The weather has still been unseasonably cool out here and this soup is a perfect little pick-me-up. It's equally versatile served warm or cold and it's a cinch to make.
Ingredients
1 leek (both white and green parts - chopped)
4 cups peas (frozen is fine)
4 cups dashi (or chicken broth)
4 tbsp. white miso
3 tbsp. mirin (substitute with 1 tbsp. sugar)
1 scallion (finely chopped for garnish)
2 tbsp. butter
black pepper
Recipe
Note: You don't need to add salt because the miso is salty enough.
Heat up the butter in a heavy pot. Fry the leeks until they are softened. Add the peas, black pepper and the broth and let it cook until the peas are tender. About 10 minutes.
Purée the mixture and pass it through a sieve. Toss out the solids.
Reheat the mixture. In a small bowl, add a little bit of the broth to the miso and let it dissolve. Add the mixture back into the broth. Thin the soup if desired. Taste for salt (you shouldn't need any.)
Do not boil the miso.
Serve at once. Garnish with the scallions.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Sinigang na halaan
This is a Filipino meta-recipe.
You can have Sinigang na X where X can be a large variety of different kinds of meats and seafood. The three classic versions for the X would be pork, chicken and bangus respectively.
A word about bangus (milkfish). It's a fish that was traditionally found in the sea but can grow in brackish water. It's one of the older examples of aquaculture — at least 800 years old in the Philippines. The fish are bony — very bony and it's a skill to eat them.
Sinigang is a sour clear broth with one or more sources of meat and/or seafood, a ton of vegetables, and one souring agent. There is a purity of flavor coming from one very clear-cut souring source which neatly dovetails into the umami of the broth from the meat/seafood.
It is traditionally eaten with rice. The rice is frequently topped with fried garlic and/or fresh scallions but these are all details.
There are traditional recipes but there are clearly two dimensions to the dish — what meat/seafood you choose and what souring agent you choose.
Filipinos love sour food. This is a necessity forced by a tropical climate and a few millennia of no refrigeration turned into a cultural trait. It's one of the few ways to preserve food in a tropical climate so that there is no wastage. There is a difference though. The souring agents are cooked through. It gives them a "rounded mellow" flavor rather than the aggressive hit of acidity that you would get without cooking. There has to be enough sourness to wake up the taste buds but not so much as to make it pucker and inedible.
The list of souring agents is endless — vinegar made from all sorts of sources (coconut, palm, sugarcane, pineapples, etc.), tamarind, calamansi, kamias, santol, green mangoes, green guava, star fruit, green pineapples, even leaves of various plants, etc. This list barely even scratches the surface of this subject. The Philippines probably has the longest list of souring agents of any culture that the CC knows about.
Needless to say the souring agents are not substitutable for each other. It does matter whether you are making a sinigang with a hearty ingredient like pork or delicate ones like seafood. Santol which has an astringent tannic component would be most inappropriate for a seafood sinigang while almost all delicate fruit-based versions would work wonderfully.
There are also some classic touches about the choices of vegetables in a sinigang — a starchy root (taro, banana hearts or "New World" potatoes), some "green protein" typically long beans, and some greens in many many different forms — everything from sili (chili leaves) to bok choy, kang kong, and malunggay. Needless to say once tomatoes were discovered and transferred to the "Old World", they became irresistible additions for reasons we have covered on the blog before.
The ingredients are rotated with the combinatorial game that we have talked about extensively on the blog — you will see corn, carrots, radishes, eggplants and all kinds of other vegetables in there. There's a pairing bias though. You see lighter vegetables with seafood and more aggressive ones like eggplants with meat which makes logical sense based upon the palate profile.
Make no mistake though. The star is the sour broth.
One last word about the use of Filipino-style fish sauce called patis. It's basically the same concept as the Roman garum or the Thai nahm pla but it's arguably different. The CC would have no trouble distinguishing it in a blind tasting. You could substitute but it won't be the same.
