lemon grass, chopped into thirds
  • 2 tablespoons turmeric
  • 2 tablespoons prepared red curry paste (I use Mae Ploy brand)
  • 1/2 teaspoon each ground cumin, coriander, and galanga powder
  • One can coconut milk
  • One container low-sodium chicken broth (i.e. Pacific brand – the larger)
  • One tablespoon fish sauce
  • Salt to taste

Dust the chicken with turmeric, cumin, coriander, galanga powder, salt. Swirl hot vegetable oil in a dutch oven, brown the chicken parts for a few minutes. Remove.

Add onion and ginger, sautee for a few minutes. Add garlic, lemongrass, lime leaves, and red curry paste, and sautee for a few minutes more. Pour in coconut milk, add fish sauce, bring to a simmer, return chicken to the pot and add pototoes. Pour in chicken broth, and add additional water (if needed) to fully cover.

Bring to boil, reduce heat to lowest setting, and simmer for more than an hour or so. Salt to taste.

Vietnamese Chicken Slaw

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Opening-Shot

With the return of warm weather, it’s quickly becoming salad season. This is a crunchy, tangy, and healthy salad. Salad.

Vietnamese Chicken Slaw

This will serve probably 3-4 people as a main dish, and more if serving as an appetizer or if those people are diminutive, children, or drug-addicted models.

Salad Components

  • 1/2 a cooked chicken, shredded (I like to use more of the white meat)
  • 1 head green cabbage
  • 2 carrots, shredded
  • 1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
  • 1/2 bunch of cilantro, chopped coarsely
  • dozen or so leaves spearmint
  • 6 or so purple perilla leaves
  • 6 or so thai basil leaves

Dressing

  • 1 clove of garlic, forced through a garlic press
  • 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
  • Juice of one nice, large juicy lime (or two smaller limes)
  • 3 tablespoons sugar
  • 1 and 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
  • 3 thai bird chilies, minced
  • 1 and 1/2 tablespoons sesame oil
  • 1 teaspoon garlic chili sauce or siracha

Garnish

  • Handful of roasted peanuts (no skins)

Dressing: whisk together all ingredients, and set aside to “steep”.

Peanuts

Crush the peanuts in a mortar with a pestle.

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Chiffonade the cabbage. You can skip this step by buying those pre-cut coleslaw packages in the E. coli aisle of the produce section of your local mega-mart. There’s often carrots in the mix, too, so that will save you the step of shredding the carrots.

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Get your herbs in order. What is perilla? It’s essentially shiso — a broad leafed member of the mint family. The versions utilized in Vietnamese cooking have a purple face. Chiffonade the perilla and mint, and along with cilantro, combine with the cabbage, carrots, and chicken in a large mixing bowl. Whisk dressing and pour over salad, and toss.

Closeup-Slaw

Garnish with peanuts.

Why it’s cheaper to eat crap

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You Are What You Grow. (NYTimes).

Michael Pollan on eating healthy in America.

As a rule, processed foods are more “energy dense” than fresh foods: they contain less water and fiber but more added fat and sugar, which makes them both less filling and more fattening. These particular calories also happen to be the least healthful ones in the marketplace, which is why we call the foods that contain them “junk.” Drewnowski concluded that the rules of the food game in America are organized in such a way that if you are eating on a budget, the most rational economic strategy is to eat badly — and get fat.

This perverse state of affairs is not, as you might think, the inevitable result of the free market. Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots?

Smell that free market

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FDA aware of dangers to food. (Washington Post via MSNBC)

The Food and Drug Administration has known for years about contamination problems at a Georgia peanut butter plant and on California spinach farms that led to disease outbreaks that killed three people, sickened hundreds, and forced one of the biggest product recalls in U.S. history, documents and interviews show.

Overwhelmed by huge growth in the number of food processors and imports, however, the agency took only limited steps to address the problems and relied on producers to police themselves, according to agency documents.

Smells like shit.

Kimchi

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Kimchi is good. Although — like many things in the wide world of food that are good — it smells like shit.

