MITCH IN THE KITCHEN

rice porridge

Okay you guys, I am back from a spectacular vacation that included a wedding in California and a family trip to Taiwan and Hong Kong. No (publicly noticeable) jet lag, but I am suffering from that warm, fuzzy, wistful feeling that comes with missing the family members and friends who are practically family members I spent time with. Also, I miss the food in Taiwan. This is the first time I’ve come back from vacation completely un-excited to return to my usual way of eating. I thought I’d have wild cravings for a good slice of pizza, a crunchy bowl of my favorite homemade granola, cheese on everything, and maybe Indian and/or Mexican food. Not so much. What (John and) I want more than any of these things is more warm, sweet, freshly made soy milk with egg pancakes and shao bing for breakfast, a cheap bowl of minced pork and stewed eggs with rice for lunch, and a humble serving of rice porridge with an array of small dishes for dinner like I had one evening at a bustling little eatery whose location I’ve forgotten.

Between six people we shared a big pot of plain rice porridge (aka congee, “jook” in Cantonese, or “jou” in Mandarin) and something like 10 small dishes of bite-sized things like three-cup chicken, crispy small fish with boiled peanuts, strips of tofu with bamboo shoots, marinated seaweed, fried wheat gluten, scrambled eggs with tomatoes, and the requisite plate of lightly sauteed greens (pea leaves, sweet potato leaves, and water spinach are among my favorites) that were ordered with every meal. The meal was light but satisfying, everyday but memorable.

It just occurred to me that this is sort of a metaphor for how I feel about this whole trip and visiting my family. We are enormous in number; my mom has 10 siblings and my dad has 11. I lost track of how many first cousins I have so I just did a count and the grand total is 45. We live all over the world, in California, New York, Wisconsin, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, and France. But when a bunch of us are together, it’s like putting a whole mess of different dishes that came out of the same kitchen on the same table for a night, and there is a palpable sense of harmony. Leaving all that great food in Taiwan gave me unexpected pangs of longing, but being there with my family (with my very own newish 2-person family as a subset) gave me a very hard-to-describe deep sense of belonging that I will never miss, despite the double-digit hours of air travel time and a bit of a language barrier that separate us (I probably have the Chinese vocabulary of a 6-year-old minus all the up-to-date slang… and then I turn around and try to translate things to John). I am beyond fortunate and beyond grateful. </sentimental thought-sharing>

To make basic rice porridge:
Bring 1 part short-grain white rice and 7-9 parts water to a boil in a large-enough pot. Season with a bit of salt, then lower heat and simmer partially covered, stirring occasionally, for about 30 minutes or until rice is softened. You can also toss in brown rice (might take a little longer to cook), peeled chunks of sweet potatoes or taro root, mung beans, or other dried beans at the beginning of cooking. Since rice porridge is wet and unflavored (okay fine, bland), I think it makes sense to have it with dishes that are on the dry side (as in not eaten with big puddles of sauce), crispy and/or fried, and a little heavy on flavor (spicy, salty, tangy, fermented, yes!). At home (in the photo) we had pressed tofu and peanuts with soy sauce and hot chiles, sauteed mustard greens with edamame, a basic omelet with scallions, and store-bought fried tiny fish coated in sesame seeds.

And finally, Happy Lunar New Year! I will be celebrating on the first night with the usual vegetarian dinner.

food stamp project week

One of the assignments for my community nutrition class is the food stamp challenge. Some 43.5 million people (about 1 in 8) in the U.S. are enrolled in SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and the week-long experience is meant to be a take-home exploration of what it’s like (a little bit, at least). John (always a good sport) and I spent seven days on a food budget of $60 ($30 per person). To be blunt, I don’t have any earth-shattering revelations or provocative insights to report. Cutting a two-person weekly food bill down to $60 is doable, but not fun. Yes, I got hungry and missed being able to have cheese whenever I want, on whatever I want. But it was entirely possible to eat a reasonably healthy mixed diet. In fact, most of the dinners we had resembled what we normally eat: rice (the brown kind) with beans, rice with tofu and eggs, pasta with sausage and beans. All with vegetables and heavily doused with hot sauce. Breakfast was muesli with milk or yogurt, lunch was peanut butter sandwiches. Very monotonous, but peanut butter and banana slices smooshed between squishy wheat bread and eaten on a subway platform have never tasted so good.

The part that challenged me most wasn’t trying to put together a decent meal for a few bucks or not being able to grab dinner at a restaurant with my friends. It wasn’t about the horror that is 99-cent packs of imitation American pasteurized process cheese food slices or the self-discipline it takes to cross the street to avoid bakery smells, pizza smells, and the mere thought of ice cream on a 60-degree afternoon. The hard part was staying full and cheerful throughout the day, at the risk of not having enough to eat in the coming days. By looking at this blog, you can probably tell that I care an awful lot about food, for better or worse. For a week, it became all about staying as full as possible for as long as possible.

