breaking the chains.

Cleaning up my phone I found this mysterious picture: I know what it is but not why there would be a picture of it.

As a break from the wattle-gazing that's going on around here, it's convenient that this is also a food blog. It's no secret that I/we seem to be growing ever more in love with pickled things over the years, probably because our tastebuds are getting old and saggy, but whatever the cause, I found another new pickle that, while it's a lot of chopping, and a little frying, and kind of feels like a bit of work while you're doing it, and boy are these a lot of commas, etc: then it sits in the fridge for 24 hours and your aged-ass moth-eaten brain has almost entirely forgotten about the prep work by then. Suddenly you're all, "Crikey, who left this bright yellow incredibly healthy-looking Nyonya/Malaysian fish pickle in my icebox? I shall bite into it right now", etc.

It's really, realllly good. One of the more obviously restaurant-quality Asian things I can make, which is interesting (to me) because there are so few ingredients. It really is the Nyonya/Malaysian version of this, so if you do it right it's another perfect treatment for oilier fishies. The post-cooking marination does something extremely complementary (and complimentary, but more the former) to the texture of this particular fish.

Which is not the fish that the original recipe calls for, which I got from here, obviously my version is totally inauthentic, I'm using dirt-cheap (but sustainably fished!) Alaskan salmon, and I didn't technically "deep-fry" anything. And some more different colors would be a good idea (adding the green chiles for example), and then check out their sprinkle of sesame seeds, which every recipe I saw included. Tragically I didn't have any so I can't comment. I left the chile peppers cut big so I could choose spicy or non-spicy bites. And I added black pepper b/c turmeric needs it in order to be bioavailable or something scientific like that.

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nyonya fish pickle. 

500g wild salmon or mackerel
olive or coconut oil for frying

5 tbsp olive or coconut oil
20g fresh turmeric (three pinky-sized pieces), peeled and julienned
50g fresh ginger (the standard "2-inch long piece"), peeled and julienned
30g garlic (ended up being about 5 cloves), peeled and etc
2 green Holland chiles
2 red Holland chiles
5 tbsp (or slightly less) raw sugar (I used one disk of palm sugar b/c that's all I had, HOW FUCKING GOURMET AM I BITCHESSSS)
1 tsp salt
freshly cracked black pepper to taste
200ml white vinegar
1 tsp white sesame seed or even a drizzle of tahini, I know it sounds weird but it worked for me

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Fry the fish in as little oil as you can to be able to call it frying. I cooked my filets 3 minutes per side and, while that doesn't sound like much, and it's true they were "just cooked" when I took them off, they kept cooking while they rested, and then the very vinegar-centric soaking finished whatever needed finishing. They were pretty perfect 24 hours later.

I can't remember if I wiped the pan out here, it could've gone either way. Let's say I did. Then you add the 5 tbsp of oil and fry the turmeric until it's lightly browned, about 5-7 minutes. Remove it and then do the ginger and garlic together, which I normally wouldn't do b/c ginger always seems to take a little longer, but again it worked perfectly, about 5 minutes, don't burn your garlic. Remove the ginger and garlic and then do the chiles.

And then put the oil and whatever's in the pan into a pickling jar or sealable glass bowl and let it cool. Then add sugar, vinegar, salt and pepper and combine with the fish pieces and rhizomes and chiles and whatnot. Something like that, I did whatever the original recipe told me to do. Cover/seal and put in the fridge for 24 hours.

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"too dangerous to go outside".

That's what city officials are saying today. We're having a windstorm, 75mph winds, two people one person killed by trees (falling trees) already this morning, etc. So we're all staying inside. It's not like we need an excuse to stay inside, but it's actually kind of nice to have one.

I did manage to dash across the street to the Dirk b/c we're out of eggs (obvs worth risking your life for), and I picked up a cute little "sale pumpkin" (€1.29 each), so I'll probably be roasting that in bit. Which reminds me, Saturday night we were changing the "couch cover", an arduous two-person job that never seems like it's going to work until it just suddenly does, and suddenly there was an obvious commotion outside involving a lot of people.

