Mmmm, sushi

I have finally started cooking again–I made a basic yogurt-based chicken-and-potato curry on Sunday (it was okay, but the chicken was pretty tasteless–real food, however, was an exciting occurence in our house).

Last night we decided to make sushi. We already had ridiculous amounts of sushi rice and nori, so I picked up some tobiko (flying fish eggs), fake crab, avocado, cucumber, green onions, and sashimi-grade tuna (they were out of salmon, sadly). While it’s true that our homemade sushi isn’t the best sushi ever, it’s still a lot better than most of what you can buy in Colorado Springs. Not only that, but under $30 fed three people full of delicious sushi. No pictures, I’m afraid, since we were pretty hungry by the time I’d acquired all the ingredients (it took three grocery stores, annoyingly, and I got lost trying to find the one with the tobiko and sashimi).

1/2 lb. sashimi-grade tuna – $10
1/8 lb. tobiko – $5
1 avocado – $2
Green onions – $1.50
Cucumber – $1
Fake crab – $2
Rice – ~$0.50
Nori – ~$4
Soy sauce – pennies
Wasabi – pennies

It reminds me that we really ought to make sushi more often (I actually have a book and video on making sushi that I should get around to looking at sometime). It’s really the only way to get enough sushi without breaking the bank.

Next time I’ll just have to call ahead to see if the one overpriced gourmet grocery that consistently sells sashimi-grade fish has salmon (Whole Foods now sells some kinds of sashimi-grade fish by the pound, but I haven’t seen salmon yet and their staff is generally a lot less knowledgeable about sushi, which makes me nervous).

Am I a picky eater?

I have always considered myself to be a picky eater, primarily because I don’t like most vegetables. This may have something to do with father’s preference for vegetables during my childhood–overcooked, unseasoned, and mushy–or it may have to do with the bitter compounds found in many dark green vegetables. Or maybe it’s something else entirely. The vegetables I do like I love, primarily raw or very lightly stirfried.

I don’t whine about how “gross” I find mushrooms, and I don’t expect others to cook to my food preferences. I do go out of my way to cook for other people’s preferences and allergies: I leave tomatoes (which I love) out of food for E., who’s allergic, and put mushrooms in for F. I also put in snowpeas for me, although F. hates all peas and picks them out. It doesn’t offend me. There are a lot of food items in the world, and I don’t expect most people to enjoy all of them.

But I will not eat really spicy food. It hurts my mouth–which isn’t a medical problem, no, so I guess that makes me a big ol’ baby–and impairs my enjoyment of other flavors.

But am I picky in the classical sense? I eat a wide variety of foods, try most everything at least once (with the exception of things like rotting shark meat or some cheese I once smelled in Whole Foods that made me check my shoes for cat poo), and love highly spiced (but not spicy-hot) food. So I don’t know.

I’m sensitive about this. I know intellectually that vegetables are good for me. I read a study a while back that suggests that some vegetable-haters may be genetically more sensitive to bitter compounds, which would explain why I love spinach, peas, onions, artichokes, corn, and potatoes and don’t mind vegetables like beets, broccoli, or even properly-cooked cabbage, but find most other vegetables unpleasant. But I’m not “seeking attention”–I’ll choke down almost anything to be polite (and I mean that literally, because I haven’t yet found a way to banish my gag reflex, it being an unconcious reflex) short of hakarl and the aforementioned cat poo cheese. And I resent the WaPo’s implication that it’s “unintelligent” to be a picky eater as an adult (otherwise intelligent men and women who banish from their diets specific tastes or textures or sometimes entire food groups)–nonvoluntary preferences have nothing to do with intelligence, thank you very much.

I don’t expect others to avoid foods they like because I don’t like them, so I’d appreciate the same courtesy in return: don’t expect me to eat everything because you are fortunate enough to like everything. People who love or at least don’t mind every food ever are in the very small minority of the real world (if a large majority of the food blogging world). Show me one person with no food hatreds and I’ll show you a hundred who have at least one.

So–I eat Indian, Thai, Italian, French, Spanish, Moroccan, Malaysian, Indonesian, Mexican, Vietnamese, American, and medieval (I’m not thrilled about most medieval spicing, but I’ll eat it). I’ll eat meat (organ meat kind of bothers me, sorry), fish, all kinds of grains and root vegetables, most fruits, certain cheeses (cheddar, various Italian cheeses), cultured dairy products of all kinds. I love most herbs and spices.

I don’t eat much non-cultured dairy for health reasons, but I’ll drink milk in order to politely choke down vegetables without gagging (and feel bad later). I can’t eat really spicy food without pain and total lack of enjoyment. I don’t like a lot of vegetables, but I’m trying to expand that.

