What I didn't realize while in Japan was how many aromatic ingredients the Japanese traditional cooking relies on. When I thought of Japanese cuisine, I usually wouldn't think of herbs and spices--I was more inclined to associate them with exotic cuisines like Thai and Indian, not my mundane Japanese food. But living in a foreign country, where the mainstay of Japanese herbs and spices are hard to come by, has made me realize that there are, indeed, a lot of aromatics involved in the Japanese cooking. And by gory, good ones are hard to find.
Ginger is probably the easiest to find, although the "shin-shoga," fresh ginger shoot just growing out of a thin, not-yet-plump ginger root (that looks a bit like fa fingerling potato)--a delicacy that powerfully signifies the advent of early summer--seems impossible to find. Dried spices like sansho (prickly ash) are also stocked in Japanese markets. When it comes to fresh herbs, things get a bit tougher. Fresh herbs--like cilantro-like mitsuba, sharp and tangy kinome (young leaves of sansho; prickly ash), and pale but potent myoga--are sometimes found in Mitsuwa, a large, suburban Japanese market, but they're invariably expensive and I can't say they're the freshest of all. Citrus fruits are the worst: the USDA doesn't seem to like the idea of importing of citrus fruits of any kind from abroad (which is not surprising, considering the danger of the citrus canker). So, if I wanted yuzu, sudachi, or kabosu, which all have generically citrusy yet unique flavors, I don't have any choice but to go for overpriced and odd-tasting bottled juices.
Until very recently, shiso was one of the elusive herbs. (It's the green leaf with rugged edges and pointed tip that you sometimes find on your sushi plate.) Granted, many Japanese people grow their own shiso (including my green-thumbed mom whose green genes I don't seem to have inherited), and I could grow my own--if only the apartment were a bit sunnier. Granted, too, shiso is available at Mitsuwa for not so bad of a price at about $1 for 10 leaves. But somehow, getting the shiso from Mitsuwa doesn't seem to work for me. Perhaps it's the precise calculation that each leaf costs 10 cents that makes me reluctant to use them extravagantly. Combined with their short shelf life (about three days before dark marks appear), my strange reluctance to use them in large quantities often leaves three or four dark, soggy leaves perishing in my fridge. So, as much as I like their minty and floral aroma, I've mostly stayed away from shiso. Until recently, that was.
When I was studying the perky herbs in the Tai Nam food market on Broadway the other day, I saw a bag of "pink mint" and picked it up. On the front, the leaves were green; on the back, purple. They looked like a smaller and little bit sturdier version of the beloved shiso leaves. I snuck a glance up and down the aisle, and seeing that there weren't anyone around, I pinched the tip of a leaf that was sticking out of the package. Sure enough, the leaf smelled exactly like shiso. I picked up a package, biked home and started cooking. This time, with a large bowl full of pseudo-shiso bursting out of the tight plastic bag, I felt I could be extravagant with them.
I had a handful of shiitake mushrooms and about half a pound of ground chicken in the fridge. An idea quickly formed in my head. I started by chopping up a generous--truly generous--amount of pink mint. The back side of the leaves were beautiful--its purple, tinged with green and a hint of gold, was almost ethereal. I admired the color for a moment, then mixed the chopped shiso leaves with ground chicken, an egg, some corn starch, sesame oil, salt and pepper. Stuffed onto the shiitake mushrooms and sautéed in a pan, the shiso-infused chicken meatballs became a refreshing and satisfying entrée. For the sauce, I mixed equal parts of soy sauce and mirin with a chopped pickled plum. There was so much pseudo-shiso that I even used them for garnish (gasp!). It felt good to use my favorite Japanese herb without worrying about the cost and calculating how many there are left in the fridge.
As it turned out later, pink mint (or tia to in phonetic Vietnamese) was a popular Vietnamese herb among the ex-pat Japanese people craving for the familiar taste of shiso. It was kind of funny to see so many food blogs scattered all over the world--from Bangkok to Paris--by Japanese cooks substituting shiso with tia to. So many of them expressed delight when finding this superb substitute for the familiar herb, often after a long search and an even longer dry spell. Though I don't know any of the bloggers personally, I felt a strange connection, maybe even a camaraderie of some sort, with the fellow ex-pats. All thanks to my unplanned move to a foreign country full of ethnic immigrants.
Been busy with moving. I'm still tired from all the packing, carrying the boxes up and down the stairs, and most of all, deciding what to throw away and what to take along. It's amazing how much stuff we accumulate as we live our lives. Most of them aren't that essential--not that I believe in a life that's made up of only the bare necessity--but it is so hard to throw them away. Though between Patrick and me I'm the Acting Minister of Toss-It-Out, it does give me some pang of guilt to hear the "thud" of something still functioning hitting the stinking bottom of the dumpster. I've known, all along, that the lesson is not to buy stuff that I don't absolutely love and/or absolutely need, but they still seem to find ways to infiltrate my life. Grrr....
So, we used the weekend to pack and move most of the non-furniture, non-essentials to the new apartment, where the current tenant let us fill up one of her unused rooms with our u-haul boxes. I'd been planning to hold on to my kitchen stuff till the last moment in the current apartment, but early on Sunday I was hit by an urge to be done with them, and ended up packing and moving most of them. My kitchen looks very white now--no more colorful condiment bottles and sundry sacks on the shelf, no take-out menus on the fridge door, no cooking utensils on the windowsill. All the walls, shelves and countertops are exposed, and white. It's so white that it feels like a hospital room, indeed.
Till we unpack the kitchen stuff in the new apartment, we'll survive on take-out food and coffee (I'm keeping the coffee maker till the last minute in this apartment; it's our life line). For lunch, I drove out to Hong Kong Buffet, a Chinese place on Lincoln Ave., figuring that it'd be a hassle-free meal. I filled up the styloform conatiner with noodles; stir-fried veggies and meats; and a peach-shaped steamed bun (my favorite); and paid a mere $3.76 for its weight. I came home delighted.
What I soon discovered should have been obvious: there was no cultery to eat the food with. I'd packed all the chopsticks, forks and knives. Even the plastic ones we'd saved from other take-outs had been packed away. Loathing my own thoroughness, I looked around the empty kitchen and the similarly (but slightly less) empty computer room. Nothing. Just when I started to consider the pros and cons of eating the General Tso's Chicken with my bare hands (or the alternative was to use the Dunkin Donuts' straw), I remembered last night's dinner. I recalled, specifically, a plastic fork. Carelessly thrown onto a bag of just-out-of-the-fryer French fries, the fork had warped in the middle, forming a rugged half circle. A warped fork is better than a straw or bare hands, when it comes to eating utensils, so I dug into the grease-spattered brown bag from last night (which was, shamefully yet conveniently, still sitting on the table). Sure enough, the fork was still there, and my lunch and my dignity as a civilized eater were both saved.
So, the lesson is, if you can't learn the first one about not buying stuff you won't need, to say "yes" to the crutial question at the take-out counter: "Do you need a fork?"
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Hong Kong Buffet
6249 N. McKormick Rd., Chicago, IL
773.649.0888
The food was good, a standard Chinese-buffet fare. Although some Yelpers absolutely hate this place to the marrow ("yucky" "msg" "filthy" "greasy" "peking duck resembles roadkill" "no wonder they make you pay before you enter the restaurant" etc.), I didn't find it any more horrific than any other Chinese buffet. Maybe my standard for Chinese buffet is lower than it should be, but hey, when I'm paying under $4 for a full box of meats and veggies, I'm not gonna complain.
Wow, was what I said.
I came across an incredibly easy and fast recipe for custard pudding on a Japanese food blog, and tried it yesterday. According to the recipe, it required one of those fancy Le Creuset pots, which have become a huge fad in Japan in the four years I've been absent from that country. Born rebellious, however, I haven''t felt too eager to jump on that bandwagon (although I'm quite fond of the cute shapes and vivid colors of these pots and pans), so I don't own one. The recipe was to boil some water in a Le Creuset pot, place small cups of custard pudding in the boiling water, keep the pot boiling for 3 minutes and leave it alone for 20 minutes with the lid on. The high heat-retention rate of the Le Creuset would allow the pudding to cook gently at the right temperature, which prevents formation of texture-roughening steam bubbles. So, the pot only needs to be heat-retentive, I thought. I gave my non-stick pasta pot a try. And it worked fantastic.
Since I figured my pot would lose more heat more quickly than the fantabulous Le Creuset, I extended the boiling time to 5 minutes, and left the pot (and the pudding) alone for 20. After a few hours of cooling in the fridge, my pudding came out fantastic. The texture was rich smooth, the flavor largely intact (probably thanks to the shorter cooking time), and contrary to my instinct, it was cooked through. (As a comparison, it normally takes more than 45 minutes in an oven for a pudding to cook.) I didn't have to tinker with the oven temperature during cooking, and I didn't have to do the cumbersome bake-bath thing (where you place pudding cups in a vat filled with hot water, which can spill all over your tender feet). Except for the hassle of carefully lowering the small cups into the boiling water with my clumsy (and trembling) hands without burning my wrists at the edge of the pot, the method was amazingly easy and yet the result was amazingly good. And I'm guessing that this method should work with most pudding recipes with minor tinkering of boiling and resting time.
The only thing I had to be careful about was the water level. Since I had three different kinds of cups, I had to remove some of the boiling water so that the boiling water won't get into any of them. Some water did end up getting into the shortest cup, and that made the surface pretty rough (which is why the photographed pudding has whipped cream and Mexican cane sugar syrup on top to cover up the blemished face). But beneath the surface, the pudding was fine. I'm mind-boggled by the ease and quickness of this recipe, and am definitely be making more puddings according to this, if only to show the Le-Creuset-equipped little madams of Japan. Ha!