I went to the window while Moop grunted and swore at the couch. "Is it Halloween?" I asked. Mara said "maybe, why". And, all Hollywood-like, I said, "if it's not, we've got a real problem on our hands". The street was full of zombies. Hundreds of them, men, women, dripping, oozing, doing the stereotypical lurching and stumbling forward, lit from behind by some semi-massive light source. And then the house music started. Zombie parade. It went on for 15 minutes or so, frankly the most horrifying thing about it being their choice of music, totally brain dead fwwaaahahahahha.

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napa cabbage and shiitake mushroom soup.

1 head napa cabbage
200g fresh shiitake mushrooms
1 2-inch piece of fresh turmeric, peeled
4 cloves garlic
2 cups leftover chicken broth
crushed red pepper
freshly cracked black pepper

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monday morning quarterback.

A couple things. One, that day when I took those beautiful pictures? They were too beautiful I guess, b/c they broke the camera. It can no longer focus. "System Error (Focus)" it says. So I'm back to those Olympuses that no one else wanted because they suck profound amounts of ass.

Two. I have often criticized "fake meat products" like, say, Tofurky, for tasting like the worst thing that ever happened to your tongue. How could you do that, I wondered. But lately I've been eating a little too much meat, and last night I happened to have a big block of tempeh in the fridge, and since I almost always eat tempeh the same flawless yet caloriffic way (fried), I thought I'd try something different.

An Asian tempeh "meatball" I thought. Treat it like a mushroomy kind of flavor, just sex it up with some Japanese flavors like miso, soy, sesame oil, ginger, garlic, etc. An egg for binding/moisture, etc. I made the "mince" last night and it smelled/tasted awesome.

I baked them today (for 50 minutes, so the tempeh is definitely "cooked") and...fuck if they don't taste like Tofurky. Just awful in every way. You almost literally can't swallow one without a glass of water, and they have a naaasty aftertaste that I can't trace back to any of the constituent ingredients. The only thing that I could've imagined helping at all would've been adding a considerable amount of butter to the "mince". A little sake maybe. But jesus, just a total fail...no wonder there are no recipes like this on the net.

Oh, three things. Third: I had raw broccoli for dinner last night and it absolutely decimated my digestive system. Like from 2am to 4am in the fetal position wishing for death. Apparently this can happen if you're not used to eating raw broccoli. But why in fuck would anyone want to get used to eating raw broccoli is my question. A mistake I shan't make again in this lifetime.

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orange you glad i didn't say asian again.

Turmeric Quest 2013 still in progress, but even I as a true lovvver of most things Asian am needing the occasional break from the normal Indonesian-Thai-Vietnamese-Japanese-Burmese-Cambodian-Sri Lankan-etc stuff we cook over here.

And yet. Trying to eat orange stuff like turmeric but also squash and sweet potatoes, I'm sure you know why. And kale, you know why, everybody does. And prunes, you probably think you know why, but it's just because I've had this bag of them sitting around forever and it's time to start fresh and begin ignoring a brand-new bag of prunes.  

Thus, if not Asian, toward what cuisine do we steer our mighty kitchen spatula. Have you noticed I'm not using question marks anymore. It's more blasé that way, like I don't even care if "you" answer. More rhetorical. I've also put sarcastic exclamation marks "on pause". Quotation marks, unfortunately not (yet), and parentheses are still going pretty strong. And I'm still really likely to use more than one colon in a sentence, probably all of them incorrectly. Progress (implied question mark). 

The answer to my extremely rhetorical and questionably punctuated moronic question turned out to be: Moroccan, ish. In the end though, by the time I got around to turning on the stove I just really didn't have it in me anymore so I just scorched/steamed a chicken breast, threw some cilantro at it and dipped it in harissa, almost the same thing. The squash is still roasting, it's 9:45pm. A recipe for tomorrow's usage of tonight's detritus will eventually emerge from the shambles below. 

