Mysterious British Foods

Sadly, much of my knowledge about culture and customs comes from reading, and what I enjoy reading most is a good British novel. British novels are notorious for focusing on food. Just think about it: J.R.R. Tolkein's hobbits enjoying their "elevenses;" (?) or Edmund gobbling up Turkish Delight in C.S. Lewis's Narnia; Arthur Dent searching the universe for a good cup of tea in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe; so many of Bertie Wooster's plans involve stealing someone's cook or softening up a foe with high tea at the Ritz (in P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves series); and Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot famously drinks tisanes (herbal tea) and always judges an establishment by its cooking. Reading such books makes me hungry, but half the time I don't even know what I'm hungry for. So this post I'm not going to give you a recipe. You can give me one if you like! I'm just going to list some peculiar British foods that I've always wanted to try. And here are some more articles about the weirdness:

http://england-travel.suite101.com/article.cfm/english_names_for_common_foods
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_cuisine
http://www.thebritishshoppe.com/
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article5808143.ece
http://www.lingolex.com/cc/foods.htm
http://britishfood.about.com/od/regionalenglishrecipes/Regional_English_Recipes.htm

(Unfortunately, the one time I visited the U.K., most of what I was fed was curries, cheese sandwiches, Italian, or Mexican. I was very disappointed, to say the least.)

Vegetarian British Foods I would Like Someone to Cook for Me so I Don't Have to do the Math of Converting Measurements:

seed cake
Ploughman's lunch
figgy pudding
kedgeree (without the fish)
bubble and squeak (with a fried egg)
yorkshire pudding (vegetable oil)
blue cheese and pear tart
Pimm's No. 1
Eton Mess
sherry trifle
Christmas pudding without suet (yuck!)
treacle tart
apple and cheese pie
Bakewell tart
bilberry pie
cauliflower cheese
rock cakes
rumbledethumps
tattie scones
tipsy cream
Yorkshire parkin

Squash Cakes, a tasty treat

Squash. Winter squash. I never liked it much until I had the Japanese kind, kabocha. Then I realized that buttercup squash in the U.S. is almost exactly the same as kabocha. But I was still cold to those old American standbys, acorn and butternut squash, until yesterday. Yesterday George said to me, "I'm making a tasty treat."
"What tasty treat?"
"You'll see."

Last night George cooked butternut squash the usual way, sliced lengthwise in half, seeds scooped out, and face down in a half-inch of water in a baking dish. He cooked it a long time at 375, then took it out, covered the cut side with butter and brown sugar, and cooked them face up 5 minutes at 400 degrees. He found it delicious and ate almost the entire squash himself—once he saw that I didn't like it. But he saved just enough for the next morning, to mash up and mix with all-purpose flour and ground pepper. He formed the mixture into patties and fried them but good.

"These are tasty treats," I admitted.
George smiled smugly.

Sweet Beans

In Japan people eat their beans sweet. Many desserts include sweet adzuki beans; there is even a hot, sweet bean soup with balls of mochi that people eat in the winter. In the U.S. no one eats their beans sweet. But today I did. I cooked some pinto beans with apple and onion slices, drained them and took out the apple and onion, mixed in some light brown sugar, and served hot alongside a microwaved sweet potato. It was pretty good. George's nose is stuffed up so he couldn't tell how flavorful and delicious they were. Poor George.

Hot Udon Noodles in Broth

George and I have colds so we don't feel like doing much, and I'm a vegetarian, so I'm completely uninterested in chicken noodle soup. But I still felt like hot noodles in soup just as long as I didn't have to do anything except sleep until they were ready. George cooked me fat, hot, chewy udon noodles in a little bit of broth, and it felt like Heaven. George made up this recipe himself with stuff we had in our pantry. All Japanese noodles including udon have wheat in them, so people with Celiac disease should avoid this meal. You can basically find frozen udon noodles in almost any Asian market in the U.S., in my experience.

Hot Udon Noodles in Broth

Package of frozen udon noodles
A couple of boxes Imagine Organic No-Chicken Broth (the only broth we buy)
some pieces kombu kelp
some miso paste
some soy sauce

Mix together everything except the noodles to taste. Bring to a boil. Add frozen noodles. Cook until noodles are done. Pick out noodles with tongs and put in a bowl. Ladle over a little bit of broth. Serve hot with chopsticks.

