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meeting notes 4/14/21

lots of links!

NYC spots: kalyustan’s astor wines

Chicago spot: calumet fishery as seen on dining on a dime

Soy sauce from Taiwan spot: Yun Hai shop , and a little documentary

Epic high-pour ciders from Spain: Txakolina Isategi

Fish: Josh Niland (epic fish breaker downer guy) Kimi Werner (epic spear-fisher and home cook)

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tools

I am big on the kiwi knife and the kiwi peeler. both of these Heidi put me onto — cheap and versatile and sharp Thai steel. I am fond of things that ride the line between precious and practical in the kitchen — this mortar and pestle (suribachi) that Miki made (the grit and surface area of the markings are great for peppercorns and spices that need more friction to release), for instance. 

A cute stainless steamer basket that folds out to whatever the limit of your pot is. A claw to grasp hot bowls from the steamer basket. A skimmer, for taking the foam off broths — so satisfying. A stainless wok, though I hear it’s unnecessary for a home kitchen because the burners don’t get nearly got enough to justify it: it’s the performance though, the rehearsal for the real thing, letting it smoke to start and then shaking to finish.

Every day, I use this large IKEA cutting board that Heidi and I wood-burned labels onto — FRUIT, FLESH, FOUL — though quickly, again, we all started using the large FRUIT for everything. Can’t do a small one, unless for a single fruit, or two garlic cloves. Something about the proportion of knife to board, and mess to board (more than two garlic cloves — where does the skin go?). A big one though, means you have your mise ready-to-go — aromatics over there, compost pile over here.

For serving, I rely on a combo of sweet and found, mostly a miscellany when serving 4 (my household size): here is a favorite bowl made by Shinobu, high straight walls that are not so reasonable for slurping, or maximizing surface area, but solid to hold. I like many little bowls for condiment/pickle/herb buffet.

I keep a keyring here for potholders. It falls every other time the oven door is opened, but until we find a better trick, this is it.

I am learning as I write this that the best tools are ones that are integrated into movement — you work together — reliable, yet hard to replace. The second-best tools are the ones that replace them just-so, because resourcefulness in absence is the thing a tool can teach you, too.

I have an air fryer my mom gifted and it is the opposite of a tool for me — impractical, occasional, and too much a mind of its own. Do you love your air fryer? Tell me more.

-con

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Kitchen Tools

So kitchen tools. When I actually take time to make a meal, I need my cutting board, my knife, several different sized bowls for my mise en place and a trash bowl, for vegetable ends, onions skins etc. Other essentials are in the pic below.

Other then the tools I’ll use to make the meal, to have a really good time, I’ll need a drink and/or some weed, and some music to sing/dance to. Lastly, FaceTime, because cooking is usually when I’ll also take time to call loved ones.

I’m really interested to know how you all set the mood for cooking as well. Talk soon!

-Princeton

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dream feast

i feel like i could work on the “meal concept” more but right now this is actually kind of just a list of my favorite foods 

Meal setting:

A humid but cool summer evening outdoors

A fire pit where we can grill fish + stuff

Maybe like, North Carolina? Somewhere with trees, or near the ocean

The meal starts actually around noon but we basically eat all day so that we just digest while we eat + never get too full and have room for dessert

Would also have to be very beautiful with like a nice handmade tablecloth and everyone has an embroidered napkin and handmade ceramic plates and cups

No one really sits at a big table but they just walk around and eat and maybe sit down at smaller tables

Maybe theres a giant blanket for people to lay down and hang out for a break? 

Le Menu  (not in any particular order because it would all be on several circular table with lazy susans) 

Pomelo salad (the biggest pomelo u can find, probably my fave fruit?)

Fried tofu (from freshly pressed homemade tofu) + nam jim tohu tod (fried tofu dippy sauce)

Fish dish (from fresh fish! encrusting it with sea salt but also having maldon salt sprinkled in! in November I had a very visceral dream. Part of the dream was that I was looking up into a hole in the ceiling up to the sky (like at the Pantheon) and saw 3 fried fish. I talked with a dream interpreter and she said that it was symbolic of my ancestors feeding me. After that, I started wanting to learn how to cook fish. Now I am a little obsessed. I am linking to a recipe by Mark Wiens who kinda creeps me out, but other Thai cookbooks I have have recipes to this too so I would prob use those.)

