Good Granola from Gatherer's

While I was up to my knees in papers (this seriously isn't much of an exaggeration) over the past month for a summer program I was teaching for at UAlbany, there was a campaign afoot that I nearly missed out on publicizing--the Kickstarter fund for Gatherer's Granola baked locally in Schenectady.

I learned about Gatherer's earlier this summer when they found my little blog and asked if I'd be willing to review their three granolas.  An offer for free granola?  That was an easy answer.  I'm a sucker for granola, though usually it comes from Trader Joe's or Target (on their Archer Farms label).  Or, if I'm especially lucky, homemade and neatly packaged as a Christmas gift from K.

I'll admit I like all those mentioned above, and K's still reigns as my favorite, but Gatherer's three different varieties--Chipmunk's Choice, Squirrel Bait, and Fox's Fancy--are creative and tasty, all while featuring high-quality ingredients.  And that's something I'd be willing to say even if Gatherer's hadn't sent me those three bags.

Trader Joe's Snack Attack: Dried Kimchi and Inner Peas

Considering my post on the Kale Chips from Trader Joe's has--by far--brought the most hits to my blog, I figured I should do a few more of these posts.  Not that I need to be gorging on snacks all the time, but I do like that TJ's comes out with some new, interesting items every once in a while, and these snacks aren't always that bad for you.

But can these snacks be the complete package, with good flavor and good value on top of the not-terrible nutritional content?

I tried Trader Joe's Dried Kimchi and their "Trader Joe's Contemplates Inner Peas" to find out--and came to the conclusion that one of these snacks satisfies more than the other.

In Need of Some Pancakes to Go with that Maple Syrup

So I've had maple syrup on my mind a lot lately.  I interviewed a couple local sugarmakers for my recent maple syrup article for All Over Albany, which I recommend reading if you haven't already not just because I wrote it, but because these two guys I talked to were so generous with their time and had a ton of interesting stuff to say.

I not only talked to these maple syrup experts, but I also read a little about sugaring so I didn't come off as a complete rube when it came to the process and science of it all.  And when it was over, I'd restocked my pantry with a nice jug of Grade A medium amber maple syrup from Bulson Road Natural Sweeteners (this is the product made and sold by Mark Cipperly of Capital Agway).

I was ready to try that syrup, and while there certainly are ways in which you can use syrup that don't involve breakfast, for me there's no better way to enjoy it than on pancakes.  And that's especially the case with the best pancake recipe I've ever tried, one K introduced me to and which comes from a somewhat surprising source: Bruce Paltrow, the late film and television producer and father of actress Gwyneth. 

Some Thoughts on Guacamole (Including Trader Joe's Reduced Guilt Chunky Guacamole)

I've been on a big guacamole kick lately.  I'm not about to try to explain it--it's not like it's related to the Super Bowl (didn't have or attend a party, didn't even watch much of the game, yet we still had some guacamole).  I suppose you could say it's somehow a physiological thing--my body craving all that avocado fat here in the cold of my first Albany winter.

Whatever it is, I think we're done with all the guacamole binging for now.  It was a fun little ride, experimenting with levels of lime juice, jalapenos versus cayenne, that sort of thing.  But last week, just after we'd sworn we were done with guacamole for a while, we returned home from a trip to Trader Joe's and I discovered that K had picked up some of their Reduced Guilt Chunky Guacamole, made with Greek yogurt.  Color me intrigued.  (I'm not sure what color "intrigued" actually is--probably somewhere close to fuchsia on the Crayola spectrum.)

Before I get to yet another Trader Joe's product review, indulge me--or don't; scroll right down to the pertinent information--as I pontificate momentarily on guacamole.

Leeks and Cauliflower and Smoked Cheese, Oh My!

There are a lot of moments from Seinfeld that even now, almost 15 years after the show came to an end, I like to refer to, especially scenes from the early seasons or those surrounding George's time with the Yankees.  (The Yankees weren't bad then, but they also weren't dominant; seeing them now  losing out on free agents to the cheap Pirates, or having to turn to creaky old members of the Red Sox to patch holes, I'm personally excited at the prospect of a new era of making fun of the Yankees.)

One of the bits from the show that I never tire of referring back to is when George gets stuck bringing the same calzone to Yankees owner George Steinbrenner for lunch, day after day after day.  As Steinbrenner says:

When I find something I like I stick with it. From 1973 to 1982 I ate the exact same lunch every day. Turkey chili in a bowl made out of bread. Bread bowl, George. First you eat the chili then you eat the bowl. There's nothing more satisfying than looking down after lunch and seeing nothing but a table.

I hate to admit this, but I can be a little like Steinbrenner, especially when I get into a routine.  Sometimes it's a good old PB&J sandwich for lunch, or maybe a nice smoked turkey and lite muenster one.  I can go a couple weeks like that.  And then it's on to a different sandwich.

But I live with someone who is on the complete opposite end of this spectrum.  The anti-Steinbrenner, if you will.  If one of us makes too much of a dish--even one she likes--I'll end up eating inordinate amounts of it so it doesn't go bad in the refrigerator, simply because she got tired of it. 

So when I got the request, only a couple weeks after making a pot of it, to cook more of Chef Carolina Fidanza's Cauliflower, Leek, and Gruyere Soup, which had been featured in an October issue of New York Magazine, I knew we had a really good recipe on our hands.

A Very Vegetarian Holiday (from a box): Field Roast Hazelnut Cranberry Roast en Croute

We didn't set out to have a vegetarian Thanksgiving this year.  I believe it has already been well established, after all, that we're all meat eaters here.  For small gatherings during past Thanksgivings, K has made this roasted chicken recipe that I absolutely adore.  (Seriously, make that once and you'll be thanking me for the recommendation.) But this year we were hoping to celebrate with others and eat some fowl we didn't have to cook ourselves.

But as we all know, life doesn't always go according to plans.  K ended up not feeling well, so I took the reigns on Thanksgiving.  And instead of cooking the Zuni Roast Chicken, I decided to keep it simpler (read: manageable by my standards) and focus on the side dishes, including an excellent green bean recipe from The Meatball Shop Cookbook, one I really should devote another post to.

That's all well and good, but it still leaves a hole at the center of Thanksgiving dinner.  My solution to that problem?  Field Roast's Hazelnut Cranberry Roast en Croute. 

Yes, it comes in a box.  And it's not exactly cheap.  But I can't say I've ever eaten a meat-substitute product that is so satisfying, both in terms of its taste and its texture.  With Christmas only six days away and New Year's the following week, I know there are people out there--vegetarians and carnivores alike--looking for an easy and tasty centerpiece to their holiday meal.  This is where the Roast en Croute comes in.

Home and Away: Beef Rendang at Flavors of Malaysia in Pittsfield and from a Prima Taste Box

Last week in my "white whales" post, I mentioned my love of Malaysian food and beef rendang, specifically.  As I said then, Malaysian cuisine is a brilliant fusion of native Malay, Indian, Chinese, and Thai culinary inspirations (among others!).  If you know the dishes of those countries, then you can only imagine how strong the flavors are when merged in one cuisine.  No, this is not food for the meek, for those who don't want things vibrantly spiced up.

It is the location of Malaysia--its proximity to those countries listed above and its usefulness as a trading hub--that enabled the spices and culinary influences of so many places to end up concentrated in this one location.  Just watch the Singapore episode of No Reservations and tell me there's any other place on earth that could compete as a culinary destination.

Okay, I'm hungry now.  Always does the trick.

Eat Your Greens: Chris Cosentino's Braised Dandelion Greens

I'm guilty of it, and I know I'm not alone: I could stand to eat more greens.

More often than not, any excuse I throw out there is going to be lame.  Salad can be boring, meat and a side of carbs is always fun.  Vegetables?  Healthy, sure, but it can take effort to make something interesting of them.

I know these aren't good excuses, so I'm always on the lookout for ways to jazz up greens without that much effort.  My new favorite way to do this?  Braising greens, southern-style.  And since there are so many variations on this theme, my plan is to cook more and more of them and post those recipes here. 

There are--and I might be low-balling it here--around a million different ways you can braise greens, so I'm not about to try to list them all right here.  I just want to talk about one method courtesy of chef Chris Cosentino, who you might know as the newly-minted winner of Season 4 of Top Chef Masters or from the Next Iron Chef show on Food Network.

Home and Away: The Splendid Table's Yam Tamarind Curry vs. Shanghai Grill's Thai Red Curry

I've mentioned previously how I was kind of sheltered as an eater for the first, oh, two-thirds of my life.  Stuffed cabbage was exotic.  Enchiladas were super-exciting.  This was small-town life in the '80s and '90s, and I didn't know anything different.

