Food for Thought | Ode to New York

As much as I enjoy traveling and enjoying food in different places, I often go with the realization that I have left the best food mecca behind: New York. Let’s face it, we live in a very decadent city with a plethora of ridiculously specific choices. Where else can you have a craving for crispy pig’s ear- and fulfill it? (The Spotted Pig’s version is fantastic and, sacrilegious as it may seem, could possibly better many of the pork belly dishes I have had.) Few other cities have as many places to eat bone marrow, (the best of the list, in my opinion, can be found at at Blue Ribbon on Sullivan Street) or offer uni (sea urchin) in different preparations (in a pasta at Basta Pasta, or in a sandwich at El Quinto Pino for example.) Usually when I am planning to eat dinner out, I do not have a specific cuisine in mind – I often favor a specific food. I find myself desiring the charcuterie plate from Butter, the chirashi sushi at Soba-ya, or longanisa sausage from the former, now shuttered, Filipino standby, Elvie’s Turo Turo. There might be a pattern to these cravings. Having grown up in Tokyo, I find it hard to resist foods with umami, the salty-sour-sweet combination that can be found in savory foods such as tsukune yakitori (a chicken meatball, grilled with soy sauce) or even the increasingly popular bacon-wrapped date, otherwise known as devils on horseback. Luckily these items are also easy to come by in our fine city.

Goodbye, Pleasures of the Sea

My hubby has high blood pressure. Sigh. I am a salt-lover through and through. I had a fruitti di mare pizza yesterday and the saltiness was palpable. It was also possibly the best thing I've eaten all week.

Considering how high his blood pressure is, I would love to try and help, and I'm sure it wouldn't hurt for me to start being less of a salt-lick, myself.

What I need to do is create a menu of mostly salt-free foods... the trick is finding flavor.

Livestrong's site suggests using citrus, and to "base your meals around some of the following [naturally salt-free] ingredients: cucumbers, corn, apples, steak and chicken breast." (Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/481334-no-salt-meals/#ixzz1uffjcceT)

It also has a great list of sodium recipes. Here's a few that I plan to try: • Manda's Mild White Chicken or Turkey Crock-Pot Chili Recipe
• Open-faced Chicken-Rice Cabbage Wraps Recipe
• Shelly's Crockpot Beef Stew Recipe
• Neecee White Beans and Roasted Tomato Casserole Recipe

After a point, it got a little monotonous... time to find salads and veggie recipes elsewhere ... bless you Real Simple!

• Boston Lettuce Salad With Herbs and Toasted Almonds
• Lettuce, Orange, and Pecan Salad
• Asian Steak Salad With Mango (will sub mango with apples)
• Broccoli Dip Recipe

Funnily enough I'm more excited about the salads and veggies. Keeping things simple is key in our busy lives- I prefer food I can make and serve right now! But I'll save the crock-pot recipes for the weekend.

Sardines

Sardines. There’s an association with them that makes sense. Might even call them the Vienna sausage of fish- usually served from a can, not visibly attractive and completely unglamorous. But like Vienna sausage to some, the sardine in a can is completely underrated.

I’ve always been intrigued by sardines. But I’ve never been won over. I used to eat them a lot as a kid, my mom would buy ones with tomato sauce on them. They weren’t altogether bad, but they still had a tinny taste to them, and they were quite bony as well. As a kid I was a pretty picky eater, but growing up in Japan, a love for fish is a prerequisite. But like any kid, I wasn't going to try too hard to like something - the unagi, or eel, for example, something I love now, was completely inedible to me in Japan - the bones were just too prevalent.

Fast-forward many years. I've been working on losing weight- and eating well- things that go hand in hand, of course.  Thanks to my 'celebrity doctor,' Michael Aziz, I am trying his Perfect 10 Diet, which in my interpretation means: whole grains, less sugar (no sugar really, but my god, I would be really grumpy), and nothing over-processed. It's been working pretty well for me, I've lost about 6 lbs so far which is great. What makes it work is finding foods that are delicious and good for you. 

I also love to read the blog, Serious Eats, for inspiration. There, a search for sardines resulted in this recipe from Alton Brown- sardine and avocado sandwiches. Now, there was a marriage I would endorse. Apparently, this was the meal that got Alton to lose a lot of weight as well. How could I go wrong?

My husband purchased Crown Prince sardines at my request at the local supermarket. They were preserved in olive oil. "Try them in salads, sandwiches, casseroles or straight out of the can," encouraged the packaging. So I did- I peeled off the top and dug in with a fork. The sardines were sweet and of course, oily- with a strong similarity to my favorite fish, the mackerel. This fish had serious potential.

With the success of the first taste, I piled them onto a slice of wheat bread, and added freshly sliced avocado and sandwiched them together. I could hardly wait to take a bite.

Sadly, it was a waste of a good sardine. The avocados, while delicious, completely overpowered the sardines. I might as well have added tuna to the sandwich. Profoundly disappointing.

Having said that, the discovery of sardines was worth the experiment. I have since purchased different varieties of sardines, and they have also been successful. One box I have yet to try, but I intend to: Bar Harbor Smoked Sardine Fillets in Maple Syrup.

Red Pepper Spread

Boy, was I picky as a kid. I was so picky, I couldn't eat rice - it tasted so bland.  Food had to be bold in flavor. I made bacon sandwiches; ate sausage with dark, grainy mustard (tasted better in Japan, where I'm from, I have yet to find better grainy mustard in America, you heard me!) ... and anything, everything curry. I also poured sauce on everything.

My mom, who is Filipina, makes gorgeous adobo, which also makes for great fried rice the next day, with the oily, thick, pork-flavored sauce as the base. She also makes sinigang na baboy, a tamarind pork stew, and the only way I'd eat white rice on its own was with that earthy, sour broth all over it. I'm still quite saucy now, so I find myself too easily tempted by the ready-made sauces at my local deli-gourmet groceria.

I had, in a past life, wanted to become a chef, and went as far as to take a Master Class in Cooking at The New School. Props to Karen Snyder-Kadish, indeed, who had the patience and drive to direct our small team of five. One of us, a former construction worker looking to change careers, had no business in the kitchen (case in point: he decided our beef stew needed whole cherry tomatoes in it. For COLOR.) Two of the women were quite adept and enthused, and the other guy, well, he was definitely meant to give it a try - he was able to French a rack of lamb with no problems at all. (I HATED him.) Then there was me. I would panic whenever Karen yelled out the time, and burn myself when I wasn't in a panic. I also broke several dishes in the midst of making a hazelnut-crusted whole trout with parsley and lemon... ruined the whole thing and had to start over. It was horrible. Still, I came away with a lot of knowledge, lessons learned (that my day job is amazing, for one) and best of all, great recipes, such as one for muhammara.

Since I don't see myself making fresh muhammara anytime soon, I couldn't help but notice the jar of red pepper spread in the aisles of my deli. After opening my prize find at home, I found it nothing like the muhammara dip I was hoping for- it wasn't refreshing, lemony or nutty at all, instead it was rather vinegary and intense. I was disappointed. Another storebought sauce purchase in vain.

After the New Year, I resolved not to spend foolishly on food (resolution is already broken, of course) especially when it came to buying things I clearly didn't need (like red pepper spread.) I also resolved to make use of what I had in the fridge as often as possible, in the hopes of being more resourceful. That paid off when I decided to make brown basmati rice- the spread, which was strong and pungent, served as the perfect foil to the nutty rice. But what other grains could it save? I decided to find out.

As much as I love quinoa, I haven't successfully enjoyed it at home, due to my lack of experience with adding flavor to it. The texture is great, but on its own, cooked with just water, makes it, well, like bland white rice. What to do. I knew it needed more flavor... so I thought about making a curry base. But I had neither the time or desire. I added salted peanuts to the cooked quinoa, that was a great boost, but not enough. Then the jar of red pepper spread called out to me. And the feta. And the leftover sauteed spinach and broccoli. Voila. With rotiserrie adobo chicken from Union Market as my protein, it was (almost) like being at home with mom.

Brown Basmati Rice

I discovered brown basmati rice while waiting for my deli guy to notice my vast array of food. I have a tendency to shop, for food or otherwise, while hungry (I'm always hungry) ... so it was hard to resist buying all sorts of items such as Porto Rico Mocca Java coffee (which they offered to grind, I graciously declined), avocado, ready-made Szechuan-style wheat noodles and a banana for my daughter.

As often occurs when you are both parts impatient and hungry, there was a long wait at the checkout counter, as the guy working decided there was no need to hurry up with the delivery order (yes, ONE order) in front of mine. But I'm not an angry person, or rather, I refuse to act angry, so I pretended to not mind, and looked around while waiting.

Ooh, biotin conditioner, that's neat! I thought to myself. This place has the most random stuff, I continued to say, in my mind. Then in the rice aisle, not far from my eye line, I saw it - Della Brown Basmati Rice. Now, that's something worth trying, I thought, and added it to the already heavy pile of items.

I didn't waste much time trying it - I had arroz con pollo planned for the family, and since I wasn't sure they would try brown rice, I decided to prepare it separately. My favorite arroz con pollo recipe comes from "The Family Dinner: Great Ways to Connect with Your Kids, One Meal at a Time," as it is relatively foolproof.  I often balk at cooking rice in a stewpot with other items, since I am used to cooking with a ricecooker - but I felt adventurous today.

The directions for the basmati were fairly simple- bring 2 1/2 cups of water to a boil, add 2 tsps of olive oil and salt to taste, then stir in the rice and cover. Seeing as I was already daring myself to try a new item, I threw in a bay leaf and a cinnamon stick to the lot.

35 minutes later, after I took the pot off the heat, and stirred the rice with a fork, it was done. The rice was nutty and delicious, and with the sauce from the arroz con pollo was a great addition to the rice. But it needed more, in my opinion, so I stirred in a spoonful of red pepper-eggplant dip from the fridge. The vinegary zing was exactly what my brown rice needed.