If it pains you that I pick the mushrooms off pizza, don’t eat pizza with me. I got the mushrooms on the pizza to make other people happy in the first place.

People who are fortunate enough to like just about everything are just that–fortunate. They weren’t fed overcooked, mushy vegetables growing up, or they’re genetically disposed to love everything. I don’t know. But it would be nice if they realized that they are, in fact, not the norm. Most people have preferences. I suppose the question is “How many preferences can one have before one is considered picky?” Yes, I feel a little sad for people who only eat bland food, or only have 20 or 30 things they’ll eat. But the only people they’re really hurting or inconveniencing are themselves.

I envy people who speak lyrically of their delicious vegetarian stirfries. I didn’t choose to dislike most vegetables.

So the guilt tripping? Really not going to help me expand my palate; much more likely to make me stop going out of my way to add things I dislike to meals I cook for others.

Thanks for the condescension, WaPo.

The Green Blog Project for summer 2006 is up!

Go check out all the beautiful plants and tasty recipes at Ginger and Mango. After that, start planning for the winter edition. My entry was Three Basil Pesto, since it’s one of the few plants resistant to my black thumb. I did get a few tomatos and strawberries this summer, but those all got eaten quickly–by me or the pestiferous squirrels.

My plants are dying of neglect after the past couple months of travel and moving and end-of-the-year flurry at work, so I don’t know if I’ll have an entry for winter. I did discover that one can, in fact, grow ginger outdoors in Colorado, at least in summer, so perhaps I’ll use that if it grows enough in the next week or so before the snows come. Mmm, green ginger sprouts. I can buy the root, but I haven’t see the sprouts at even my beloved Asian market.

Edible origami

Erica at hit waes renig weder posted a link to edible origami cranes made of wonton wrappers and deep-fried. I can make paper cranes, but I can’t get my wontons to stay wrapped to save my life, so I think these are beyond me, but wow! How pretty and awesome.

I made another green curry with basil on Friday, this time with beef and proper Mae Ploy curry paste. Mae Ploy is definitely a vast improvement over Thai Kitchen, although still too salty. Alas, I can’t quite afford a Sumeet grinder right now. This curry was a bit of a Thai-Indian fusion, as I started with my usual Indian base of a giant mound of chopped ginger, garlic, and onion, and added a liberal amount of cardamom. I wanted to use some green mango, but the mango I bought ended up being too right (the color of Mexican mangos is an unreliable indicator of their ripeness).

I am finally moving to Broomfield, though, where I will have access to the wonderful (and cheap!) Asian market more regularly. So I should be cooking more soon.

Grilled Icelandic Fusion Lamb

Last night I tried out the Icelandic wild herb blend from Blóðbergsgarðurinn. The mix contains Arctic thyme, birch leaves, bog bilberry, bilberry, and juniper (needles, I think). It’s a very subtle herb mix, with a scent vaguely reminiscent of black tea. I’m not entirely sure what you could substitute: Arctic thyme doesn’t taste like regular thyme, and while folks in some areas could collect their own juniper needles and birch leaves, I’m not sure I’d recommend it.

But I’ll give the recipe anyway. We had steamed potatoes (with rosemary, sage, olive oil, salt, and butter) and salad for side dishes. I don’t usually grill, so I apologize if my grilling instructions are insufficient–my new housemate has a propane grill, and for all I know technique may be entirely different with a wood or charcoal grill.

The lamb comes out smoky and moderately garlicky, with a subtle herb flavor. Very excellent! If your lamb cut is exceptionally bony, as lamb often is, you may want to allow larger portions.

Grilled Icelandic Fusion Lamb

Serves 2

2 lb. lamb sirloin or other “steak” cut

~2 tbl. Icelandic wild herbs
Small drizzle of olive oil
Small drizzle of red wine (we used a Merlot we had open)
Three cloves of garlic, minced finely

1. Mix herbs and garlic in a bowl large enough to marinate the lamb. Add just enough red wine and olive oil to moisten.

2. Rub lamb steaks with the herb mixture and set aside to marinate. We allowed them to marinate while pre-heating the grill and steaming the potatoes.

3. Grill over a low flame for about 3 minutes on a side (for medium rare) or 6 on a side for well done.

Iceland!

I have just returned from two weeks in Iceland, where I almost completely failed to sample the local cuisine because everything’s so bloody expensive there. I ate a lot of hot dogs, fish & chips, and the occasional Chinese and Indian. I did not try any of the usual tourist-horrifying delicacies which most Icelanders don’t eat, aside from harðfiskur: hákarl (rotted shark meat, said to taste something like strong blue cheese), harðfiskur (dried haddock), pickled sheep’s head, or Brennevín (caraway-flavored schnaps made from potatoes, colloquially called “Black Death” and taken as shots between bites of hákarl). I did buy a tiny sample bottle of Brennevín to try later, though.

