Five Spice Peanuts

These peanuts make a wonderful accompaniment for cocktail hour and a great snack any time! I’ve tweaked a recipe for pecans to use more common Chinese ingredients, peanuts and five spice powder. But I’ve left in the butter – not very Chinese, but it really helps glue the spices to the nuts, and everything’s better with butter (or so they told us in culinary school)!

Five spice powder’s claim to fame is that it includes all 5 flavors found in Chinese cooking: sweet, sour, bitter, pungent, and salty. You can make your own by combining equal parts whole Sichuan (or other) peppercorn, cinnamon sticks, cloves, fennel seed, and star anise. After toasting the spices lightly, grind in a mortar or with a coffee or spice grinder. If you’re in a hurry or don’t want to mess with that, five-spice is also available pre-mixed in Asian markets and in some conventional groceries – try the Asian section first, then the baking/spice aisle.

This recipe will make a big bowlful, enough to serve 12 as an hors d’oeuvre.

ingredients:

• 1 T unsalted butter
• 1/4 c light brown sugar
• 1 tsp five spice powder
• 1.5 tsp sea salt, or to taste
• 3 c raw, skinless peanuts

method:

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a small saucepan, melt the butter, then add the sugar, five spice powder, and salt. Stir gently over medium heat until the sugar dissolves, but do not allow the mixture to caramelize.
3. Pour the spice mixture over the nuts, mix thoroughly, then spread in a single layer on a sheet pan.
4. Bake until crisp and golden, approximately 5-10 m, but check on them frequently because sugar can easily burn.
5. Remove from the oven, cool slightly until you are able to separate the nuts with your hands. If you let them cool completely on the pan, you may have to pry them off with a spatula.
6. Store in a tightly covered container away from light – these will last approximately 1 week in the pantry (if you don’t eat them all before that!)

Braised Peas

Spring has definitley sprung in SoCal – I think we may actually get a few days of it before summer hits – and with it spring brings some fantastic English peas. We’ve been putting them in risotto, making stirfried rice with them, and just enjoying them steamed. Here is a simple stirfry version if you can get your hands on some – frozen will work too, just rinse in cold water to thaw and reduce the cooking time. You need to buy a lot and it does take time to shell them, but it’s something kids love to help with (although you’ll be lucky if more go in the bowl than in their mouths!)

ingredients:

• 12 oz shelled peas
• 2 slices fresh ginger root, peeled and cut into thin strips
• 1/4 c stock, broth or water
• 1/4 tsp sugar
• 1 T oil
• 1/4 tsp salt

method:

1. Combine stock and sugar and set aside.
2. Heat the oil in a wok over medium high heat just until it shimmers, then add the ginger root and explode until fragrant.
3. Add the peas and stirfry quickly to coat with oil and heat through.
4. Add the stock and sugar mixture and bring to a rolling boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, until the peas are cooked through and the liquid mostly evaporated, approximately 2-3 m. You may have to add more liquid.
5. Adjust the seasoning and serve.

The White House Garden

This 60 Minutes clip is worth 1,000,000 words – need anyone say more?

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4867014n

Apparently Michelle Obama has taken Alice Waters’ advice to heart – three cheers for the new White House Vegetable Garden! But really, Mrs. Obama, why not beets?!?

Asparagus with “Hollandaise”

Must be spring: asparagus is flooding the farmers’ market in SoCal, so I hope things are warming up in the rest of the country, too! Here’s a twist on asparagus served with hollandaise – it’s certainly lower in fat than that classic sauce and adds some protein to a vegetarian meal. Just remember cooking the sauce requires a fine balance: you want to cook the sauce on a low enough heat that it won’t separate, but you also want to heat it long enough that the starch is cooked out. If you add the cold beaten egg directly to the hot sauce or cook it to rapidly, you’ll end up with egg drop soup! And a note on asparagus – only buy this veggie from the vendors who store them upright in a bit of water, and when you get it home, if you’re not cooking it right away, store upright in a tall glass with a bit of water at the bottom.

ingredients:

• 1 lb asparagus
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• 1 c homemade stock or broth
• 1 T cornstarch mixed with 2 T cold water
• 1 T oil
• 1/2 T Shaoxing cooking wine or dry sherry
• 1/2 tsp salt, to taste

method:

1. Bring a pot of water to a boil.
2. Snap the tough ends off the asparagus where they break naturally, then rinse, drain, cut into 1.5″ lengths or roll-cut. Blanch and shock.
3. Bring the stock to a simmer, then add cornstarch mixture and bring back to a simmer, stirring constantly until slightly thickened, then simmer 1 m more to cook out the starchy taste.
4. Whisking constantly, gradually add 1/4 c of the hot stock mixture to the egg, then add the egg mixture back to the hot stock mixture, whisking constantly. Heat gently until thickened – it should not reach a simmer. Remove from the heat, season with 1/4 tsp salt and keep warm.
5. Heat the oil in a wok over medium high heat just until it shimmers.
6. Add the asparagus and stirfry until crisp-tender.
7. Add the cooking wine and 1/4 tsp salt, stirfry to allow the sherry to evaporate, then remove to a serving plate.
8. Drizzle with the egg sauce and serve immediately.

Cooking Personality Disorder

It’s really time to get back to posting some recipes, but humor me one day more – I found this to be an interesting exercise (and being in the middle of not one, but two piles of real estate paperwork, I simply haven’t had time to play in the kitchen!) I recently blogged about the supersizing of cookbook recipes – who ever imagined that home cooking might be as much part of the American weight problem as fast food? – and today, more from one of the main characters in that post, Brian Wansink.

In the New York Times “Well” blog, Tara Parker Pope reprints a “cooking personality” quiz from Wansink’s book, Mindless Eating. The quiz, reprinted here from Parker Pope’s blog,  is meant to determine whether you are a giving, methodical, healthy, competitive, or innovative cook:

1) When I prepare a meal, I typically:

a) Rely on classic dishes my family has always enjoyed.
b) Follow a recipe step-by-step.
c) Substitute more healthful ingredients.
d) Go all out and try to impress my guests.
e) Rarely use recipes and like to experiment.
2) Some of my favorite ingredients are:

a) Lots of bread, starches and red meat.
b) Beef and chicken.
c) Fish and vegetables.
d) A trendy ingredient I saw on the Food Network.
e) Vegetables, spices and unusual ingredients.

3) In my free time I like to:

a) Visit with friends and family.
b) Organize the house.
c) Exercise or take a fitness class.
d) Be spontaneous and seek adventure.
e) Take part in creative or artistic pursuits.

4) My favorite things to cook are:

a) Home-baked goodies.
b) Casseroles.
c) Foods with fresh ingredients and herbs.
d) Anything that lets me fire up the grill.
e) Ethnic foods and wok dishes.

5) Other people describe me as:

a) Really friendly.
b) Diligent and methodical.
c) Health conscious.
d) Intense.
e) Curious.

There may be overlap in the answers you give, but is there one letter that you picked most often? Here’s what your answers say about your cooking style:

a) Giving: Friendly, well-liked and enthusiastic, giving cooks seldom experiment, love baking and like to serve tried-and-true family favorites, although that sometimes means serving less healthful foods.

b) Methodical: Talented cooks who rely heavily on recipes. The methodical cook has refined tastes and manners. Their creations always look exactly like the picture in the cookbook.

c) Healthy: Optimistic, book-loving, nature enthusiasts, healthy cooks experiment with fish, fresh produce and herbs. Health comes first, even if it means sometimes sacrificing taste.

d) Competitive: The Iron Chef of the neighborhood, competitive cooks have dominant personalities and are intense perfectionists who love to impress their guests.

e) Innovative: Creative and trend-setting, innovative cooks seldom use recipes and like to experiment with ingredients, cuisine styles and cooking methods.

I must have a cooking personality disorder – I had to finally admit defeat: for every question, I would probably have to say “all of the above,” or perhaps more accurately, “all of the above except ‘d.’” So maybe I did manage to learn that I am NOT competitive – which I already knew.

I did, however, enjoy Parker Pope’s further discussion of the quiz and the concept of “nutritional gatekeepers” in “Who’s Cooking? For Health, It Matters.” (Thanks, Peter, for sending me that link – it’s been a “don’t have time to skim the paper kind of week!”) With the cost of processed food and frozen food rising, more Americans are turning to home cooking – now the question seems to be, “How healthful IS home cooking?”

Fun quizzes like Wansink’s are certainly a way to raise the public’s awareness of the potential pitfalls of home cooking, but I hope it will send us to the kitchen rather than make us run screaming from it!

The Joy of Supersizing?

Just about everyone has a cooking “Bible” – at my mother’s house, it’s the old Betty Crocker cookbook she got for her wedding. I have coveted that cookbook since moving out on my own 20+ years ago! When I moved into my own apartment, my father bought me a “new and improved” Betty Crocker cookbook, and it was a total disappointment: not only were most of the recipes different, but many of them called for a package of this mix or a bag of that one. No surprise, really, since what the cookbook pushes is use of Betty’s other line – processed, prepared foods!

