mizducky

Heh. This may be yet another reason for my lifelong passion for Asian cuisine. When I was a kid, getting Chinese takeout was one of my family's favorite fun food dinners, so from a very young age I had a really positive mental association with that style of food. My family also did the occasional grazing meal, usually over the weekend--pull all the odds and ends of deli meats and cheeses out of the fridge, augment with bread, crackers, pickles, maybe a sliced onion and/or tomato, and assemble as each person sees fit. These days, it's not so much guilt I have to deal with, as physics -- the calories have to wind up somewhere, after all, and if I don't burn 'em off, where they wind up is my butt. But I've still made room for a few free-snacking indulgences here and there. And like I said, I think of Asian cuisines as fun food, so all I have to do is cook myself a big batch of mapo tofu and I can have all the food fun I want.

Y'know, I saw this topic get bumped back up, and figured the food I would have to be was a big Italian hoagy, the kind packed with every type of salumi in the shop and annointed with really good olive oil. Then I started wondering if I hadn't posted in this topic previously, looked back ... and discovered I had previously desired to be a Carnegie Deli-style overstuffed sandwich. Hey, at least I'm consistent! Well, sort of, anyway ...

Thanks for the compliment. As for pork belly, I've never made it like that before, but it seems strange to me that you would slice it up before simmering, since you'd think it would shrink a whole lot during cooking. Also, make sure you're gently simmering it and not boiling. Just those few degrees can make a difference. ← Yeah, I was going to say, from my pork belly experiments so far, that it's much easier to control the texture if you keep the meat in large pieces and wait to slice it thinly until after it's cooked. And yeah, you need to simmer it super low-and-slow. In fact, I've gotten my best results yet using a crockpot on its lowest setting, just letting the stuff barely simmer for at least 8 hours/overnight. That "squeaky" texture of the meat you reported from your most recent experiment sounds to me like the meat wound up overcooked--it may sound paradoxical, but even though you're simmering in liquid, you can still dry out and toughen the meat by simmering at too high a heat for too long, as that (and the salty broth) draws too much moisture from the meat and beats up too much on the protein. I've learned for best results to get a really thick piece with the skin on, preferably one that has rib bones in it. It's really easy to slide the bones out once the meat is finished cooking. Use a cooking utensil in which you can keep the meat flat, in one layer. I've seen some recipes saying to keep it skin-side up, and some skin-side down; but whatever you do, don't do what I did once and put a couple of layers of meat on top of each other because then the skin will stick to the next layer and get all wrecked--still tastes great, but doesn't look anywhere near as pretty. I have had really excellent results starting from this recipe, but with lots of changes: --instead of cutting the meat into smallish chunks, I cut it into big strips about 2-3 inches wide; once it's cooked and cooled a bit , I'll then cut those strips into thin slices. --because the pieces of meat are larger, I cook them for longer--but still really really low (that's where the crockpot comes in so handy) --instead of all light soy sauce, I do 1/4 cup each of light and dark soy sauce; --instead of brown sugar, I use the Chinese rock sugar. --Oh yeah, and I usually don't bother to make the sauce--instead I save the broth for use in other recipes. Heh, almost a different recipe by the time I've monkeyed with all that, huh? But my pork belly has gotten the taste-tester's seal of approval from someone who grew up eating the stuff, so I must be doing something right!

When I was a kid in the New York metro area, the first Jersey truck farm sweet corn of the season was a hugely anticipated event in my family. Ridiculously sweet and delicious butter-and-sugar corn. Yum! First edible tomatoes out of my dad's garden each year was also an event ... but only because he had to be the most haphazard gardener on the planet. What didn't get eaten by the local woodchucks would stay green on the vine an inordinately long time. And then there were all the wild raspberry bushes in the woods and brushy places around my home. I'd be eyeing those bushes for weeks, waiting for the berries to go ripe--if you waited too long, the birds would beat you to them. These days, I still eagerly await the first blueberries of the season to turn up in the market. I can inhale 'em by the pint without blinking an eye. Oh yeah, and going now from the sublime to the ridiculous ... it is now the season when I can acquire the key ingredient for these stunning little morsels ...

