Vanessa Barrington

What I Finally Did with my Massa Organics Duck

Last fall, Greg tweeted that he’d be selling rice-paddy raised ducks at the Berkeley market if folks wanted to order ahead. I did. I picked mine up on a bright day in September or October. I have no idea which. It was frozen so I put it in the freezer thinking I’d cook it within the month.

 

All sorts of crazy life stuff ensued, including a move. The duck, of course, came with me to my new home and took up residence in my new freezer. Sitting there in my freezer all winter and into the spring, the duck took on a gigantic importance. It was a special duck. A Massa-raised duck. Not just any old duck. I had to DO something with it. Just roasting it would not do at all. I was waiting for an occasion.

 

Finally Haven’s mother was in town and since the two of us had been meaning to cook a dinner together out of Niloufer’s wonderful book, My Bombay Kitchen, we decided it was time. Only problem is that there wasn’t really a recipe for a whole duck in the book.  Improvisation was in order.

I decided to make the Green Curry Masala (page 135) that Niloufer says is versatile enough for lamb, brains, or chicken. My thought was to rub the duck with ginger garlic paste (page 36) and steam it for 15 minutes to render the fat. Then I’d rub it with the masala and roast it. I also made the Watercress and Turnip Salad (page 215). Haven made a variation on the Fresh Turmeric and Ginger Pickle (page 234) and her mother (appropriately) made Mother’s Khichri (page 165).  Sorry about the white rice! We didn’t use the Massa Rice.

All went swimmingly. In the end I decided the duck needed a little sauce so I whisked together some white wine, butter, and Green Curry Masala and we spooned it over the duck. Four of us picked that thing clean. It looked as if buzzards had gotten in and taken up residence at the dinner table. The appetizer was a real coup. Instead of flatbread we ate the pickle with Cowgirl Fromage Blanc (they were out of paneer) on toasted Massa Whole Wheat Tortillas.

I’m hoping for another duck this fall. Greg: are you listening?

 

Just before steaming. Steamer insert rigged up in wok with foil covering it for 15 minutes.

Just after steam bath.

Rendering fat to use for roasting potatoes.

After roasting. It wasn't that pretty but it sure was good. PS: 1 duck is barely enough for 4 people.

A Healthy, Restorative Meal with Sablefish and Dal

I rarely cook a protein, starch, veg meal anymore. And I rarely eat fish either. Our oceans are just so endangered, that it’s a once-in-awhile treat these days. And it’s gotta be on Seafood Watch’s green list, or I’m not even eating it as a treat.

If you’ve never cooked sablefish, you’ll find that it’s a reasonable substitute for the overfished rockfish and snapper usually used in dishes like fish tacos, and other preparations where you want a mild, white fillet of fish. It has a moist texture that lends itself well to a variety of preparations. I always find myself wishing it were a little flakier and a little less gelatinous, but it works pretty well. You may also see it as Black Cod at the fish counter.

This was a really easy dinner to make with little prep time and few ingredients. Its only down side is the number of pots and pans I used. One for the fish, one for the rice, one for the greens and yet another for the dal. If you cook the dal on a different day, that will make it a little less dish intensive.

For the dal, I use red split lentils and just cook them in water with a little turmeric and salt until tender (takes about 20 minutes) Then I sauté chilies (either fresh green or dried red) with mustard seeds, cumin seeds, garlic, shallots, and whatever else I’m feeling like adding, over high heat in oil or ghee and then quickly add the sizzling hot mixture to the dal, stir in and cover to permeate the dal with flavor. Ratio of lentils to water is about 4 to 1. The rest you’ll have to eyeball.


For the fish, I followed a recipe in Niloufer King’s fabulous James Beard Award winning My Bombay Kitchen for masala seafood. You don’t even need a recipe. It’s basically cayenne, turmeric and salt rubbed into scored fish fillets that are then fried quickly in a very small amount of oil. It’s wonderful and wonderfully easy. The rest of the meal is just sautéed mustard greens and Massa Brown Rice with some sprigs of fresh cilantro.

And Hey! I’m going to Mexico for two weeks so you might not hear from me. I might try to blog from there, but not sure. At any rate, expect some good posts about Mexican food when I return. I’m staying with a family and I hear the Senora is a very good cook and I’ve been assured that I’ll be welcome in her kitchen. Qué Bueno! Feliz Navidad Y Año Nuevo!