Icelandic cuisine is pretty heavy on the fish and lamb, for obvious reasons, and relatively light on herbs and spices, aside from curry powder, which caught on around WWII or so. This has resulted in some pretty horrifying “curries” (I shudder to recall an “oriental soup” I unwisely had which consisted of perfectly good shrimp and some unidentifiable vegetables floating in a broth murky with curry powder). You can also eat minke whale, dolphin, and horse in Reykjavík’s finer restaurants (ironically, whale meat has almost no market, now that the whaling ban has been partially lifted: it’s difficult to cook in a way that makes it taste tolerable, and people have gotten out of the habit of eating it. This makes it the cheapest meat in Iceland, at only 400 kronúr per kilogram). Reykjavík is a very cosmopolitan city, with a variety of international restaurants, although the best tend to be Euro-Asian or European-flavored Icelandic/Icelandic-flavored European.

I did try smoked lamb with butter on rye pancakes (flatkökur), which was pretty nice. I prefer lox (lax) on the rye pancakes, which are slightly sweetish and very good. Icelandic butter is excellent, but Icelandic lox is pretty much the same as imported Norwegian lox in the U.S. I dispair of ever having smoked salmon as good as Russian syomga again.

I also ate large amounts of skyr, a cultured milk product similar to yogurt. Although it is essentially low-fat, it is very creamy in texture, almost as creamy-feeling as whole milk yogurt. It has a sharper tartness, which is usually masked by loads of sugar and flavoring in Iceland. Although I enjoyed it, I have been thoroughly spoiled by Brown Cow’s delicious whole milk yogurt with chunks of recognizeable fruit and honey or maple syrup sweetening. I would love to taste what Brown Cow could do with skyr. I believe some Whole Foods locations sell skyr, but otherwise you’ll have trouble finding it anywhere outside of Iceland. I’ve read that it’s somewhat similar to Greek yogurt.

And finally, I picked up a couple bottles of an Icelandic wild herb mix from Blóðbergsgarðurinn (no, I can’t get the site to load, either, which seems to be the case with a lot of Icelandic websites), so I’ll have to pick up some more lamb before the farmer’s markets close this fall and try it. The mix contains Arctic thyme, birch leaves, bog bilberry, bilberry, and juniper. You may be able to purchase a similar mix from Potmagic, but they don’t list ingredients on their website.

Anyway, in my absence, we began the process of moving (which is going to happen again next month, hurrah), so things are in disarray, but once they’re settled out I should be back to cooking and posting recipes.

Three-Basil Pesto

Edit 10/1/2006: You can see all the beautiful entries for the Summer 2006 Green Blog Project over at Ginger and Mango.

Inji at Ginger and Mango started the Green Blog Project back in May. In a fit of container gardening fervor, I signed up. Alas, my general gardening incompetence and the freakish summer this year in Colorado conspired to kill or reduce yields of most of my plants. The strawberries are doing well, but the main crop is still green, as are my meager collection of tomatoes. About half of the six or so varieties of basil I planted died, but the rest did great.

So…basil it is. I didn’t really want to do pesto, since it’s kind of a cliche, but my first crop of basil needed harvesting (my winter entry will probably be a curry centering around Thai basil, heh).

This will just barely fit in a mini food processor. If you’ve got a real food processor and enough basil, make more.

Three-Basil Pesto

Makes about 1 1/2 c.

3 c. mixed basil leaves, including one purple variety
1/2 c. parmesan cheese
3 cloves garlic
1 small yellow onion
1/4 c. pinenuts
1/2 c. olive oil, divided
Pinch of salt

1. In a food processor, process the garlic and onion to a coarse paste. Add half of the olive oil.

2. Add pinenuts and process.

3. Add basil, 1 cup at a time and process.

4. Add parmesan, rest of olive oil, and salt. Process until it is a pleasing consistency.

Notes: I used three kinds of basil: African Blue, Dark Opal (a purple basil), and Genovese sweet basil. You could use any varieties (I’m not sure how lemon basil would be), but be sure to use a purple variety for the pretty purple flecks. The farmer’s market garlic I used was practically violent in its strength. If you wish your pesto to stay green, you can blanch the basil in boiling water before making the pesto. Pesto freezes well.

Mel’s Super-Awesome Spaghetti Sauce

I love spaghetti sauce packed with black olives, garlic, ground beef, and delicious herbs. I don’t really understand the point of bottled–or worse, canned–spaghetti sauce, since it’s easy to make much better spaghetti sauce yourself, and it freezes well. I’ve never even found restaurant marinara sauce I like–it’s usually weak, watery, and bland. Someday I’ll actually make this from fresh tomatoes, but for now I use good-quality canned tomatoes (Muir Glen is my favorite).

