Kitchen Chick

Seasoned Gluten Puff

I was asking myself earlier "What is the strangest food item currently in our kitchen?" That's a difficult question, not only because we have a lot of strange food stuffs, but also because we so familiar with them that they don't seem strange anymore. I'm not sure pickled turnip really qualifies (see "The Turnips Does What?" entry.), as turnips aren't a strange item here in the US. I went trawling through the shelves, uncovering a great many unusual items like mahlab and roasted blachen, and then I found it:

I remember this box. It was in the remainders section of the store. They wanted to get rid of it, which made me doubt the wisdom of buying it. But we were curious.

The back reads: "Yu Yee vegetarian foods series are popular with the customers for it's high quality material choice, sweet smell, unique flavor and full nutrition. Seasoned Gluten Puff are made of choice quality of the rare matieral and special flavoring. They are superior in delicious and highly nutritious. They are a nice dish used in banquet, travel and as a gift to friends."

Hmmm... okay. Well, it's lunch time, and I don't have a lot of time to cook something from scratch.

The cooking directions give me three options:
1) open the package and eat them cold
2) boil them in the package for five minutes
3) open the package and microwave them

I don't know about eating puffed gluten cold on an empty stomach, so I opt for option 2. While the water comes to a boil, I cook up some breakfast links as a fall back option. I'm hungry, and I'm not taking chances.

And here we are with the cooked gluten. Hmmm... looks like chopped beef, but the proof is in the taste:

Salty. Sweet. Fennel. Faint cinnamon. A slightly spicy after-taste. Not bad. A bit too salty to eat much of it at any one time, but I could grow to like this stuff.

The Turnip Does What?

Bottle front:

Translation:

If You Can Smell It, It's too Late — Or, How Not to Initiate a New Viking Stove

In 1994 Joe and I bought a Viking gas range. 15,000 BTU burners! 1,500 degree F infrared broiler! Convention oven setting. Oh baby, I was ready to wok with the best.

The first thing I cooked on the stovetop were pancakes, a fitting meal given that they were also the first thing I learned to cook as a kid.

The first thing I baked in the oven was, I am ashamed to say, a frozen pre-processed mass-produced Marie Callendar's chicken potpie. The timer when off and I pulled it out of the oven. It was cooked, but the top hadn't browned at all. Try the broiler, Joe suggested. So I turned on the broiler, put the potpie within about 2 inches of it, shut the door, and sat down with a magazine.

A few minutes later the most wonderful aroma filled the air. Ah ha! I leap to the stove, pulled open the door, and flames gushed out at me. I slammed the door closed and turned off the broiler. When the flames didn't die down, I called for Joe. We watched through the stove window as sheets of blue flame flowed off of the pot pie and around the cookie tray it was sitting on. Opening the door only gave them more air to burn. It was time to use the fire extinguisher.

I spent our second night with our new Viking range breaking down the stove (not easy!) and cleaning out yellow fire extinguisher chemical. I've since learned two things:

1) if I leave the stove door open when using the broiler, I'm less likely to overcook the food;

2) don't put food so close to the broiler — it may take longer to cook, but it's less like to catch on fire; and

3) when using the broiler, if it smells great, it's too late.

Kebabs cooking under the infrared broiler:

Yan Can Cook and So Can I

Back in college, when faced with the prospect of cooking for myself for the first time (and for my then-boyfriend), I bought my very first cookbook:  A Wok for All Seasons by Martin Yan. Martin Yan proved to me that I could cook something edible, and even better, that it was fun.  With Martin Yan in hand, I ventured into grocery stores seeking out such unfamiliar things as hoisin and oyster sauce.  I bought my first bottle of wine (cooking wine) because of this cookbook.  Martin Yan's book, and the other two cookbooks I acquired that year, survived the electric wok-with-missing-leg and the ancient gas-spewing stove.  They were my trenchmates in the ongoing battle of "What's for dinner?" and "Do you like it?"  They bolstered my confidence, emboldened me to go forth and cook a cuisine that I didn't even like two years before.  (Alright, girl, enough with the poetics.)   My copy, now 14 years old, is splattered with oil, hoisin, and oyster sauce, and the pages are falling out of the binding — the sign of a well-used and loved cookbook.  Though I haven't cook much from this cookbook in years, there is one dish that calls me back time and time again:  "Beef and Bean Curd Delight."  Tonight was one of those nights.  I said to myself in the morning, "You just bought a big tub of tofu yesterday.  Just what are you going to do with it?"  Beef and Tofu.  Of course.  I forgot to take a picture of it, so you'll have to imagine for yourself thinly sliced marinated beef, stir fried with ginger (and dried chilies — my modification), then simmered briefly with cubed medium or firm tofu and a sauce made of chicken broth, shao hsing wine, oyster-flavored sauce, and black pepper.  Stir in some tapioca starch (plus water) to thicken the sauce, sprinkle with thinly horseshoe-sliced green onions, and serve.  Mmmm...

Presidential Candidate Kerry visits Zingerman's Deli

This evening I was leaving work and to pick up Joe, my husband from his work.  I turned up E. Kingsley, part of my usual route, only to discover a row of state police motorcycles four across and good 6-8 deep in the oncoming lane.  (That's a lot of bikes!)  I had a red light, lucky me, so I had time to look at them.  The bikes were shiny new, bright blue with the words "state police" stenciled in white across their broad fronts.  The officers were all kitted out in their motorcycle gear and bullet proof vests.  Whoa.  What's going on, I asked myself.  A state cop after work get-together at Zingerman's?  I cursed myself for not having my camera with me — all those bikes packed together were a d@mn beautiful and unusual sight.  The lead cop, looking rather military-like, in his all black leather and bulkly vest and weapons, stood in my lane, making it perfectly clear that when the light turned green I was not to go straight.  So I turned down another street to circle around.  I thought, "Self, you're going to be smart and circle Zingerman's from Detroit street and get another look at what's happening."  But woe and behold, but more cops were blocking that street too, along with a woman in a fancy black pantsuit who waved me on.  Slightly annoyed at being thwarted, I finally realized that John Kerry was visiting Zingerman's.  He was in town that day, giving a speech at Washtenaw Community College. What does this have to do with food?  Zingerman's is justly world-famous for its deli and other fine and exotic food offerings.  Want to impress your boss, your mother for Mother's Day, your spouse, make a friend's day, etc?  Order them a Zingerman's gift box.  Yes, it's pricey, but they offer only the best and they use top-notch ingredients in all of their baked goods.  They snail mail paper catalogues with a wide selection of farmhouse cheeses, estate-bottled olive oils, varietal vinegars, smoked fish, salami, small estate chocolates, coffee, tea, and their justly famous breads and other baked goods.  To get on their mailing list, send an email to [email protected]. I picked up Joe, and we took a detour back toward Zingerman's.  I was really hoping to show him that spectacular display of bikes, but they were gone, but a cluster of people wearing "Kerry for President" shirts proved my theory correct.  (Campaign staffers?  Zing employees who've been given shirts?)  Well, hey, I reported it here before the local Ann Arbor News got the story out on their website.

Kebabs and Parathas

I've been craving idli. I even have an idli maker, which is about the scariest pressure cooker I've ever seen. My husband frowned and wondered if it was safe to be in the same room as it. I figure millions of people in India make idli in these things, so I can too.

But you'll have to wait for a photo of my idli maker. Idli is a South Indian specialty, and I hadn't thought about what other South Indian dishes I could make to go with it. So now that I've been an idli-tease, I'm going to switch to more northern dishes...

