I get really annoyed when uppity publications like Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, or even Food52 (which I love to death) start getting classist by making inane generalizations like “the more expensive your spices are, the better the quality you can expect.” No, guys. No, no, no, no, NO. This article even made the argument that when we get excited buying “cheaper” spices abroad, we’re actually also getting crappier quality. As someone who bought a considerable bag of some of the most fragrant dried bay leaves in Valencia in November and compared them to my sad, expensive (and empty) bottle of bay leaves from Whole Foods, I know this is a sad generalization to get us all to spend more, and in this case even worse, to be a bit xenophobic and question quality of product in other countries! This really is just not true, and I’m speaking from the perspective of someone who has purchased a number of spices abroad and compared them to the ones I have here.

If I buy a bottle of McCormick’s ground cardamom at Fairway and it cost me $3 less than the same brand and bottle at Whole Foods — no, it doesn’t mean that the bottle at Fairway was sitting on the shelf for longer. If I buy cinnamon or cloves in bulk at Patel Brothers in Jackson Heights for a dirt cheap cost (in an Indian / South Asian area where families and businesses are buying these in bulk constantly), it doesn’t mean my spices will be less fresh or fragrant than the ones I paid an arm and a leg for at a specialty spice shop like Kaluystan’s in Manhattan. Not everyone is cooking as a hobby and wants to spend $10 on a few pinches of a single spice; most of the people who are actually cooking (especially in Manhattan) are cooking for families that just need food on the table (and want that food to be good). More expensive does not always mean better quality. Sometimes it does, but in this case, it definitely does not.

I started my chocolate and pistachio whirligig buns on Friday by making the yeast dough, kneading it, and allowing it to rise twice, both times in the fridge to make sure I could freshly bake them on Sunday morning for our brunch at home with friends. They rose twice and puffed and browned in the oven; everything seemed like it was going swell. Then the strangest thing happened to them, though; my friend took a bite and asked if there was any alcohol in the buns. I said no and thought that was strange. I then took a bite of mine and realized that the alcoholic taste was really there; neither of us was imagining it. And then I got worried. What did I do wrong?

So me being the anal person I am, I went to look online and found out that oddly enough, the yeast may have turned “cannibalistic.” This basically means that if left in a place that is too warm (the heating in our apartment has been really high in the last few weeks!), if the yeast runs out of sugar in the dough to “eat,” the yeast will then start eating itself, producing the byproduct of an alcoholic taste in the bread. I was not happy about this; I had no idea that this could even happen!

And the day after, as homemade bread tends to be in this apartment the day after I make it, the bread has become a bit stale. This also is strange to me because I made bread many times at my parents’ home, and also at my Elmhurst apartment, and the bread never got this stale until about three days later. I’m not adding or subtracting anything from the bread that I used to use. I’ve never added any preservatives. This apartment just has so many odd quirks to it. I’m going to blame the apartment for this one.

Many articles have recently been written about whether it’s accurate to be labeling nut beverages “milk” — e.g. almond “milk,” cashew “milk,” walnut “milk.” Milk, in its technical definition, actually has to come from an animal, whether it’s a cow, sheep, or human being. Beverages that are thus derived from almonds or cashews therefore would not count as “milk.” Could the same then be said for yogurts that are made from nuts and get their probiotics externally?

Here is the definition for “yogurt” in the dictionary:

yo·gurt    —-> ˈyōɡərt/

Tonight, I decided to finally put the Tahitian vanilla bean my friend got me to good use by adding it and its scraped seeds into a banana pudding with pistachio crumble recipe that has long been on my list of things to make. I had been saving these Tahitian vanilla beans for years now, properly storing them and deciding they would be best to use in a custard or pudding of some sort. This pudding shattered all my dreams; it came out mealy, completely unlike a custard, and really just tasted like pureed bananas with some vanilla flavoring added to it. Even the pistachio crumble turned out brown, with the taste of sugar and butter completely overshadowing the delicate pistachio flavor.

You win some, and then you lose some. I hope the next time I use one of these vanilla beans that I will win. This stuff ain’t cheap.

I spent 6.5 hours slow roasting a pork shoulder in preparation for bo ssam, or Korean-style slow roasted pork shoulder, to be torn up and served with ssamjang (homemade Korean barbecue paste), ginger scallion sauce, rice, and lettuce. It actually wasn’t much work, as the oven does the cooking. The one thing that took the most time were the ginger scallion sauce since I had to finely mince a decent amount of scallions and ginger.