This makes a lot of sauce for one person and just about enough for two people who really like spaghetti and are happy to eat it for lunch (or breakfast) the next day. If you plan on freezing any, I highly suggest making at least a double batch–I never have enough left over after the first couple meals to be worth freezing.

For people (kids and adults) with Textural Issues, pureeing the onions and/or tomatoes in a food processor works well to make a smoother sauce. I used to pick the onions out as a kid ’cause I couldn’t stand the crunch; now I just sautee them into limp submission.

Mel’s Super-Awesome Spaghetti Sauce

Ingredients

1 can Muir Glen diced tomatoes (I often use the basil-garlic flavor)
1 can Muir Glen tomato sauce
A couple spoonfuls of tomato paste

1 small can sliced olives
A splash of red wine (optional)

To taste:
Basil
Oregano
Thyme
Ground rosemary
Rubbed sage
Salt
Black pepper

Olive oil
1 small onion, diced
Garlic to taste, minced
3/4 – 1 lb. lean ground hamburger or turkey (optional)

Instructions

1. Mix together tomatoes, olives, alcohol, and herbs/spices in a saucepan, tasting frequently. It helps to rub the herbs in your hands before adding them to release yummy flavor. Set to simmer on a back burner.

2. Fry the onions in olive oil until soft. At this point, if you’re using a small frying pan, add them to the sauce. Otherwise, you can leave them in.

3. Fry the garlic for a little bit in olive oil (not much!). Then add the ground hamburger.

4. Drain off grease if necessary (I use lean hamburger because I don’t like draining off the yummy garlic-flavored olive oil) and add hamburger and garlic to sauce.

5. Simmer as long as you like. Check for flavorings before removing from heat.

Notes: You could also add mushrooms or other vegetables, although I wouldn’t add much without cutting back on the hamburger or leaving it out. It’s also good with fewer herbs–I’ve just been adding more over the years (it started out with the basil/oregano/thyme)–but the rosemary really gives it a special flavor and I strongly suggest leaving it in (basil is also vital). You can substitute fresh herbs for dried. I don’t usually put the wine in, but it’s nice occasionally.

Wonton Soup, Kulfi, and Lamb Stirfry

Last week I made a big batch of spaghetti sauce and ate spaghetti pretty much all week. I’ll post a recipe for the sauce when I have time to write it up. Until then, summaries of what I’ve been making:

Wonton Soup

I used homemade chicken/pork stock I made a while back and froze as the base. I usually make chicken stock from chicken backs and necks ($1/lb at Whole Foods) and don’t season it until I make the soup. This time I threw in some pork soup bones. I badly need a bigger stockpot. Homemade stock freezes beautifully for several months.

To that I added crushed lemongrass and garlic and slices of ginger, some mirin (I don’t have any Shaoxing wine, which would be more appropriate), and salt. I used prefrozen shrimp/pork wontons (they were kind of bland and salty; next time I will make my own or look harder for the good frozen kind) and shreds of pork (which should have been barbequed first, but oh well.

It was decent and enjoyable–it didn’t really taste like restaurant wonton soup, and I overdid it a bit on the ginger (this is probably the only time you will ever hear me say that)–but not worth posting a proper recipe for.

Rosewater-Cardamom Kulfi

Kulfi is a kind of Indian ice cream based on reduced milk rather than an egg custard. Traditionally, one would simmer down the milk to thicken it over a period of several hours. I used condensed milk because (a) I had it for some inexplicable reason, and (b) I would never ever use it for anything else because condensed milk tastes nasty. I mixed it with heavy cream, rosewater, cardamom, and sugar and froze it in disposable muffin tins. It’s pretty nice, although I suspect it would be better with simmered rather than condensed milk. I may post the recipe later once I decide how much I like it.

Lamb Stirfry with Asparagus and Sugar Snap Peas

The Asian market in Broomfield sells super-thinly pre-sliced lamb shoulder for $4 US/lb. I can’t cut it that thin myself and it’s hard to beat the price, so I had Kevin pick some up on his way down last weekend.

I made a slightly modified version of Meena’s Stir Fried Asparagus and Lamb at Tigers and Strawberries, as follows:

Chicken with Peanut Sauce

I made loads of peanut sauce a while back, since it freezes and refreezes quite well. Since I haven’t yet found the appropriate fuel for my tabletop grill, I haven’t made satay yet, but I have been eating it on stirfry.

Broccoli would also work well as a vegetable.