An Effing Foodie

Food Poems: Taking Stock, by EF

Taking Stock

“People are as strange about eating as they are about love. They want what they want.” --Frank Bruni

Take stock; the beginning of one meal
from the remains of the last,
brewing bones and skimming chaff.
People have fallen out of love with food,
no seeded mysticism or churn blisters;
the sum of a body cellophaned and portioned.

Or maybe not.  Maybe it’s love overlooked--
custard-soft eggs, bitten buttered toast--
or love too rich and freely given,
seconds of coconut curry, jungle-green,
choked with curving eggplants
and bamboo, pliant and plentiful. 

When the one that got away
came back, he cupped my dark-pooled face,
clucked his tongue. “Eat something.”
My mother did the same when he disappeared
for good, handed me the oldest remedy--
rice plumped and redolent of chicken,
golden gelatin, collagen, fat and blood;
the things that hold a body together.

One day, that’ll be me,
ladling simmering stock into long grains,
when really what I mean is,
I’m sorry baby, I know it hurts. 
Some things take time, starch and stock
marrying every kernel--ginger, garlic
and shallots wafting from the bowl.

Summertime, Sausage and Pepper Sliders, and Nanny's Cucina!

Just as mangoes in Hawaii have ruined mangoes from anywhere else for me, the bulging beauty of East Coast tomatoes have made boxed-still-green supermarket tomatoes a bitter pill to swallow.

That said, I generally prefer to melt down fresh tomatoes for sauce, deferring to whole canned kind when the freshies are looking wan.  Occasionally I'll dip into tomato paste when I'm looking for a hit of sweetness, color, and depth in whatever I'm making.  Even though I do keep it around, I find that I hardly ever use prepared tomato sauce.

But...that may change!  An always-in-the-know food friend of mine was kind enough to point me in the direction of Nanny's Cucina Marinara. 

Handmade in small batches from roma and grape tomatoes, this deeply red sauce has a glossy patina, pleasing, slow-cooked sweetness, and a bit of a spicy bite-back that beats the pants off your run-of-the-mill jarred marinara.  It's like sticking a finger into an old-school Sunday Dinner.

Prepared food goblins can step off--The Sauce is a great example of a flavorful time-saver, made only from ingredients you can pronounce. (That, and it just plain tastes better than anything a mere mortal could pull off on a weekday.)

Regina, I think you've done your Nanny's recipe proud--witness, Sausage and Pepper Sliders made possible--nay, scrumptious!--by your lovely sauce.

 

>CHOMP<

Alas, The Sauce isn't available in stores yet, but you can order it online via Nanny Cucina's site, where there's also recipes and some great family photos, too!

What's next for Nanny's?  A yet-spicier Arrabbiata Sauce and their version of Puttanesca, pegged All About Olives...can't wait!

Recipe Reeeemix: Hainanese Chicken Rice (AKA Chicken with Scallion-Ginger Sauce)

I love it when people insist that chicken doesn't taste like chicken anymore.  Maybe it's because I wasn't raised on a farm, and never had to opportunity to purchase a chicken in the golden era of non-industrialized food.

Or maaaaybe people just don't know how to cook chicken.

I'm not saying that all chickens are created equal--if you can come up with the scratch to buy free-range sustainable boutique chicken at $7 a pound, then by all means, please do support that farmer.  I, however, take a certain glee in scooping up family packs of thighs and drumsticks at my local megamart.

That your chicken needs to be expensive, or preciously tended to, or expertly timed in order to taste good is a load of bull.  Family FN Foodie does have a penchant for meats of a darker, sultrier nature (duck, beef, fatty pork and lamb), and often eschews chicken in restaurants, but there's one chicken dish that we not only order every time it's offered, we order it in concert.

I speak of the humble Hainanese Chicken Rice.  Beloved by Chinese people at large (and favored by Singaporeans and Malaysians in particular) it's straightforward comfort food: Gently poached chicken served over rice made from its own stock, served with a ginger-based dipping sauce and a chili sauce for ooomph.

No fancy fusion, glitz or sideshows.  Just pull-apart chicken that tastes like chicken, on top of chicken-flavored rice.  Sounds like a snooze, but trust me--the anise-tinted stock steeped into jasmine rice is soothingly savory, and everything you want out of flavored rice packets that you just can't get without boiling bones.

