Tomato Bomb

The CC loves savory cocktails particularly when they involve tomatoes.

The first time the CC had this particular beer cocktail at a Mexican restaurant, he knew he was tasting something other than the salt on the rim. The liquid had an intense umami flavor which was from something other than the tomatoes.

The answer which the CC observed by watching the bartender is sure to shock the "gourmandistas". He was using Maggi seasoning which has an intense umami flavor. The alternative from reading recipes online is Worcestershire sauce which has a similar umami flavor. Vegetable bouillon cubes, crushed and dissolved in hot water would work too.

The umami synergy is created by the salt, the tomatoes and the seasoning which are amplifying the taste beyond the sum of its parts.

Michelada

Ingredients

(makes one cocktail - scale as necessary)

1 lager
2 tbsp. tomato purée
1 tsp hot sauce (Tapatío works great)
dash of Maggi seasoning
1 lime

fine sea salt
finely ground chili powder

1 lime (for the glass rims)

Recipe

Squeeze the lime into a flat bowl. This is to rim the glasses with the salt and chilli seasoning.

In a separate flat bowl or plate, mix the fine sea salt and chili powder and set aside.

First, dip the glass rim into the lime above. Then rotate it in the second mixture till the rim is coated.

Add the tomato purée, juice of 1 line, hot sauce, and seasoning into the glass. Top with the lager and stir briefly.

Basil, Basil, Basil

Now that it's summer (finally!), it's time to talk about basil.

The Greek name for basil (ocimum) which is where the scientific name comes from "to smell" — clearly the principal virtue of this herb.

The English word "basil" also comes from the Greek and it means "monarch" — entirely appropriate for this "king of herbs".

1. Sweet Basil (Ocimum basilicum = O. basilicum)

This is the traditional variety used in Italian cooking. It's mild and most known for its characteristic aroma. This is what you need to make pesto.

2. Thai Basil (O. basilicum var. thyrisflorum)

It's a variant of sweet basil and it's called bai horapa in Thai. This is the predominant type used in Thai cooking.

This has a strong peppery taste and at least chez CC this is frequently preferred even in Italian dishes that call for black pepper. It has a muscular taste that goes particularly well with pasta dishes that contain vegetables. It's too aggressive for pesto however. For that, you will need to stick with sweet basil.

It's also more heat stable under the classic stir-fry methods of Thai cooking under which sweet basil discolors rapidly. Carefully washed and wrapped in paper towels in a bag, it lasts a lot longer in the fridge as well with its smell intact.

3. Holy Basil (O. sanctum, O. tenuiflorum)

It's called bai kaprao and it's also used in Thai cooking.

It has a strong aggressive anise-like flavor which is a variant to the above. Also used in stir-fries that need a strong taste.

One of the stranger things that the CC notes is that even though this variety is completely widespread in India and even "worshipped", it doesn't make its way into any dish. Devout Hindus will eat one leaf daily and even plant it but it doesn't get eaten. "Basil chutney" rocks the world with samosas and the like and the CC offers up this idea gratis to enterprising Indian chefs.

Followers of politics might be amused that one of the "biggest" controversies in Thailand in 2013 was the banning of the dish pad kaprao (stir-fry with holy basil) in army canteens because of the aggressive flavor spreading throughout. Entirely rational journalists asked why the ventilation fans were not up to the task and a parallel was drawn to the coup. The army commander-in-chief had to personally make a statement that he too loved pad kaprao and he had nothing to do with the ban.

Moral: Men will wage war and put up with military coups but never mess with their beloved foods. That way lies defeat.

Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup

It's such a classic American food combination that it's practically a cliché.

The CC was desperately craving it on today's dark and stormy morning and nothing else would do. Even if the ingredients were not already present, he would've braved the elements to get them. Cravings will do that.

Recipes follow but first we are going to discuss the origins of the dish and what makes it so "classic".

The easier part to start with is the "grilled cheese". While toasted bread and melted cheese and the combination go back into antiquity — we have evidence since at least Roman times — the modern incarnation dates back to 1920's America.

America has consistently been a leader in food technology of both the wildly innovative variety (and it's dark sinister underbelly) since its beginnings. Everything from grain silos to rail transportation that allowed it to supply Midwestern grain to 19th-century Europe cheaper than it could manufacture itself speaks to the country's muscular prowess in food innovation.

The innovation in this case was two-fold.

One was the invention of bread-slicing machines by Otto Rohwedder of Iowa. The other was the invention of processed cheese patented by James Kraft. Cheese went from a perishable product to something that could be canned. (The CC has a strong memory of opening a can of Kraft cheese sometime in his childhood.)

The eponym "grilled cheese" didn't exist till the 1960's or so. It was all "toasted cheese sandwich"  or "melted cheese sandwich" before that. The origins are ancient, remember? It's just the speed of preparation that was new.

The popularity really took off after the Kraft corporation invented "Singles" sometime in the late-1940's but it really took off when supermarkets stocked them in the mid-1960's. The convenience factor took off.

