Outdoor Survival Kit

Being alive is an essential part of the eating experience. So it's important to survive outdoor experiences that our associates, loved ones or our own curiosity takes us to.

Peter P has already suggested lugging a satellite phone (with extra charged batteries) into the wilds. What else would you recommend?

The Ethics of Eating Shark Fin

Shark fin is a delicious food item that is constantly under fire from environmentalists and animal "rights" groups.

Is it wrong to eat shark fin? Is it more wrong to ban this delicacy?

1. If finning is allowed to continue, we will still have shark fin for many years.
2. If finning is banned then shark fin will cease to exist as food immediately.

It seems to me that (1) is clearly preferable. At least we will get to eat shark fin for a while.

Turdcucken Arrives in Mail

There will definitely be a turducken in my future. More to come...

Name your favorite scent.

We're getting close to the season of olfactory scentations - sugar cookies baking, roasting poultry, cake, ham, mulled cidar, etc.

What's your favorite scent?

My absolute favorite scent would probably be a bai lan (michelia alba) flower, though a lei of frangipani gives that a good run for the money. I also love Evelyn and Crabtree's Nantucket Briar - a very simple sweet scent that's perfect all year around.

Should Flambee be banned?

Is flambee too dangerous for residential dwellings? Should we prevent our neighbors from practicing this potentially dangerous form of cooking? Should we sue TV cooks for demonstrating flambee techniques to stop them?

Gingko Nuts Update

My apologies bloggers here: there will be no gingko nut post after all - I stashed a big bag at my parents last weekend but my mom threw them all away during fall clean up (yeah, so they do smell like aged cat urine...).

I'm open to any questions on gingko nuts.

Any Tea Drinkers Here?

I got out of Mainland China before the big coffee craze hit so I've always prefer tea to coffee (except in the morning - 2 shots of generic espresso + 1 cup of soy milk makes for a good pick me up).

My preferred drink of Huangshan maofeng (a relatively inexpensive green tea) surreptitiously raided from my parents' stash. The far better known longjing tea is not worth buying - the good stuff is good (though no staying power - you only get one good brew from them and I can get three decent brews from maofeng) but very hard to get, and there are imitators everywhere. The best green tea, called "white tea" in American vernacular, is actually called be lu chun - it's almost impossible (do you have a close friend who is also a member of the Chinese politburo?) to get genuine bi lu chun nowadays - I had some about twelve years ago - very fine fragrance and good staying power.

Woo long might be better suited to the Western palate. Taiwan produces some very fine woo long tea with a great fragrance, good body and a hint of sweetness. China's Fujian province also produces a lot of woo long but I find even the best lacks the sweetness and depth of Taiwan woo long.

If you don't have Chinese cadres as friends, I'd recommend Ten Ren shops. Their selection is not as fresh as what you can get in China, and the prices are quite a bit higher, but still quite drinkable. Particularly impressive are the jasmine tea balls that expand to reveal flowers and tied together tea leaves - not economical for everyday consumption, but very impressive presentation if your backwoodsy relatives come for a visit.

Trader Joe's has a pretty decent jasmine tea that I chug when my parents' green tea supply runs low. I drink Earl Gray when I'm away from home - Earl Gray is basically the same idea as jasmine tea - flavor mediocre tea with a strong fragrance and get instant body. Tea snobs turn their noses away from such chicanery, but I find these tea quite yummy.

One thing that really bothers me about non-Asian attitude towards green teadrinking is that non-Asians people claim to do it for health reasons. Yuck! I don't know who spread that mime but that person (ergh, marketing executive) should be taken out and shot. Green tea should be savored, or at least enjoyed, on its own merits. The idea of ignorant people who go out and buy crappy green tea for vague health reasons bothers me. Those people should just go to GNC and buy some capsules.

Also -- Japanese green tea sucks. I've tried the "good" stuff and I've tried the bag stuff - they all taste off and sludgy to me. And no! This is not some anti-Japanese biase. I have the greatest admiration for the Japanese in many areas, but their tea sucks.

What moves slower? Slow food or fast food eaters?

Please leave your thoughts about fat food, slow food, fat food eater, slow food eaters, etc here.

