Blood Harmony 15: Food Thoughts
I recently spent a few days in clinic working with a lovely medical student who happened to share my interest in cooking. Our day sounded like this:
Me: Before we see this patient, can you tell me what you know about bacterial vaginiosis?
Medical Student: Extremely comprehensive answer that I don’t feel like typing out.
Me: Excellent! What are you into spice-wise right now?
Many hours, patients and recommendations later…
Medical Student: You should write all of this down.
This one is for you Michael!
Here are some things I’ve learned from cooking so, so much during COVID. I’m including some recipes and some suppliers that I love. Of course, a lot of the fancy food products are pricey so take all of this with a grain of Maldon salt (cooking joke!). If you are interested in getting any of these things for yourself or for holiday gifts, I do recommend purchasing them ASAP since, as NPR reminds me daily, there are a lot of supply chain issues right now.
I would also like to say that I’m not a particularly gifted cook so none of this is very complicated. In an ideal world, I would be more of a home executive chef. I’d be the one slowly perusing the farmers’ markets stalls saying things like “garlic scapes at last! " and looking to my extensive cookbook collection for inspiration. Someone else would actually dice everything with a consistency and economy of movement that I do not possess. In reality, I’m the person who decides to make five vegan dishes out of my new Korean cookbook for my sibling’s birthday at 5pm that same night without acknowledging that my sibling doesn’t like spicy food and that it’s going to take me at least three hours to complete the meal. You could say I’m a slightly compulsive weekend cook stuck in a weekday world.
Beans
Rancho Gordo is a bean supplier out of Napa, California that specializes in heirloom legumes. You may be thinking to yourself, “Does it really make a difference where I get my beans?” and the answer is a definite “fuck yes” in my book. These beans taste different from any beans I’ve made before and they all taste different from each other. So far, my favorite is the Ayocote Negro beans which have very shiny skins and a very intense flavor. The spices are also great. My current favorite way to make beans involves an Instapot and this recipe. I don’t soak the beans in advance (I just end up cooking them for longer—like 70-90 minutes) and I use whatever beans and fresh peppers I have on hand. DELICIOUS.
Onions
Sometime last year I bought a cookbook called This Will Make It Taste Good by Vivian Howard. She’s a chef from eastern North Carolina who has a restaurant that I still haven’t been to despite the fact that it’s directly between where I live and the beach. But I will make it there someday! It’s a very interesting cookbook in that each chapter is organized around a specific ingredient (sauce, preserve, spice mix) which then becomes the basis of all of the recipes in that section. One chapter is based on cooked onions (“R-Rated Onions” in Howard’s parlance. This book is also quite cheeky.). Per her instructions, you slice a bunch of onions down (not across) and cook them slowly in olive oil with a little salt for 30-60 minutes until they are the color of mahogany. Then you freeze the onions in ice cube trays and keep them in your freezer to add to any recipe calling for browned onions. It’s a really good restaurant hack. You know what goes into the aforementioned bean recipe and basically everything else I make? Two microwaved onion cubes. Everything I’ve made from this cookbook has been excellent but so far the other standout is this rice and beans recipe. If you haven’t made the brined citrus from the book (it’s really funky!), you can use preserved lemons from the store.
Freezing cubes
I’m fairly certain I first learned about Souper Cubes from some targeted Instagram advertising. I ignored them until they showed up in the Food52 catalog. Food52 is a very fancy catalog/website for kitchen supplies. I like to look at it and then order the same things from other (cheaper) websites. Anyway, I bought two sets of the 2 cup trays and now I make double quantities of soups or legumes and freeze them. Then I put the cubes into freezer quart bags (which I reuse!) and stack them up on my freezer shelves. I will never run out of food! My freezer looks like the part of Ikea where you go to pick up the flat boxes.
Spices
Like a lot of folks who read cooking newsletters, I’m very into spices from Diaspora Co. The company itself is very cool and the spices are out-of-this-world. The turmeric truly tastes insane. It’s so intense. Same with the cinnamon. You can choose a couple of spices as a gift and they will pack them up in a beautiful box and send them off for you. I am also a big fan of NC spice company called Spicewalla. They have really great spice blends. My favorite is the Madras Curry Powder which I like to put on vegetables before I roast them.
Condiments
We got pretty into condiments during COVID. After an extensive period of taste testing, I can report that possibly the greatest condiment of all time is Mom’s Mala. There’s a spicy and a mild version and they are both excellent. I put that stuff on eggs, in soup, on stir fries, etc. My husband gave me 5 jars for Christmas last year. Best gift ever.
I also starting making two condiments that I really love. You know how you always have extra cilantro when you buy a bunch? No more! Also, I have an idea for a product called Dime Bags of Cilantro (TM) to avoid this very issue. Anyway, take all that cilantro and make pebre! I use red wine vinegar and usually leave out the garlic, shallots, jalapeno and tomatoes. So mine is basically cilantro, olive oil, red wine vinegar, red pepper, salt and black pepper. It’s wonderful. I’ve also gotten really into turning cabbage into Salvadorean curtido. I use a food processor to grate the cabbage and carrot but you can also use a box grater.
Whisk app
And finally, wouldn’t it be cool if you had an app that let you store any recipe you found online and automatically populate a shopping list from it? I’m sure there are a whole bunch of them but I use one called Whisk. It’s quite handy.
Other Things:
+ I love popcorn. My standard cooking-for-myself meal is popcorn and some sort of side vegetable (you know, for balance?). Here is an excellent slide deck of stove popcorn best practices.
+ If you are looking for more food thoughts, here are some wonderful newsletters to check out: