Week #47 Szechuan (Chinese)

Posted on August 7, 2010 by Carol

In the past few years I’ve grown so fond of the myriad flavors that make up Thai, Vietnamese and Korean cuisines that I’ve more or less back burnered Chinese food. But Szechuan has restored my interest.

Szechuan province, in southwestern China, is a land of bold flavors and a variety of chili pepper that will clear your sinuses and cool you down on the hottest of days. “One dish, one shape, hundreds of dishes, hundreds of tastes” they say there, referring to their passion for balancing flavors, aromas, textures and colors. I’d say they’re speaking my language, metaphorically at least.

A number of people have told us that the most authentic representation of Szechuan in the Los Angeles area is the food at Chung King in Monterey Park. It seems every food blogger in town has written about this place, but with all those endorsements, Himself and I knew this was where we had to go for the goods.

 The dominant color in this meal was RED, for all the peppers so liberally strewn over our dishes.

 And for the fire extinguisher mounted on the wall right next to our table (next to the thermometer). AND for the color of my face when I’d finished my chili-laden meal (see the last pic). This was definitely a waterproof mascara meal!

Himself ordered the fish slice hot pot, which contained slabs of a succulent white fish with mushrooms, bamboo shoots and slices of a taro root gelatin called konjaku. A healthy alternative to wheat noodles, konjaku is gluten free and loaded with fiber. And like a follow-the-leader kid on the playground, it absorbs whatever flavors are around it. I ladled some of that zingy broth over my white rice–the first time. For seconds on the rice, I retreated to the plain stuff to soothe my burning mouth and tingling lips.

I ordered the fried chicken cubes with green onions and sesame seeds, and of course, a ton of chili peppers. The chicken had plenty of heat without my gobbling up any of those bright red beauties. The chicken and chilis just being neighbors on the plate was enough for me to get a heat that was strong but that never overpowered the flavors of the dish.

Not every Szechuan dish is hot, so if you’re a little shy about plunging into the peppers, you have options. This dish of rice crust with pork slices came in a mild broth that coated the mouth, to cool and refresh. We ordered a pot of white rice, too, so that helped calm things down. Balance is key to enjoying the hot stuff. By the way, this dish was good on its own, so if you have timid taste buds, you also have options.

Our big discovery: the lip-numbing quality of Szechuan food does not come from those hot peppers.  I always assumed that they were so hot that the sensory overload would finally drive your nerve endings to cry “uncle!” and numb out on you. But no, there’s a completely different ingredient at work here: the Szechuan peppercorn, which is not actually a pepper or a chili at all. Szechuan peppercorns are aromatic and lemony–they come from a plant that’s in the citrus family. But they hold a secret: this is where the lip numbing comes in–they contain a substance that causes a “general neurological confusion,” to quote culinary science go-to guy Harold McGee. Beyond flavor, Szechuan peppercorns are added to help you deal with those fiery peppers by producing both numbness and a sort of sensory effervescence, kind of like when you drink a carbonated beverage while eating spicy food. (By the way, water is the last thing you want to drink while eating hot food, because it spreads the heat, rather than washing it away.) The outer husk is toasted, ground and added to dishes just before they’re served.

With a face to match the pepper: devil’s tongue, anyone?!

You actually do have some control over how much heat you get in a Szechuan meal. These hollowed out super-hot chilis are lavishly served over your order, and you control the amount of heat you consume by eating a few or a lot–or by picking out the meat and veggies and leaving the peppers behind. It’s up to the individual diner. In spite of the heat, though, the flavors shine right through–ginger, garlic and Chinese five-spice, a blend of cinnamon, cloves, star anise, fennel seed and, ta-dah! Szechuan peppercorn.

My concern all along has been that the heat would completely wipe out the flavor and leave me a done-in pile of sweat, tears and pain. But I was wrong, and I’m champing at the bit for more. Szechuan rocks!

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Week #46 Serbian

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Carol

If you’ve never been to Serbia, do you actually know where it is–unless you’re one of those oddballs like me who has a map fetish? Even I had to double check and see exactly where it fits in with the other Balkan States. It’s part of the former Yugoslavia, one of those countries that we vaguely know is over there somewhere east of Italy. Or is that Slovenia? Or Croatia? Or the generously syllabled Bosnia-Herzegovina?

As difficult as it is for someone who’s never been to Serbia to tell you just where it is, it’s equally difficult to pin down exactly what makes Serbian food Serbian. So I asked my pal Tanja to join me for dinner. As a first generation American from Serbia, she’s the truth meter I usually lack on these expeditions.

