BostonZest

Breadcrumbs Are Golden

Serving a dipping dish of buttery breadcrumbs gives these quickly steamed artichoke halves the taste and crunch of our "much-more-work" favorite recipe of stuffed and baked artichokes. A quick dip in olive oil or melted butter and then the crumbs makes for a delicious leaf.

You may see “pasta aglio e olio” popping up on menus. That seductive sounding Italian phrase translates to pasta with garlic and oil. The surprise when you first meet this dish may be beautifully toasted breadcrumbs sprinkled on top where you would have expected cheese.

We recently enjoyed this dish of pasta with mushrooms and peas topped with breadcrumbs at Eastern Standard.

Evan Kleiman, chef, food writer, and host of the radio show and podcast “Good Food,” wrote an article on the topic for the L.A. Times. In praise of breadcrumbs she wrote, “Toasted with garlic and olive oil, they can lend a textural and flavorful crunch to a variety of foods. You'd never know that something as simple and ubiquitous as a handful of crumbs could be what you're looking for to amp your everyday recipes.” She calls, “... spaghetti aglio e olio (their highest use, in my opinion).”

A sprinkle of cheesy breadcrumbs are the perfect finishing touch to this bowl of pea soup.

Filling in For...

In lean times, breadcrumbs have been used to expand food. They are mixed into chopped protein sources to make everything from meatballs to crab cakes. They add body and protect foods when they are used as a batter coating. The meat in popular dishes like chicken or veal Parmesan is first pounded thin and then bulked up with a tummy-filling coating of breadcrumbs. 

In times of food rationing, people were urged to save breadcrumbs and turn them into main courses. Mixed with liquids they became breakfast cereals and desserts. Recipes were created to make meatless loaves and cakes using fine crumbs in place of proteins and flour.

In the book, "Nonna's House: Cooking and Reminiscing with the Italian Grandmothers of Enoteca Maria," we learned another use. "The Nonnas come from different generations and different places, so they have many useful tricks. Simple ones, like a Sicilian Nonna throwing a handful of breadcrumbs into a pan of spaghetti with marinara. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked, as she mixed it in. ‘It thickens the sauce. This is our way,’ she said."

Butter-toasted panko breadcrumbs with a dash of Parmigiano Reggiano and Aleppo pepper add an attractive and delicious finishing touch to simple, steamed cauliflower.

With a bit of imagination, the lowly breadcrumb was turned into something elegant and delicious. England’s famous Queen of Puddings is simply a custard mixed with breadcrumbs and topped with jam and meringue. One hot menu craze these days is roasted cauliflower steaks many of which are topped with garlicky breadcrumbs.

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Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photos: ©2018 Penny & Ed Cherubino 

(Adapted for BostonZest from one of our Fresh & Local newspaper columns.)

Acid Is a Good Food Word! Learn More from Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking

Since the publication of “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking” by Samin Nosrat, more attention is being paid to acid as an essential aspect of the cooking arts. It’s a tool that most chefs and many good cooks use to bring into focus the final flavor of a dish.

 

You already know that you like acid in connection to food if you add a squeeze of lemon to your fish or your favorite BBQ sauce is a North Carolina style with a vinegar base. You may have a preference for wines with a good acidity or feel pickles are essential when you have a sandwich piled high with pastrami.

Around here we had an ongoing editing duel over the word acid. Penny would use the word in a draft of an article and Ed would try to replace it with a “friendlier” word, e.g. tartness. To him the word acid was unappealing.

To Penny it was exactly what she meant to say. It represented the range of flavor balancing agents she used including citrus juices, vinegars, wines, beers, fermented vegetables, and dairy products like yogurt and crème fraiche to create our favorite dishes. Our duel ended as we explored the acid chapter in “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” and we both gained a greater acceptance of the word acid as a positive part of cooking.

Exploring Acidity

The illustrations are an important part of this book. Penny thinks they should be sold as framed posters to add to kitchen decor and serve as references for cooks as they work. For example, as you can see above, acid is presented in a series of circles that lets you quickly explore the world of acid. The instructions say, “Use this wheel to help you choose which cooking acids (inner circle) and garnishing acids (outer circle) to use as you cook food from around the world.”

 

To add Vietnamese zest to your meal, you would cook with lime, rice wine vinegar, rice wine or beer, and garnish with fish sauce, hoisin sauce, or pickled shallots. The salad above took that Vietnamese route.

In Greece they cook with beer, wine, vinegar, or lemon, and finish with tomato, olive, yogurt, feta, or halloumi. Just knowing these selections for culture-after-culture can add excellent variation to something as simple as grilled chicken. The salad above took on that Greek character.