And thus the grilled cheese became the best invention since sliced bread (sic).

You can guess where the rest of the story is going.

Tomato soup is also a reasonably classic idea. It just follows the template of most vegetable soups from ancient times even though the tomato is a New World product. The difference between other soups and that of the tomato is its absurd umami. Its popularity is entirely unsurprising.

The popularity comes from the innovations and marketing efforts of the Campbell Soup Company. It became something that you didn't have to work too hard. You just had to open a can and heat it up. Convenience once again.

But what about the combination? Why does it work?

You could argue that it is "comfort food" but then that begs the question, "What makes comfort food comforting in the first place?"

We have a partial answer to that. As a general rule, comfort food is high in carbohydrates and fats.

This dish doesn't follow that template directly. For starters, the cheese has proteins and the soup is made with stock. The bread is insubstantial compared to the "high protein" factor.

Comfort food also has a strong "memory factor" as being something from your childhood that you loved which also brings us to the analogous question, "Why did you love it in your childhood in the first place?"

Chez CC, we are strong believers in ur-reasons not reasons which just push along one concept in favor of a differently named one thus passing the buck but explaining absolutely nothing.

The "magic" of the combination comes from three factors.

Firstly, the absurd interplay of umami between three ingredients — the cheese, the tomatoes and the stock that is used to make it. As we have noted, the combined umami coming from animal products and from vegetable products has an amplifying effect. In this case, the cheese and stock on one hand and the tomatoes on the other.

There are specialized umami receptors on our tongues and if they fire at some response from either cheese or tomato they will fire between 15-20x that amount at the combination. The sum is greater than the parts. You will perceive the combination to be extraordinarily savory.

Secondly, there is still the high-ish carbohydrate and fat factor which definitely makes the dish appealing. Also, there's the combination of salty cheese, sweet and sour tomatoes. Your taste buds are firing from a lot of combinations.

Lastly, it's the textural interplay. The toasted crunchy bread, the ooey-gooey melted cheese and the wet tomato soup. They each play a role. No two bites will be exactly alike just because of the variation in dunking time and eating time. Each bite is just slightly different enough to provide and sustain interest.

Children would particularly appreciate the dish since it doesn't have any bitter elements at all. This is what most likely accounts for the memory factor.

These days we have come full circle from the production of these dishes. We balk at opening a can for the soup or using crappy cheese and the dish isn't even hard to make. It took the CC no more than 30 minutes. Of course, we have the modern-day convenience of immersion blenders, dishwashers, and the like.

To understand the seemingly-backward nature of this, you'd have to first understand that the three products talked about above were very different 70 years than they are today. The tomato soup was really tomato, broth, salt and pepper. The breads had long fermentations. The cheese was actually cheese. There were no preservatives and the shelf-life was similarly constrained. As time went on the products just got worse and worse and today it bears no resemblance whatsoever to its original conception.

And hence it's back to the past.

The CC is not a purist. The tomatoes came from a can but they were real tomatoes and salt. Nothing else. The bread is one made with a long ferment but it's a standard Pullman bread. The cheese is the only place where the CC went "fancy" but that's because he had all three in his refrigerator.

The recipe is going to be exactly as good as the ingredients that go into it. Even poor ingredients will make it work but good ones will turn it into magic.

The combination is exactly as magical as the CC remembers it.

Tomato Soup

(serves 4)

Ingredients

l large onion (or 4 shallots)
4 cloves garlic
1 32-oz San-Marzano canned tomatoes
4 cups chicken stock (read notes below for substitutions)

2 tbsp. unsalted cultured butter
2 tbsp. olive oil

1 sprig sage

sugar (optional - read below!)
water (optional)

salt
pepper

Recipe

Heat up the butter and olive oil at medium heat. Sautée the onions and garlic in them for about 6-7 minutes. Add the tomatoes, sage and the broth and bring to a low simmer. Add salt and pepper.

Skim the fat as it comes to the surface. Let it cook for about 20 minutes.

Using an immersion blender, purée the mixture.

Taste it. You may need to add a little sugar to balance the acidity of the tomatoes. Also additional salt and pepper. You may also need to thin the soup a little using some water. You can prepare it until this point ahead of time.

Reheat and bring it to a boil again. Serve.

Note: If you are vegetarian, instead of chicken stock, you must make a quick Japanese dashi using just kombu. You absolutely need the umami. Plain water is not going to cut it and vegetable broth would change the flavor towards a more bitter element which is not what you want either.

Grilled Cheese

Ingredients

8 slices of good bread

1/2 cup cheddar
1/2 cup parmigiano-reggiano
1 cup gruyère

salted cultured butter

Recipe

Note: The tomato soup calls for unsalted cultured butter but this one calls for the salted variety. Just sprinkle salt on the buttered side otherwise. Yes, the CC demands some perfection.

Shred the cheese using a grater.

Classically, this is made using a skillet but it's time-consuming work. The oven works just as well for a larger crowd.

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Butter one side of each of the 8 slices of bread. Assemble them on a baking sheet. Between two slices you put in the grated cheese. The buttered slices are on the outside. Yes, this is messy work.

