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September 22, 2009

of bitter melon and j. gold

Bitter melon. Photo courtesy of sfllaw. Licensed under Creative Commons.

I recently joined the Culinary Historians of Southern California, thereby fulfilling my dream of being a member of an organization with both a quarterly newsletter and a treasurer. YES. Further proof that CHSC and I were meant to be: it is closely affiliated with the LA Public Library and it hosts free monthly talks by noted food experts. Like Jonathan Gold, whose recent talk on "The Rise of Regional Cuisines in the San Gabriel Valley" covered a list of 25 or so restaurants which for him have defined regional Asian cuisine in the area. It was less like a lecture from a college professor and more like a peek into the journal of a man passionate about his hobby -- in this case, seeking out the best knife-cut noodles, Taiwanese slush and fake dogmeat in the county.

I won't regurgitate the whole list here, but I did want to bring up something I've been thinking about in the week since he spoke, a point he brought up when talking about number 15 on his list, the Taiwanese restaurant Nice Time Deli. He hated it for a long time. He hated the food, the stinky tofu and bitter melon, and couldn't understand why it always seemed to be packed with people clearly relishing their meals. But he kept eating there. He said he looked around the dining room, saw a roomful of professional-looking Taiwanese ex-pats who had obviously gone out of their way to eat at this restaurant and he decided to figure out what he was missing. Two months and sixteen meals later, he finally did.

I repeat: he ate there seventeen times before he started to actually enjoy himself, a mind-boggling feat for which I have the utmost respect.

While it's true that most food bloggers lack both the expense account and the time needed to dine at a restaurant 15+ times before publishing their opinions, many are also missing something even more crucial: a totally open mind. It was humbling to hear that Jonathan Gold -- arguably one of the most knowledgeable restaurant reviewers in the country, certainly one of the most respected -- sat back at the end of the meal and admitted to himself, I don't get this yet. He assumed the problem was not the food; it was him.

And then he ate and he ate until finally he understood the appeal of bitter melon ("not bitter like coffee, not bitter like dark chocolate -- bitter like cancer medicine"). Until maybe tofu that smelled like an alleyway of rotting garbage started to almost make sense.

I strive to be like that, a person who has devoted a good chunk of his life to learning all he can about the subject that interests him most, respected by others as an expert -- yet still able to say humbly and honestly, "I still have more to learn."

Because the only thing more bitter than bitter melon is a critic who thinks he knows it all. Right?

Posted by anjali at 7:35 AM | Comments (12) | Categories: Musings

September 17, 2009

mitsuwa hokkaido fair 2009

In Japan every place -- even the smallest, most unremarkable village -- is famous for something. Hokkaido is known for its rich and flavorful milk, its light-bodied, buttery style of ramen and a crab with freakishly long legs full of sweet, delicate meat. All were in attendance this past weekend at the Mitsuwa Hokkaido Fair 2009 -- all except the butter in the ramen, but more on that later.

My friends Mel and Steve, who went to the festival last year, invited me down to the Torrance Mitsuwa on Sunday during the pre-lunch hour, cautioning that the ramen booth had run out the year before. I got there early and wandered around, relishing the familiar sound of "Irasshaimase!" being belted out by tiny uniformed ladies proffering treats. Between the supermarket and the food court, a strip of booths selling Hokkaido specialties had sprung up and I couldn't resist the rows of golden karei-pan (curry bread) at Pullman Bakery. I also eyed the Yubari meron-pan (melon bread made from a special Hokkaido muskmelon) and shiro-taiyaki (white, fish-shaped cakes filled with sweet red bean paste), but decided to wait until after the ramen.

Mel and Steve arrived and we lined up at Shingen Ramen. Steve craned his neck looking for the miso-butter ramen they had eaten at last year's festival, but only straightforward shio ramen was to be found. I was pretty happy about the prospect of any sort of ramen in my belly, but the more Steve talked about the rich miso broth kissed with a bit of famous Hokkaido butter, the more I started craning my neck looking for miso-butter ramen. But, as the old saying goes, a ramen bowl in the hand is worth two in the bush. I sat down before my bowl of shio ramen with only joy in my heart.

The broth was clean and powerfully salty, the noodles springy, the whole bowl surprisingly free of the usual porky grease. It was like a ramen deconstructed, each component simple but nearly flawless.

I would have eaten it with some butter though, had they offered. I'm just saying.

Dessert number one was my still-warm curry pan, a crunchy-coated roll miraculously filled with rich curry, a study in textures and contrasting flavors. I could write a paper about the synergy of crunchy-soft bread, squishy curry and smooth potato chunk...but I'd rather just eat another curry pan.