Hunger Challenge Day Two

I wake up ready to go. Day one wasn’t so bad. I’m working at home in the morning and going into the office late. I take that time to make Vietnamese rice porridge. This is a brilliant dish involving a very small amount of white, long grain rice, a lot of chicken broth, a few coins of ginger, and two green onions. So few ingredients to make a magical dish that is intensely satisfying. It’s like alchemy with rice. I learned this dish from Andrea Nguyen’s Book, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen.
It’s one of my favorite cookbooks and I’m deeply appreciative that I have the time to make this at home before heading off to work.

Breakfast:
Oatmeal with a little brown sugar and milk; 2 slices of melon

I’m noticing that I’m eating my breakfast with great concentration. Seems I’ve banished mindless eating in one day.

Lunch:
A bowl of the above porridge with a little cilantro and sliced green onion. I also threw in just a bit of the shredded chicken I’d cooked a few days before.

I was really hungry after work so I had a piece of bread with peanut butter and went off to yoga class. I felt a bit weak during the class and came home famished and ready to throw together a quick rice noodle pasta dish.

Dinner: I used half the bok choy that I bought for $1 and some rice noodles from my Food Bank pantry list. In addition, I sauteéd the other half of the onion from the soup broth, a bit of ginger, and a bit of garlic. I also used just a few shreds of chicken and some soy sauce from the pantry. I garnished the pasta with cilantro and green onion (I’m now thinking these two items are some of my smartest purchases).

I notice that I’m taking no pleasure in cooking. I just want to get it done and into my mouth. I usually take my time and listen to music and relax. I just want to eat. I find this interesting. I eat really fast and somewhat resentfully. I realize that I’m only about 80% full. Funny, this is a habit I’d been trying to master and finally I’m doing it. There's a bottle of wine in the house so I decide to have a glass. My cushion right? I'm also drinking one cup of coffee a day. I tell myself my cushion allows that too and it actually does, depending on what else I need the cushion for.

I’m hungry again before bed so I have a piece of toast with butter.

Recalibration Eating

Let’s just say I’m not the “cleansing type.” I like to think of myself as a self-indulgent healthy eater. I don’t deny myself anything I want (though I never want to eat fast food or most processed food) and eat a great variety of mostly very healthy stuff. But after a months-long period of intense work and stress I was feeling a little unbalanced and suffering from spring allergies well into the summer.

Not one to do anything drastic like ingest nothing but lemon juice and maple syrup for days on end, I decided to figure out a way to eat for a week that I thought would make me feel better.

Mostly by instinct, I came up with a recalibration diet. Luckily my cohort was game too or it would have been more difficult. We even went out once. To Café Gratitude, natch.

Here’s what we ate/didn’t eat:

Any whole grains and legumes we wanted (except wheat)
All the fresh fruits and vegetables we could eat
A good balance of raw vegetables to cooked with some fermented vegetables
No bread or anything, not completely whole (except almond milk I made myself)
No alcohol, dairy, or animal products of any kind (except bonito flakes for dashi broth)
No sugar
1 cup of coffee a day

 

(soba noodles in dashi broth)

Meal Plan:
Breakfast: We alternated three items: whole grain porridge (pictured above) with fresh fruit, almond milk and honey; dashi broth, soba noodles, seaweed, and mushrooms; and fruit smoothies made with homemade almond milk

Lunch: We alternated beans and brown rice and seasonal vegetables with lentils, brown rice and seasonal vegetables. Some raw, some cooked, sometimes drizzled with tahini dressing. Sauteed okra, steamed greens, raw carrots, lacto-fermented beets, and avocado, etc.

Dinner: Same as above

Snack: lots of peaches anytime we wanted them

(my own dal, with cucumber relish from the book, and leftover curry red rice bowl from Cafe Gratitude)
It was interesting to see what kind of cravings came up on such a diet. As I said I don’t deny myself anything I want so I was bound to yearn for something. I thought it might be the yogurt I eat almost every day. Nope. Or the wine I love with dinner. Nope. Or the afternoon nubbin of chocolate or scoop of ice cream. Nope. Or the cheese I love dearly. Nope. Here’s what I wanted most intensely: Bread and Eggs. I craved eggs like crazy and realized how often, when I’m hungry, I’ll reach for a piece of bread or make toast or something. The carbs I think are a habit and the eggs maybe a need for animal protein. It was interesting. And on the last day I started daydreaming about pizza. And that’s how I broke the cleanse, with pizza from Flour & Water. It was fantastic!

(blurry, but I could live on raw carrots, lacto-fermented beets, and mashed avocado with salt)

Do I feel better? Yes, a bit lighter, more energetic. Most importantly, I think limiting the insane number of food choices we have every day is a really good way to start eating mindfully again and enjoy everything even more intensely (I say this as I eat breakfast at the computer while blogging). The whole experiment was sort of comforting, fun, and predictable (in a good way). I felt like I had more headspace for other thoughts besides food. I looked forward to every meal because I was really hungry and because it was tasty food. I think it’s a good idea for me to do this every few months or so.

(ugly-tasty-dal over brown rice, steamed greens and roots with tahini dressing and turnip-kohlrabi pickles from the book)

Was it hard? Not for the most part, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t absolutely tortuous to stop by Omnivore Books to see our friend Celia moments before the Fried Chicken Taste Off . One of the succulent, fragrant entries had already arrived and the aroma was driving me wild. Then I had to torture myself further by looking at cookbooks!

Scenes from a Photo Shoot

Toast shot

Ok, so the book is pretty much done. All that remains is copyediting, galleys, and other little details. Directly on the heels of turning in the manuscript, we went right into shooting the photos.

We did it with a crew of 4 plus me over 5 long days right here at the house. It was fun, intense, and a very exhausting. Kind of like catering a 5 day party.

But it paid off and we got some gorgeous shots. Here's a little photo essay of mine documenting a few of the moments. These, of course, are not Sara Remington's photos but mine on my little Sony Cyber-shot. But my photos do benefit from the food and prop styling of Nani Steele and Kami Bremyer respectively. Props also go to Sara (of course) and Stacy Ventura, fab photo assistant. Thanks Ladies! While I'm thanking. Thanks also to Emunah, Rachel, Haven, and Susan for all your help during the shoot and to all the parents and kids who modeled at the picnic. You know who you are.
Sourdough Buckwheat Pancakes with Caramelized Apples

Donut Run from Dynamo Donuts. Oh Yeah!

Tofu Soup with Homemade Kimchi

Kami with Root Beer Day 5

Sustainable Seafood Stew with Meyer Lemon Parsley Aioli (not pictured)

Sara and Nani valiantly trying to make brown cookies with browner filling look appetizing

Let's celebrate! It's a wrap!

The Many Faces of Kimchi

Let me count the ways I love you, kimchi. With rice, on your own, in homemade soft tofu soup, I can’t get enough of you. Ever since the Fermentation Workshop at The Cog, I’ve been dipping into the kimchi jar like it was hooch. I’ve discovered that it’s great for lunch with brown rice, with canned herring and brown rice, in homemade soft tofu soup. A little dab of kimchi just seems to make my brain work better in the afternoon. Who knew kimchi could make a person smarter and more productive?

I adapted the recipe below from one I got in a workshop at The Asian Culinary Forum with Huynjoo Albrecht, of CookingKorean.com. I changed it a little because when I emailed for permission to share I never heard back, so I didn’t feel right using it verbatim. It’s a great recipe from a great Korean chef.  Enjoy!

Basic Kimchi
2 cups sea salt, divided
2 quarts water
1 head (about 2 1/2 pounds) Napa cabbage, untrimmed

Seasonings:
2 1/2 tablespoons chopped scallion
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 1/2 teaspoons minced ginger
1/4 cup Korean red pepper powder (gochu-garu)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon chopped salted shrimp pickle (sae-woo-jeot)
1 teaspoon toasted hulled (white) sesame seeds, roughly chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 tablespoon sugar

Dissolve 1 cup of sea salt in the 2 quarts water. The water should taste as salty as sea water. To test proper amount of salt in water, put an egg in the salted water. If the egg doesn’t float, you need to add more salt until it does.

Leaving the cabbage untrimmed, quarter it lengthwise through the root end, so the root holds each quarter together. Sprinkle the remaining 1 cup sea salt on the cabbage. Lift each layer of cabbage leaves, starting from the very outer layer. Sprinkle salt on each leaf. Make sure the white, thick part of the cabbage leaves get a good amount of salt. Put the cabbage in the salted water and place a heavy weight on top to keep the cabbage submerged.

