« February 2009 | Main | April 2009 »

March 29, 2009

ode to the oro blanco

I have a new morning ritual. I cut an Oro Blanco grapefruit in half. Then I halve that half and halve those quarters: four wedges of pale yellow. I cut away the skin and thick pith at the pointy end of each piece. Then, with the aid of my fingers and at least two napkins, I peel away the bitter membrane to expose the plump heart of each segment. I eat -- juice spurting onto the table and all over my hands -- and repeat, until all I am left with is a pile of soggy yellow and white husks. I sigh contentedly as I scrape them into the trash.

Oro Blanco means "white gold" in Spanish. I think of the farmer cutting open his first fruit from the tree, juice running down the knife, little firecrackers of sweetness exploding in his mouth and in his head, trying to think of a name for this new and special variety. A fat fruit, heavy in his hand. Heavy like gold, but pale, a light yellow. White Gold, of course, his fortune growing on trees. And then, because things sound better in other languages, or at least more romantic, he named it Oro Blanco.

Or maybe he just spoke Spanish, I don't know.

I think of the time I ate miracle fruit, that weird African berry that masks the bitter and sour tastes in food. Lemon wedges tasted like they had been dipped in sugar -- different, but not revelatory, almost cloying in fact. But grapefruit, grapefruit truly was miraculous. And that is what Oro Blancos remind me of: grapefruits stripped of their harshness, sweet but with a fine edge of bitterness to keep things interesting.

I'll keep eating them until the season over, until gold stops growing on trees. And then I'll wait expectantly until next year.

Posted by anjali at 3:30 PM | Comments (3) | Categories: Ingredient

March 22, 2009

alhambra farmers market

Inspired by Eating LA's report on the Alhambra Farmers' Market, I made my way over to my old stomping grounds last Sunday to check it out. My first boyfriend in college used to live a couple blocks away from the market, but as the kitchen of the house he lived in was a dismal, grease-yellowed room used only by the creepy guy down the hall who seemed to always be hanging around in a dirty bathrobe, we didn't cook much and never stopped by for produce.

Mystery greens on the right, flowering napa cabbage on the left.

We should have. It's a small but vibrant farmers' market with two rows of produce sellers connected by a few tables selling prepared foods. The selection is surprisingly varied, thanks to the large Asian population in the area. I was tempted by a long table covered by stacks and stacks of bundled pea shoots and spent a long time looking at the unfamiliar greens labeled only in Chinese. (At the same table, the woman next to me was shown a box of large, straw-speckled eggs -- goose eggs maybe? -- which she touched gently and with approval. She bought two.)

Ana's Farm stall. You can see pictures of the happy chickens in the back.

The highlight of the market for me was Ana's Farm, which sells whole free range, sustainably-raised chickens for less than $4/lb. The catch? They still have their heads and feet attached, so unless you are serving the chicken Asian-style, some butchery is required. I bought a 3 1/2-pound chicken and a carton of eggs, a steal at $3/dozen. I ended up roasting the chicken (more on that in a later post) and have been eating the eggs all week, marveling at how golden and flavorful the yolks are.

Prices in general are much lower than at the Hollywood Farmers' Market, my usual Sunday stop, and that includes more than just the produce. Flowers are especially affordable, between $2 to $3 for a big bunch, and there is a table selling beautiful bonsai for as little as $12 each.

When I left, my bag included dandelion greens, turnip greens (with immature turnips attached), a couple oro blanco grapefruits and a bunch of French radishes. Except for a few of the radishes, I've eaten everything over the course of the week (even the dozen eggs!). I blanched the dandelion greens, mashed them up with some boiled russet potatoes and olive oil, covered them with panko crumbs and baked the whole thing, following a recipe by Mark Bittman. The turnip greens were added to a pot of oven-baked pinto beans, which I ate over turmeric-spiced rice. The grapefruits I've been eating for breakfast every morning and the radishes are good raw alongside lunchtime sandwiches.

But it's the eggs I keep thinking about, the eggs and the chicken. I used to eat a hard-cooked egg every day for breakfast in Japan and was saddened, upon my return, by the colorless, flavorless eggs in the U.S., even the fancy organic ones. But these eggs -- these eggs were good. Perfectly hard-cooked and dipped in a little salt and pepper, they transported me back to my little table on the tatami floor in my little living room. Now I just need to find a good source for super-thick Japanese toast.

Snapshot from the past: my Japanese breakfast.

One Perfect Hard-Cooked Egg

Place egg in a small saucepan and cover with cold water. Put a lid on the pan and bring to a boil over medium heat. As soon as water starts boiling, turn off the heat and set a timer for 7 minutes (5 minutes for a medium egg). When the timer goes off, pour out the water and cover the egg with cold water. Let sit until cool enough to handle. Crack, peel and enjoy.

Alhambra Farmers' Market
Monterey Street between Main & Bay State
Sundays, 8:30am to 1pm

Posted by anjali at 3:49 PM | Comments (6) | Categories: Market | San Gabriel Valley

March 17, 2009

ye may restaurant

Ever since I read Thi Nguyen's roundup of the best places to eat Asian breakfasts, I have been seriously craving fried dough and fresh soy milk. A Sunday excursion to the San Gabriel Valley was the perfect chance to try out Ye May Restaurant, a small cafe where the soy milk is hot, the prices are cheap and the breakfast buns are usually stuffed with pork.

