Breakfast of champions

I am too tickled with the breakfast I made today.  We're winding down our visit so we're just cooking what's on hand.  I had a pack of Wellshire's uncured beef bacon, a few eggs, and some fruit.  I'm not a fan of eggs but my aunt used to make a turkey bacon and fried egg sandwich on raisin bread with strawberry jam so I thought I'd go with something along those lines. 

I went out in search of english muffins because I didn't want to buy a loaf of bread and I was certain it would all contain hfcs anyway.  I ended up buying a small artisan baguette which I cut into 4 pieces and topped with some bananas that I caramelized, a fried egg, and a piece of bacon.  It was an absolute toetapper. 

As seen on tv

It's a good thing that I don't watch a lot of television...I'm clearly easily influenced.  I've been flipping between Animal Planet and the History Channel all day and the Modern Marvels just kept sending me into the kitchen - watching the episode about the potato chip had me popping corn on the stove; the cheese episode send me for a few slices of aged gouda; and finally ice cream inspired me to make a quart of nectarines and cream. 

We brought a few nectarines from home and three have been sitting in the fridge since we got here...they were soft and a bit mushy so it was clear that no one was going to eat them.  I had half & half and sugar...all I needed was heavy cream.  I walked to get some and was almost tempted to buy some vanilla but I prefer the paste for ice cream so I passed.  Fortunately the molasses still contained in unrefined sugar added a bit of umph. 

I think that was lunch...having leftovers for dinner and will probably make the cantaloupe sorbet for dessert.

Mason-Dixon

This summer we weren't up to taking that drive into the Carolinas.  Instead we opted for National Harbor.  I've previously mentioned that I am not necessarily a fan of this pseudo public place - I can't help but wonder if there has been a negative impact on the residents of Oxon Hill having access to the waterfront.  But, it's a great change of scenery.

The one good thing is that there is both a Whole Foods and Trader Joe's located in Old Town Alexandria - I have not been able to locate these stores in the parts of South Carolina that we frequent - maybe because the demand is not there.  I suppose the reality is that these stores appeal to folks of a particular demographic who have been disconnected from food production. 

Upon arrival we went to both stores to get our basics but I did not buy any produce because my master plan was to procure it locally since I had crossed the Mason-Dixon line into the South. I did however get ground beef and a butterflied leg of lamb from Whole Foods.  I went to Maine Street Fish market for our traditional dinner and bought some Carolina shrimp and was a bit dismayed at the limited selection of wild fish. I think my fear is to the point that if it's not coming directly out of the water, then I am only buying from Whole Foods.

The DC Metropolitan area is quite urbanized but fortunately I was able to locate a "farm" just a few minutes away in Clinton, MD.  Miller's Farm put me in mind of the family farm stores in our area.  I bought kale, okra, vidalias (obviously not local), dried cayennes, cantaloupe, and sugar baby watermelon - $20.

After a misguided trip to Annapolis to inject money into the economy via Nordstroms and Borders we arrived back at 915p.  The kids got into the pool and I went ahead with dinner as planned.  I seared the lamb and cooked it in the oven for 30 minutes.  I carmelized onions, added tomatoes, and cooked the best okra I've had since I can remember.  I also made the kale and a watermelon sorbet.  Today I'm planning a cantaloupe sorbet.

I've been watching America Eats on the History channel - salty snacks, sodas, and ice cream.  I think my next experiment is going to be soda syrup.

Quick quiche

My daughter requested quiche as her welcome home from camp dinner.  I was so glad that I picked up the ingredients while I was out with my grandmother on Thursday because yesterday the weather was unbearable. 

I did however have the brilliant idea to snazz it up with crab meat but I didn't think I could justify putting $25 lump crab meat in a quiche so I called Shop Rite to see if they had some on sale.  The problem was that when I got there the sign said imported.  I immediately got nervous because I certainly did not want "fresh" crab meat from China.  I thought I might go with the pasteurized stuff in the can but that's always sourced from China...and of course Chicken of the Sea was not an option.

