NYC was on fire this weekend. A heatwave affected much of the U.S. with temperatures reaching over 100 in many states. In New York City, the temperatures on Saturday and Sunday reached 98 with a heat index of 108. It was sweltering and because of this I wanted to eat cooling foods that could keep my body from breaking out into unmanageable sweat; specifically I wanted to eat cold dishes. At the moment, farmer’s markets around the City are bursting with summer’s bounty and I was inspired by cucumbers, tomatoes, onions and fresh basil that are in season. With these ingredients at hand, I diced tomatoes, cucumbers, along with Greek feta cheese and chopped up basil and onion. The ratios were 2 tomatoes: 2 cucumbers: 1 feta cheese: ½ basil: ½ onion. Into a large bowel they went and I drizzled truffle olive oil, balsamic vinegar over the melange then added salt for depth. After I tossed the salad, I set it in the fridge for about an hour and had it over several meals. It was crunching, cooling and nourishing. How many calories was it? Does it matter? It kept me cool.
Kohlrabi with Turkey Cubes
Ingredients:
Kohlrabi - peel outer layer and cut into 1cm cubes
Turkey breast - cut into 1cm cubes
Ginger - cut into a handful of slices
Dried Shiitake mushroom (two handfuls)
Dried baby scallops (handful)
Chicken flavoring
Black pepper
Olive oil
Sesame oil
Kohlrabi is a vegetable that I’m not too familiar with but have been eating all my life. My mom used to cook it, not very often but once in awhile we’ll have it. And from my memory I don’t remember its exact taste but I remember it being somewhat like a radish or daikon or some other root veggies that has a shape similar to a carrot. That being said, I believe it has a nice mild flavor.
This week Kohlrabi was ready to harvest at my community farm in Red Hook, Brooklyn. I’m always excited by the challenge of cooking something that’s in season yet off-the-beaten-track of my usual repertoire. I harvested a few and took them home to give it a go. Thinking through Chinese ingredients, I wanted to meld “soft” flavors into the kohlrabi dish. I also wanted to add a meat protein to the dish for no other reason than to eat it as part of my meal. I chose turkey breasts cut into cubes. I could’ve easily excluded the turkey but I wasn’t planning to cook a separate meat dish for dinner.
Once I assembled the ingredients above I began cooking. The dish started with oil and ginger. Sesame oil was heated with olive oil in about a 1:1 ratio. Once hot, ginger was added to the oils to allow its pungent flavor to permeate and soften. The oily-gingery flavor sets the base for the rest of the dish. Kohlrabi cubes, dried shiitake mushrooms and dried scallops were then added to the pot along with enough water to almost submerge the ingredients. Fire and heat goes to work - increase the heat to high until the dish boils then reduce it to a gentle boil. Simmer for about five minutes. Stir every half minute or so. Several things are happening while the ingredients cook: Shiitakes and scallops are absorbing water and oil flavors as it expands and imparts its fragrance into the dish, and the Kholrabi starts to soften and exchange flavors with the rest of the dish.
After five minutes of gentle boil the turkey was added to the pot. About one tablespoon of chicken flavoring and black pepper were also added and stirred. You can can adjust amount to your liking. Again, high heat to a boil then low heat to a simmer. Once the turkey was cooked, which takes about 5 minutes, the dish was completed.
You can serve over rice or what I did that was rather tasty was eat it with vermicelli.
The dish was delicious with robust, mellow, soft flavors. However, what surprised me even more was the Kohrabi. It was nutty and sweet and tender. Ah what a nice treat for the summer!
Stewed Pinto Beans
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Using what I purchased for my last blog entry, I decided to cook the dried pinto beans. Prior to cooking I reflected on how I wanted to prepare them and more importantly, how to discuss the cooking process. I think most of us have read and followed many recipes in our lives from various sources - cookbooks, internet sites, magazines, friends and family, etc. The structure of a recipe is pretty standard listing ingredients at the beginning then the steps required to prepare the dish. Sometimes, there are side or sub-steps that instruct the cook to prepare secondary products such as a sauce, a dip, a pie crust, or a garnish. A recipe is an instruction manual that takes the ingredients from A to Z.
As I was reflecting I thought rather than laying out a standard recipe perhaps it's more interesting to lay out a manual that requires more creative thinking on the part of the cook. So here's my attempt to describe and articulate steps for turning my dried pinto beans into a yummy stew:
Making stewed Pinto Beans is a fun process. The star of the dish is the beans and at a minimum water and heat must be applied to transform the dried beans into something edible. That is the fundamental process by which flavors and textures are considered.
Start by soaking the beans in water at a 1:2 ratio. Allow half a day to elapse. The beans will absorb the water and increase in size. Before applying heat there are a few things to consider:
- Texture: What is the desired texture of the bean? Should the bean be firm, which would require a bite to split the beans? Or perhaps soft enough so that the tongue can mush the bean by pushing it against the roof of the mouth? The desired texture will determine the length of the cooking process.
