Grilled shrimp? It's like cheating, right? What's strange about grilled shrimp?
The only thing strange about the avocado salad is that I bought a Florida avocado instead of the usual Hass. If you're not familiar with the varieties, Hass avocados (sometimes referred to as Haas) are the most widely cultivated avocados in the world. They are the bumpy black skinned ones that fit comfortably in the palm of your hand. Developed in 1926 by a California mail carrier named Rudolph Hass, they are very nutty tasting and have a high oil content which contributes to their smooth and creamy texture. Interestingly enough, Hass patented his tree but never made much money from it. It was the first U.S. patent ever issued for a tree.
Florida avocados are much larger with a smooth bright green skin. When ripe, the texture is usually firmer than the Hass and the taste has a bright citrusy note. Generally, I use Florida avocados for salads when I can find them. Hass is almost always available.
Avocados will continue to ripen after harvesting, so don't be afraid to buy hard green Hass. A day or two on your kitchen counter and they will soften and the skin will darken. If you want to speed up the process, place the avocados in a paper bag with an apple. (Apples emit ethylene gas which promotes ripening. This trick works for bananas, too.)
But I digress. Again. Where's my strange food? Well, I wouldn't call it strange, exactly. More like unfamiliar. Tired of guessing? You can stop anyway because you're not going to get it unless you've developed telepathy that transcends time and space. It's Trader Joe's Orange Muscat Champagne Vinegar which I will refer to as OMCV from now on. Maybe it will catch on. It could happen. When Rachel Ray started saying EVOO, we thought it was goofy but she's like a gazillionare now. So who's laughing all the way to the bank?
OMCV. At first glance, I dismissed it. Yuck, sweet. My culinary blind spot. I don't like sweet stuff. Which sounds crazy to most people but it is what it is. Back to the subject at hand. I decided to check it out so I starting reading the bottle. Suggested uses: dress a salad, marinate chicken or shrimp, combine with sesame oil for Chinese chicken salad. Big deal. But then it suggests: "For a refreshing spritzer, add 3 tablespoons to a glass full of sparkling water and crushed ice." Seriously? I want vinegar in my drink? But before you run away in horror, hear me out. I looked at the ingredients. I assumed that it was orange vinegar, muscat vinegar and champagne vinegar. Wrong answer. It actually is champagne vinegar with orange juice, sugar, fresh oranges, and muscat grape juice.
Hmm. This poses a dilemma. I'm intrigued by the thought of tasting that spritzer because it sounds disgusting. But now I'm thinking that it's going to be something so sweet that I won't use the rest of the bottle and it ain't cheap. I'm torn. Finally the vinegar drink wins me over, so I bought it.
I tried the spritzer. "Refreshing" is not the word that came to mind after the first sip. "Bizarre" is a much better word. But like so many other things I've tasted, you can't go by your initial reaction. Sometimes, you're completely unprepared and your tastebuds go into shock. Especially when it's a flavor profile that you wouldn't have ever thought would be harmonious. And most people wouldn't even try it on a bet. So I took another sip. And another. And another. I started viewing my attraction to it now as somewhat masochistic.
My beloved wandered into the kitchen, so I said, "here, try this". Without hesitation, he grabbed the glass and took a huge swig. Then he screamed. Not a little girl scream. More like a wounded animal scream. He shook his head back and forth like a wet dog, managed to say "Aaaagggh" and then stomped his foot. When he finally caught his breath, he declared it to have a weird super-tart aspirin taste. Shook his head again and ran from the kitchen which had suddenly become Dante's fourth circle of hell. I drank the rest of the spritzer. It's like sweet pickle soda. You have to admit, THAT'S very strange.
I mixed about two parts OMCV with three parts EVOO and put it in a ziiploc bag. I peeled the shrimp and dropped them in the marinade. I let them hang out for about 30 minutes. I fired up the grill and threaded the shrimp on bamboo skewers. I always use 2 skewers because it makes them a lot easier to flip. I mixed some more OMCV and EVOO and added a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, salt and pepper and a dollop of dijon mustard. Voila! Salad dressing for the peeled and cubed avocado.
The verdict? Awesome marinade. Pretty tasty salad dressing. Spritzer? You'll have to buy a bottle of OMCV and try it for yourself. I dare you.
Buy something you haven't tried and play with your food!
