I have an inherent drive to get to the source of things in my life. With food, that means getting as close to nature as possible. I understand that this is not a desire many people share. If that were the case, there would be a movement to fling all of the currently existing Doritos and Twinkies into space and look upon the memory of them with shame and disgust at our fallen culinary state.
I'll be honest and say I don't know that much about how bread is made. But I do know that the primary concerns for most companies producing bread are things like shelf life and packability. If they were making, I don't know, boxes, I'd be totally down with that. But they're not. They're making food. That you eat. And that goes in your body. The primary concern should not be how long it can sit at the grocery store or how easy it is to pack and ship with tons of other bread
So what did I do? I learned to make my own! Three cheers! And it's incredibly easy. It's about one level above ramen noodles, and I'm being completely serious. It takes about 10 minutes of actual working time, tastes incredible, is healthy, and impresses the crap out of the ladies (if you're a lady, I think the result is about the same on the menfolk, though I'll admit I'm not as interested in impressing them so I can't be sure). Thanks again to Mark Bittman for this one. Here's the link.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/26/dining/20110126-bittman.html?ref=theminimalist#No-Knead_Bread_(2006)
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Gyoza, Round I
I recently, and by recently I mean yesterday, attempted to make gyoza for the first time. I've known for a while that I was eventually going to move out of my Thai phase, which has lasted well over a year, with decent results. I thought maybe I'd end up going Mexican or Italian, but it seems as if the Japanese phase is about to hit.
Here's the thing, I've never really been to Japan. Technically. Or in any other sense of the word. Though I have watched a lot of anime (most of it really isn't worth it, to be honest. Occasionally you find a good one, but then all the other ones are just crappy, over-sexed, predictable, weird cartoons--forgive the broad sweeping generalization, but it's pretty accurate as far as BSGs go). Anyway, my point is, of all the foreign foods I've eaten, I've eaten Japanese food the least. But I love gyoza, and I love all kinds of seafood. And in my mind, miso soup is kind of like an evolved, meal version of herbal tea. There's a cool, sort of minimalistic element to these foods that really appeals to me.
So back to the Gyoza. The process of making them is actually pretty simple. The filling is very easy (mostly just combining chopped vegetables and meat), and then you just have to get the motion of folding the little gyoza wrappers. This takes some practice, but messing it up isn't going to have any drastic consequences. You could probably go spill some milk after and still not cry about it.
The final step is the only part I had any real trouble with. Pan-frying is not a complex technique. Pan frying is a fry followed by a steam, so you heat up a little oil, fry your dumplings for about 2 minutes, then pour on water and steam them. My first two batches went fine. The third batch proved to be the, uh, charm. On my third batch, when I poured the water in, I got an incredibly loud and violent reaction which you could also get by mixing baking soda, vinegar, and napalm (Note: if you somehow manage to get a hold of napalm, do not try this anywhere except on the moon, where you and you alone will have to face the consequences of your choices). It died down after a couple of seconds and the gyoza came out fine. Unfortunately, I got the same thing on my fourth batch as well. My guess--and I'll have to have someone smarter than me confirm this--was that because the pan was so hot already, the oil was closer to its smoke point (a principle I admittedly don't understand) when I added the water. So next time I'm going to try to keep it to two batches, or just fry the gyoza at a lower temperature.
And by the way, despite the nuclear minicaust that took place, the gyoza tasted awesome. I ate over 20 of them.
Here's a link to the recipe:
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-make-gyoza-dumplings
Here's the thing, I've never really been to Japan. Technically. Or in any other sense of the word. Though I have watched a lot of anime (most of it really isn't worth it, to be honest. Occasionally you find a good one, but then all the other ones are just crappy, over-sexed, predictable, weird cartoons--forgive the broad sweeping generalization, but it's pretty accurate as far as BSGs go). Anyway, my point is, of all the foreign foods I've eaten, I've eaten Japanese food the least. But I love gyoza, and I love all kinds of seafood. And in my mind, miso soup is kind of like an evolved, meal version of herbal tea. There's a cool, sort of minimalistic element to these foods that really appeals to me.
So back to the Gyoza. The process of making them is actually pretty simple. The filling is very easy (mostly just combining chopped vegetables and meat), and then you just have to get the motion of folding the little gyoza wrappers. This takes some practice, but messing it up isn't going to have any drastic consequences. You could probably go spill some milk after and still not cry about it.
The final step is the only part I had any real trouble with. Pan-frying is not a complex technique. Pan frying is a fry followed by a steam, so you heat up a little oil, fry your dumplings for about 2 minutes, then pour on water and steam them. My first two batches went fine. The third batch proved to be the, uh, charm. On my third batch, when I poured the water in, I got an incredibly loud and violent reaction which you could also get by mixing baking soda, vinegar, and napalm (Note: if you somehow manage to get a hold of napalm, do not try this anywhere except on the moon, where you and you alone will have to face the consequences of your choices). It died down after a couple of seconds and the gyoza came out fine. Unfortunately, I got the same thing on my fourth batch as well. My guess--and I'll have to have someone smarter than me confirm this--was that because the pan was so hot already, the oil was closer to its smoke point (a principle I admittedly don't understand) when I added the water. So next time I'm going to try to keep it to two batches, or just fry the gyoza at a lower temperature.
And by the way, despite the nuclear minicaust that took place, the gyoza tasted awesome. I ate over 20 of them.
Here's a link to the recipe:
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-make-gyoza-dumplings
Friday, September 16, 2011
A Few More Things
Hello readers, friends, and everybody else. I wanted to add a few more things on top of my first post. Specifically, a few more details about my cooking history, and what I want to do with this blog.
First, I think most people experiment a little with cooking pretty early on. I learned how to fry eggs, cook frozen pizza (which was of course doctored with bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, and usually some basil and oregano. Such was the Spackman way), and brown meat at a relatively early age. Later on, when I was about 16, I attended a four-day cullinary arts camp at Kendall College in Chicago. While I was there I spent a couple days in a professional kitchen with a professional chef (and a bunch of other kids) learning basic knife skills and cooking techniques. Most of what I learned there didn't stick with me, but I did get two really important things. The first was, of course, an intro to knives, which is important. The second, which was far more important, was a sense of confidence. I walked away from that with the feeling that I knew what I was doing, that I was legit, even though I still had no idea what I was doing.
This works into what I guess I could call my philosophy of food, which has three parts. First, confidence. A lot of people approach food with fear, trepidation, anxiety, and little or no medication to treat these symptoms. There's a sense that you'll soil a timeless art, that you'll offend the Vegetable Dieties, or some other sort of "I'm not the right person to do this" mentality. This is, as they say, a load of poppycockles. (Who says that? you may be wondering. The English, probably) But seriously, cooking is remarkably easy, and if you mess up, the only person's judgment you have to worry about is your own (unless you're married or have kids, but if that's the case, chances are you're probably already cooking). No one's grading you, no one's watching. It's just you and the food. It's likely that on your first time you'll mess something up, but you're also not likely to mess everything up. And the other thing is, once you've mastered a recipe, you have it forever. It's taken me about a year to get Pad Thai down to where I can almost cook it in my sleep, but now if I want I can make it every day for the next 65 (give or take) that I have left. So fresh courage take! You will be victorious.
The second part of my food philosophy is that food brings people together like almost nothing else can. Good food in good company lets people forget their daily grind. It's a chance to talk, to laugh, to experiment, or to just sit and think. It can either be one of life's most tedious necessities, or its greatest joys. I'll just reference my dinner stories from last post. Given that choice, who wouldn't take the latter?
The last element of my food philosophy is that everything is normal to somebody. This kind of comes back to the confidence bit. Sometimes a person will find a recipe and say "What the crap?! Why would I cook with an eggplant? Who eats tofu? Only food snobs actually use fresh garlic!" Here's the thing. You can cook, eat, buy whatever you want, and you don't know what something's like until you've tried it. In terms of finding ingredients, if you can't find it in a local store (99% of the time you can, just ask around), you can order almost anything on the internet. Also, you can learn to DO anything from the internet, which is where I get 80% of my recipes and techniques (the other 20% comes from real, live people). I'll post some good websites in a comment.
So, this blog will mostly be a chronicle of my adventures and mishaps as I try cooking new foods. To my friends who do photography and video (if you're interested), at some point I'd like to add both of those elements but don't really take good pictures or know how to do editing. So if you have any interest in helping, let me know. I might also do some posts on local restaurants, grocery stores/ethnic markets, and maybe some interviews (I'd love to do interviews with the two asian food store owners I know). So, all that said, I need to go make lunch.
First, I think most people experiment a little with cooking pretty early on. I learned how to fry eggs, cook frozen pizza (which was of course doctored with bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, and usually some basil and oregano. Such was the Spackman way), and brown meat at a relatively early age. Later on, when I was about 16, I attended a four-day cullinary arts camp at Kendall College in Chicago. While I was there I spent a couple days in a professional kitchen with a professional chef (and a bunch of other kids) learning basic knife skills and cooking techniques. Most of what I learned there didn't stick with me, but I did get two really important things. The first was, of course, an intro to knives, which is important. The second, which was far more important, was a sense of confidence. I walked away from that with the feeling that I knew what I was doing, that I was legit, even though I still had no idea what I was doing.
