Don’t cry over almost spoilt milk…
October 29, 2009 at 1:22 pm Filed in:Cooking No Comments
Have some milk that hasn’t quite turned yet?
Milk that has started to spoil may no longer be drinkable, but you can still use it up in cooking and baking without much to-do.
You might want to note, however, that milk tends to become more acidic as it ages. This normally isn’t too much of a concern to our stomachs, but if you’re using it for baking, you might want to fight off the acid using a pinch of baking soda.
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You’re gonna love his nuts.
May 15, 2009 at 7:06 pm Filed in:Advertising | Cooking No Comments
One fine afternoon a few weeks ago, I was multitasking with daytime tv on providing a background when I heard a familiar voice say “Hi… it’s Vince with SlapChop.”
Yes, folks, when I looked up, it was our good friend Vince of infomercial and prostitute battery fame – you know, the spiky-haired guy with the power leave women almost speechless, able to say nothing but “ShamWow.”
And yes, my friends, I admit – the ShamWow guy left me speechless when I watched this commercial for the first time.
Not only does he have the ability to leave women saying only “ShamWow,” but we’re “all gonna love his nuts”… and he can do it with just one finger too. And not just that… he’s “gonna make America skinny – one slap at a time.”
Yup, I was speechless for three whole days pondering what was either sheer brillance on the part of the SlapChop marketing team, or the sheer luck they had if they hired him before his arrest.
And today, while poking through the blog of fellow okonomiyaki snob Cooking With Sean, one of my new favorite foodie blogs, I came across this. And I really… just… I…
Nope, there’s nothing more I can say.
Food recalls running rampant – can we know what we’re eating?
April 9, 2009 at 4:06 pm Filed in:Cooking | food&drink No Comments
So far this year, a number of separate food recalls have been issued due to salmonella contamination from a handful of manufacturers – including thousands of products from hundreds of different labels, products that include Peanuts, Pistachios, Egg rolls, Pepper, a slew of other spices… even organic eggs have felt the crunch. And the food has made its way not only into the products we purchase from the grocer, but into restaurants and even school cafeterias as well.
But most of the time, we don’t even know what’s in our food, let alone where it came from… so when there’s a peanut recall, even if we toss any peanut butter we have in our cupboards, we might not think to look at the labels on our salad dressing, frozen pad thai, or even our pet food.
I suppose this is, in large part, a consequence of our convenience-based society, the ridiculously large scale that food is produced on today… but at this point, it is a wholly unnecessary one. Today, the technology at our disposal that could allow us to know where our food comes from – be it the myriad ingredients from sources currently unbeknownst to us, or purchased from the weekend farmer’s market. The main roadblock preventing this today is not that it is impossible to create a way to track our food back to the farm, or even that it would be too costly to implement a real-time tracking system accessible to consumers.
What I fear will prevent this from becoming reality is the very real fact that the manufacturers’ ability to keep us ignorant of where our food is sourced from helps them to maintain their profit line. Were we to know how our food is sourced, the degree of homogenization, and the risk at which that places us and the integrity of our food supply, demands would be made for changes that would be a real cost to the large-scale food producers of the nation. And so long as it is simply optional for food manufacturers to provide this information to the consumer, it won’t be done on a large enough scale to truly be useful… for it appears that trade secrets are more likely to be a concern than consumer safety. Still, there’s no reason we shouldn’t get started.
But I’ll get into that another day, I suppose.
More about the recalls:
- Pistachios and Peanuts: Far too many labels to list
- Spices from Union International Food Co./Uncle Chen & Lian How Labels
- Organic Eggs: Kirkland and Safeway O Organic Labels
Arepas in the evenin’, arepas in the morning…
March 31, 2009 at 9:09 am Filed in:Cooking | food&drink 2 Comments
In my first year out of college, my good friend Edhy and her family who hail from Venezuela introduced me to the magical world of arepa. Arepas are quite possibly Central/Latin America’s finest solution to the fast food conundrum: a thick corn tortilla, sliced open and stuffed with cheesy goodness. They’re similar to pupusas and gorditas, in that they’re flat and stuffed, but the similarities end there.
Sorry, I just couldn't wait long enough to take pictures.
Pupusas and gorditas are typically made from the commonly available Maseca brand masa harina (in the US, at least): decent for making tortillas for wrapping tacos, etc., but something is lacking when it’s the focus of the meal. It’s the Pan – the brand of cornmeal used to make the arepa that makes them the golden standard of stuffed masa snacks.
In most of the nation, arepas are difficult to come by, but in Miami, I found arepas all over – at Don Pan, at the corner bodega, and even in the freezer section at Publix. I found them for breakfast, lunch and dinner, stuffed with scrambled eggs, beans, bbq pork, roast pork, sweet corn… while there are some traditional recipes, it seems that when it comes to arepas, you might be able to make anything work, so long as you have the right masa.
Random Facts:
Pan doesn’t undergo nixtamalization, the process used to produce most masa harina. To make most masa, corn kernels are cooked and soaked in an alkaline solution (like limewater). This helps to loosen the hull from the kernel and breaks down the bits of cell walls that we can’t digest to make the nutrients in the corn more available. The hull is discarded, and only the germ (the meat of the kernel) is used to produce masa. This is typically a good thing, since it increases the levels of niacin, calcium, iron, copper and zinc that our bodies can use, as well as killing off some of the bacteria and fungi that might be hanging out as well. However, those chemical reactions also change the kinds of proteins in the masa, and get rid of the hull too – changing the taste and texture of the masa.
Sadly, though, San Francisco is a largely arepa-less city: the sole vendor I’ve discovered in these parts is a tiny place called “Mr Pollo,” just south of the 24th St. BART station in the Mission. And while the arepas made on that greasy grill behind the counter are cheap and delicious, they only have arepas con queso… and their hours tend to be fairly unpredicatble.
So imagine my glee when on my first visit to the brand new Duc Loi Supermarket at 18th and Mission, I finally tracked down some Pan (aka P.A.N. Harina de Maiz), the flour by which Edhy’s mom swore when making her arepas. In the aisles of the I jumped up and down, then squealed and did a little giggly dance, much to the amusement of the friends with whom I was shopping for fixin’s for that afternoon’s tamale-making party. Continue Reading