Cooling Down With Heat

When it gets unbelieveably hot in August, sometimes the last thing I want to do is cook.

Often, the second-to-last thing I want to do is eat.

When I am sweaty and miserable, food is generally the last thing on my mind. The first thing on my mind is where I can find a nice cold body of water I can sit my sticky self into and never leave. Or, rather, not leave until October, when the temperatures decrease to the point where normal human beings can walk around in the sun without fainting.

Long August afternoons when the heat makes nothing sound appetizing call for stern measures in the kitchen. Cold dishes are the only cure for what ails the overheated cook. Minimal cooking times and equipment, the ability to utilize leftovers and whatever fresh produce lurks in the refrigerator, and light, snappy flavors that will stimulate a sluggish appetite are the lifesavers of the summer kitchen.

Hunan Cold Spicy Noodles fulfill each of these rather stringent requirements with ease.

You only need to cook the noodles, and you can do those ahead of time, in the dead of night, when the temperature has at least dropped five degrees or so.

You dirty only a few utensils–the pasta pot, a cleaver or knife, a cutting board, a bowl, a whisk or a jar, and your fingers.

Leftovers can make the noodles as plain or as fancy as you like, and the dish keeps perfectly in the refrigerator for whenever hunger strikes with a vengeance.

I learned this dish at the behest of a friend who fell in love with it at a very short-lived Chinese restaurant that opened up in Athens about ten years ago or so. Though the dish was served as an appetizer, it was what she ordered for lunch every day after she had walked downtown to attend classes at Ohio University, because it was the only thing she could consider eating after pounding the pavement in the insanely humid August weather.

After the little restaurant closed and we moved to Maryland, she beseeched me to figure out how to make “that nice Chinese noodle salad we used to eat.”

I looked in cookbooks and found nothing, but going from my memory of how it tasted and her description, I came up with a recipe that is remarkably like the one in Henry Chung’s Hunan Style Chinese Cookbook. In his cookbook, he gives a recipe for the dressing, which is the heart of the dish and instructs the cook to use it for cold, marinated summer salads such as are popular in the region of Hunan, which is apparently afflicted with long, humid, beastly hot summers like we have here in Southeastern Ohio. (I always assumed, since I couldn’t find the recipe in any cookbooks that the name of the dish had little to do with Hunan province, and that it might have just been named that by the owners of the restaurant to sound trendy. However, I am happy to find out years later, that the recipe probably is pretty well authentically Hunan.)

I made this salad for Morganna to take with her for lunch on her first day of school yesterday, and shredded up the leftover yakitori to add a bit of protein to the mix. I used carrots, too, but no cucumber, even though it is traditional. Morganna doesn’t care for cucumber; she thinks it both feels and tastes funny, so I left it out and instead used extra cilantro and scallions, both of which she does like.

Hunan Cold Spicy Noodles

Dressing Ingredients:

(I am giving these ingredients in proportions, rather than in specific measurements, so you can make as much or as little dressing as you need. It is a very forgiving recipe.)

1 part thin soy sauce
1/2 part Chinkiang vinegar
1/2 part white rice vinegar
1/4 part sesame oil
1/4 part sugar or honey(optional, or to taste)
1/4 part minced fresh ginger
1/4 part minced fresh garlic
1/4 part minced scallion
1/4 part minced cilantro
chile garlic paste to taste
black or white pepper to taste

Method:

Stick ingredients in a jar, screw cap on tightly and shake until combined.

Ingredients for Noodles:

Fresh or dried Chinese wheat noodles (I used Rossi Pasta linguine for this), cooked until al dente, rinsed in cold water and drained
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
Shredded vegetables–about half as many in volume as you have noodles
Shredded cooked meat–optional
Big handful of fresh, coarsely chopped cilantro
1/4 cup coarsely crushed dry roasted peanuts (optional)

Method:

Put noodles in a bowl and toss (it is easiest to do this with clean hands) with sesame oil to make certain that the noodles do not stick together.

Add dressing, and toss until noodles are completely coated with dressing.

Put into serving bowl, and arrange shredded vegetables and meat prettily on top, then sprinkle with chopped cilantro and if using, peanuts. Cover and chill until service.

Toss just before serving to combine.

Yakitori: The Zen of Grilled Chicken

Simplicity of preparation and beautiful presentation are hallmarks of Japanese cookery. A perfectly composed meal should be a gustatory poem or a painting meant to be appreciated with all five senses, instead of just one or two.