New Year's Eve Dinner

I am cheesed out! I have been offered (and I unhesitatingly accepted) six or seven different fantastic cheeses with crackers pretty much all week. My favorite are the creamy blue cheeses like the blue goat cheese Humboldt Fog or Saga blue brie. I also like me some English Cotswold cheese—I feel like getting out my hunting horn, hound, and horse every time I see its glowing orange goodness. Just kidding—pleasure hunting is totally evil.

Anyway, the point of my cheese story was that usually I make a cheese-tastic New Year's Eve dinner for me and my victims, er, friends. But this year I nixed that and made Kasha Varnishkes. Nobody else ever gets excited about Kasha Varnishkes, and I already wrote an entire ode-post to it, so I'm going to write about my usual New Year's Eve fare: Grilled French Toast Cheese Sandwich and Cold Tomato Soup. I like to accompany it with bubbly champagne. Bring on the decadence, baby.

Grilled French Toast Cheese Sandwich

I think I got this recipe from Nigella Lawson, who is an engaging writer and also does an excellent job modelling the cramming of food into face.

1 loaf low-quality white sliced bread, crusts removed (GF bread won't do--sorry!)
several large balls of fresh or buffalo mozzarella
egg
milk
butter

1. Mix egg in one wide bowl. Pour milk into another wide bowl.
2. Make sandwiches: Stuff several thick slices mozzarella between two slices of the bread. Then pinch the edges of the bread together so that the cheese is entirely enclosed by bread. Repeat. (You could also stuff in optional flavorings, like sun-dried tomatoes or basil.)
3. Dip sandwich in milk. Then in egg.
4. In a buttered fry pan, grill those there sandwiches until golden and good on each side. The goal is for the mozzarella to get all gooey and hot, so take your sweet time cooking it. Cut in half on the diagonal. Eat hot.

Cold Tomato Soup

This is the easiest tomato soup of all time. My Japanese homestay "mother" Kazue Nishino taught it to me, along with all my other favorite recipes.

low-sodium tomato juice, chilled
fresh tomatoes (on the vine is usually best), chopped
fresh cucumber, peeled, seeded and chopped
fresh basil, washed and torn up

Combine all to taste. Chill in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes and serve immediately.

A note about good champagne: They do not serve good champagne New Year's Eve on the Carnival cruise ships. Just sayin', BYOB.

Apology Post - Microwaved Sweet Potato

Hi what few readers I have left,

I have been away for a long time. It's entirely the fault of graduate school. 4 ginormous papers loomed over me, I had to write them super fast, and then I experienced serious writer's burn out. And vacation.

But fear not, I've accumulated some great recipes over break, and I promise to share them with you, beginning with George's ingenious method of producing hot, creamy, fat-free sweet potatoes in less than 10 minutes: use the microwave. Yams also work.

First take a sweet potato. Wash it thoroughly. Pierce it in several places with fork tines to allow steam to escape. Wrap it in paper towel, put it on a plate, and stick it in the microwave. On most microwaves there is a potato setting, but the sweet potato usually takes longer to cook. Depending on the thickness of the sweet potato, it will take from four to eleven minutes to cook on the highest setting. You will know it's done by grabbing the sweet potato and squeezing—when the skin has separated from the flesh, you can eat it. Just grind on fresh pepper and scoop out the flesh with a spoon.

George, Thomas, and I all really love sweet potatoes cooked this way. They like mashed sweet potatoes, and I like baked sweet potatoes, but we can all agree on this recipe.

Collards à la George

George and I love visiting the Durham, NC farmer's market every weekend. It is part of our special Shabbos ritual, which I know is all backward, but the market does make us very happy and it is something we look forward to doing together. Lately we have bought collards from a special stall that only sells kale and collards—but what collards! The farmer bunches them together loosely and stands them on their stalks in huge dark woven baskets. The leaves glow mysteriously from within, and they seem so alive that I always feel like they are breathing very very slowly. Whenever I am forced to buy produce from the supermarket, the vegetables always look so cowed compared to farmers' market vegetables. I feel sorry for people who don't have farmers' markets near them; no wonder they don't enjoy their vegetables.