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calico tagine. 

100-200g leftover chicken
1 or 2 fried or hard-boiled egg(s)

2 or 3 cups kale, chopped pretty fine
1 or 2 cups butternut squash, roasted with smoked salt, cinnamon, and cumin seed

7 or 14 prunes, soaked, keep the water

handful almonds, toasted, chopped

pinch powdered ginger or ras el hanout

teaspoon cumin seed

a good bit of cinnamon

an assload of harissa, ok i used 2 tbsp 

extra-virgin olive oil if there's not already some from the squash or chicken
salt or feta if you're eating dairy
freshly cracked pepper to taste
a sprinkle of smoked paprika if you're in the mood
toasted sesame seeds

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gingerly.

Since you know by now that we loves us some dieting around here, how bout let's start an anti-cancer diet, what you got to say about that? Why, you might ask? Why not, I might reply. What exactly does an anti-cancer diet mean? We don't know really.

We do know that turmeric is almost definitely a good fixer-upper, and that it becomes exponentially more bioavailable when you combine it with black pepper and olive oil.

This here is a recipe that ALREADY HAS MOST OF THAT SHIT IN IT (no disrespeck but we was Thug Kitchen long before they was any such thing as a Thug mfkin Kitchen). It's from Cradle of Flavor, and it's for Singaporean black pepper crab, but I'm betting it would be pretty righteous on anything that used to live in the water. 

There's also a super-long version of acar kuning in Cradle of Flavor (more turmeric and useful rhizomes), I'm wondering if a simpler one would do. 

AFTER A LITTLE GOOGLING: No, they're all complicated. This one looks good too.
AFTER A LITTLE TASTING: The below recipe is awesome. But really, unless you "like spicy food", this is probably not for you. I myself am going to keep making it until I'm sick of it. 

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singaporean black pepper paste. 

4 tbsp black peppercorns

8 cloves garlic

3 inches fresh turmeric, peeled with a spoon or 2 tsp dried

3 inches fresh ginger, peeled

3/4 tsp salt

3 tbsp mild olive oil

3/4 cup water

Basically, process the five ingredients in a food processor. Fry the paste in the oil over medium-low heat, about 5 to 7 minutes or until the garlic no longer smells raw. 

If you're going to be adding seafood to this now, add the water and your seafood and cook til it's done. Otherwise just keep it as a seasoning paste and use it over the next week or so.

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il weekend di zuppe.

It was a rather perfect weekend for soup, overcast and drizzly. My ingredients were giving me Italian directions again for soup #2, the loudest of these voices coming from a head of green cabbage that was starting to go limp on me (go leeeemp was Mary Quinones' advice to me back in 1994 when I complained that her friend Don't propositioned me and wouldn't take no for answer. Mary's sage advice refers to the childhood defense technique that I've only previously heard referred to as Noodle Boy/Girl: basically acting boneless so no one can physically make you do anything. Try it, it works. Though it didn't work on Don't, come to think of it).

I've been searching for new ways to eat cabbage for a couple of years now. You know why: cabbage is supposed to be very good for you in the anti-cancer department. Apparently it's because cabbage contains something that your body metabolizes into something else called indole-3-carbinol (I3C), which has been shown in clinical studies to prevent or even reverse the growth of pre-cancerous cells.

Do note that if you're just choking down some cabbage exclusively for its anti-cancer properties, don't boil it. Here's an excerpt from the study:

"Past studies have shown that consumption of Brassica vegetables decreases the risk of cancer. This is because of the high concentration in Brassicas of substances known as glucosinolates which are metabolized to cancer preventive substances known as isothiocyanates. However before this research it was not known how the glucosinolates and isothiocyanates were influenced by storage and cooking of Brassica vegetables.

