The final meal of my quest provided me with that happy ending I know you've all been hoping for. I had a perfectly good green chili at the absolute last moment that I could have: as a side dish to a burrito in the Denver airport. It really was my last chance, and it really was good. Unthickened, more green than brown, spicy and tangy. That's all I'd ever asked for.
In the wake of a recent oral surgery, I found myself with some spare silken tofu on hand. I've often wondered why most homemade fried tofus use a "firm" texture when restaurant chefs so clearly prefer "silken" for dishes like agedashi. The cylindrical shape of my brand of curd gave me the idea for this dish. I very carefully sliced wheels of tofu, dredged in flour, and fried. They really looked like scallops, and tasted like nothing.
My first oolong from the bounty is the White Leaf Dan Cong. I was especially excited to try it because it is roasted at Tea Habitat. I've never before heard of a store roasting its own tea. This is really cool. It makes me want to try and roast some tea at home. I can already roast vegetables pretty well.
The tea itself is really cool. The roasted flavor is very light and the sweet fruit flavor dominates: peach and honey. I would love to know what the unroasted tea tastes like and how this differs.
Pictured above is Phoenix Mountain in the Guangdong Province, where this tea originates. It is cool that the tea started its life there then went to the west coast for roasting and now the east coast for consumption. Unfortunately for the tea, its beginning was a little more picturesque than its ending.
I’ve wanted to make this dish ever since I first witnessed the transformation of stale bread into moist pudding while working the counter of a local bakery in high school. I was so impressed by the frugality with which the baker could turn a worthless product into an expensive one. Since then, finding bread pudding on a dessert menu has saved me after many unfulfilling meals. Offering a hearty bread pudding is a restaurant’s way of making it okay to consume the mass of a second entrée while pretending you’re having dessert.
I chopped stale corn and blueberry muffins into chunks along with two apples, two eggs, a splash of milk, a squirt of honey, lemon zest, grated ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, and more cinnamon on top for an added browning effect. The pudding consisted entirely of ingredients I had on hand with many of them (muffins, lemon, apple, ginger) not fresh enough to be used for their standard purposes. But together, resurrected, they created an entirely new and wonderful food.
The use of the lemon zest and ginger comes from my recent reading of an English food history, while a recipe for “brood mit appelen” from a Dutch family cookbook inspired the presence of the apple. However, I merely glanced at these recipes and was surprised at how simple it was to fulfill a long standing culinary desire. Please note the cross section of apple chunks in the photo, and just imagine how moist this is.
There was no lunch day two, and for dinner I was confined to what I could buy at a gas station. I was worried that I wouldn't get a square meal, but even more worried that I wouldn't fulfill the g.c.f.e.m. challenge. So I was overjoyed to find this item: carne seca, a Mexican beef jerky I've had only once before and have never forgotten. It's almost paper thin with a seriously crunchy texture. Not a leathery or chewy bite to be had, and none of the preservatives so common even in brands that claim to be "natural." The flavor? Green chili.
The chicken stock is still going.
I rarely stick to recipes, but this time I followed a Cook's Illustrated recipe fairly closely. The first step was to simmer some stock and coconut milk with lemongrass and coriander. Whew. The broth it produced was amazing. Once it took on the chicken and mushroom flavor and had some help from lime and red curry, it was even better. My favorite thing about this soup is that it is even better than the version I've loved at Thai restaurants. It was less sweet, since I omitted the sugar, and it had a deeper flavor. I attribute this, of course, to the stock.
Getting a pair of packages upon my return brightened an otherwise stomach-bug blighted Thanksgiving holiday. One was a book I'd been looking forward to and the other was an Oolong bounty. Imen from Tea Obsession was kind enough to send me 10 samples, 8 of which are oolongs, from her store Tea Habitat. If you're ever near L.A. make sure to drop by. Posts are coming soon.
That's right, for breakfast. This green chili was had at the restaurant attached our kitschy hotel. The place was a real throwback, meaning the green chili was so bad that I wanted to throw it back into the kitchen. While nicely green, it was completely opaque. If you turned the spoon upside down, it might not fall off. To speak in its defense, I tried to eat it like a soup though it was offered as a side and therefore may have been intended as a smothering agent. To speak in my defense, I think that's a waste of g.c.