I just had to include this photo of Tanja holding a pic of her dad, a bodybuilder who was the first Mr. Yugoslavia in 1968. How cool is that?!

She suggested we go to Metro Cafe in Culver City. When I raised my eyebrows at the name and said it didn’t sound terribly authentic, she assured me it had the goods. Then she rather sheepishly explained that Serbian food is more or less a pastiche of the cuisines of the neighboring countries, so there’s a lot of Italian, Greek, Turkish and Hungarian on the menu. I assured her that that’s fine, because food borders and political borders have little in common. Cuisine is geographically, climatically and culturally determined–no respecter of lines dictated by governments and drafted by mapmakers.

We did start off with a Serbian treat, because the first thing to hit our table was ajvar, known as “Serbian caviar.” A spread of roasted red bell pepper, egg plant and chili peppers, it was richly textured, full flavored and mildly hot. Take a look at the spellings of these cousin words: ajvar and caviar. And neighboring Turkey’s word for caviar is “havyar.” See the etymological similarity? I imagine you could step into a kitchen next door and ask for one of these, and they’d know just what you were talking about. Well, that’s enough of a foray into linguistic geekdom for one blog entry, but thanks for indulging me!

Next was a basic Greek salad. At least you didn’t see it in my last blog entry! This lightly dressed pile of tomatoes, lettuce, onions, cucumbers and feta was a nice fresh intermission in between the rich flavors of the other dishes.

In spite of being completely landlocked, Serbia still manages to get its share of fresh seafood. These steamed mussels were dressed in a light sauce of tomato, garlic and parsley that made a nice soup for mopping up with that piece of charred bread on top.

My favorite dish was the pasulj, Serbian white bean soup. What made it a hit with me was that I detected the presence of smoked pork in it. You just can’t go wrong with that. It was basic but hearty and nourishing, mildly seasoned, except for the garnish of cracked pepper. The door was propped open, with the ocean breezes whisking in, so even though it’s August, there was a crispness to the air that made this soup even more welcome. Our server noted that the recipe comes from the chef’s mum. Okay, in unison everybody say, “Awwww!!!”

The menu contains plenty of meat–they certainly don’t shy away from it in veggie-happy LA. Our mutual friend, Vanessa, who is also of Serbian extraction, says the Serb table is all about meat, meat and more meat, “with the odd stew thrown in for digestive purposes.” Well that’s okay by me!

Chevapchichi is considered one of the national dishes of Serbia. These are beef sausages, but traditionally they were made of a combination of beef, pork and lamb. Still, these were really good, with a nice bit of char bestowed by the grill. They were served on a bed of sweet onions with some ajvar–which is an accompaniment as well as an appetizer–and fried potatoes that somehow managed to be more grease than potato. I don’t mean this in a bad way. They were incredibly good!

Tanja shared a recipe for pasulj, the Serbian bean pot we’d had, from one of her family cookbooks. The funky measurements in it make me think it was converted from metrics to avoirdupois, which is what we use here in the U.S. (who uses .35 ounces of anything?) Between the odd measurements and some ingredients being listed with no measurements at all, I decided to do a little searching. I think I’ve managed to cobble together a recipe that is to the spirit of the original.

Homemade pasulj: I’ll pick out the bay leaves and parsley stems before serving.

Serbian Bean Pot
(“Pasulj”)
Yields about 4 servings
Based on a recipe from Yugoslav Cookbook by Olga Novak Markovič (Cankarjeva založba, Ljubljana, 1986)

12 oz. white beans
Approximately 3 pints water
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 medium carrot, finely chopped
parsley root (if you can’t find this, use a few parsley stems and chop the leaves for garnish)
2 cloves of garlic, minced
12 oz. smoked pork, cut into small bits if you use bacon
2 bay leaves
2 tablespoons tomato sauce
1 chili pepper (I used a Serrano), seeded, deveined and minced
salt and black pepper, to taste

Wash the beans well and soak overnight.

The next day, strain off the soaking water and add fresh cold water. Add to the bean pot all ingredients except salt and pepper, and simmer until beans and meat are tender.

***Remove the meat (if it’s a whole piece) and add a roux, made of 2 oz. fat (measured by volume) and 2 oz. flour (measured by weight). Simmer everything until thickened.

Season with salt and pepper when cooking is finished.

If you keep the pork whole, slice pieces of it and place one in each bowl and then ladle soup over it and garnish with chopped parsley.