Soaking takes about 3 to 4 hours, depending on the temperature of the room. It will take less time on a hot day. More on a cold day. Check to see if the cabbage is wilted enough by trying to break the white part of the cabbage closest to the root end.  If it breaks, the cabbage needs to soak longer. If the cabbage folds in half very softly with no resistance, it has soaked too long. Ideally, you should be able to fold the white part of the cabbage in half with a little resistance but no breaking. If the cabbage is not salted enough, the kimchi turns out too watery and tastes plain. If the cabbage is salted too long, it doesn’t get too salty but you end up with kimchi that is mushy. Perfectly salted cabbage will create a crisp, clean, and refreshing feel on your palate.

Remove the cabbage from the salted water. Rinse under running water several times. Squeeze slightly and drain for 1 hour. Meanwhile, combine all the kimchi seasonings.

After draining the cabbage, squeeze it again to get as much water out as possible. Cut the cabbage into pieces about 1 to 1 1/2 inches wide. In a big bowl, combine the cabbage and all the other ingredients. Mix well.

Put the kimchi in an air tight glass jar and push it down a bit. Pour any leftover seasoning liquid on top of the cabbage and seal well.

Set the jar aside at room temperature for 4 to 5 hours and then put in the refrigerator for two or three days to let flavors develop.

The bonus pictures are just for fun. This is the before picture of the dried wood ear mushroom that went in the soup.

After soaking. mmmm. fleshy.

Abalone Three Ways

It’s good to have friends who dive. Sometimes they’ll just show up at your house on a Sunday evening with beer and abalone. I haven’t had abalone in years. It is a very special food and on a Sunday a couple weeks back, the abalone showed up and I got to decide how to cook it with the stuff I had in the house.

We had:

1.    Southeast Asian Abalone Ceviche
2.    Pan-fried Abalone
3.    Poached Abalone

All that and the alliterative salad you see below and a variation on the caramelized rice dish from my new favorite cookbook, My Bombay Kitchen by Niloufer King and it really was a memorable meal.

Abalone season is over so you’ll have to file this advice away until April or so. That should give you plenty of time to cultivate a few diving friends. Sorry no pictures of all the dishes. We were too busy stuffing ourselves.

Salad: Persimmons, pomegranate seeds, and pumpkin seeds along with arugula and fennel.

Ceviche: Cut the pounded abalone into strips and add a little dressing of fish sauce, lime, chilies, cilantro, shallots, and a little bit of sugar. It sat for about an hour and became incredibly tender.

Panfried: Slice the abalone first and then pound. Dip each piece in flour seasoned lightly with salt and pepper and pan fry for just a minute or two on each side in a mixture of butter and olive oil.

Poached: (Pictured) Pound the abalone whole and then put it in a casserole dish just large enough to contain it with 1/2 cup-3/4 cup white wine, a splash of olive oil, a dab of butter, a couple slices lemon (with rind), 2-3 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced, and 2-3 sprigs parsley, and Salt and pepper. Bring to a boil on the stove, remove from heat, cover tightly and place in a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes or so. Check abalone for tenderness before serving.

This one was transformative. I had no idea poached abalone could be so good. It was also by far the easiest of the three dishes to prepare.

I got to keep a shell! Isn't it pretty?

Asian Culinary Forum

Saturday I devoted the day to something I love more than anything: studying, talking about, tasting, and discovering food traditions from different cultures. I attended two events at the Asian Culinary Forum. The forum is an educational nonprofit that aims to celebrate, investigate, and expand Asian food and culture. Founded by cookbook author Andrea Nguyen and writer and Asian food expert Thy Tran, the forum held its inaugural events this weekend. 

First I took a class at Sur La Table on Chutney, Kimchi, and Sambal. It was totally mind and palate blowing. Three masters of their genres, Niloufer Inchaporia King, author of the award winning My Bombay Kitchen, Huynjoo Albrecht, proprietor of CookingKorean.com, and Daniel Sudar, chef at Red Lantern Restaurant in Redwood City (if anyone local is up for a field trip, let me know. The restaurant is steps away from the Cal Train station) demonstrated some amazing staples of Indian, Korean, and Indonesian cuisines. The tastes jumped around my tongue and left my head spinning with ambition to recreate the flavors I sampled. I left truly inspired to push the boundaries of the familiar even further in my kitchen.