Is trans fat an invention of the devil?

(correction: modern trans fat is the invention of Proctor & Gamble)

(correction on the correction: the process of converting liquid fat to trans fat was the work one Nobel laureate Paul Sabatier)

Let's start with Wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisco

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat

A Menu For People Who Owe $2 Million To The Bank

I've already threatened to do this before on this blog and on Casey Serin's comments...

So, what the hell does one eat when one is $2 M in debt?

1. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich, holding the peanut butter and the jelly and the bread?
2. Half a brick of ramen per meal? (mixed in with public water fountain water)
3. Army emergency rations?
4. Whatever you find in a supermarket dumpster?
5. Go to nice restaurants and sneak out afterwards?
6. Boiled weeds (see North Korean directive on food supplementation)?
7. And the old standby: shoplifting.

Wouldn't it be ironic if Casey didn't get sent to jail for fraud but for stealing a loaf of bread from Albertson's?

Your thoughts, please!

Simple Pleasures

I don't know if this is meant to be a site for the gourmand, but I thought that I'd throw one in for those of us who like to keep it simple.

But since I called the post simple pleasures, I'm going to put up a totally simple, but absolutely sinful dessert recipe.


EASY GOOEY BUTTER CAKE

1 pkg. yellow cake mix
1/2 c. butter
1 egg

GOOEY FILLING
1 (8 oz.) pkg. cream cheese softened
2 eggs
1 lb. box confectioners' sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

Mix together cake mix (just the mix, not the other ingredients called for on the box) with butter and 1 egg. Pat into an ungreased 9 x 13 inch cake pan. Cream together cream cheese, 2 eggs, powdered sugar and vanilla. Pour over cake mixture. Spreading to the edges. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes. Center will still be soft when you remove from oven. Sets as it cools. (but still remains 'gooey')

Soooooooooooo good.

To Pan Fry Commercial Frozen Chinese Dumplings

Equipment
1 flat bottom non-stick pan - 8" or 10" with a lid

ingredient
1 bag of store bought Chinese dumpling AKA goyze (at least 10-16 oz, cook as much as you can eat and return the rest to the freezer)
a small quantity of generic vegetable oil or sesame oil (approx. 1 tbsp, more if you like greasy, less if you like light)
optional - chopped chives, sesame seeds, chopped peanuts
optional - dipping condiment

Use a flat bottom non-stick pan with a lid (preferably glass). Put in oil, lay the dumplings side by side and add 1/2" to 2/3" of water (covering about half the dumpling). Turn the heat onto high until the water starts boiling, then turn to medium high (6 or 7 on a 10 setting range). Cover with lid.

The dumplings will be close to ready when all the water boils away and you start to hear sizzling sounds. Give it 1-2 minutes more to brown, then ease the whole thing onto a serving plate.

If you have an Asian grocery store nearby, I highly recommend getting a can (1 or 2 L) of sesame oil. It should cost around $10 and be much cheaper than buying bottles from TJ's. You can use it in place of olive or canola oil for most dressing/flavoring purposes. Sesame oil is also the traditional frying medium for tempura (Shizuo Tsuji recommend a 50/50 mix of sesame oil and a neutral tasting vegetable oil with a high burning point).

For dip sauce, balsamic vinegar is very good and very close to traditional Chinese dipping sauces. You dip into shallow plate/bowls. But just about anything will work (including ketchup and commercial salsa).

More Food!

Lots more investigative eating and cooking planned.

1. Photographic evidence of the elusive flash frozen Shanghai soup dumpling.
2. Testing out my latest Lee Valley order - including the in-pot egg timer.
3. Pickling okra.
4. Cooking glutinous rice.
5. Homemade sushi (w/ and w/o raw fish).
6. Dashi soup from scratch.

Still looking for my elusive sour cream apple pie recipe...I may have to substitute with other apple recipes.
What would you guys like to learn more about?

a) apple tortes
b) baked apples
c) generic apple pie
d) apple cobbler
e) other

Turducken Update

I placed an order for turducken at cajungrocer.com. It was $65 for the turducken and $24 for shipping. Soooo...definitely not something for every Thanksgiving, but it'll be an interesting food experiment. I'll write about my verdict in early December.

One possible snag. I'm actually attending a wedding out of town that weekend, so I'll be eating the leftover and will eat turducken fresh. I hope that'll only be a minor snag.

Easy Recipe - Swiss Chard

This is really easy:

1. heat up some olive oil
2. saute minced shallot or sliced garlic
3. saute a bag of swiss chard, cover with oil
4. pour in some chicken broth
5. braise for a while

It is done! All you need is a deep saute pan and a wooden spoon. You can also use crushed garlic cloves if you do not want to slice them.

Turducken

I'm thinking about buying my parents a turducken for Thanksgiving this year. Does anyone here have experience cooking or eating turducken?

Tips On Crab Mauling

Tis the season for blue crabs in the lovely Chesapeake Bay watershed. This particular delicacy is not for those with delicate sensibilities. Good crab eating requires you to buy combative live crabs and steam the crab while alive (animal rights activists would faint!).

Furthermore, eating blue crab requires fussing with a hot, scaly, spiny creature with eyes that look back at you. It requires some specialized knowledge about crab anatomy, so that you don't eat the gills or throw away the delicious roe. Most importantly, it requires infinite patience as you tease meat out of every little cavity at the rate of 1 crab every 30 minutes.

In other words, blue crab eating is an activity that my crab loving but lazy (and rather clumsy) boyfriend has completely given up on. He does not like with the violent tearing of exo-skeletons. He has no patience with extracting the little pieces of fin meat and nibbling on the legs. Blue crabs are not for him.

He prefers crab cake.

If you've never eaten blue crab, you should do some googling to start. I offer tips, but it's hard to blog about something that requires hands on instruction.

The first and most important tip on crab mauling (that is, you mauling into the crab, not vice versa) is get a big tong (at least 10" long). Do not attempt to handle by hand.

The second tip is to use warm water (100-110F) to wash the crabs. They will be much less active if they're washed in warm water.

The third tip is to pick female crabs and learn to enjoy crab roe. Americans prefer males (the fools!) but Asians will tell you that the roe is the best part of a crab.

The fourth tip is to buy crabs only between September 20 and November 30th. Don't buy crabs in the summer, they're molting and growning and often tastes watery (sometimes you get lucky and find some good eating in June, but fall brings out the really exceptional crabs).

The fifth tip is that if you get very good at peeling crabs and find a good bargain (like 99 cents a pound at Grand Market in Gaithersburg, MD), you can double bag and freeze meat and roe you pick out for up to 2 months. They're good to add to noodles, soups, and stir fry. You don't need much, one ounce of meat and roe per person is sufficient for flavor. I find this tastes much much better than canned or "fresh" pasturized crab meat.

The sixth tip is always steam your crab and don't let the crab touch water directly.

The seventh tip is to dip the crabmeat into a balsamic vinegar and minced ginger mixture (or rice vinegar + sugar + minced ginger). The Chinese say this warm mixture combats the coldness of the crabmeat. I actually eat crabs with no flavoring at all, but you should try this traditional mixture at least once.

The eighth tip is to eat crabs on top of thick layers of newspaper. Crab eating is messy and the newspaper soaks up a lot of the juices and shells. Dispose everything in a dumpster. If your trash is frequented by raccoons or alley cats, double bag and keep the bag indoors until trash day. Otherwise, they will pick the bag apart.

That's all I can think of for now. If you have any questions about eating blue crabs, please leave a comment and I'll get back to you in the comment section.

Is Eating Meat Morally Permissible?

In one word: yes.

There are people out there who claim that animals have the same rights as human beings. They then conclude that killing animals for food is unethical. They seek the eventual "liberation" of all animals.

Is this line of thinking valid in any way? Do animals have rights?

The answer should be very obvious.

I am not going to repeat any of my arguments. They have been presented by others time and time again. This article from The Ayn Rand Institute has a good analysis. It says, "Rights are ethical principles applicable only to beings capable of reason and choice."

So it seems that no rights are violated by killing animals for food, or for any other legal purpose. Can we say that eating meat is ethical? I would tend to think so.

Kitchen Tools

Do you have any kitchen tool that you can't bear to be without?

How about a kitchen tool with a high gee whiz factor?

What about a kitchen tool that just works?

Care to talk about it?

Talk About Other People's Cooking

Good restaurants? Bad restaurants? Reminiscing about mom's home cooking? Discovered an amazing flash frozen pan-Asian dumpling of mystery? Chat about it here.

Tea Eggs

Tea eggs is a classic Chinese snack food that doesn't get much exposure in the west. Basically, it's a hard boiled egg that is marinated in a mixture of tea, soy sauce, salt, and star anise. There's two schools of thinking on making a tea egg - the faster hot method or the slower cold method.

In both cases, you start by boiling 10 to 15 eggs. You can double or triple the recipe if you like tea eggs and want to make for a crowd. Hard boil the egg. (Boil in salted water) For the cold method, expert egg boilers can attempt to cook the egg until the yoke fully sets but is still creamy to taste.

Hot method:
Once the egg is cooked, take the egg out and gently crack the shell without breaking it. This breaks the shell and allow the flavors to pass through the egg membrane and penetrate the egg.

For the pot, turn the heat to medium-low (just enough to keep the pot slightly simmering) and add 1 or 2 star anise, 2 or 3 Lipton tea bags, soy sauce and salt to taste. The steeping liquid should be a bit saltier than soup. Cook for 3-4 hours. Add water occasionally to replace the evaporated liquid.

Cold method:
Crack the egg and make the infusion like in the hot method. Then put everything in a container. Cool to room temperature and then place in a fridge. The eggs should be ready in 2 or 3 days.

Bonus tip:
This comes from the best home cook in my acquaintance. Cook by either the hot or cold method, then save the liquid and eggs in a container. Then reheat everything the next day and add a little extra soy sauce and an extra tea bag. You can also add more hard boiled eggs. Hot eggs will taste better than cold eggs and eggs that has marinated for a while will taste the best.

Fried Rice

Sorry about the messy formatting on the last post. I'm still trying to work out a decent presentation format. I also plan to add pictures later to illustrate the recipes.

Making fried rice is about the easiest kind of Chinese cooking, if you already have cooled cooked rice on hand. In fact, fried rice is the perfect use for leftover Chinese takeout rice. (If you like rice or couscous a lot, you may also also consider buying something like this for cooking rice and to use as a steamer.)

Ingredients:

2-3 eggs
2 cup of cold cooked rice (either Chinese restaurant leftovers or cook your own with jasmine rice)
1 oz water
1 tbsp of oil
1-2 tbsp of soy sauce
salt to taste

optional:
1/4-1/2 cup of chopped onions or 2 green onion plants
1 cup of chopped vegetables less than 1/2" across (small broccoli florets, corn, carrots, peas, asparagus, thinly sliced mushrooms)
some cubed ham (preferably cubed proscuttio or dry cured Smithfield) or bacon (or precooked bacon bits) or precooked chicken
sesame oil
hot sauce
a few sprigs of fresh basil or chives

equipment
1 - 3 quart nonstick sauce pan with cover
1 - pair of Chinese restaurant bamboo chopsticks
1 - 1-2 quart bowl

Start by cracking the eggs into a 1-2 quart bowl. Beat the eggs lightly and add in some salt and garlic powder. Now warm up the pan and add about 1 tsp of oil and set the burner to medium high. (If you like green onions or onions, chop some up and lightly brown before adding in the eggs. Add a little more oil to adjust for the extra bulk.) Add in the eggs and scramble, breaking the egg into small pieces, until everything is fully cooked. Return the egg to the bowl.

Now add in the rest of the oil into the same pan, turn to medium high heat and add in the vegetables and/or meats. Cook for a minute or two, stirring frequently. Then add rice and continue to stir a little. Then add in the eggs. (and put the bowl in the sink, serve the cooked rice in a different bowl). Then add about 1 oz of water to the pot and soy sauce. If you have sesame oil, add a couple dashes now. Stir to everything together, taste and adjust salt, then cover and reduce heat to medium. This allows the rice and other ingredients to steam, ensuring even heating and a moist texture.