Dessert number two was a shiro-taiyaki. Or two actually, because I really like taiyaki. It's my second favorite Japanese festival food.* I once even made a purse with a felt applique of a taiyaki and the phrase "I want to eat taiyaki" embroidered on it in Japanese, so you see how I serious I am about this little pancake fish. But I had never tried shiro (white) taiyaki and was wondering how MJ Shokudo managed to keep their tai so vampire pale, when the first bite made it clear: mochi flour. Freshly grilled, the little fish was addictively chewy with a crisp outer skin and smooth, sweet bean center. Forget mochi ice cream balls, people. Mochi is magical when it's warm. MAGICAL.

The melon pan was unfortunately sold out, so there was no dessert number three. But that's okay. I scoped out the market's candy aisles and ogled the Hokkaido crab for sale before heading home, feeling a little sad my pretend Japan day was over. As my former students would say, it was very enjoy! Shall we do it again next year?

* My very favorite Japanese festival food is jaga-bataa ("potato butter"), simply a well-steamed potato topped with a giant chunk of butter. You salt it to taste and eat it in a bowl with chopsticks. Simple and fantastically satisfying.

Posted by anjali at 6:59 AM | Comments (5) | Categories: Event | South Bay

September 15, 2009

feel-good food: julia child dinner at cafe pinot

Turkey ready for carving, Union Rescue Mission, 1956. From the LAPL Photo Collection.

Although Delicious Coma tends to focus more on fermenting cabbage than upcoming food events, a few interesting meals devoted to good causes have come my way and I wanted to write them up.

The first event combines two of my favorite things: Julia Child and the Los Angeles Public Library. How can you go wrong? This Thursday at Cafe Pinot, executive chef Kevin Meehan will be presenting four courses from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, plus wine pairings and dessert. The $75 prix fixe meal is sponsored by Young Literati, the library's membership group for younger, hipper readers which raises money to do fantastic things like buy more educational materials for young patrons and expand literacy programs throughout the library's 72 branches.

The event is just two days away, but there is still room, so make a reservation by emailing literati@lapl.org or calling Lori Enterline at (213) 228-7542. You can also make a reservation online.

Happy eating and reading! (I'm assuming it's alright to do both at this dinner.)

Cafe Pinot
700 W. Fifth Street
Los Angeles, CA 90071
(Right next to the Central Library)

Posted by anjali at 7:23 AM | Comments (1) | Categories: Downtown | Meals for a Cause

September 7, 2009

krautfest '09

My kimchi.

Sundays are inextricably linked with pickled cabbage for me. When I was small, Sunday was jook day with my dad, a post-church ritual involving hot rice porridge, tiny dried shrimp and a can of pickled cabbage.* My mother, fearful of her children OD-ing on salt, always put away the pickled cabbage before I had my fill, so I remember those mornings as warm and slow and filled with an aching desire for more slippery, crunchy, salty bites of pickled cabbage.

Making red cabbage sauerkraut.

So when I heard about Machine Project's Krautfest '09, a Sunday dedicated to learning how to make not one but two types of pickled cabbage, it was a no-brainer. I was there, despite the long list of items to bring and the napa cabbage brining that had to happen the night before. No one ever said love was easy.

Shredding cabbage on a giant mandoline.

Machine Project was less crowded than it had been during Fallen Fruit's Public Fruit Jam, but the attendees were just as friendly, a buzzing roomful of people excited about making pickles. First we learned the simple art of sauerkraut making from Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen, the couple behind the blog Homegrown Evolution. After shredding a head of cabbage, I massaged in about a tablespoon of salt by hand, then dumped it into a small bucket and beat it to a juicy pulp with the bottom of a glass jar. (Others used beer bottles or their fists.) Dump in the other half, beat, repeat -- until all three heads of cabbage sat, mashed and juicy, in the bucket. That was it. In order to age properly, the cabbage must remain submerged in the brine, so we were given plastic zipper bags to fill with salt water and use as sauerkraut weights, along with the instructions to "Pick out anything that looks weird" as the cabbage ages, a process which should take anywhere from a few days to two weeks. To figure out if it's done, "Just taste it," said Kelly. "It's done when it tastes ready to you."

After writing our names on our buckets and stowing them away, it was time to master the slightly more complicated art of kimchi making from the mother-daughter team behind Granny Choe Kimchi, Oghee and Connie Choe. The kimchi ingredient list had sent me to California Market on Beverly the day before, where I had no trouble finding ground Korean chili pepper, a ginormous head of napa cabbage and gat, Korean mustard greens. We were instructed to brine the napa cabbage the night before, peeling off all the leaves and soaking them in a gallon of water mixed with half a cup of salt. We also had to bring a small shredded daikon, a whole head of peeled garlic, a piece of peeled ginger, an onion (which actually should have been a bunch of green onions) and a little sugar and salt.

Mama Choe instructed us to cut up all the cabbage and put it in the bowl along with the chili pepper. Many people had brought the wrong type of chili powder, so Daughter Choe walked around with a giant sack and a teacup, dispensing Korean chili powder to anyone who needed it. Then came the garlic and ginger, crushed in a garlic press, followed by the onion, chopped fine, the daikon and the chopped mustard greens. A tablespoon of sugar and two teaspoons of salt were mixed with a cup of water and dumped in, along with a bit of cooked rice to aid fermentation.

Passing out kimchi samples.

I pulled on plastic gloves and set to work mixing everything in the bowl, massaging the cabbage to soften it. The Choes walked around adding a few pieces of their own mature kimchi to each bowl to help jump-start fermentation. I packed my young kimchi into a big jar and sat back to admire it, pleased at how much it looked like real kimchi.

Choucroute garnie.

Kimchi making was over, but there was one last pickled cabbage pleasure: choucroute garnie, the Alsatian specialty of cooked sauerkraut and smoked meats, made for us by Jean-Paul Monsche, an Alsatian friend of the Homegrown Evolution crew. Before we dug in, Jean-Paul told us a bit about the history of the dish and the special place it holds in Alsatian culture. He claimed his rendition wasn't perfect, but I thought it was fantastic, redolent with smoky meat, the sauerkraut mellow and tender. Perhaps I should have been born in Alsace, where my consumption of massive amounts of pickled cabbage would have been a point of regional pride rather than cause for alarm.

I'm so proud of my kimchi.

Oh well. The 10 pounds of cabbage currently fermenting in my kitchen will hopefully help me get over the childhood trauma of never having enough pickled cabbage.

* Pam of Rants and Craves recently wrote a lovely post about her own weekend jook mornings with her family. She strikes me as the kind of mom who would let her boy eat as much pickled cabbage as he wanted though.

Posted by anjali at 7:02 PM | Comments (10) | Categories: Event | Silver Lake & Nearby

September 2, 2009

how i save recipes online: a nerdy treatise

You may not know this about me, but in addition to being a food nerd, I am also a productivity geek, which means I neatly label my spices, I clean out my refrigerator regularly and I made this kind of embarrassing grocery list template organized around the layout of my local Trader Joe's. (I can totally send you the Word doc if you shop at the TJ's in Silver Lake, just let me know.) So it probably comes as no surprise that I have a system in place for organizing the recipes I find online. It's not perfect, but I thought I'd write it up in case it might help any other food and productivity nerds out there.

Click on any screenshot for a full-size view.

It all starts with Google Reader, the hub of my blog reading and where I am most likely to find a recipe I want to keep for later. If I'm in a hurry, I'll just star the recipe so I'll be able to find it easily later. (Extra credit keyboard shortcut geek tip: Just hit S to star an entry in Google Reader.)

If I have a little more time, I immediately save the recipe in Delicious, tagging it with "recipe" plus a mix of general and specific tags, so I have the ability later to search for either a general category of recipes or a specific main ingredient. When I have a larger chunk of time and the desire to obsessively organize, I go through all my starred items and add the recipes to Delicious. Unstarring an item (geek tip: hit S again) after saving it, tagged neatly, is a wonderfully satisfying feeling, like how it felt to empty your school binder at the end of the year in junior high.

...You're getting a deep look into my psyche here, people. I hope you appreciate it.

Here's where we kick into Mac-specific nerd mode because the best and most convenient aspect of saving recipes in Delicious is that I can look them up with Quicksilver, the application launcher program any good geek should be using on her Mac. (You can read more about Quicksilver here: "Why Quicksilver is Still the Greatest Mac App of All Time.") I just pull up Quicksilver -- with a keyboard shortcut, of course -- and type in any word from the name of the recipe to get a list of saved items with that word. I highlight the recipe, hit Return and the recipe page opens up in a new tab in my browser. Quicksilver is also adaptive, so if every time I search for "lentils" I choose Orangette's flawless lentil salad recipe, that item will begin appearing at the top of the list.

I've also been playing around with Evernote, which goes beyond storing bookmarks, allowing you to copy and paste the actual website content -- helpful in case your recipe comes from a blog that closes up shop -- and save documents, photos and even handwritten notes, so if you go to a party and eat an amazing pavlova, you can ask the hostess to write up the recipe on a napkin and save that alongside a photo you snapped of the dessert wine served at the party. It has the potential to be the ultimate recipe box, but I've only just started using it and have yet to reach those heights.

So that's it. Is it all rather underwhelming? Does the idea of accessing a recipe with just two keystrokes and a keyword leave you absolutely cold? Sorry, my friend, it's a geek thing. I like to save time looking up recipes so I have more time to cook. And eat. And, you know, lie around the house rereading the Harry Potter books. Whatever.

Fellow geeks, how do you store your recipes online?

Posted by anjali at 7:46 AM | Comments (32) | Categories: Recipe