Now the AP reports that not only have classic cookbooks changed recipes, they’ve changed the portion sizes in the ones that remain otherwise unchanged: “No joy in this cooking: recipes can make you fat” summarizes a study first reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine (the original article is available for a fee on that site). 

“There’s so much attention that’s been given to away-from-home eating and so much attention that’s been focused on restaurants and the packaged food industry, it makes me wonder whether it’s actually deflecting attention from the one place where we can make the most immediate change,” says Cornell University marketing professor Brian Wansink, who directed the study.

By tracking 18 recipes that appeared in every Joy of Cooking edition, Brian Wansink (author of Mindless Eating) determined that portion numbers were reduced, thereby increasing the amount of calories per serving. Apparently, this portion distortion has been going on in cookbooks for a while – first in the 1940s, then again in the 1960s, with the largest jump in the 2006 edition.

Makes you wonder who first invented the concept of supersizing, doesn’t it? It also makes you realize that it’s not only important to know how to cook with whole, close to the source (i.e. non-processed) ingredients – it’s also vital to understand how to eat: changes to portion size must begin at home.

Clams with Fresh Basil

I have not come across too many uses for basil in Chinese cooking, but occasionally you can find a dish on a Chinese menu that is made with something called “nine-layer pagoda,” (jiuceng ta) which is, according to the Evergreen Seeds site, also known as Thai basil. Thai basil has a stronger flavor and a hint of cloves, but if you can’t find it, any fresh basil will work just fine in this recipe. If you can’t find fresh clams, Asian markets sometimes carry frozen ones still in their shells – odd, but they really do cook up well, although I am sometimes a bit wary of how sustainable that option is.

ingredients:

• 1.5 lb small clams in their shells (visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch to learn how to purchase the most sustainable variety)
• 1 T water
• 1 T light soy sauce or miso paste
• 1 tsp Shaoxing cooking wine or dry sherry
• 2 T cooking oil
• 2 slices fresh ginger root, peeled and cut into matchsticks
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 scallions, minced
• 1/2 oz fresh basil, leaves removed from the stem and gently rinsed.
• 1 fresh red chili (optional), cut into small rings
• sea salt, to taste

method:

1. Soak the clams in cool water for 20-30 m to release any grit, then gently rinse and set aside. Get rid of any that do not close firmly when gently tapped.
2. In a bowl, combine the water, soy sauce and cooking wine and set aside.
3. Heat the oil in the wok over medium high heat just until it shimmers, and explode the ginger, garlic, and scallions just until fragrant.
4. Add the clams and stirfry gently, then add the liquid, reduce the heat to medium, and partially cover to allow the clams to steam for approximately 1-2 m. They should just begin to open.
5. Add the basil and chili pepper, stir gently a few times to combine thoroughly and allow the liquid to evaporate.
6. Adjust the seasoning and serve.

Food News

There’s a fun bit of history on Cashew Chicken in the New York Times: “Missouri Chinese” explores how this dish has become part of an American city’s heritage. It reminded me of driving cross-country from Vermont to Colorado with my father – I was on my way to my first job out of college, and he was along for the ride. I marveled at how in the middle of nowhere in the midwest one could find a Chinese restaurant, and he said that many of them sprang up after the railroad work was finished, leaving hundreds of Chinese looking for work. It seems most opted for opening restaurants or laundromats – many of these are no longer owned by Chinese but keep their original names. And like the NYT-mentions restaurants, which started after WWII, many of these restaurants helped to create what is now a very distinct cuisine – American Chinese.

And what’s new on the White Home front? It seems Michelle Obama is indeed rising to the expectations of those among us who hope to see her use her platform to promote more healthful eating for Americans. “Michelle Obama’s Agenda Includes Healthful Eating” covers the first lady’s trip to a soup kitchen and tails her around the White House kitchen.

White House officials say the focus on healthy living will be a significant item on Mrs. Obama’s agenda, which already includes supporting working families and military spouses. As the nation battles an obesity epidemic and a hard-to-break taste for oversweetened and oversalted dishes, her message is clear: Fresh, nutritious foods are not delicacies to be savored by the wealthy, but critical components of the diets of ordinary and struggling families. … In a speech at the Department of Agriculture last month, Mrs. Obama described herself as “a big believer” in community gardens that provide “fresh fruits and vegetables for so many communities across this nation and world.”

