I Don't Want To Come Home

Tonight's our last night in Kyoto. Tomorrow we catch the bullet train back to Tokyo to spend the night and fly back to the States on Tuesday morning.

I really, seriously do not want to leave Japan yet; I've gotten pretty comfortable here. Comfortable enough to the point that when I zone out on a JR train, I think for a split-second that I'm on an NYC #7 train leaving Flushing Main St station (Chinatown). As soon as I hear the nasal conductor voice say "Mamonaku eki wa, Kyoto desu" I snap out of it.

Please don't make me come home. I could make a really good salaryman. Or a store clerk, I'm good at shouting "Irasshaimase dozo" and other gibberish.

Then again, Japan makes me feel poor and unfashionable. Maybe I've been here too long, my bank account can only take so much blood-letting.

Banane Pézé (Fried Plantains)

Haiti calls it Banane Pézé (pronounced bahn-ahn pay-zay). Spanish-speaking countries around the Caribbean call it Tostones. But for English-speakers, it's just fried plantains.

For those of you who aren't so familiar with Afro-Caribbean or Latin American foods, plantains are a relative of the bananas we eat as fruit, or Cavendish bananas. But plantains have a lot more starch than Cavendish bananas and are not eaten raw. In Haitian cuisine, it's as popular of a side dish as potatoes are to Americans.

In stores, you might see them looking deep green, or yellow, or yellowish with black splotches. This correlates with the plantains' ripeness and sweetness. When they're unripe and green, they're super starchy and not very flavorful. When they start going black, they're overripe and get too sweet for me to handle. A good yellow is my ideal.

Growing up, I'd have boiled plantains with almost every dinner. But once in a while, at some Thanksgivings, my aunt would make banane pézé. So making this as a side dish for some friends' Thanksgiving dinner party definitely brought back some memories.

It's a really simple recipe. First, wash and peel the plantain. The easiest way to peel it is to chop off the stem and end, cut a shallow slit from end to end, and pull off the peel and any lingering strands. Chop the plantain into 1-inch rounds.

In some good frying oil (grapeseed, sunflower, peanut, etc), fry each piece of plantain until it's just barely golden brown on each side. When they're golden, remove them from the skillet and let them cool for a minute. Keep the oil hot, you're not done yet.

When they're cool enough to handle, flatten them. A lot of Haitian families have a complicated piece of hardware for the sole purpose of making banane pézé. It's basically 2 pieces of wood connected by a hinge. I just used some wax paper and 2 cheap wooden coasters.

Return the flatten plantain pieces to the oil and fry on each side until they've turned golden-brown. When they're done, remove them from the pan, dry them on some paper towels, and season with salt and pepper.

Serve fresh and hot.

Irish Beef and Guinness Stew

I'm not one to make New Year resolutions. Not necessarily because I think that self improvement should be a year-round thing. Maybe I agree with Tyler Durden's line from Fight Club, "Self-improvement is masturbation." (I joke, of course)

But I did promise to myself that I would try to experiment more frequently and get more content on this thing. I've been falling into a recipe-rut, where I make the same things pretty frequently. Granted I was trying out a pretty strict workout schedule for the past few months that didn't leave me much time when I get home from work. But that's over with, and I'm ready to get creative again.

That being said, this is a recipe that I spent some time on over the past few months, working from a recipe posted by a more established Austin food/recipe blogger. It was great because I could get it started before working out and let it simmer during the workout. And remember that I'm a big fan of braising/stewing.

Things that I learned while trying to get this recipe down pat:

1. Fattier pieces of stew-cut beef are ideal. If it's too lean, the meat gets too dry in the end. Some time I'll try some cut of beef that's not pre-diced and experiment with some chuck vs. round. I also want to try this with a more traditional Irish meat: lamb.
2. The more time you have, the better.
3. Parsnips are freaking delicious. It's like a cross between a carrot, a potato, and a turnip. They're especially great when roasted.

Merry Christmas

It's Christmas morning, I'm back home on Long Island, and I'm teaching my mom how to make paella [of sorts]. It's a good day :)

That is all.

Mapo Tofu with Ground Pork [Attempt 2]

I recently discovered that Whole Foods carries Sichuan peppercorns. The last time I tried to make mapo tofu, this was the key ingredient that I was missing, so I decided it's time to revisit this dish. This time around, I searched for a recipe more authentic than the one in my big book o' Chinese food, which a friend told me was relatively legit. Something about the first recipe's use of chicken broth made me somewhat skeptical, though.

Sichuan pepper doesn't give heat like red chili pepper does. It's more of a cooling, tingling sensation on the tongue, and increased salivation. This kid agrees with me (watch his other videos, I really hope my future kids will be as adventurous and curious about weird foods at such an early age!).

About Sichuan Pepper
Doing a little research, I learned that Sichuan peppercorns are actually the outer husk of the dried berries of several kinds of Asian trees of the genus Zanthoxylum. In cooking, its flavor is often described as slightly citrusy, and it creates a buzzing numbness on the tongue. That numbness is due to the berry's bioactive component Hydroxy-alpha sanshool, which excites the sensory neurons that are responsible for our response to capsaicin (spicy heat, like in a chili pepper).

Did you know that Sichuan peppercorns were banned in the USA from 1968 to 2005? Not for health reasons, like with the ban on unpasteurized milk products, but because the peppercorns were capable of carrying the citrus canker bacteria that could have wrecked our citrus crops. Enforcement stopped in 2002, then the ban was lifted in 2005 when they were proven safe as long as the peppercorns were heated to 160˚F to kill the bacteria before import.

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Braising

A few weeks ago, my friend Alex sent me an e-mail, wanting to connect me with his friend Rich who had just started up a food blog of his own. Of Feasts and Yeasts is some really interesting stuff, featuring not only recipes and chronicling home-brewing, but also discussing food science. So Alex saw potential for some good collaboration between Rich and myself.

So some time in the near future, expect to see either some cross-posting, or one of us experimenting with the other's recipes. Reading Rich's posts on the science behind marinades and capsaicin inspired me to do a little research of my own.

About Braising

Ever since I started trying to re-create my mom's Haitian dishes, I've loved the technique of braising. Simply put, braising is slow-cooking something partially submerged in liquid, covered and at lower temperatures. When done right, you could end up with the tenderest and most flavorful meat, the epitome of "falling off the bone."

One of the best applications of braising is with tough cuts of meat with a good amount of fat and connective tissue. I'm talking about briskets, chuck roasts, and pork or lamb shoulder.

Beef chuck top blade steak

Think about if you were to take some chuck top blade, with that strip of gristle right down the center, and just pan-sear or grill it. That gristle isn't going anywhere, and it's not going to feel very good in your mouth. Braising, however, not only helps to break down the gristle, but it also uses that connective tissue to keep the meat succulent.

Succulent

According to Cooks Illustrated's explanation of braising, once meat reaches 150˚F, the muscle tissue becomes fully tightened and releases its moisture and juices into the cooking liquid. So the liquid will be nice and flavorful, but if you were to pull out the meat, it would be tough. However, keeping it in the liquid longer and raising the temperature some more will break down the connective tissue, which is primarily made of collagen.

At 200˚F, collagen completely becomes soft gelatin and the tightened muscle fibres begin to separate a little, drawing moisture back into the meat. In the end, your tough and chewy cut of meat can be cut with a spoon. And it only gets better with more time in the pot.

Easy Pad Thai

I was inspired to try a pad thai recipe recently. Could it be because I spotted a jar of tamarind juice at Central Market, and my mind was flooded with memories of past Indian/Thai recipes that involved tamarind and failed miserably? Probably, yes.

Store-bought tamarind comes in many forms. There's whole fruit that you can pick up from the Hispanic markets, or the pre-packaged fruit pulp. And then there are the containers of tamarind juice that come in all sorts of concentrations. I've tried a couple of recipes with tamarind, and they were annoyingly vague about how much tamarind to utilize.

