Sort-of-Thai Noodles

This recipe came from Ruth Reichl’s book Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise.  It’s a good read with moments of sadness and humor.  If I don’t have shrimp, I still make it and really like it.  When you pour the fish sauce mixture in the pan, it looks like a lot of liquid, but the noodles quickly absorb it.

Ingredients:

1/2 lb. very thin rice noodles (but I usually use thicker ones because that’s what I like for some reason)

1/4 c. sugar

1/4 c. fish sauce

1/4 c. white vinegar or unseasoned rice vinegar

2 T. peanut oil (I use canola if I don’t have peanut, which can be expensive)

1/2 lb. medium shrimp, shelled (optional)

2 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed

1/2 lb. ground pork

4 scallions, sliced into 1/2-inch lengths

2 eggs

1 tsp. dried, crushed red pepper flakes

1/4 c. lime juice (about two limes)

1/2 c. peanuts, chopped finely or ground

Sriracha chili sauce and lime slices for serving

Directions:

Soak noodles in hot water to cover for 20 minutes, until soft; then drain and set aside.

Mix the sugar, fish sauce, and vinegar together; set aside.

Heat oil in a wok or skillet until very hot, and saute shrimp until they change color, about 1 minute. Remove and set aside.

Add garlic to wok, and as soon as it starts to color and get fragrant, add pork and half of scallions. Saute until the pork just loses its redness; then add noodles and mix quickly. Add the fish sauce mixture, reduce heat to medium, and cook until noodles have absorbed all the liquid, about 5 to 8 minutes.

Move noodles to one side of the pan and break 1 egg into wok, breaking the yolk. Tilt wok so you get the thinnest sheet of egg possible, and scramble until just set. Mix into noodles. Repeat process with second egg. Add the shrimp, remaining scallions, and the red pepper flakes, and mix to combine. Add the lime juice and cook about 1 minute.

Pour into dish, sprinkle with peanuts, and add chili sauce to taste. Serve with lime wedges for drizzling.

Mango and Blackbeen Salad

I got this recipe out of Cooking Light Magazine.  I think it makes a really good side to grilled chicken, but it would probably go well with tacos or burritos (what I’m going to try next).  While the rice is cooking, you can prep the rest of the ingredients and cook the rest of the meal.

Ingredients:

1-1/2 c. chopped, peeled mango

1 c. thinly sliced green onions

1/2 c. cooked wild or brown rice (or more)

3 T. finely chopped cilantro

2 T. salsa (fresh, regular, or roasted tomatillo)

2 T. lime juice

2 T. extra-virgin olive oil

3/4 tsp. salt (or less)

1/4 tsp. pepper

1 – 15 oz. can black beans, rinsed and drained

Directions:

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and toss. Enjoy!

Peanut Butter Brownies

I got this recipe from Gourmet magazine, with a couple changes to make it, if not healthy, at least not PURE fat. Of course you can use the fatty version too for extra deliciousness, but either way my boyfriend –who hates sweets– finds them irresistible.

INGREDIENTS:

12 tablespoons of Smart Balance margarine (or 1.5 sticks unsalted butter)
1/2 cup reduced-fat peanut butter (try Smart Balance. It’s all natural, so it’s not great to eat on a sandwich or out of the jar, but it’s good in baking because it gets the flavor right and because there’s so much sugar in the other ingredients, you don’t notice it’s all natural)
4 oz. chocolate chips
2 cups packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
4 large eggs
1 cup whole-wheat flour (of course, all-purpose is fine)
1/2 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350F with rack in the middle.

Spray olive oil cooking spray (or butter) on a 13×9″ baking dish. Sprinkle flour over the baking dish (this makes it extra nonsticky and gives it a cakey feel).

Melt margarine, peanut butter and chocolate in a heavy 3qt saucepan over low heat, stirring until smooth.

Remove from heat and cool.

Whisk in brown sugar and vanilla.

Whisk in eggs one at a time.

Whisk together flour and salt then whisk this into the chocolate mixture.

Spread all of this into the pan. Bake 30 minutes or until pick inserted comes out with crumbs. Cool completely before eating.