I have a theory about foreign breakfasts. I think that while it is relatively easy to dive headfirst into a new cuisine while you are traveling, during the breakfast hour it's tough to do more than just dip in a toe. I'm not talking about French croissants or Italian cappuccinos or plates of peeled tropical fruits; I mean raw egg on rice, chunk of stinky dried fish, big handful of chopped green onion on my salty morning porridge. And it goes both ways. When I asked some of my Japanese students who had spent a year studying abroad in the U.S. and Canada what Western food grossed them out the most, they said without hesitation, "Oatmeal."

But I think when you fall for a foreign breakfast food, you fall hard, which may explain some people's undying love for natto or my six-month quest for Japanese yogurt. Breakfast is so deeply comforting, no matter the country of origin, and a specific craving cannot be quelled by anything but the exact morning meal you are carrying around in your head. Fried dough and hot soy milk had been taunting me for weeks.

I like the illustrated pictures of the food. And I wanted to steal this little girl.

Ye May is a nondescript restaurant tucked into the corner of an equally unremarkable mini mall in San Gabriel. Mid-morning on a Sunday, the stream of patrons placing their orders at the bun-filled bakery case is steady and the women behind the counter are friendly and quick. The menu is translated into English, but as with most literally translated Chinese menus, it helps to ask what's actually in whatever it is you're looking at. Or just point at one of the other tables. They all hold bowls of steaming soy milk and sticks of fried dough as long as the friendly counter lady's forearm.

Soft tofu.

Our order emerged minutes after sitting down: my bowl of soy milk with a spoon, Jessica's soft tofu soup, a stick of fried dough helpfully cut in half and a steamed pork-vegetable bun. I had ordered the "sweet" soy milk instead of salty, but I didn't taste any added sugar in the first steamy sip. Just the essence of soy, pure and clear.

The fried dough was equally simple but sublime, the outer surface crinkled and crisp, the insides soft and satisfyingly chewy. Torn pieces dipped in the soy milk transformed into gushy soy sponges with crackly edges, exactly the right thing to eat on a hazy Sunday morning in China. Or San Gabriel, whichever.

Pork gao bun.

The pork and vegetable bun was the perfect accompaniment, the sweet bun and savory filling a nice counterpoint to the mild flavor of the dough and soy milk. And I would certainly go for the pork gao bun again, the star of our second round of ordering, a sort of bun sandwich filled with pork, herbs, pickles and a chunky peanut spread.

I think I've found my new breakfast craving.

Ye May Restaurant
608 E. Valley Blvd., Space G
San Gabriel, CA 91776
(626) 280-8568

Posted by anjali at 7:46 AM | Comments (6) | Categories: Restaurant | San Gabriel Valley

March 2, 2009

black sticky rice pudding

Some smells are just magical: coffee brewing in the morning, the soft folds of a baby's neck, orange blossoms through an open car window on a warm night. Hot sticky rice mixed with coconut milk is one of those for me. It's not like we even have that long a history, considering my childhood disgust with the coconut-laced desserts my dad used to stock up on whenever we would take a family trip to Bangkok Market in Hollywood. I could not see the appeal of not-very-sweet squares of coconut jelly, soupy tapiocas, gray disks of griddled shredded coconut. Pass the Oreos, please.

But I grew up, ate my first plate of mango and sticky rice at Noodle Planet one summer and realized my dad was on to something. I thought for a long time it was the mango-sticky rice synergy that made the dish so good, but during my last trip to Thailand, after stuffing my face with a mountain of little banana-leaf-wrapped packets of coconut-milk-infused sticky rice, I realized it was the rice and coconut all along. Hot rice, warm coconut milk, that edge of salt -- addictive.

I'd bought a 5-lb bag of black sticky rice at LAX-C months ago, mostly because the grains were too beautiful and intriguing to resist. Sticky rice is usually soaked overnight and steamed, but I needed a same-day dessert for the dinner my friend Jessica was having that night. So I decided to make khao neow dam piag, black sticky rice pudding. The rice is boiled instead of steamed and mixed with a little coconut milk, sugar and salt toward the end of cooking. The finished pudding is deep purple, the grains soft yet chewy, with that warm, woozy coconut milk scent wafting up from the bowl. It was dessert that night and breakfast for the next two mornings. And since I still have 4.9 pounds of black sticky rice left, it may be my breakfast for the next year. Sounds good to me.

Black Sticky Rice Pudding with Coconut (Khao neow dam piag)

Serves 4-6

1 cup black sweet rice (also called black sticky rice or black glutinous rice)*
1 cup coconut milk
1/4-1/2 cup packed brown sugar, to taste
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
Sweetened shredded coconut or toasted sesame seeds (for garnish, optional)

Put rice in a medium saucepan and cover with water. Swish rice around to rinse it and pour off any loose husks that float to the top. Drain rice through a sieve and return to pot. Add 6 cups of water and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 45 minutes or until rice is soft. Pour off any excess water, so that the water line is just below the grains of rice. Add coconut milk, sugar and salt and simmer, stirring frequently, until pudding is desired consistency. Serve hot or room temperature, topped with coconut or sesame seeds.

*You can find black sticky rice at Thai grocery stores or online here. Don't substitute Chinese black rice, which is not sticky.

Posted by anjali at 7:16 AM | Comments (6) | Categories: Recipe