I'm not a big fun of carrots. I eat them, but I don't like to eat them in a large quantity. Unfortunately, I have a bad habit of picking up beautiful heirloom (?) carrots from farmers' markets; it's just really hard to resist the happily grown, lacy leaves (that you don't see too often in supermarkets) and the unusual palletes ranging from pearly white to striking vermilion to rich burgundy. Since the farmers' market carrots tend to have even stronger flavor, I always end up with my purchase patiently waiting for their turn in the fridge--often for weeks. (Good thing they don't go bad quickly.)
Today, I was determined to clear the fridge of the beautiful, burgundy-colored carrots that I'd picked up weeks ago. There were six good-sized ones, so a drastic measure was in order. Remembering the amazing transformation of the root veggies in a slow-cooked hash, I decided to do something similar, but this time with an Asian twist. (Come to think of it, I think I got the carrots when I did the hash; which makes the carrots three-week old. Sigh...) The main was to be shiitake mushrooms stuffed with ground chicken, Vietnamese pink mint (that tastes like Japanese shiso), and ginger, so a side of slow-cooked carrots in Thai red curry sauce would be a nice accompaniment.
Slow-Cooked Carrots with Thai Red Curry Sauce (for two)
First, wash the carrots and cut them into bite-sized chunks. Heat a generous amount of butter or vegetable oil in a heavy frying pan, and sautée the garlic and onion. When they're half translucent, add carrots. Stir to coat the carrots with butter (or oil), then arrange the carrots on the pan so that every piece is touching the pan. Sprinkle the coriander seeds. Turn the heat down and cook slowly, without stirring. Every once in a while, turn the carrots to ensure that all sides are browned.
Meanwhile, mix the coconut milk, red curry paste and lime peel in a bowl. After about 30 minutes of slow-cooking (or when the carrots are cooked through and the onions are nicely caramelized), pour the mixture into the frying pan. Let the sauce simmer and thicken for a minute or two. Serve in a bowl or on a plate, and garnish with fresh cilantro. It does take about half an hour for the carrots to slowly release its sweetness, but that doesn't mean that you have to tend the pan every single minute of it. I managed to make the stuffed shiitake mushrooms and miso soup while the carrots cooked. This is a let-the-stove-do-its-job-while-I-do-mine kind of recipe.
As was the case with the root veggie hash, the slow cooking on low heat brought out the natural sugar in the carrots, while the tang and heat of the Thai red curry livened up the sweetness. There wasn't a hint of that green, pungent flavor typical of carrots--this might be a disappointing dish if you love that flavor, but even for a carrot lover, I think the surprising sweetness within the carrots that the slow-cooking brings out would be pleasurable. I wonder if you could pass this dish to your carrot-hating kids without them rejecting it--it doesn't taste like carrots at all, but then again, kids are freakishly keen observers when it comes to foods they don't like. I've read enough accounts of failed attempts to "hide" a detested ingredient in an innocent-looking dish. One thing for sure is, though, that once a carrot hater puts this in his/her mouth, the toughest hurdle has been cleared.
We successfully defeated the six remaining carrots with this wonderfully comforting dish--just in time for a next bunch from the Green City Market on Wednesday!
I don't like oysters.
In fact, it's probably safe to say that I positively hate them.
Not that I've ever gotten sick from one, but I'm repulsed by the bitter, briny taste of their slimy guts. I can't eat them in any way--deep-fried, cooked with rice, in a hot pot, let alone raw.
So, I don't know why I decided to pick up a tin of smoked oysters at the Tai Nam Food Market yesterday. I was wandering up and down their maze-like aisles filled with exotic food stuffs--like canned shrimp paste, shredded young coconuts meat in syrup, a dozen different rice papers. Then I saw tins of oysters. Some were as is, others were treated: cured, salted, and smoked. Somehow, I wanted one. I didn't know what I would do with it, but before I knew it, the tin was in the basket. I really don't know why.
I wandered around some more (actually for an hour or so--the place is a wonderland!), got a Vietnamese lunch box at Ba Le Sandwich Shop on Broadway, had it on the beach, and biked home. Then I had to face the small, nonthreatening-looking tin of oysters. What would I do with it? To make matters worse, Patrick isn't big of oysters, either. I should open the tin and see what it tastes like, I thought, but didn't have the balls to do it. The tin sat on the kitchen counter as I googled "smoked oyster" in the dining area. Having had virtually zero experience with oysters (let alone a good one), I needed some idea of what flavors would go well with the oysters. Someone baked the oysters in its shell with Vietnamese chili sauce, quail eggs and scallions. That sounded good. Someone else baked a flan with smoked oysters and parmesan cheese. That might work, too. Yet another made a pasta with oyster cream sauce. Hmm.
Then the idea struck. A double oyster linguini! I'd picked up a pack of exceptionally perky oyster mushrooms at the same market. I could pair the oysters with oyster mushrooms. Ha. Obviously I was in a rare, bold mood for a dish based purely on a (bad) joke. Cream sauce should work fine with both the oysters and the mushrooms, but I needed something punchy, something that'd stand up against the oysters' strong flavor. Black peppers? Garlic? But they didn't seem to be the one, although I did end up using them in the final product. Further googling didn't yield too many useful suggestions, so I was left to my own devices.
I opened the can and was amused to see its content faithfully mirroring the rather unappetizing graphic on the box. Inside, greenish brown baby oysters about half the size of my thumb were squished against each other in three neat rows. The texture seemed to be very close to that of cooked liver (something else I'm not terribly fond of). Am I being too daring? I wondered. All the recent news of Chinese poisonous products--food or not--started circling around in my head. What do I do? For an answer, I stared at the oysters. Look thy enemy in the eye, and thou shall defeat it, right?
The oysters were preserved in cotton seed oil, which bore a yucky green tint from the oyster juice. The oil might contain the strongest flavor of the oysters; something a real oyster lover would treasure, I thought, but since we weren't the most enthusiastic lovers of oysters, I figured I could drain the oil to tame the flavor. I rinsed the oysters with a bit of leftover whiskey, hoping that the whiskey might add some interesting flavor compatible with the oysters, while rinsing off the excess pungency.
Following the usual steps for a cream-based sauce, I made the double-oyster pasta in about fifteen minutes. In the final product, I didn't taste much of the whiskey, but rinsing part seemed to have worked pretty well; the oysters had become surprisingly edible. There was a hint of their oceanic and bitter flavor, but it was tame enough that we, the two oyster haters, could actually enjoy the sauce infused with oysters. The smoky note, which became the primary flavor, also helped tame the wild oysters for us. We surprised ourselves that we could actually enjoy oysters, but there was room for improvement. There was something lacking in the pasta. I thought something more spicy--like crushed chili pepper or even curry powder--might liven up the complex but somewhat flat sauce. Patrick thought more cream might be good. Writing this now, I wonder something even crazier--like cherry--might work with them or not. Though my first experiment wasn't a success to be announced with fanfare, I'm definitely going to play with this cheap ingredient more. (A tin costs about $1.50.) When winter comes, I might try Patrick's other suggestion: a seafood chowder with the smoked oysters added to the base as a smooth purée.
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Tai Nam Food Market
4925 N. Broadway, Chicago, IL
We spent much of the weekend packing our infinite belongings and moving them to our new apartment. We're taking it slowly, using three weekends to complete our move, but with close to 30 boxes of books and other heavy stuff, the first weekend was tiring enough. I'm having that weird sensation that I (wow!) have arms and legs--these are the body parts I'm not usually aware of, unless they feel heavy with some dull pain at the core, like they do now. Given the physical work, I didn't do much of interesting cooking; I stuck to the easy, reliable food like scrambled eggs with sausage (Saturday breakfast) and plain old French toast (Sunday breakfast). Saturday night, though, I was in a rare mood for sashimi and Japanese sake, and wanted to go to Kuni's, a good, cozy Evanston sushi place.
Somehow, we ended up at Trattoria D. O. C., on the same street but millions of light years apart in terms of cuisine. Well, not "somehow." It was the outdoor seating that did it. When we parked on Main Street, just west of the D.O.C., the golden combination of sashimi and chilled Japanese sake was still the winner in my head. But the Japanese combo's throne was short-lived: as soon as I saw the white-clothed outdoor tables basking in the warm, late-afternoon sun, I couldn't say no to the al fresco dining at the D.O.C. It was too good of a weather to waste indoors--temperatures probably in the 70s, with slight lake breeze to freshen things up. And of course, I knew the D.O.C.'s excellence in pizza making. Adieu, sashimi; adieu, sake--I'll have a clandestine rendezvouz with Italian goodness.
I thought that the Italian goodness was going to be pizza. Granted, pizza was a part of it, but the meal convinced me about something else: Trattoria D.O.C. is one of the best places in town to get fried food. Let me explain.
There was a good number of people crowding the bar area of the restaurant, but we were seated right away; not too many customers wanted the outdoor tables, apparently. From the specials, we ordered tuna tartar and fiori di zuccca, and decided to share a potato rosemary pizza. It turned out that they were out of tuna tartar, which we substituted with beef tartar. I had a glass of soave--a drinkable yet flavorful white wine on the dry side, with a strong muscaty taste and slightly spicy finish. Patrick had a red. (I don't remember what that was.)
I'm split between the fiori di zucca and the potato rosemary pizza in terms to the best item of the meal. (The beef carpaccio was good and came with fantastic parmesano shreds, but the lemon juice completely overpowered the flavor of the beef, thus leaving some room for improvement.) The zucchini flowers were stuffed with mozzarella and anchovies, dressed with light batter and deep-fried. It was my first time to eat zucchini flowers although I've been curious about them for a while. D.O.C. version was decidedly more exciting than the traditional recipe of ricotta and egg for stuffing. And it worked fantastic: the batter was light and fluffy but a little resilient; the mozzarella was rich and supple; and the oceanic, salty flavor of the anchovies was a wonderful accent to it all. The refreshing vinaigrette on the greens which the zucchini flowers were served on balanced out the oil. So, my first experience with deep-fried zucchini flowers was awesome. We shared four flowers between the two of us, but I could have finished the whole plate with a glass of white wine and be merry.)
On the other hand, the rosemary potato pizza was nothing to be slighted. On a crispy yet stretchy (i.e., not a cardboard pizza) and flavorful crust, thin slices of golden-yellow potatoes were gleaming with olive oil. The crust bubbled and charred beautifully in parts, and some of the potato slices were starting to crispify, just like very good kettle-cooked chips. There was just enough rosemary to complement the earthy sweetness of the potatoes. Mozzarella was so buttery that I suspected the pizza baker used the ancient cook's trick of adding a dollop of butter to everything. (Then again, maybe he did.) It was a sauceless pizza, but also a sublime one.
Had I not been to Spacca Napoli, I would give the D.O.C. the title of Chicago's Number One Pizzeria, but unfortunately I'd been to Spacca, so that title isn't available to the D.O.C. Yet, it is definitely one of the best in town. (I tend to think that pizzerias that bake a few sauceless pizzas might be decent ones--I don't think a pizzeria without an absolute confidence in its crust would want to serve it without the palate-drenching marinara slathered on it.)
So, the pizza was excellent. But the fiori di zucca might have been even better. I was amazed by the batter that was light and fluffy but never mushy, flimsy or fragile. It was spirited, if I may put it that way. Combined with a large platter of light, crispy and awesomely oceanic fried calamari (that didn't require marinara) that we'd had there before, the fiori di zucca totally convinced me that Trattoria D.O.C. knows their fried stuff. I'm not a fried food enthusiast, but within my limited experience, I dare say the D.O.C. is probably the best place to get fried food. And instead of the staple sodas of the fast food joints, I can get good wine at this restaurant. What not to love, right?
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Trattoria D.O.C.
706 Main Street, Evanston, IL
847.475.1111
I spent ten years of my childhood in an agricultural town in central Japan. Our house stood on the edge of a tableland overlooking carrot fields. In spring, the smell of freshly turned earth permeated the air, and soon, deep green leaves of the carrots turned into a swelling ocean. In summer, reflections of the intense sun on the transparent plastic sheet that covered the green houses below in the field sometimes surprised my sleepy eyes as I ate breakfast. This was the east side of the house, and east was where my primary school stood, in relation to my house. I walked through the carrot fields to and from school, occasionally picking mulberries along the way, until my purple fingers looked like an alien's. In early summer, when farmers pulled out and discarded smaller carrots to give room to the better-growing ones, I would pick up the small yet still good ones from the side of the fields and take them home. Though my friends from farming families didn't do this (most likely they had more carrots than they would ever wish to see lying around at home), I didn't think picking up discarded vegetables was a shameful act; to me, the small carrots slowly withering away in the afternoon sun were perfectly good food going unappreciated. I might still feel the same way. With berries to pick, carrots to find and nectar to suck, twenty minutes of walk twice a day, along the same route through the field, across an irrigation canal and up the last steep climb to my house was never a routine.
The scenery changed when I moved on to middle school. The middle school was to the north of my house, and most of the way there was residential. Beyond a railroad and a busy national highway and past a small, dark shrine, the way to middle school never felt as fun as the road to the primary school. I may not have paid as much concentrated attention to the surrounding, either, for I talked and talked and talked with a close friend as we walked from school together. With a good friend to share it, the world seemed to be much larger than the mulberry trees and carrot leaves. We trashed school policies, discussed politics as if we'd been cynical adults, lamented environmental destruction and exchanged our thoughts on books. As we immersed ourselves in the conversation, old houses and little rice paddies disappeared into the indistinguishable background. Until my friend made a turn at the national highway, I was oblivious of what was around me. In a strange way, thus, my memory is much more vivid between the highway and my house; the cracked surface of the pedestrian bridge, tall summer weeds swaying violently on the roadside as cars zoomed by, and the tiny corn field between the railway and my house.
The farmer who had that field must have been alternating his crops, for all sorts of vegetables showed up: taro, sweet potatoes, carrots, pumpkins, peas, and what I remember the most--corn. During the harvest season, the farmer would set up a small shack--more appropriately, a small shelf with a tin roof--by the green, erect stalks of corn and sold his harvest directly. I don't really know if that was a he or a she, because I'd never seen the farmer manning the shack; there was a tapper ware box with a slit on the lid to put coins in, and everyone left a few hundred yens in exchange for the sweet, plump corn cobs just cut in the morning. When I saw the corn shack on the way back from school, I would run to my house and told my mother. She then would grab her purse and walked up the hill to get the corn before that special sweetness evaporates into thin air. She would boil them immediately, and often the main fare of her dinner was that corn, just boiled with salt.
For a long time, I didn't understand the "corn as snack" or "corn as dinner" concept. It was tasty, but I didn't think it was good enough to replace my cookies and chocolates, or my spaghetti or curry and rice. I watched my mom sink her teeth into the thick, yellow stick, thinking of the prehistoric meat on the bone that troglodytes feasted on. When she ate corn this way, her eyes focused on the next row of pearly kernels to guide her teeth and her fingers tense from the pressure to hold the fat cob, there was a simple, child-like pleasure that emanated from her. While I almost envied her delight, simplicity of food didn't convince me. And I suppose that hadn't changed too much even now: I do enjoy less complicated good food much more now, but I still don't think I can be as happy as my mom was with a dinner of a corn on the cob. I can't help adding the "twist."
Summer Festival Corn on the Cob
Corn on the cob is a ubiquitous summer festival food, sold in multi-colored tents with a long and narrow charcoal grill set in the front. The vendors roast the corn on the grill, occasionally brushing it with soy sauce. The soy sauce burns and adds a wonderfully earthy and nutty flavor to the corn, which I think perfectly complements the sweetness already in the kernels. To recreate this flavor, I often sautée the boiled corn in a bit of butter until the kernels show brown burn marks. Then, I sprinkle some soy sauce and let it burn a bit on high heat. You need to be careful not to set off the smoke detector (it can be pretty smoky, but that's what makes it so tasty), but a box fan in the kitchen window should be enough. Eating this festival corn transports me back, in time and space, to the rural Japan I grew up in--picking mulberries and all.
The New York Times has an amusing op-ed article about the American fear of eating raw fish during pregnancy. Steven A. Shaw compares the situation with that in Japan, where eating raw fish during pregnancy is never discouraged. He denounces the governmental recommendation not to eat raw fish during pregnancy and backs up his claim with factual supports. For one, Shaw says, most (85% indeed) of the food poisoning from consuming raw seafood comes from eating oysters grown in contaminated water, not sushi and sashimi (because most of the fish used for sushi and sashimi don't have parasites). He worries that the over-concern about food poisoning from raw fish might be scaring people (pregnant women or not) away from taking advantage of the excellent nutrients in fish.
While I agree with his points, what struck me the most was his last remark: "the sushi ban is insulting to Japanese culture." I never thought of the fear of eating raw fish this way, but I suppose in a way it could be. While I do appreciate the cultural sensitivity of the author, I myself may not be able to go as far as saying it myself. For one thing, I'm sure there are many complicated factors behind the fear (epidemiological or not) of raw fish--like the relative novelty and the resultant, possibly deadly, ignorance of the proper handling of the material; in other words, the Japanese might have a hygienic advantage thanks to the much longer and more intimate history with the raw fish.
But for another, I'm slightly weary of combative rhetoric surrounding the question of cultures and eating, the least of which is the long-standing issue of whaling. In a similar vain, I often find it odd that the Americans, who eat far less seafood than the Japanese, seem much more concerned about the mercury level in seafood than their Japanese counterparts are, but I'm not sure if I would want to characterize it as "insulting" to the numerous fish-eating cultures around the world that aren't as concerned. With all that said, though, what remains is my appreciation of Steven Shaw's concern over the American paranoia of fish (raw or not) and his sincere effort to culturally decipher that paranoia.
One of my favorite fast food chains is the Culver's. Predictably, Patrick was the one who introduced me to this Wisconsin-based chain. I don't remember exactly when, but ever since I've been a big fun of Culver's, especially when I'm on a road trip in areas with questionable meal choices. Granted, it's always an extra fun to accidentally find a good local restaurant when in an unfamiliar place, but it's also true that a failure could be quite miserable when you're tired of driving, hungry, grumpy with your companion, or all of the above. Then, the blue metal roof of Culver's comes in sight, and you (and your similarly hungry companion) are saved. I don't know if I would eat there more often if there were Culver's closer to home, but our trip north often involves one meal at one of their restaurants.
We (Patrick, my mom and I) ended up in one of the many Culver's after our antique hunt in Volo Antique Mall. To be precise, we didn't go there right after the Mall--we stopped at the nearby Moraine Hills State Park and took a leisurely bird walk along one of their awesome trails. The "Yellow Trail" was fantastic. The first part of the 2-mile loop meanders through a marshland, which offers plenty of wildlife sitings. Despite the fact that we were there around 2 pm (which isn't the ideal birding time), we saw close to twenty different species. About half of them we didn't recognize. Among the ones we did know, the highlight of the first few was a pair of red headed woodpeckers. Unlike other woodpeckers with a black-and-white speckled back and a poorly defined red patch on the head, red headed woodpeckers are Mondorian-like in their boldly defined color sections. Just below the dead tree where the two flew around, a smallish beaver made an awesome racket, going after his potential lunch in muddy water. Beside him was an inscrutable-looking green frog, seemingly oblivious of the commotion just three feet from him. Though the evidence of drought was visible in the marshland (dried-up canals, dead fish floating belly-up in shallow water, etc.), it still seemed to sustain an amazing number and diversity of wildlife. We even saw a school of tiny catfish--black and jelly-like, but shaped just like their grown-ups, complete with the whiskers and all!
The marshland is taken over by a forest, then runs through a large prairie. The prairie was literally run over by busy American gold finches. A few Indigo buntings perched on the top ends of bushes. The summer wildflowers were everywhere, with gorgeous butterflies sucking their nectar here and there. Butterflies were an annoyance for me (I'm terrified of them), but Patrick was visibly delighted. Then, we were in the forest again, this time infested with mosquitoes--and dozens of birds as well. A scarlet tanager boasted its beautiful scarlet, while tiny, hummingbird-sized gnatcatches jumped from one branch to the other, like busy bees. Had it not been for the mosquitoes, we could have stayed there all day long, staring at the tree tops, open-mouthed and sore-necked.
The last attraction just before the trail came to a complete loop was a common yellow throat, a kind of yellow warbler with a black bandit mask. The sinister mask seemed utterly and amusingly unfit for a tiny bird (about 5 inches at the most) with a slim, smart shape and a beautiful song. As we approached the parking lot by the McHenry Dam, an appetizing smell of riverside BBQ wafted through the pine forest, and we realized that we were starving. Our pace naturally picked up, and within a few minutes, we were back in the car and headed north to 120, where we'd seen a Culver's on the way.
From their wide selection of menu items, my mom chose an Atlantic cod dinner, Patrick got a pulled BBQ pork sandwich, and I settled on their signature Butter Burger. The BBQ pork was surprisingly good for a non-BBQ joint, and my mom's battered cod was excellent: firm and flavorful, it might be comparable to the fish and chips at (dearly missed) Marshall Field's. And just for the record, the cod dinner came with an extraordinary amount of food: two 6-7 inch-sized pieces of fried cod, a mountain of French fries (that covered more than half the 10-inch plate), a decent-sized cole slow and a large cup of green beans. (I think the server made a mistake; the dinner was supposed to come with either the green beans or the slow, not both.) That was a lot of food. My Butter Burger was okay--for some reason, I always end up getting the Butter Burger even though every time I do so I realize that other items taste better.
After all that grease-packed meal, a nutritionist-approved decision would be to leave the premises immediately (and never come back again). But who would leave a Culver's without getting the frozen custard? Not us. I didn't want a ton of it, but I did want a few spoonfuls of the creamy, sweet dessert. We decided to share a small (what good boys we were!) caramel cashew sundae. The cold custard and the hot, gooey caramel; the sweetness of the caramel and the salt on the nutty cashew; it was a divine concoction of matching and fighting opposites. "Didn't we get the same thing when we went to Culver's in Port Washington?" asked my mom, and she was right. I'm hooked to that one. Now finally satiated, we left the premise--but, to the dismay of our imaginary nutritionist, only to come back again sometime later during one of our next trips up North.
Not an antiquing person, I didn't know the existence of the Volo Antique Mall untill I came across a Japanese blog about it. It sounded like fun from her description, and it was only an hour or so away from where we live, so my mom, Patrick and I drove to the Mall early Sunday morning (after a filling breakfast of an apple pancake etc. at Walker Brothers' Pancake House). The drive out to the town of Volo, northwest of Chicago, was a pleasant one. The morning sun hadn't reached its midday, sizzling temperature, and the scenery became decidedly greener as we drove past the civilization. Among the new housing developments of identical mac-mansions, a few corn and soy fields popped up, and silos and barns became a regular feature along the road. We even saw a marshy nesting ground of a bunch of large herons from the Belvedier Road.
The mall was huge; there were three buildings dedicated to "real" antique with another selling collectibles that may not qualify as "antique." Here, individual antique vendors pay a certain amount of monthly rent to use a display case or a booth, so there were a lot of overlaps in terms of the items available. For instance, I saw an astronomical number of thick, cut-glass bowls and goblets probably from the 60s or 70s. It seemed as if those had been in everyone's cupboard at one time. Another, slightly less predictable staple was the set of Chinese-inspired bowls and dishes made in Japan. I was astounded to see how horrible its quality was: the ceramics were unevenly shaped, the paints went astray everywhere, and the colors were just ghasly. Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I always associated "Made in Japan" with "high quality," but the extremely poor quality of the Japanese-nade ceramics reminded me of the time when Japan survived as a source of cheap labor of the world. The entire place smelled of old things, just like the musty, somewhat pleasant smell of my grandma's closet back in Japan. I was sort of amused to realize that the smell of old, forgotten things are the same on both sides of the Pacific.
I wouldn't say that the Volo Antique Mall is the place to go for high-quality antique. It's more a place to find kitsch stuff that you can actually use in your everyday life without worrying to death about breaking them. There must have been literally gazillion artifacts there--we ran out of energy after exploring only the first (and the largest) building. But our hunt wasn't fruitless. I found a quaint Japanese-looking tea set for $3.95. (My mom bought two sets of tea cup and saucer and a matching sugar pot.)
Granted, the tea pot had a chunk missing from the handle, and its lid had gone AWOL. One of the tea cups even had a hairline crack on it. But hey, for that price, I wouldn't care. I wasn't going to use the tea set as a tea set anyway--I thought I could use the tea cups to put dipping sauces or small amount of food (most likely something to accompany a good chilled sake!), and the tea pot might look good as a flower vase, say, with a few yellow chrysanthemums in it, when autumn comes.
On the bottom of the tea cups, I noticed a marking that said "kutani-zukuri" (九谷造). Given the cheapish make of the tea set, I don't necessarily believe that it's a real kutani, which is known for its super-high quality and elegant design, but the caligraphy does make me believe that it was written by someone who writes Chinese characters daily. So, the set was probably made either in Japan or China. To imagine where and when it was created, how it came to the United States and how it ended up in an antique mall in Illinois stimulates my imagination no end. I'll probably never really know the history and stories attached to the set, but it'll give me with just a bit more fun every time I serve my food on it. For a lay person, that flight of imagination seems to be the essence of the antique fun.
Today, I was going to write an English version of this Japanese post about what's coming in season and what's going out at the Green City Market. That was until I found an old bottle opener in the back of a kitchen drawer.
Made of a single piece of metal, the opener felt heavy in my hand. I'd never seen it during my three years of kitchen usage at Patrick's, but I was familiar with the opener itself--it was the same bottle opener that my grandfather used to keep in a cupboard in his tiny, tatami-matted living/dining room in Tokyo. I recognized it by the Japanese inscription on both sides of the handle; one said "Sapporo Beer" and the other "Ribbon Citron." It must have been a cheap giveaway that came with maybe a crate of Sapporo Beer.
The original tag was still intact. On one side, the plastic tag showed a design of a can of Sapporo Lager Beer, and on the other, a promotional character, Ribbon-chan, for the family of soft drinks called "Ribbon," also produced by the Sapporo Beer company. The bottle opener was nothing special when I saw it being used every day as a kid, but now the same thing looked awfully cute and quaint. This is a keeper, I thought, and put it on the dining table. (I was doing some packing for our August relocation.)
When I went back into the dining room after a while, I wondered how in the world a Japanese bottle opener ended up in a 30-something American guy who'd been to Japan only once. The most likely suspect is his famous grandma, who left him a truckload of weird artifacts (like a huge set of Thai cutlery with a tiny statue of Buddha carved on each and every one of them, and a garish orange table that can support an elephant). But still. Mistified, I did some quick sleuthing--with Google and Wikipedia being my personal Hastings, Ms. Lemon and Watson.
First, I looked up "Ribbon Citron," for I'd never heard of such a soft drink. I figured it was probably a soda-like thing that boomed in the 60s and ceased to exist since (the graphic had that 60s feel). My guess proved wrong. Ribbon Citron came into being way back in the Meiji era. Carbonated (and sometimes sweetened) water had been introduced in Japan in the 1890s as a health drink, just as many Europeans back then drank carbonated (naturally or not) water in spas to promote health. In 1909, Japanese beer company (Dainihon Bakushu) picked up the fad to make use of the excess CO2 generated during the production of beer, and placed it in the market as "Ribbon Citron."
To my surprise, Ribbon Citron is still being produced and sold in Japan. Perhaps it is somewhat an object of nostalgia, rather than something people drink for the pure joy of its taste, but I have to say a (almost) 100-year old soda is pretty impressive. Now that I knew how old the carbonated drink was, I grew curious how old the bottle opener might be. A few more clicks around Sapporo Beer's "Ribbon-chan.com," a very cute site explaining the history of the soda and its promotional character, revealed that the animated character of the girl with a big ribbon was introduced in 1957; this means that the bottle opener was made after 1957. Not as old as I'd hoped it might.
Another clue on the tag was the design of the beer can. With a large red "North Star" and a golden S-curve that devides the can into blue and white areas, the design was completely unfamiliar to me. And yet the retro-modern design somehow evoked a strange sense of nostalgia. It looked like I could have seen it on the yellowing pages of my mother's old cooking magazines.
Sapporo Beer's corporate site again proved helpful. Its history page had an information about the design of the can. According to the article, the canned beer was introduced in 1959. The can was designed by a pioneering American industrial designer Walter Landor, who also designed 7-Up cans, Kellog's corn flake box, Levi's logo, and the famous WWF panda, among other things. At the time, the can didn't have a pull-open tab, so one needed to punch two holes on the top with a can opener to pour out the beer (wow). The plastic tag on the bottle opener in question was this type--without a tab. Since the easy-open can started appearing in stores in 1965, the bottle opener was given away probably before that date.
So, the bottle oepner was most likely produced between 1959 and 1965. How it ended up in an American guy's kitchen more than 40 years later is a mystery. I wonder if the same family who gave Patrick's grandma that set of Buddha cutlery is responsible for the bottle opener as well. That would be a very strange connection, if that were the case, for I, too, have lived in the three countries involved (Thailand, Japan and the United States). My grandfather would be amused to know that the same bottle opener he used turned up in his granddaughter's foreign kitchen 6,000 miles across the ocean. Well, actually I'm not quite sure about this--he was very inscrutable--as a real man was supposed to be back in his time, but it's fun to imagine it this way, with my grandfather sharing my surprise and curiosity.
It's been pretty mild for July, so I've had a chance to cook things not exactly for hot season. Although I do love eating refreshing salads and chilled noodles at the height of summer, the diet of chilled food does get dull after a few weeks. So I was happy to opt for a homey Chinese-inspired soup when the temperature came down to the 70's. It's a very simple soup with daikon, shrimps and tofu, but somehow very comforting and satisfying.