The sense of smell is engaged by the delicious odors of the cleanly prepared ingredients, carefully enhanced by a minimum of extraneous flavors. The sense of sight is rewarded with the use of contrasting colors within the ingredients and the serving pieces themselves. Hearing is delighted by the sounds of cookery in process: the sizzle of of a bit of meat touching a hot grill or the whisper of simmering stock both bring joy to the ear of an appreciative diner. The sense of touch is never forgotten by the careful Japanese cook; every dish or meal should have a contrast in texture present in some form.

Taste, of course, is paramount, and the Japanese philosophy of the freshest ingredients cooked or presented simply shows the seminal essence of kitchen Zen. Foods should taste naturally good, with minimal enhancements utilized, not to hide the flavor of the main ingredient, but rather to bring forth the fullness of its true nature.

Yakitori, chicken bits threaded on skewers and grilled, is a dish which illustrates the principles of Japanese cookery perfectly. Small cubes of chicken meat are marinated in a sauce that contains sake, mirin, sugar of some derivation, soy sauce and sometimes chicken broth, then threaded on soaked bamboo skewers with or without vegetables. Then, they are grilled over high heat and basted with the sauce, until the outside is golden brown marked with charred strips where the hot grill seared the chicken meat. The interior should be just barely done in order to preserve the moistness of the meat and to provide a contrast between the juicy, tender meat in the center and the sweet, toothsome gold and black outer crust.

Overjoyed to find that Canaan Farms Chicken once more had fresh chicken breasts for sale at the Farmer’s Market, I decided to make yakitori to go with the edamame.

So I picked up some scallions and after finding some leftover portobella slices in the refrigerator, decided to add mushrooms to the skewers.

Although it is traditional to use bamboo for skewering the meat, I went ahead and used the metal skewers I had instead. For one thing, you have to soak bamboo skewers, and I had no intention of doing that; for another thing, one generally discards of bamboo skewers after using them once, a practice which I find to be utterly wasteful.

Having made and eaten yakitori made with the bamboo skewers before, when I compared them to the ones put on the metal skewers, I found no discernable difference between the two types of skewers in practice. I guess that since yakitori started out primarily as a street stall food, eaten by patrons on the run, it made sense to use bamboo skewers for portability and ease of disposal; having a patron walk away with a skewer one was intending to throw out is not tragic.

Having someone walk off with your metal skewer, on the other hand, is not only expensive, but is an invitation to any number of possible accidental blood-spillings.

However, unless one intends to open up a yakitori stand on the corner, I suggest you use metal skewers, if you have them. If you don’t, but you grill a lot, go out and get some. They last forever, and in a pinch, the two and a half foot-long ones I have with wooden handles can be used as fencing foils.

Chicken Yakitori

Sauce Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup sake
1/2 cup mirin
1/4 cup honey (I used local wildflower honey sublty flavored with pure lemon oil)
2 cups dark Japanese soy sauce
1 tablespoon tamari soy sauce
1/8 cup chicken broth

Further Ingredients:

1 whole chicken breast, boned, skinned and cut into 1″ cubes
1 bunch scallions, washed, trimmed and cut into 1″ lengths
1 large portobella mushroom, stem removed and cut into 1/2″ thick slices, each slice cut into half lengthwise
1 teaspoon sesame oil

Method:

In a saucepan, mix together sauce ingredients over medium heat. Bring to a boil, and turn down to a simmer–cook until mixture reduces by about 1/4. Cool to about room temperature, and add chicken, scallions and mushrooms.

Allow to marinate at least three hours or so. Overnight would probably be even better.

Thread chicken and vegetables, alternating, on skewers of choice; if you use bamboo skewers, be certain to soak them in water to cover for at least three hours, preferably overnight. Reserve marinade.

Bring marinade back to a boil and allow to boil vigorously for about two minutes, in order to kill any bacteria that may have been introduced to the mixture by the chicken.

Grill skewers over high heat, basting with boiled marinade and turning frequently, until chicken has firmed up and is streaked with golden brown and black, and the mushrooms and scallions have blackened considerably.

Drizzle with sesame oil.

Serve immediately, on the skewers or off.

Note:

Leftovers can be saved and utilized in cold dishes like grilled chicken salads or Cold Hunan Spicy Noodles.

If you like dark meat, boned and skinned chicken thighs and legs can be cut into chunks and used to great effect in this recipe, as these pieces are naturally more juicy than breast meat.

