Category Archives: Kitchen experiments

An extremely wordy post about date flakes.

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Wow. Three weeks flies by pretty quickly. I’m drop­ping back in again, with the hopes that you haven’t totally lost faith in me and my increasingly-sporadic rambles.

But the excit­ing thing is, in my absence from blog­ging, I’ve devel­oped so much (SO MUCH!) that I want to share on this blog, rang­ing every­where from pack out antic­i­pa­tion, to new work projects, to recent trips across the states, to upcom­ing trip ideas, to new ideas in gen­eral. Excuse this lit­tle bit of word vomit, I took one of these this morn­ing. So now, where does one start?

shields date flakes

I know, let’s start at the begin­ning. Some­times the begin­ning means at the header of a page, some­times it means at a marked start­ing line, but today, my begin­ning is start­ing with break­fast — as many of your morn­ings do too, I gather. (Cau­tion: If you’re not into wordi­ness right now, I’d sug­gest you skip to the bot­tom, because admit­tedly, this is a very long entry with a lot of fluff in the middle).

Every morn­ing I wake up hun­gry– this is a staid fact in my life– which means I have some assem­blance of a break­fast every morn­ing. It’s usu­ally more sim­ple than any­thing fancy, mean­ing that I gen­er­ally avoid turn­ing on the stove to make break­fast. I make my slice of toast, or juice, or bowl of oat­meal, and then eat it, in front of my com­puter, simul­ta­ne­ously check­ing emails and let­ting my mind wan­der to things such as the break­fast rou­tines of other peo­ple. You see, it’s a bit of a yearn­ing of mine to have the same break­fast every morn­ing, like many of you claim to do. Fresh yogurt and home­made gra­nola with beau­ti­ful fruits every morn­ing is the pre­ferred sta­ple, but I’d get down with a slice of hearty-grained toast with peanut but­ter too, and seri­ously even just half a grape­fruit every morn­ing. As long as it’s every morn­ing. Though I so des­per­ately want for one of these rou­tines, and have tried so hard in the past for weeks at a time to turn myself into an everyday-same-breakfast-er, I’m never com­mit­tal enough, nor sure enough, nor deci­sive enough, nor have planned ahead enough, to have one sin­gle item for break­fast every day. It really is one of my desired goals though, and there — I just shared with the world one of my embar­rass­ingly super­flous, and highly unnec­es­sary goals in my life.

date flakes- in the bag

Recently part of my break­fast has been a green juice, which has been made semi-routine-ish thanks to the addi­tion of our shiny new *expen­sive* blender. And inter­spersed here and there, par­tic­u­larly if it’s cold and dreary out, I’ll heat up a big bowl of oats. If you too like to encounter a bowl of steam­ing hot oat­meal in front of your face in the AM, I am highly sug­gest­ing the addi­tion of date flakes, or date crys­tals. The name date flakes sounds a bit gross, and look just slightly less so, but I promise you they add a world of fla­vor and com­plex­ity to an oth­er­wise sim­ple bowl of hot oats.

And here, is where the point of this blog post actu­ally starts (I warned you ear­lier of wordi­ness, so you can’t fault me for that now).

I first tasted date flakes in Palm Springs, where date flakes have been a rag­ing fad since the 60’s. By now, it can be stated they have out­run their sta­tus as a fad and are turn­ing more into a local sta­ple, some­thing for tourists to seek out should they find them­selves in the Cal­i­for­nia desert. In Palm Springs, where a date indus­try has cre­ated a name for itself, date flakes are mostly used in hybrid milk­shakes, or rather, frozen-yogurt health shakes cre­ated from the hippie-bohemian types that tend to fre­quent Palm Springs.

After con­sum­ing one of the afore­men­tioned date shakes, I told myself I would go home and make a date shake every day to sat­isfy my sweet tooth. How­ever the act of pur­chas­ing and drink­ing a date shake in Palm Springs and mak­ing a date shake in your blender at home, some­how, some­where, presents a large gap of dis­co­nu­ity, where your date shake at home tastes noth­ing like the one you had in Palm Springs. This phe­nom­ena hap­pens often with ham­burg­ers and hot dogs, as well as with milk­shakes in gen­eral, and some­times Chi­nese Food and other types of eth­nic foods.

Which leaves you with a lot of date flakes you antic­i­pated on mak­ing shakes for in your pantry, to be used now for what.…?

date flakes - in the hand

The answer is oat­meal. I pre­vi­ously would always add brown sugar in my oat­meal, but this has since changed. Date flakes are hard and crunchy out of the bag, but when heated in oat­meal become melted and soft and become one with the oats (yes, I just said “become one with oats”). They add a height­ened com­plex­ity of sweet­ness that plan old sugar or honey does not, and since they’re nat­ural, they’re infi­nitely health­ier than processed sugar.

I’m excited to try to sprin­kle these date flakes into a banana or zuc­chini bread WHEN I GET AN OVEN AGAIN, but in the mean­time, these lit­tle can­died pieces of dates are absolute heaven in my semi-routine break­fast bowls of oat­meal. Shield’s Date Gar­den is one of the more famous com­pa­nies who sell date flakes out of the Palm Springs area (and who also offer online order­ing), but any other brand you might find would prob­a­bly be fine. I’ve yet to ever see these at any Whole Foods or health store on the East Coast, so I’d rec­om­mend order­ing online. Also, sorry for that photo of my extremely dry hands. Win­ter here in DC is killer.