Wait 2 to 3 minutes and then check to see if the liquid is absorbed. Once that happens, lift the top lid and continue to stir. Allow the oil to cook the rice a little to add a crust. Now it's ready to serve. You can serve by cutting (with kitchen scissors) some chive or basil on the top. Feel free to add hot sauce to taste.

Baking Books

SQT asked for some baking book recommendations. I'm no expert baker but here's my experience.

Nowadays first place I'd go would be online to the Food Network and to a website called Cooking For Engineers. The latter has some of the Elton Brown flair but with a greater emphasis to testing and researching.

The CFE webmaster recommends the Bread Bible. I borrowed a copy from the local library but haven't had time to read thoroughly. I really enjoyed reading Julia Child's baking book
and I like Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything for simple recipes and clear instructions. I tried to read Fannie Farmer's baking book, but found the instructions rather difficult to follow.

One thing about all cooking books - don't buy unless you really plan to refer to it on a weekly basis. I find public libraries can supply adequate cook books for almost any occasion and often have out of print rarities. Even if you don't find the book you want in your library, check out the library's website and see if you can find a copy elsewhere. An unused cookbook is a waste fo shelf space. A few years ago I bought about 10 recipe books including the updated Joy of Cooking book, I find that I only refer to Bittman's book when I want to cook. I'll probably add a Japanese cookbook and a baking book in the future to round off my personal reference collection, but I find the public library to be my best resource if I am planning ahead for something special.

Another thing about cooking is to familiarize yourself with the ingredients. There are some cookbooks that focus on the ingredients. They're not worth buying but are good to read once over to gain more knowledge. I think the reason cooking is intimidating for many people is because at first they are not comfortable with the ingredients, the kitchen tools and the techniques. For me, once I become comfortable with an ingredient or technique, I become a much more creative cook of that ingredient.



My basic bread recipe is very simple and I know it's not artisanal bread, but I find the flavor and texture of the final product preferable to most bakery bread. To make:

You need a big plastic or metallic bowl (at least 8 quarts), I just mix a starter with 3 to 4 cups of flour and 1 or 2 tbsp of dry yeast (depending on the temperature and when I want to bake) and salt and enough water to make it soggy but not liquidity. I cover and let sit for 4 to 12 hours. If it gets too bubbly and you're not ready to cook, use a spatula and stir to let out the air.

Then I mix in enough flour to make a firm dough, let it sit for another hour or so before shaping. How wet depends on the kind of bread you like.

I usually make a very stiff basic dough because I like to mix in some nuts and oily flavoring like olive, marinated artichoke or sundried tomatoes. I find the oil and water in the additives soften the dough up. Mix in any additional ingredients before letting the dough sit prior to shaping. Taste the dough and adjust for flavor - salt and pepper or garlic or paprika can really liven up the flavor.

If you just want to make rolls and not sandwich bread, you can make rolls in small batches in small non-stick pans and bake to finish a toaster oven. Just pull a piece of dough, roughly shape and squish them against each other. Bake at 375F until light brown on the outside, spitzering a little water into the oven ever 5 minutes will help make a crustier bread. You can wrap up the rest of the bread dough into a tupperware container and refrigerate. I find they keep just fine for about a week - just shape and bring to room temperature, give a little time to rise and bake.

One final thing. I know hardcore breadbakers use wet towels for bread rising. I just lightly spritz the dough surface and cover the bread with a large pan or bowl, I find this will conserve moisture just fine and there's less of a mess at the the end.

Remember to keep a good quality long serrated knife for cutting bread. It doesn't have to be a bread knife, but a flat edge won't give you the necessary sawing action needed to cut breads and cakes. If you haven't bought a knife for this purpose, I recommend a Forscher or an Ikea branded 6"-8.5" serrated chef's knife. This would be a good sandwich knife that excel for tomatoes and cooked meats, and does not take up nearly as much space as the traditional 10" bread knife.

Intro

This blog is intended to be a repository of my more successful cooking endeavors. Right now, that's a pretty small number. I can make edible yeast bread, saute mushrooms, cut up pineapples, marinate some eggs and make the odd fresh pickle. I'm borrowing heavily from the local library so hopefully I'll have better recipes up pretty soon.

(I'm also able to make French donuts and rice crispy treats in very large batches. But that's our secret.)