Just like in Thai recipes, you don't add salt to the dish. The salt comes via the addition of the patis. Additionally, for this recipe with clams, they will give off plenty of salty liquid. Traditionally, the patis is always added towards the end where you can control the level of saltiness. (It also adds substantial umami to the dish.)
This makes a perfectly good soup even in the absence of rice which is heresy as far as the Filipino world is concerned but the CC can live with that.
After all this long explanatory buildup, this is not a difficult recipe. It's what Filipino moms make when they are too lazy to make something. It's really so simple as to defy its excellence.
Sinigang na halaan
Ingredients
1 large onion (sliced)
1" ginger (chopped thinly)
2 pieces ginger (chopped thinly)
1 chili (sliced lengthwise - optional)
2 small tomatoes (chopped into large pieces)
24 clams
2 cups tamarind water (read below)
2 cups water
1 lotus root (cut into 1/3" slices)
2 cups long beans (sliced into 2" pieces)
4 pieces baby bok choy (tough bottom parts cut off)
2 sprigs chili leaves (sili leaves)
patis (to taste)
vegetable oil
Recipe
Note: Various markets (Filipino, Indian, Thai) carry frozen "green fruits" and both fresh and dried tamarind. They are perfectly excellent in making the various sour broths because the textural component is not important in the least.
First make the tamarind water. Heat up 2 1/2 cups of water with tamarind pods and bring to a boil. Simmer for 10 minutes. Let it sit in the cooling water. When it has cooled down, separate the water from the pods using a strainer. Discard the solids. Retain the tamarind water.
Heat up the oil in a sturdy pot. Add the onions, ginger, garlic and chili (if using) and fry for a bit till soft. Roughly 6 minutes.
Add the tamarind water, the water and bring to a boil. Add the lotus roots and let cook for 3 minutes. Add the long beans and let cook for 4 minutes.
Add the clams. Let them cook till they open. Roughly 8 minutes.
Turn off the heat.
At the very end, add the tomatoes, the bok choy and the chili leaves and let them sit for a few minutes to wilt. Add the patis to taste.
Serve immediately with rice (or not.)
You can have Sinigang na X where X can be a large variety of different kinds of meats and seafood. The three classic versions for the X would be pork, chicken and bangus respectively.
A word about bangus (milkfish). It's a fish that was traditionally found in the sea but can grow in brackish water. It's one of the older examples of aquaculture — at least 800 years old in the Philippines. The fish are bony — very bony and it's a skill to eat them.
Sinigang is a sour clear broth with one or more sources of meat and/or seafood, a ton of vegetables, and one souring agent. There is a purity of flavor coming from one very clear-cut souring source which neatly dovetails into the umami of the broth from the meat/seafood.
It is traditionally eaten with rice. The rice is frequently topped with fried garlic and/or fresh scallions but these are all details.
There are traditional recipes but there are clearly two dimensions to the dish — what meat/seafood you choose and what souring agent you choose.
Filipinos love sour food. This is a necessity forced by a tropical climate and a few millennia of no refrigeration turned into a cultural trait. It's one of the few ways to preserve food in a tropical climate so that there is no wastage. There is a difference though. The souring agents are cooked through. It gives them a "rounded mellow" flavor rather than the aggressive hit of acidity that you would get without cooking. There has to be enough sourness to wake up the taste buds but not so much as to make it pucker and inedible.
The list of souring agents is endless — vinegar made from all sorts of sources (coconut, palm, sugarcane, pineapples, etc.), tamarind, calamansi, kamias, santol, green mangoes, green guava, star fruit, green pineapples, even leaves of various plants, etc. This list barely even scratches the surface of this subject. The Philippines probably has the longest list of souring agents of any culture that the CC knows about.
Needless to say the souring agents are not substitutable for each other. It does matter whether you are making a sinigang with a hearty ingredient like pork or delicate ones like seafood. Santol which has an astringent tannic component would be most inappropriate for a seafood sinigang while almost all delicate fruit-based versions would work wonderfully.