When we lived overseas, for a while we had a Korean neighbor who taught my mom how to make kimchi (I was in the third grade). My mom at that point had made pickled vegetables (the most ubiquitous being pickled mustard greens), but these were mild concoctions. My mom I imagine was intoxicated by the heat and toxicity of our neighbors kimchi, which spent a few days taking a dirt nap, buried in her backyard.

My mom didn’t go that far, instead allowing a huge jar of kimchi to ferment on our kitchen counter. We lived at the time in a closed residential compound that had been designed by Dutch architects for (initially) expatriated Dutch workers and their families. As a result, our house was quite diminutive in an efficient, scaled down way — the Netherlands appearing to be a country that was built to 3/5th scale. It was quite possibly the smallest 5 bedroom house in the entire world – maybe 1000 square feet. Everything was scaled down to size — the bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, utility room. One load in our washer and dryer meant probably two pairs of jeans and five shirts. The icebox could barely hold a chicken. Our Atari 2600 game room was so small a third Missile Command spectator had a hard time waiting his turn without discomforting the others.

As a result of living in such cramped quarters, my Mom’s huge jar of rotting crap smelled like fucking shit. Oh man, my dad would bellyache like a whiny ass titty baby. He had a hard time with fish sauce, but this kimchi was another smelly beast altogether. The fact that it sat out for days, stinking up the whole joint, imparted a more criminal ignominy. Like most solipsistic white honkies, he had an aversion to anything that smelled stronger than ketchup that wasn’t his own fart. I kid the white people. I love them — they are good at starting wars.

My kimchi technique is slightly modified from a more traditional approach (as described on Zenkimchi’s excellent post), though I do use this technique as a template.

As with most of my recipes, everything is approximate. In fact, I’m not going to give measurements for most of the ingredients here. Just figure it out yourself, you’re a big girl. Take some responsibility for your life for once.

Kimchi

Vegetable components

  • Cabbage
  • Daikon radish
  • Carrots
  • Sliced red onion
  • Chopped green onion
  • Garlic
  • Italian parsley
  • Ginger

In this case, I picked up a couple long napa cabbages from Uwajimaya (around 2 feet long, but much narrower than conventional napa). I sliced the daikon into coins, and the carrots into matchsticks, and brined all these for around 8 hours in cold, salty water (1 cup kosher salt for every quart water). I used around 25 minced garlic cloves — no kidding — and a nice, shredded knob of ginger. The parsley may sound like an odd addition, but I like the freshness it adds to the mix.

Seasoning components

  • Fish sauce (I used Three Lions brand – my usual)
  • Gochugaru
  • Crushed red pepper
  • Paprika
  • 1 teaspoon fermented shrimp sauce (your call)
  • 1 teaspoon or so of sugar

Start with a large mixing bowl, and add all the spices.

Pepper

Gochugaru is Korean dried red pepper. It’s intensely red. Paprika, again, may seem odd , but I like the “red” it adds. Also, the crushed pepper could probably be omitted, but I like the additional flavor layer it adds. It is important to note the gochugaru is the primary pepper component and you are using a lot. How much? That’s your call, but you’re looking to create a consistent paste when you add the fish sauce (and the shrimp sauce, if you’re using it). It should be a nice sludge that should should be ample enough to coat all your vegetables. If you’re feeling timid, you can create the sludge separately and mix it in stages with the vegetables to obtain your optimum level of intensity.

Once everything is mixed to your liking, transfer to a large jar or container and commence with the rotting. You can leave it out at room temperature overnight or transfer immediately to your fridge – I usually let it sit out for around 12 hours and then refridgerate. The opening photo shows kimchi in its infancy. I will sample the kimchi at this point, as there’s joy to be obtained from a fresh, bright batch of kimchi.

Pepper

But as you can see, once it mucks around in its own rotting filth for a while, that’s when something special starts to occur.

The real veal

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Veal to Love, Without the Guilt. (NYTimes)

When photographs of formula-fed veal calves tethered in crates where they could not turn around appeared across the country, sales of veal plummeted. They have never recovered. In the 1950s and 1960s Americans ate four pounds of veal a year on average. Today per capital consumption is around half a pound a year.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that some farmers finally got the message and changed the way their calves were raised.

