Mar 05

Hot and Sour Soup Worth Slurping

When we order Chinese food, we almost always get hot and sour soup as a starter. It provides a good preview of the restaurant’s quality. A good hot and sour soup will have the tang of vinegar with heat from white or black pepper (not chiles). Unfortunately, many restaurants make the soup hours ahead and any volatile flavors will have dissipated by the time a bowl is set before you. So why not make your own?
Hot and sour soup is actually quite easy to prepare. All of the ingredients can be obtained at a supermarket and an Asian grocery. (In Seattle, we can get everything at Central Market or Uwajimaya.) The main time suck involved is soaking the dried fungi and lily buds prior to cooking. Last night I adapted a recipe from Irene Kuo’s The Key to Chinese Cooking (Knopf, 1977) to my own evil purposes. Here’s roughly what I did. This will make enough for dinner one night and lunch the next for two people.

Boil water. Put 4 dried shiitake (or black) mushrooms in a small bowl. In another small bowl, place a large pinch (about 2 tablespoons) of shredded tree ear fungus. In a third small bowl, place a large pinch (about 15-20) of lily buds, also called golden needles. Pour boiling water into each of these bowls and let the contents rehydrate for about 30 minutes.

While the fungi and lily buds are soaking, shred two thin-cut boneless pork loin chops. Place these shreds in a bowl and add 1 teaspoon light soy sauce, 1 teaspoon dry sherry, 2 teaspoons cornstarch, and 2 teaspoons sesame oil. Stir until the cornstarch is evenly distributed on the pork shreds. Put the pork in the refrigerator while you’re cutting up the rest of the ingredients.

Take about 4 ounces of extra-firm tofu and cut into small pieces. Open a can of sliced bamboo shoots, take out about 1/4 cup, and cut those to about the same size as the tofu.

When the soaking time is up, drain all three of the soaking bowls. De-stem the shiitake mushrooms and cut the caps to roughly the same thickness as the tofu. Cut off any hard spots on the shredded tree ears and lily buds.

Take out three more small bowls. (Yes, this recipe uses a LOT of dishes. I used the soaking bowls for these functions because I was running out of small bowls.) In one, beat an egg with 1 teaspoon Asian (dark) sesame oil. In the second, mix together 1 1/2 tablespoons light soy sauce, 2 tablespoons vinegar, and 1/2 to 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper. For the vinegar, you can use Chinese Chenkong, red wine, or cider vinegar. In the last one, stir together 2 tablespoons cornstarch with 3 tablespoons water and 1 tablespoon sesame oil.

Now we can actually start cooking. Irene called for a quart of chicken or meat stock. I like a little more umami in my soup, so I added about a cup of beef stock and the soaking water from the shiitake mushrooms to the quart of chicken broth. Bring this to a boil over high heat. To add a little more Asian flavor, I threw in a chunk of fresh ginger and two pieces of star anise. I strained them out once the broth came to a boil, and stirred in the sliced shiitakes, lily buds, and bamboo shoots. Reduce the heat to low and let simmer for about 5 minutes. Stir in the pork and increase the heat. Once the soup returns to a boil, stir in the tofu and shredded tree ears. Reduce the heat again, cover, and simmer for about 3 minutes. Re-stir the cornstarch-water-sesame oil slurry: pour that into the soup with one hand while stirring with the other. The soup should thicken, but not be gloppy. Take the pot off the heat and pour in the egg in a wide circle. Stir the soup to break up the egg into shreds. Put the vinegar mixture into a large serving bowl, and pour the soup into the bowl. This assures that the vinegar won’t get boiled away. Garnish the soup with chopped scallions and/or cilantro and serve. If the soup isn’t hot or sour enough for you, add more vinegar or hot sauce/pepper at the table.

Julian’s mother, Betty, was a big hot and sour soup aficionado. We’d smuggle it into her room at the nursing home along with shrimp and broccoli and barbecued spare ribs from the Chinese restaurant down the street. (She lived in a nursing home that kept a kosher kitchen, but residents could eat anything in their rooms except during Passover.) After Julian tried this recipe, he paid me a high compliment: “Betty would have approved.”