One crucial ingredient for this soup is shrimp shells, which make the soup base. Shrimp shells have an awesome flavor--it can work in almost any cuisine, from Chinese soups to Italian pasta sauces to American bisques. For this reason, I never buy pre-peeled or pre-cooked shrimps; I want the shells, raw. (Every once in a blue moon, I find a little ziploc bag of shrimp shells and legs from god-knows-when hiding in a back corner of my freezer.) Another crucial ingredient is the tofu. The tofu really should be extra soft. Most tofu available in generic markets, even ones that claim to be "soft," are too rough and tough for this delicate soup. You want a silky, soft texture that doesn't interfere with the low-impact rest of the soup. If you know an Asian grocer in your area, look for a Japanese "kinugoshi" tofu, or a Korean Soon-Dubu tofu, made for Soon-Dubu Jigae (Korean hot soup).
Ginger Daikon Soup with Shrimps (for two)
First, peel the shrimps. (Don't throw away the shells!) Marinate the shrimps with soy sauce and sake, and sprinkle 1/3 tablespoon of cornstarch and mix to coat. The cornstarch should keep the moisture within the shrimps when they're cooked, and add nice, gelatinous coating to the shrimps.
Boil water in a pot and throw in the shrimp shells. Boil for a while to let the oceanic flavor seep out of the shells and drain. (Now you can throw away the shells...) Add ginger and daikon in the soup base and cook till the daikon is transparent. Turn the heat down and add tofu and shrimps. (If cooked at high temperature, the shrimps toughen.) You might want to break the tofu by hand, if it's very soft--cutting it on a cutting board and transferring the pieces to the pot could be tricky.
Give a stir to the cornstarch-water mix and pour it into the pot. Mix carefully so that the tofu won't be in shards. Turn the heat up a little and let the soup boil gently for about three minutes, or till it thickens a little. Add green onions and season with a little bit of salt and pepper.
The fun of this soup is to serve it in a large, communal bowl. In your individual soup cups, you can add other flavorings to your soup, as you have seconds and thirds--I like to have it "as is" for the first cup, then add a tiny dash of olive oil for the second, and maybe a bit of to ban djan (Chinese hot sauce) to the third. To do this, I keep the salinity low when I season the soup at the end of the cooking. You'll be amazed how different the soup tastes each time, and how good it can be without any addition at all.
To follow the transformation of ratatouille, today's entry is a transformation of failed brandade. As I wrote yesterday, my first (possibly the last?) attempt to recreate the rich and creamy brandade we had at Avec was a miserable failure. It tasted good, but the texture was nowhere near creamy. It was more pulpy than creamy--what a formidable cod flesh! I didn't feel like throwing away the fruit of my tear and sweat (yuck), though, so I used some Swedish alchemy to make the iffy brandade enjoyable.
Swedish Alchemy (a.k.a. Fake Jansson's Temptation) for two
First, boil the potatoes until tender. Drain, put them back into the pot and heat over medium flame till the excess moisture has evaporated (about a minute or so). In a heat-resistant baking pan, layer potato slices and brandade alternately three times. Sprinkle the rosemary, garlic powder and parmesan cheese on the top. Bake in an oven at 350 F till the top gets golden.
I don't know if it was a magic of letting the brandade rest in the fridge for a day, or the magic of baking, or what, but what seemed like a pulpy, bland mush just 24 hours before had turned into something comfortingly delicious. The salt cod in brandade imparted a subtle oceanic flavor, and the richness of the milk and parmesan cheese worked very well. The pulpyness that threw me off when I tried the brandade by itself was not an issue any more, when combined with potatoes. I don't know if I want to make this Janssons' Temptation impostor again (because making brandade is pretty time-consuming), but I was pleasantly surprised how good it turned out. Despite my Japanese origin, I felt like I was eating something my (imaginary) European peasant grandma cooked up for her homesick granddaughter in a foreign country.
We dragged out dining chairs and a folding table to the back porch (which is really just a staircase) and had dinner there. With a bottle of Chablis, a bowl of ratatouille (from yesterday), and a Japanese-style light pickle salad, fake Jansson's Temptation made a great summer dinner. As we enjoyed the food and talked, a pair of house finches (the beautiful one with red throat and head) groomed themselves on a nearby electric wire. The light was crisp and transparent, almost like early autumn. Huge trees in our neighbors' backyards rustled their green leaves in the evening breeze. It was a luxurious evening, even though the cost of the meal wasn't that luxurious. We'll miss the back porch view when we move from this apartment in August...
I was trying to recreate brandade, a French salt cod dish that we had at Avec. Other than making me realize what a god-awful amount of calorie-packed olive oil goes into the creamy dip-like concoction, the thing wasn't working too well. The salt cod chunks refused to become creamy, however hard I attacked them with my bamboo spatula till all the other pots and pans on the stove started to rattle and dance. The cod chunks even resisted the glorious power of modern industrial machinery--my stick blender, refusing to kiss goodbye to their pulpy selves. After adding salt and pepper, the brandade-wannabe did taste decent, but it definitely wasn't interesting enough to be the centerpiece of the evening's meal.
That paused a serious problem. My plan was to accompany that brandade with bread and a bowl of ratatouille. Inspired by the awesome Pixar animation of the same name, I had bought a whole bunch of beautiful summer veggies: summer squashes, yellow squashes, Italian eggplants, orange paprika and some cherry tomatoes. All those, along with an onion and a few garlic cloves, had gone into a big pot and was simmering quietly by the obstinate brandade. Though the ratatouille looked beautiful, now that the brandade is out, I didn't have a "main" dish. I thought about taking a few ladles of ratatouille and turning it into a pasta sauce, but then I realized that I didn't have tomato paste or tomato sauce. Hmm.
1/3 pound of ground pork, leftover from the day before, was my savior. I sautéed the pork in a medium-sized pot, scooped out some of the summer veggies out of the ratatouille pot and threw them into the pork pot. Add a few cubes of Japanese curry roux, and voila, I had a decent Japanese-style curry to serve with some sticky rice. Pretty much everybody loves curry in Japan (especially meat-and-rice-craving hungry guys), and both Patrick and I are fond of the dish as well, so it worked out fine.
Curry was brought to Japan toward the end of the nineteenth century by the British, who, during their rule of India, had grown fond of the Indian cooking. The curry that the British taught the Japanese to cook had most likely been an Anglicized (and simplified ) version of the original Indian cookery, but it underwent further modification to suit the Japanese palate. At the time, the Japanese government was looking for ways to incorporate meats into Japanese diet, in order to build a body fit for an Western-style military. (Most Japanese people then had an aversion to eating meats, based on their Buddhist beliefs.) Along with sukiyaki, curry proved a handy tool for the government; first served in the Imperial Navy's mess halls, the Japanized curry gained popularity and spread out to the civilian society. Once a fancy dish served only in high-end Western restaurant for urban connoisseurs, curry is now one of the cheap and easy "national foods" of Japan that everyone, regardless of gender, age and class, eats monthly, if not weekly. Just like I did, many Japanese wives and mothers turn to this reliable dish in a pinch. After all, it's one of the rare dishes that are likely to delight most everybody in their household (except for, perhaps, their already skinny daughters on a vanity diet).
I'll have to use that mediocre brandade for something today--I'm thinking of Jansson's Temptation, a Swedish potato-and-anchovy gratin. Pray for me that it'll be edible...
This is the second half of my two-part review/applause of Le Lan, a French-Asian restaurant in River North. The first half is here.
For entrée, Patrick's blue nosed grouper wrapped in banana leaf was the winner. To begin with, it was an eye candy: the deep green of the fresh banana leaf, vermilion of the Thai red curry sauce and creamy yellow of the fingerling potatoes danced in a large, simple, white bowl. Yet the flavors were sweeter (figuratively, that is) than the look. The grouper was firm and supple, the fingerling potatoes earthy and sweet. The Thai red curry might have been the best I've ever had. And I spent about one fifth of my life in Bangkok. (Well, that was when I was a skinny little kid, but still.)
My choice from the day's specials was an interesting one: grilled scallops in smoked tomato sauce, served with coarsely minced pork belly. The scallops, though fresh and naturally sweet, were far too salty for my taste. The absolute redemption was the pork belly and the smoked tomato sauce. Combined together, the paté like pork belly and the smoky tomato sauce tasted like a very good barbecue; only that the pork had never been on a Weber grill. "It's a deconstructed BBQ," we laughed, while admiring the almost magical non-BBQ BBQ on our tongue. Despite the excess salt in the scallops, the dish was delicious, and made me want some freshly steamed white rice (which is a compliment in a Japanese context).
The dessert was a feast in itself. Our Tuesday prix-fixe included dessert, so we ordered one each; pineapple napoleon for Patrick, Vietnamese coffee cake for me. And on top of these, the restaurant gave us an off-the-menu crème brûlée with a nice message scribbled across the plate with chocolate. The three previous courses weren't humongous, so we had enough room for our own desserts, but the complimentary dessert was a bit much (although the gift made me very grateful). Of course we finished it all--it was one of the best crème brûlées in my life; rich but light, sweet but refreshing.
Patrick's pineapple napoleon was actually made with layers of wanton with very fine custard cream. The caramelized pineapple bits were very good, and the sweet-tartness went wonderfully with the suggested port (I forgot the name), but what totally made this playful dessert was the aromatic sage sorbet. My Vietnamese coffee cake was more substantial than Patrick's dessert. Three small squares of coffee cake (baked with Chinese five spice mix) were accompanied by thick zig-zag of chocolate mousse, which was fantastic. As a chocolate mousse addict, I had to restrain myself hard so that I won't start doing my happy dance, right there in front of everyone (though our server witnessed a bit of that earlier). Here and there in the chocolate mousse track was bits of caramelized hazelnuts and pecans--I could eat those crunchy, nutty, bitter little things all day long!