Just like my first bite of legit pastrami was a come-to-Jesus moment, so too was my first taste of Thai curry.  I remember it pretty clearly.  This was eight years ago to the month: I was in Pittsburgh, my first couple weeks of grad school, wandering through Oakland with a few of my new "colleagues," if you will, before attending a reading.  It started raining, and I, the foolish boy from California, was woefully unprepared.  I ended up sloshing my way into Lulu's Noodles, a cheap and decent Asian fusion place in between the Pitt and Carnegie Mellon campuses.

It was the perfect time to try a bowl of curry for the first time, and I seriously remembered thinking this was the best thing I'd ever eaten.  You know how some websites have "What's your favorite food?" as a security question?  Yeah, I had a new answer.  I assumed back then, and a long time after, that curry was impossibly complicated and difficult to make.

I was wrong.  Whether you're making the curry paste yourself or getting a good one out of a jar, it's not really that hard.  Which is why it feels particularly egregious when you get a lousy one out at a restaurant.

Home and Away: El Loco's Chicken Mole Negro and Trader Joe's Chicken in Red Mole

Trader Joe's Chicken in Red Mole: Tastes better than it looks

 Note: This is the first in a series in which I'll be comparing food I've eaten out in restaurants to similar dishes at home.  Usually, it'll be a comparison to something I've made; in this case, it's between a restaurant dish and a frozen entree.  

 Agree?  Disagree?  Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments.

There are times when I wish I were a more spontaneous person.  I think it's always been in my nature to be a little nervous, a little squirrelly, when it comes to making decisions.  Just give me a few minutes to think about it!

But this part of my disposition has only increased in recent years, probably corresponding with the increase in reviews at our disposal on the internet.  Moving here and there so much over the past decade has contributed; not since we were in grad school in Pittsburgh did K and I really have go-to restaurants that we could head to on a whim.  These days, this is pretty much how our conversations go when we decide we're in the mood to go out for a meal:

Me: What do you feel like?
Her: I don't know.  ...?
Me: Hmm.  Okay.  (Opens laptop, flips to Yelp.)

10 minutes later.

Me: This place has some good reviews.
Her: Oh, I was just looking at those.
Me: Daniel B. likes it.  That's a good sign.
Her: Oooooookay.  I guess that works.

Basement Discovery: Rick Bayless's Pollo en Escabeche

 
It's been 25 years since the publication of Mexican food authority Rick Bayless's first book, Authentic Mexican.  I was pretty young back in 1987, subsisting mostly on grilled cheese sandwiches, but I recall that the Northern California town I was growing up in was hardly a hot-bed of interesting food options.  It's not that way anymore.  And in so many other ways, the changes to our food-consuming culture have been swift, not so unlike the advances made in technology over that time.

But have we really seen significant jumps in how we think of and consume Mexican cuisine in America in that time?  In the introduction to Authentic Mexican, Bayless writes, "Most Americans don't even know well-prepared Mexican-American foods.  Their unhappy experience is often limited to some mass-produced takeoff on the Southwest Traditional at a Chi Chi's or El Torito's or whatever the regional chain restaurant is called.  Mexican-American food seems to...have become a near-laughable caricature created by financially-savvy businessmen-cum-restaurateurs who saw the profits in beans and rice and margaritas."

In the last quarter century, I don't think that's changed so much.  Chi-Chi's might have gone bankrupt in the U.S. in 2004, but not for lack of demand.  Taco Bell may be trying to class up their joints by bringing celebrity chef Lorena Garcia into the fold, but it's not like their food is any more authentically Mexican (cilantro: so exotic!)--or, apparently, any better.  More cities are featuring hole-in-the-wall authentic Mexican eateries and groceries, like La Mexicana in Schenectady, but while these places often feature excellent tacos, their menus are generally pretty limited.  More often than not, enjoying food at many Mexican restaurants is related to the amount of margaritas you drink during the meal.

A Tale of Two Eggplants

 
I've never been anti-eggplant.  As a picky child, I eyed them suspiciously the first time my grandmother served them.  But because she's the best, I was willing to try them.  And they were all right.

But I didn't really develop strong feelings for eggplants (or aubergines, as they call them in the UK--which I prefer, but sounds insufferably snobby if you're American) until several years later when I ate the Asian version at a Thai restaurant.  I was simultaneously enlightened and flabbergasted.  How could they be so much better than your regular eggplant?