There are also some classic touches about the choices of vegetables in a sinigang — a starchy root (taro, banana hearts or "New World" potatoes), some "green protein" typically long beans, and some greens in many many different forms — everything from sili (chili leaves) to bok choy, kang kong, and malunggay. Needless to say once tomatoes were discovered and transferred to the "Old World", they became irresistible additions for reasons we have covered on the blog before.
The ingredients are rotated with the combinatorial game that we have talked about extensively on the blog — you will see corn, carrots, radishes, eggplants and all kinds of other vegetables in there. There's a pairing bias though. You see lighter vegetables with seafood and more aggressive ones like eggplants with meat which makes logical sense based upon the palate profile.
Make no mistake though. The star is the sour broth.
One last word about the use of Filipino-style fish sauce called patis. It's basically the same concept as the Roman garum or the Thai nahm pla but it's arguably different. The CC would have no trouble distinguishing it in a blind tasting. You could substitute but it won't be the same.
Just like in Thai recipes, you don't add salt to the dish. The salt comes via the addition of the patis. Additionally, for this recipe with clams, they will give off plenty of salty liquid. Traditionally, the patis is always added towards the end where you can control the level of saltiness. (It also adds substantial umami to the dish.)
This makes a perfectly good soup even in the absence of rice which is heresy as far as the Filipino world is concerned but the CC can live with that.
After all this long explanatory buildup, this is not a difficult recipe. It's what Filipino moms make when they are too lazy to make something. It's really so simple as to defy its excellence.
Sinigang na halaanIngredients
1 large onion (sliced)
1" ginger (chopped thinly)
2 pieces ginger (chopped thinly)
1 chili (sliced lengthwise - optional)
2 small tomatoes (chopped into large pieces)
24 clams
2 cups tamarind water (read below)
2 cups water
1 lotus root (cut into 1/3" slices)
2 cups long beans (sliced into 2" pieces)
4 pieces baby bok choy (tough bottom parts cut off)
2 sprigs chili leaves (sili leaves)
patis (to taste)
vegetable oil
Recipe
Note: Various markets (Filipino, Indian, Thai) carry frozen "green fruits" and both fresh and dried tamarind. They are perfectly excellent in making the various sour broths because the textural component is not important in the least.
First make the tamarind water. Heat up 2 1/2 cups of water with tamarind pods and bring to a boil. Simmer for 10 minutes. Let it sit in the cooling water. When it has cooled down, separate the water from the pods using a strainer. Discard the solids. Retain the tamarind water.
Heat up the oil in a sturdy pot. Add the onions, ginger, garlic and chili (if using) and fry for a bit till soft. Roughly 6 minutes.
Add the tamarind water, the water and bring to a boil. Add the lotus roots and let cook for 3 minutes. Add the long beans and let cook for 4 minutes.
Add the clams. Let them cook till they open. Roughly 8 minutes.
Turn off the heat.
At the very end, add the tomatoes, the bok choy and the chili leaves and let them sit for a few minutes to wilt. Add the patis to taste.
Serve immediately with rice (or not.)
Saturday, May 17, 2014
Ginger x 2
Ginger is a unique substance. It's origin is clearly in South Asia from where it has spread far and wide. Its use in everything from the Japanese gari to ginger ale to gingerbread and ginger snaps means that it's about as ancient as spices come.
The CC would like to talk about a very specific thing. Dried ginger.
The flavors are completely different from the fresh variety and they are not substitutes for each other. You will see the dried version most often in the context of Moroccan, Tunisian, or Indian cooking.
Fresh ginger has a pungent edge. Dried ginger has an edge but it's a lot more mellow. It has a positively fragrant disposition.
The CC has seen dried ginger in two forms. One is the whole root. You cut off as much as you need and grind it as needed. (A coffee grinder rocks out just fine.)
The second is pre-ground which is fine too but you need to store it in the fridge. It has a tendency to absorb moisture and will spoil.
There's also a half-way house which is dried ginger slices that you can then grind.
One of the classic uses of dried ginger in the pan-North-African-made-its-way-to-India context is its use as a sprinkling over pulped fruit. Specifically fruit that is very sweet. Specifically mangoes.