Menu:
- Chicken Kebabs marinated in spiced yogurt sauce (Curries & Bugles)
- Spinach cooked in a Bihari Style (Jaffrey)
- Parathas (Jaffrey)

Cookbooks:
Madhur Jaffrey's World of the East Vegetarian Cooking — the most amazing vegetarian book around.
Curries & Bugles, by Jennifer Brennan — recipes from the British Raj in India

Here's the meal pictured with mustard oil (for the spinach) and ghee (for the parathas), along with some chutneys that we didn't end up using tonight. (click on photo for larger image)

Trader Joe's and More is Definitely Less

Ann Arbor has just become home to the largest Trader Joe's store. Or so claims one of the Ann Arbor TJ's crew, and since they're fresh out of new employee orientation (or whatever it's called in TJ land), I don't have any reason to doubt them.

Trader Joe's moved into Whole Foods' old location, and Whole Foods moved into a new mega box store built just for them with lots of "designer atmosphere". (But that's a different rant.)

Anyway, Trader Joe's has a lot of cool foods. My husband is particularly fond of their wasabi peanuts, and we both love their chocolate-coated peanut butter stuffed pretzel bits. (Mmmm....) And their tasty ginger cookies have chunks of candied ginger in them. They have a fabulous frozen food selection with some really interesting items, and their prices are pretty darn good.

This brings me to "More & Less." Since weekday breakfast usually consists of a bowl of cereal before running out of the door, I'm always on the lookout for health food cereals that taste reasonably good. I grabbed two promising boxes of Trader Joe's cereal for a taste test.

The candidates:
- Essentials
- More & Less

Roast Pork with Vinegar and Bay Leaves

It's Sunday and 6pm, and unless I think fast, it's going to be "let's order in." I rummage through the freezer and take stock of the few "emergency" meats I keep on hand. (With a butcher's shop right on the way to my car after work, I like to buy fresh the day that I'm going to use it.) Some boneless chicken breast, a skirt steak, flank steak, and boneless pork loin. Hmmm... maybe Italian? Okay, let's check out what Marcella Hazan has to suggest. I pull out her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.

I find a suitable pork loin dish. Now I all I need is a vegetable and a starch. I glance at a carrot and caper dish, but recall that I have a head of radicchio in the fridge. Hazan comes through again with a radicchio and bean salad. Perfect.

The salad recipe requires cranberry beans, but says that cannellini can substitute. Cranberry beans I have not. I do have dried cannellini, but I lack a time machine that will let me turn the clock back 24 hours so I can soak them. Digging through my shelves turns up a can of navy beans. Good enough for me!

Add a pasta and olive oil side dish for an easy starch, and I have...

Dinner Menu:
- Roast port with vinegar and bay leaves
- Radicchio and warm bean salad
- Whole wheat fusilli sauteed in olive oil with garlic and pinenuts and herbs

Survive the Dangerous Wok and You, Too, can Blog about it.

It's "yet another food blog." Yep. Everyone has to have one, including me. I love cooking. So much that I think the only thing keeping me from becoming a chef is the detrimental effect that a chef's hours would have on my marriage. (Yes, my marriage is more important than cooking.)

I'm self-taught, starting with pancakes and cookies as a child. My mother didn't (and doesn't) much care for cooking, so once she taught me pancakes I was on my own for weekend breakfasts. I do have her beer bread recipe, however.

During my junior year in college, I bought a Chef Yan cookbook, and that was the true beginning of my culinary adventures. With Chef Yan's guidance, I taught myself to cook on an old, old gas stove that required matches to light the pilot light, and an electric wok with a broken leg balanced on narrow shelves made of milk crates and 8x1 wood boards. I even deep-fried a Japanese chicken ball recipe in that wok. Several times. I must have thought I was immortal, especially considering that there was about three feet of maneuverable space between the stove and my make-shift wok counter with the two-legged wok. One careless turn.... Amazingly, I neither burned myself nor burned down the house-converted-into-an-apartment building. Having survived what could have been Darwinian exercise in evolution, I can now blog semi-knowledgably about all my favorite foods, and some of my not-so-favorites.

Here's to great food and fun in the kitchen! Cheers.