Here’s the first thing we made for dinner. Filling, nutritious, and cheap.

Beans & Greens Stew with Rice
serves 4 (total cost: $3.56, excluding seasonings)

8 oz dried kidney beans ($0.75)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil ($0.10)
1 small onion, chopped ($0.10)
1/2 large carrot, chopped ($0.15)
1 large clove garlic, minced ($0.07)
water
10 oz package frozen chopped collard greens or spinach ($0.99)
2 tablespoons tomato paste ($0.40)
a few shakes of dried oregano
salt, pepper, hot sauce to taste

1 pound long grain brown rice, cooked ($1.00)

Soak beans in cold water overnight or for 8 to 12 hours.

Heat oil in a large pan over medium heat. Add onion and carrot and cook for a few minutes, until soft. Add garlic and cook for another few minutes. Add beans and enough water to fully cover them. Bring to a simmer, then add salt and oregano. Lower heat and continue to simmer until beans are cooked through (40 minutes? something like that… just keep testing them). Stir them every now and then and add more water if necessary.

Stir tomato paste into cooking liquid. Add frozen greens and cook until they are un-frozen. Add more salt if necessary, pepper, and hot sauce to taste. Serve with cooked rice.

jean-georges’ fried rice

This is a French chef’s take on fried rice, that Chinese staple that I rely on to make delicious use of leftover rice and assorted odds and ends.

Yang zhou fried rice is commonly found on restaurant menus, but one of my favorite combinations was (is? it’s been awhile) rice with diced ham, scrambled eggs, corn, tomatoes, and get this, ketchup mixed into the rice during cooking. A blogger named Pei sums it up better than I can. It’s also a little bit like Japanese omurice. Another wacky fried rice I make is with cashews, pineapple chunks, fresh hot peppers, greens, and a squirt of lime. And then there’s my grandmother’s version that starts with a well-seasoned wok and several cloves of crushed garlic in a puddle of hot oil. The garlic infuses the oil (and your clothes and maybe even your home) with that wonderful kicky aroma, which then coats each grain of rice that hits the pan.

Anyway, back to Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s fried rice. Mark Bittman wrote about it a year ago in the New York Times, and I finally got around to trying it. I was a little put off by having to cook everything separately but in the end, I couldn’t complain too much about the result. And since fried rice is a vehicle for improvisation and refrigerator-cleaning, I added some chopped up Chinese sausage that my mom stuffed into my suitcase after my last visit.

vegetable paella

Because you know, Spain, World Cup, had some escarole, found some arborio rice in the pantry. Recipe from Epicurious.

eating while sick

I am currently nursing a nasty cold. Symptoms: hacking cough, runny nose, head congestion, worse-than-usual malaise, no fever (calm down people, I’m pretty sure it’s not H1N1, the disease formerly known as swine flu). Thankfully, I still have my appetite and digestive abilities. A simple rice porridge has always been my go-to meal during times of less-than-optimal health. Like my hangover meal, it’s a good way to increase fluid intake to replenish what is lost through post nasal drip, vomiting, or diarrhea (sorry I’m mentioning snot, barf, and feces on a blog about food). It’s also what my mom made for my younger self when I was sick.

To make my porridge meal, I used long grain jasmine rice because it was what I had on hand. You could also use short grain white rice (will produce a more traditional, viscous porridge, thanks to a slightly different starch profile), brown rice (more fiber and micronutrients, gets a little gritty and takes longer), or a mixture of brown and white rice. I basically boil the rice in lots of water and a bit of salt for about 20 to 25 minutes, stirring occasionally to keep it from boiling over. For a richer tasting porridge, cook the rice in chicken stock.

Here are the toppings I put on my rice porridge (aka congee, jook, zhou, or xi fan). Clockwise from left:

Chinese pickled cucumbers: I have a small jar of these in my fridge, that was given to me by my mom three Thanksgivings ago (!). This (like many other East Asian condiments) NEVER goes bad. They are very sweet and have a slightly funky mushroomy flavor.

Pork sung: I love this stuff. It is unusually furry and resembles lint or those balls of hair, carpet fibers, and dust that collect in the corners of your house. It’s made by cooking the sh*t out of pork, then shredding and drying it. Like the pickled cucumbers, it tastes sweet, and the small jar from my mom has been sitting in my fridge since I moved to New York. Chinese people have really perfected their food preservation methods, let me tell you.

Scallions: I didn’t have any fresh scallions, so I used leftover oil-soaked scallions from Momofuku.

Cilantro: Whenever I see cilantro called Chinese parsley, I wonder if Indians, Mexicans and other peoples around the world are a little miffed.

Shredded egg: One egg, scrambled with a little salt and cooked in a small pan, then cut into strips.

Everything is topped with a drizzle of soy sauce and many sprinkles of white pepper.