November 19, 2009
Posted by Wan Yan Ling, May 4, 2009 at 12:30 PM
The Grocery Ninja leaves no aisle unexplored, no jar unopened, no produce untasted. Creep along with her below, and read all her mission reports here. Editor's note: Ling will be taking a brief hiatus from Serious Eats for the next couple of months, but she assures us she'll be back in June.
Kim on peg.
You are looking at a sheet of Korean seaweed, held up by a mini binder clip, and pegged to an iPod cable. There is a very good reason why the seaweed is being "hung out to dry," but it has nothing to do with the recent drizzly weather. I wanted to show you guys how much flimsier and more translucent it is (compared to the thicker Japanese seaweed, nori, used for wrapping sushi that most of us are familiar with), and my roommate was unable to hold the sheet up without giggling. "Tee, hee, hee," he would go, and the chopsticks would wobble, and the sheet would flutter, and my picture would be ruined.
Hence the makeshift iPod cable clothesline. Because, besides not having a roommate with steady hands, I also lack twine in my life.
The one thing I do have though, is seasoned and roasted Korean seaweed—also known as kankoku nori (in Japanese), or more simply, kim (in Korean). Thin sheets of seaweed are basted with nutty sesame oil and sprinkled with crackly grains of salt before being roasted to a crisp. If you're wondering how this makes it any better than the soy sauce-basted and toasted Japanese version called ajitsuke nori (usually found crumbled atop ochazuke or as a snug cummerbund around onigiri), the reason is fat. Since fat equals flavor, no fat equals less flavor. Some people prefer ajitsuke nori's subtleness. I find it lacks the wonderful fragrance and addictive salt kick that kim has.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, April 20, 2009 at 3:45 PM
The Grocery Ninja leaves no aisle unexplored, no jar unopened, no produce untasted. Creep along with her below, and read all her mission reports here.
Kumquats. Photograph from orphanjones on Flickr
Remember Mega Warheads or Super Lemon—those insanely tart, hard candies that made your eyes squinch and your lips pucker and your head go, "Oh my! Oh my!" and then "Ahhh..." when the intense sour finally gave way to sugary-sweet insides?
Kumquat cross-section. Photograph from Splat Worldwide on Flickr
I remembered them this weekend, when the boyfriend brought home a box of kumquats—tiny, pixie citruses about the size of my thumb and cute as all get out. The Chinese think kumquats resemble gold ingots, so my family always had ornamental pots of them around the house to symbolize wealth and abundance. But I never thought to eat them.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, April 13, 2009 at 5:45 PM
The Grocery Ninja leaves no aisle unexplored, no jar unopened, no produce untasted. Creep along with her below, and read all her mission reports here.
Hundreds and thousands! Photograph from Shenghung Lin on Flickr
Hoshigaki are tender, succulent, and moist. These are Hachiya (acorn-shaped) persimmons dried the traditional Japanese way—in the sun, with nary a preservative in sight. The taste is intense—concentrated persimmon flavor with honeyed overtones and perhaps the barest hint of cinnamon—but it's definitely the texture that gets to me. Hoshigaki have chewy, almost jelly-like insides that I distinctly remember my mom trying to con me of when I was a kid ("Sweetie, those dried-up persimmons don't look very good, why don't you have these yummy grapes instead?").
Hoshigaki are made by peeling fresh Hachiya persimmons, then hanging them up to dry in "a spot that gets some sun and some wind." Crucially, the drying persimmons are never allowed to touch each other—mold is the enemy, and any spot where air may not circulate is a potential enemy safe haven. The persimmons are also gently massaged by hand once every few days to break up the insides, smooth the outsides (wrinkles trap moisture and allow mold to grow), and to encourage the fruit's sugars to migrate to the surface in a "delicate white bloom."
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, April 6, 2009 at 11:50 AM
The Grocery Ninja leaves no aisle unexplored, no jar unopened, no produce untasted. Creep along with her below, and read all her mission reports here.
Crisp, golden, buttery roti prata.
Before I knew the gentle, sit-down joys of a warm croissant, I knew the theatrical flips and flying acrobatics of the roti prata. Crisp, golden, with multiple, tissue-thin layers of buttery flakiness, the roti prata is Southeast Asia's street food answer to the West's more gentrified pastries.
Flour, water, and copious amounts of ghee (clarified butter) are formed into a dough, kneaded, allowed to rest overnight, then formed into balls. Each ball of dough is then stretched paper thin, tossed in the air, twirled, slapped onto a greased work surface, slathered with more ghee, folded, and repeat. This goes on until the roti prata man has worked sufficient layers of ghee and dough together, and finally lays it down on a hot plate to be fried to a golden crisp. This is what's known as "roti prata kosong" (literally, "roti prata empty"), and is usually served with a dish of curry for dipping, or crunchy, coarse-grained sugar crystals for the sweet-toothed.
If you had ordered a "roti prata telur" ("telur" means egg), the roti prata man would stretch the dough ball out on his griddle—like a hanky—crack an egg into the middle and muddy the yolk, before folding the four corners in and flipping the prata onto its now egg-filled belly. As you can imagine, enriching what is already a very rich dough with egg makes for even more deliciousness, and roti prata telor is an undisputed brunch and supper favorite in Southeast Asia.
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Posted by Wan Yan Ling, March 30, 2009 at 3:00 PM
The Grocery Ninja leaves no aisle unexplored, no jar unopened, no produce untasted. Creep along with her below, and read all her mission reports here.
The boyfriend mentioned something interesting recently: Coffee breaks are the nonsmoker's smoke break.
He wasn't referring to the communal pot of watered down joe most offices brew up in the morning and keep on a burner all day, though. He was referring to the process of pulling a perfect shot of espresso, frothing milk till it's just right, then bringing it all together in an earnest little cappuccino.
I had never thought of it that way, but making coffee can be a meditative experience. It's five minutes away from the computer, time to yourself, and the satisfaction of knowing you can tweak your coffee to your heart's desire (without having to learn Starbonics).
But what about noncoffee drinkers? If coffee breaks are a nonsmoker's smoke break, what's a noncoffee-drinker's coffee break?
Enter the tsokolate—otherwise known as Pinoy hot chocolate.
Tableas made from ground cocoa nibs and sugar.
Tsokolate is a world removed from the instant sachets of Nesquik I tend to reach for. Before you can make tsokolate, you have to prepare tableas from scratch. These are fist-sized balls or tablets of cocoa nibs that have been ground together with sugar and roasted peanuts. You bring a cup of water to a boil, plop in a tablea, then briskly rub a batidor (a wooden whisk of sorts) between your palms to dissolve the tablea, churn up froth, and thicken the tsokolate to a lush creaminess.
Once you're satisfied with the consistency of your tsokolate (or you get bored of "whisking"), you get to decide if you'd like to enrich it with milk or to drink it neat. Serious eater lorelai76 says it tastes like "smokey espresso, with peanutty undertones" when drunk sans milk, and, judging from my makeshift version, I'd agree.
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