***Now, about that roux: Some people panic as soon as they read a recipe and see they’ll have to make a roux or even a liaison. So we’re going to cheat. I’ll teach you a little trick so you can get around it. Mind you, it will taste much better if you actually take the time and effort to make a roux, because the flavor and texture will both improve the final product. (And you have to promise me that someday you’ll learn to make a proper roux, alrighty?) But for now, this is what we’ll do: cook half of the beans in a separate pot and purée them before adding them to the main pot about a half hour before cooking is finished. The result will be a nice rich, thick potage.

Dessert is problematic. The Serbian dessert menu includes sweets that are emblematic of other countries: Greece’s baklava; Hungary’s dobos torte and Turkey’s Turkish delight or ratluk, as they call it in Serbia.

Serbia has rice pudding too, but here they call it sutlijaš. And they top it with cinnamon and molasses, so I figured, why not? In the interest of portion control and not being a total glutton, I spooned the finished product into individual ramekins rather than one large bowl. And I stirred in the cinnamon while the rice cooked, so it would be well distributed. Himself and I test tasted two servings, one with molasses drizzled over it and the other with syrup. Hands down, the molasses was the winner in our household. But honey would be good, and I’m sure something rich like chestnut honey would be even better.

So, Serbian cuisine? As Tanja noted, when your homeland has been occupied by the Ottomans for a few hundred years and when it lies amongst an assortment of other countries with their varied cultures, it’s easy to just absorb what’s close at hand. But what Serbia has absorbed is, quite smartly, the good stuff. So if you find yourself wandering past a Serbian restaurant, stop in and have a bite. It will be good.

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Week #45 Greek

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Carol

Just between you and me and the gatepost–as my grandma used to say–I’m getting a little weary of trying to sort out the differences between Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisines. So much of it is so similar that when I ask, “What’s the difference between your stuffed grape leaves and those of the country next door?” the inevitable response is, “Ours are better.”

I yearned to do something a little different this time, so I headed out for groceries, not to the generic corner market but to Papa Cristo’s on Pico at Normandie in Mid-City Los Angeles. This beloved LA institution is a Greek grocery, restaurant and catering company that keeps the city’s Greeks–and Greek food lovers–supplied with plenty of imported and authentically prepared food.

Here’s my haul, which I used to make dinner, with plenty of items I can use for quite some time–a good olive oil, some seasonings to which only Papa Cristo himself knows the formula and a nice bag of Greek sage that’s still on its woody stems. And masticha, which we’ll get to in a little bit.

What I didn’t want to do was make what shows up on every Greek menu–or what people typically think of when they ponder Greek food. So no hummus, no baba ganoush, no baklava.

Instead of feta, which is what usually comes to mind when you think of Greek cheese, I selected wedges of a couple of completely different cheeses to go with the rustic bread that’s made on-site. The cheese in the center is kaseri, a sheep’s milk cheese with a little goat’s milk thrown in for good measure. It has an herbal quality to it that I suppose is the result of grazing livestock in a scrubby landscape filled with rosemary, thyme and oregano. Its slight chewiness reminds me a bit of provolone. The cheese in the lower right is kefalotiri, a tart, saltier and slightly drier cheese made from sheep’s milk. Having been around since Byzantine times, this is a cheese with some history. By the way, its name comes from the Greek hat called a kefalo. Now whenever I see one those hats, my wacky mind’s eye is sure to envision someone wearing a round of cheese on his head.

Okay, so the canned beans seem like a cheat, but they’re Greek gigantes, the largest lima beans you’ll ever find. One glance and I’d swear they were actually fava beans, but they taste like neither limas nor favas. They have a mild flavor and with a slightly dry texture to them–in spite of their tenure in the can of sauce–so the mildly spicy red sauce was a good addition. I cooked up some of the couscous-type sour frumenty Greek pasta. It’s made of durum wheat and has a robust sourdough flavor. Then I started layering: I spooned the hot pasta and beans over a bed of chard and let it wilt, then drizzled the dish with the olive oil and a little red wine vinegar (not too much, since the pasta is naturally sour) and sprinkled on one of Papa Cristo’s spice blends. Served with bread and olives, it was a satisfying main course. With it we had glasses of retsina. This Greek white wine is famously pine-tasting, crisp and dry, but full of flavor.