Yum pla duk foo (I crave this at least once a month. It’s a fluffy fried catfish salad that is sweeet and sour and perfect) 

Other seafood, even though this meal seems pretty heavy on seafood already lol: seared scallops + caviar, some oysters for fun bc i love salt

Khao soi (maybe not using meat but instead fresh oyster mushrooms and some mustard greens on the side, fresh bean sprouts (none of the slimy sad stuff))

Beef jerky made by my grandma (when I was a kid I remember she would lay thin slices of meat out on tables outside in our backyard, cover them with window screens, and they would be out there for days during the summer. I would do anything to eat that right now)

++an abundance of fresh herbs to garnish and LIMES

Sticky rice AND jasmine rice 

Drinks

Hot AND cold chrysanthemum tea

A little fizzy mead

Mango juice

Coffee? (for aid with digestion lol and also energy, also decaf)

For dessert

Angel food cake that is grilled/seared so that its caramelized and crispy on one side

Coconut ice cream

Condensed milk with roti

Khanom tua pap (my mom used to make this every year for new years)

Foi thong 

a lot of fruit to snack on

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stocking up rambling

Sereno pantry items.. 

Pictured: a giant coconut milk can (image from google) about ¾ gallon. The first time I saw a can this big was at Hung Vuong Market. I’ve joked before that I should just buy a 12-pack of coconut milk (a joke because I know they don’t come in 12 packs) but I guess sometimes I just go through phases where I use a lot a lot of coconut milk. My pantry would have a 12 pack of coconut milk, maybe a case.  

Here is an image I took two years ago of my parents’ pantry. Pictured are cans and sauces and jars of whatever and a Betty Crocker peanut butter cookie mix. Not pictured are their two fridges (the one in the basement is just full of sauces and overflow vegetables) and their chest freezer (also in the basement, stores a lot of meat and frozen stuff, I guess?) 

A while ago my sister sent me this TikTok of a person giving a tour of all of the fridges their Asian parents have. I’m also thinking of Priya Krishna showing us around her parents’ fridges and pantry (VERY fancy and VERY organized lol, skip to 10:20 to get a glimpse). I’m thinking of my friend Judith’s parents’ freezer packed absurdly FULL of frozen meat, all of the garage-fridges that I saw growing up in my Asian friends’ family homes. (This is also colored just by the fact that I grew up in a middle-class suburb with a high population of Asians.) While this is definitely not an all-Asians thing, and probably not just an Asian thing, I wonder what it is about stocking up.  

I’m hesitant to buy a bottle of something I know I will probably not be able to finish. Just a few days ago I was standing in a grocery store aisle for 5 minutes debating whether I should get dark soy sauce because I didn’t want to commit to another big glass bottle in my already full-of-sauces-sauce-shelf. Sometimes I wish I didn’t need all of these ingredients to cook a decent Thai meal. Why do we (Asians, Thai people?) need so many sauces? Why do we need so many herbs and types of peppers? Meanwhile, it takes like 3 ingredients to make pasta.  

But obviously the answer lies somewhere in complexity of flavor, survival, and versatility of building blocks. Like the soy bean as a building block—you get edamame, soy milk, tofu, tofu skin, fermented tofu, fermented soy bean paste, soy sauce, dark + light soy sauce, tamari, miso, tempeh, tofu skin… Sometimes I feel like my pantry is just a space for all the lives of soybean, a display shelf of all of the weird ways people of the past have fought to preserve a life. A good pantry is full of this variety and life.  

So anyway, back to stocking up. I get why it happens, you buy more so you don’t have to buy more later. You buy more because at one point in your life you couldn’t have abundance, so now you can and should. You buy more because you have a family to feed and not a lot of time. I wish everyone could have a full fridges and pantries, had all the essential items they needed to cook every dish they could ever want, and never have to go to the grocery store again.  

