Cabin fever has descended on Casa Sammamish. I’d given Julian a weekend trip for Christmas. It has morphed into a week in Nevada and Arizona to see Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. What happens in Vegas will (mostly) wind up on the blog. Julian will bring his camera on this jaunt, so expect a few of his photos to appear.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/03/23/another-edible-thoughts-road-trip/
Mar 18
Two Tamarind Recipes, Two Results
Tamarind is a common ingredient in Asian and Latin American cuisines. It’s also a main component of Worcestershire and A-1 sauces. It gives food a tart edge that’s not as volatile as vinegar. We used tamarind in two different recipes last week with vastly different results.
The first recipe was out of the New York Times. Julian adapted it in an attempt to reproduce a pork tamarindo recipe we used to order at a Cuban restaurant in Miami. He’s been trying to reproduce that recipe for years. Last week’s iteration was as close as he’s come. He had to add more chicken broth and tomato paste to the sauce to amp up the umami. He served it alongside rice and fried plantains.
My recipe was from The Simple Art of Vietnamese Cooking, by Binh Duong and Marcia Kiesel. It was for a hot and sour fish soup. I’ve made iterations of this soup from other cookbooks with great success. This one, not so much. The recipe called for soaking 1/3 cup tamarind paste with 1/3 cup water, then straining the fluid. Other recipes use a much lower ratio of paste to water, which is what I should have done. The final result was almost black from the tamarind, and very astringent. I wonder if this was an error in editing. I should have trusted my gut and cut back the tamarind considerably.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/03/18/two-tamarind-recipes-two-results/
Mar 10
Curating the Collection
Despite the popularity of online recipe sites, publishers are still churning out cookbooks. Looking at cookbooks in a well-stocked bookstore or even on websites can be a daunting experience. I’ve developed a list of criteria to guide me in acquiring a new volume (or three):
- Am I likely to use it? Is this a cookbook that adds to my repertoire or knowledge base?
- Do the recipes look well-written and reality-based? Recipe testing and cookbook editing are lost arts.
- Do the number of recipes justify the cost? As an example: I searched amazon.com for cauliflower cookbooks for my post, The Cinderella Vegetable. One touted 25 recipes for $12.99. That comes to 52 cents per recipe. That flunked the value test. Twenty years ago I considered 10 cents per recipe a good value; however, one has to adjust for inflation. Nowadays if a cookbook costs more than 25 cents per recipe, the sidebars, photos, and how-to’s had better make up for the dearth of recipes.
A cookbook that fails the first two criteria are rejected outright. If the third criterion isn’t quite met, I just wait until the cookbook goes on the sale table.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/03/10/curating-the-collection/
Mar 09
The Cinderella Vegetable
Cauliflower is this year’s kale. It’s undergone a Cinderella-like transformation from the stinky vegetable your mother forced on you to the one everyone’s eating. It’s low carb! You can buy it chopped up so you can pretend it’s rice! (Save your money, use your food processor to chop the flowerets.) It’s even incorporated into frozen pizza crusts! You can even buy cauliflower cookbooks! I found a plethora of cauliflower cookbooks on Amazon.com.
Cauliflower and I have a checkered history. My doctoral project was on beta-carotene supplementation. My research subjects had to eat a fixed, low-carotenoid diet for ten weeks. No tomatoes, no broccoli, no greens. The only vegetable sufficiently low in carotenoids was cauliflower, so these poor guys were subjected to cauliflower every day for the duration of the study. Needless to say, the end of study party had every vegetable but cauliflower on the table.
As with many other vegetables, our preferred way to cook cauliflower is roasting. This post gives you basic instructions. You can either serve the cauliflower right out of the oven or in a salad the next day. This week I hit the leftovers with extra-virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and seasoning for a lunch salad.
It probably won’t be long before midnight strikes and this Cinderella vegetable is replaced by some other Superfood. Maybe it’ll be okra’s turn to be the belle of the ball.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/03/09/the-cinderella-vegetable/
Mar 03
An Ecumenical Saturday
Seattle is one of the least religious cities in the country. This does not deter the faithful from trying to make converts. Yesterday on our coffee/tea run to downtown Seattle, we saw the following:
- The Christian Science reading room;
- The Scientology storefront around the corner;
- Two Jehovah’s Witnesses at a sandwich board;
- Black Hebrews farther down the block;
- And, for good measure, a group of Hare Krishnas.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/03/03/an-ecumenical-saturday/
Mar 02
Turn It Down!
Last year I posted on our restaurant pet peeves. Number one on the list was noise. I have some hearing loss, courtesy of too many fraternity parties back in the day. (I should have done a hearing aid inventory on my classmates at Reunion last year.) As a result, the cacophony of many restaurants drives me crazy.
Last night was a prime example. Julian, sweetie that he is, arranged a surprise birthday dinner for me with our friends at a nearby restaurant. Worst case scenario: It was Friday night and the joint was slammed with people. The lack of noise-deadening building materials and the presence of loud background music made it difficult for me to hear anyone, even those sitting next to me. What should have been a convivial evening with our closest friends was an uncomfortable experience. As we walked to the car after dinner, I remarked to Julian that my eardrums had finally stopped bleeding.
If one cannot enjoy the company of dining companions because of noise, the quality of the food doesn’t matter. My advice to restaurateurs who want my business: TURN THE *&^%$#@! VOLUME DOWN!!!