The dried ginger acts as a tonic cutting through the absurd sweetness of the fruit. Salt is another way of doing the same and you frequently see dried ginger in this context.
Of course, its also used in innumerable spice mixtures but that's not very surprising.
Many cookie recipes from Europe also call for dried ginger not the least because it doesn't have any moisture which would change the ratios of the ingredients needed although these days the hipsters are sneaking back in fresh ginger.
However, as the CC has already stated. They are not substitutes. They are fully equals and just different things even though the derive from the same source.
The CC would like to talk about a very specific thing. Dried ginger.
The flavors are completely different from the fresh variety and they are not substitutes for each other. You will see the dried version most often in the context of Moroccan, Tunisian, or Indian cooking.
Fresh ginger has a pungent edge. Dried ginger has an edge but it's a lot more mellow. It has a positively fragrant disposition.
The CC has seen dried ginger in two forms. One is the whole root. You cut off as much as you need and grind it as needed. (A coffee grinder rocks out just fine.)
The second is pre-ground which is fine too but you need to store it in the fridge. It has a tendency to absorb moisture and will spoil.
There's also a half-way house which is dried ginger slices that you can then grind.
One of the classic uses of dried ginger in the pan-North-African-made-its-way-to-India context is its use as a sprinkling over pulped fruit. Specifically fruit that is very sweet. Specifically mangoes.
The dried ginger acts as a tonic cutting through the absurd sweetness of the fruit. Salt is another way of doing the same and you frequently see dried ginger in this context.
Of course, its also used in innumerable spice mixtures but that's not very surprising.
Many cookie recipes from Europe also call for dried ginger not the least because it doesn't have any moisture which would change the ratios of the ingredients needed although these days the hipsters are sneaking back in fresh ginger.
However, as the CC has already stated. They are not substitutes. They are fully equals and just different things even though the derive from the same source.
Monday, May 12, 2014
Asparagus, Peas & Parmesan Purée
This is another one of those magical combos which is perfect for spring and easy to make.
The CC made it with fresh peas because he had some but frozen is fine here.
The CC has served this on a bruschetta topped with the asparagus spears and also as a pizza base. Toss with pasta if you like. It's truly amazing.
Ingredients
1 bunch asparagus
1 1/2 cup peas (frozen is fine)
1 1/2 cup parmigiano-reggiano
black pepper
salt (if necessary)
Recipe
First cut up the asparagus. Separate the tender spears and set aside. Then for each stem decide by pressing where the woody bottom portion is and discard. Set the stems aside.
Steam the stems and the peas for about 8 minutes.
Then steam the spears for no more than 1 minute. Be careful. You want some texture left here. They are very soft and will just go limp and disintegrate.
Blend the stems, peas, parmesan, and black pepper in a blender with some water.
Add some more salt to the paste if it needs it. Depends on the saltiness of the cheese really.
(You can also thin the paste if you like if you want to toss with pasta, etc.)
The paste and the spears are now your friends. Top a toasted piece of bread with the paste and top with the spear. Watch them disappear!
The CC made it with fresh peas because he had some but frozen is fine here.
The CC has served this on a bruschetta topped with the asparagus spears and also as a pizza base. Toss with pasta if you like. It's truly amazing.
Ingredients
1 bunch asparagus
1 1/2 cup peas (frozen is fine)
1 1/2 cup parmigiano-reggiano
black pepper
salt (if necessary)
Recipe
First cut up the asparagus. Separate the tender spears and set aside. Then for each stem decide by pressing where the woody bottom portion is and discard. Set the stems aside.
Steam the stems and the peas for about 8 minutes.
Then steam the spears for no more than 1 minute. Be careful. You want some texture left here. They are very soft and will just go limp and disintegrate.
Blend the stems, peas, parmesan, and black pepper in a blender with some water.
Add some more salt to the paste if it needs it. Depends on the saltiness of the cheese really.
(You can also thin the paste if you like if you want to toss with pasta, etc.)