Oat­meal with date flakes

  • 1/2 cup old fash­ioned oats
  • 3/4 cup — 1 cup water
  • 2 tsp date flakes
  • accom­pa­ni­ments: blue­ber­ries, peaches, and/or wal­nuts, cashew nut milk or soy millk.
  1. Rinse oats once under cold water and drain. Add up to 1 cup water. Heat in microwave for 1 minute, then add date flakes. Heat for another 1 minute, watch­ing care­fully as the oats will have a ten­dency to over­flow (if it does, take the bowl out and stir, then con­tinue heating).
  2. Add accom­pa­ni­ments as desired. If you’re feel­ing crazy, add a pinch of salt to your oatmeal!

Shields Date Flakes - closeup

I’m also excited because date flakes and oat­meal with soy milk fits into my plan to go Gluten Free for a few weeks. I’m telling you, I’ve got a lot to say since I’ve missed blog­ging for a few weeks. But there’s more research and plan­ning that needs to be done for that, so for now we’ll leave it as yet another silly and super­flu­ous goal I’m set­ting in my life.

Smoked Tofu Stir Fry

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A ver­sion of this arti­cle will be pop­ping up over on Hon­est Cook­ing in a few days. But I couldn’t resist shar­ing it here, first!!

smoked tofu stir fry recipe

Sev­eral months ago, while in China, I waxed poetic about the virtues of good, smoked, baked tofu. I shared an excel­lent recipe for tofu stir fry over on Hon­est Cook­ing– it was easy, tasty, fast, and fresh.

Now I’m back in the U.S., and the ideas of easy, tasty, fast, and fresh food can be found EVERYWHERE around me. I’m elated!

smoked tofu_top view

Since I’ve got­ten a job over at Union Mar­ket, I’ve found myself exposed to a num­ber of folks who are bring­ing back the arti­san food­ways of yes­ter­year. From farm­house dairies, to home­made pre­serves, to in-house cur­ing of meats, to fam­ily oys­ter farms and local bak­eries, small busi­ness have come for­ward to pro­vide and pro­mote a small scale pro­duc­tion of qual­ity, local, and tasty pro­vi­sions. And this is not just hap­pen­ing at my local mar­ket, but all over the city, too. In fact, it’s hap­pen­ing in cities all over the U.S..

But back to the offer­ings at Union Mar­ket: Neopol Smok­ery is part of this won­der­ful arti­sanal move­ment. Based in Bal­ti­more, Mary­land, their pro­vi­sions fea­ture a vari­ety of smoked fish, but also extend to smoked spices, herbs, and most intrigu­ing to me — smoked tofu.

smoked tofu+cross sections

I brought a cube of Neopol’s smoked tofu home with me last week­end. This isn’t your typ­i­cal, store-bought, mild-flavored, densely packed smoked tofu. No, it’s a grill-marked, heav­ily scented, rich and smoky tofu, weighty, but pil­lowy and then firm, all at the same time. Slic­ing off a raw piece at home, I deemed the intense smok­i­ness beck­on­ing to be accom­pa­nied by other earthy, umami-rich ingre­di­ents such as mush­rooms and leeks. The tofu, some­what bland on its own, desired a kick of fla­vors that could eas­ily be lent from soy, gin­ger, and mirin.

leeks, ginger, and mushrooms

Now, both as a writer and a cook, I shoot for vari­ety in my work. But some­times, when I come across some­thing so good and so fresh and made with some much love and care, vari­ety just gets pushed to the side­lines. So here it is, another recipe for a smoked tofu stir fry.

**For all my friends who have got a smoker in your back­yard, I encour­age you to try mak­ing your own smoked tofu. I know not every­one has access to Neopol’s amaz­ing trea­sures. Of course, the store-bought stuff is a fine enough substitute.…and that’s not said with any amount of snuff or anything…

tofu stir fry with leeks and mushrooms

Fresh Smoked Tofu Stir Fry

Ingre­di­ents
  • 1 medium leek, greens and whites, chopped
  • 1 clove gar­lic, minced
  • 1 cube smoked tofu, approx 8 oz., thinly sliced
  • 4 oz. mush­rooms, any vari­ety (crem­ini & hen-of-the-woods used here), chopped/sliced into small pieces
  • 2 Tbsp. mirin
  • 1 Tbsp. soy sauce
  • 1 Tbsp. sesame oil
  • 1 small nub gin­ger, finely minced (approx 1/2 tsp)
  • 6 oz. ground turkey
Direc­tions
  1. Heat a bit of veg­etable oil over high heat on a large skil­let or wok. When oil is hot, add gar­lic and leeks. Sauté for 3–5 min­utes, or until leeks are soft.
  2. Lower heat slightly to medium high. Add tofu and mush­rooms. Let cook for 3–5 min­utes, turn­ing occa­sion­ally to sauté. Don’t stir too vig­or­ously, or the tofu will break up. You want the tofu to brown on the sides and the mush­rooms to become soft.
  3. Mix the mirin, soy sauce, sesame oil, and gin­ger in a small bowl. Add to the stir fry, and sautee. Add the ground turkey, and cook until turkey is well done, approx 5 more minutes.
  4. Serve, hot, accom­pa­nied by rice.
Notes
If you love spicy fare, this dish would do well with the addi­tion of a cou­ple of chili pep­pers or a tea­spoon of hot sauce.
Yield: 2–3 serv­ings, as a main dish

Za’atar

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Have you ever expe­ri­enced the feel­ing where you just know you’ll like some­thing, even before you try it? Like, you know it so pos­i­tively that you’d be will­ing to bet any­thing on it?

That was how I felt about za’atar.

Za’atar can be found at any nat­ural foods or gourmet gro­cery store in the states, and is a lovely Mediter­ranean blend of sesame seeds, sumac, salt, and a bevy of dried herbs– usu­ally Thyme, Mar­jo­ram, and Oregano. I’ve heard so much about this spice blend in the last few years. Along with ramps and rhubarb, za’atar is a dar­ling in the eyes of a food lover.

I’m dream­ing of the day I can finally grill a whole fresh fresh fish when I am back in the States, in my non-existant grill I own, in the large sub­ur­ban back­yard that I don’t have. In my dream kitchen, I will driz­zle the grilled fish with a gen­er­ous amount of olive oil and a heap­ing dose of za’atar before per­fectly black­en­ing it on my grill. Until then, to ful­fill these fan­tasies, I smug­gled brought back a small packet of za’atar with me to China. I bought it with­out ever tast­ing it, but com­pletely know­ing what to do with it and know­ing that I would love it.

So far it hasn’t dis­ap­pointed me. It has made its way into a lot of my dishes these days– chicken drum­sticks, omelets, even tofu. No fish though– I still don’t really trust the fish here.

Za’atar is also very fun to say, and dif­fi­cult to keep typ­ing cor­rectly. Za’atar. Za’atar. Za’atar!!!

My favorite has been this com­bi­na­tion of aspara­gus (chives) and za’atar. Which after a quick roast in the oven, sub­se­quently get placed in a mean, green, sum­mery salad. Yum.

You really should try it, too. I think you’d love it.

Roasted Aspara­gus with Za’atar

  1. Trim or shave the base of the aspara­gus. Line bak­ing sheet with foil or non­stick mat. Sprin­kle a gen­er­ous amount (1–2 tsp.) of za’atar over aspara­gus and add a gen­er­ous amount of olive oil. Add a pinch of salt and freshly ground pepper.
  2. Roast at 350F for 15–20 min­utes, or until aspara­gus are slightly darker and wilted.
  3. Serve as a side dish, or on top of a salad (with lots of feta cheese and mint!!)

RecipeRelay

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Time flies. A week since I last posted!

I’ll put up some amaz­ing pic­tures from our trip to Zhangji­a­jie soon enough..In the mean­time, hop over to RecipeRe­lay to read about my most recent kitchen exper­i­ments. Hint: it involves those huge meaty mush­rooms I found at the mar­ket, pic­tured above, along with home­made steamed buns!!!

A Full Fridge Dressing

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The Diplo­Man and I have been try­ing to get back into shape lately– me after a long string of health prob­lems and him because I wasn’t in town to feed him prop­erly (kid­ding, sort of).

We’ve been doing P90x every morn­ing for the last few weeks, and though I’m not newly ripped like the DVD cov­ers indi­cate, I can do a few more push ups than when I first started. That, and I can recite lines from the work­out videos. Lines like,

“Like a pter­adachtyl, backin’ up outta trouble…cawwww!!”

So any­way we’ve been work­ing out, and try­ing to eat “right” too. Eat­ing right means more greens and less meat, more raw foods and sal­ads, and more home-cooked meals. Basi­cally like how we used to eat in Cal­i­for­nia, minus In’n’Out. Mark Bittman, eat your heart out.


Eat­ing out in China can, unfor­tu­nately, be much cheaper than cook­ing at home. Espe­cially when we’re try­ing to recre­ate some of the meals we’re used to eat­ing back in the States. But, that’s what the COLA adjust­ment is for, right? Frisee that costs $10!!

I’ve been mak­ing trips to the wet mar­ket and the super­mar­kets more fre­quently, because I find that a stocked fridge = a healthy diet. It’s a good trick, not to men­tion the onset of rot­ting veg­eta­bles ren­ders it com­pletely unrea­son­able to dine out for the third night in a row. But the prob­lem now is, there are nubs of veg­eta­bles stored, left­over, in Ziploc bags scat­tered through­out our fridge, in addi­tion to tiny por­tions left over side dishes in pyrex con­tain­ers begin­ning to stack up.

Appar­ently a stocked fridge=lots of left­overs + a really stocked fridge. uh-oh.

There needs to be a way to clear out these left­overs. Enter, the salad.

I like to think I’m a mas­ter at mak­ing sal­ads. I’m not going to be mod­est here, peo­ple. Ask any of my old co-workers in NY, and they can tell you it’s true. I can make a damn good lasagna and braise some crazy fla­vor­ful meat dish, but I really pre­fer to show off my culi­nary prowess by bring­ing a high-end salad bar with me to a pot luck. Don’t think it hasn’t been done.

Com­bin­ing left­overs on top of a plate of greens can be an easy week­night salad, just like puree­ing left­over bits of veg­eta­bles with some lemon and oils can make a zesty dress­ing. And that’s exactly what a did a few nights ago, when I threw in all sorts of scraps and bits into a salad and dress­ing combo.

Because “mint-pea-cilantro-half a lemon-olive oil-garlic-honey-shallot dress­ing” is way too much of a mouth­ful, let’s just call this the “fridge full of Ziploc bags dressing”.

*Also, I’d like to add that this din­ner was made after a failed attempt at Bul­gogi. So don’t think I’m get­ting totally nutty healthy and right­eous on you just yet.

Ingre­di­ents:

  • 1/2 cup frozen peas
  • 1 shal­lot
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 5 sprigs fresh mint, leaves only
  • 1/2 bunch cilantro, leaves only
  • 1 Tbsp. honey
  • 1/2 lemon
  • 2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
  • 1/2 cup Extra Vir­gin Olive Oil
  • Salt and Pep­per, to taste

Direc­tions:

  1. Put peas in boil­ing water for a few min­utes until ten­der. Drain.
  2. Add all ingre­di­ents in a medium bowl, and blend with an immer­sion blender. Sea­son lib­er­ally with salt and pep­per. Allow it to sit for 5 min­utes for the fla­vors to meld.

Tofu at Home

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As I men­tioned before, I was recently liv­ing at my par­ents’ house for two months. I asked them when it would ever be inap­pro­pri­ate for me to go “home” and live with them, rent-free, with meals included. Luck­ily for me, they answered,

“never.”

So until I’m too old to do so, I’m going to be doing things like going back home to my par­ents’ house when I’m sick and using their Vita­mix to make tofu.

My friend Sarah from RecipeRe­lay first started me think­ing of home­made tofu, when she cre­ated her own batch last year. As much as I eat the stuff, I never really con­sid­ered it pos­si­ble to try mak­ing it at home. In the U.S., it’s so com­mer­cially sold that we often for­get it’s meant to be eaten fresh and hand-made. So with Sarah break­ing it down and pro­vid­ing a link to a step-by-step recipe I could fol­low, I was super inspired. But the task was still a bit daunt­ing, and with tofu so cheap at the mar­kets in China (as lit­tle as 10cents for a small block!), I never had the urge to try it myself in my own kitchen.

That, and I lacked a Cuisi­nart or Vita­mix to blend the soy­beans– a cru­cial step in the process for mak­ing tofu.

So with a few extra hours on my hands (and an arti­cle on tofu due the next day), I spent an after­noon at the home of my par­ents, tak­ing advan­tage of an industrial-strength blender, exper­i­ment­ing with soybeans.

I did plenty of read­ing prep before­hand. When DIY’ing in the kitchen– whether it be for marsh­mal­lows, ice cream sand­wiches, pop tarts, fig new­tons, or gra­nola bars- I def­i­nitely rec­om­mend doing your research and read­ing through a few dif­fer­ent recipes before rolling up your sleeves. In my case, I read and re-read Sarah’s expe­ri­ence, which directed me towards this web­site and very help­ful recipe. Given my time and resources (which was a lot and many, respec­tively), I was also able to make a trip to the local library where I sat in the cook­book aisle for an hour and skimmed a few books about soy and tofu

With my tofu research ses­sion fin­ished, I finally under­stood the very basic process that pro­duced tofu: a prod­uct of fresh soy milk, sep­a­rated into curds and whey, and then pressed. The magic ingre­di­ent that would pro­duce curds in the “milk” of the soy­bean extract was called the coag­u­lant, a cru­cial part of all tofu-making processes. The coag­u­lant used in tra­di­tional tofu mak­ing is a Japan­ese ingre­di­ent called nigari, a con­cen­tra­tion of var­i­ous salts that remain after the crys­talli­sa­tion of salts extracted from sea­wa­ter. While vis­it­ing the neigh­bor­hood Japan­ese super­mar­ket one after­noon I peeked in the salts and dashi aisle, and became over­whelmed at the selec­tion of salts and pow­ders, none of which were labeled in Eng­lish. Luck­ily as an alter­na­tive to nigari, Epsom salts (mag­ne­sium sul­phate), fresh lemon juice, or apple cider vine­gar can also be used to pro­duce the same cur­dling effects. The vari­a­tions in the results are seen mainly in the tex­ture of the tofu, and only slightly affect the taste. I decided to use some apple cider vine­gar that was already in the pantry.

I pro­cured a pound of organic soy­beans from the bulk grains aisle of Whole Foods to start my tofu-making adven­ture. After soak­ing the beans overnight and wak­ing to their plump soy­bean glory the next morn­ing, I got busy boil­ing, grind­ing, cook­ing and strain­ing the soy­beans. Fresh soy milk, as easy as that.

Press­ing for­ward, I fol­lowed instruc­tions care­fully and put my soy milk back on the stove, adding the coag­u­lant (in my case, apple cider vine­gar), and stir­ring as advised. As expected, a pot full of steam­ing soy milk soon sep­a­rated into small curds and whey. Lit­tle Miss Muf­fet, you’d be proud!

The curds were spooned into my own home­made tofu press – a rec­tan­gu­lar plas­tic Tup­per­ware con­tainer with holes punched through­out the bot­toms and sides, lined with cheese­cloth. With the curds weighted down with a bevy of canned ingre­di­ents, I let time do its job.

A short and sur­pris­ing 15 min­utes later, I checked on my result. There it was: the curds had com­pacted into one small rec­tan­gu­lar form. Home­made tofu, firmer than I had imag­ined, smaller than I would have liked, and a far more crumbly than I would have pre­ferred, but nev­er­the­less it was tofu!

For the step-by step recipe, jump over here.

Purple Potatoes, sufferin’ succotash!

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Olfac­tory asso­ci­a­tions are a funny thing. I can barely tell you what I did dur­ing the Fall of 2009 (prob­a­bly not much), but I dis­tinctly remem­ber roast­ing veg­eta­bles every week or so in my tiny Williams­burg apart­ment– I remem­ber every ding and scar on the old roast­ing pan my room­mate and I shared, and more potent in my mem­ory are the smells that would fill our tiny win­dow­less liv­ing room. When I think of Christ­mas Evening at my par­ents’ home, I can only imag­ine our kitchen win­dows steamy from the Hot Pot feast that we’ve cooked up indoors and the smell of that steamy, brothy, air. When I think of cer­tain close friends, I rem­i­nisce about cer­tain din­ners and feasts that we’ve cre­ated together. Even with the Diplo­Man, with whom I have trav­elled the world, one of our favorite mem­o­ries together involves a tiny restau­rant under the G train called Moto and a neigh­bor­ing bar called Tro­phy Bar- sights, fla­vors, sounds, and smells.

I’ve been read­ing and hear­ing about all you at home, enjoy­ing your braises and roasted veg­eta­bles and stews and apple desserts. To me, this can only mean the true start of Fall . I expect leaves of epic rain­bow pro­por­tions out­side my win­dow and replac­ing my sum­mer dresses with thick wool coats in my closet. While sum­mer brings plenty of out­door par­ties and fire­work shows, Fall and Win­ter brings cozy famil­ial gath­er­ings and the shar­ing of food and drink. And the roast­ing of vegetables.

When I found pur­ple pota­toes at the mar­ket– local pur­ple pota­toes, imag­ine that!- and then soon­after a few but­ter­nut squash (for a hefty price I might add…), I knew that Fall would finally grace its pres­ence in my own kitchen. I have yet to roast any veg­eta­bles on a pan this sea­son, but that quickly changed after a trip to the mar­ket last week.

Com­bin­ing pur­ple pota­toes, roast­ing pota­toes, and one bright but­tern­nut squash, along with maple bacon, sweet corn, and dijon mus­tard, I cre­ated a side dish that was part suc­co­tash, part potato salad– a mash up of great pro­por­tion. In strug­gling to find a name for my new cre­ation, I set­tled on call­ing it a Potato Succotash.

Even with my knowl­edge of foods, I still always think suc­co­tash to be some­thing other than it is– some sort of leather-soled footwear, or an expres­sion of sur­prise, or some­thing involv­ing pumpkins.

I’ve seen suc­co­tash pop­ping up in food mag­a­zines and menus over the last few years, mak­ing a resur­gence from it’s 20th-century Depression-era roots. Usu­ally a late summer/early fall fare, suc­co­tash is actu­ally a sauteed corn and bean based dish that is often pumped with toma­toes or zuc­chini or pep­pers. Here, I’ve com­pletely elim­i­nated the beans and sub­sti­tuted pota­toes in their place. Thanks to the pro­longed Indian sum­mer that has been cast in Guangzhou, I’ve found the per­fect sea­son for the dish.

Three Potato Succotash

Ingre­di­ents:

  • 3 medium-sized pur­ple pota­toes, peel-on.
  • 1 medium but­ter­nut squash, peeled and seeded.
  • 6 small roast­ing potatoes
  • 6 strips of thick-cut bacon
  • 3 Tbsp. real maple syrup
  • 1 large leek, both green and white parts, chopped
  • 2 ears of fresh, sweet corn (prefer­ably multi-colored), with ker­nels cut off the ear.
  • 3 Tbsp. whole grain mustard

Direc­tions

  1. Cut pota­toes and squash into 1/2-inch cubes. Line a large roast­ing pan with foil, and scat­ter pota­toes onto pan. Lib­er­ally sea­son with salt and freshly ground pep­per, a few Tbsp. of Olive Oil, and sev­eral dashes of what­ever dried spices you find entic­ing in your pantry– I used rose­mary, thyme, cumin, and sage.
  2. Pre­heat oven to 400. Roast pota­toes for 40mins-1hr (depend­ing on the tem­pera­ment of your oven), check­ing every 20 min­utes and shak­ing the pan to make sure the pota­toes aren’t stick­ing to the foil. Pota­toes are done once they are ten­der to the bite. Take out of the oven, and set aside to cool to room temperature.
  3. Line a non­stick bak­ing sheet or sil­pat mat with your slices of bacon. Turn oven down to 375, and place bacon on the mid­dle rack of the oven. After 15 min­utes, slide pan out and brush bacon with syrup, flip over with a pair of tongs, and gen­er­ously brush again with more maple syrup on the other side. Slide back into oven and turn up oven to broil for 3–5 min­utes, watch­ing care­fully to make sure the bacon does not burn. Turn off oven and remove bacon to cool slightly.
  4. In a large sauté pan, heat Olive Oil on high and sautee leeks for 3–5 min­utes or until ten­der. Turn down heat to medium, and add corn. Sautee for another few min­utes. Turn off range and take the pan off the stove.
  5. Cut slightly cooled bacon into 1/2 inch pieces. Add it into your pan (that is off the heat). Also add the pota­toes, then add whole-grain mus­tard. Toss to thor­oughly com­bine. Sea­son with salt an pep­per, if necessary.
  6. Trans­fer into a large bowl or serv­ing dish. Serve warm or at room temperature.