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/03/05/hot-and-sour-soup-worth-slurping/

Feb 26

Sick Day Doings

The sniffles started around lunchtime on Thursday. By the time I left the office, I was in full-tilt sneeze mode. Our Homeowners’ Association annual meeting was that night, but I sent Julian there solo and was in bed by 8:30. I woke up at 3 on Friday morning, took some decongestant, emailed in sick, and went back to bed.

I was born with farm girl genes; therefore, I find it hard to sleep during the day unless I’m really sick. So I did some laundry and looked through my food porn magazines in search of something to bake. I settled on a no-knead brioche recipe I found in Cook’s Illustrated. Most no-knead bread recipes contain just flour, water, yeast, and salt. Brioches are heavy on the butter and eggs, and this recipe is no exception: 6 eggs and 1/2 pound of butter for two loaves. (My cardiologist cronies wouldn’t approve, but they don’t read my blog.) The key to incorporating the butter into the dough is to melt it, let it cool to about body temperature, and then mix it with the eggs to emulsify it. Make sure you cool the butter; otherwise, you’ll end up with greasy scrambled eggs.

This recipe may bill itself as no-knead, but you do have to fold the dough several times over the course of two hours. It was a very wet dough, so I used a flexible scraper to do the folding. After the folding, it goes into the refrigerator overnight or up to two days. This helps further develop the gluten. Leaner (no sugar, fat, or eggs) no-knead bread doughs can rise at room temperature, but the amount of eggs in this recipe would be a breeding ground for not-very-nice bacteria along with the yeast; hence, to the fridge it went.

A wet brioche dough, after some folding.

I took a look at the dough as I was putting away the dinner fixings. Much to my surprise/horror, it had reached the top of the bowl. Since cleaning up a large, glutenous amoeba seeping out of the fridge is not my idea of fun, I grabbed the largest bowl in the cupboard, oozed the dough into it, and returned it to the bottom shelf. Fortunately, the larger bowl contained the blob quite nicely when I peeked at it the next morning.

By the time I shaped it into loaves, the dough was supple and not too tacky. The loaves rose for about 90 minutes, then got baked in a 350° oven for 40 minutes. The results are below. The loaves were very tender. I used a couple of slices for French toast for Sunday brunch. I sliced them and left them on the cutting board underneath a sheet of parchment paper to dry out a little. Had I cut the slices just before soaking in the egg mixture, they would have disintegrated. This was worth making again, even when I’m not sick.

Beautiful brioches.

 

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/02/26/sick-day-doings/

Feb 24

An Unexpected Perk

As mentioned earlier, Julian broke his shoulder two weeks ago. The sole upside to this escapade: We discovered that there’s a Trader Joe’s across the street from his orthopedic surgeon’s office. For the non-cognoscenti, Trader Joe’s is a California-based grocery chain. Its primary claim to fame is “two-buck Chuck” (actually three bucks in Washington), cheap but drinkable wine. It also carries a wide selection of frozen and refrigerated pre-fab foods, for those whose cooking skills are limited to turning on the microwave. Given Julian’s injury, this is ideal for his daytime eating. (Not to mention my lunches at work.)

There are several Trader Joe’s in the area, including two in Seattle between my work and home. The problem with these two stores is that their parking garages are striped for Smart Cars rather than real vehicles. When we lived in north Seattle, I’d ride my bike down to the University District store, because the bike was much easier to park than my car. Since I didn’t have saddlebags for the bike, I had a limit on how much I could purchase on a given trip.