A postscript: I’m not alone. The Sunday Seattle Times had a feature article on restaurant noise and a sidebar of ten relatively quiet restaurants in the area. Needless to say, Friday night’s restaurant was not on the quiet list.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/03/02/turn-it-down/
Feb 24
Cuisine Hopping
Over the years I’ve gone on jags of cooking in particular cuisines, usually accompanied by cookbook purchases. Many of these jags have related to access to ingredients and restaurants in the area. Others have been fostered by acquaintances or travels. Three examples:
Asian. Chinese was the first foreign cuisine I wanted to explore. One of the first pieces of cookware I bought was a wok. Never mind that it was a round-bottom pan and thus highly unstable on the electric burners of my first apartments. I got interested in Southeast Asian cuisines when I was in grad school and had access to the right ingredients. Most recently, I’ve been on Korean and Filipino kicks. Julian bought some gochujang (Korean fermented chile paste) for one recipe, and we had to figure out ways to use up the rest of the package. Indian cuisine peeks in from time to time, especially when I’m in a more meatless frame of mind.
“Mediterranean/Middle Eastern”. This covers even more territory than Asian. I dated an Iran-born Armenian man many years ago, and my interest returned when I went to the Republic of Georgia with a friend from college. I also had access to good Greek and Middle Eastern restaurants in Dallas, Ithaca, and Greensboro. I like Provençal cooking because it’s lighter than other regional French cuisines. Our paella experiments have been courtesy of our friends at the Paris-Madrid Grocery (formerly the Spanish Table) in Seattle.
Caribbean. Blame this on Julian. We’d go to Cuban and Caribbean restaurants when we’d visit his parents in Miami. Our friend Beverly is from Jamaica and has made all sorts of goodies when we’ve visited her.
The answer to what my favorite cuisine is depends on what mood I’m in or what’s available to cook. So, yes, I’m a cuisine hopper. My taste buds never get bored this way.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/02/24/cuisine-hopping/
Feb 14
Surviving Snowpocalypse
Monday’s snowfall was even worse than last week’s. We must have gotten 6 inches of heavy, wet snow. I took the bus home before travel got really dicey. To add to the misery, many places lost power – including us.
The power flickered off and on in the wee hours, then went off. Fortunately, the temperature was near freezing rather than lower. I bundled up in layers. For a while, I shoveled out the driveway to stay warm. After Julian got up we warmed up water for tea and coffee on a little Coleman propane burner. We started the gas fireplace. This required moving the flat screen TV out of the way, which is why I didn’t do it earlier. I did some writing in the old school way – on paper. The power finally came back on around 5 pm, just in time for Julian to make dinner.
Luka and I enjoying hearth and home.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/02/14/surviving-snowpocalpyse/
Feb 10
Hummingbirds
The Anna’s hummingbird is a year-round resident of the Seattle area. We have a group that lives in the big-ass Douglas Fir just off our decks. We put out feed for them. Unfortunately, it’s been so cold that the feed freezes overnight. (As Julian says, “So much for freezing point depression.”)
Hummingbirds are quite territorial. We often see them chasing each other away from the feeder. A recent article in The New York Times shows the rather nasty beak of one species of hummingbird, which seems to be designed to maim the competition. Despite their territorial behavior, this video shows a male hummingbird trying to free a female from the center well of a feeder similar to ours.
I was trying to get a picture of the hummingbirds at the feeder today with my phone, but I wasn’t fast enough. I was also in the midst of baking frenzy. Julian brought his camera and tripod upstairs and lay in wait for his subjects. He succeeded.
Hummingbirds at our feeder in the snow. Photo courtesy of Julian.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/02/10/hummingbirds/
Feb 09
Snowfall Silence
All Hell breaks loose here when a snowstorm is predicted. Hardware stores run out of snow shovels and deicer. Grocery stores run out of bread, milk, and toilet paper. Schools close early and people rush to get home before the roads get impassable. The people who have four- or all-wheel drive vehicles believe they’re invincible on snowy or icy roads. Fortunately for the rest of us, they’re the first ones to skid into the ditches.
We got about 4″ of snow here at Casa Sammamish yesterday. While that amount would be considered church picnic weather in the Snow Belt of upstate New York where I grew up, it effectively paralyzes the Seattle-Tacoma region. Main roads get cleared. Side streets languish until the weather gets warmer or enough people are brave enough to drive. The steep hills and traffic roundabouts on side streets make plowing a challenge. The buses are as disadvantaged as cars. During Monday’s snowfall, two buses I was on lost their chains on Interstate 5. It took me 2 1/2 hours to get to work that morning from the Park and Ride.
This morning I peeked out of our bedroom window. It was still dark out, but the snow reflected what light there was from the street lamps. The other thing that struck me was the silence. I didn’t hear any cars or trucks driving on 96th Avenue. I haven’t seen anyone in the park across the river from our condo yet. That may change soon, as the snowshoers and cross-country skiers wake up. The silence was occasionally broken by quacks or honks by our resident waterfowl. I’ll have to shovel the driveway at some point. In the meantime, I’m enjoying the silence of the snowfall.
View of the park this afternoon. About four inches of snow fell yesterday.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2019/02/09/snowfall-silence/
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