yield: 6–8 serv­ings as a side dish

Supermarket shock. English Muffins with Poached Egg and Chorizo.

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You know you’ve been in China for too long when.…

Liv­ing in China comes with its share of sto­ries, jokes, and life lessons. Along with lib­er­ally spit­ting out the acronym TIC (This Is China!), always said in part jest and part exas­per­a­tion, the laowai (directly trans­lated: Old Out­sider. Basi­cally, Chi­nese slang for any expat/foreigner) are always mak­ing com­ments about life in China. I mean, you know you’ve been in China for too long when.…

How would one go about fin­ish­ing this sen­tence? Well, for exam­ple, when…

…the sound of sub­way doors slid­ing open elic­its a nat­ural response to stick out your elbows.

…Tiger Beer no longer gives you nasty hangovers

…grunt­ing is lan­guage. “mmn” becomes syn­ony­mous with “yes” and “unhh” syn­ony­mous with “sure”.

…every other sen­tence out of your mouth starts with the clause, bu hao yi si, 不好意思. Part “oh sorry!” and part “oops”, here in China it is used with­out any thought, and pre­cedes just about any com­ment– a sug­ges­tion, a ques­tion, a snarky remark, and an insult. It works. bu hao yi si, can I inter­rupt? bu hao yi si, but I have to step on all ten of your toes to get by. bu hao yi si, but your baby is ugly. bu hao yi si, can I bor­row three hun­dred bucks? It’s basi­cally the email smi­ley face emoti­con of China.

…Pri­vacy? What’s that?

…on a trip home to Amer­ica, you notice peo­ple are star­ing at you inside of a Macy’s because you are yelling into your cell phone. No prob­lem honey, I’ll pick up your diar­rhea med­i­cine on the way to din­ner. What?!

…you drink hot water out of a tall glass as if it were lemonade.

…frozen bur­ri­tos in the aisle of the super­mar­ket causes heart pal­pi­ta­tions from sheer excitement.

I could go on, but I think you get it.

That last one, the one with the bur­rito, actu­ally hap­pened the other day. The Diplo­Man and I were mar­veling at the won­ders of a West­ern super­mar­ket that had been open for awhile, but that we had only recently got­ten across town to visit. ‘West­ern’ super­mar­ket, as in, stocked pre­dom­i­nantly with imported goods– Dun­can Hines cake mix, a real deli counter with cold cuts and cheeses, dish­wash­ing liq­uid, tam­pons, etc. I believe Barrett’s first words were in the canned food aisle,

“uuuh­ma­gawd, they have dif­fer­ent kinds of olives”

I’m actu­ally still not sure if this quote came as a ques­tion or an exclamation.

And later, when the Amy’s bur­ri­tos appeared in misty cases of the freezer aisle, it sent shock­waves down our spines. I almost dropped the bag of King Arthur’s Flour in my hands.

Need­less to say, we eas­ily spent the 1000RMB nec­es­sary to obtain a fre­quent buyer card. After a long cab ride home spent chat­ting about Ket­tle Chips and Greek Yogurt, we got home and emp­tied our gro­ceries onto the kitchen counter. In truth, our 1000RMB didn’t get us very far, espe­cially in com­par­i­son to the measly 30RMB I spent at the wet mar­ket ear­lier in the week. So we’re com­bin­ing some local goods– eggs, spinach, cilantro, onions, etc., and rationing our trea­sured good­ies, devour­ing break­fasts such as the one below with poached egg, Thomas’ Eng­lish Muffins, chorizo and greek yogurt.

We might just die when we see Whole Foods again.

Poached Eggs and Chorizo on Eng­lish Muffins

Ingre­di­ents:

  • 2/3 cup chorizo, diced into small cubes
  • 1 red onion, finely diced
  • 1 small tomato, diced
  • 1 green onion, finely chopped
  • a few sprigs of cilantro, leaves only, finely chopped
  • Eng­lish Muffins
  • 2–4 eggs (depend­ing on how hun­gry you are, or how many peo­ple you have)
  • 1 Tbsp. white dis­tilled vine­gar (for poach­ing eggs)
  • Greek Yogurt

Direc­tions:

  1. Sauté onions on high for 3 min­utes, add chorizo and sauté for another two min­utes. Add the remain­der of the ingre­di­ents and turn down heat. Sauté on med for another 5–7 min­utes or until onions are thor­oughly browned and chorizo is charred and crisp. Take off the burner and set aside.
  2. Toast Eng­lish Muffins. Optional: Driz­zle with olive oil or spread with butter.
  3. Poach Egg (see instruc­tions below). Set the poached egg on top of one half of the Eng­lish Muf­fin, and add a gen­er­ous few spoon­fuls of the chorizo-onion-tomato mix­ture over it and on the sec­ond half of the Eng­lish Muf­fin. Top off with dol­lops of full-fat Greek yogurt.