Prices at Trader Joe’s on items other than wine are quite reasonable. My one beef with the chain is that you have to buy pre-packaged produce. Three bell peppers are often more than we need. However, I can always get fruits and vegetables at the Yakima Fruit Stand between March and November and at the grocery store downtown anytime. But if I want a frozen bi him bap entrée, Trader Joe’s is my sole option.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/02/24/an-unexpected-perk/

Feb 22

Pantries and their Placement

I grew up in my maternal grandparents’ farmhouse, which dated from the late 1800’s. The hallway leading to the cellar was Grandma’s pantry. It was lined on both sides with shelves for mixers, pickle crocks, and other kitchen equipment. It also had a huge chest freezer. One could have put two intact sides of beef in it, with plenty of room for other items. Home-canned goods sat on shelves above the stairs to the cellar and in the cellar itself. There’s a reason she needed such a big pantry: Her kitchen was puny, with very little counter or cupboard space. The kitchen also doubled as a mud room for my grandfather and uncle when they came in from the barn. Since Grandma was disabled due to arthritis in the last few years of her life (she died just before my 5th birthday), it’s a safe bet Grandpa or my uncle had to move her mixer or get meat out of the freezer for her.

With the exception of my grad school apartment, all of my kitchens have been bigger than Grandma’s. However, the issue of storage still remains. Each kitchen posed its own challenges. The house we rented in Dallas when we merged kitchens accommodated everything, assisted by a hanging pot rack. We managed to shoehorn things into the Greensboro rental house. Our former rental house in Seattle came with an extra refrigerator in the basement laundry room. We used that fridge for extra meat and beverages. We even brined a turkey in that fridge one year. There was also a cupboard in the laundry room where we could store some of our Costco largesse.

The garage here at Casa Sammamish serves as our pantry for excess canned goods, paper products, beer, and foil. It’s also where our smaller-than-a-side of-beef freezer resides. We have a good-sized refrigerator in the kitchen, but double-door, bottom freezer appliances aren’t always as large as they appear. The one thing I’d add to our pantry is a large dorm-sized fridge for the white wines and beers. Grandma would not approve of this use of electrons. (She was so anti-alcohol that Grandpa had to stash his “heart-starters” here and there around the farm, knowing that she’d never find them.) However, moving the wine and beer out of the main fridge would free up more space for the important stuff.

 

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/02/22/pantries-and-their-placement/

Feb 19

Spring is in the Air

Two items that indicate the groundhog was wrong when he predicted six more weeks of winter this year:

  • There’s a certain aroma you can detect when spring bulbs are sprouting, even before they bloom. It smells like daffodils. I’ve detected this aroma in several places where I know bulbs will appear. No flowers yet, but the aroma is pretty heady.
  • My nieces and nephews are carrying on my brother-in-law’s ritual of making maple syrup. Stan wasn’t able to do it last year because of his cancer diagnosis. The kids are already tapping the trees on the property. According to my sister, they got 15 gallons of sap yesterday. This seems a little early to me; I remember folks not being able to tap trees until March or April when I was growing up. Climate change at work?

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/02/19/spring-is-in-the-air/

Feb 18

The No BS Glasses

I lost one of my contact lenses last month. While I waited for the new lens to arrive, I wore my glasses. They work fine for driving and seeing at a distance, but I don’t need them for reading or working on the computer. (I’m one of the few people in my age group who doesn’t need bifocals.) The frames are dark and very business-like, which has led me to call them the no BS glasses. I had to start wearing the glasses just before Inauguration. This may be coincidental; then again, these times require a low tolerance of BS. Fortunately, I picked up my replacement lens earlier this week and am back to normal (for me) vision.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/02/18/the-no-bs-glasses/

Feb 11

First Sunny Saturday

My mantra has always been that it’s a sin to waste a sunny day in Seattle – and in Bothell. After the snow, ice, and heavy rain of the last week, my first impulse was to get out of the house. To be fair, the Saturday of the Women’s March had spots of sun, but it was bracketed by rain.

We had to make a run to a shoe store to buy some loafers for Julian to wear until he can tie his shoes again. On the road we saw dogs hanging their heads out of car windows with their tongues flapping in the breeze. I saw a convertible with its top down. Luckily, I didn’t see any “50°, shirt’s off guys” today. (This slogan was part of an ad campaign for a local insurance company, highlighting the quirks of many Northwest residents.)

After we got back from our shoe run, I went out for a walk through Blyth Park and on the Sammamish River Trail. I was joined by numerous bicyclists, rollerbladers, dog-walkers, and baby carriage-pushers. The wetlands between the road to the park and the trail are being redeveloped as an improved habitat for salmon. Kids were feeding the freeloaders ducks by the footbridge to Gateway Park. On my way home, I saw a ’57 Chevy two-tone all tricked out for Valentine’s Day. A most pleasant February stroll.