Here are my essential pantry items, listed not like one of those “if you had to save 5 pantry items from your burning house what would you take” but more in an abundant way. Here are the things I use so much that I would dream to have an abundant supply of them. (sorry I don’t know how this post got so long lol) 

spices sea salt pepper (white and black) turmeric cumin cinnamon red pepper flakes (or any dried chilies) 

semi/liquids soy sauce fish sauce oyster sauce miso sesame oil olive oil + sunflower oil coconut milk rice vinegar  aromatics garlic scallions+onion+shallots ginger 

solids rice noodles (wide + vermicelli) jasmine rice sticky rice

also,, not including items i would bake with?? that is a whole other can of worms i am not ready to think about

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pantry items 2021

top 10 and friends

Coarse Sea Salt Hom Mali - Thai Jasmine Rice Mushroom Thin Soy Sauce Thin Soy Sauce Dark Soy Sauce Fish Sauce Miso (Red and White) Palm Sugar/Brown Sugar Kombu Spam   Vinegars - Rice, Coconut, White and Apple Cider Sesame Seeds --- Garlic Ginger Scallions

These are my favorite stocked ingredients on hand, on the daily. Only missing a small lazy susan to hold all these friends together on the counter. Most recently exploring different soy sauces and vinegars. 

xo, Heidi 

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meeting notes 3/4/21

we talked about...

"authenticity"  ~~ how do you find authentic recipes (if that is real), how do you be authentic in your cooking, how do know if something tastes authentic?

wondering about colonial influences on food (for example, banh mi)?

why is kalaya (thai restaurant) so expensive??

growing food ~~ learning about ingredients 

sources//where do we get our recipes + information?

lisa's korean food rec's - https://www.koreanbapsang.com - https://www.cafemaddy.com - https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=chris+cho

con's - woks of life

serena's - kiin a book on northern thai cuisine (my parents are not from northern thailand but i love sour stuff and salads)

heidi's - leela punyaratabandhu's books (her site is shesimmers.com)

next bloggie:

- what would your dream meal be? (no financial, location, ingredient constraints) <3 :~)

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Things I’ve been cooking <3

Japchae with carrots, onion, scallion, and beef. In Korea, people eat this in special occasions.

Korean Lunar New Year soup with sliced rice cake and dumplings. Kimchi as a side dish! Seaweed and sesame seed as a garnish.

Japanese Salmon Ochazuke. Saw this dish in one Japanese drama. heard that this is a real comfort food in Japan. Grilled salmon and the soup base is dashi and boil with green tea bag :) sounds like a bit strange combination but its so delicious. 

Sweet pumpkin soup. my all time favorite soup in fall. I blend the acorn squash smoothly and mix with cream and butter. so filling. Croutons and parsley as a garnish on top.  

Cold Kimchi Noodle. soy sauce, kimchi, some red pepper powder..... a bit spicy :0

Basil pesto pasta. such a simple meal. Garnish with pistachio, parmesan cheese, and sliced basil.

Tuna Avocado bibimbap. Fast comfort food. don't need to cook up anything. just have a rice some tuna, avocado and any salad. then mix up all together. 

If you want recipes for these, I can send you! 

I mostly get recipes from https://www.koreanbapsang.com , https://www.cafemaddy.com, https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=chris+cho & Korean food blogs.

~Lisa

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My all time favorite ingredients

These are the ingredients I can't live without.

1. Soy sauce - no doubts.

2. Sesame oil - when I cook Asian meals, I prefer sesame oil to other vegetable or olive oil.

3. Sesame seed - the best garnish on almost anything!!

4. Seaweed- I cut in thin long shapes and put as a garnish with sesame seed. adding up nice flavor.

5. Minced garlic- adding up so much flavors with any meal. put this a lot in asian meal and Italian meal.

6. Kimchi- fried rice, stew, side dish......

7. Scallion- huge fan of it.

8. Oyster sauce- I use this for fried rice. yummy.

9. Miso paste- comfort food! 

10. Dashi pack- composed of anchovy and dashi. makes a nice base broth for any soup meal. I even use dashi pack to mix with miso paste for making miso soup.

11. Korean red pepper powder- its spicy so I put a little bit when cooking.’

12. Onion- no doubts.

13. Sticky rice- the best texture.

14. Parsley- good garnish for Italian meals.

15. Basil pesto- healthy and amazingly delicious.

~Lisa

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Two nights ago I had a friend over and made a very Haitian Meal: Du ris á pois France (jasmine rice with peas), Pwason Fri (Fried whole Red Snapper), simple roasted asparagus, and of course, Sos (typically a sauce made with peppers, onion, and tomato). It was fantastic.