yield: 2–3 servings

How to Poach An Egg:

  1. Crack each egg into one small prep bowl, one egg per bowl. In a small or medium saucepan, heat water to a boil. Add a tea­spoon of white vine­gar, and turn down heat to Medium.
  2. Lightly swirl the water with a fork, and drop one egg into the pan. Don’t touch it. After a minute, use a spat­ula or slot­ted spoon and make sure it hasn’t stuck to the bot­tom of the pan. Drop in a sec­ond egg at this time, if you dare.
  3. Let each egg cook for approx. 4 min­utes. Or more, if you want the yolk to be slightly firmer.
  4. Using a slot­ted spoon, care­fully fish the egg out of the water and set on a plate lined with paper tow­els. Care­fully flip over to pat egg dry, and sprin­kle with salt and pep­per. Care­fully trans­fer to a plate.
  5. Did I men­tion, to do all this care­fully?

Tofubrain

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Remem­ber the days of AIM? When, Apple com­put­ers looked like space-aged jolly ranch­ers, and Google wasn’t yet a verb– let alone a real word. I think it meant some­thing dirty, but I’m not sure.

I still remem­ber down­load­ing and sign­ing onto AIM chat for the first time, at the fam­ily com­puter in my par­ents’ liv­ing room. In the awk­ward years of mid­dle school (which, to me weren’t so awkard– I actu­ally had a blast in the 7th and 8th grades) triv­ial mat­ters were viewed with great grav­ity. As if your life depend­ing on choos­ing the per­fect length for your back­pack straps (in the 90’s, the per­fect length was until your back­pack dragged to just about your knees). Or, the out­fits you and your friends would wear for the first school dance. Every school dance, for that mat­ter. Or per­haps more impor­tantly to a mid­dle schooler grow­ing up in Sil­i­con Val­ley in the mid-90’s, what to choose as your screen name.

While my fel­low junior high­school­ers had nick­names like aznboi1234 or kewlchk555 or drgn<3, begin­ning an era of per­pet­ual abbrevs, I chose tofubrain13. It liked it because it was dif­fer­ent, clever, unique, and dorky in the coolest pos­si­ble way. I still like it, even if I am par­tially hor­ri­fied if I ever have to exchange screen names with a new friend.

It was (and still is) an ode to my love of tofu– much like the recipe below. Tofu is ver­sa­tile, it’s sat­is­fy­ing, and before the vegan com­mu­nity dis­cov­ered it, I claimed it.

I shared this recipe online months ago on RecipeRe­lay, so it’s been out in the world for awhile. But on recent trips to the mar­ket I’ve been slow­ing to peruse the tofu options more than usual. Luck­ily the Diplo­Man shares my love of tofu (!), so I know this dish will make an appear­ance on the din­ner table soon enough.

This tofu recipe is per­fect as an appe­tizer paired with a chili-mayo dip­ping sauce, as a side dish with rice and spinach for Meat­less Mon­day, or as I pre­fer, on top of a crisp and crunchy salad with a savory cilantro dress­ing. And if you think you don’t like tofu– well, this one comes out of the pan hot and crispy and savory and fried. I guar­an­tee it will turn you into a tofubrain.

Panko Crusted Tofu

Ingre­di­ents:

  • 2 eggs
  • 1 1/2 lbs firm tofu (1–2 pack­ages store-bought tofu)
  • 1/4 cup flour
  • 2 tsp Tan­dori spice
  • 1 tsp cumin
  • to taste - salt and pepper
  • 6 Tbs canola oil
Direc­tions:
  1. Drain and rinse the tofu. Slice into 1/2 inch slices. Using a tea towel or paper towel, pat each piece dry and set aside.
  2. Set up your bread­ing sta­tion: in one medium-sized shal­low bowl, beat eggs and add a pinch of salt and pep­per. In a sec­ond medium-sized shal­low bowl, mix flour with a pinch of salt and pep­per. In a third bowl, com­bine panko crumbs with spices, and add another pinch of salt and pep­per. This may seem like a lot of salt and pep­per, but it’s not.
  3. Take your (pat­ted dry) tofu steaks that you’ve set aside. One by one, bread the tofu: Using one hand, put the tofu in the flour and coat. Gen­tly shake off excess flour, and set in the egg bath. Now using your other hand, bathe the tofu in the beaten egg, and trans­fer to the panko crumbs with the same hand. Finally using your orig­i­nal flour/non-eggy hand, com­pletely coat tofu with the panko crumbs (warn­ing: your hands will become slightly stained form the Tan­doori spice!). Using this method of alter­nat­ing hands, keep­ing one hand dry and one hand wet, makes for a less messy process.
  4. Con­tinue bread­ing all your tofu, set­ting aside on a plate as you fin­ish each one.
  5. When you have fin­ished bread­ing, add 3 Tbs canola oil into a skil­let and heat on high. When the oil is ho t– ide­ally just before it starts smok­ing – turn down the heat to med-high and begin to fry your tofu, drop­ping in 3–4 pieces at a time, depend­ing on the size of your skil­let. Cook tofu for 1–2 min­utes on each side, until golden brown.
  6. Remove from the skil­let onto paper tow­els or a rack to cool.
  7. Repeat with the remain­ing tofu, dump­ing out the oil and con­tents of the pan once you’ve com­pleted half of the tofu. Wipe the skil­let clean with a dry paper towel, and using the remain­der of the oil (3 Tbs) to fry the rest of the breaded tofu.

