Shellfish cooking class with political commentary and a white gaze

Yesterday night, I attended a shellfish cooking class that Chris gifted me for Christmas in Little Italy. It’s funny for me to even say that it’s in “Little Italy” because it’s just about two blocks away from the main Chinatown area I always shop in. I came in a little early and was the only person who was carrying massive canvas bags that were clearly stuffed to the brim with groceries. The teacher looked excited to see that I went shopping.

“Oh, yes! It’s so great to get your shopping done down here! Did you check out Eataly and Despana?” she asked.

I told her that I actually was shopping in Chinatown, and she didn’t have much of a response to that. It was like she had zero awareness that the majority of this surrounding area is NOT actually Italian, but mostly Chinese.

That was the first hint of the “white gaze” that I got even before the class started. I’ve been in a class at this same cooking school with this instructor, and while she certainly is not my favorite teacher, I never knew her to be so political during her classes. She made a number of random jabs at former members of Trump’s cabinet while he was president, and while I got all of them and chuckled a few times, no one else really had much of a reaction. When she made a joke about how incompetent Betsy DeVos was and how it was clear no one was in public school in this class during her reign and I laughed, she looked at me, then around at the other students, and said, “Well, at least one person here has been paying attention to politics!” I didn’t really mind these comments, but I’d imagine other people who might not agree with her would be bothered and caught off guard by these words, especially since this was supposed to be a cooking class.

The annoying parts came when she was talking about the production and farming of some of these types of shellfish, and she made some very big assertions that for seafood like shrimp, we should be buying “only” American shrimp caught in the Gulf because “it’s the best,” and she also made comments about how all farmed shrimp is questionable and produced with the equivalent of slave labor. It seemed like such a pro-American, anti-everywhere else in the world comment, plus she occasionally knocked seafood farms in Asia. First of all, I don’t think that Gulf-caught shrimp would be the undisputed “best” shrimp option one can eat or buy; that sounds not only ignorant, but also just racist against other places that produce it. Secondly, if you really want to have a conversation about slave labor, does she honestly think that the people working in seafood farms and catching “the best” Gulf shrimp are all paid fair wages that would afford them comfortable lives…?

We also talked about the eating of things like mussels and clams. She said that it’s customary, when serving bivalves, to always give diners an empty bowl to put their shells in after they finish. She mentioned how if we were in a country like Vietnam, you could just throw your shells on the floor, and some worker would rush to sweep them all up for you. A number of people (my class was 70% white, with one Asian (me), one Latino guy, and one Black guy) were shocked when the teacher shared this.

“Why?” some of them asked, truly astonished.

“Well, it gives someone a job, so why not?” she said, with a bit of an eye roll. It sounded a bit judgmental, and also disparaging to the Vietnamese businesses in that country for doing this. She also did not give off the tone that she approved of this being a job.

In general, I dislike commentary like this because it is almost always said with a “white gaze” in mind, the notion that the Western or American way is better or “the best,” and it doesn’t factor in cultural nuances at all. Plenty of judgment could equally be made about what we consider suitable jobs here in this country, or how people in different service roles are paid: Why do we have “bus boys” when wait staff could easily clear and clean your table? Why the hell should “front of house staff” have higher wages than “back of house staff” or kitchen staff when the kitchen staff are actually the people preparing diners’ food — you know, the reason people are eating out?!

I highly doubt she would consider the idea that seafood farm practices in countries like New Zealand, Australia, or Finland would yield higher quality seafood than in U.S. surrounding waters, or pay higher wages. I also doubt this instructor has probably ever even visited Oceania to make the statement that Gulf-caught shrimp are the best, just as another point of comparison.

At some point of my life when I was younger, I’m sure I was one of those same smart asses who thought I knew a lot, or at least, way more than I actually did. I have since gradually relented, and now, I’m more eager to say that every day, I realize more and more how little I know as I learn more things (sounds ironic, but it isn’t). But I do try to be intentional about sharing what I know and caveating it, and I rarely will make a statement like, “gulf shrimp is the best in the world” unless I’m just being hyperbolic — the best, according to… her?

The sad story of the shared chicken drumstick

While I was away on my work trip last week, Chris decided to defrost some of the chicken drumsticks in our freezer and make a Malaysian-style curry. There weren’t a lot of drumsticks, so he decided to ration them out to make them last at least five days. So when I came back with Kaia after picking her up from daycare, he had prepared our dinner bowls, but only his bowl had a drumstick in it, and mine did not. Kaia had a drumstick with some chicken pieces torn off it on her dinner plate.

“How come there’s only one drum stick you warmed up?” I asked him.

“Well, I want to make the chicken last because there weren’t that many drumsticks and we don’t have that much (cooked) food left, so we can share one,” he responded.

I always thought that wherever we lived was always “food rich.” It doesn’t matter what point of time you are referring to: we usually have a freezer brimming with frozen meat, seafood, and vegetables, amongst other ingredients I use for cooking, whether it’s frozen cubes of stock, tomato onion masala, curry leaves, frozen shredded coconut or purple yam. I have from-scratch made sauces and pickled things in our fridge, plus plenty of fresh produce in the vegetable and fruit drawers. Some food in the freezer is ready to eat once you pop it into the oven for 25 minutes, while others (like my zongzi and banh chung from Chinatown) are ready after you steam them for 15-20 minutes. Our pantry is stocked well with plenty of dried noodles, pasta, mushrooms, and canned goods. But this chicken drumstick incident honestly seemed completely ridiculous and made me feel like we were extremely food poor. Where the hell had our life gone awry where two grown-ass adults living in a luxury apartment building in the middle of Manhattan were sharing a SINGLE chicken drumstick for dinner…?

I gave Chris some grief about this and shared my sentiments above. He proceeded to not get another drumstick. Instead, he simply took one small bite of the drumstick, then put it in my bowl. No, that did NOT make a difference with my sentiments.

This is what happens when I am not here to cook regularly. We end up with faux food rationing, and I cannot handle it. It’s a good thing I am back to take care of the food preparation in this house.

Buy-Nothing group brings goodies in the form of: shrimp stock!

One of the greatest communities I’ve ever joined has most definitely been the Facebook Buy-Nothing group within the walking radius of my apartment. In the last year, not only have I been able to give away plenty of things that we no longer needed or found useful, but I’ve also scored endless great things for the apartment, Pookster, and myself. The vast majority has been toys, books, and clothes for Kaia, but we’ve also gotten some occasional goodies for ourselves here and there, including Bundaberg ginger beer for Chris, and today: shrimp stock for me!

Hot Thai Kitchen recently posted a video a few months ago on her channel about how easy it actually is to make good laksa… as long as you have access to good shrimp stock. How do you make shrimp stock? With shrimp heads, shells, and tails! It’s difficult (nearly impossible) to find shrimp heads on shrimp when you buy them at places like Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods, but more likely if you buy them from Asian grocery stores. So I’d been collecting a few sparse shrimp heads, shells, and tails from takeout food we’ve gotten and throwing them into a small bag in our freezer for future stock. When I saw someone post that she had 7 1-cup cubes of homemade shrimp stock, I immediately raised my hand. I went to pick up the cubes from her apartment (very shrimpy smelling, so a good sign!), but she told me that she used random herbs like oregano, rosemary, thyme, and bay leaf (she said she didn’t cook much, so she basically threw her spice cabinet at the pot!). So now I’m not sure I’ll use this for laksa, as it may not have the right flavor profile I’m going for, but I can still use it as a soup base or a flavor base for grains like farro, quinoa, or even just plain rice.

Normally, I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking food like this from a stranger. But this particular Buy-Nothing group almost feels like extended family with how honest and considerate people are, and so I’ve really enjoyed being a part of it. The verdict for the goodness of this shrimp stock awaits when I come back from my Denver work trip later this week!

Pork bone and daikon soup – a traditional Chinese soup

Growing up in a Chinese household, soup was always considered the cure for everything. Have a headache? Drink soup. Ate too much fried food and feel “hot” inside? Drink soup. Caught the flu? Drink soup. Recovering from a sickness? Drink soup. “Drink soup” is the solution to literally all of your life’s problems as summed up by my paternal grandma, my aunt, and my mom.

Now that I am in my late 30s, I realize how much I took for granted all the delicious soups I grew up with, whether they were made by my grandma, my aunt, or my mom. Some soups were simple and straightforward and could be done in an hour or so. Others would be simmering on the stove overnight or for two to three days. I never knew how much time or effort they took since I was never involved in making them; I just got to enjoy them piping hot and ladled into a bowl for me. As with all kids, sometimes I even got annoyed with the elder women in my life for always rushing me to drink my soup. But when I look back, this is just the way they all communicated love when they did not have the words to do so.

Occasionally, I am reminded of the soups and flavors. Sometimes it’s via a restaurant that has a “free soup,” and I take one sip and get blown away because it’s like I saw a flashback of my grandma. That happened in the last year when Chris got takeout from China Xiang near Times Square, and the complimentary soup with a takeout order was a pork bone soup that was super milky in appearance, but just tasted so familiar to me. Other times, it’s via food blogs I skim or Instagram reels I watch where people are going “back to basics” with Chinese home cooking. And so that’s why I’ve decided that this year, I want to be more intentional with soup making. In a traditional Chinese or Vietnamese household, there would be a soup to begin every meal, along with 3-4 different dishes to eat with your rice. I don’t have the time or desire to do this entire show every single day when we eat at home, but I do want to make it more regular than just once every few months. So more frequent soup making is going to be a little cooking goal of mine. I’ve already started it by buying pork bones for $2.49/pound at Whole Foods yesterday and bringing them home to make a traditional pork bone and daikon soup. The taste of plucking off super tender, fall-off-the-bone pork made me feel right at home. Chris called this soup “gnawing soup” because I told him he was expected to gnaw/eat the meat off the pork bones. But I consider this “homey” and comforting. And I hope Kaia embraces this all, as well.

Pumpkin pie bars for Christmas 2023

This year, like last year, I couldn’t be bothered making anything too elaborate for our Christmas time meals. In previous years, I’d done time-intensive, painstaking dishes like dumplings, Argentinian style (baked) empanadas, and Cook’s Illustrated’s silky smooth pumpkin pie (which had strained my neck on multiple occasions with how exacting it was). So this time around, I kept it simple and made just two desserts: pumpkin bread (simple but delicious and seemingly loved by all) and pumpkin pie bars. I found the idea of pumpkin pie bars while sifting through seasonal recipes in the New York Times cooking section. A recipe for this came up as being easier both in process vs. a pie and to cut up and serve for a crowd; that made sense both for me in terms of time, and for the family regarding ease of cutting and serving. But I wasn’t that enthused by the pumpkin custard base: the recipe just called for mixing the spices, cream, milk, sugar, eggs together in a bowl and adding it to the par-baked ginger snap crust and baking. That seemed too one-dimensional for flavor based on my prior pumpkin pie baking experiences. The best way to infuse the flavor of the spices would be to simmer the pumpkin mixture (sans eggs) over the stove. This would allow the flavors to properly meld and give a true autumnal/winter pumpkin pie flavor. So I made this change for the custard, baked the pumpkin pie “base” using crushed Arnott’s Ginger Nuts (an amazing rendition of ginger snaps!) and Malt-o-Milk biscuits, and added a little more heavy cream. I also made homemade whipped cream and added some sugar, ground cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger to the cream. I let the pie sit overnight and cut it up right before serving on Christmas day. In the end, I was very pleased with the result: the pie not only released easily from the pan (with parchment lining it), but it was easy, neat, and clean to cut, which I always fear with any custard pie. Plus, the flavor of the pumpkin really came out well! With my tweaks, it’s the perfect pumpkin pie to make for a crowd with minimal fussiness. And almost all of it got eaten on day 1!

After a few months of using the New York Times recipes app, I’m really not impressed, as I’ve had to make a lot of tweaks to their recipes to get them either to a passing stage, or a really good stage like these pumpkin pie bars. With all the amazing cookbooks and blogs out there, I would never pay for the NYT standalone recipes app. It’s too many misses and bland recipes for the cost.