The researchers, Prof Paul Thornalley from Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick and Dr Lijiang Song from the University of Warwick’s Department of Chemistry bought Brassica vegetables, (broccoli, Brussel sprouts, cauliflower and green cabbage) from a local store and transported them to the laboratory within 30 minutes of purchasing.

The effect of cooking on the glucosinolate content of vegetables was then studied by investigating the effects of cooking by boiling, steaming, microwave cooking and stir-fry. Boiling appeared to have a serious impact on the retention of those important glucosinolate within the vegetables.

The loss of total glucosinolate content after boiling for 30 minutes was: broccoli 77%, Brussel sprouts 58%, cauliflower 75% and green cabbage 65%. The effects of other cooking methods were investigated: steaming for 0–20 min, microwave cooking for 0–3 min and stir-fry cooking for 0–5 min. All three methods gave no significant loss of total glucosinolate analyte contents over these cooking periods."

Right, so where does roasting/braising fit in here. I imagine that it's OK.

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The best cabbage dish we've ever made at home happened during one of our Mara's-thyroid-initiated cooking experiments. I can't remember the exact sequence of trial and error that led us to cabbage and cheese, but one evening we found ourselves making a noodle-less "lasagna": subbing cabbage leaves for the noodles, and keeping every thing else pretty much the same (red sauce, etc). I remember it being pretty surprisingly delicious, but I can't justify that kind of cheese consumption at the moment (lots of mozzarella and ricotta).

So I've been looking for healthy, interesting baked cabbage recipes for a while now, and then what do I spy in Signore Carluccio's book: something called zuppa di cavolo alla Canavesana. It's a cabbage soup, but one that's even more like a ribollita than the zuppa di pesce was, as you can see from the photo above. In fact, this is barely a soup at all..."it eats like a meal," as the Campbell's Chunky Soup commercials used to say.

Although if I recall correctly, back in my college days sometimes the Campbell's Chunky didn't really eat quite enough like a meal, especially after 18 beers and a pile of Kenny's weed. So at about 4am O'Neill and I would start making soup sandwiches using one of those electric sandwich toasters. Nature's Own multigrain bread and Campbell's Sirloin Burger soup was the most common combo (because these were almost always the sole contents of the pantry), maybe with a slice of Kraft American cheese in there as well. The results were...yeah. Not quite right, as far as food goes, but I believe that what we achieved in that toaster was in fact greater than the sum of its parts.

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Antonio says that this is his sister's recipe, from an area in the Piemonte called the Canavese, near Torino. It looks like this recipe might also be called simply zuppa del Canavese. I didn't have fontina in the house (why not?) so I used a bit of leftover Reblochon, but a fraction of the quantity specified. We are trying to gently steer our way back to healthy eating, right. I probably used 100g of cheese total between the Parmesan and the Reblochon. In any event, the end result was very good and I'll be making it again. The buttered bread is an excellent idea. And long-cooked cabbage really does share some textural characteristics with baked pasta, for me at least, if I'm craving the latter sometimes the former will do just fine....plus there's cancer-fightin' enzymes 'n' shit in there.

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zuppa di cavolo alla Canavesana.

1 head of cabbage, shredded
2 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
1 quart chicken broth
6 slices good bread
100g butter
50-100g parmiginano-reggiano, grated
50-100g fontina, sliced
5 oil-packed anchovies, chopped
salt
pepper

Add the garlic to the chicken broth and gently steam the cabbage over the chicken broth for 20-30 minutes or until softish. I actually did a mix of simmering and steaming, but steaming is healthier...just want to make sure that not all of the broth evaporates.

Meanwhile, toast each slice of bread and butter it as if you don't care how much butter you're eating. Line a baking dish with half the buttered toast slices.

When the cabbage is soft, pour half the cabbage and broth over the toast in the baking pan. Add a good grating of black pepper here. Top with half the anchovies, half the fontina (if using), and half the parmesan. Then ad another layer of the remaining toast, cabbage, anchovies, and cheese on top.

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