Hee. I now feel totally vindicated, as I almost never have remembered to soak beans before cooking, and have very seldom bothered to do the quickie-shortcut business with bringing the beans to a boil in water and then letting them sit for an hour before proceeding. That said, I have previously whined in other topics about how I don't care for the flavor of most beans I cook. Having read this topic, I'm now thinking that my usual methods of cooking beans--stovetop, either in a regular pot or a pressure-cooker--might be beating up on them too harshly, and this gentle low-and-slow oven method (or crockpot equivalent) might serve me better. Yet another cooking experiment to add to the list ...

Saba nigiri, yum! (Obligatory on-topic comment: I understand that there is such a thing as sardine (iwashi) nigiri, though I've not ever had it.)

Doddie, thanks so much for showing us your world and your food. My brain is now totally obsessed with learning how to cook more Filipino and Korean dishes. We've got a huge Filipino community here in the San Diego area, and I've already made some exploratory visits into their neighborhoods, but now I've got to plan a major expedition. So many new foods, so little time ...

Eggplant all on its own is admittedly not a "big flavor" item. It does have a mild subtle flavor that I like. But yeah, I do prefer piling a lot of flavor on the (relatively) blank canvas. What the eggplant contributes is texture. Or more accurately textures. You can get an especially wide variety of different mouthfeels out of it depending on how you treat it, and that's lots of fun to play with, and to eat.

It's been my experience also that the Asian varieties of eggplant seem to run less bitter on average than the big bulbous Euro-American variety. I don't necessarily get the littlest ones--I tend to go for the long skinny ones. Their skins also tend to be much more tender and mild-flavored than the Euro ones. I love to put unpeeled chunks of it into soups and stews. I love all sorts of eggplant dishes--Italian, Chinese, Indian, Mediterranean/Middle Eastern, you name it--but I think my all-time favorite to make is ratatouille. The first batch of the summer is an annual personal kitchen rite with me. I love how the eggplant absorbs all the tomato/garlic/basil flavors and gets so succulent. Following a tip from Alton Brown, when I roast a whole (Euro) eggplant all the way to super-soft (usually to make baba ghanoush), I now drain it in a colander for awhile after I've gotten it out of its skin. That does seem to drain away a lot of bitter juices that were liberated by the roasting process. Alton also had a method for getting a soft squishy whole cooked eggplant out of its skin that I found pretty neat, if not quite as easy as he made it look: you wrap the eggplant in plastic wrap, cut off the 'plant's green cap, and then use the plastic wrap to help you squeeze the eggplant's pulp out of its skin like toothpaste from a tube.

I too have been quiet simply because I was too busy reading and enjoying to stop and write. Um, and work was also kind of interfering. But now that I've made it to the weekend, I can take a little time to say "bravo!" And that, yeah, I've been drooling too. I'm majorly grateful for this window into everyday Korean and Filipino food and culture you're giving us. Not to mention the style and thoroughness with which you're doing it. A few days ago, your blog inspired me to take a whack at making a kong namul type dish. I don't know enough to say how far from authentic my version was, but I had a bunch of fun. P.S. Love your childhood poem. That's so fabulous that you still have the original. I was a grade school poet too. Alas, the little diary I used to write in disappeared long ago.

Okay, so using the flavoring packet is the commonly done thing. I had used a packet the one time I've made sinigang so far, and it's nice to know I was on the right track there. So does anyone still start with the tamarind? I've got a block of pulp in my pantry and was thinking of doing something yummy with it ... What are some other common combinations of ingredients that recur in sinigang makings? P.S. Your kids just make me go "awwwwwwww ... " with every photo.

I couldn't resist re-posting all three of these photos. They are a collective thing of beauty. Wishing I could get a sample of all thirty-some ... I'd love to learn more about banchan, if you have time to fit that in, please.

Cool! Korean and Filipino are two cuisines that fascinate me and that I want to learn more about. Blog on, o goddess of domesticity!

The Joan Nathan article linked to by Chris Amirault in the initial post gives some background on the fava bean vs. garbanzo bean preferences in felafel, including one bit of data I didn't know about before: Repeating the link to that article (which also includes a recipe): clickie If I find some time to do some felafel experiments, I will probably be one of the baked-not-fried guinea pigs. I'll have to finally break down and get myself a food processor, though. (Yep--I don't currently own a food processor. The Foodie Police are knocking at my door right now. )

Thank you, Susan, for all your terrific blog-wrangling!

Wow. That was pretty damn intense. And moving.