Julia Child sheds light on quality of all-purpose flour in US vs. France in the 1950s-1960s

After watching the first season of Julia on HBO in the last couple of months, my appreciation and admiration of Julia Child has grown immensely. Though I’d always respected her and thought she was fun and quirky, I never realized before exactly how ahead of her time she truly was. So after watching the show, I decided to read her memoir, published shortly after she passed and co-written with her husband’s grand-nephew, called Julia Child: My Life in France.

One interesting thing I’ve learned while reading it that I never really thought much about before was the nutritional value of something as basic as all-purpose white flour across different countries. I suppose at a superficial level, I’d thought about what “wheat” is in the U.S. vs. say, in Italy, because a lot of people who claim to have gluten allergies/problems in the U.S. travel to Italy and find that they can somehow eat copious amounts of pasta there and have zero negative reactions. But I didn’t actually think about the vitamins and minerals and how that composition would be different. Julia brings this up in her memoir as she (based in the U.S.) and her writing partner Simca (based in Paris) are testing out recipes for what would eventually become her first cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. They are corresponding via phone and snail mail about their endless tests on making bread, and they can never reach the same baked result and are frustrated as to why. But then, they both realize that the reason they cannot get the same result… is that their raw ingredients are just NOT the same in quality.

For one, Julia remembers that while she lived in France, anytime she had flour in the house, it had a very short shelf life and would go rancid within 2-3 months in the pantry, attracting endless maggots, which was actually a sign of pride for the French, she claimed. The reason for this is that it was an indicator of exactly how fresh the flour was. In contrast, the all-purpose flour she used in the U.S. could last years on the shelf, with nothing going “off” about it. The main reason for this is that in the U.S., the focus was less on keeping the ingredient (in this case, wheat flour) in its purest and thus most nutritious form; the primary goal was to keep the shelf life as long as possible. But in order to get to that hyper shelf-stable state, the flour would have to go through intense processing and heat treatments, which would ultimately reduce the nutritional profile of the flour. And that was why French flour was not American flour, and why they could not get the same results from baking using the same recipe in their two countries.

In other words, the majority of all-purpose flour in the U.S. is just empty calories. While it does have some nutrition, such as certain levels of B vitamins, folate, selenium, riboflavin, niacin, manganese, and phosphorus, it pales in comparison to flour you find on the shelves in most of the rest of the world, especially countries in the EU that actually care about what they put into their bodies.

This brief section of her book made me so sad. I mean, who doesn’t want to believe that when they eat chocolate chip cookies in the U.S. that there has to be some redeeming quality to the cookie in the form of some nutritional value from the flour…?

Chocolate peppermint loaf/cookie mix from Trader Joe’s: the verdict is positive!!

A few weeks ago, I was reading about this infamous Trader Joe’s boxed mix for a chocolate peppermint loaf (or chocolate peppermint crackle cookies) that was so popular that it oftentimes would sell out and fully go out of stock by the time December hit. I specifically was drawn by comments from people who said this was a “box mix for people who don’t like mixes,” and I knew I had to get my hands on one box. So I got one, and finally today, I baked it up as crackle cookies topped with powdered sugar for our building staff. In previous years, I always made cookies from scratch, along with pumpkin bread, as a show of appreciation while handing out Christmas tips, but this year, I was pressed for time. So this would have to do. It was super quick to whip up: all I did was add some coconut oil, two eggs, and a little oat milk to thin out the batter since it was too dry without. I rolled the dough into 1-inch balls, dusted them with powdered sugar, and baked them for 12 minutes at 350 F. And they came out amazingly well! The cookies had a beautiful crackle on top and were like a cross between a cookie and a brownie. They also had a nice, rich chocolatey flavor, with just enough peppermint to not be overbearing. I could definitely get behind these!

Next year, assuming this box mix is still available, I might even get two boxes so that I could try it out as a sweet bread loaf, as well!