The paste and the spears are now your friends. Top a toasted piece of bread with the paste and top with the spear. Watch them disappear!
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Bacterial Overload
Recently the CC went to one of those outdoor street fairs where there was a pickle stand. They were also selling some of the pickled juice blended with tomatoes as a "Bloody Mary Mix". The vendors kept apologizing and warning clients who wanted to buy it that it was not pasteurized.
And the CC was completely nonplussed, "So it has come to this?"
It doesn't need to be pasteurized!
There is a fundamental lack of understanding by people who work in food about our relationship with other bio-agents and particularly the organisms that we are deeply symbiotic with namely bacteria.
At this point in time, advertising agencies have basically convinced consumers that bacteria are "evil" but nothing could be further from the truth.
The standard mechanism of cultivating bacteria in the lab is creating something called a "culture". Basically, a swab of bacteria are grown on a substrate and then examined under a microscope. Based on this, it was estimated that something like 1% of a human mass was actually bacteria. Little did people know how wrong this estimate turned out to be.
In the early part of the 21st century, the price of DNA sequencers fell precipitously. What used to be an expensive tool became dirt cheap. Scientists had the entirely brilliant idea of not measuring bacteria by mass but by what percentage of DNA of our body was made up of bacteria. Turns out the answer is between 90-99%.
Remember the two estimates are of different things. One is by weight and the other is by percentage of DNA that is non-human. They are different things but the latter estimate is clearly the more important.
To put it differently, we humans exist for the benefit of the bacteria not the other way around. Of course, we are extraordinarily symbiotic with them. We provide them the food and they provide us both protection by repelling all the "bad bacteria" and do significant portions of body work for us.
In fact, the bacteria on your left and right hands are completely different.
So why did the earlier scientists get it so wrong? How can the estimates be so off?
You should be able to guess the answer. Not every bacteria can grow in the "culture". In fact, they can only survive in that localized environment inside the body that they have adapted to.
The answer is even more complex. There's no such thing as "good" or "bad" bacteria. It's contextual. You move the "good" bacteria from the right spot where they are supposed to be into the wrong spot and they will become "bad" bacteria. The context is completely important.
The bacteria that we are the most symbiotic with is a family called lactobacillus. Every time, you eat yogurt, eat or drink miso, eat pickles, cheese, kimchi, drink beer or wine, you are basically consuming them in vast quantities. They do the fermentation for us, and in turn, they repel other harmful bacteria for us. We are completely reliant on them.
So now maybe you can guess why the pickled juice blended with tomatoes did not need to be pasteurized?
The lactobacilli would repel any invader which there are not that many of to start with because of the acidity of the environment. The lactobacilli are the rare family that has adapted to the acidic environment thanks to their symbiosis with us.
Fermented foods have a long history of being considered "good for you". It was just an empirical observation over large swathes of human history in vastly different regions and contexts but they all came to the same conclusion.
Only in the 21st century is science able to actually dissect how all these various extraordinarily-complex mechanisms actually work.
But the CC's point is a lot larger. How have we gotten to a point where the most basic food interaction is fraught with anxiety? The answer is that Madison Ave. has made you paranoid.
The CC never relies on the expiration dates for milk. Just smell it. It's pretty obvious. Sometimes it will go bad before the expiration date!
The same goes for fermentation and fermented products. They work in a complex way and made correctly will last forever. Experienced picklers never throw out the juice. They use a cup of it to start off the next batch because it has the complex blend of bacteria all ready to give the next batch the right start.
Pickling is one of the greatest achievements in food technology. Just remember that for most of human history, humans were food deprived. Our modern calorie-rich environment is an extraordinarily recent development barely 50 years old. Pickling was the trick that allowed humans to store food for the winter. It also gave variety and complexity to their diet and the symbiotic relationship with the bacteria made for healthier humans.
The CC hopes that this explanation convinces people not to think of bacteria as "evil" but our necessary partners in the game of life. We need them; they need us. We can't actually function without them.