I love love love leeks. But right up there on the list with turnips and rutabagas, they must be one of the world’s most under-appreciated vegetables. While the traditional Greek way to have them is simmered, drained and then drizzled with olive oil and vinegar, I decided to instead top these with avgholemono sauce made of eggs, lemon juice and some of the leek broth (chicken broth is more traditional). While the leeks were simmering I tossed in a branch of the Greek sage to zazz up their mild butteriness with a little woody-herbally flavor.
I also picked up a can of calamari, a.k.a. squid, since I can’t find the fresh stuff at our much more generic local grocery stores. These tiny little guys were packed in brine and still raw, so I gave them two minutes in a pot of boiling water with a couple of lemon halves tossed in. I’ve never cooked squid, and what I found on the subject said to cook it either two minutes or 30 minutes, explaining that if you go past two minutes they become tough, and then it takes a good half hour to tender them up again. Two minutes was perfect–they were delicate and not at all rubbery, which is my usual complaint with calamari. I detest eating what feels to my mouth like a basket of deep-fried rubber bands!

I made up a bit of ladolemono to dip them in. This intensely lemony dressing is a popular accompaniment in Greece to all sorts of seafood. It’s a great addition to your stash of quick fix-ups–just whisk together a couple of tablespoons of fresh lemon juice, a half tablespoon of Dijon mustard and a quarter cup of olive oil, and season it with salt and black pepper to taste. This sauce has some serious pucker power, so cheat if you need to, by adding just a smidge of sugar while you’re whisking to make the sauce a little less aggressive.

Here’s the body of one of the calamari. Larger ones can be stuffed with a mixture of something wonderful and then breaded and lightly fried. I’d say this size would be perfect for piping in a mixture, just like you would with a squash blossom. Just pull out that cartilaginous spine first (don’t worry about the other bits inside–they’re edible). I guess this is an experiment to reserve for another day.
The baklava in Papa Cristo’s pastry case called long and loud, but I opted for these crumbly cookies laced with chopped nuts. I had them with some ouzo, which is the color of water when you pour it into the glass but turns milky when you add water to it. Ouzo is an aperitive, meaning you’re supposed to have it before dinner, to get the digestive juices flowing in preparation for the meal. But I’ve jumbled up everything else in this meal, so why not have the aperitive at the end? It still aids digestion.

 Leftovers: For lunch the following day, I varied things a bit and had the remaining ingredients as a cold salad: a bed of chard, then the pasta and beans, with the rest of the calamari cut up on top and a bit of the kefalotiri grated over it and drizzled with just a touch of the ladolemono. I didn’t mind having this two days in a row. It’s a good way to get a lot of flavor and variety in one dish–and to use up leftover bits that are too few to make much of a meal on. A handful of those huge beans, a couple of calamari and a few gratings of cheese, combined to provide all the protein I needed for one meal.

 Snack time: People love their “spoon sweets” in Greece, and masticha is a favorite. Growing only on the southern part of the island of Chios, the evergreen mastica tree produces a pleasantly resinous tasting sap that is used to flavor this yummy paste. Get a spoonful of this white taffy-like substance and dip it into a glass of water to make a “lollipop” of it, called a “submarine.” It’s a great treat on a hot day. While masticha looks like it might be employed in some other way in the kitchen, this is the only way I’ve ever heard of anyone eating it. Hmmm, looks like an ingredient that’s just begging to be experimented with, doesn’t it?

For breakfast the following morning we toasted some of the leftover rustic bread and enjoyed it with the cheeses and some rose petal preserves. I was still swooning from the rosewater ice cream I’d had during my Persian adventure the previous week, so a rose petal strewn breakfast made me quite happy.

For future reference, rose petal preserves are quite liquidy and don’t work well on rustic bread with its large crumb (that’s baker talk for holes in the bread created during the rising process). It leaks through and you have to lick it off your plate. It’s also difficult to photograph as it seeps through, so I’ll just have to document it this way, with those luscious petals sliding off the spoon.

Yeah this is Greek-lite, I know. But it was fun poking around in the market, reading labels and becoming overwhelmed by the variety of food available. When you’re dealing with a cuisine that is several thousand years in the making, your choices are practically unlimited.

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Week #44 Persian

Posted on July 25, 2010 by Carol

“You know, we could eat a boatload of caviar and still be entirely faithful to this blog entry,” I submitted to my dinner date, Chef Don, as we breezed west through Los Angeles toward the sunset. He cackled with glee.

Persian is one of only two cuisines on the planet, the other being Russian, that can claim caviar as an authentic part of its cuisine, because Iran and Russia are the only countries that border the Caspian Sea, where the caviar-laden sturgeon makes its home. All the rest of the world’s fish eggs are just that–fish eggs. As the saying goes, “Location is everything!”

Enticing as that gorging-on-caviar idea was, practical considerations–namely money–deemed that we resist the neighborhood caviar bars. Instead we blew through Beverly Hills and stopped at Baran Restaurant, in that part of West LA known as Tehrangeles, for its concentration of Iranians, their businesses and most importantly to us, their restaurants.