I picked up the container and it was from Venezuela, so i went out on a limb for $12. 

As I picked through the crab meat, I notice three things - only 25% was actually lump, there were lots of shell bits, and lots of liquid. 

I made one plain spinach quiche because I wasn't sure if my daughter would go for the crab additive.  The other three I made with the crab.  Hands down, the crab was the best...only problem is that I missed a couple of shell bits. 

Tom kha thale

When I walked into P&K, the grocer smiled. After I asked for lemon grass, galangal, kaffir, and lime, he asked if I was making tom kha.  I said yes.  He told me I could buy a kaffir plant for $20.  He asked if I was planning to use mushrooms and I remembered that I didn't have any.  He offered to sell me some mushrooms and young corn but unfortunately these were in a can packed in brine and I couldn't bring myself to do it although he assured me that they were very good.

He also pointed out the tom kha  paste that could be used to make the soup in lieu of buying the separate veggies. I hesitated and said that fresh was better. He agreed, adding that lazy people like the paste.  He started talking about how good tom kha is, especially when it's hot out of the pot. 

Once I got home I knew I needed something to make a complete meal. All I had was fresh kale and frozen okra so I googled thai kale and a host of curried recipes (similar to the string bean concoction I made) came back. For some reason they seemed inauthentic. Thai food is more than coconut milk. I saw a stir fry kale with garlic and oyster sauce and decided I would go for it.  Although upon further investigation, I learned that the kale was not the same vegetable that I had. 

I made the soup and it is now clear that ginger is not a proper substitute for galangal.  The kale was easy - I blanched it, sauteed garlic and ginger, added the kale and tossed with oyster sauce. 

Reality Check

I've always thought that the distinguishing factors between my cooking and other random good home cooks, is that I incorporate a bit of technicality, I use good ingredients, and I'm not afraid to take risks and expand my repertoire. 

For over 10 years I've dreamed of opening a cafe, but cafes are a dime a dozen - what would distinguish mine?  I'm not sure...I don't really have a signature dish...there is no flagship meal that I make for company...everything is always a cultural theme of sorts.  Perhaps it's the quiche that I've been making for 20 years or the carrot cake that's in retirement?  At one time it was roasted chicken...but what are my main sides?

We have been watching Master Chef as a family for the past month or so.  This has been a dose of humility.  Although I have a keen sense of smell (and taste), and I can usually pull a meal an impromptu meal together, I can't hold a candle to the creativity that is produced by the home chefs that are competing on this reality show. 

I've been inspired to step my game up. 

unHappy Ending

I was all set to write a Happy Ending post.  Friday I made timtimo in the crock pot for my daughter's welcome back from camp meal.  We had fish & grits for Saturday breakfast.  Then I made a cobbler last night before dashing off to dinner with my husband's colleagues.

Although the cobber is a bit sweet (I was distracted and put 1/4 too much sugar in), it has a nice flavor.  The cobbler is a bit of a patchwork - I used the peaches I picked up from Whole Foods and 2 pears from Wegman's.  And the top crust fell apart so I had to glue it together with beaten egg. 

This morning I finally decided to run the self-cleaning oven.  A patina was starting to form.  The issue is the bird - the fumes produced by the burning off of debris are toxic to birds.  I couldn't really wait much longer, as I was beginning to think the build up was impairing the oven's efficiency.  We put the bird in the spare cage in the backyard and started the over.  Then we cut the cut the cobbler and sat down and ate it. 

As I was making the fit-fit to eat with the remaining timtimo, the kids noticed that the bird cage was empty and went scurrying around to find her.  My son said "I hear her outside" so they opened the door and for some reason opened the cage to take her out.  Of course she flew away.  Then there were tears. 

Snazzy snapper

I need to get on a food budget, quickly.  My last couple of trips to Whole Foods total over $200 and I don't have much to show for it.  It's the seafood.  The fish just look so inviting. 