- Proportion of primary flavors: There are several primary flavors to consider - sweet, sour, salty, bitter and savory (umami). Should the stewed beans be savory and salty, or sweet and sour, or perhaps a different combination?
- Taste and aroma: What other flavoring ingredients should the beans take on? How simple or complex should the flavors be?
For this particular dish, I wanted to make the beans savory and salty. For flavoring, I decided to add part of an onion and two ingredients I found at the dollar store - onion bouillon cubes and canned sweet corn kernels. Each of these adds a layer of taste to the dish: Onions will impart flavor and fragrance, the bouillon cube will make the dish savory, and the canned corn will add a burst of sweetness. Salt and pepper will also be used to enhance the overall dish.
After soaking the beans, I chopped half the onion into small pieces and sauteed them in a pot until soft and golden. The beans were then drained, rinsed and added to the pot. Add about twice the amount of the water then increase the heat until the water boils. Once the beans are boiling lower the heat and let it cook slowly. There should be a slow, gentle boil.
The next and final phase of the cooking process is what I like to call incremental cooking. The reason I call it incremental cooking is because once you add too much of something, you can't take it out! As the beans cook, they will continue to absorb water and the liquid will slowly evaporate. The following should be done in increments over time:
- Check the water level: Add more water as the water evaporates but don't add too much. How soupy, thick, or dry should the final product be? Think and adjust in increments as needed.
- Texture of the bean: Test the texture of the bean every 5-10 mins to see if it has softened to the desired texture. Simply put one bean in your mouth and chew.
- Seasoning: When the beans are close to the desired texture, add seasoning in small increments. For my particular dish this includes salt, pepper and bouillon cubes - add, taste, add, taste, add, taste, etc.
Finally, the canned corn was drained and added towards the end of the cooking process. I only added about half the can to not over-power the beans. Because the corn is already cooked and it's not something that needs to "meld" into the other flavors of the dish, I added the corn to the stew a few minutes before turning off the heat. I wanted the corn to provide a burst of sweetness while eating. (Of course fresh corn would be better but that is not available at the dollar store.)
I would say the cooking/boiling part took about an hour to an hour an a half. I ate this over a bed of rice and it was delicious!
Canned vs. Dried Beans
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I was in Red Hook, Brooklyn the other day and came across a $99 cent dollar store. I've been there several times but this time I was looking for something yummy to blog about. One thing that is ubiquitous at most dollar stores is beans. Many stores will offer both dried and canned beans - Kidney beans, black beans, pinto beans, chickpeas etc. As far as eating from the dollar stores goes, beans are a true treasure. Knowing how to cook with beans adds good substance and sustenance to a meal.
So there I was staring at the beans. My eyes went back and forth - dried, canned, dried, canned, dried, canned. Canned beans obviously offer more convenience but there was something about dried beans that attracted me. I know it's a process to cook - one has to soak the beans overnight then cook them for a least an hour so they are soft enough to eat. Through the process of osmosis and application of heat, water is absorbed and the bean cells soften over the course of a day. It takes time and patience. More work for sure but I often enjoy eating beans cooked from scratch than from a can.
I think in order to make good food, among many things, one must have clear control of the texture of food. The ability to work with the texture of food allows the cook to decide how soft or firm, concentrated or diluted, or large or small an ingredient should be. The gradation of the qualities of an ingredient is similar to the quality of sound in music. For example, every note in a piece of music has a stylistic execution - it can be hummed softly in pianissimo while other notes are being played out, or be robust taking the lead in a song, or linger over several moments and blend in with the harmony of the music. I think beans are like that too. There are various "styles" in which beans can work itself into a dish. When firm, beans hold their original structure and nutty flavor. Eating firm beans provides a toothsome feel that might go well with other ingredients in a dish. When soft, beans can absorb the flavors of the dish. Chili, for example, is usually served with soft beans that have been cooking in many herbs and spices, hence flavorful soft beans. Cook beans for too long and it will turn into a pot of mush. Re-fried beans come to mind as there are dishes that call for mushy pasty beans.
In addition to the culinary advantages of cooking with dried beans, I think it offers something more psychological as well, especially in the context of eating from the dollar store. Working with dried beans offers greater freedom to choose, freedom to decide how beans should be, and freedom to be more creative with cooking. When we buy canned beans, the condition of the beans has already been decided. The canning process has already determined the quality of the bean. There is no turning back. We cannot make it firm again. Beans from a can only become softer with more cooking. Additionally, the canned beans won't assimilate with the flavors of a dish effectively since it's absorbed the water content of the can.
Good cooking requires the freedom to manipulate the flavors and textures of an ingredient. For that reason, it's usually best to start with the freshest and least processed food as possible. With that thought, I sighed and grabbed a bag of dried beans off the shelf.