When we stepped out into the evening, the gray sky harbored some threats of impending storm. We strolled up Clark Street for a couple of blocks, waited for a bus for a while, and decided that the occasion was special enough to justify a taxi splurge. From the Lake Shore Drive, we could see a huge number of white boats--some tiny, others sizable--heading toward the Navy Pier area, where pre-July-4th fireworks were in preparation. The beaches were similarly jam-packed with people waiting for the fireworks. The taxi driver and Patrick discussed the congregation of the boats for a while. I went through our fantastic dinner in my head, and hoped that Le Lan would be around years to come, so we'd be able to make the yearly visit our gluttonous romantic ritual.
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Le Lan
749 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL
312.280.9100
Le Lan's Tuesday prix-fixe is such a deal. At $38, you get a soup or salad (which are as inspired as any entrée--no standard-issue "house salad" here), an entrée and a dessert. A simple addition of these three courses could cost more than $45 off the normal menu. We added an appetizer (Wagyu carpaccio), two glasses of wine, a glass of port to the prix-fixe, and came out with a tab of around $125 before tip. Tuesday is the day at this superb French-Asian restaurant.
With something to celebrate, Patrick and I made a hasty reservation (about three hours before the actual dinner time) at Le Lan, a French-Asian fusion restaurant in River North, a day before the Independence Day. The restlessness for the beer-and-grilling celebration ahead was already in the air when I rode the Red Line to downtown. I waited for Patrick for a while in front of a hot dog shop next door, feeling somewhat like a prosxxtute in my Chinese dress--just because I'm not used to wearing a dress, I think. When he showed up, we walked into the narrow yet airy dining room.
Our dinner in the green-themed stylish restaurant was beyond great; many of the dishes were epitomes of sophisticated mingling of different cuisines, executed with incredible expertise. Especially before the dinner rush hit, the service was extremely friendly and nearly impeccable. I didn't bring my camera so I can purely enjoy the meal, so there won't be any photographs, but I'll try to describe the dishes as best I could.
For our occasion, the restaurant gave us free glasses of champaign (I forgot what brand) to start us up. The champaign was dry yet flavorful, more to my taste than my wine of choice, Kung Fu Girl Riesling, which was a bit on the sweet side. (Yes, I admit I fell for the funny name.) Champaign was followed by a small, rectangular dish with two tiny steamed buns. The buns were shaped like cinnamon rolls, with what I believe to be Sichuan peppercorns sprinkled on top. A sweet, flavorful dipping sauce accompanied the buns. I tasted ten men djan (Chinese sweet miso), a bit of vinegar, soy sauce and maybe sugar. The steamed buns were absolutely adorable: white, smooth skin, fluffy inside and such a tiny size.
Though we went for the $38 Tuesday prix-fixe menu, which includes a soup or salad, an entrée and a dessert, we were too curious to skip the renowned Wagyu Beef Carpaccio. The award-winning carpaccio was a neatly arranged, paper-thin cuts of wagyu, with microscopic pieces of jicama, courtons, chives (a hair-thin kind we call "asatsuki" in Japan, I think), trout roe and red peppercorn sprinkled on top. Next to the beef slices were three triangles of scallion pancakes and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Although the sweet-and-nutty scallion-and-dried-shrimp pancakes might have overwhelmed the wagyu at times, balsamic vinegar worked wonderfully with the beef. We mainly ate the scallion pancakes alone, occasionally wiping the sweet-and-tart balsamic vinegar with them. With the sesame-oil flavored pancakes, the balsamic vinegar behaved like aromatic vinegar (香醋, aged and fermented vinegar with dark amber color, often used as dipping sauce for steamed buns). I loved the addition of asatsuki as well, for it reminded me of flavors I used to in Japan. Also the occasional trout roes changed the melt-in-your-mouth beef flavor into something more oceanic--a fun twist.
Patrick ordered seared tuna salad with pickled daikon vinaigrette. The tuna on a glass plate was very fresh, firm and flavorful--nothing like the nightmarish tuna from a few weeks ago elsewhere. The marinated Japanese cucumbers and wakame (seaweed) was a nice touch, but what impressed me the most was the vinaigrette. Though the use of pickled daikon in vinaigrette was a novel idea, the stock base they used in the vinaigrette tasted just like the bonito and kombu stock the respected Japanese restaurants make every day. Called dashi, this stock can be extremely satisfying even with a smallest amount of added condiments, if done right. And Le Lan did it right. Clean, subtle yet flavorful, his might have been the best dashi I've tasted outside of Japan.
I picked an heirloom tomato salad, which may have been my favorite of all the courses, though the competition was tough. Three slices of different tomatoes were topped with sautéed pea pod (which I think was 十六ササゲ, a type of cowpea in edible pod), poached shrimps, eggplants, and sprigs of mint and other herbs. What blew me away was the eggplant. Infused with nam pla (Thai fish sauce) and sugar (maybe palm sugar?), the creamy eggplant pieces melted in my mouth, accentuating the delightful acidity of the tomatoes. I could eat a bowl of rice with just three pieces of this eggplant--which is a great compliment if you're a Japanese cook. With colorful tomatoes (each with distinct flavor), eggplant and peas, this was a wonderful salad at the height of the summer harvest season. (And again, I was pleasantly surprised to see how Le Lan's cooks could combine so many different Asian ingredients cooked so many different ways in a single dish and still hold everything together!)
Obviously I'm still halfway through the meal--but I think this is long enough, so I'll return tomorrow with the second half of the wonderful dinner.
Japanese food is very healthy.
Is that what you generally take to be true? Apparently it is, for many Americans. I've been slowly reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a recent book in which Barbara Kingsolver, the author, documents her year of thriving on locally grown foods, including ones from her own garden. This otherwise very informed author ventures to say that Japanese kids prefer boiled and salted edamame over Twinkies for their snack food of choice. Excuse me? As far as I know, most Japanese kids reach for sweet or fried snack food over such "healthy" veggie alternative, any day of the week. (God knows I grew up on cookies, chocolate and potato chips!) They may not have Twinkies there, but they have plenty of other oh-it's-bad-for-you snack foods that sell extremely well. I have to wonder where she got that wild idea. ("Unless there's a group of people without the genes that crave for sugar and fat, everyone more or less would go for Twinkies; we're hard-wired for those flavors associated with high calories," Patrick said, and that's true.)
And of course, she's not alone in that belief. Maybe it is generally true that the average Japanese eating habit is healthier than the average American eating habit, but it seems bizarre to me that so many people automatically associate Japanese food with healthy eating. Because, every so often, it's not so.
A bowl of katsudon in the food court of Mitsuwa Marketplace.
Take this bowl of katsudon, for example. A favorite lunch item for many a Japanese corporate soldiers, katsudon features a piece of center cut pork, breaded and deep-fried in oil, then cooked briefly in soysauce-and-sugar broth, topped with an egg, some onions and served on a thick bed of rice. I haven't met a single Japanese person who doesn't like this dish, and it's a comfort food for me, too. But, the horrifying truth is, an average bowl of katsudon packs, perhaps not so surprisingly, over 1,000 calories and about 60% of your daily fat allowance. And forget about vegetables; a few cooked-down pieces of onions are all you get. (If you're lucky, it might come with a small dish of pickled cucumbers and daikon, but that adds to the sodium intake, too, while most of the vitamins are probably long gone.) Katsudon is no healthier than a Big Mac, and we love it.
Sushi, which is considered to be healthy in the U.S., is also a nutritional suspect in Japan. The fish part is fine. The rice part is the problem. Sushi vinegar has so much sugar and salt dissolved in it that diabetics and those with high blood pressure are often advised not to eat too much sushi. (My father was, for one.) And let's face it, where are the veggies for which the Japanese cooking is so prized?
Well, maybe I'm being too harsh on the eating habits of my own people. We do seem to place less emphasis on fatty meat than an average Western cook. But we do have our own culinary problem, which is (traditionally) the excess intake of sodium. Miso soup, pickles and salted dried fish--it all adds up pretty quickly. The Japanese may not die from colon cancer in massive numbers, but we do die massively from strokes and heart attacks. Different food cultures have different healthy problems inherent in them, and fantasizing an exotic food culture to be purely healthy without acknowledging its dubious side(s) seems not just dangerous but a little symplistic. I was in fact surprised by Kingsolver's innocent remark, for throughout the book, up till the (doomed?) 303rd page, she kept me admiring her wide range of knowledge about how food is grown and how it's preserved, with an occasional social and economic expositions of American industrial food production.
I suppose everybody fantasizes about exotic food, in one way or the other. And it's perhaps quite telling that many of us in this society attaches health claims to our fantasies of exotic food and the culture that accompanies it.
We Japanese love to massacre modify different Western cuisines to make them suit our taste. (You might remember the soy sauce-based mushroom spaghetti I wrote about a while back.) One of the frequent victims is the Italian food--there are quite a few spaghetti dishes that you don't see anywhere outside of Japan, or outside of Japanese cooks' kitchens. We might add miso to a simple tomato sauce to give it an extra depth of flavor. "Natto," fermented soybeans, also makes its appearance in spaghetti dishes. We might even use "shiokara," various seafood, often squid, marinated and fermented in its own innards (I know it sounds gross, but a good one can be fantastic) as a base for the sauce.
Though I'm not a huge fan of "natto spa," as this type of spaghetti is often called, I am deeply in love with another perennial Spaghetti Giapponese: spaghetti with spicy pollack roe. Spicy pollack roe, originally from Korea, is raw pollack roe preserved in salt and red chili, and is usually eaten with a bowl of rice or as an accompaniment for sake. Mentaiko, as it's called, can be a little bit daunting for someone with an aversion to oceanic flavor (I had to overcome my initial revulsion, too, since mentaiko smells pretty fishy), but once you get over it, it can be quite addictive. Mentaiko loses some of its wild fishiness when it's cooked, so spaghetti with mentaiko (or "mentai spa" in short) is one of my favorite dishes that involve this ingredient.