Imagine my disappointment the first time I tried tamarind with a scratch Vindaloo curry recipe. The tamarind juice I bought was so concentrated that it wasn't quite compatible with the original recipe. My first indication of failure was that the curry was dark as night and thick as sludge. The first taste was beyond sour, and borderline inedible.

After that, tamarind was dead to me. Fast-forward about 3 years, I've been on a Thai stir-fry kick lately, and I saw this guy on the market shelf.

Tamarind Juice Concentrate

Add some sugar, fish sauce, and a dash of soy, and you've got the main ingredients for the sauce in pad thai. After a few iterations, I've managed to get the procedure down to where the noodles weren't practically disintegrating on me, and the finished product wasn't a dried out mess at the end. And fortunately, I diluted the tamarind enough that you can pick up its signature tangy flavor but not be horribly overwhelmed by it, like I've had in the past.

I can't believe I forgot the wedge of lime

Hot Salade Niçoise

A year or 2 ago, there was a show on PBS that I loved, Spain: On the Road Again. Celebrity chef Mario Batali, NY Times food columnist Mark Bittman, super hot actress from Barcelona Claudia Bassols, and Gwyneth Paltrow went on an epic road trip around Spain. They took in architecture in Barcelona, rugged landscapes in Asturias, Moorish history in Andalusia, and so on. And all along the way, they gorged themselves on each location's specialties, top restaurants, and the best wines.

That is what I wish I could be paid to do for the rest of my life.

Then again, maybe I wouldn't necessarily want to do it with that exact crew.

1. Mark's accent annoys the hell out of me. Yes, I was born and raised on Long Island, and I'm no stranger to NYC/LI accents. But sometimes it just feels like a cheese grater on my eardrum. "Smwall," "sauwalt," (small, salt). Gawd.

2. Mario's a bit of hefty fellow. He seems like an absolutely nice and fun guy, but I tend to walk lots of long distances when I'm abroad, and I can see him slowing me down.

Last, and certainly not least

3. Gwyneth is one of those "ethical eaters." She's not vegetarian, but she won't eat animals that walked on 4 legs. So no pork, beef, etc. So for a bunch of episodes, I couldn't help but think of how much it would suck to travel with a picky eater.

But I realized that she has a pretty good palate. And then imagine my surprise when I learned she's an active, and skilled home cook. I stumbled upon this recipe on Food + Wine Magazine's site, and I'll admit I was impressed. It's a fast and simple one-pot dish, and it's an interesting take on a classic salad. Plus it's nice and light for this oppressive summer heat.

Hot Niçoise Salad

Ingredients:

- Extra virgin olive oil

- 1/2 lb tuna steak, ~1-inch thick

- 1/2 lb haricot verts (or green beans), stem ends chopped off

- 1/2 cup Niçoise olives (or kalmata, if Niçoise are unavailable), pitted and sliced

- 10-12 filets of anchovy (packed in olive oil)

- 1 cup grape tomatoes, halved

- 2 eggs

- salt and black pepper

- salad greens of your choice (I prefer baby spring mix)

Procedure:

1. Blanch the green beans in boiling water for 4 minutes, then drain them and set them aside. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 400 degF.

2. Rub all sides of the tuna steak with olive oil, and season it with salt and pepper.

3. Coat the insides of 2 ramekins with olive oil, then crack 1 egg into each one. Drizzle a little bit more olive oil on top.

4. In a large, heavy-bottom, oven-ready sauté pan, put in the green beans, olives, anchovies, and grape tomatoes (lightly squeezed first). Toss it all with 2 Tbsp of olive oil and spread it around the pan. Put the tuna steak in the center, and place the ramekins of egg in the pan, too.

5. Put the pan, uncovered, on the center rack of the oven, and let it roast for 10 minutes, or however long it takes to let the egg whites set and leave the yolk somewhat liquid. The tuna steak should be whitened on the outside, but still slightly pink and not fully cooked at its core.

6. Flake up the tuna steak, and toss the salad in a light vinaigrette of your choice. I make a vinaigrette from 2 Tbsp lemon juice, 2 Tbsp olive oil, and 1/2 tsp of dijon mustard. Serve on top of salad greens.

Yields 2 servings, best served still warm.