Put the pan in the oven for 10 minutes.

At the ten-minute mark, flip each of the sandwiches and put them back in the oven for 6 minutes.

Slice them diagonally. Yes, this matters. It makes the dunking work in a clean and elegant fashion.

(Sorry Mom, you are still not forgiven for slicing it wrong occasionally but you need to know that the CC had good intuition even as a kid but now can express the same fact analytically.)

On Never Joking in New York

A few months ago the CC went out with a Greek friend for lunch. The restaurant was by a fancy Greek chef and the CC started joking that the chef's cook book opens with cooking a whole lamb.

He remarked, "When am I going to roast a whole lamb in my apartment?"

The friend misunderstood the jest, "Let me know when you want to do it. I own a spit and can order you the fresh lamb."

Som Tam (Thai Green Papaya Salad)

This is a classic street recipe from North-East Thailand (Isaan) that has become so popular that it you can find it all over Thailand now.

It combines the classic Thai tastes — hot, sweet, salty, sour. It's a textural masterpiece and it has umami like no other. It's also visually impressive — something that is most important from the sales perspective of street food.

It is important to understand that the Thai conception of a "salad" is different from Western expectations. It's just a side dish. It might be topped by "pickled blue crab" or "fried pork". It just acts as a base register.

Note the seamless integration of the entirely New World tomato into the mixture. The reason is clear. It's umami as the CC has explained before.

Seasonings in the Thai conception are a little hard to give precise instructions for. The ingredients are precise enough but the quantities rely on "balance" — something that can only be learned via experience. You keep adding counterbalances until it all makes "sense". This sounds vague but it really is not. It's taking into account the variability in the ingredients that make up the mixture.

(Experienced eaters and makers of most South-Asian street food — Indian, Burmese, Malaysian, Indonesian, Filipino — will probably recognize what the CC is saying a lot easier.)

A very quick note about some of the techniques. You need a mortar and pestle which is easy enough. The long beans must be quite young because they are eaten raw. This is simply not possible where the CC lives so a quick blanching is in order. It's the only way to make them edible. Fidelity to the source can only go so far when practicality drives the truck crashing through the door.

Ingredients

1 small raw papaya

8 long beans (cut into 2" lengths)
16-24 cherry tomatoes

1/3 cup dried shimp
1/3 cup peanuts (roasted)

2-4 Thai green chillies (sliced really thin)

2 cloves garlic
2-3 tbsp. palm sugar (substitute with brown sugar)
4 tbsp. nahm pla (fish sauce)
2 limes

Recipe

If your beans are young, ignore this. Otherwise blanch them for no more than 60 seconds in boiling water and put them in an ice-cold bath. Drain and set aside.

Make the sauce. The garlic needs to be finely chopped. Add the garlic, palm sugar, fish sauce and lime juice. Taste to make sure it has the right balance. You may need to add more of the palm sugar, fish sauce or lime juice.

Cut the cherry tomatoes into halves.

The papaya needs to be shredded into thin strips. Either a mandoline or a grater make quick work.

In a mortar and pestle, add the papaya, long beans, shrimp and roasted peanuts. Pound lightly to crush the ingredients just to release some juices and to break up the shrimp and peanuts a bit.

Toss everything together and serve at once.

Boiled Peanuts

This recipe is so rock-star around the globe that it's hard to believe that it's only a few hundred years old.

Peanuts are ancient. We have evidence. They come from the Andes and date back about 5000 years.

However, their modern incarnation dates back to the Spanish conquest of Hispaniola (modern-day: Haiti and Dominican Republic) in 1502.

The nuts spread quickly across the globe. First to Europe and thence to South-East Asia, China and Africa. They also played a disproportionate role in the slave trade. Many Africans consider the peanut to be "native" but the CC would like to disenchant them of this entirely fictitious notion.

The peanut is not a "nut". It's really a legume more akin to peas and beans than to walnuts and hazelnuts.

If you've never had boiled peanuts, you are totally missing out. This is one of the great joys of life.

The CC presents three recipes from different parts around the globe. Add the ingredients and boil them with the peanuts. (A pressure cooker makes quick work but it's not strictly speaking necessary.)

Eat them with beer. Champagne if you want to get fancy. It's not exactly rocket surgery. But it's delicious.

Ingredients

1 lb. whole raw peanuts
6 cups water

Ingredients 1: Classic

4 tbsp. salt

Ingredients 2: Chinese

4 tbsp. salt
2 tbsp. palm sugar (substitute with brown sugar)

2 star anise
1 small piece of cinnamon
4 cloves
2 dried red chillies

Ingredients 3: Thai

4 tbsp. nahm pla (fish sauce)
2 tbsp. palm sugar (substitute with brown sugar)

2 Thai green chillies (slit lengthwise)

Recipe

Boil the peanuts with the ingredients. About 45 minutes. Test to see. This is hard to predict.

(In a pressure cooker, it takes about 10 minutes.)

Serve with beer.