Ah Leung, it's been a pleasure to have you hold forth for a full week, and to get a more in-depth glimpse into your culture and history, as well as the Sacramento scene. Many thanks for a terrific blog, on top of all the wonderful teaching and sharing you've been doing over in the China forum. Wishing you and your family a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year! /the duck

About sugar in Coca-Cola--I too had heard the "conspiracy theory" explanation for the whole New Coke weirdness. It cracks me up. I have also heard that Coke bottled in Mexico is still made with sugar rather than corn syrup. I wouldn't know, as I'm a lifelong drinker of diet soda. (Nobody throw anything at me! ) About the dot-com home grocery delivery services--sigh. I remember Homegrocer.com--they were huge in Seattle for awhile. I thought their little trucks with the big golden peach logo were brilliant. I don't know what their business model was, but they actually seemed to be making a go of it. Then they sold to another company that had home grocery delivery businesses in another city or two, and the goal of going multi-city ... and then the dot-com bubble burst and the whole thing went tires-up. Pity. Homegrocer actually supplied dependably decent basic produce--I could at least order basics like onions and carrots from them without fear. But the real beauty part was using them for heavier groceries. Especially when I was in a lot crappier physical shape than I am now, there was just something so lovely about having someone else haul a whole load of bottles of pop and cans of tomatoes and bags of cat litter into your home for you.

There's a Japanese-run fish and chips shop I know of in San Diego which is also very good. They make battered fried zuchini that is to die for. I definitely think the tempura tradition is at work here--somebody in that kitchen really knows what they're doing with a fryolator. You know, I too have a long-standing pipedream to get an RV and hit the road. Myself, I was contemplating a much more modest vehicle--more likely one of those truck insert campers. But the intent was similar--head cross-country and do foodie stuff. Along with a whole bunch of other stuff, of course ... hey, we could have one of those RV camping jamborees!

I loved those gold coins, too! My parents used to pack the coins in our Christmas stockings, along with an orange in the toe, a Mad magazine, a nutcracker, and an assortment of unshelled nuts - usually walnuts, Brazil nuts, almonds, and hazelnuts. They would hang the stocking on our bedroom door after we went to sleep. I think they wanted us to stay occupied as long as possible Christmas morning. ← Heh. Similar chocolate coins also turn up as Hannukah gelt ... only embossed with Stars of David and Hebrew instead of Chinese glyphs and characters. Yet another Jewish/Chinese connection! I've been seeing the piles of sweets and other red/gold-wrapped CNY food gifts at my local Asian grocery stores for weeks now. They fascinated me, even though I'm not much of a sweets person either--plus my food regimen makes sweets a very rare indulgence anyway. Still, I've been extremely curious as to how they taste. Maybe I'll buy a really small sampler (do they typically do post-holiday clearance sales of this kind of stuff?) and give any extra away to some willing victim.

I'm far from a flowering plant expert, but those look very much like some kind of jonquil/daffodil/narcissus relative. A little creative Googling turned up this flowering plant -- is this the right one?

Learning new stuff already! Ah Leung, I notice that, unlike in other recipes, here you didn't soak the dried shrimp before cooking them. Do they plump up a bit when fried without rehydrating? Or get crunchier? I just adore all the dried ingredients that are part of Asian cuisines. The flavors are more intense and the textures are chewier than their fresh counterparts, which makes them much more interesting to cook with, let alone to eat. My budget loves their low prices, especially considering how big a volume of food they reconstitute to--and then there's the much longer shelf life. Plus I feel so healthy eating them!

Best wishes for the New Year, Ah Leung! As another huge fan of your pictorials, I'm really pleased to see you blogging. And I'm so glad you're giving us all the cultural background too. Looking forward to a terrific week of food! P.S. I'm a foodie and a technogeek--does two out of three count for anything?

Caught up at last--whew! Really digging the New York vibe, Megan. And Daniel--you're a wild man.

Right on. I've wound up evolving a lot of the same habits as I've been doing my weight loss trip, and it really does help prevent unnecessary temptation. Because I do a lot of freelance work out of my home, grocery shopping is a welcome chore, because it gets me out of the house for some fresh air and human contact. I keep the bill down as well as the interest up by hitting a circuit of ethnic markets. I have a general mental list--"need some protein, some veg, some fruit ... " -- yeah, really eliminates a lot, huh? I have learned to always include a "legal" goodie or two with which to distract the Lizard Brain in case of post-shopping munchies (berries in season; raw mushrooms; salsa; really good pickles, etc.). And yes, I have learned the hard way that there are certain levels of hunger at which I have no business being anywhere near a food store.