This works into what I guess I could call my philosophy of food, which has three parts. First, confidence. A lot of people approach food with fear, trepidation, anxiety, and little or no medication to treat these symptoms. There's a sense that you'll soil a timeless art, that you'll offend the Vegetable Dieties, or some other sort of "I'm not the right person to do this" mentality. This is, as they say, a load of poppycockles. (Who says that? you may be wondering. The English, probably) But seriously, cooking is remarkably easy, and if you mess up, the only person's judgment you have to worry about is your own (unless you're married or have kids, but if that's the case, chances are you're probably already cooking). No one's grading you, no one's watching. It's just you and the food. It's likely that on your first time you'll mess something up, but you're also not likely to mess everything up. And the other thing is, once you've mastered a recipe, you have it forever. It's taken me about a year to get Pad Thai down to where I can almost cook it in my sleep, but now if I want I can make it every day for the next 65 (give or take) that I have left. So fresh courage take! You will be victorious.
The second part of my food philosophy is that food brings people together like almost nothing else can. Good food in good company lets people forget their daily grind. It's a chance to talk, to laugh, to experiment, or to just sit and think. It can either be one of life's most tedious necessities, or its greatest joys. I'll just reference my dinner stories from last post. Given that choice, who wouldn't take the latter?
The last element of my food philosophy is that everything is normal to somebody. This kind of comes back to the confidence bit. Sometimes a person will find a recipe and say "What the crap?! Why would I cook with an eggplant? Who eats tofu? Only food snobs actually use fresh garlic!" Here's the thing. You can cook, eat, buy whatever you want, and you don't know what something's like until you've tried it. In terms of finding ingredients, if you can't find it in a local store (99% of the time you can, just ask around), you can order almost anything on the internet. Also, you can learn to DO anything from the internet, which is where I get 80% of my recipes and techniques (the other 20% comes from real, live people). I'll post some good websites in a comment.
So, this blog will mostly be a chronicle of my adventures and mishaps as I try cooking new foods. To my friends who do photography and video (if you're interested), at some point I'd like to add both of those elements but don't really take good pictures or know how to do editing. So if you have any interest in helping, let me know. I might also do some posts on local restaurants, grocery stores/ethnic markets, and maybe some interviews (I'd love to do interviews with the two asian food store owners I know). So, all that said, I need to go make lunch.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
College Cooks: There are dozens of us! Dozens!
Hello. If you are reading this, there is something you should know. I love food. I love to eat it, read about it, rant about it, and gesture wildly about it. Perhaps that's a bit hyperbolic. But the truth remains that I love food.
My love for food came in large part from my family, especially my mom. Her name is Sue. She is spunky. She grew up in a small town in Canada living off of produce from the family garden and game and fowl hunted by my grandpa. So when she cooks, she cooks good. (Note to the grammatically sensitive: I know that "good" is an adjective, and as such should only modify nouns and pronouns. But let's be honest, saying "she cooks well" just doesn't pack the same punch. Thank you for your flexibility. Or, if you're still upset, you can send hate-mail to the address at the bottom of the post*, and I promise I will read it.)
So, I grew up eating meals that my mom made from scratch. The only food we ate from a box was pasta, and the only real junk food we had was red licorice and fancy potato chips. (Note: While I am grateful now, this comparative lack of junk was a seriously traumatic element of my childhood. When I would get out my sack lunch in 4th grade and compare, as 4th-graders invariably do, I would see that the other kids had motorcycle-shaped String Thing, or Froot-by-the-Foot, or other sugar-loaded, cool-shaped, fruit-mocking abominations. What did I have? Actual fruit.)
But more important than the food my Mom cooked were the memories that revolved around those meals. Maybe the family meal is a lost art, but we preserved it faithfully and with diligence in our house. And with great results. Dinner time was one of the few times all seven of us were together, and it was normally spent trying to keep our food in our mouths because we were laughing too hard, while simultaneously offering praise and admiration to anyone who could successfully cause a spew. This was dinner.
Or, if we didn't eat at home, we would find some foreign restaurant and impose our camaraderie on it. Where I'm from (an undisclosed city in exotic Minnesota), there are immigrants from just about every place in the world. I never verified this, but I've heard that one of our rival high schools was one of the most ethnically diverse in the country. So what does this mean? Lots of ethnic people means lots of ethnic food. Of course we had the standard Mexican and Chinese joints, but from an early age I was also exposed to excellent Thai, Indian, Greek, Italian, and later on French, Turkish, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean food. Also BBQ, which isn't ethnic, but it is awesome.
So flash back to about a year and a half ago. I had recently returned from spending 18+ months in Mongolia, where I mostly ate Mongolian food (mutton in various forms), rice, fried eggs, and kimchi. Being back in America, where you can get any kind of food from anywhere, I thought to myself, "You know what? I love pesto. I bet I could learn how to make pesto." So, I looked up a pesto recipe, and made pesto.
This was a significant moment, in the same way the apple falling on Newton's head was significant. I realized that if I want to eat something, all I have to do is look it up on the internet, follow the recipe, and then eat it. Thus, a chef was born.
So now, I'm back in college, cooking away. And this is my blog.
*Send hate-mail here:
Haha! There is no address. Now you will stew in your own angry feelings.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)