Again, a mediocre green chili that still tasted pretty good and was fun to eat. This from a restaurant in Alamosa that had an enormous all you can eat dinner buffet that came with a complimentary horchata. The g.c wasn't opaque, but it wasn't too flavorful either. Instead of tang or spice, saltiness was a primary flavor, but it was still fun to eat.
On a recent trip to Colorado, I pledged to eat green chili for each of the four meals I would have there. My first was lunch. Following an enthusiastic tip from a baggage handler at my rental car service, I set off for the restaurant pictured above: La Casa Del Rey in Commerce City. I ordered the green chili with beans at the recommendation of the waitress, which came with two flour tortillas. While it wasn't extraordinary green chili, it still met my expectation of a perfect food: regional, unprocessed, spicy. It had an excellent heat that hit the back of the throat and a nice tang. It was on the opaque side, something I dislike in g.c. for its tendency to go with the adjective "smothered." Green Chili that "smothers" is usually more like a gravy than a soup or stew. When you smother something, it dies.
A lifelong hater of sour, fruit teas, I'm surprised to find myself a regular drinker of a hibiscus and rose hip blend that is everything I once despised. Suddenly the very traits that repelled me now draw me in. While looking at some hibiscus flowers in the garden here in Florida, I figured there must be some way to make it fresh. The internet said I was correct. Apparently hibiscus tea is a traditional drink in places as varied as Mexico, Egypt, and the Sudan. I was shocked at the deep, cool purple the water turned when poured over a single red blossom.
These were part of my final Farmer's Market stock-up for the season. I also bought several winter squashes, twenty pounds of apples, eight heads of cabbage and about six pounds of beef. I was told that these are cayenne peppers, and that they should dry if left somewhere with a decent air current. Hence their climbing toy. Sadly, if you google "cayenne," a Porsche comes up.
Aaron's mom bought him this Sencha at the mall, Teavana I think. Since she got him a huge cannister he passed some on to me. I was skeptical about a mall purchase but I really like this. It is a little sweet and it actually has that roasted chicken taste that Aaron has read about. A tea tasting like roast chicken may sound offensive, but it is actually excellent.
Thanks, Sue!
Another simple trick from Wild Fermentation. Get some cider, ideally unpasteurized, though I've heard pasteurized without preservatives will still work. Let it sit with cloth over the neck of the vessel until it reaches the desired dryness and alcohol content, maybe two or three weeks. Cider wants to do this - just let it.
I'm leaving for home tomorrow so tonight it was time to use up the odds and ends in my fridge. I constructed this pasta with parsley, mushrooms, garlic, rosemary, olive oil, and leftover turkey from Karen's dinner party. I love putting the raw garlic in the bottom of the pasta bowl and having the pasta's residual heat cook it.
I washed this down, of course, with some ripe pu-er.
This is the third Guoyan raw pu-er that I've tried, and I've loved them all. It comes entirely from Ban Zhang mountain, which, I take it, is one of the famous pu-er producing mountains in Yunnan. To limit the bitterness, I kept the first three infusions very short: about 5 seconds. Far from bitter, each was extremely sweet though the characteristic smokiness of a young raw pu-er was there too. There was a fruity flavor too, though it was hard to pick out among the others.
Gnocchi is easier to make than it seems like it should be. Just cook some starchy potatoes and use them as a base for a dough. I didn't know quite how to dress my gnocchi so I made a simple pesto and decorated the plate with basil leaves, parmesan cheese, and freshly ground pepper. The plate was pretty enough and the gnocchi was pillowy enough to impress Karen, which really was the point anyway.
And here is that afore mentioned dish, the tea smoked duck. I concur with Mr. Tea and Food in regards to how good the meal was. China Road in Syracuse is one of those rare restaurants in the United States that actually seems more Chinese than Chinese-American. Everything was just right, especially the soup dumplings, which somehow featured all of the flavor of a whole bowl of soup wrapped in up in one little, doughy package.
Our lunch at China Road in Syracuse, NY was uniformly excellent. I highly recommend a visit. Of particular note was the tea-smoked duck: tea and food. Pictured above is my order of fish with sour cabbage.
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