Kyllie Kwong’s Lemon Chicken Fillets Recipe

My good friend got me Kyllie Kwong’s “Simple Chinese Cooking” cookbook for my birthday and I was so (almost) inordinately excited to see that one of my favorite recipes from when I was a kid is in it — Lemon Chicken. (Food memories are so wonderful!) Fond memories litter my childhood of going with my dad to the Golden Wok where everyone knew my dad could speak Chinese and I, little introverted Americanized daughter, could barely speak English to strangers. I would always always order the lemon chicken, which was so moist and just slightly crispy in its thin breading, with an excellent rich lemon sauce; not bitter, but almost BBQy (and of course extra almond cookies were thrown in the box, mm).

Anyway, I made this dish for my birthday and it was a huge success. And if I was able to make it, it’s proof enough that it’s easy.

(SERVES 4)

INGREDIENTS:

For Breading:
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons cold water
1 lb. chicken, cut into 1″ pieces
2 egg yolks
2 tablespoons shao hsing wine (or dry sherry)
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup cornstarch
Vegetable oil for deep-frying

For Sauce:
2 cups low-sodium chicken stock
1/3 cup shao hsing wine (or dry sherry)
2 tablespoons oyster sauce
1/4 cup hoisin sauce
1 tablespoon low-sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
7 strips fresh lemon zest
1 small lemon, finely sliced
2 tablespoons lemon juice

1) Blend 2 tablespoons cornstarch with water in a medium-sized bowl until dissolved. Add chicken, egg yolks, wine/sherry and salt and mix well. Cover and leave to marinate in the refrigerator for 1 hour.

2) Place stock, 1/3 cup wine/sherry, oyster sauce (tamari soy sauce is an okay substitute), hoisin sauce, soy sauce, sugar, salt and lemon zest in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer gently for about 10 minutes or until slightly reduced. Stir in sliced lemon and simmer for another 5 minutes — if you cook longer it could turn bitter.

3) Combine plain flour and 1/3 cup cornstarch, add to the marinated chicken and mix well. Heat oil in a hot wok until surface seems to shimmer slightly. (There should be enough oil to just cover the chicken pieces.) Deep-fry half the chicken over high heat for 1 minute, then reduce heat to medium and fry for 1 minute, or until chicken is almost cooked through.

4) Remove chicken with slotted spoon and drain on plated paper towels. Repeat with remaining chicken.

5) Finally, return all the chicken to the hot oil and deep-fry for 1 minute or until lightly browned, crispy and just cooked through. Be careful not to overcook the chicken as they will become dry. But also don’t be afraid to go over the 1 minute increments here if the chicken looks undone. Drain well on paper towels before serving.

6) Gently reheat lemon sauce, stir in lemon juice and remove from heat.

Now, I made steamed white rice to go with this. Obviously, steamed brown rice is more healthy and highly recommended for this dish. Unfortunately, perhaps because I was forced to use tamari soy sauce instead of oyster sauce, which I ran out of, the sauce was a bit too watery for my taste. So, when you eat this together and if you’d like a bit more flavor, try adding some hoisin sauce to your rice and/or some soy sauce. This will liven up the rice and, in my estimation, add to the flavor of the dish as a whole. But, the chicken has a wonderful flavor and texture of its own, so don’t try to mask it with sauce. In fact, try it first without any extra flavoring, it may just be enough. (I’m just weird and saucy.)

Making Chinese Dumplings – for Clumsy Cooks

There’s this place in Cambridge, too far away for me to get to when I crave Chinese, but they make the best dumplings I have ever tasted in my life. Instead of the thin noodle wrappers, they’re made of a plump thick dough and steamed –not fried– to perfection.

Anyway, dumplings might be in my top ten favorite foods. Handheld, they come in perfect portions, and always with a tastilicious sauce for dipping. So, I thought I’d try and make some myself instead of waiting an hour for the delivery guy to remember where my house is.

Now, I have an irrational fear of dough. While there are some recipes out there for making fairly easy dumpling dough. Ming Tsai has a good one for those of you unafraid of dough-failure (http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_4997,00.html). But I turned to Nasoya.