Of course I bought cherries ($3.99/lb), some jersey tomatoes (I'm hoping they're good because I bought a couple for my grandmother and she's been dying for a "real" tomato for years), and georgia peaches.  Then i took a quick look at the seafood counter.  Nothing good was on sale, but they had snapper for $10.99/lb and it was gorgeous.  I've been thinking about making a escovitch since I saw snapper in HMart for $5.99/lb a couple of weeks ago. 

I let the fish marinade in my basic seasonings then instead of pan frying, I convection roasted for 25 minutes while I cooked the cabbage and cut up the onions, peppers, and carrots and made the sauce (vinegar, soy, tomato, and lime) for the escovitch.  I didn't have scotch bonnet so I sauteed it with a blend of chili oil and olive oil (my son loves fish and can't stand the heat). 

It was ridiculously delicious.

Compromise

I got sucked back into Lemon Grass today.  I met a former line cook who lived in Thailand for a year and she asked me if there were any good Thai restaurants in the area.  I told her that last week I would have recommended Lemon Grass but I was pissed off about the evil jungle princess fiasco.  Based on my description she assumed that it just might be some version of a jungle curry.  I excitedly told her about the grocer and the dishes I cooked.  She was shocked about the laab - she lived in the north eastern part of the country and said it was one of her favorite dishes.  I decided that it would be worth a tasting.  Although the sauce on the pad thai was a bit sweet, she thought the food was pretty good.  She also said that my pad kee mao looked more like pad see ew due to the size of the noodles.  We had a great conversation about food but to the server's surprise, I did not order a thai tea to go. 

One essential element to Asian cooking is a seasoned wok and high heat...one of my burners outputs 14,000 btus but I think I need to step my pan up. 

A few hours later at home I was once again confronted with my son's request for seafood salad.  I used to make seafood salad with shrimp and pasteurized crabmeat but I've come to have an aversion to what my friend refers to as mayo salads.  I knew he was looking for the typical seafood salad with the imitation crab hence I went with the stuff at Whole Foods (Kanimi - made from wild caught fish).  However after boiling quality noodles and sauteing delicious shrimp I couldn't bring myself to sprinkling Old Bay (I found a low sodium version) on it and adding mayonnaise so I threw in some basic seasonings and tossed it with celery and french vinaigrette.  He said he liked it but wanted it a little less gourmet and more like my Aunt Mary's.  Fortunately I had reserved half of it so I was able to oblige him.

Hunters and gatherers

There's something about my new colleague that screams progressive lifestyle, which is why she shocked me Friday by eating pizza and drinking Sprite with a Diet Coke chaser.  It gets worse - today she went to the food cart for lunch and came back with a cheeseburger, cookies, and a chocolate milk.  I immediately got on my soapbox because I had a hunch that she knew better...and she did.

Before I knew it she was telling me about Philly Cow Share and I was grinning from ear to ear thinking about those angus cows I met in Santee.  I realized that I since I no longer am a Greensgrow CSA member, I'm a bit out of the loop in terms of local food production.  I asked her how she knew about it and she said that her gym promotes healthy lifestyles including the paleo diet as in paleolithic - meats, fish, vegetables, fruits, nuts - things available before the domestication of plants and animals - hence no grains, dairy, or sweeteners.  I bet they don't promote eating burgers off of a food cart. 
Clearly this is not for vegetarians because legumes are a no-no but I'm thinking I might try to do the 30 day challenge.  I know I've talked about this type of thing before, but this seems achievable and I could feasibly start right after Labor Day.  Who's with me?

Distraction

I have been asked numerous times about the lack of intersection among my work (urban education), my passion (cooking), and my academic pursuit (human geography).  There is an underlying commonality - justice - access to education, access to quality food, and being saddled with the burden of landscape.

