Not supposed to

I've always loved eating "strange" food. I was that child who willingly ate - sometimes even requested - ginger, pig's feet, bitter melon, intestines. Even with stuff I wasn't sure about at first, like cilantro, I would keep eating it, because if it was something my mom liked - and she has great taste - I wanted to like it too.

(Fortunately for me, I married someone whose favorite bowl of pho contains ONLY TENDON.)

Sometime around late elementary or early middle school, our family went to a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant in Sunnyvale, CA. We ordered menudo, and at that time, I don't think that my parents explained that we were eating tripe. Or it could have been that I didn't know what tripe was, anyway.

Either way, I distinctly remember having this feeling that I am enjoying something I am not supposed to like.

After recently sharing a bowl of birria (goat stew) with a friend at a tortilleria that also serves menudo, I was inspired to try making it myself.

I had trouble finding a recipe that looked solid at first glance. After all, most abuelitas aren't sitting around blogging; they are making tamales. So I had to read a variety of sites, gleaning the best aspects of each and trying to figure out the overall concept of what makes menudo menudo.

Fortunately for us, it turned out well. Piping hot, spicy, and flavorful, we enjoyed bowl after bowl with fresh corn tortillas from the tortilleria where I originally had the birria. As we scooped minced onion and cilantro into our bowls and squeezed in limes, we laughed and called it Mexican pho.

(Now you have make this, right?)

So, if you are so bold, I heartily recommend this to you.


Menudo, or "Mexican pho"
loosely adapted from The Domestic Man

Using a pressure cooker is a great way to make this happen faster, but of course if you don't have one, just use a regular pot or dutch oven, and plan for it to take a whole afternoon. Better yet, make it the night before and let the flavors marry.

3-4 lbs beef marrow bones (some recipes combine beef bones with pork neckbones)
1 lb honeycomb tripe, cut into 1" pieces (you can definitely use a lot more, but it is surprisingly expensive considering they are innards!)
4-5 dried guajillo peppers*
1 1/2 white onion, divided (one chopped into large pieces; half diced for garnish)
4 cloves garlic
1-2 cans white hominy, drained
1 T oregano, Mexican preferred, plus more for serving
cilantro, minced, for garnish
lime, for garnish

Bring beef bones to a boil in a large pot. Let boil for about 10 minutes, skimming off any fat and scum that rises to the surface. Then cover and simmer for 2-3 hours, or 45 minutes if using a pressure cooker.

Add tripe and cook for another hour or two (less with a pressure cooker).

While the meat is cooking, destem the peppers and cover with about half a cup of boiling water. Let stand for 30 minutes to soften. Then blend with the chopped onion and garlic.

Add chile sauce and oregano and continue to simmer. (You can also add the cilantro stems, but be sure to fish them out before serving.) About an hour before serving, add drained hominy and simmer. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with warmed corn tortillas, cilantro, onion, and lime.

We had some shredded cabbage from tacos so we threw it in the soup as well. Not as essential (like the cilantro/onion/lime is) but it helps bulk it up and add some greens. (Stephie, if you slice up your tortillas into "noodles", you will essentially have Mexican jjampong!)

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* I had previously been intimidated** about cooking authentic Mexican because of all the different kind of chiles, but I decided to be an adult and learn a little bit. I'm sure there's a million other sources for this kind of information, but after simply reading this one post, I felt quite a bit more sure of myself. Guajillos are fruity, and mild: in fact they were so mild, that I had to add more chiles - including a chipotle - to get more of that spicy flavor I was going for. I really think you could use any combination of chiles for a great flavor, but if you already know you want it mild, start with guajillos.

** Now that I know EVERYTHING ABOUT MEXICAN COOKING my family is going to be stuck eating it for a week straight.*** The last time I went crazy like this was after we visited Little Saigon in San Jose. For a week our house was filled with grilled meats, spring rolls, egg custard, pandan waffles... you get the drift. This time I think I'm going to try pozole, caldo de pollo and probably a lot of these recipes.

*** I already have all the Mexican cookbooks they carry at the library on hold. This train has left the station..

The most whimsical thing

Yesterday my friend Chelsey called me last-minute to see if we wanted to join them at The Farm in Snohomish.