Recipes and Tips

In the “How Acid Works” section, you will learn how the chemistry of acid impacts things like color and texture along with tips for avoiding acid missteps. Next comes a recipe for Pasta Alle Vongole (spaghetti with clams) that demonstrates how acid works in a dish. That is followed by tips for using acid both within a dish and within a meal.

In addition to all of this, you are offered many variations. The recipe for Chicken and Garlic Soup has instructions for turning it into one of our favorite meals. Pho Ga or Vietnamese chicken noodle soup.

Remember, this is only one of four basic aspects of cooking that are explained in this book by the woman who taught Michael Pollan, New York Times bestselling author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, to cook.

In his foreword to the book Pollan wrote, “... I honestly can’t remember the last time I read a book on cooking that was this useful or unusual. I suspect that’s because reading SALT FAT ACID HEAT feels less like being in the pages of a cookbook than at a really good cooking school ..." We highly recommend this book to both experienced cooks and those who are just beginning to explore the culinary arts.

SALT FAT ACID HEAT is available as an ebook, hardcover, or audiobook.

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Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photos: ©2017 Penny & Ed Cherubino cover artwork courtesy of Salt-Fat-Acid-Heat

Building Your Cultural Food Shopping Skills

Do you hesitate to explore markets specializing in specific cultures because of a language barrier? Do you find it frustrating when you can’t read the labels on packages of food? I’ve recently added a new tool to enhance my international shopping skills.

Image from Google's information on this feature

Last winter a press release from Google announced a Japanese language expansion in their Google Translate app saying, “With Word Lens, you just need to fire up the Translate app, point your camera at the Japanese text, and the English translations will appear overlaid on your screen.”

My mind immediately saw this as a food shopper’s dream. I could see myself standing in a Japanese grocery store using my phone to read and compare the ingredients on packages. What’s more, since this app supports nearly 30 languages, you can point your phone at a package in any shop and it will do its best to figure out what language it is seeing and translate the information on that item.

Ask a Friend!

Far better than using a phone and app is exploring another culture with a friend who is part of that community, speaks the language, or who is far ahead of you in learning about that particular cuisine.

Ed and I enjoyed our first taste of Indian food with a couple who had lived in India. They not only explained the food, but also the dining etiquette.

Friends from Thailand wrote out, in Thai, a list of dishes we should try at a local restaurant that had a separate menu for anyone who wanted a meal made the way it would have been served in Thailand. We only had to point to a paragraph to order dishes prepared the way the customers with greater knowledge of Thai cuisine would prefer them. 

Take a Tour

If you’ve spent much time in the North End shops, you may have seen one of the tour groups learning more about the Italian offerings available in this neighborhood. Many home cooks may feel they know Italian food and the ingredients needed to make it, but I know that I learn a bit more each time I interact with North End shopkeepers.

In this area you can find tours of other neighborhoods and cultures as well. Penny recently took one of Jacqueline Church's Boston Chinatown Tours - Food, Fun, Fables and loved it. Even after years of visiting the neighborhood, dining there, and shopping in area stores, she learned a lot. (She'll be writing a full report on that experience soon, so watch for it!)

For anyone trying to make Vietnamese food, the book Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors has both photos and detailed notes on the herbs you might want to add to your shopping list.

Photo Notes

Another way that I put my phone camera to work is by taking photos of ingredients I’m seeking from the pages of one of the many ethnic cookbooks that have glossaries of food and equipment used in the culture the book covers.

A visit to your library’s cookbook section is a great place to begin exploring a cuisine. Grab a few books on the topic that have reference sections and borrow one or two that seem to supply the information you want.

Pick a recipe and take a photo of the notes or glossary entry on that ingredient. Then you can pull out your phone and show it to the shopkeeper or read it as you explore the shelves in an ethnic market.

Dedicated Guide Books

Author Linda Bladholm’s wonderful “Take It With You” guides to three ethnic cuisines were recently released as ebooks. Now you can have a copy on your phone for impromptu visits to Indian, Asian, or Latin cuisine. “The Indian Grocery Store Demystified,” was her first guide. The others substitute the culture “Asian” and “Latin & Caribbean” in their titles. Food Writer Bladholm takes you on a walk through the aisles of each culture with clear insight on the items offered. I highly recommend all three.

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Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photos: ©2017 Penny & Ed Cherubino 

(Adapted for BostonZest from one of our Fresh & Local newspaper columns.)

Gravenstein as Our Local Apple-a-Day

This is another occasional post on the local apples we are including in our afternoon fruit plate snack. The Gravenstein is part of the Orange Pippin family and has a decided tart side to its personality that Penny loves!

 

Here it is cut up for snacking. Ed says it reminds him of Sauvignon Blanc with that wine grape's snappy tart bite. Penny finds it a great balance of snap and sweet.

Oddly enough, when this apple arrived from the kitchen to our snack table, Amy Traverso was on the television, in an apple orchard, tasting apples. So we had to include our rave review of her The Apple Lover's Cookbook in this post. The woman knows her apples and can tell you exactly how to use each one.

Related Posts:

The Apple Lover's CookBook by Amy Traverso

How About a Different Apple-a-Day While Local Apples Are In Season?

Fruit Plates Are Our Favorite Afternoon Snacks

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Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photos: ©2017 Penny & Ed Cherubino 

Where Would You Find This Swag? Let's Play Attention to Detail!

Let's play Attention to Detail! We give you a close-up clue and you have to figure out where you've seen it around Boston. So where have you seen this swag on a building?

Here are some hints:

• It was built in 1911.
• The original building permits list it as a five-story, nine-family tenement house with one store.
• It is on a corner building in a less traveled part of the Beacon Hill neighborhood.
• The street name on one side fits a theme that runs throughout the neighborhood.
• The other street was named for a person.

Ready? Click through or scroll down past this great book about Boston for the answer.

 

 

More Cookbooks that Are Great to Read Beyond the Recipes!

Last week we posted Reading Cookbooks Can Be Simply for Pleasure. Here are a few more books that fall into that category.

Try These!

Here are few great reads to recommend if you would like to begin reading cookbooks for pleasure. “A Mediterranean Feast” by food historian Clifford Wright will give you great background on foods you may think you know. “Marcella Says…” by Marcella Hazan is like taking an informal cooking class with the great master. 

  

Diana Kennedy’s “The Art of Mexican Cooking” was my first exposure to authentic Mexican cuisine. “Hot Sour Salty Sweet” by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid told me the stories of Southeast Asia recipe-by-recipe.

  

“The New Portuguese Table” by David Leite gave me updated insights to a food culture I only knew from a Rhode Island Portuguese immigrant population, while “Dishing up Maine” by Brooke Dojny taught me more about the culinary roots of an often visited state.

  

“Pok Pok” by chef Andy Ricker is in my ebook collection. That makes it handy when I visit a Thai restaurant and want to remember details of some tidbit he taught me about this cuisine in its pages.

 

If you love food culture, add a few cookbooks to your reading list. They are relaxing and educational. Audition before you buy and add to your collection by borrowing, either in physical or ebook format. And don’t forget Boston’s great used bookstores and library book sales. I check out the cookbook section every time I visit one.

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Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photos: ©2017 Penny & Ed Cherubino (Adapted for BostonZest from one of our Fresh & Local newspaper columns.)

Reading Cookbooks Can Be Simply for Pleasure

One of the great pleasures in writing about food is reading a lot of cookbooks. I’m not talking about choosing a recipe and cooking from a book, but rather sitting in a comfy armchair and letting a great writer and storyteller take me to another place, another time, or another culture through their love of the food.

I also read cookbooks to learn more about a particular food, technique, or cuisine. Many of these are stored in my Kindle Fire ebook reader. They offer the perfect alternative reading material when waiting for an appointment or putting in miles on the treadmill on a stormy day. Often essays open chapters or sidebars and tell a story about a recipe’s origin, ingredients, or the person who taught the writer to make the dish.

Acquiring Great Cookbooks

My first choice for acquiring a cookbook is the Boston Public Library (BPL). Buying cookbooks is expensive and storing them requires more space than I have. Therefore I audition potential purchases.

Many times I enjoy the BPL copy and use it to inspire a piece of writing or make notes for future reference. I can borrow it again if I need it.

However some books are so addicting that I will refer to them often, and so popular that I may have to wait to have the library copy longer or borrow it again.

These go onto my wishlist. A recent example is, “My Kitchen in Rome: Recipes and Notes on Italian Cooking” by Rachel Roddy. After reading a few rave reviews by colleagues I respect, I borrowed the ebook from the library. ( I have since purchased the Kindle version)

I read and reread this book in a weekend. Roddy took me to her neighborhood in the Testaccio quarter of Rome and introduced me to the neighbors, vendors, streets, sights, sounds, and aromas she discovered. She tempted me to make the food she learned to make and to enjoy the culture.

It went on my wish list. At that time, the ebook price was not much less than the hardcover price. When the price finally dropped, I added it to my Kindle collection.

More of my favorite cookbooks like this one will be in upcoming posts.

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Words: Penny Cherubino
Photos: ©2012-2017 Penny Cherubino  

(Adapted for BostonZest from one of her Fresh & Local newspaper columns.)

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