Food Poems: Saying Grace, by EF

Saying Grace

Give me your controlled rot,
ruby-speckled rows of aging
beef, bottles seasoned in dust--
veins branch penicillin-blue
through spring’s milk, a washed-rind
bite that only comes with time.

Give me your unborn--
your unlaid eggs nestled
in the soup hen, tone of topaz
that never saw the sun--

hand me a pearl spoon
of a million yet-to-be sturgeon
massaged through a sieve with
malossol’s touch of salt--

even the inky urchin cracked
in spiky halves will yield
the secrets to her young--briny,
potential-rich, that taste of perpetuation,
of what was to become life.

No one is innocent.
The local August tomato--
God-fearing, luscious red--
that sweetness, those jellied seeds
running down your chin
they weren’t meant for you. 

Repent?  Hardly.  Who are you
to apologize to?  But say thank you,
for Chrissake, and we’re not talking
to God, unless God was a tomato
flushed with pride, grown
by knowing, gnarled hands.

HipHipHooray for Häagen-Dazs Five and Helping Honey Bees!

In this age of "the New Authentic", where every schmuck is pretending to know the name of their artfully grizzled Brooklyn butcher and his starter hog, it's brazenly uncool to crush on a food corporation.

But crush I have!  I heart Häagen-Dazs.  In particular, I heart Häagen-Dazs Five.

I first got wind of this on The Food Section, and managed to snag myself a carton at my local A&P. 

Ingredient minimalism is the makeup and namesake; each of the 7 offered HD Five flavors (mint, ginger, vanilla bean, coffee, passion fruit, brown sugar and milk chocolate) contains only 5 ingredients (milk, cream, sugar, eggs, and said-naturally derived flavor). 

I got to try the passion fruit...and it's amazing!

First off, the ice cream itself was supple and yielding to the spoon, with a lush and custardy mouthfeel--a big departure from the petrified pints that we've come to expect from the Dazs. 

It was also far less sweet than your average pint of Dazs, the front-running flavors being clean cream and the tart, tropical fragrance of passion fruit.  It's sunshine churned into dairy!  WHEEE!

The premise is irritatingly on-trend, but it's a quality product nonetheless.  Consider the c*cksucking approval of uppity foodites mere collateral as you contentedly lick your spoon.

One more reason I'm crushing on the Dazs: I heart their Help the Honey Bees campaign.  

Recipe Reeeeeemix: Chicken Long Rice with Green Curry and Leeks

I dig braised meats, deep-fat frying, and charred chops as much as (who am I kidding, grossly-more-than) the next eater, but I've definitely hit a brown-food wall.  I'm a 'lil fatigued of things that taste like they're meant to prepare you for hibernation.

Which makes me cuckoopants-nostalgic for local Hawaiian food.

Which makes me dig through the pantry...and realize that I'm a couple of staples short of a faithful reproduction of chicken long rice. 

(Perhaps in the next life, I'll learn to keep a non-sprouting hand of ginger around.)

What is chicken long rice, you ask?  It's basically broth-bathed, ginger-scented bits of vermicelli noodles suspending tender chunks of chicken, usually spooned over rice.  It's a pretty Hawaii-specific thing, amorphous by nature--neither Chinese nor Japanese, too thickened to be soup-noodles, but too thin to be stew. 

No matter! I'm recklessly tweaking the beloved, monotone classic of chicken long rice to suit the contents of my fridge and my selfish mid-winter needs.

At home, they usually make long rice with round onion and finish it with green onion; I didn't have either, but I did have some pert leeks.  Using both the white and the green parts of the leeks made a fine (if blaringly inauthentic) substitute. 

I was also missing the aforementioned ginger, which is tougher to duplicate.  But my eye landed on a jar of Thai green curry paste crouching in the fridge door.  Why not?  It's got galangal in it--not quite ersatz ginger, but closer than anything else I had on-hand--plus, the heat from chilis and citrus notes from the lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves would be an eye-opening off-beat to a generally one-note dish.

And hell, since we were taking it to curry paste, why not season with Vietnamese fish sauce rather than salt?  Let's flip in some star anise, too, as a shout-out to the Chinese.

The result?  Not a chicken long rice you'd find at a luau or plate lunch place, but a bright, soothing bowl that I'd be happy to serve to NYers and kamaaina alike.