Be certain that you do not overcook the chicken pieces. Check them for firm texture (when you poke it with a finger, the surface “springs back”) often. If they are the tiniest bit soft, but golden and black on the outside, take them off anyway–they will continue cooking off heat in their own retained heat for several minutes, and if you wait until they are perfectly firm, they will likely overcook.

Edamame: They’re Fuzzy

For all that I adore Asian foods and teach Asian cooking, I don’t often cook or eat Japanese food.

I am not quite certain why that is–I do like most Japanese foods, but I simply do not have as much experience with them, nor have I made a large study of them over the years, as I have with Chinese, Thai and Indian cuisnes.

Sushi is divine, and miso soup is comforting.

However, if I were to choose a single Japanese dish to call my favorite, it would have to be boiled edamame with salt and lemon.

I love it even better than tuna or salmon sashimi; for anyone who knows me and has eaten sushi with me, this admission should speak volumes. I have often stated, after having gobbled down an immoderate amount of raw salmon, that I hope in my next life I come back as a grizzly bear, so that I can gorge myself on fresh raw salmon caught between my own paws.

The fact that I like edamame even better than the king of fish is amazing.

For those who have never had them, edamame are fresh soybeans. They come in wiry, tough pods that are covered in russet fuzz, with one to three beans packed tightly in their unappetizing jackets.

They are eaten as appetizers in sushi bars, simply boiled and salted, the more coarse salt the better, where edamame serve the same function that peanuts do in American bars–they are meant to make the patron thirsty, so that more alcohol is consumed.

One sushi bar I have been to throws lemon peel into the boiling water so that the pods and beans are gently infused with lemon oil, adding just a hint of complexity to the utterly sublime simplicity of the classic Japanese summer dish. I also like to squeeze fresh lemon juice over the pods before eating them; the citrus tang brings out the nutty flavor of the verdant beans.

I had never cooked them before, but when I found out that my CSA harvested some on Saturday, of course I had to take some. Canaan Hills Farms also had freshly slaughtered chicken, so I determined to pair the edamame with chicken yakitori (more on that tomorrow) and fresh grilled corn on the cob for an easy summer supper.

Of course, since I had never cooked them, I had to read up on them, so I dragged out the Japanese cookbook Morganna picked out for me when she was only eleven, The Japanese Kitchen: 250 Recipes in a Traditional Spirit, by Hiroko Shimbo, and started reading. Hiroko swore that one could remove the five o’clock shadow from the edamame pods by rubbing them between your palms with coarse salt. I had kosher salt in the kitchen, and so decided to give it go, but I found, that unless one is willing to give each pod individual attention, the salt thing doesn’t do much in the de-fuzzing arena.

Some fuzz was removed, to be certain, as evidenced by the amount I rinsed down the drain before popping them into the boiling water, but nowhere near all of it was gone. A majority of the wee beans still had that rakish, unshaven look after my ministrations, such that I wondered what the point of wasting the salt had been.

More fuzz was removed by the boiling process itself, than by the rubbing, unless it was a combination of the two actions which resulted in the fur removal. Zak helpfully suggested Nair, however, I declined to attempt such an experiment.

After rubbing the pods with salt, the rest of the cooking operation was simplicity itself. Bring a pot of water to a rolling boil, toss in the edamame (You can add a lemon slice or some lemon zest or peel to the cooking water), and boil for 3-5 minutes. I opted for cooking them for 4 minutes, but upon tasting them, should have gone for 5 or 6; they were just a shade too crunchy for my taste.

When the timer goes off, drain them and rinse them in hot water, then pour them onto a baking sheet that has been lined with paper towels, or a cotton kitchen towel, to dry. Once they are dry, sprinkle liberal amounts of coarse salt over them, and toss them.

And so, for those who have never had edamame–I bet you are wondering how one eats them?

This is the fun part.

You pick them up with your fingers and bring them close to your lips, then squeeze gently from the bottom of the pod to pop the plump beans into your mouth. Or, you can be refined and use chopsticks, and instead of popping them into your mouth, use your teeth to scrape them free of the pods. If you use the chopsticks method, however, know that you will be dealing with the fuzz factor.

I say dive in with your fingers and have fun with it. Make a game of it, and while you are playing with your food, remember that edamame are not only a hoot to eat, but are nutritional powerhouses that are filled with anti-oxidants, protein, A and B vitamins and a reasonable amount of vitamin C.

It is rare for a food item to taste good, be fun to eat and on top of it all, be good for you–for this reason alone, I hope to find more people jumping on the edamame bandwagon and eating them as a summer treat when they come into season.