These guys are already coated lightly in cornstarch, so they don’t stick together or dry up while you’re prepping. Make sure to keep them in the bag while you make your other dumplings.

Now, I used the following ingredients, but you can feel free to replace some of the veggies with your own favorites, so long as you keep them in the same quantity, you should be fine.

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 pound lean ground turkey — *You can use any ground meet you like, even shrimp if you finely chop it or pulse it in the food processor. I used lean turkey, but the more fat in the meat the juicier they’ll be, so if you’re skinny, take advantage of it by getting fatter meat. Also, traditionally, dumplings are made with either ground pork or chicken. I just had turkey on hand.
3/4 cup finely chopped bok choy (or green cabbage)
1/3 cup finely chopped green onion — *This adds a nice bite and Chinese flavor to the dumplings, so I probably wouldn’t replace this with another veggie
1/4 cup finely chopped red bell pepper — *A good replacement here would be carrots or water chestnuts
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon low-sodium soy sauce — *Again, for more, richer flavor, try tamari soy sauce or full sodium
2 teaspoons minced ginger
1 teaspoon dark sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
Dash of Tabasco
24 Nasoya wonton wrappers (or equivalent in homemade dough)
1 cup low-sodium chicken broth
1 tablespoon sesame or peanut oil
A small bowl of water

TO PREPARE:

Combine all the ingredients through Tabasco sauce in a bowl until well mixed.

Using one wonton wrapper at a time (keep the rest in the package as you make the others), plop about a teaspoon and a half of the turkey mixture in the middle of the wrapper. Too much more than this will break the wrapper.

Dip your finger into the small bowl of water and wet all 4 edges of the wrapper. Bring up two opposite corners of the wrapper and pinch together. The water serves as glue, so if it’s wet enough, it will stick and stay. Now, bring the other two opposite corners together so that all four corners meet in the middle. Pinch them together forming a point. Now, pinch the corners to seal.

Set the finished dumplings aside on a plate or baking sheet. If you notice them sticking to the plate or baking sheet, sprinkle it with cornstarch. The Nasoya wrappers are already dusted with cornstarch, so they should be fine.

Once you’re finished, heat the sesame or peanut oil, whichever you’re using, in a large skillet on medium-high heat until hot. Place the dumplings in the skillet. You’ll probably fit about 12. Cook for 2 minutes, or until the bottoms are golden brown. Slowly add 1/2 cup of chicken broth and cover and cook for 4 minutes. Uncover and cook 3 minutes or until the broth evaporates. Repeat with remaining dumplings.

SERVING SAUCE:

5 tablespoons mirin

1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce (it might be too salty if you use anything else)

1/4 cup rice vinegar

3 tablespoons chopped green onions

1 teaspoon chili paste with garlic (find this in the Chinese food section of the market)

Mix all ingredients together.

Emma’s in Kendall Square, Boston, MA (by Gourmandette T)

For some reason, every time I go to the Kendall Square theater near MIT, it’s in bad weather. Either there’s a blizzard and my friend’s eyebrows freeze like some evil Jack Frost sprite, or a water main breaks and we’re drenched by the time we trudge courageously to the theater just to find it closed, or in the case of last Wednesday, it’s raining in the middle of a week that’s book-ended by beautiful summer weather.

So, once again, after the movie I was looking for some kind of happy ending. Luckily, we found Emma’s, a pizza parlor (I’ll respectfully refrain from calling it a “pizza joint” as I usually would), small and nondescript, as most good places are.

The small dining room is all wood and fresh and clean with light pastel colors making it a very pleasant place to be, especially when it’s spitting outside. The menu is simple, few thrills and words that are hard to understand, but full of flavors and mouthwatering combinations.

My boyfriend had the Chicken Panchelle sandwich. Simple, it came with roasted tomatoes and bacon and mayo. The basics. It arrived on a small appetizer-sized plate with a pile of gherkins. Cute, but not as satisfying, probably, as chips or fries. Still, he said he tasted something that reminded him of curry. Basil perhaps? In any case, it packed a surprising punch of flavor for such an ordinary-looking sandwich.