I am a homebody to the core and normally do not love to go out, especially at the last minute, but I'm so glad we decided to go.

There were piglets. (!!)

We shared the most delicious apple pie, and overheard some girls talking about xiao long bao. I had a "squirrel moment" and turned around and asked, "Did you just say xiao long bao?" Haha. 

On our way there we drove past a literal (i.e., not-yet-picked) pumpkin patch. The picture below doesn't quite capture it - we were driving - but it was the most whimsical thing I had seen in a long time.

Best of all, we got to take home some pumpkins.

Thanks, Chens! We had a wonderful time with you. :)

Took the plunge

Today's post isn't really about food. (Crazy, huh?)

Well, not entirely at least, because it is about something necessary for food to happen.

After two years of putting up with our nice but really annoying sink (#firstworldproblems), David finally put a stake in the ground and ordered us a new one.

You can see in the photo below how the lip is really high, so that instead of the water draining into the sink, it would run around the back. Water would drip onto the floor, and worse yet, cause the particle board under our laminate counters to bubble up. 

Of course, one day when we pay off our home we'd love to change the countertops to something solid and to something lighter in color and warmer in tone. (In a dream world I would have wood countertops and a magic fairy who would keep them clean and dry and beautiful for me when I cook and make a big mess.)

But in the meantime, we decided to do a (relatively) cheap fix that would give us a lot of satisfaction for the price. We could afford to consider doing this only because Kenny is super handy and David has learned a lot from him in the last three years. (I can't believe how time has passed!)

Believe it or not, we bought the sink on Amazon, for less than $150. With Prime, this bad boy arrived on our door step two days later.



Yup, we took the plunge and became a one-bowl family. So controversial, I know.* But we don't regret it one bit.



Even though this wasn't that expensive in the grand scheme of kitchen remodels, if you know how we live, you know that we like to run a very tight ship with finances. So for the rest of that week, we ate a lot of beans and rice.

Literally.

It's been a couple weeks now, and I still love it. At first, I was worried about it seeming like a downgrade because it's stainless and one-bowl, but now I can't imagine going back. It's amazing.

Someone has even laundered money in it. 

Literally, again. 

Are you confused by that picture? Well, let that be a cliff-hanger for a future post.

(You may now return from the edge of your seats...)

Well, that was that! First post that wasn't completely about food. Aren't you impressed?

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* Even in this authoritative article about double-bowl sinks, almost all the commenters** say they prefer their one-bowl.

** Chrome is having a spell-check issue with my usage of the word "commenters." So what are these people called?

Blame the food

As promised, I'm here to tell you about ratatouille.

It's terrible, I know, that I don't have a picture of the final product, but that's mostly because it doesn't last very long on the table.

I'm blaming the ratatouille.

I'm not even going to post the recipe here, because the original is perfect as written. Francis Lam (it's Lam, right?) is a hilarious recipe writer. I once heard someone say that it's like he's standing right there in the kitchen with you.

(Wouldn't we all like our moms to be there while we cook? "How much of [ingredient of choice] should I use-- like, is this enough?)

So check it out.

However, if I were to dare add anything to his perfect recipe, I would say that if you can get your hands on Chinese eggplant, use that instead. 

I also dared to say I would make it with eggplant only-- "I don't care for zucchini or summer squash," I said at the dining table, but then I got a look from one of our guests. I'm an anomaly, I guess, but, if you are weird like me, too, just know that everything - even zucchini - gets an amazing lift when roasted at 450 degrees. 

Yes, I ate a few of them right off the roasting pan, like chips. But in my defense, they do shrink a lot when roasted. (All that evaporation is what concentrates that delicious flavor.) 

That's my excuse, at least. 'Cause it's so much easier to blame food than to take responsibility.

Do we do anything around here other than eat?

Nope. Now, stay away from my bottle.

Definitely legit

I originally meant to post this before I wrote about biryani because in a way this is what inspired that adventure. However, there was was no ridiculous backstory to this. Just a lot of groaning and sighing at the table.

We told our friend (and neighbor) Karen that she is definitely family because during dinner we were practically bragging about how delicious the meal was, right in front of her. But that is the price she had to pay for getting to eat with us.

Allow us to let you in on a secret. 

That's right. Lamb loin chops.

Because they are naturally more thickly cut, they are more succulent than rack of lamb, and cheaper, too (we got ours at Costco). We salted and peppered them, let them sit at room temperature for a couple of hours and then grilled them.

It would probably be fantastic with cumin, coriander, and turmeric [we love to make our steak sandwiches like that a la Berkeley's Brazil Cafe (is that still around? Yes, it is, and now I am dreaming about garlic and cilantro and sour cream/mayo...)], but I also love the simplicity of just salt and pepper. Especially for something as flavorful as lamb.

It was perfect, simply accompanied by spinach from our CSA and some yellow rice. (It would probably go well with a Greek salad, too.)

And while it's still questionable* if you should make biryani in the rice cooker, it's not at all so to just make yellow rice. My mom often made it for us while we were growing up, so it's definitely legit.

Yellow rice

I think my mom uses only turmeric, but the other spices and butter are nice additions. I don't actually measure any of this. All you need to know is: don't be shy with the turmeric. 

3 cups rice
1-2 t turmeric
1/2 t cumin
pinch of cinnamon
2 cloves
1/2 t salt
1 T butter
cilantro for garnish

Throw everything into the rice cooker except for the cilantro and hit start.

P.S. This tip regarding cilantro storage has changed my world. I hope it will change yours too.


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* Oh my goodness, just this week I saw this article that confirms I'm not crazy. Also, Francis Lam** tweeted that "[t]rue genius is finding the obvious when the obvious has not yet been found."***

** I bring up Francis Lam**** because I want to tell you about his ratatouille before all of your summer squash is used up. Post forthcoming...

*** What is proper MLA for citing tweets, anyway? Can you tell I graduated from high school in the early 2000s?

**** Every time I re-google the recipe, I have to check myself about whether it's Chan or Lam. Maybe Francis Lam should publish a book called Crazy Food. I would totally buy it.

This is just to say

that I found my old iPod Mini circa 2005 and it still works!

It's in black and white*, yes, but it works.

At first, I thought the wheel was broken, but then after googling, I realized the orange "hold" button was on. #thestrugglewasreal

Okay, just had to share. I'm no longer on Facebook, so what else is a girl to do when she has something trivial to say?

On that note, right before I deactivated my account, FB wanted me to know that my friends would "no longer be able to keep in touch with [me]." Wow.

No, really, they said that.

Am I really sure I want to lose touch with all my friends FOREVER? Especially Professor Davinder Bartagupta? 

Wow. Just wow.

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* Whenever we want to introduce the kids to an "old" movie (think Matrix or Ocean's Eleven), Kenny always asks "Is it in color?"

An aside in itself

I'm writing this post as I finish the rest of the meal and as the dishes are still sprawled on the table from dinner. That's how important this is.

Yes, that's a Subway napkin.

The thing I want to tell you about today is ludicrous, actually. It's really an aside in itself and should be relegated to an extremely long "Lisa footnote."* Because I'm not sure you would actually want to make the thing I'm going to spend most of this post talking about. I promise that at the end I will tell you about something you should make, but because I love to tell ridiculous stories, I'm going to make you sit through this first.

*   *   *

My brain is always asking questions and generating weird ideas. (Strengthsfinder says that I'm "ideation." And "input." Gahh!) Often when I come up with what I think might be an original idea, I check the internetz to see if anyone else has thought of it before, and if so, whether it works. (These ideas could run the gamut of how to keep kitchen towels clean, has anyone ever cut holes out of a sleep sack to make it footed, how do you implement GTD as a homemaker--possibly using Excel. I would show you a screenshot of my search history, but that could be embarrassing.)

If I don't see my idea after a couple of Google searches, I assume that either (a) it's a very dumb idea, or (b) I'm an absolute genius. I'm not sure there are any other possible logical conclusions.

Today, among other things, I wanted to know if anyone has ever made chicken biryani in a rice cooker - without frying any part of it. Here are the permutations I searched:

"chicken biryani in rice cooker"

"chicken biryani in rice cooker no stovetop"

"no-fry chicken biryani"

"raw chicken in rice cooker"

"make chicken biryani without frying"

Alas, I found no meaningful results to my searches, so it was time put the idea - and me - to the test. I mean, if an amazing dish could be made decently well without very much work, wouldn't someone else have already made it??

Anyway, so whenever I'm trying to figure out if a "cheater" method works, I purposely do every step the laziest way possible. Because if I were to do one thing un-lazy - such as to sear the chicken first - and the rest of it the lazy way, I wouldn't be able to tell what caused the dish to work or not work. So in the name of the Scientific Method, I do everything like a bachelor. In this case, everything was thrown into the rice cooker - no stove time, and hardly any chopping.

I still used my brain, though, and marinated the chicken with salt and curry powder hours before I wanted to "set it and forget it."

Then, an hour and a half before dinnertime, I threw the following into the rice cooker: 3 cups Jasmine rice (unwashed, don't tell my mom!); water/chicken broth (to just under the correct level on the cooker; I'm not Asian enough to do the knuckle method, but you could definitely do that-- note: I add the water before the rest of the ingredients); 2.5 lbs chicken thighs/drums, marinated; a few slices of onion; 1 green chile, sliced in half lengthwise; 1 t each, ginger and garlic, minced; a bunch of turmeric (maybe 1-2 t?); 3 cloves; 3 cardamom pods, lightly crushed; 1/2 t whole black peppercorns; 1 t salt (if using water or unsalted broth).

I even threw in cilantro stems to "scent" the rice. So fancy.

And then I hit "start."

It turned out surprisingly well. The chicken was moist and the rice was flavorful, spicy. The only thing I would change is to use just slightly less water (it was a little sticky) because the other ingredients let out water, and to serve it with raita.

Verdict: Tasty, but I'm not sure I would call it biryani, lest your Indian great-grandmother roll over in her grave. But for a bachelor dinner that was ten times more delicious than it should have been, considering the work that went into it, A-plus.

I'm not posting a picture because biryani is not photogenic. (Even when it's made the real way.)

*   *   *

Anyway, so like I said at the beginning of the post, I'm not sure this is worth your making, easy as it is. But for the morbidly curious, I had to tell you the results of my experiment. Now that you've read my long story, here's what you should make.

I have long loved the Five-minute Indian-style cabbage dish I wrote about once here. But today I had some wax and green beans from our CSA so I decided to sub them in. And I think they turned out even better than the cabbage version.

This rendition was of my own devising. It wasn't already on Google, so it must mean I'm brilliant.

Five-minute Indian spiced green beans

inspired by Herbivoracious 

1 lb green beans, trimmed, and cut into 1.5 inch lengths (I had a mixture of wax and green, from our CSA)

1 T black mustard seeds

1/2 t each, turmeric and cumin

a touch of cayenne if you're not serving a baby, too

3/4 t salt

Heat oil in a pan over high heat. Add mustard seeds and turn heat down to medium-high. As they pop, add spices and saute for 30 seconds. Then add beans and salt, and saute 1 minute, then add 1-2 T water/broth, and saute another 3-4 minutes until crisp-tender. 

P.S. Aaand the obligatory baby picture:

Blogger, why you gotta be so obnoxious? I hate when the photos don't turn. (David says, "Theo turns heads, so it's okay.")

P.P.S. A few randoms I have been saving for a post. I have been saving up to be thematic, but I guess that would be not-the-point of randoms.

• Have celery languishing in the fridge? Make this celery stir-fry. (I definitely think the word "languishing" was invented for celery. It's like the only thing it does. Languishes.)
• An article on decluttering. 
• Mexican polenta pie. Was maybe gonna blog about it... The filling as written was meh, but the concept of polenta and cheese melted over was worth sharing. 
• Making plans is difficult nowadays. Excuse the minor (albeit censored) profanity. My favorite line: "I wasn't expecting all this predictable rush hour traffic."
• Baked spaghetti. Do it. Way more than the sum of its parts. Definitely better made with refrigerated spaghetti (just like fried rice is). Throw in tomato bisque if your husband obtains you a free lunch at the hospital and you manage to have leftover soup.

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* I just named this a "Lisa footnote." In case you hadn't figured it out already.