Ahh. Asian Pork Burgers. One of my staples. But even the best cooks can stumble once in a while. They looked awesome and smelled delicious but as soon as I bit into one, I realized that I forgot something. Something that would certainly send me home from a competitive cooking show. Acid! The pork fat was crying out for acid to balance the greasiness inherent in the ground meat.
It started with the day I decided, on a whim, that I would write a blog about the unfamiliar foods that I find and try to cook. I went to the market, bought the malanga coco and spent way too much time researching it and sussing out how to start a blog. I sat and wrote until my husband came to the kitchen with stomach growling. His offer to "help" with dinner kicked me into high gear.
I put him to work, pulling out ingredients and prepping stuff while I chopped and added things to the ground pork waiting patiently in the mixing bowl. A pound and a half of pork, throw in three cloves of garlic that I minced. Minced Thai bird chilis, three green onions, chopped, minced cilantro, about an inch of minced fresh ginger. What next? Oh, yeah. Soy sauce, sesame oil. What else? I was hurrying. I recited what had gone in and asked my husband, what's missing? I know I usually put something else in. He looked scared but ventured, "fish sauce"? Yes! Thank you! He located the fish sauce after some coaching. It dawned on me that I have chased him out of "my" kitchen so many times that the poor guy doesn't know where to find anything. I'll have to work on that.
I donned a pair of evidence gloves and mixed the burgers. I formed the patties and laid them on a sheet pan. I sent my beloved to heat up the gas grill. I kept thinking I had forgot something. But we're both hungry so I shrugged off the feeling.
About six minutes per side on a hot grill. I used my handy-dandy Thermopen instant read thermometer to check for the ideal 160 degrees for ground meat. I pulled them off and brought them in the house and tented with foil for about 5 minutes to bring them up to the recommended 165. Beautiful.
My husband grabbed his camera, excited about the newly created blog, and took photos. He suggested that I cut one of the patties in half and get a photo of that too.
I finally cut off a piece and taste. And there's the oops! I know now what was missing. I forgot that I usually include some rice wine vinegar in the mix and it was glaringly obvious that it was not in there. Luckily, I poured some right from the bottle over the patty and on the plate and it was sufficient. Not great but not bad. Definitely ok in a pinch because by that time, we were starving!
My beloved is all about just eating protein so he was happy with the burgers by themselves. I grabbed some spring mix lettuces and tossed them with an impromptu rice wine vinegar, soy sauce and canola oil dressing. Not bad for a weeknight!
I know that this post wasn't about strange food but I like to cook anything and I wanted to share. Maybe you haven't tried something like this. It's all about making good flavor!
See you next time. And keep playing with your food!
Malanga Coco
Ok. So I procrastinated about doing this post. But in my defense, I do still have a pesky old job. That and the fact that we went to a special wine tasting at Niko's on Wednesday night and another wine tasting at Beverage Superstore on Thursday night. Priorities, right?
But on Wednesday, before the wine tasting, I played with the malanga coco. If you didn't read the first post, the malanga coco is a relative of a taro root. I Googled it and came up with several suggested ways to cook it.
First up? Boiled.
I read that you should peel it, cut it into cubes and boil it for 20 minutes. Check. Peeling it was easy. The skin is relatively thin. I cut a few chunks off and put them in a saucepan with tap water and put them on the stove on high heat. This is the way I treat potatoes so I thought it was a good place to start. I set the timer for 15 minutes so I could start checking them for "doneness". Doneness? How will I know?
On to second cooking suggestion: baked chips.
Oops. You can see that I turned my back for those crucial few seconds when you put something in the oven. I started with thin slices of the malanga coco, tossed them in extra virgin olive oil, laid them out on a sheet pan and sprinkled with Kosher salt. Hmmm. What temperature? And how long? Ok. When in doubt, guess! I decided on 375 degrees and 10 minutes, thinking I will flip them after 5 minutes, which I did.
Got those two going, let's go for the third and most promising technique... DRUM ROLL, please. FRIED CHIPS! Yay!
Again, I sliced it thin. I put about an inch of peanut oil in a heavy pan at medium heat. Using my super-cool, can't live without it, Thermoworks ThermaPen instant read thermometer, I waited for the oil to come up to 375 degrees. (Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, I know from experience to fry chips at 375. That's why I chose the same temp for the oven as a starting point for baking them.) I dropped the slices in the hot oil in small batches and watched them sizzle and turn golden in just a minute or so. I fished them out with a slotted spoon and dumped them on a paper towel. i purposely did not salt them, out of curiousity based on what I found on Google.
The verdict? Delicious, all three ways. The baked chips were probably my least favorite but I still ate the ones that weren't burnt. They had a sweet potato-y taste with a slight chewiness. The fried chips were delightfully crunchy, shattering when I bit into them. Surprisingly, these chips without salt were more savory than the baked chips with their liberal sprinkle of salt. They were nutty and addictive.
The total suprise to me was the boiled! You saw the picture. Not exactly appetizing. It was a quirky, non-food-like pinkish purple and had some strange stringiness to some of the cubes. l figured out when I checked at the 15 minute mark that, based on the size of my cubes, I didn't need 20 minutes. I retrieved a cube, plopped it on the cutting board to cool off and screwed up my courage. When the steam curling off of it subsided, I took a deep breath and popped it into my mouth, expecting the starchy, gluey taste of taro root. Holy Cow! It was silky and tasted very much like a fresh steamed artichoke heart. I drained the rest of the cubes and wolfed down three more pieces before I realized that I needed to stop and take a photo. I love artichokes, especially the hearts. Given the ease of preparation, if I get a hankering for artichoke heart, I may just head for my newest strange food, malanga coco!
Check back again, and don't be afraid to play with your food!
I like to play with my food. It's because I don't really eat. I'm not anorexic or anything even close to it. I just happen to be one of those people who eats when I'm hungry and stops when I'm full. And I won't eat bad food just to satisfy my hunger. I can always go find something worth eating! When you don't eat very much, you definitely don't want to waste time on bland, boring stuff. So I get excited when I get to go to a restaurant and do a tasting menu. Love the creativity of chefs!
We had the opportunity to go to Park 75 in Atlanta and sit at the chef's table. It was a big square stainless steel table smack dab in the middle of the busy kitchen. A row of line cooks to my right at several stations, the bakery/dessert station to my left, the walk in cooler over my right shoulder, the sink and clean up section behind me, discreetly hidden behind a folding screen. The first course that we were presented with was a ceviche-like dish served on a Himalayan salt block. I still remember that first thrilling bite, cool, citrusy, what is that? Dissected it like Gordon Ramsay on Kitchen Nightmares or Robert Irvine on Restaurant Impossible, oohing and ahhing. Then realized that because I was playing with my food instead of actually eating it, the salt block had melted into the food and it was suddenly slap your face salty. Oops!
But I digress. Writing this blog is more about finding things that I've never seen and/or never tried to prepare and wading right in. I'll taste anything once, as long as it's not still moving. I could eat squriming bugs if I was stranded in a jungle or if I landed in an alternate universe competing on Fear Factor but most days, I draw the line at food that moves. If Andrew Zimmern shows up at my door and offers to take me to Southeast Asia, I'll say sure, knowing that I'm going to eat some disgusting stuff. I'm in my own kitchen, though, and here I make the rules.
So... those of you who know me now realize that I write like I talk. All over the place. Too much detail. Yada, yada, yada. (Thanks to Larry, I now know that "yada" means to know and be known.) Get to the point already! Ok. Ok. I'm getting there.
I went to the Asian market today. (Ok. I admit, I go most days.) I wandered around the produce section and decided that for some reason, I NEED a pomegranate. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. I'll figure that out later. Because the really interesting thing that I found was labeled "malanga coco" and looked like a small dirty yucca or taro root. It smelled slightly nutty. It was in a bin sandwiched between yams and jicama. (I actually had a jicama in my hand with an idea for a salad to go with dinner. I abandoned it when I saw the ugly malanga cocos beside it.) Here it is.
When I got home, I fired up the computer and Googled malanga coco. Google knows all. Apparently it is either A: a member of the taro family or B: a magical medicinal root that calms the stomach or C: a weird, dirty looking vegetable that is delicious when sliced thin and deep fried. I'm hoping it's C. Because, DUH, any vegetable is delicious when sliced thin and deep fried.
Sorry that there are no completed dish photos for this debut blog. I've been sitting here typing when I should have been cooking! My husband just ventured into the kitchen and offered to "help" with dinner. Yikes! Imperative that I sign off now.
Please check in again and always, play with your food!