Because the wall’s littered with awards for their pizza, I decided to jump in in spite of the price: $9.00 for the crust and the sauce (of which they have 3 varieties, Regular, Rosemary or Garlic-Olive Oil), and then $1.25 for each additional topping. Still, the pizza’s large enough for two meals, so it was worth the price in the end. (Side note: While pizza “joints” make great leftovers, Emma’s pizza wasn’t terribly delicious on second reheating.)

I ended up with a grilled chicken, sauteed mushroom, sundried tomato, and smoked mozzarella pizza. Their array of base cheeses are what really make them special, offering everything from goat cheese to Gorgonzola. Unlike traditional pizzas, the cheese is layered on top of all the goodies, and since I ordered smoked mozzarella it really allowed for the flavor of the cheese to come through rather than be hidden or overwhelmed by the toppings.

I couldn’t help but say a few times how good the pizza was as I was eating it, even better when I washed it down with their homemade Arnold Palmers with unlimited refills.

Undoubtedly, Emma’s was the among the top three pizzas I have ever had. Even if you have to do the foul-weather trudging, make it there. It’s worth the suffering.

THE PLACE: ****
THE FOOD: *****
THE PEOPLE: ***
OVERALL: ****

TO GET THERE: Take the Red Line to Alewife. Get off at Kendall. It takes some walking from here, and every time I prepare myself to get lost, but as long as you pass the Railroad tracks, you’re fine. There are tour guides hanging around right outside the subways, ask them for street names. Seriously, it’s always a crap shoot whether I’ll find One Kendall Square or get lost.

Foodie Depression

What happens when a foodie wonders what’s for lunch and can’t think of a single thing that sounds good, even the old favorites that she thought would always provide comfort? Is this foodie depression?

A quick glance through Gourmet magazine rejuvenates the spirit a little, but when you catch yourself eating Lean Pockets for lunch, you know you’re in trouble. Nothing seems like it will satisfy in that happy way you remember food doing. You begin to feel bloated at the thought of your comfort foods, and instead of salivating at the thought of stuffed pork chops or chicken salad, you feel a little ill and an actual bland flavor begins to communicate itself across your tastebuds at the mere thought of food. So now your stomach’s growling because you realize you haven’t eaten since breakfast when you only had half a corn muffin at one of your favorite breakfast diners, where usually you’re more than happy to have an egg, cheese, mushroom, and tomato omelet. Something is definitely wrong. But what can it be?

Being surrounded by people who do not see the value in food is a huge help in creating this foodie depression. Like a painter with no friends except politicians or businessmen, surely the painter gets stale and loses confidence in the value of his art after a while. The thing you’re passionate about can easily seem silly and frivolous when you’re surrounded by those who assert themselves as more high-minded, or claim a more practical approach to daily living.

Still, like all passions, if it’s really something you’re meant to be doing, if it’s really something that enriches your life, that you love, then nobody can convince you not to pursue it. If they can, you don’t love it as much as you think. So, I pick up the Gourmet magazine again. Cut out some recipes. I’ll try the brownie recipe tonight and hope it elicits a smile in my boyfriend.

It comes out even better. He sneaks back into the kitchen and steals a spoonful of the brownies before dinner. Even though he’s not a foodie, and I get chided for spending so much time thinking and planning and reading about food, I remember why food is rewarding. Because it does make people happy, it brings them together, and it relaxes them. It does make me happy to plan, to discover new recipes, to experiment, and to make people something they’ve never had before. I just have to remember that that’s why I’m a foodie.

CNN’s 9 Forbidden Foods in the USA

Guess what, HFCS is among them!

While the CNN article (link below) is a pretty “no-duh” sort of exposition (i.e. Shark fin is endangered because of restrictions in US waters on fishermen who just cut off the fins of sharks and leave the shark to die in the ocean; but what’s more interesting, CNN, is the illegal shark fin trade going on, is the chefs who are getting their shark fins from foreign waters).

