eG Foodblog: therese - Hey, wanna play a game?

[*Deborah*]

Oh, those Green Tea Mousse Pocky are right up there on my hit parade.

[therese]

Oh, those Green Tea Mousse Pocky are right up there on my hit parade.

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They were lovely.

[therese]

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Meant to give credit to melonpan for this purchase. She (he?) describes making shikhye from scratch on the Elsewhere in Asia forum. Not that I was not inspired to make it myself, as it looks like rather a lot of work, but rather to purchase a bottle (after tasting it---it was featured at the Asian Food Festival extravaganza yesterday).

[chefzadi]

Those look like the chewy bits usually served on top of patbingsu - ice and fruit and chewy bits served with red beans during the summer. McDonalds always did a nice one with vanilla soft serve, as I recall. Does anyone know their official name? Zenkimchi? Are you out there?

They were always multi-coloured when I got them, though.

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the package says chap ssal bingsu dduk. I asked my 7 year old to read the package.

[therese]

the package says chap ssal bingsu dduk. I asked my 7 year old to read the package. 

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Those 7 year olds can come in pretty handy.

Does that include a brand name? Can she manage an approximate word by word translation?

[mochihead]

the package says chap ssal bingsu dduk. I asked my 7 year old to read the package. 

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Those 7 year olds can come in pretty handy.

Does that include a brand name? Can she manage an approximate word by word translation?

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It looks like what the Japanese call mochi - pounded sticky sweet rice.

[chefzadi]

the package says chap ssal bingsu dduk. I asked my 7 year old to read the package. 

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Those 7 year olds can come in pretty handy.

Does that include a brand name? Can she manage an approximate word by word translation?

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chap (sticky) ssal (rice) bingsu (shave ice thing) dduk (cake, as in rice cake)

In the little square it says "hwa gwa banhg" probably the brand/company name.

[therese]

Dinner quandary ahead.

I was planning on grilling corn on the cob and okra and Vidalia onions and eggplant, and serving it all with tomato and basil salad. Not only would this have been a great means of processing the contents of my fridge, but I'd have leftovers for lunch this week.

Unfortunately my husband is presently lying supine on the floor of the kitchen, resting up before returning to finish our two-thirds stained deck. So not only will the grill not be back in service in time, but the entire outside smells like a solvent factory.

Documentation of the work in progress:

Husband has just cast a vote for "take out." I don't think he cares too much what sort of take out. Hmm, maybe I could get him to eat that nasty potato salad he brought home from the Publix the other night. Oh, hold it, that wouldn't be very nice, would it?

[slbunge]

Vidalia onions have changed in appearance since I first saw them (probably 20 years ago). Back then they were they were virtually always pretty small, and "flatter" than usual onions, so there was much less yield of usable onion per item and per pound. They also went bad much more quickly than other onions.

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Is this due to better genetics? Has it come at the expense of flavor?

In the midwest, a number of boutique organic farms produce a variety that is often called 'cipollini' that is very similar to what you describe as the Vidalias from years ago. Flat and small with a very nice round sweet flavor. Excellent grilled. They are most often sold field fresh as opposed to storage onions.

As for rhubarb, what is the season for rhubarb in the south?

Blog on. Good stuff in here.

Edit: spelling

Edited May 29, 2006 by slbunge (log)

[therese]

A topic that comes up pretty frequently on eG is yogurt, specifically the difference between European (particularly Greek) and U.S. yogurts. The biggest difference, I think, is that U.S. yogurts generally have added gelatin or other "stiffeners" that give them a creamier texture. The added gelatin will bind up some of the water that yogurt otherwise gives up.

The other way of dealing with extra water is to drain it, and Total Greek yogurt is a good example of this type product.

I tend to prefer U.S. style yogurt for sweet applications, and Greek-style drained yogurt for savory ones. I also like goats milk and sheeps milk yogurt for savory things. I don't like commercially-flavored yogurts, and make my own.

Anyway, I've generally got two different sorts of plain, fat free yogurt on hand:

Apart from the differences listed above (as well as price, packaging, name brand, provenance, and specific bacterial cultures), there's something else about these two yogurts that's different. What is it?

[therese]

Vidalia onions have changed in appearance since I first saw them (probably 20 years ago). Back then they were they were virtually always pretty small, and "flatter" than usual onions, so there was much less yield of usable onion per item and per pound. They also went bad much more quickly than other onions.

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Is this due to better genetics? Has it come at the expense of flavor?

In the midwest, a number of boutique organic farms produce a variety that is often called 'cipollini' that is very similar to what you describe as the Vidalias from years ago. Flat and small with a very nice round sweet flavor. Excellent grilled. They are most often sold field fresh as opposed to storage onions.