When life hands you lemons…

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I’m always unnerved by the lack of cit­rus (namely, lemons and limes) around this city. What’s one got to do around these parts to dress a salad?! So I’ve scoured my neigh­bor­hood to find my go-to cit­rus stops.

There’s my lime lady that oper­ates out of a hole-in-the-wall who also sells things like shiso leaves, lemon grass, and bell pep­pers. She’s absolutely clutch over hol­i­days such as Cinco de Mayo (or, if I ever decide to make a Thai curry). There’s lemons that are sold at my favorite fruit stand, but they’re imported, expen­sive, wrapped indi­vid­u­ally in saran wrap and as hard as stone. Prefer­ably, I buy fresher and juicier lemons from the guy who posts him­self in an alley­way on my way to my neigh­bor­hood wet mar­ket. He has woven bam­boo bas­kets filled with lemons, but he’s unre­li­able because some­times instead of lemons he brings weird chi­nese olives. And other times, he’s sim­ply not there.

But for the most part I’ve finally solved my cit­rus cri­sis. But now the prob­lem is, when you don’t get much of some­thing and it becomes avail­able, you feel the need to HOARDE. Every other week, I am guar­an­teed to come home with half a dozen lemons and a dozen limes, some­times even more. Too many lemons aren’t usu­ally a prob­lem (unless, you are my friend Gillian), but there’s just not enough salad greens sold locally around here that call for a lemon-olive oil dressing.

A few weeks ago I found myself in front of the lemon man, fran­ti­cally adding lemons to his hand-held steel­yard scale. Before I knew it there were a dozen lemons sit­ting on my kitchen counter. A dozen lemons. Too many lemons. Instead of trans­form­ing lemons into the prover­bial, and thus bor­ing, lemon­ade, I decided to pre­serve them.

I’ve read all about pre­served lemons. I’ve eaten pre­served lemons. They seem fancy. But I can now attest, it’s quite pos­si­bly the eas­i­est thing I’ve done in my kitchen to date– although I have a his­tory of try­ing rather com­pli­cated recipes. But seri­ously, even your boyfriend/husband/partner/cat could do this.

In the course of two weeks, this salt-packed snow-capped jar of lemons.…

…turned into this briny and fla­vor­ful, com­pletely edi­ble treat!!!

These pre­served lemons are meant to be con­sumed whole– peel and all. The preser­va­tion process breaks down the once-bitter rind into a savory and tart gar­nish. It can be used on almost any main or side dish, and is par­tic­u­larly won­der­ful with the earthy fla­vors of fall veg­eta­bles and will bring out a lit­tle extra zing in your oth­er­wise hearty, heavy win­ter braises. In addi­tion to pair­ing extremely well with roasted fish or chicken, I’ve been unspar­ingly using the pre­seved quar­ters (rinsed, then thinly sliced) mixed into lentil and quinoa dishes. Toss it into sauteed spinach for a unique kick, or braised kale, or roasted potatoes.

Who said too many lemons were a bad thing?!

Pre­served Lemons

adapted from The Sprouted Kitchen

Ingre­di­ents:

  • 6–9 lemons
  • 1 cup kosher salt
  • 1 Tbsp. cane sugar
  • 2 tsp. whole peppercorns

Direc­tions:

  1. Ster­il­ize a glass jar by boil­ing in water for five minutes.
  2. Scrub lemons hard to remove dirt and, if pur­chased from a super­mar­ket, the waxy sur­face on the skin.
  3. Slice ends off each lemon, and cut length­wise into quar­ters. Remove as many seeds as possible.
  4. Salt the lemons on the cut­ting board with a few pinches of salt. Place about 2 Tbsp. of salt into the bot­tom of the glass jar, and place 3–4 lemon quar­ters on top. Using a wooden spoon, smush the lemons down.
  5. Add a cou­ple more table­spoons of salt into the jar. Take another 3–4 lemon quar­teres, squeeze their juices into the jar, and then toss them in.
  6. Repeat, adding lay­ers of salt, lemon juice, and lemons. Halfway through, add one table­spoon of sugar.
  7. Leav­ing at least an inch of room at the top of the jar, add in the pep­per­corns last. Seal the jar with its lid, and leave at room tem­per­a­ture on a coun­ter­top for a few days, turn­ing the jar each day.
  8. After three days, store in the fridge. Every few days or so, shake up and turn the jar again to mix the lemons and juices around. After two weeks the lemons are ready to use. They will keep for sev­eral months.

On a closely related note, I promised to make a lemon meringue pie next week for a pie party. Why? Because lemons are, not so sur­prisinly, actu­ally eas­ier to find than pecans and canned pump­kin around here. Plus I don’t like apple pie and thus refuse to make it. Let’s hope my lemon guy brings his lemons!

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