Anyway, here is the article. HFCS is #9; Trans Fats #1. I suppose what we’re really trying to ban is obesity.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fsb/0804/gallery.forbidden_foods.fsb/9.html

High Fructose Corn Syrup is the Devil!…so I’m told

I don’t know about you, but High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) buzzes around me like it’s some kind of national conspiracy to make me obese or diabetic. At a table with intelligent people, it’s a shake of the head and a sigh and a helpless, “I don’t know how to stop it.” It’s yet another example of how our government (FDA, I’m pointing at you!) can put an A on a bad paper and graduate the undeserving. But is it all of these things, or is my middle-class, higher-educated, liberal-tending group of friends (God love ‘em) caught up in the organic craze, in the hippie backlash of food awareness?

I like the idea of organic foods. I can’t afford them, but I like the idea of them. I am middle-class, higher-educated and liberal. So I like the idea of no trans fats and less unhealthy carbs and more whole wheats and free-range eggs and meats. So, it stands to reason that I also like the crusade against high fructose corn syrup. However, after reading a recent article in QSR magazine and perusing some of the more recent studies on HFCS, I’m starting to wonder if my organic sensibilities have, like the hippies, gone astray.

In 2004, a nutrition professor (Barry Popkin) and a professor of medicine (George Bray) wrote a paper wherein they proposed that HFCS may be responsible for the increase in obesity in Americans since the 1970s. In one of their more gripping seal-the-deal moments, they took a graph of the consumption of HFCS in the US and overlayed it with a graph of the increase in American obesity. Bam! The graphs matched up almost perfectly. Four years later, most Whole Foods-going shoppers and eaters spout off the following information with confidence, “It’s been linked to obesity, and it’s just not something that’s natural or good for you” (NYTimes). Makers of the documentary King Corn talk as if they were betrayed by their mothers when they say, “We found out that our corn was going to become not sweet corn on the cob but in fact fast food, essentially corn-fed beef for hamburgers and high fructose corn syrup soda. In the course of the year of making our film and seeing where our crop was going to go, we came to question the agricultural system that’s in place right now as it affects our food” (QSR). While having your corn go to corn-fed cows is probably a bad thing (experts say that corn-fed cows are more likely to provide tougher and ecoli-friendly meat), what’s the big deal about your corn going to HFCS? While the FDA’s official stance is that it’s not “natural”, John White (PhD, White Technical Research) and John Foreyt (Professor of Medicine, Baylor College) argue that it goes through the same processes that don’t disqualify other products, and it does not contain artificial materials, and meets all the FDA’s guidelines for a natural food ingredient. Moreover, it only accounts for 10% of the world’s sweeteners. So what’s with all the moaning and groaning?

Based on what I’ve seen in researching for this post, it appears to me that we’re just looking for a scapegoat on why we’re getting fatter. I know I’m getting fatter because the portions at restaurants are so huge, because I like cheese and pasta and bread a little too much, and it’s hard to resist Starbucks chai lattes and Cabot’s ice cream. I work out at least three times a week, but I also know I could work out harder. That’s why I’m getting fat.

The truth is, HFCS is really not that different from regular sugar. One of the reasons industries switched to HFCS and continue to use it instead of sugar is that it’s cheaper and more efficient for certain products. Instead of having to carry in bags of sugar, HFCS can be pumped from a truck in the parking lot. While sugar can make old soda taste different –yes, Coke’s different here than in Mexico, but imagine if it was different between Boston and New Orleans?—HFCS keeps a Coke a Coke no matter where you are in the US (which makes my Dad eternally happy). Moreover, it helps keep canned foods fresher, retains moisture in cereals, helps maintain that soft texture in baked goods, enhances the flavor in fruit fillings in yogurts and your favorite jelly-filled donuts, it balances the tartness of the tomato in your pasta sauce, and it’s far more stable than sugar in acidic carbonated sodas. So why are we whining about HFCS when we should be celebrating?

Okay, I wouldn’t go that far. The point is, whether it’s HFCS or regular sugar, it’s making us fat. We are still consuming calories. HFCS is no worse than sugar, but it’s also no better. That’s all current experts are saying in their attempts to calm the organic-loving masses. Even the firestarters themselves are recanting. “It was a theory meant to spur science,” Popkin said in the NY Times. It was a suggestion, a proposition, more than a statement of researched fact. Popkin still believes that with further research he may be proved right, but for now he says it’s a misconception to blame HFCS for obesity.