Then I headed over the Ferry Building to attend a panel discussion on Meals, Meaning, and Memory in Asian Diasporas. It was scholarly in the way that panel discussions by scholars often are (by that I mean the talk required concentration) and hours later, I found myself continuing to run over in my mind some of the ideas that were brought up: why food-based cultural habits are the last to change when immigrants assimilate, the ways in which immigrant’s eating habits vary depending on who they are eating with, feelings of being “other” around food, and the roles of caste, gender, in ascetism in Gandhi’s vegetarianism.

What did I cook when I got home? I pulled out Andrea’s book, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen,
which I love and cook from often. I made two dishes I hadn't made before: a simple soup of shrimp and cabbage (to which I added rice) and rice noodles with Chinese chives, tofu, and dried shrimp (instead of the fresh shrimp and pork called for). It’s fun that I’m getting comfortable enough with the Vietnamese techniques and flavor profiles to vary the ingredients and still end up with very good dishes that are almost always better than anything I can find in a Vietnamese restaurant.

Next up: Kimchi!

I'm so glad I treated myself to this wonderful day. I wish I'd gone to the all-day symposium on Sunday too.

Indonesianish Fried Rice

Between seasonal, from the market, no recipe cooking, recipe development projects, and $1 a meal Hunger Challenge recipes, I’ve been slowly working my way through James Oseland’s wonderful book, Cradle of Flavor.

Awhile ago I made one of the many sambals in the book, Javanese Sambal. It consists of dried shrimp paste, lots of shallots, garlic, red chiles, and palm sugar. It’s a cooked sambal, so it’s fiery, but mellow. It seems to go with everything and lasts forever. The day I made it we ate it with rice and steamed fish, but there was a lot left and it keeps finding its way to the table as a condiment.

This was a quick breakfast of leftover, lovely, and local Massa Organic Brown Rice, and a fried egg. I tossed in the sambal, and stirred in the Indonesian soy sauce (pictured), then topped it all off with a fried egg, a few leaves of cilantro, and some cool cucumber slices. Memorable. If I were you, I’d buy this book. You can’t find food this good and authentic-tasting in any restaurants I know.

Photo Credits: Susan Fleming

How to Clean Fresh Squid &Thai-inspired Squid Salad

With more types of seafood becoming nearly extinct or too expensive to afford every day, I'm always looking for delicious, healthy, sustainable, affordable, preferably local seafood. Two of my favorites come from the Monterey Bay and fit all the requirements above: Sardines and squid. Unfortunately, both can be daunting to clean. I picked up 3/4 of a pound of nice looking fresh squid at the Berkeley Bowl for something like a buck-fifty. Can't beat that. Don't be tempted to get the already cleaned version. It's more expensive, it was processed in China and caught who knows where, and it won't taste as good.

The best written instructions I've ever seen for cleaning squid come from Andrea Nguyen's book, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, a stellar book that I highly recommend. This is her method with photos to aid understanding.

Step by step instructions: Position a bowl in the sink below the cutting board.
Pull the head free of the body and get ready to cut the tentacles off just above the eyes.

Make the cut and pull the head and the guts that come with it out. Put the tentacles in a colander and the guts and ink in the bowl.

If you have a dog, she'll go googly eyed over the heads--waste note want not!

With the dull edge of the knife, scrape the squid so that the gunk inside falls into a bowl positioned under the cutting board. Do this several times to get as much gunk as possible and at the same time, scrape off the mottled skin so the squid is clean white. Turn the squid over and do both sides.

Here's what it will look like.

Reach inside the body and pull the bony quill out, making sure to get it all.
Place all the cleaned squid in the colander and rinse thoroughly, letting the water run through the bodies to remove any remaining sliminess.  Drain and cut the squid as your recipe directs.

This salad is a variation on one in Paul Johnson's excellent book, Fish Forever, for which I tested all the recipes. To prepare squid so it is tender, you either have to cook it for 30 seconds or something like 30 minutes. Anything in between produces tough rubber bands. To cook the squid for this salad, all you have to do is bring a large pot of water to a boil and add the cut squid. Once the water returns to a boil, turn the heat off and let sit for 30 seconds. Drain, rinse and immediately toss in a simple, spicy fish sauce-based dressing. Then you add whatever vegetables you're using. I used different ones than Paul's recipe-purple cabbage, lettuce, green onions, herbs, carrot, avocado, and served it over rice noodles. Easy peasy, healthy, no fat, and fantastic.