This meal really speaks to the ingredients germane to Haitian cuisine. Red Snapper is by far the most popular fish in the repertoire. I am at least at the moment, not eating any meat so this was my first time scaling, gutting, and cleaning a whole fish. I marinated it for about 8 hours using this recipe.

There are several preparations of rice, all using white jasmine rice. I grew up mainly with Red Rice (rice with kidney beans) white rice which is seasoned simply with garlic, onion, and salt, and Du ris á pois France. There is also the elusive Du ris á Djon Djon, a rice made with djon djon, a black mushroom native to the island that is used dried. (Djon Djon is one of those ingredients that cannot be found in your local market. Ordering some and making that beautiful savory rice is on my list.) No matter which preparation Jasmine rice is the one that’s used.

Sos as I know it starts with the fond, or any meat or fish juices or marinade. added to that is bell pepper, yellow onions, tomato sauce or paste, and spices, including clove, a very singular sauce, ground to powder used it both sauces and marinades as well as used whole in rice.

Pics of my first foray into cooking a whole fish:

-Princeton

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meeting notes 2/15/21

in attendance: connie, princeton, serena

we talked about:

podcasts - reply/all (they are releasing a 4 part series about bon appetit d r a m a ) another podcast princeton was listening to but can't remember

what we've been cooking - Lunar New Years, fish, etc.

if $$ werent a constraint, what would u do?  fresh fish, bougie ingredients buy a mandolin (connie's recommendation) food inspo for when ur feeling uninspired: good eats (hulu) people's republic of fermentation (youtube) taste the nation with padma lakshmi (hulu) chefs table (netflix) flavorful origins (netflix)

NEXT MEETING: cookbook show + tell (or websites/blogs you get recipes from)

BLOG: the topic is still ~ingredients~ FUTURE PROMPTS/TOPICS: what would your dream meal be (without money, location etc. constraints)? what was your most exciting food experience?

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pantry

There are things I defer to often when cooking, and these are laid out spatially in the kitchen. On the counter: a bowl of salt, a tray of garlic and ginger, light soy sauce. In the cabinet above the stove: Shaoxing cooking wine, fish sauce, mushroom soy, mirin, sesame oil, coconut oil. In the spice drawer: white pepper, five spice, bay leaves. From the fridge: scallions, stock. From the baking area: sugar, cornstarch. In my pantry: black vinegar, dark soy sauce, chili peppers, dried mushrooms, kombu, furikake. An order of events, and a dance to decide them.

It has taken me a while to build a pantry I trust. By this, I think I mean it’s taken a while to know what I rely on, and what I feel confident using. In the past year, I’ve been trying to conceive more wholly of what I am making and why — usually it’s a permutation of what’s available, what’s recent and fresh, what needs to go; sometimes it’s a project, sometimes it’s just dinner. I am learning to use medicinal ingredients like astralagus, lily bulbs, goji — using this book, “Ancient Wisdom, Modern Kitchen” as a spine, written in English for a non-Asian-specific audience, and my creaky sense-memory of mom & grandma’s Chinese cooking. I am learning about ingredients and their properties, how they relate to each other and to the body, in conditions that are always changing — the seasons, coming cold, holiday, occasional stagnation. Using what I know to respond to what I need — this is a more durational dance.

-con

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non-essential ingredients

I’ve been reading my way through this cookbook, The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen. Sean Sherman talks about how the book tries not to use ingredients brought in by colonizers, namely wheat flour and processed sugar. Instead, there are so many flours from vegetables and native grains. Sources of sugar are honey and maple syrup. I also just read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer��where theres a whole chapter about the gift of maple syrup. 