…

People like Elaine Burden of Middleburg, Va., who stopped eating veal about 10 years ago, have come back. Ayrshire Farm, an 800-acre organic farm in nearby Upperville, is selling certified-humane veal at its Home Farm Store in Middleburg, and she is buying it. “I’m delighted we can have it again,” she said. “Psychologically you feel better because it can graze on the fresh field of grass. It’s a more natural and wholesome way to eat. But in fact, the taste is better.”

You remain karmically pure because the baby cow is allowed to get its grass on before you slit its throat. And if that ups the deliciousness factor, then long live humanity. Win win.

Beans of Mass Destruction

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Imported food rarely inspected. (AP via Yahoo! News)

Just 1.3 percent of imported fish, vegetables, fruit and other foods are inspected — yet those government inspections regularly reveal food unfit for human consumption.

Frozen catfish from China, beans from Belgium, jalapenos from Peru, blackberries from Guatemala, baked goods from Canada, India and the Philippines — the list of tainted food detained at the border by the Food and Drug Administration stretches on.

Add to that the contaminated Chinese wheat gluten that poisoned cats and dogs nationwide and led to a massive pet food recall, and you’ve got a real international pickle. Does the United States have the wherewithal to ensure the food it imports is safe?

Food safety experts say no.

A hurricane triggered by a butterfly’s wings*

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Are mobile phones wiping out our bees? (The Independent).

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world’s harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world – the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops.

This really is quite frightening. The kind of thing that — during days in which my faith in fortuitousness feels increasingly tenuous — makes me want to curl up underneath my bed in a fetal position. Or dig out a plot in rural Alberta, stock up on canned goods and freeze dried sundries, and arm myself to the teeth.

* These words were once coined (as lyrics in a song) by an acquaintance of mine vis-à-vis that age-old chaos theory axiom

McGee on nitrates/nitrites

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The Red-Meat Miracle, and Other Tales From the Butcher Case. (NYTimes)

Then there’s the ongoing saga of nitrite and nitrate, which give hams, bacon, hot dogs, bologna and other salt-cured meats their special color and tang. Nitrite reacts in the meat tissue to form nitric oxide, which binds tightly to the iron in myoglobin and turns it a stable red. Nitrite is also toxic to many microbes, including the bacteria that cause botulism, so it’s a critical preservative in cured sausages. For centuries meats were treated with a liberal mixture of salt and saltpeter, or sodium nitrate, which bacteria on the meat converted into nitrite. Nowadays manufacturers generally use very small quantities of pure nitrite, or a mixture of nitrite and nitrate.

In the 1970s, the nitrite and nitrate in cured meats fell under the suspicion that they might cause cancer. Later research showed that we get far more of these chemicals from vegetables like celery, spinach and lettuce. Their abundant nitrate comes from the soil and is turned into nitrite by bacteria living in our mouths.

Five Things meme

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EatDrink&BeMerry has tagged me in the Five Things About Me meme that has been going around the Interwebs. So here’s my barf.

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1. The very first live rock concert I went to was Ratt, in 1985, who were touring in support of their “Invasion of Your Privacy” release. Opening was a heretofore unknown band by the name of Bon Jovi. It was after witnessing this horror that I began an exodus from my newly-pubic, testosterone-stunted heavy metal fascination. Next stop: Thompson Twins.

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2. I spent many of my formidable, younger years overseas, including 7 years in Northwestern Saudi Arabia on the Persian/Arabian Gulf. Suffice to say, these were (sadly) mostly pork-free years. We watched highly censored, non sequiturs disguised as television programs that would segue from Alex P. Keaton’s imminent kiss to denouement all in the matter of 5 seconds, thus leaving 12 minutes of air time which was often filled with some bearded guy on a rug chanting “Allahu Akbar” in rapturous song. We played a lot of kickball.