I don't know who invented the "mentai spa," but it's a pretty simple dish. In fact, I might venture to say that its simplicity faithfully reflects the simplicity of Italian pasta dishes. The main ingredients are the spaghetti, mentaiko, butter, soy sauce and nori (seaweed you find wrapped around your "maki" sushi). It's simple, but the fishy, salty mentaiko, the fatty, rich butter and the aromatic nori blend extremely well with each other. And it's ridiculously easy to make; it's one of the easiest meals to cook, even if you don't know how to cook at all. Indeed, there's no knife involved, either, other than the butter knife you might use to transfer the butter from the butter case to the pan.
Spaghetti with Spicy Pollack Roe (for one)
First, boil the pasta in plenty of water with a pinch of salt. While the pasta is cooking, squeeze the pollack roe out of its thin skin. To get the tiny roe out of the fragile skin, I like to cut one end of the roe sack and pull the sack between two chopsticks tightly held together, but if you aren't used to using chopsticks, you can also do this by breaking the sack open and scrape the roe out with a spoon. When the pasta is al dente, drain the water from the pot, remove it from heat, and add butter, pollack roe and soy sauce. Mix well. The pollack roe cooks by the heat of the pasta. Place the pasta on a plate and top it with shredded nori and shiso leaves, cut into thin strips.
The other day I made this spaghetti for lunch, for the first time in many, many years, and totally fell in love with it again. The punchy heat and fishiness of the mentaiko had morphed into incredibly delicate hint of spice and oceanic flavor, and the butter's dairy richness held it all together. (Just writing this makes my mouth water... Ah!) For folks out there with higher seafood tolerance, I highly recommend this Japanified Italian recipe. Oh, yeah, you should eat it with a pair of chopsticks, too!
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Mentaiko can be found in freezer cases in Japanese or Korean markets. They may come in fancy packages, since they're a bit more expensive. (I think I bought mine, a fake-wood box of 7 oz for $12 or $16.) They're expensive, but you really don't need a ton of them to give flavor to your dishes, so a relatively small package should last you for a while. I got mine at the H Mart (801 Civic Center Drive, Niles, IL).
Continued from this post about my recent "discovery" of Albany Park.
Our little Albany Park exploration (over one afternoon and one evening) was heavily Middle-Eastern. A day after the happy encounter with the Al-Khyam Bakery and Grocery, we went to the nearby Noon-o-Kabab for dinner. The recently renovated interior of the Persian restaurant featured Persian-themed tile work on the wall and a few colorful knickknacks like a hookah pipe and musical instruments on the display shelf above the bar counter. At around 7:30 on a Monday night, the dining room was pretty crowded. Quite a few Asian-looking diners (including me, I suppose), along with the usual suspects of European-looking and Middle-Eastern looking people, seemed to reflect the diversity of the neighborhood.
The thin, flavorful pita came with a small dish of onion, radish, parsley and feta. Patrick the cheese lover said the feta was great, but I liked the pita with onions. For the main, I tried Ghormeh Sabzi and Koubideh combo, while Patrick went for Koubideh and chicken combo. After reading Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors, which traces the myriad origins of what we now grossly simplify as "Indian cuisine," I'd been curious to try some of the Persian foods that had a huge influence on the "Indian cuisine*" through the conquest of northern India by the Islamic and Persian-influenced Mughal Empire. Early Mugahli emperors, used to Persian cooking, brought expert Persian cooks with them to India, where they taught Indian cooks how to cook Persian food, and modified staple dishes to incorporate Indian ingredients and cooking methods. One of such influential items was the ghormeh sabzi--spinach, red beans and some beef bits stewed slowly until absolutely tender. It was an interesting experience; if no one told me that it was a Persian dish, I would have believed that the stewed dish was Indian.
The rest of the meal was fantastic. The dill rice was so light and fluffy that I ate more than half of the huge heap though I usually give up at around 1/3. (Cooking the rice light and fluffy, by the way, is another Persian influence on the Indian cooking. For example, biryani, which most Americans equates with Indian rice, actually originated in Persia.) Koubideh, a skewer of ground beef broiled over charcoal fire, was incredibly juicy and beefy, with a strong hint of smokiness. Although the chicken may not have stood up to the Café Suron's divine chicken, Koubideh was pretty darn good.
After the meal, I was so stuffed that I had to take a walk around the neighborhood. The sun had set, and the western sky visible beyond the busy Lawrence avenue was a dreamy mixture of pink, mauve, orange and indigo. We wandered into the Lindo Michoacan, a Mexican supermarket, where I picked up a molinillo (a traditional stirring stick to make champurrado) for a whopping $3.50. (I've seen molinillos for around $25 in gourmet stores--though these are much more elaborately made.) Along Lawrence, there were Guatemalan bakery, Mexican restaurants, Chinese restaurants, Korean kitchen store, more Middle Eastern places, and lots and lots of people of all ages and ethnicities. Some young men boomed along the street in a pimped-up ghetto mobile, while elderly couples took a leisurely stroll and families in sedans and minivans crowded parking lots everywhere. It was quite chaotic, in a Devon-avenue sort of way, but the vibrancy felt good. After all, Rogers Park wasn't the only neighborhood that's really diverse and down-to-earth, without too much commercial flair of Lincoln Park and Lakeview, I thought. (I do enjoy cool new restaurants and oh-so-cute stores in more hip neighborhoods, but I'm always pestered by a slight sense of discomfort when I'm in these neighborhoods. I don't know why.)
When the evening light surrendered to the indigo darkness of the night, we turned around and headed back to the car. With the nightfall, the area around the Brown Line's Kimball station was starting to be a little bit more exciting than we'd want ourselves in, but in the daylight, we'd definitely come back for more exploration. (I'd spotted a few Korean stores that seemed to sell some Japanese ceramics, which I have a constant hankering for.)
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* Though I now understand, thanks to the book's author Lizzie Collingham, that there's no such thing as homogeneous "Indian cuisine" in the regionally diverse culinary universe of the Indian subcontinent, I still don't know how to bridge the gap between the widely acknowledged "Indian food" and the yet-obscure regional varieties of it. Saying "Indian food" seems too violent of a simplification, yet what else could I say? I definitely need to more about the food of the subcontinent to talk about it properly.
It's strange how spotty one's familiarity with her city of residence can be. As for me, I frequent only certain parts of Chicago and feel as if I knew Chicago pretty well. But every once in a while, the city opens up a whole new neighborhood in front of me and grins, challenging my rather arrogant notion that I already know the city. It's a good thing, I suppose, for finding yet another face of this city keeps me busy (with stores and restaurants to explore) and entertained. Albany Park has been one of those blind spots for me--and for Patrick as well. It's fairly close to Rogers Park, but somehow we'd totally missed the area. That changed last weekend, when we decided to bike down California after lunch at a fantastic Georgian bakery on Devon, just to see what it's like along the road.
Soon we switched to the bike path along the river, and found ourselves on Lawrence. Remembering that we'd seen a short, heavily Middle-Eastern stretch on Kedzie in a neighborhood that otherwise seemed mainly Latino and Korean, we decided to bike down Kedzie from there. Within a block or so, we saw the long, green awning of the Al Khyam Bakery and Grocery. Inside this dimly lit Lebanese grocer were row after row of Middle Eastern ingredients: grape leaves conserved in olive oil, bags of semolina flour (this seemed to be under their own name, along with many other grain-based products), myriad jars of spices and spice mixes, colorful boxes of sweets (which, of course, includes many flavors of halva), and various teas, just to name a few. In the back, huge chunks of zabiha/halal beef and lamb sat quietly in a large glass case, along with bucket-sized containers of different olives and pickles.
The largest attraction of them all was, however, along the street-facing windows. By a tall, ancient iron oven, there was a few long showcases full of Middle-Eastern sweets, all of them gleaming with dewy honey. Some looked like familiar baklava, and some sported shredded philo dough delicately warpped around some divine mixture of nuts and honey, while others were shaped like flowers, with twisted philo dough gently cupping a few pieces of pistachios in the middle. They all looked absolutely gorgeous, but my eyes were pegged to a large, round, flat cake that I'd never seen before. When I asked the dark-haired guy behind the counter, he confessed that he didn't know how its name (that sounded like "kenafa") is spelled in English.
"I know it in French, Française," he said and smiled. He pointed at the cake in a large, shallow pan: "It has cheese inside." Wow. Cheese in Lebanese cake? I never knew.
"I'll probably be able to look it up online," I said. Certainly Française would be beyond me. Trying (in vain) to remember what crooked, colonial relationship Lebanon and France have had in the recent history, I jotted down "kenafa" in my notebook and asked for a small slice. (Later, through some googling, I found out that it was knafe, a Lebanese specialty made with fresh cheese called kenafa, semolina and honey.) Patrick asked for a piece of baklava.
"That's not baklava," the guy corrected. "It has cream in it." Cream? Wow.
Al-Khyam Bakery definitely extended beyond my limited knowledge of Middle-Eastern baking. Using dairy products (other than butter, I mean) in pastries was of course novel, but that was not all: they also had sublime butter cookies called "grhybe" or "ghoraibi." (It took me quite a while to figure out the correct spelling from what I scribbled in my notebook from the kind baker's pronunciation: goravy.) Both knafe and the cream-filled baklava impostor were very, very good, but the grhybe was a notch or two above them. I'm not sure how they make these awesome cookies, but it seemed to have two layers: the rough, nutty inside and the incredibly delicate, melt-in-your-mouth outside that resembled snow ball cookies. They were sweet, but not overwhelmingly so. Mary Luz Mejia of Suite 101 says that good Lebanese pastries can stand up against the world-renowned French pastry making, and I have to agree with her. The grhybe I had from the Al-Khyam was nothing short of excellent.
Al-Khyam had a small restaurant attached to it, and I'm curious to try their food in the near future. Also, according to this article, Al-Khyam's thin, Lebanese-style pita is a favorite of many Middle-Easterners living in the Chicago region. I have to try those, too... A day after we explored a bit of Albany Park, we went back to the area for a nice Persian dinner, but I'll write another post for that one; I suppose this is long enough.