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I don't know if "better" is quite the term, and I'm not in a position to say whether the Vidalias today are as good as the Vidalias from way back when. I don't eat raw onions too frequently, and that's where the difference will be the most marked. The term "Vidalia" basically means that the onion is grown in a particular part of Georgia, so there's an element of "terroir" involved.

I do know that Vidalias were seen as pretty odd back when they were first being shipped. A friend of mine is a vegetable broker (yes, a vegetable broker) and he apparently had trouble with a load of them being turned away by Canadian ag inspectors who thought there was something wrong with them.

[therese]

As for rhubarb, what is the season for rhubarb in the south?

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There isn't one, at least not once you get out of the mountains. We're in the piedmont of the Appalachians, literally right at the edge, with the northern suburbs of Atlanta being hillier than the southern ones. My grandmother (whose farm was in Appalachia proper, in the Blue Ridge of Virginia) could grow it, but farmers I've talked to here at the Morningside Market never seem to have it and say that it doesn't grow well.

The rhubarb in my picture was purchased at DFM, labeled as organic, from California.

[therese]

Dinner quandary solved by not entirely satisfactory compromise involving picking up daughter from friend's house (where she'd already dined) and having her run into Panera buy some of the worst bread on the face of the earth. Panera does have a decent sourdough, but their French baguette is atrocious, and so although my daughter had been instructed to buy sourdough she had to make do with French.

This was served with pate (of undistinguished origin), taramosalata (similarly undistinguished), and tomato and arugula salad.

Oh, and remember the potato salad from Publix? I didn't have to offer it to my husband (and thereby feel cruel), he asked for it. So it all worked out very nicely.

Hideous work day tomorrow, so I'm hitting the hay early, but I'll leave you with a trivia question:

The first time I ever heard the word arugula was in the context of a fairy tale. Which one was it?

[Gifted Gourmet]

The first time I ever heard the word arugula was in the context of a fairy tale. Which one was it?

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Probably Rapunzel .. or something Italian, I would imagine ...

A sidebar here: If you don't know about Therese and her love of intricate trivia, which have been known to keep me up nights, a caveat here: she never asks a question which doesn't have deep multi-level learning involved .. you will always learn from her trivia ... so, get the Ambien, here she comes again!

[Megan Blocker]

The first time I ever heard the word arugula was in the context of a fairy tale. Which one was it?

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Rapunzel!!!

ETA: I just whipped out my annotated volume of fairy tales, and I don't see arugula mentioned, though, obviously, rapunzel is mentioned at length. From the annotation (by Maria Tatar):

...rapunzel, or rampion, is an autogamous plant, one that can fertilize itself.  Furthermore, it has a column that splits in two if not fertilized, and the "halves will curl like braids or coils on a maiden's head, and this will being the female stigmatic tissue into contact with the male pollen on the exterior surface of the column."  Most versions of the story give the girl the name of a savory herb.

Or, from "Into the Woods," by Stephen Sondheim:

'Cause I caught him in the autumn

In my garden one night!

He was robbing me,

Raping me,

Rooting through my rutabaga,

Raiding my arugula and

Ripping up my rampion...

Edited May 30, 2006 by Megan Blocker (log)

[ldenney]

Therese

Earlier you mentioned being asked to stop taking photos in a food market. I know this happens from time to time, but I have never been entirely clear as to why. Is the answer obvious to everyone else and I am missing something? Does it have to do with the competition or what?

Lee

[mona]

I know what the dried stuff on the right is called in Cantonese...it is something from a young bamboo shoot, I believe. It's one of my favourite vegetables! It has a really "soong" (crunchy?) texture when you bite into it, even though it's soft and holds a lot of sauce because it's so porous.

And yes, the one of the left is abalone.

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Help identifying the other items I photographed would be welcome:

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I can try...the first one is "sert yee" (snow fungus in English?), the second one I see all the time but I don't remember what it is. I was going to guess shark fin but the pieces look too small. The third is just Chinese dried black mushrooms...you use them in soup or you can braise them in sauce and serve them on a bed of Chinese greens, and the fourth one I'm also not quite sure about, but it looks ike "fish maw" or "fa gao" in Cantonese (fish stomach? fish bladder?) and it's used in soup. Fish maw soup is one of my favourite Chinese soups, but only if it's of excellent quality. I like it even more than shark fin.

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Is the second one fu chuk (sp)? It's like sheets of dried tofu-ish. Things.

[MarketStEl]

Anyway, I've generally got two different sorts of plain, fat free yogurt on hand:

Apart from the differences listed above (as well as price, packaging, name brand, provenance, and specific bacterial cultures), there's something else about these two yogurts that's different. What is it?

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Okay, here's my guess:

The American Stonyfield Farm yogurt has added fiber?

