the wei

How about the name of this food truck?

Amersterdam Avenue, New York City 080229 around 11:00 pm.

Adobo - rub over meat and let it sit for a while or overnight before cooking.

Adobo Paste
2 t olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 t oregano
juice of 1/2 lime
2 t sea salt
1/2 t fresh ground black pepper

From Daisy Martinez

Adobo Seco [Dry Adobo]
Makes 1 cup
6 tablespoons salt
3 tablespoons onion powder
3 tablespoons garlic powder
3 tablespoons ground black pepper
1 ½ teaspoons ground oregano

Place all ingredients in a jar with a tight fitting lid. Shake well and store for up to 2 months in a cool dry place.
You can add 1 teaspoon of any or all of the following to customize your dry adobo: Ground cumin Dried citrus zest (orange, lemon, or lime) Saffron Achiote powder.

The tradition in my family is that Dad takes me and the grandkids out for Father’s Day. We’ve tried to flip this tradition around so we are the ones taking Dad out, but this upset my father so the tradition holds.

Tonight Dad took us to a wonderful restaurant on the corner of 9th Ave and 13th Street, Spice Market. Evocative of leisure service establishments in Asia several decades ago, when space conservation was not a consideration and buildings were envisioned with ease as their foremost design element.

Staff bustle around the vast, dark, interior space wearing a variety of earth-toned garments. Slender waitresses wear matching burnt orange pant-top suits with open backs. Male staff share the same burnt-orange pants but two different styles of tops distinguish waiters from busboys. Dried plants reside inside double-glass sided frames on the restaurant walls and spice urns and baskets overlook the dining area from shelves built around the staircase descending to private party rooms. We could enjoy the sensation of looking in on the large open kitchen’s ceaseless activity, just visible in the far distance across the dining room.

Although the temperature outside was over 90º and doors were open to an outside wrap-around balcony, the interior temperature of the Spice Market dining salon remained pleasant.

Dishes span the entire Asian continent and include Indian, south-east and eastern Asian appetizers and entrées. Unfortunately, the food lives up to the restaurant’s name and both Dad and my older boy spent the evening fanning their mouths and passing up seconds on food that was just too hot for them!

The most interesting dish of the evening was shrimp in a black bean sauce with pineapple. I tasted Chinese black beans, garlic, scallion, rice wine and plenty of hot chili paste in the extremely pungent sauce which covered the shrimp. Chunks of “sun-dried” pineapple were laid aside the shrimp, uncovered by the sauce, and had an interesting taste but were verrrry sweet. The sauce was just a bit overblown. Less chili and less black beans would have made it meld with the taste of the shrimp instead of overwhelm it, but still, this was a very memorable dish.

The charbroiled chicken was not very spicy, and was very good. The grilled outer layer of the chicken had been seasoned with a mouth-watering rub which gave it a fantastic flavor and an agreeably crunchy texture. My father enjoyed the short beef ribs, which were served with noodles. The taste of the ribs was reminiscent of Shanghai red cooking.

For appetizers, we thoroughly enjoyed the 5-to-an-order, eggrolls. Filled with pork and shrimp, they were a truly special taste. But, the lobster rolls were a disappointment. For the price, we expected more than a single sushi roll containing less than one lobster claw of meat. Furthermore, the yellow sauce served up in a leaf pattern on the plate, was the tastiest part of the roll. So prettily laid the sauce was, that I thought it was a real leaf!

Spice Market
403 W 13th Street at 9th Avenue phone
212 675 2322
http://www.jean-georges.com/

New York Times food critic & chef Mark Bittman [his book] on 08 Oct 2006

“I asked Harold McGee, who is an amateur breadmaker and best known as the author of "On Food and Cooking" (Scribner, 2004), what he thought of this method. His response:

It makes sense. The long, slow rise does over hours what intensive kneading does in minutes: it brings the gluten molecules into side-by-side alignment to maximize their opportunity to bind to each other and produce a strong, elastic network. The wetness of the dough is an important piece of this because the gluten molecules are more mobile in a high proportion of water, and so can move into alignment easier and faster than if the dough were stiff.

That’s as technical an explanation as I care to have, enough to validate what I already knew: Mr. Lahey’s method is creative and smart.