So the next time you're at the fair eating a pickle-on-a-stick, you should not think to yourself "Ooh! crunchy cucumber", you should really be thinking "Ooh! Tons of bacteria with a side helping of crunchy cucumber!"
And the CC was completely nonplussed, "So it has come to this?"
It doesn't need to be pasteurized!
There is a fundamental lack of understanding by people who work in food about our relationship with other bio-agents and particularly the organisms that we are deeply symbiotic with namely bacteria.
At this point in time, advertising agencies have basically convinced consumers that bacteria are "evil" but nothing could be further from the truth.
The standard mechanism of cultivating bacteria in the lab is creating something called a "culture". Basically, a swab of bacteria are grown on a substrate and then examined under a microscope. Based on this, it was estimated that something like 1% of a human mass was actually bacteria. Little did people know how wrong this estimate turned out to be.
In the early part of the 21st century, the price of DNA sequencers fell precipitously. What used to be an expensive tool became dirt cheap. Scientists had the entirely brilliant idea of not measuring bacteria by mass but by what percentage of DNA of our body was made up of bacteria. Turns out the answer is between 90-99%.
Remember the two estimates are of different things. One is by weight and the other is by percentage of DNA that is non-human. They are different things but the latter estimate is clearly the more important.
To put it differently, we humans exist for the benefit of the bacteria not the other way around. Of course, we are extraordinarily symbiotic with them. We provide them the food and they provide us both protection by repelling all the "bad bacteria" and do significant portions of body work for us.
In fact, the bacteria on your left and right hands are completely different.
So why did the earlier scientists get it so wrong? How can the estimates be so off?
You should be able to guess the answer. Not every bacteria can grow in the "culture". In fact, they can only survive in that localized environment inside the body that they have adapted to.
The answer is even more complex. There's no such thing as "good" or "bad" bacteria. It's contextual. You move the "good" bacteria from the right spot where they are supposed to be into the wrong spot and they will become "bad" bacteria. The context is completely important.
The bacteria that we are the most symbiotic with is a family called lactobacillus. Every time, you eat yogurt, eat or drink miso, eat pickles, cheese, kimchi, drink beer or wine, you are basically consuming them in vast quantities. They do the fermentation for us, and in turn, they repel other harmful bacteria for us. We are completely reliant on them.
So now maybe you can guess why the pickled juice blended with tomatoes did not need to be pasteurized?
The lactobacilli would repel any invader which there are not that many of to start with because of the acidity of the environment. The lactobacilli are the rare family that has adapted to the acidic environment thanks to their symbiosis with us.
Fermented foods have a long history of being considered "good for you". It was just an empirical observation over large swathes of human history in vastly different regions and contexts but they all came to the same conclusion.
Only in the 21st century is science able to actually dissect how all these various extraordinarily-complex mechanisms actually work.
But the CC's point is a lot larger. How have we gotten to a point where the most basic food interaction is fraught with anxiety? The answer is that Madison Ave. has made you paranoid.
The CC never relies on the expiration dates for milk. Just smell it. It's pretty obvious. Sometimes it will go bad before the expiration date!
The same goes for fermentation and fermented products. They work in a complex way and made correctly will last forever. Experienced picklers never throw out the juice. They use a cup of it to start off the next batch because it has the complex blend of bacteria all ready to give the next batch the right start.
Pickling is one of the greatest achievements in food technology. Just remember that for most of human history, humans were food deprived. Our modern calorie-rich environment is an extraordinarily recent development barely 50 years old. Pickling was the trick that allowed humans to store food for the winter. It also gave variety and complexity to their diet and the symbiotic relationship with the bacteria made for healthier humans.
The CC hopes that this explanation convinces people not to think of bacteria as "evil" but our necessary partners in the game of life. We need them; they need us. We can't actually function without them.
So the next time you're at the fair eating a pickle-on-a-stick, you should not think to yourself "Ooh! crunchy cucumber", you should really be thinking "Ooh! Tons of bacteria with a side helping of crunchy cucumber!"
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