It’s refreshing to see a first lady emphasize the importance of something so basic in addition to tackling “more important” problems – I hope she continues to flex her oh-so-sculpted muscles on this issue despite the recent spate of criticisms that she ought to cover up those biceps more often!

And finally, from the LA Times, an entertaining and yet thought-provoking piece titled “Can two people eat on $67 a week?” Journalist Jason Song and his wife take the “food stamp challenge,” trying to live within the amount a couple on foodstamps might reasonably receive per week. Amidst the mild trials and tribulations of the two-month experiment (overly salty ham, the need to render his own poultry rather than buy it cut up), Mr. Song reveals some scary statistics – “More than 31 million Americans received food stamps in December, the latest data available, believed to be the highest rate ever.” – and makes some useful discoveries – shopping ethnic markets is usually more cost-efficient, packing a lunch saves tons of money, etc. And indeed, perhaps the most illuminating moment comes when the experiment is over and they splurge on 2 bagel sandwiches, aghast at what they’ve just done. The point is – yes, we can live on less than what we’re accustomed to, and with a little knowledge and attitude adjustments, we’ll probably end up much healthier – a win-win situation if there ever was one in trying economic times.

The Future of Food

I finally got around to watching The Future of Food this weekend. By now this movie has become one of the cornerstones of the local/organic/sustainable movement, often quoted and referred to and listed as a resource by such writers as Michael Pollan among others. But somehow it had sat at the foot of my Netflix queue for too long, so it was high time to watch it, and what an eye-opener it proved to be!

Made in 2004, the movie is no less chilling (if not more so) now. Deborah Koons Garcia’s investigation into the connections between government and agribusiness are frightening, and her exploration of genetically modified food does indeed make you want to head for the hills and start growing all your own food – except that if you were to do so and some of those GM seeds found their way into your garden and your life, you would end up like Percy Schmeiser, fighting the agribusiness giants with all you can muster….

Stephen Holden’s review in the New York Times summarizes the documentary very succintly:

The film poses many ticklish ethical and scientific questions:

• Since genetic material is life, should corporations have the right to patent genes?
• What are the long-term effects on humans of consuming genetically engineered food, which is still largely unlabeled in the United States?
• Can the crossbreeding of wild and genetically modified plants be controlled?
• Might genetically engineered food be the answer to world hunger? 
• And finally, could the reduction of biodiversity, which has quickened since the introduction of genetically modified plants, lead to catastrophe?

The film’s answers to these five questions are: No. Possibly damaging. Probably not. Probably not. Possibly.

Naturally, the Goliaths of the story (represented by Monsanto) would probably cry foul, but if they were invited to comment, they didn’t show up for the interview. Instead we see plenty of spin provided by their own PR machine.

In any case, the movie definitely impresses upon the watcher that buying and eating locally from small, independent farmers and farmers’ markets  is more important than ever. Labeled or not, GM foods (aka “Frankenfoods”, a word which now appears in the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary!) are everywhere in conventional stores and restaurants:

Since genetically engineered soy and corn are used in many processed foods, it is estimated that over 70 percent of the foods in grocery stores in the U.S. and Canada contain genetically engineered ingredients. (The Campaign)

Enough to make me even more convinced that it is time for Americans to vote with their forks, walk away from those oh-so-convenient processed foods that clutter our grocery store aisles, and re-learn how to cook from scratch using whole, close to the source ingredients!

The Future of Food deservedly holds its place as a cornerstone of the local/organic/sustainable food movement: as Jonathan Curiel of the San Francisco Chronicle writes, “The Future of Food will motivate many of its audience members to reconsider their eating (and purchasing) habits.”

In praise of the cherimoya

This post is neither here nor there, perhaps having nothing to do with Chinese food, but I just had to write about a new fruit the kids and I have discovered – cherimoyas!

After receiving a free sample, we have been buying delicious ones at the farmers’ market from Thys’ Ranch, one of my favorite vendors there. You can read all about this exotic fruit at Calimoya.com, and if you live in or near Southern California, I do encourage you to try one if you haven’t – season runs January to June.

Unfortunately, my daughter tried an underripe one and hasn’t tried again: “tastes like chlorine”, so be warned. But my son and I go through at least 3 a week – his assessment is that it tastes sort of like a really sweet pineapple mixed with coconut , sounds like an edible pina colada to me!

So if we’re talking about buying local ingredients, why not serve it as the end of the meal fruit course – the flavors and texture are a perfect end to a homemade Chinese meal.