EF's Tomato Obsession Continues Unabated!

Markets crashing!
Lightning flashing!
PETA clamoring for B&J breast-milk ice cream!
Limey felled by hot sauce!

And yet, EF's consumption of 'maters continues unabated.

 
 

L to R, from top left corner: Tagliatelle with melted tomatoes, basil, ricotta, and red pepper flakes; striped heirloom tomatoes, whole and sliced; Caprese salad made with Brandywine tomatoes (PA).

Methinks this is some kind of subliminal coping strategy for the shortening days.

Hanover Tomatoes from Richmond, VA & Poems of the Tomato-Kind

Feeling Fucked Up

Lord she’s gone done left me done packed / up and split
and I with no way to make her
come back and everywhere the world is bare
bright bone white    crystal sand glistens
dope death dead dying and jiving drove
her away made her take her laughter and her smiles
and her softness and her midnight sighs—

Fuck Coltrane and music and clouds drifting in the sky
fuck the sea and trees and the sky and birds
and alligators and all the animals that roam the earth
fuck marx and mao fuck fidel and nkrumah and
democracy and communism fuck smack and pot
and red ripe tomatoes fuck joseph fuck mary fuck
god jesus and all the disciples fuck fanon nixon
and malcolm fuck the revolution fuck freedom fuck
the whole muthafucking thing
all i want now is my woman back
so my soul can sing

    -Etheridge Knight, The Essential Etheridge Knight

These Are a Few of My Faaavorite Things: Oxtail Soup, Asahi Grill, Honolulu

So...the EF has been felled by her ancient nefarious nemesis...food poisoning.

Once you've clocked a certain number of hours grasping porcelain for dear life, it's important to get right back on the horse and shove some nutrients back into your betrayed body. 

It's times like this that we bust out our personalized short lists of Never-Fail Food (one notch more crucial, particular and reliable than mere comfort food).

As I rubbed my wounded, whimpering belly in a guest room in Virginia, one thing kept coming to mind:

 

Meet the Hawaiian answer to Jewish penicillin: Oxtail soup.

Sadly, most of the oxtail temples of my childhood have shut down since I've swapped to the East Coast, but my last visit home, my BFF Allison clued me in on Asahi Grill, a newer kid on the block with old-school sensibilities and killer oxtail soup.

There are no frills involved; just tender, bone-in hunks of long-cooked oxtail suspended in consomme-clear broth scented with star anise, cilantro, peanuts and ginger.  No matter where you order this is Hawaii, you'll always get 2 scoops of rice and a little bowl of grated ginger to go with it.

Ironically, it's been an exact calendar year since I was sitting at Asahi Grill with my family, coating my insides with collagen-rich broth.  As I slurp down conciliatory Campbell's, I concede that this may be a sign from mischievous deities that I should visit the motherland more often.

Or at the very least, call Allison more.  Alli, I MISS YOU, I LUV YOU...SEND SOUP!

Bringin' 'Em Back: Brussels Sprouts with Mustard and Pine Nuts

Generally, if you're a weirdo, you have to be told, and my peers have always provided me that service.  But it was only after watching hours of "You Can't Do That on Television" in 4th grade that I finally understood that kids are supposed to hate vegetables--brussels sprouts, lima beans, and broccoli in particular.

And here I was, a juvenile mega-weirdo, asking for seconds of lima beans and broccoli at the school cafeteria.  Brussels sprouts were few and far between in Hawaii, but I loved 'em, and thought of them as custom cabbages for little people.

I get where the dislike comes from: institution-style, freezer-burned, gray-cooked veggies made by ladies with hairnets and well-meaning biddies.  But friend, when you're pushin' thirty and STILL making faces at your veggies, take a seat...WEIRDO.  Your colon will thank me.

Brussels Sprouts FAQs:

• When choosing fresh ones in the market, look for bright green, tight little heads. (Don't buy the friggen frozen ones, they won't improve your opinion of 'em.)
• Brussels Sprouts season is from August to March.
• These little guys grow on big 'ol stalks, with dozens of sprouts per stalk.
• The sprout of yesteryear was probably more bitter; these days, farmers tend to deliberately cultivate sweeter varieties.
• No really, they're good for you: lots of folic acid, fiber, and Vitamins A, C, and K.