An expectedly delicious acai bowl at breakfast yesterday

Yesterday, I was invited to breakfast with the president of our company, plus three sales reps who all live in the general northeast region of the U.S. With breakfast work meetings, I am never sure what I will ever order. On weekdays, I usually barely eat anything for breakfast, so indulging in something like poached eggs with bacon always seems far too over the top for me. On the other hand, I generally hate ordering oatmeal in restaurants. Sometimes, I do this, but it’s only when I’ve had heavier meals the previous day and just need something light but nutritious to sustain me. Plus, I know how to make good, creamy oatmeal, and it always feels wrong to pay $15-20 for it, even if I am able to expense it to my company.

So yesterday, I ordered the acai bowl with mixed berries and a skinny latte. I realized that since acai has become all the rage that I’ve actually never ordered an acai bowl ever. I’ve experimented with different versions at home, and I’ve also had it blended into smoothies. I actually loved this acai bowl and couldn’t figure out how it was so creamy and rich… and then I went back to the menu description and realized that they just blended peanut butter into the acai. That was simple and delicious, perhaps something that Pookster might be open to, as she loves peanut butter, but she has yet to warm up to smoothies (she’s only had some homemade mango lassi once, and rejected anything else I’ve blended into that consistency to date). Almond or cashew butter could also work pretty well. So this ended up, unexpectedly, becoming inspiration to me for making at home, as I remember I still have a few frozen packets of acai in our freezer.

The other thing that struck me about this breakfast meeting out was that my portion of breakfast was probably around $30 once you factored in tax and tip. The acai bowl itself cost $18, which is really steep. Some people call it inflation in these times. I just call it price gauging masquerading as “inflation.”

Appam mix in India: just ground rice, lentils, and yeast

What always puzzled me about mixes I’d see that were imported from India was that you would rarely see any artificial colorings or ingredients on the ingredients list the way you do here in the U.S. You would simply see the ingredients you’d expect to see. For example, appam, a rice/lentil based hopper that is popular in the state of Kerala, is traditionally made with ground rice and lentils, fermented with toddy, but in modern times, people use yeast. If you saw a mix like this made in the U.S,, it would probably have all these weird preservatives, artificial colorings and flavor enhancers. But the mix I got for almost nothing at a Hypermarket in Kochi when we were there in June just had three ingredients listed: ground rice, ground lentils, and yeast. Nothing more, nothing less. I also noticed the expiration date meant the shelf life of this mix would be far shorter than anything made here, but maybe that was the point: it’s fine to have mixes in India, but you just have to use them within a shorter period of time to ensure it doesn’t go rancid, plus it doesn’t NEED anything to preserve it to last longer.

So I used it today, simply adding some sugar, a pinch of salt, water, and 1/2 cup of coconut milk. The batter easily rose and grew poofy. I was out of practice making appams, though, and had to add a lot more water to get the right crepe-like consistency of the batter. But when I finally got that right, plus the temperature of the appam pan, the batter sizzled on contact with the pan, plus the nice lacy edges we associate with appams started appearing. I was getting back into practice with this process, and it was so much fun!

So I suppose my vilification of pre-made mixes is really just about American ones with all their gross preservatives and artificial flavorings and ingredients. I can definitely get behind the Indian mixes more fully and more often!

First time making challah in years, and it’s glorious

On Thursday, I tested out the last two of my six dry active yeast packets that I purchased right before Kaia’s birth, and to my delight, they were both still active and very much alive. That means that my success rate was 5 for 6; only one of the six packets I purchased was actually a goner. These last two would be used to make two fat challah loaves. I couldn’t even remember the last time I made challah, but every time I make it, I get so, so happy. I love how the dough poofs up and gets huge and pillowy. I especially love the process of braiding the strands. Doing a double egg wash, then topping with sesame or poppy seeds always makes me feel so satisfied. This time around, I added some whole wheat flour to make the bread a little more nutritious (hopefully that’s not too offensive to any Jews reading this!), and it worked out really well: the loaves baked up super big, puffy, golden brown, and the crumb was extremely soft, tender, and moist. The whole wheat flour gave the bread a nice, subtle nuttiness, not to mention a pale tan sheen to the crumb that I wasn’t quite used to (it’s usually more on the yellowish/beige side because of the eggs in the dough). Chris declared it one of the best loaves I’d made.

You don’t have to be Jewish to love and appreciate challah. You just need to love good food made with TLC.