I stood over a sea of plantains- eight, cardboard boxes of plantains in all stages of ripeness, from the earliest, jungle green through the death throes of yellow and black. I picked over the two boxes of brown-and-yellow ones. I couldn't call myself an expert, but I had cooked my fair share of sweet plantains as an accompaniment to black beans and rice. I had fallen in love with them a dozen years ago at a tiny, Cuban restaurant in Hollywood.
I had been recently burned by some unripened plantains. They left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth that still set my teeth on end whenever I thought of them. This time, I was determined to not make the same mistake twice. As I poked and pinched through the box in front of me, a diminutive, elderly woman stepped up to the second box of ripened fruit.
She looked over the plantains, but I could see that she was checking me out from the corner of her eye. Finally, she dropped the facade. She turned towards me and leaned back to get a good, long look at the towering, indecisive Anglo looming over her. She turned back to her box and picked up a bright-yellow fruit.
"I like to set these out in my home for a few days," she announces in a thick, Dominican accent. I glanced at her with an exaggerated 'Who Me?" look but she is paying no attention to my face. It was my plantains she was scrutinizing and, perhaps, talking to.
"Yeah," I offered in reply and dropped the plantain back into the pile. I picked up another brown fruit.
"That one is no good."
"Well, I was wanting to use them today," I explained, "I don't have time to wait for them to ripen at home."
She reached across and squeezed my plantain.
"Feel that," she ordered. I complied.
"No! Don't peench it," she cried. "You've got to feeeel it! Like this-" The old woman reached into my box, seized a yellow plantain and massaged it with her hand. Had she been 30 years younger, I would have sworn that she was hitting on me.
Kat stood beside the organic produce, laughing as I stuttered to explain myself.
"Well, maybe I have really strong fingers," I suggested.
The little, old woman thrusted her hand into my box, pulled out another plantain and slapped it into my open hand.
"That one is good for eating now," she said.
I opened my mouth to thank her.
"Feel it," she barked. I felt it.
"Oh, yeah," I marvel with a bit too much vigor. They did feel pretty good.
'Is that wrong,' I wondered.
"Those are good ones! Feeel it," she stabbed at the plantains with her finger as I attempted to pleasure her with my plantain-squeezing skills.
"Well... thanks," I said, but she had already turned away to continue her business of plantain shopping. The lesson was over.
Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
lesson in Thai cooking... wear gloves
Less than a block from the infamous 5-Points section of Lower Manhattan lies a jewel of grocery store called Bangkok Center Grocery. It's a hole-in-the-wall place that's smaller than my living room, but packs enough Thai goodness to keep my mouth burning all year round. I go there whenever the travel bug hits and I need some nostalgic nourishment to placate the fact that I ain't going anywhere anytime soon. The days are shortening and with the 1-year anniversary of my Thailand trip looming on the horizon, I was jonesin' bad.
I had taken a few Thai cooking classes when I was in Chiang Mai and immediately fell in love with the food. New York is woefully lacking in quality, Thai restaurants. We're hip-deep in Chinese, Italian, Indian and sushi, but authentic Thai and Mexican are rare-if-ever sightings. If I wanted some Thai, then I was going to have to do it myself. The four hardest, quality ingredients to come by are fish sauce, shrimp paste, palm sugar and kaffir lime rind/leaves. The first two smell awful the first time you try them. Palm sugar is a great not-so-sweet sugar. Kaffir lime isn't nearly as tangy and sour as conventional limes. It has a great taste that instantly takes me back to Thailand whenever I smell it and it's the secret weapon of really good Thai cooking. If I lived somewhere warm and I had a yard, I would plant myself a kaffir lime tree. It's that frigging good.
Even with the ingredients and the know-how, it takes a lot of practice to get a food dish into the Rotation- eaten on a regular basis. The key is ease-of-preparation. Even in my neighborhood, delivery food is quick and ideal for a tired S.O.B. who's just returned home after a 45-minute commute. I'm not, generally, in the mood to heat up my kitchen and cook for an hour. It's gotta be simple. Pad thai is the first Thai food that I've gotten down pat. It's easy, tastes awesome, and soaking the rice noodles for 12 minutes is half the prep time. Still, it's not a particularly exciting meal. It's mild and frankly, my favorite Thai foods have a little kick. That's where the curry paste comes in.
The cornerstone of hot, Thai cooking is a good curry. Curry paste is the barbecue sauce or marinara of Thai food. If you can nail down a good curry paste, you can stick it in the freezer and pull it out whenever you need it. Cook it with chicken or pork or duck or tofu (all organic, of course) and you will be able to quickly assemble a couple dozen fantastic meals. I made a few curry pastes when I first got back from Thailand, but with middling success. I made a red paste, a paenang paste and a sweeter, milder curry paste called Chiang Mai paste (my favorite). I discovered two keys to a good paste- smoothness and heat. On my first attempt, I got impatient with the food processor and ended up with a bunch of paste that wasn't smooth enough. In addition, it had a good flavor, but didn't give the kind of nasal-clearing heat I'd come to expect from a good curry dish. This time around, I wasn't going to fuck around with the peppers. This time, we were going to have some Serious pepper action in the kitchen.
On Monday, I decided to make some yellow curry paste and a double-batch of red curry paste. I soaked 3-dozen dried, red peppers then added another 10 tiny, green peppers to the mix. I cut and I cleaned the seeds out and I soaked them and when I was done- Success! I busted out my wok, added some coconut milk, 4 tablespoons of red curry paste, palm sugar, tofu. Man! It was like I was back in Southeast Asia. Even Kat, who had been eyeing me nervously all through the prep had to give me props.
Pumped on adrenaline and intense enthusiasm all afternoon, I was finally starting to come down when I noticed my hands- what was that... that burning? My hands began to get warmer and warmer until suddenly they were in full-blown pain. The oils from all the peppers I'd been handling made me feel like I could light a candle with my fingertip. Ho-ly Je-sus. I scrubbed and I scrubbed. I held them in front of fans, I poured milk on them, I scrubbed them some more, but they kept burning and burning. This is what happens when coddled, office hands meet hot peppers. Yow. Five hours later, the burning subsided enough for me to fall asleep.
Last week, my glasses broke. One of those little nose bridges snapped off as I was putting my yogurt in the fridge at work. With no money to buy a new pair, I've started wearing my contact lenses again. They've taken some getting used to, but I was beginning to adjust. Mercifully, I was lazy on Monday and never bothered to put them in. The morning after my Flaming Hands performance, I woke up and stumbled to the bathroom- completely forgetting that my hands were burning just hours earlier. Now, they felt fine. I'd like to think that I'd have been a little smarter if I'd waited another 10 minutes to wake up but, alas, I will never know for sure, for it was with infinite stupidity that I ambled up to the bathroom sink and popped in my right contact. The next 15 minutes were spent trying to get it out. You know you're in a bad way when you start negotiating with yourself. Out Loud. Kat, one of the most squeamish human beings when it comes to eyes, actually offered to use Her fingers to get it out. Finally, the contact abandoned ship and I managed to lurch through my daily prep. Unfortunately, I was left to wear my broken glasses the rest of the day... and again today.
Good curry paste, though.
I had taken a few Thai cooking classes when I was in Chiang Mai and immediately fell in love with the food. New York is woefully lacking in quality, Thai restaurants. We're hip-deep in Chinese, Italian, Indian and sushi, but authentic Thai and Mexican are rare-if-ever sightings. If I wanted some Thai, then I was going to have to do it myself. The four hardest, quality ingredients to come by are fish sauce, shrimp paste, palm sugar and kaffir lime rind/leaves. The first two smell awful the first time you try them. Palm sugar is a great not-so-sweet sugar. Kaffir lime isn't nearly as tangy and sour as conventional limes. It has a great taste that instantly takes me back to Thailand whenever I smell it and it's the secret weapon of really good Thai cooking. If I lived somewhere warm and I had a yard, I would plant myself a kaffir lime tree. It's that frigging good.