Tonight George cooked our collards. First he washed half of a bunch, but then he got bored and went away to rest. Later he returned, washed the rest, and chopped them up. In a large pot he sautéed onions and garlic. When they had mellowed into a darker sweetness, he added an umeboshi (pickled plum), some soy sauce [you might need gluten-free soy sauce like San-J], and a little bit of salt. Then he covered and cooked the greens quite some time. Mmm.... I cannot convey to you how absolutely savory they were. Although they tasted like golden raisins had been added, the sweetness actually came from the onions!

I'm really glad that we are learning so many ways to cook collard greens. I feel like so many of the traditional Southern foods are inaccessible to vegetarians. Also, although we live in a heavily Mexican area with many fresh carnicerias around, I feel intimidated by Spanish, the foreignness of the culture and cooking, and the large amounts of chicharonnes and tins of lard I see. Also, I haven't found a Mexican vegetarian cookbook that appeals to me.

Anyway, I am going to post a wish-list of good ol' Southern or Mexican dishes I'd like to learn:
fried green tomatoes
gumbo
tomatillo salsa
horchata
sweet potato pie
Hoppin' John
old fashioned grits
vegetarian bbq
potlikker
fresh corn tortillas

Any other suggestions would be welcome, as to be honest I just don't know these cuisines that well. Go ahead and post in the comments section below.

Borscht Borscht Borscht

My friend Naomi took me on a food tour of the Lower East Side in NY City and one of the meals we enjoyed was sweet cheese blintzes and borscht. I couldn't believe how much more delicious they tasted together. Now of course I can't remember the name of the little place we ate at and neither can Naomi. The other day, for the first time, George and I attempted to recreate that meal from scratch. We used the Russian Cabbage Borscht recipe from Mollie Katzen's The New Moosewood Cookbook and served it hot, topped with sour cream and fresh snipped dill. (The soup is gluten-free.) This soup always turns out well; I make it once or twice a year.

George made blintzes using Mark Bittman's cheese blintze recipe in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. I felt that the filling, sour cream and cottage cheese with sugar and cinnamon, wasn't sweet enough and also was a bit too runny, but the skins were great. George experimented with both frying the blintzes in a pan and cooking in the oven, and the frying method turned out much better because the outsides crisped up beautifully. You don't want every mouthful to be mushy.

Unfortunately, George doubled the borscht recipe and I've had to eat it for breakfast every day since. Pouring it over rice makes it go down better, but I have to say, borscht is one of those items that is great for dinner one night as "something different." I don't want to immerse myself in beet and cabbage all week long!

I'll say this about borscht for breakfast. It keeps you going all day long.

Mellow Pumpkin Buns

I heart mellow pumpkin buns! I buy them at the Oriental Supermarket in Durham, NC. I have not been cooking much lately because of school crunch time and not feeling well, so when I need a quick snack I pop one of these in the microwave for 50 seconds, cut it into fourths, and enjoy with tea.

One of the things I love about Mellow Pumpkin Buns is that they actually aren't pumpkin buns. They are kabocha squash buns—you can see it in the picture. I much prefer cooking with kabocha than pumpkin; in fact I've never cooked with pumpkin because I've been too intimidated. Kabocha (or their practically identical cousins, Buttercup squash) are small and easy to chop up. Their skin is thin and peels off easily, and the flesh is moist, not stringy, with a beautiful, vibrant orange. To my mind they taste way better than acorn or butternut squash. Someday in the distant future I plan to make a pumpkin pie with freshly puréed kabocha.

The Japanese love kabocha squash as much as I do and one of their favorite ways to cook it is to simmer peeled chunks of it in heavily sugared water until tender. Then they'll serve about 3 or 4 chunks as a side dish. If this is your first time with kabocha or buttercup squash, you should definitely try cooking it this way.

Get Well Food

I haven't been feeling well in oh-so-many ways lately, so George made me some simple get well food. Nothing brilliant, but expertly executed. He has gotten good at poaching eggs.

The key, according to George, is to get the salted water to a very gentle simmer. (You have to salt it so it doesn't lose its boil when you add the egg.) Then crack an egg into a tiny bowl. Lower the dish to right above the water, then slowly slowly rotate the dish 90 degrees until the side of the bowl is horizontal on the surface of the water. The egg should slowly ooze out sideways into the water. Cook until awesome.

He also boiled collard green leaves (until tender but they hadn't lost their color) and tossed them with fresh squeezed lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil. Both greens and egg were served on hot fresh rice.

I feel better.