I learned a new word - bistronomy - and it is timely because I recently went to a gelateria and found myself amazed at the price point.  My first brush with gelato was at Capogiro's 7 or 8 years ago; more recently I get it at the Whole Foods in Plymouth Meeting.  The gelato I had last week was just as delicious but targeted at a different demographic.  While I ate, I kept marveling at how the masses would be able to enjoy it because the upscale decor associated with gelato in this area has been stripped down to a family friendly decor. 

Although it's likely that the ingredients aren't sourced locally, seasonally, and sustainably - this normalizes the gourmet foodscape a bit. 

Conversion

Last night I went to Whole Foods to return that despicable Allegro coffee and stopped by the seafood counter because my son wants seafood salad.  My plan was to buy a half pound of the shrimp and a package of the imitation crab meat. 

There was whole boneless trout for $7.99/lb that I thought would be nice fried with some grits for breakfast.  The only drawback was that it was farm raised...and that has nothing on wild caught trout.  But supposedly the trout is farmed in conditions that mimic a running stream, so I went for it and it was delicious. 

On my way home I stopped at Fresh Grocer for Hellman's mayonnaise....I took a look at their seafood counter.  Everything looked so dead.  There was wild caught fillets of silver and rainbow trout that were unimpressive and there was the whole boneless trout at the same $7.99 price point.  But it looked lifeless.

I can't seem to figure out why inferior food (fish, meat, produce) hovers around the same price as more wholesome and sustainably produced food.  I'm now even more cautious than before about farm raised fish.  My concern about the fish was basically the same as the feedlot cattle - an unnatural diet of grains and hormones coupled with overcrowding mitigated by antibiotics.  Well it's worst than I thought.  Whole Foods statement about tilapia sex-reversal prompted me to do a little investigating.

I remember when tilapia first hit the supermarkets 15 years ago - it was a delicate fish that was almost a delicacy, now it's omnipresent.  It's native to Africa but is now being farmed all over the world.  It has become the "Factory Fish."  But there are a couple of problems with that - it's almost nutritionally useless; it's environmentally degradative; and this sex-reversal thing sounds like frankenscience.  Mixed-sexed ponds can become overcrowded due to reproduction - this adversely impacts the size of the fish.  The solution is to feed the fish a synthetic sex hormone (or use hybrids) to produce an all male population that can grow to a large size for the market. 

We need to get the food system back to the basics - not only are we engineering chickens to grow faster and have larger breasts but we are meddling with animal reproduction.  Dairy cows are getting hormones to increase lactation and we are reversing the sex of tilapia to meet the demands of the market.  Is anyone concerned that this might adversely affect humans?

While I may have converted to the farm raised rainbow trout at Whole Foods, I'm literally scared to death of tilapia.

Terroir terror

Once again I have a new obsession - coffee.  Words can't begin to describe how wonderful this particular brew is.  There is an espresso and coffee guide online that tells you everything there is to know about coffee.  Ever since it was smuggled from Ethiopia to Yemen it has been a commodity and a source of wealth for merchants, particularly when they held monopolies.  Until the Dutch smuggled plants to Indonesia, the Arabs and Venetians had a monopoly.  The kicker is that coffee grows best in the global south but the commodification of coffee only truly benefits those in the global north - hence the push for fair trade coffee.

Coffee became mass produced in various western hemisphere colonies and we can clearly see who has reaped the benefits of the exploitative coffee plantation economy that stretches from Central America to the Caribbean. 

Learning a bit about the history has helped me to put my coffee preferences in perspective.  Coffee from the western hemisphere lacks the body and flavor that I love because it is so far removed from the original source and is essentially a mass produced grandchild of the original coffee plant.

The thing that's even more crazy about the history of coffee is the role of the Dutch East India Company.  I wonder if my friend realizes that she embodies the rags to riches story of coffee.  Her mother is Eritrean and her father is Dutch.  Eritrea is an Abyssinian country that was colonized by the Italians in the 19th century (initially the Venetians held the European coffee monopoly before the Dutch establish plantations on Indonesia).  I am waiting for a jebena so that I can experience coffee from seed to cup.