Even with the ingredients and the know-how, it takes a lot of practice to get a food dish into the Rotation- eaten on a regular basis. The key is ease-of-preparation. Even in my neighborhood, delivery food is quick and ideal for a tired S.O.B. who's just returned home after a 45-minute commute. I'm not, generally, in the mood to heat up my kitchen and cook for an hour. It's gotta be simple. Pad thai is the first Thai food that I've gotten down pat. It's easy, tastes awesome, and soaking the rice noodles for 12 minutes is half the prep time. Still, it's not a particularly exciting meal. It's mild and frankly, my favorite Thai foods have a little kick. That's where the curry paste comes in.
The cornerstone of hot, Thai cooking is a good curry. Curry paste is the barbecue sauce or marinara of Thai food. If you can nail down a good curry paste, you can stick it in the freezer and pull it out whenever you need it. Cook it with chicken or pork or duck or tofu (all organic, of course) and you will be able to quickly assemble a couple dozen fantastic meals. I made a few curry pastes when I first got back from Thailand, but with middling success. I made a red paste, a paenang paste and a sweeter, milder curry paste called Chiang Mai paste (my favorite). I discovered two keys to a good paste- smoothness and heat. On my first attempt, I got impatient with the food processor and ended up with a bunch of paste that wasn't smooth enough. In addition, it had a good flavor, but didn't give the kind of nasal-clearing heat I'd come to expect from a good curry dish. This time around, I wasn't going to fuck around with the peppers. This time, we were going to have some Serious pepper action in the kitchen.
On Monday, I decided to make some yellow curry paste and a double-batch of red curry paste. I soaked 3-dozen dried, red peppers then added another 10 tiny, green peppers to the mix. I cut and I cleaned the seeds out and I soaked them and when I was done- Success! I busted out my wok, added some coconut milk, 4 tablespoons of red curry paste, palm sugar, tofu. Man! It was like I was back in Southeast Asia. Even Kat, who had been eyeing me nervously all through the prep had to give me props.
Pumped on adrenaline and intense enthusiasm all afternoon, I was finally starting to come down when I noticed my hands- what was that... that burning? My hands began to get warmer and warmer until suddenly they were in full-blown pain. The oils from all the peppers I'd been handling made me feel like I could light a candle with my fingertip. Ho-ly Je-sus. I scrubbed and I scrubbed. I held them in front of fans, I poured milk on them, I scrubbed them some more, but they kept burning and burning. This is what happens when coddled, office hands meet hot peppers. Yow. Five hours later, the burning subsided enough for me to fall asleep.
Last week, my glasses broke. One of those little nose bridges snapped off as I was putting my yogurt in the fridge at work. With no money to buy a new pair, I've started wearing my contact lenses again. They've taken some getting used to, but I was beginning to adjust. Mercifully, I was lazy on Monday and never bothered to put them in. The morning after my Flaming Hands performance, I woke up and stumbled to the bathroom- completely forgetting that my hands were burning just hours earlier. Now, they felt fine. I'd like to think that I'd have been a little smarter if I'd waited another 10 minutes to wake up but, alas, I will never know for sure, for it was with infinite stupidity that I ambled up to the bathroom sink and popped in my right contact. The next 15 minutes were spent trying to get it out. You know you're in a bad way when you start negotiating with yourself. Out Loud. Kat, one of the most squeamish human beings when it comes to eyes, actually offered to use Her fingers to get it out. Finally, the contact abandoned ship and I managed to lurch through my daily prep. Unfortunately, I was left to wear my broken glasses the rest of the day... and again today.
Good curry paste, though.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