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3. I am a lover of instant ramen. Not Americanized crap like Maruchan or Top Ramen — these brands are a scourge and blight upon humanity. But, rather, imported brands from all the countries than comprise the Asian continent. I have particular respect for the Koreans, who IMHO are the current world instant ramen kings, having wrested the mantle from the Japanese. This occurred some time in the early-to-mid nineties. Whereas most food dilettantes use their discernible faculties of taste detection to refine an appreciation of fine wine varietal and vintages, or train a palette to distinguish between olive oil appellations or artisanal cheeses, I have honed my tongue to recognize the noodle styles and MSG-laden broth characteristics of various instant ramen brands and their regions. Without seeing the package, I can correctly identify the distinct Korean brands (in their prepared states) of Jin Ramen, Nong Shim Shin Ramyun, and Samyang Ramen. Among the Nong Shim varietals, it is very likely I would be able to tell you which was Shin Ramyun, which was Kimchi flavor, and which was Neoguri seafood flavor. Likewise, I could differentiate between Nissin’s miso, tonkotsu, shoyu, pork, or prawn flavors rather easily. I would be able to inform you that I was about to slurp a bowl of Tung-I Chinese Onion Flavor simply by the nose.

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4. I have a young daughter who will be three in July. She is cute and funny and I’m a horrible role model because I can’t stop cussing. Profusely. In fact, I’m quite enamored with the F-bomb, as all 1.7 regular readers of this blog can attest. Due to a perfunctory corporate climate at my job, I am a language eunuch during the day. So when I get home, I have difficulty containing my excitement for a chance to use salty language. It is a problem that I have acknowledged.

However, I do not have any similar reservations about using colorful language on my blog, as my daughter is too young to read. I find the F-word, especially in gerund form, to be a fine rhetorical tool, a veritable colloquial Swiss army knife when employed by a skilled wordsmith. Why would any writer, especially a plebeian hack such as myself, deny the existence or refrain from the use of such an elocutionary flourish? Here is such an example writ large. Compare:

“It was good burrito.”

With…

“It was a fucking good burrito.”

Case closed.

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5. I am half-Vietnamese. As some people mistake me for being Latin or another indeterminately equatorial ethnicity of some sort, I’m often asked what my other half is, to which I reply “Cracker!”. I can make fun of both white people and Asians. It’s my right for being forced to check “Asian/Pacific Islander” on all my standardized tests in high school. First of all, how come America is so binary? You are either black or white, or something else altogether. When Tiger Woods splashed upon the scene, the media narrative dictated that he was the finest black golfer of all time, the first to win the Masters, etc. Which he certainly was…but with a father who was African AND Native American, but a mother who was FULL Thai, wouldn’t simple ratios qualify Tiger Woods as the best Thai golfer ever and first to win the Masters? The Sultan of Siam? Fuzzy Zoeller SHOULD have said, “You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy it and tell him not to serve Khao Soi next year. Got it? Or Pad Kee Mow or Pad See Ew or whatever the hell they serve.”

And second, there’s only, what, 3 billion Asians? Maybe a few hundred thousand Pacific Islanders? Lumping both groups together under one umbrella gives short shrift to the Asian experience. How come there is no correlative option for “White/Caucasian/Icelandic” or “White/Caucasian/Baffin Islander?”

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There you have it. Five things you now know about me, time that could have been better spent watching Growing Pains reruns or cleaning the sock lint and jam from the inner nail nook of your big toe. For my part, I will pass the torch to the following:

Consider yourselves tagged.

Higgins

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I went to Higgins with a buddy last week (disclaimer: I also posted this @Portlandfood.org). I had the burger and was duly unimpressed.

It was definitely large and looked promising. But the texture was off. The menu doesn’t use the word “burger”, preferring to dress it up with euphemisms (“freshly ground sirloin on hearth-baked roll”). The ground sirloin just doesn’t cut it IMO. Too lean, for one, and the thick patty sunk like a lead balloon on that roll. 1/2 the way through it was tough to finish, like I was eating a solid meat donut (incidentally I gave up on the last couple bites as I could sense a large lump of meatitude in my abdomen – I can’t remember the last time I didn’t finish a non-fast food burger).

There was very little discernable flavor outside of thick, brutal meatness. At $11, I have had a better $5 Sysco burger at Yur’s — and it included Sysco fries. This burger was served with a perfunctory mayo/aioli, no tomato, just a meager portion of house made pickles that were basically limp wisps of sliced cucumber and a single cornichon. It came with a lightly dressed mesclun mix that was sprinkled with hazelnuts.