A little bit more info about where beans come from: Beans are considered part of the legume family of plants. They are hearty plants that grow well in temperate weather conditions. In the northeast part of the United States, beans can be grown between the months of May through October when temperatures are cool to warm. Legumes are special plants because unlike other agricultural plants, legumes nourish the soil. Nitrogen, which is considered the staple "food" for plants, does not occur naturally in soil. Part of the reason why so much fertilizer is applied to soil is to put nitrogen back into the soil. Legumes, however, are special because they can produce their own nitrogen. Their roots host bacteria that fix nitrogen back into soil. For this reason, beans are always considered an important agricultural crop.
When a bean plant begins to produce beans, a pod emerges from the flower at first and then small beans form inside the pod. As the pod matures, the beans increase in size, become ripe to eat, then dries out. The pods are then picked and shucked which is how we get our beans.
Jamaican Patties
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I went to Jack's 99 Cent Store located in midtown Manhattan to explore their food products and I was seriously surprised. For those of you who do not know Jack's 99 Cent Store, this is probably the most popular dollar store in the city. There are always hordes of people filling its 3-floor store and no matter when you go, the store is full. The food is on the ground floor. As soon as you enter, there are multiple aisles of food. I was incredibly impressed by the selection. It is almost as good as the grocery store minus fresh perishable foods.
One particular product that caught my eye was frozen Jamaican patties. They were in an open freezer and cost $1.28 each. It's not something I eat regularly but I do love these patties. Jamaican patties consist of a flaky dough with a spicy filling that can be meat or non-meat. When hot, the dough and the warm filling is a great combination. From a health perspective, I think packaged goods like this should be consumed as an occasional treat rather than a meal substitute or everyday snack. The main reason I say this (and this goes for many products at dollar stores) is because the list of ingredients are long and most ingredients are hard to pronounce. Most seem more like chemicals than food. I assume the reason for the list of unrecognizable ingredients is to help make the product last longer and contributes nothing to our biological health.
So I purchased two patties (beef and chicken), went back to my office, popped them into the microwave for 3 minutes and voila, I had two different Jamaican patties for lunch. They were actually tastier than I expected. I was only planning to have a small taste but ended up eating them both! Yes, the dough was not the freshest and the filling looked like weird mush but it was yummy - not too spicy, full of robust flavors, not too salty and had a good combination of taste and texture. Overall, I give it like 4 out of 5 for taste but here's the catch: 10 hours later while I was watching T.V. before bed, my stomach started to cramp, my intestines started making rumbling noises, and before I knew it, I was on the toilet having diarrhea.
As I reflect on this experience, I truly believe the good gastronomy must result in good bowl movements. The quality of our shits is a measure of the quality of the food that we put in our mouths. There's a Chinese saying that goes something like this: The secret to a happy life is a good bowl movement. So as you eat from the dollar store, pay attention to how the food affects the quality of your shit because remember, garbage in equals garbage out.
I think I'll be better off eating Jamaican patties made from scratch next time around.
Ghost Pepper Chili Sauce
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For this first post, I went to the dollar store that is closest to work - Lot-Less, which is located in lower Manhattan. Looking through the food shelves, I found a bottle of Ghost Chili Pepper sauce. My initial reaction was "wow!". Ghost Peppers are considered the hottest peppers in the world. There are many different peppers that exist ranging from non-spicy peppers such as bell peppers, red/orange peppers and sweet peppers to spicy ones such as Serrano peppers, Habanero peppers and Jalapeno peppers. Just to give you a sense of how spicy Ghost Peppers are, they are about 125 times hotter than a Jalapeno Pepper. That is a tremendous amount of kick from a small pepper!
This is a great addition to any food pantry to spice up anyone's life. No, this did not cost $1 ($5.99 actually) but a little bit goes a long way. The bottle instructs the user to use only one drop. I imagine one can get hundreds of drops out of this bottle.
The sensation of heat can truly enhance flavors of a dish that may need an elevated sensation. But some dishes may benefit from heat while others may not. One cannot just add this sauce to all foods in an indiscriminate manner. The gastronomy of the sauce lies in thinking about complementary flavors in which a touch of spice will elevate its overall taste to please the eater. Some of these complementary flavors could be savory, salty foods that can be great with a bit more mouth feel. Other dishes maybe not require spice such as cold, sweet things. But what one considers complementary or not is in the taste buds of the beholder - you!
I personally like to enhance hot, oily dishes with a bit of hot sauce. When something such as beef stew or pasta sauce is given a bit of heat, the experience of eating becomes more exciting. But too much of anything is simply too much so I often think about how much burn do I want while I eat this dish; and does the heat compliment the other flavors of the dish?
This sauce is a great find. The sensation of spice and heat can be found at the dollar store. See what you can find in your local discount store.