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.

DIY Delicious is Here!

I got the email yesterday. It said, "I'm holding advance copies of your book in my hand, it looks beautiful. Which address should I send them to?"

I was excited but a little numb I guess. Or maybe nothing can really prepare a person for the feeling of opening a package and pulling out a HARDCOVER book with your name on the cover. I think that's it. 

So there I was trying to concentrate on work all morning, with an undercurrent in my brain saying, "it's coming," quietly, insistently, constantly. The second I went upstairs to do something, I heard the dog bark. Here it was.

I ran to the door and stood in front of it, waiting for the Fedex guy to ring the bell. I guess I didn't want to appear too eager. I opened the door, shoved the dog inside, signed the electronic thingy shakily and then grabbed the package with a feeling in my stomach like being in love. I ripped it open and just kept saying "oh my god", "oh my god", "oh my god." The dog looked worried. She shouldn't have been. 

There it was, real, concrete, and gorgeous beyond belief. The design of the cover is raised and embossed and it has a super cool blurb on the back by Novella Carpenter. I am feeling very lucky right now and also so thankful for the opportunities I've had. In the end, the dog wasn't really that excited. These are the times you wish you worked in an office, where if you shout, people will hear. I guess, that's what Twitter and Facebook are for. 

Stay tuned soon for a gorgeous new Wordpress site to do justice to this book!

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.

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!

January Events: Book Signing, Winter Soups and Stews Class, Fermentation Workshop

Hitting the New Year Running:

Saturday, January 10th--book signing and food samples from Heirloom Beans at Omnivore Books
3-4 PM Free!

Wednesday, January 14--Winter Soups and Stews class at Sur La Table in San Francisco 6pm. $75

Saturday, January 24--Fermentation Workshop at The Cooperative Grocery in Berkeley. Time of day to be determined. Email or leave a comment, if you're interested. The Cog is also looking for new members. Now is the time to join! Workshop Free! Bring your own veggies and jars. I'll bring salt and recipes.

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.

It's Official: Heirloom Beans are Popular

Sorry for the longish silence over here. Crashed my bike while riding to Slow Food Nation to break down on Labor Day and have been laying low to help my messed up hand heal. Slowly getting back into action. It was an action-packed weekend for promoting the bean book. first the Sur La Table class on Saturday, which was fabulous. On Sunday we headed up to Jimtown Store for the first official signing event. 69 books were sold and it's already in its second printing before it's even officially released. Carrie Brown and her staff put on a wonderful event.

The photo shows Steve Sando, coauthor and bean man, Sara Remington, photographer extraodinaire. (not just anyone can make bean dishes look good in 100 degree weather) and the ever-stylish Carrie Brown, who styled the recipes and provided the lovely props in all the photos. Oh, and me.

The photo below is of the bean art by Julie Brown, Carrie's sister and jewelry maker. Artistic talent does run in the family.

If you want to support the book, go to your local bookstore and see if they have it. If not, ask them to get it. Thanks!

Heirloom Beans

Got my author copies yesterday! The book will be on the shelves soon. You can preorder it now on Amazon cheap. Or you can "support your local bookstore".

I'll be teaching a bean class at Sur La Table on Maiden Lane in San Francisco September 13. We'll be hitting the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market to meet Steve, talk beans and buy ingredients, then we'll head back to the kitchen and prepare a variety of bean dishes.

Steve and I will both be at Jimtown Store on September 14th from 2 to 5 signing books.

I'm teaching in Cleveland October 20, 21, and 22 and then at Kitchen on Fire on the 25th.

Whew! here we go.

Something to Relish

I'm rarely compelled to blog about a product, but here's an exception. I found this at The Pasta Shop in Berkeley just as they were building the new display. They found it at the Unfancy Food Show in Brooklyn. I was smitten by the packaging first and that's about as far as it would have gone if the nice man hadn't offered me a taste. (they make beautiful pickles too but at a higher price point). As it was, $6.99 was my gateway to a brand new addiction. The brothers McClure do indeed know what they are doing, which puts me in a pickle because now I need to figure out how to make my own version. How hard can it be? cucumbers, vinegar, water, salt, peppers (jalapenos?), garlic, dill. I think it will take awhile before I can make such a perfect relish, but I'm going to try.

And what have we adorned with this lovely little relish? Crazy sounding, but we put it on salami pizza. It works to cut the richness in the same way that pepperoncini works on a salami sandwich. What other plans do we have? Lots! Hot dogs, sausages, chicken salad and tuna salad sandwiches, bowls of pinto beans, tacos, pulled pork sandwiches. I don't know. It kind of sounds like I'm going to have to up my meat consumption temporarily or think of some vegetarian ideas. Send yours along please. 'Scuse me, I've got to go buy some Mc Clure's pickles now.