When I was growing up, up until I started eating dinner at my friends’ homes and out at restaurants with my friends’ families, I was exposed to an extremely limited amount of food. Sure, I had a lot of good food — my grandmother and aunt made some of the best (and most laborious) Cantonese dishes, my mom made delicious potstickers, stews, and Vietnamese dishes, and my dad exposed me to different types of meatloaf and biscuits — but they were all in the realm of Cantonese, Vietnamese, or generic American-household foods like spaghetti or mashed potatoes. I had no idea that Thai curry existed; I never knew people ate pasta with sauces that weren’t red. And I definitely would not have known that in many parts of the world and even within China, bread was actually the primary household staple, not rice.

But what I hope is that when we have children that I’ll continue to have the desire and love to experiment with recipes of cultures other than our own. So many people have found it comical that I know how to make Indian food, even making my own curry mixes. Other people laugh when they hear I am making Korean or Turkish dishes. But I think this is important for knowledge and to ensure our future children are exposed to a wide variety of cultures via these cultures’ foods. What better way to learn about and appreciate other cultures than eating their cuisine?

I’m in a number of different Facebook groups, and some of the most active ones are through my college network. We have a Foodies for Wellesley Alums group that I read almost every other day, and I occasionally contribute when I have recipes to recommend or suggestions based on questions that other alums post. One of the questions this week that left me thinking quite a bit was from an alum who is part of a growing family of four, and because her husband will be quitting his job soon, she wants to try to limit their household grocery bill to $100/week. I thought about this and how hard that would be, especially if you want a diet filled with fresh produce, meat, and dairy.

I go to a number of different places to buy our groceries, whether it’s staples like spices and rice, or fresh produce, and what inevitably always drives up the bill are the costs of fresh produce in New York city, whether it’s fruit or vegetables. If I’m buying fish or any type of seafood, that will increase the bill significantly, as well. The only way I’d see achieving this for a family of four in New York would be if you almost exclusively ate canned or frozen produce and kept fish and meat purchases to a minimum.

Wild coho salmon was on sale at Whole Foods this weekend, so I went to buy two pounds for dinner this week. Little did I know that coho has a much lower fat content than I am used to experiencing (my favorite, king salmon, is the fattiest of the fatty salmons, and also sadly the most expensive, especially when wild and fresh caught), which means that it will cook faster than other salmon types. I broiled the salmon fillets after marinating them in an Indian-yogurt spice mixture all day. After pulling them out of the oven and letting them rest, I realized I had overcooked the center fillets at just six minutes under the broiler. I was not happy. In a city where buying fresh fish is expensive, even on sale, it is deeply disappointing to know when you’ve messed up a really good piece of fish. Because then for the rest of the week, every single time you reheat that fish, it will become more and more overcooked.

At least the marinade was tasty.

A colleague of mine told me about the Michael Pollan Cooked TV series on Netflix, so I started watching the episodes and loved them immediately. I’ve read a number of Pollen’s books, including his bestsellers Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, and I completely agree with his opinions on food and the importance of knowing where your food comes from and being able to prepare healthy, simple meals. He really delves into the science behind food and talks a lot about how eating has evolved over time, and that’s what makes his writing and documentary-style TV series so interesting and educational.

In one of his episodes, he shows a clip of an Indian woman preparing a dosa lunch with all the fixings for her husband. She explains that dosa takes a lot of time and energy to make, but in the end, it is worth it. He notes that in the past, people spent a lot of time preparing their foods that they ate, and they valued that time. Today, people do not value the time spent cooking and want to minimize it as much as possible, but in the process of doing that, the nutritional value of the foods we eat today have diminished — this includes meats (animals eating grain as opposed to grass, which reduces the nutritional value of the meat) and breads (heavily processed with vitamins and minerals added back in… as opposed to being made the traditional way where these nutrients were naturally occurring, and is also very likely the reason so many people have celiac and gluten-related diseases. So time spent cooking has decreased while nutritional value of food has decreased.

The funny thing is that while re-watching this episode, I’m in the process of soaking lentils and fenugreek seeds for dosa this weekend. I’m like that older Indian lady preparing lunch for her husband, just not Indian. 🙂