I don't associate dairy products with dietary fiber usually.

Shifting gears to Vidalia onions:

Would the reason they used to go bad faster have anything to do with their high moisture content? I note that they go bad faster than regular onions still.

It seems to me that Vidalias are still as sweet as ever, but there is certainly more competition in the category they once had to themselves. When Vidalias go out of season, produce bins in Philadelphia quickly fill with "Mayan Sweets" grown in either Central America or Peru, I forget which. And if there aren't Mayan Sweets on sale, someone has Texas 1015s.

Great trivia questions, BTW. I need to pick up more of what I see at the H-Mart.

Now, however, I'm curious about something else:

I'm following an Atlantan's gastronomic adventures and I have yet to see anything aside from Vidalia onions and rhubarb that I would consider traditionally Southern. What happened to all that?

[miladyinsanity]

I know what the dried stuff on the right is called in Cantonese...it is something from a young bamboo shoot, I believe. It's one of my favourite vegetables! It has a really "soong" (crunchy?) texture when you bite into it, even though it's soft and holds a lot of sauce because it's so porous.

And yes, the one of the left is abalone.

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Help identifying the other items I photographed would be welcome:

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I can try...the first one is "sert yee" (snow fungus in English?), the second one I see all the time but I don't remember what it is. I was going to guess shark fin but the pieces look too small. The third is just Chinese dried black mushrooms...you use them in soup or you can braise them in sauce and serve them on a bed of Chinese greens, and the fourth one I'm also not quite sure about, but it looks ike "fish maw" or "fa gao" in Cantonese (fish stomach? fish bladder?) and it's used in soup. Fish maw soup is one of my favourite Chinese soups, but only if it's of excellent quality. I like it even more than shark fin.

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Is the second one fu chuk (sp)? It's like sheets of dried tofu-ish. Things.

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I know what you are talking about, but I don't think it is. Foo Chuk is usually more crinkly.

I think it's snow fungus and fish maw too.

Hey therese!

Is this one of the spongy desserts? I noticed you got the daikon cakes as well. Did they have a sautee cart for those and some of the other dumplings? What was in the egg roll sprinkled with sesame seeds?

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That's Chestnut cake, the fried one. You can get it steamed too.

[Ling]

I know what you are talking about, but I don't think it is. Foo Chuk is usually more crinkly.

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Yeah....it's not 'foo jook' for sure. It's not 'foo pay' either, as those come in flat rectangular sheets. Same colour though.

[Pan]

Susan - I have been making osso buco lately - http://cookingdownunder.com/articles/2006/225.htm -  and no one at my table will touch the marrow (me included).  Gross is probably the word I would use for it. Bit late to post it to you, I guess 

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It is a weird combination of fatty and gelatinous, I agree. And so I find it all the more bizarre that one of my children (my son, who is 15) loves it, loves it so much he'll ask for mine and his dad's, and is likely one of the very few diners under 21 to have ever asked for a marrow spoon when we dined at Rules in London a couple of years ago.

It's possible that I may have gone a bit overboard in exposing my children to interesting foods.

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My father made osso buco from time to time when I was a kid, and we always considered it a treat.

[Pan]

I think the bamboo dried thing that Lorna described is bamboo pith, actually a fungus, I believe.

Stonyfield Farm has either pectin or corn starch in it, I think?

I would have never guessed those things were rice cakes. They looked like candied melon to me.

[therese]

Therese

Earlier you mentioned being asked to stop taking photos in a food market.  I know this happens from time to time, but I have never been entirely clear as to why.  Is the answer obvious to everyone else and I am missing something?  Does it have to do with the competition or what? 

Lee

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I really don't know, and it might be different reasons in different places. DFM has historically used staff that might have some immigration issues and so might be camera shy, but I think it's mostly the whole "industrial espionage" issue.

[therese]

The American Stonyfield Farm yogurt has added fiber?

I don't associate dairy products with dietary fiber usually.

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Inulin and pectin are both added to Stoneyfield. I'm pretty sure that pectin's used in a number of U.S. yogurts (as a gelling agent, although it's also a dietary fiber), but inulin's unique (the last time I checked, that is).

Why does Stoneyfield add inulin to its yogurt?

I'm following an Atlantan's gastronomic adventures and I have yet to see anything aside from Vidalia onions and rhubarb that I would consider traditionally Southern. What happened to all that?

The week is young.

[therese]

That's Chestnut cake, the fried one. You can get it steamed too.

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This one is chestnut cake? Very gelatinous, and unless the chestnuts in question are water chestnuts a very curious texture to the little bits as well, much more like apple or firm pear than chestnut.

The outside texture seems to result from it having been rolled in something to keep the pieces from sticking together, not from frying.