Sweet succulence

Last night we went to my favorite restaurant and over indulged as usual.  I almost deviated from my regular and ordered shrimp and cheese grits - but when I inquired about the shrimp, they were farm raised.  Fortunately, I had purchased wild caught shrimp from Whole Foods so I planned shrump n grits for breakfast this morning.

I don't make shrump n grits quite the way they do in the low country but we only eat shrimp from the southern coast because shrimp from anywhere else are just plain inferior and tasteless.  I paid $13.99/lb for shrimp that go for $6.99/lb or less at the source, but it's worth it for shrimp that are sweet and bursting with flavor. 

Jackpot

I went to Whole Foods to take advantage of the one-day-sale on cherries and hit the jackpot.  I was greeted by organic cherries from the Ranier Fruit Company - I bought 6 pounds without even tasting them.  I was beginning to think that I was going to have to quit cold turkey because the cherries I've purchased in the last few weeks were lacking to say the least.

I was even more excited when I approached the seafood counter -- I bought fresh wild caught 16/20 shrimp and a whole rockfish - both on sale. 

Finally, One Village Coffee had a sample table setup.  Initially I was going to keep going because I already know that I like the House Blend and I have decided that I would just alternate between that and Swing's G Street blend because the Allegro Blend I just bought on sale was a total waste of time.  Apparently that's because it's roasted in large batches in Colorado and shipped all across the country.  I chatted with the vendor a bit and settled on the Smart Blend (mocha java). 

I came home and immediately brewed a pot of coffee.  The aroma enveloped the house in a way that buffered the torrential downpours outside.  With one sip, I declared it my favorite (full bodied with a hint of blueberry) and before I knew it, my cup was empty and I was desperate for a refill.

Cofee and cherries just might be my two favorite berries. 

3 courses, 3 hours

My mother bought a deviled egg carrier for $2 and couldn't wait to use it.  Last night I bought some drumsticks and called to tell her that she could bring some deviled eggs over today; she was thrilled.  My husband wasn't impressed with the menu - he wanted corn on the cob.  My son suggested lamb, but the loin chops were frozen...so I set the vac-pacs in water and drove to Whole Foods for the corn.  I also bought zucchini and squash.

I skinned the drumsticks and marinated them and the chops arabesque style. 

I had to take my daughter to camp so the plan was that my husband would put the food on the grill at 4 and we would eat at 5.  I got home at 450, my grandmother was sitting on the couch, but there was nothing on the grill.  I got the corn into the oven and sauteed the zucchini with onions and garlic.  We ate the zucchini at 545 as our first course.  The lamb chops came in and we at those with the corn at 630.  My grandmother absolutely loved the flavor, the meatiness, and the tenderness.  She couldn't remember the last time she had a piece of lamb that good.  I told her I saw loin chops for $16.99/lb at the market, but I had gotten mine directly from the meatpacker for around $9/lb.   

At 715 we had the main course - the deviled eggs, accompanied by the chicken.

Back to biryani

In order to avert Friday night takeout I decided to make biryani.  I thought it was early enough in the afternoon and I had all of the ingredients at home (if I substituted the "laban" for yogurt) , even for the hara marsala (left over from the Thai) except green chilis and rice.  Technically I could have substituted with the jasmine I had at home but who knows how that would've turned out so I scraped together $15 to buy a 10lb bag of tilda. 

I came home at 4, fried the onions, skinned the thighs, then got to work mixing up the marinade for the chicken, etc.  I stuffed it all in my 5 quart cuisinart (I don't have a de chi pot) and let it cook.  When my husband walked
in the door a little after 7, he said, "wow, it smells like biryani, and it didn't take hours to make."  In fact, although I wasn't tired (running on adrenaline from a successful work week I suppose), it had taken many steps and a significant amount of time to prepare. 

We sat down and ate as if it were a basic chicken and rice dish...everyone helped themselves to seconds and thirds.  I suppose ethnic dishes have become a bit too common place in this house.