My suggestion? Abandon the age-old habit of scapegoats, and start taking responsibility. Americans have bad eating habits, and while I know that salad’s going to make me feel happy and refreshed, that pizza sure smells damn good.

Wagamama in Boston, MA (by Gourmandette T)

It’s special celebration time. Where do you go when you’re celebrating an asiaphile who is scared of food that is different –even though you, as a foodie, know he’ll love it if he tries it (but try convincing him of that)—and who has only ever chosen teriyaki chicken from a Japanese menu? You take him to Wagamama. There is no teriyaki chicken.

Wagamama is a Japanese noodle restaurant chain that started in 1992 in London. It immediately became a phenomenon beating such restaurants as Gordon Ramsay and Nobu out of Zagat’s most popular restaurant award in 2005 and 2006. This past year it finally branched out across the pond in, of all places, Harvard Square in Cambridge and Fahnieul Hall in Boston (where it’s taken place of one of my favorite restaurants in the city, Rustic Kitchen). I guess someone realized that Bostonians desperately need some more food culture.

When I first walked in to Wagamama I sorta rolled my eyes and thought, “Great, another place trying to be nouveaux yuppy.” On one side of the slim restaurant there were rows of long tables, much like a high school cafeteria or summer camp mess hall, the open kitchen lining the other wall in its confidence. Unlike in movie theaters, eating to me is a social but also private affair between whomever I’ve willfully chosen to be social with. I get uncomfortable in restaurants that seat me too close to other people, but have been known to turn the other cheek if the food is excellent. As the hostess led us to a bench-style seat beside two Spanish guys, who promptly scooted over in discomfort as we shoved in beside them, as she told us that we could place our things on a shelf underneath the table (as there’s no back to your bench or room on the floor for your things), and when a loud Sex in the City wannabe double-date appeared beside us, I realized the food better be pretty damned good. It was.

Not feeling up to noodles or soup –of which they have much and all of which look tasty—I set my sights on the four rice dishes they have. For every meat dish Wagamama has, it offers a vegetarian version, which as a lover of meaty protein, was a little frustrating because it seemed to limit the menu for me. I love my veggies, don’t get me wrong, I just like to eat them with meat whenever I get the chance. So, with two very delicious-sounding vegetarian rice dish options, there were only two meat dishes I could choose from. I landed on Chicken Katsu Curry, because when you mix curry and panko, delight usually follows. The plate was $11, but there was a lot of food on the plate and it was all incredibly delicious. Even my asiaphile boyfriend had to admit several times, “This is so good.” Almost every bite I took I wanted to announce it. It came in a beautiful curry-colorful display of crispy panko and a plentiful scoop of Japanese white rice shaped like a lobster tail. The chicken was butterflied around and beneath it and there was a tasty garnish of mixed greens and red pickles tossed with a sweet vinaigrette. Yummo.

For dessert, I really wanted to try their Baked Stem Ginger Cheesecake (a baked ginger cheesecake on a crunchy biscuit base served with white chocolate sauce) or the Coconut Reika (three scoops of coconut ice cream topped with fresh mango sauce and toasted coconut flakes), but we got so much food for our $11, it was impossible to stomach more. I’d try their plum wine while you’re there. It’s served with sparkling water and ice, and it comes like a cocktail, to your table and your taste buds. It was a perfect accent to the meal.

Wagamama, in spite of all my wishes to judge it, was a place I would go again. It’s great if you have a group or a family, but probably not the best place to go with only two people. From the looks of other people’s dishes and the descriptions on the menu, no matter what you order is going to be high quality, full of a creative combination of flavors, and utterly delicious. Odd thing, though…there was not a single Asian person in the entire restaurant, including on staff.

THE PLACE: ****
THE FOOD: *****
THE PEOPLE: ***
OVERALL: ****

You can check out their menu at http://www.wagamama.us/food_menus.php

To get there, take the Green Line to Government Center or North Station and walk to Fahnieul Hall. It’s at the end of Quincy Market towards the water. Or, for the Cambridge location, take the Red Line to Harvard Square. Turn left down JFK Street. Continue two blocks, and it’s on your right-hand side next to the Staples.