My love of cooking comes from my love of sweets. I’ve been baking since I was in highschool. Two essential ingredients in European/American baking: wheat flour and processed sugar. I work (just quit my job tho ;) ) at a bakery where we most use flour, butter, and sugar. In my research on Thai baked goods, there aren’t many. Ovens aren’t super popular in Thailand, so most sweets are steamed cakes, soups, or snacks steeped in palm sugar, their “flour” is tapioca starch and rice flours. Sweets, in Thailand, are not even reserved for dessert. They are spread out through the day, as snacks, or khanom, or integrated within main dishes as one of the essential flavor elements for balance: salty, sour, bitter, spicy, sweet. Pad thai is a really sweet noodle dish. When I was in highschool I had a white boyfriend (lmao) and had him over for dinner with my family one time (lmao) where my mom made pad thai and I put sugar on top of it, along with peanuts, bean sprouts, and lime wedge (the essentials) and he was surprised that sugar on noodles was even a thing. 

Talking with a friend of mine who is gluten and dairy intolerant, we note that people have been cooking sweets with ingredients other than wheat flour for centuries. Alternatives to these ingredients have existed forever— So I’m making recipes from the Sioux Chef book, and I’m making khanom recipes, to try to expand my cooking knowledge to ingredients beyond flour and processed sugar. But also to connect to times where I went to Thai temple and ate so many good khanom, and to connect to this stolen land. Also, its been a few months that I’ve realized that I have a serious sugar addiction.. (maybe quitting this job is good after all lol.) So I’m trying alternatives: dates, palm sugar, honey, fruit? I made popped amaranth cakes (or alegria) using maple syrup. 

I made tau suan (เต้าส่วน) which is a Thai/Chinese khanom. It is mung beans in a sweet sloppy jelly-like soup, garnished with a salty coconut sauce. It feels weird to translate these dishes into English—but anyway. I’m realizing salty as an element normally reserved to describe entrees, used to describe an element in a dessert. I keep watching fishing videos on Youtube and I grab my container of kombu and just eat it straight—I think I’m also addicted to salt. But that doesn’t feel quite as destructive as sugar right now. I’m trying to shift my palate—from one that loves sweet desserts to one that thinks sweet is something more complex. I’m starting to really enjoy the sweets that Lost Bread makes—a burnt toast biscotti where the only thing sweet in there is dried cherries (even though the ingredients include molasses), or a whole wheat canelé, where the sweet is just in the custardy inside. I am learning to appreciate other flavors, other ingredients.

~~~ seren0

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Pantry Items I Can't Live Without

My staples have evolved so much from July 2009 when I spent much of the summer watching Food Network. Diners Drive-ins and Dives, Giada at Home, Iron Chef America, Unwrapped with Marc Summers... I watched pretty much everything except the Pioneer Woman. The show that had the greatest effect on me, though was Good Eats with Alton Brown. I watched it religiously. This is where I got my learned about fundamental cooking techniques and theory. It’s also where I learned that a stocked pantry is the home cook’s greatest asset.

I started out cooking all kinds of dishes inspired from all of those shows, always making substitutions because we never had all of the called-for ingredients. I especially loved grilling and Barbeque in the summer, and Worcestershire sauce was a must.

Coming to Philly for school opened up my palette to amazing Mexican, Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean food as well. The biggest influence on my pantry since college, however, was Studying abroad in Japan for the spring of 2018, which dramatically influenced the ingredients I use today. 

Lastly, in my pursuit of cooking my Grandmother’s and Great Aunt’s food, Haitian food, I’ve more recently added spices and ingredients native to Haitian and other Caribbean cuisines, taking the form of the flavor base Epis, (a haitian herb and vegetable blend, somewhat like sofrito).

So, here my top pantry/ingredient/flavor essentials no particular order, except for #1:

Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt

Fresh ground Black Pepper

Sugar 

Miso

Kimchi

Bonito Flakes

Kombu

Shinho Premium Soy Sauce

Mirin

Any type of vinegar

Epis 

Fish sauce

Jasmine Rice

Short Grain Rice

Tomatoes (in the summer) 

Excited to see yours!

-Princeton

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meeting notes 2/1/21

in attendance: Tess, Lisa, Princeton, Serena

We did intros, sharing what our interests are and how we can support each other: 

Food tied to memory + culture + identity

Accountability, research, learning recipes

Learning about hybridity of Western + Eastern food; What does 2nd gen food look like?

We talked about recent foods we made :~)

Serena will start a blog (here) and we will meet twice a month. Will send out a When2Meet next week!

Each of us will try to make a blog post before the next meeting, the topic being INGREDIENTS!