Maybe tomorrow, weather permitting, I’ll dust off my bike and take a quick spin.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/02/11/first-sunny-saturday/

Feb 11

Food for the Infirmary

My worst food memory from childhood was being fed milk toast when I was sick. Mom toasted and buttered some Wonder bread and poured hot whole milk on top. I remember her serving it in an oblong purple melamine bowl she had. I’m sure that’s what Grandma served Mom when she was a girl, and she thought it would help me feel better. It didn’t. Even in those days of a relatively limited palate, I resolved never to eat milk toast again. Maybe this is where my aversion to white, bland foods began.

Given our orthopedic mishaps of the last six months (my dislocated pinky, Julian’s fractured humerus), food in the short term after an injury has to meet three criteria:

  1. No cutting required at the table;
  2. Easily picked up with one hand if it’s a sandwich or finger food; and
  3. Not too gloppy, runny,  or slippery.

Number one eliminates most meats unless ground, served in a sandwich, or pot-roasted until it’s easily shredded. Number two rules out overstuffed deli or sub sandwiches, or burgers piled high with mayonnaise-based sauces and other accoutrements. Number three scratches the aforementioned burgers, along with slippery noodles. Eating peas can also be problematic, especially if you’re forced to use your non-dominant hand.

These criteria limit one’s diet significantly. However, there are workarounds so you don’t have to rely on liquid meal replacers (unless you have a wired jaw, in which case you may need to do so). Stir-fries, casseroles, and baked pastas are good options. Fish, shrimp out of the shell, and scallops are easy to eat. Seafood in the shell is not a good idea. Supermarket rotisserie chickens are usually cooked to the point of shredding, so you don’t need a knife to eat them. Soups are easily consumed. If they’re too thin to eat with a spoon (e.g., tomato soup), you can always drink them out of coffee mugs. If you’re trying to eat with your non-dominant hand, you may find it useful to put your food in a wide bowl so you have the edge to push the food onto your fork or spoon. Don’t be fixated on how you’ll look eating this way. As long as you can feed yourself, you’re fine.

Fortunately for most of us, these limitations are temporary. After recovery or adaptation, we can go back to our normal food regimens.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/02/11/food-for-the-infirmary/

Feb 11

The Wisconsin Omelet

We had some leftover bratwurst from last night’s dinner. Julian suggested chopping them up into my weekly omelet. We have now invented the Wisconsin omelet, to join the diner standards of Western and Denver omelets. Here is the recipe:

Chop up your leftover (cooked) bratwurst and frizzle in your omelet pan. Remove from pan and set aside. Whisk up your eggs as for a regular omelet. The number of eggs depends on your appetite. Pour the eggs into the pan and make your usual omelet. Just before you fold over the eggs, sprinkle the frizzled brats on one side of the omelet. Fold, finish, and serve. One brat is more than you need for a standard omelet. No worries, either use one brat for two omelets or serve the rest of the frizzled brat on the side.

For the “Full Madison” Wisconsin omelet, you can add grated cheddar cheese on top of the brats before folding the omelet. Julian (who earned his bachelors’ degree at Wisconsin) cracked, “For the Full Madison, you need brats, cheese, and beer.” I had that covered – the brats were parboiled in beer before I grilled them last night.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/02/11/the-wisconsin-omelet/

Feb 11

Julian’s Turn

Thursday night we were supposed to go to the symphony. Julian was going to take the bus downtown and meet me for dinner before the concert. As I was driving downhill from work, Julian called. He’d taken a nasty fall at the bus stop and banged his shoulder. I managed to get out of downtown and picked up some takeout for dinner on the way home. After dinner we took a drive to the nearest emergency room. Diagnosis: A broken left humerus (the upper bone in the arm). This is the first time he’s ever fractured a bone. He sees the orthopedic surgeon on Monday; in the meantime, he’s popping painkillers and icing his shoulder.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/02/11/julians-turn/

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