Within moments a basket hit our table filled with uniformly cut pieces of nan-e lavash, unleavened bread as thin and easy to handle as a stack of playing cards. We smeared them with soft butter and rolled up pieces of sweet onion inside. They were refreshing yet substantial.

 Next came an appetizer of tahdig, the wonderfully crusty rice that sticks to the bottom of the pot (check out my blog entry Do Not Soak This Pan to see my attempt at making some). It was smothered in two stews, one of lentils and the other of herbs and beef, which was so good I ordered a full entrée of the stuff. Tahdig is wonderful all by itself–a savory rice krispy treat for adults–but those stews were necessary: I’d been starving myself all day so I could savor more of this cuisine.

The herb-and-beef stew is called ghormeh sabzi, and it’s considered the national dish of Iran. Made of beef, beans and assorted greens and herbs–whatever greenery is available in any particular region of Iran–it carries enormous flavor and is filling without being too heavy.

The boiled chicken, in the foreground (with ghormeh sabzi in the background) came with albalou polo, basmati rice flavored with sour cherries and saffron (picture below). Maybe chicken and sour cherries isn’t the first combination you’d think of, but what a natural pairing. Just think about all the great dishes you’ve had combining chicken and lemon, or perhaps chicken and capers. As for the chicken, I couldn’t pin down exactly what the flavorings were (and it looks more braised than boiled), but it was mildly hot and perfectly accented by the sweet and sour cherries.
albalou polo

Torshi is a dish of aged pickled vegetables, including carrots, eggplant and cauliflower with an array of herbs and plenty of salt. My tonsils are seizing up even as I type this–it’s incredibly sour, and a tiny bit goes a long way. In fact, I brought most of it home with me. I plan to enjoy it for a really long time.
 I think faloodeh is what angels eat for dessert. This sublime rosewater granita with vermicelli has been around for a looong time, since about 400 BCE. It’s sweet and rich yet light. The rosewater makes it rich, the ice makes it light and the vermicelli gives it a bit of chewiness. Vermicelli may seem like a strange ingredient in ice cream, but I believe that’s what helps keep it frozen longer. Without those frozen starchy bits, the ice crystals would quickly melt away.

Confession time: Dessert didn’t end there. Don wasn’t familiar with Mashti Malone’s, a veritable palace of Persian ice cream in Hollywood, so I had to remedy that deficiency in his local food knowledge. I figured we’d stop by and pick up prepackaged containers to carry home and enjoy later. But nooo, before I knew what was happening he’d ordered a couple of scoops–pomegranate and saffron. I held my order to a single serving of herb snow, which is similar to faloodeh but contains those wonderful gelatinous basil seeds. It was all heavenly.
One of the nice things about faloodeh–about granita in general–is that it’s a great frozen treat that doesn’t require an ice cream maker to produce. Time to share the secret:

Faloodeh
Yield: 8 servings

2 cups granulated sugar
2 cups water
2 tbsp. rosewater (you should be able to find it in any Middle Eastern market)
2 oz. vermicelli
garnish options: lime wedges, sour cherries, chopped pistachios, fresh mint leaves

Stir together sugar and water in a medium saucepan and simmer over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat, stir in rose water and allow to cool to room temperature.
Place noodles in a glass or metal bowl and add just enough boiling water to cover them. Let stand for a few minutes, until the noodles are soft. Drain noodles, rinse under cold water and drain again; then cut noodles into one-inch lengths.
Stir noodles into rosewater mixture in a shallow dish and set it in the freezer.
After an hour, reach in and stir and break up the ice crystals with a fork. Repeat periodically over the next two or three hours, until you have a nice crystally sweet dessert.
Serve with the garnish of your choice.

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POP!

Posted on July 24, 2010 by Carol

 I love the sound of that little telltale POP! coming from the kitchen that lets me know my jellies and chutneys are properly insulated. Ooh! There it goes again! Three more and I’ll know they’re all ready for the pantry.

This is strawberry jam with balsamic reduction to give it richness and depth, and a little black pepper, just for the sass. It’s better than anything I can find in the stores. I don’t manage to make it every year, and when I don’t, I’m always sorry. Not only is it good on a croissant, but I love it on a ham sandwich. Or all by itself, licked off a spoon when I’m standing in the open fridge door. The lemon chutney is good that way, too.

Maybe this isn’t a strawberry’s immortality, but it IS a lovely reminder of strawberry season much later on, when there’s not a local berry to be had. This is something worth working up a sweat for and a sticky I don’t mind cleaning, although I really shouldn’t be mopping up the kitchen with my tongue.

Oops…did I type that out loud?!

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