Weekend Cat Blogging: Emergency Kitten Bath

Thursday night, we were sitting about watching a movie, when Indrid popped up on the couch, soaking wet, and smelling rather–unappetizing.

Someone, namely, Indrid’s person, had forgotten to close the lid on the toilet, and while it had been flushed, it is still a toilet and thus doesn’t smell minty fresh, and the little bugger fell in.

So, he had to have a bath.

I had Morganna done her leather jacket, and I put mine on, zipping them up to our necks.

Cat-bathing is something that requires armor, you know.

They really do not appreciate water.

So, there we were, looking rather like two biker chicks, picking on a poor innocent kitten, as we dunked him in the bathroom sink.

He was amazingly well behaved, considering that we were doing all sorts of awful things to his wee personage. I am glad to report, that although, after the ordeal, he huddled and shivered in a towel for about ten minutes, he is now fine, and is suffering no noticeable ill effects.

Simplicity from the Earth

For all that I love to make Asian foods, sometimes, I crave the plain comfort of country foods cooked simply.

Last night was one of those times.

Zak grilled bratwursts, and while those were cooking, I put a pot of some tiny Russian Banana fingerling potatoes on to boil in thier skins.

When I was a girl, my grandpa would dig up the very first potatoes in early June, just in time for the garden pea harvest, and we’d feast on creamed new potatoes and baby peas. He always grew Kennebecs, and when they were tiny–no bigger than a jawbreaker–their skins were so thin and tender you could rub them off with your thumb while washing the dirt off if you weren’t careful. They were sweet, too, and waxy, though when they were mature, the potatoes had the drier starch characteristic of the Kennebecs. They paired perfectly with baby peas and spring onions in a light cream sauce, and it was a treat we waited all year for.

Fingerlings are a type of potato that are grown to be harvested immature, and I was thrilled to find out that my CSA grows my favorite type–Russian Banana. They tend to grow peanut-shaped, with russet-brown skins and a nutty-sweet waxy interior. I fell in love with them when I first started getting the at the North Market in Columbus, because they are simplicty itself to cook and they go with everything.

When I opened the cabinet I had stored the ones from the CSA in, I was greeted with the dark scent of the earth they were grown in, and as I scrubbed them, the delicious odor called to mind the feel of red clay soil warm beneath my feet and and dry against my fingers as I carefully dug up baby potatoes by hand, so as to not disturb the roots of the plant, so that the remaining potatoes would grow and become large enough to harvest in the fall.

I typically boil them in salted water until they are tender. Thier skins are tender enough to eat, but not so fragile that boiling them will make them crack and burst–they have a bite to them under the teeth, and if you have some tiny enough to leave whole, they will pop when you chew them with a satisfying “snick!”

After they are tender, I drain and rinse them, then cut them into halves longways. I let them dry, then heat olive oil in a skillet–maybe a tablespoon and a half or so, and then, throw in some minced garlic–usually about three cloves or so. I let it turn golden, then add the potatoes, cut side down, and let them soak up the garlic-scented oil. I sprinkle thier backs with salt and freshly ground pepper, and then turn them over, and watch to make sure that the potatoes crisp slightly and the garlic turns nut-brown, but doesn’t burn.

In the last couple of minutes of cooking, I sprinkle over it all freshly minced herbs–last night, I used thyme, rosemary, oregano and chives. I have used basil in the past, cilantro, mint or dill. All of them are good, and they all add incredible flavor to the little nuggets that smell and taste of the fine soil they were grown in.

Then, we eat them, and we seldom have any left over, they are so good. But if there are any leftovers, they are good as a salad the next day.

There are variants, of course. Sometimes I brown a thinly sliced shallot with the garlic, and sometimes I add a chile pepper. But that is basically the dish–I don’t complicate it overmuch, because the focus of it is the delicious little potatoes themselves.

Every time I eat fingerlings or new potatoes, I always think of my Grandpa, and how he would say that potatoes shouldn’t be made into anything fancy. “They should taste of the good earth itself,” he’d say, “So don’t put too much weird stuff in them.”

While others in my family thought me strange for liking to eat them raw, straight from the ground, Grandpa understood. “They are full of goodness right from the dirt,” he’d say. “And they are good for you–don’t let anyone tell you different. They don’t make you fat. All that butter and sour cream people heap on them makes them fat. Just give me a potato baked or boiled with just some salt and pepper and a little butter, and that is the best meal the ground ever gave me.”

Wise words from a wise man.