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Al-Khyam Bakery and Grocery
4746 N. Kedzie Ave., Chicago, IL (just south of Lawrence)
773.583.3099
Pitting a quart of cherries is a lot of work, is what I learned yesterday. Well, "learned" may not be the best word, for I'd figured that would be the case, but still, I didn't realize how much time it took to cut these beautiful, ruby-red orbs in half and dig out their pits embedded in the soft, translucent flesh. The tart cherries were so juicy that the bright-red liquid ran down my fingers, past my wrists all the way to my elbows. I had to periodically stop the work and go wash myself in the kitchen sink.
We'd picked up the tart cherries at, yep, you've guessed it, the Green City Market. One of the farmers said it was their first cherry crop, but I couldn't believe it; the market was literally piled with cartons of plump cherries of varying shades of red. The morning light that danced on their glossy, round surface was a photographer's delight. If they'd been only starting, I couldn't imagine what it'd be like when the cherries are in full season. Eying at the beautiful display of tart cherries in a stand, Patrick reminded me of the Dufour Pastry Kitchens' frozen puff pastry dough we'd picked up a few months ago at Whole Foods.
"Do you want a cherry pie?" I teased asked him.
"Cherry pie! Yummm!" was his answer. Watching the familiar, tastiness-induced smile spread over his face, I finally got over the apprehension that I might ruin the special pastry dough that carried the hefty price tag of almost $12 a small package. (I'm a much better--and experienced--cook than a baker.) But the day of fear was over. The dough needed to be used before it went stale anyway, so now was the time. Cherry pie it was. We picked up a carton of tart cherries, wandered around some more in the breezy market and went home.
I didn't bake the promised cherry pie right away. For one thing, we went out to a prairie preserve in the afternoon, and I was exhausted by the time we got home in the evening (though I did cook dinner, using the fresh produce from the farmers market, for which I gave myself a pat on the back). Sunday was not that different, though our destination was more urban than natural. By Monday, though, I was restless; the cherries must be quickly losing their sweetness and flavor even in the fridge. The pie had to be made. I couldn't waste both the pastry dough and the cherries. I put aside whatever premonition I had over my not-so-great baking skills, set up a pitting station by the computer monitor, put on Mr. Incredible, and started pitting. (The animated feature turned out to be a mediocre choice for the task; it relied more on visual information than I'd remembered it, and I quickly lost track of what was going on in the retired hero's world as initial dialogs were supplanted by loud thuds, thumps and ka-booms.)
As the milk for the custard slowly warmed up on the stove, I studied the dough package. The ingredients list was positively promising: the first ingredient was butter (which was verified by the 120 calories coming from fat out of 170 in one serving). The rest were wheat flour, water, salt and lemon juice. Very clean. When the custard was done, I unfolded the pastry dough on a floured cutting board and cut them into four large rectangles. I'd said "pie," but it was going to be turnovers (for my lack of patissiery skills). I slapped on the custard on one side of each rectangle and placed halved cherries in neat rows on top. Some of the egg whites left from making custard, which only calls for egg yolks, was used to seal the folded pastries. Even with the day's cooler temperature, the pastry dough behaved surprisingly well. It didn't stick to the cutting board, knife or my hands, and didn't lose its shape as quickly as it could have. This seemed even more surprising when we bit into the finished turnovers--I had no idea how a dough so buttery and delicate could stay so obliging for such a long time.
When they came out of the oven, I couldn't believe my eyes (and my nose): the pastries looked like they'd been baked by a professional patissier, with its sides almost bursting out in golden strata, little dribble of hot-pink cherry juice still bubbling here and there. And most of all, the fresh, buttery aroma of the pastry shell itself. I regretted my decision to bake them when Patrick was out at work--it would have been such a treat for him to inhale that fresh-off-the-oven goodness. When he came home, though, we shared a turnover, reheated in the toaster to perk up the slightly moistened shell. We had one each this morning, for a sumptuous breakfast. I'm guessing that we'd have to fight hard to decide who's going to get that one remaining turnover on the counter. They turned out to be as tasty as they looked. You might believe it if I told you that I got them from some expensive, fancy bakery tucked away somewhere in a up-and-coming neighborhood. But then again, they did come from an expensive bakery (in New York, of all places)--the dough was professionally and expensively made, the cherries grown by dedicated local organic farmers, and the eggs and milk in the custard also organic, if not local. Each turnover probably cost us about $4 or so just for the ingredients. But was it worth the price? Absolutely. I'd pit those cherries again and again, and stir gallons of custard till my arms hurt, if only to fill that amazing pastry shell.
...I have to admit, though, I'm in complete awe of those people, amateur and professional, who not only pit their cherries but also make their own pastry dough from scratch. That's just a lot of work!
Using a Japanese eggplant and a little bit of daikon radish that we picked up from the Green City Market on Saturday, I made "asazuke," Japanese-style light pickle. Though it's called a pickle, it's more like a salad than a pickle; it takes only 20 minutes or so in the fridge for the veggies to be ready for din-din. Well chilled and spiced, asazuke can be a refreshing side dish for any summer meal. The added salt dehydrate the veggies a little, making it easier to eat a lot of vegetables than in their bulky, raw state.
Daikon and Eggplant Asazuke (for two, and a bit of leftover for tomorrow)
Slice the daikon and eggplant into 1/8 - 1/10 inch thickness. You can make them thicker or thinner, depending on how fast you want the pickle to be ready. In a hurry, make them thinner; I like to keep them crunchy, so I usually stick to this sickness. Place them in a small ziploc bag, sprinkle salt, kobucha, minced ginger and hot chili pepper over them. Shake the bag so that all the veggie slices are mixed with the condiments and spices, and "knead" the bag a little. Push the air out of the bag, seal it and place it in the fridge until dinner time. When dishing out, squeeze out the excess water by hand.
I added shredded shiso (perilla) leaves on top. Though it's not absolutely necessary, its sweet, faintly fennel-like aroma was quite wonderful on the pickle that combines the refreshing tang of the ginger and the heat of the red chili.
I've done this with normal radishes, and they work pretty well. Also good in this dish are cucumbers (ones with tender skins, like Japanese or Persian cucumbers are the best), carrots and even celeries. Just like cucumbers, you would want eggplants with their skins on the tender side. If the ones at hand seem to have tough skin, you can also peel them partially (so that the remaining skin looks like purple streaks on the white fresh), which is what Japanese professional chefs often do with their eggplants to make them look nicer.
* Kobucha--or kombucha--is a kind of instant drink made from powdered kelp (kobu, or kombu). Since kobu has a ton of natural umami compounds, kobucha is often used as a flavor enhancer in contemporary Japanese cooking. For example, I've used this in a simple mushroom spaghetti. Though you don't have to use kobucha for the pickle (traditional recipe doesn't call for one), with kobucha you can get additional depth of flavor that's unachievable with just veggies and salt.
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By the way, my post about the unassuming yet delicious Georgian bakery, Argo Bakery, is on Gapers Block Drive Thru today.
Green City Market seems to be hitting the peak of the harvesting season lately. What started out as a bunch of strawberries and asparagus is now a huge array of squashes, zucchini, daikon radishes, carrots, broccoli, onions, cherries and all kinds of beautiful berries. From the gorgeous offerings, we picked up (among other things) a bunch of small red carrots yesterday. Their dark, ruby-red skin hid a firm, orange flesh, and the green leaves were still perfectly perky when we stashed them in our increasingly veggie-filled refrigerator. It was a thing of beauty.
This morning, I felt compelled to use at least some of the farmers market bounty from yesterday. (I'd used the beautiful, dark-purple Japanese eggplant for dinner, but there were a lot more to enjoy.) Eying the bag of red carrots and a few remaining Jewel yams from this dessert, I got an idea. I had a potato, a purple onion and a bunch of green onions, so I should be able to make root veggie hash. What I had in mind was the spicy and savory breakfast potatoes from Lucky Platter in Evanston. (And maybe also the similarly appetizing one from m. henry in Andersonville.
I cut the carrots, potato and yams in medium-sized chunks, and diced the onion and green onions. In a pan, I slowly sautéed some minced garlic and onions, then added all the root vegetables. From there, all I need to do was to be patient; I'd discovered that the key to making good chunky hash is not to stir the potatoes. Rather, I'd need to let them become brown and crispy, slowly on lower-than-medium heat. So, this freed me up to make some scrambled eggs with oyster mushrooms (another prize from yesterday's Green City Market stroll). Toward the end, I added the green onions and let all the veggies slightly charred, just the way they are in Lucky Platter and m. henry. I love the concentrated veggie sweetness in charred onions and green onions, so I made sure they get the right treatment. A bit of salt and a few generous shakes of hot chili powder from the Spice House was enough for seasoning. (This hot chili powder was already in Patrick's cupboard when I met him three years ago. God knows how long it'd been sitting there before that, but it still has enough kick to spice up most everything!)
Out of curiosity, I'd sampled a small piece of the red carrot when I was cutting the veggies. That tiny piece was more than enough to fill my mouth with the almost pungent, green flavor of carrots. So, I was surprised, when I tasted the carrots in the hash--there was no hint of that pungent carrot flavor left in them. Instead, the red carrots had become as sweet as the jewel yams. I would have believed it if someone had told me that there's a ton of sugar added to the dish. Thanks to the slow cooking, all the root veggies had turned extra sweet and flavorful, without the least trace of the flavors they have when they're raw. Not that I hate the raw carrot flavor to the guts (I have to admit I'm not a huge fun of it, though...), but it was a pleasant reminder of the botanical basics, which I tend to forget, when seeing them as merely an "ingredient," that carrots are roots, a part of the plant that is a reservoir of sugary energy for the leaner days.
Apparently I was too excited to make this dish. Three little yams, one potato and three small carrots didn't seem like much when I cut them, but I'm completely stuffed two hours after our sumptuous breakfast of root veggies and eggs. Do I regret all those calories, though? No way! Coming from a country (or is it just my family?) that doesn't feast on hearty weekend breakfast, I'm utterly in love with this very American (it seems) luxury.