Also had the open-faced pastrami sandwich. I’m no pastrami expert, but I can say this fared better than the burger – served with grilled onions and melted white cheddar. Same salad on the plate.

I didn’t pay for the meal – we were on our way to see The Apples in Stereo @Berbati’s, so my buddy picked up the tab (since I had paid for show tickets). However, had I paid, I may have said something about this:

Con of condiments

Especially considering I couldn’t even get as much ketchup from the glass container as I wanted for my burger (it was running on low-to-empty). I had considered asking our waitron for more ketchup, but simply didn’t bother – I wonder if we would have been double-charged.

Again, mediocre burger. No fucking fries. Charging for ketchup and mustard? Criminal.

Lamb Kefta Kebabs

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Opening-3

I like kebabs. I particularly enjoy the Kefta kebab, which is ground meat formed around a skewer in kebab-like fashion. I like saying the word kefta. It’s one of those words, like película and Kofi Annan, that you never grow tired of saying. I remember when Congress a couple years ago was debating the merits of the Central America Free Trade Agreement, I secretly wished the debate would draw out into a longer, more contentious debate than it had at the time, just because I enjoyed all the talking heads uttering the acronym “CAFTA” (which was close enough for me). Each time I watched the news I’d get hungry.

You can make this with beef or beef and lamb as well. New Seasons sells ground lamb, though keep in mind it is very fatty and will imbue quite a gamy scent into the atmosphere for some time. My wife was all bothered and stuff, but the deliciousness factor made her harangues worth it.

Kefta Kebab

  • 1 and one-half pounds ground beef or lamb (or both!)
  • 1 bunch chopped fresh Italian parsley, reserve a couple tablespoons (to cook with rice)
  • 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
  • 1 egg
  • 1/3 cup bread crumbs
  • 3 or 4 garlic cloves, forced through a press
  • 1 white onion, finely chopped
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon ground coriander
  • 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
  • Ground pepper
  • Salt to your taste

Meat

Combine everything in a large mixing bowl and mix together with your hands. I like to use long, flat broad metal skewers — mold the meat around the length of the skewer and pat to form an elongated, rectangular patty.

Brown

Heat a grill pan over medium-high and brown skewers on each of the 4 ends, 2 minutes or so each side. Remove and let sit for a few minutes.

You can eat this skewers by themselves. But c’mon, man, don’t be such freak.

Rice Pilaf

  • Olive oil or butter (2 tablespoons)
  • 2 cups basmati rice
  • 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
  • 3 cups chicken broth
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 2 cloves minced garlic
  • 1 chopped tomato
  • Pinch of saffron
  • Salt

Rice

Preheat oven to 325 F. Rinse and soak rice in water for half hour. Drain. Heat oil or butter in a medium saucepan (with a tight fitting lid) over medium heat. Add onions and sweat for a couple minutes, then add garlic, rice and saffron and sautee for a couple minutes. Add tomatoes, salt, and broth. Bring to boil, cover, and place in oven for 20 minutes. Allow the rice to sit on stovetop for 10 minutes, then fluff with a fork.

Sumac Onions

  • 1 white onion, halved and sliced
  • Ground sumac
  • Olive oil

Sautee onions in oil. Hit with sumac when they start to caramelize, and serve over kebabs.

Plated-2

I like to squeeze lemon over the kebab, onions, and rice.

How about an appetizer of seared Shut the Fuck Up with a Bite Me coulis?

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Food bloggers dish up plates of spicy criticism. “Formerly formal discipline of reviewing becomes a free-for-all for online amateurs”.

If you think restaurant critics from mainstream newspapers, television and magazines are tough on the food industry, you haven’t spent much time in cyberspace. Online message boards, gossip columns, city restaurant guides and food blogs are proliferating and having a profound influence on where consumers spend their eating dollars. The once-genteel discipline of restaurant reviewing has turned into a free-for-all, celebrated by some as a new-world democracy but seen by others as populist tyranny.