But until this point, it’s not revolutionary. Mr. McGee said he had been kneading less and less as the years have gone by, relying on time to do the work for him. Charles Van Over, author of the authoritative book on food-processor dough making, “The Best Bread Ever” (Broadway, 1997), long ago taught me to make a very wet dough (the food processor is great at this) and let it rise slowly. And, as Mr. Lahey himself notes, “The Egyptians mixed their batches of dough with a hoe.”

What makes Mr. Lahey’s process revolutionary is the resulting combination of great crumb, lightness, incredible flavor - long fermentation gives you that - and an enviable, crackling crust, the feature of bread that most frequently separates the amateurs from the pros.” Jump to Full article.

I haven’t yet tried this recipe. If you do, please let me know how it worked for you.

I’ve been trying to remember the taste and texture of a fried bananas dish I once had as a child. There was something odd about the bananas when they were served. They had a hard exterior, I think, which because it was solid had the effect of continuing to cook the bananas, so by the time one bit into one, they were literally melting. They were hot! Not spicey, I mean really hot temperatured. Very delicious too.

This looks like the recipe I remember. Found at the Hare Krsna website, of all places.

Banana in Caramel Sauce
Butter - 1/8 cup
Sugar - 1/2 cup
Bananas - 4 peeled
Juice of 2 oranges
Juice of 1 lime

In a heavy bottomed frying pan add the sugar and butter and juice of lime and cook till a golden caramel syrup is obtained. Add the bananas with the orange juice and coat the bananas with the sauce. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes till a little hot and slightly soft. Offer with fresh cream.

This recipe also looks nice, but I don’t remember the bananas being breaded.

This is not a food blog, but I often try new recipes. This week I was asked for one of them, which supplied the nudge I needed to get my blog up and running. Here’s the recipe. Enjoy!

Clams in White Wine with Cilantro

1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil
6 cloves garlic, roughly minced
1/2 t hot red pepper flakes, plain or stored in oil
1/2 c white wine
3 doz small clams
Soak in fridge 2-3 hours [or overnight] with
3 T cornmeal to get clams to dispel sand
1 full bunch chopped cilantro

Heat oil over medium flame. Add garlic, cook shaking pan twice. When golden after 3 minutes add hot red pepper flakes and white wine [it will boil immediately]. Add clams, [and I covered them at this point] and stir gently with a long-handled wooden spoon a couple of times until liquid boils again. Add the chopped cilantro, cover and cook, shaking pan, until clams open [about 4 minutes]. Ladle into bowls and serve.

Things happen very fast in this recipe, so be ready! The wine, for example, boils immediately, which surprised me.

Notes on the Clams

The clams must breathe! In an airtight container or bag they will die. Stored in fresh water they will die [they are sea creatures]. Best to store them dry in an open container in the fridge draped loosely with a pretty damp cloth or paper towel. Try to keep them at 32 degrees.

Clams need to be scrubbed clean before soaking with cornmeal. Those which don’t close when you’re scrubbing them, discard. They are dying or dead. Those which don’t open when cooked, throw them away. They are also very likely dead and can make a person very ill [or worse, expelled]. Discard clams with broken shells.

When comes the time to soak the clams with cornmeal, prepare your water first. Tap water needs to sit for a few hours to rid itself of chemicals which can kill your babies. Scrub the clams clean before soaking. Add salt with no iodine, seasalt preferably, to the water in a 1:10 ratio and add a few T cornmeal. Leave the clams soaking in the fridge 2-3 hours or overnight.

I bought my clams on a Friday night and cooked them one week later. 30 hours before cooking Jorge scrubbed them for me, then I soaked them. Couldn’t get to them before 30 hours had passed, but they were fine. I guess my sea-salt water was good for the little mollusks. After soaking, rinse out, drain, and cook! I used baby clams, by the way.

Success/Failure Notes

Tasted good, a nice light broth was produced - a little heavy on the oil element on the first go, so I reduced the amount called for [the recipe above shows the correct amount]. The clams’ texture was wonderful. Yielding but not buttery, firm but not chewy. Very heavenly, I’m glad I prepared this dish even though I hated to murder those adorable little sea creatures. Interestingly enough, once they were cooked I didn’t mind eating them at all.

C’est la vie, n’est pas? This dish is based on a recipe by Daisy Martinez of Puerto Rican cooking fame.