It might be because it’s finals week, that time of year when EVERYONE consumes excessive amounts of caffeine via this black, liquid gold, myself included.

It might be because I’ve started to really get into coffee; making sure I’m trying good coffee and really tasting it. Trying to make the best coffee I can with the limited resources I have in my dorm. Looking for and buying from really good roasters, watching dreamy coffee videos… It’s all very exciting.

yup, I made this in my dorm

And also, I’ve become enamored with actually making coffee. It’s so cheesy, but texturing milk perfectly, getting a good shot of espresso, and putting the 2 together to make a great drink for a customer is something I love doing. Which is why I’ve been picking up so many shifts this finals week… COFFEE TAKES PRIORITY OVER EVERYTHING!!!

So I want to share my love of coffee. I’m sure almost everyone out there drinks coffee. You might drink it just for the caffeine boost, or you might actually drink it to savor that deep, dark brew. Whatever it is, I want to talk about it.

Because coffee’s becoming huge these days. Cities like Chicago, NYC, and San Francisco are home to burgeoning coffee cultures and more and more high-class cafes that are trying to fix the impression that conglomerate coffee chains made on the American public.

Pour-over stations are everywhere, and siphon coffee is also becoming huge.

La Marzocco, probably one of the best espresso machine makers out there, is becoming a standard in most cafes. There’s a rising interest in getting better, more sustainable coffee… And it doesn’t hurt that most baristas are extremely attractive.

But there’s also a lot of trending words being thrown out there about coffee. Like “sustainable.” And “fair-trade.” But how’s that different from “direct-trade.” Shade-grown, organic, Rainforest Alliance Approved? As people are demanding more and more coffee, they’re also demanding better coffee. This means that café manages and baristas are starting to source their coffee differently. The alternative food movement is emphasizing organic and local foods; although it’s not really possible to get local coffee (all of the world’s coffee is grown pretty much exclusively in a band stretching around the equator called the coffee belt), people are going out to get to know their coffee harvesters and roasters, just like you would with produce at a farmers’ market.

According to the book “Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival by Daniel Jaffee, the coffee industry has reached a critical point in the past decade. The price has coffee plummeted starting in 1989, and was especially bad between 1998 and 2004. The highly fluctuating prices of coffee means that the cultural and economic well-being of coffee-growing communities is in danger, as is the ecological balance of the highly biodiverse regions where coffee is grown.

This is where fair-trade comes in and offers a more dependable alternative for coffee growers. Fair-trade means that coffee purchasers offer the farmers a fixed price for their goods, so that no matter how low the price drops, farmers will always get paid at least this minimal amount. That’s why you see fair-trade tagged in crops susceptible to crisis like coffee, chocolate, bananas, and vanilla.

But fair-trade is just one step in offering farmers the economic safety. Jaffee says that fair-trade labeling is valuable because at the very least, it “conveys information about the social conditions under which [coffee] was produced and about the people who produced them… and to reconfigure local people’s opportunities to improve their social and economic conditions.” But contrary to popular belief, fair trade farmers actually do not escape the cycle of poverty; because of the continued dependence on conventional market structure, coffee farmers’ food security is still directly affected by the stability of coffee prices (which is not very stable at all). I know that in the café that I work at on-campus, the price of the coffee that we use (which is fair-trade) has gone up by 30% in the past few years.

So simply put, fair-trade is not the be-all, end-all solution to coffee.

Coffee roasters like Madcap Coffee and Novo Coffee are actually engaging in direct-trade now, where they actually visit the coffee farmers once every few months, building a personal relationship with the people they get coffee from. It’s an admirable business model, and a sign of slow but steady improvement and concern for the farmers’ welfare.

And what am I doing? Well, although both price and taste are huge factors for me when I buy coffee, I still try to actively participate as a consumer in buying direct-trade and relationship coffee. Yeah, it’s a couple bucks more expensive, but as most of us probably know, cheap coffee is fakely cheap, with other people paying for the price of the coffee that’s $5 a pound.

And if any of you were curious, this is how I make espresso in my room. With a Mypressi Twist, some good, fresh coffee that I grind in my hand-grinder, and filtered water. It might look like a lot of work for one cup of coffee, but trust me, it is SO worth it.

Considering how much I need/knead bread (harhar), I’m surprised I haven’t done written about a yeast-leavened carbohydrate yet.

Well, better late than never they say.

This is the recipe, and these are the ingredients:

These ingredients were mixed with water to make the soaker, or a pre-ferment.

A soaker is a loose mix of wet and dry ingredients that you let sit for (usually) 4-12 hours at room temperature so the yeast has a chance to feed and develop really good flavors.

Once the soaker reached a batter-like consistency, the recipe instructions said to scoop the rest of the ingredients (more flour, more yeast, and salt) on top of the soaker without stirring it in.

Hmm. Interesting. I’d never encountered this technique.

But I did as I was told and covered the bowl with a plastic bag (reuse!) and let it sit for 3 hours.

This is the mix after the rest. It doesn’t look much different… Maybe a little bubblier. But I forged on.

It was only after I stirred the soaker with the unmixed dry ingredients that I kneaded the dough.

This here is a clip of me kneading the dough so you guys can get a better sense of how I do it.

As you can see, I start with a loose dough that I push forward with the heels of my hand then fold over, rotating 90° every once in a while. You’ll see that after a couple of kneads, the flour starts to hydrate and the dough gets sticker. You only need to sprinkle more flour onto your working surface to adjust your tackiness. The dough shouldn’t be too stiff or too loose, but very… kneadable and doughy (helpful, I know). As the gluten develops, you’ll feel the dough “fighting” your efforts to push it as it gets stronger.

:)

If you’ve kneaded well and long enough, you’ll end up with a dough as happy as mine.

The recipe calls for 2 risings and one final proofing. I know that sounds like a lot of time, but all that resting time will make the yeast really happy and your bread really yummy.

After the 2nd rise, I shaped the dough into a batard or a long oblong-shaped loaf, not unlike a baguette. Then I proofed it (more or less a 3rd rise) before sticking it on a bread stone in an oven preheated too 450F.

Yeah, the oven is screaming hot. But that’s what gives the bread a good crust. That, and spraying the insides with water to create steam.

Bake for 40 minutes, rotating half-way through, and when done the bread will look like this:

NOMZ. BREAD.

I’ll be honest, this wasn’t my best, or best-looking loaf, but it was still pretty delicious.

Let’s be real, there are few things that smell or taste better than a freshly baked loaf of bread. But did you know that this delightful aroma was once feared across the lands? According to the article “Kills a Body Twelve Ways” from Gastronomica magazine, “the smell of fresh bread was the stink of death… taping into several food fears, including anxiety about yeasty fermentation and chemical adulteration…” I know, it’s hard to believe. Sure, yeast can smell a little funky to people who’ve never used it before, but the fact that it was feared is a little outlandish.

In the early 20th century, this fear of yeast developed into a phobia that we still see today…. A fear of WHITE FLOUR. Yes, it’s not as nutritionally dense as whole-wheat flours, but according to this article, the humble white loaf was accused of causing “anemia, cancer, diabetes, criminal delinquency, tuberculosis, polyneuritis, neurasthenia, gout, bursal rheumatism, childhood blindness, choked intestines, overstimulated nervous systems, acidosis, morbidity of mind and body, and ‘white race suicide.’” It was called “the food that doesn’t feed,” and there was even a saying that went: “The whiter your bread, the sooner you’re dead.”

Wow.

I think that’s worse than some of the things you hear about high fructose corn syrup these days.

Even though you don’t see this kind of phobia linked with bread these days, there’s no doubting that people are somewhat carb-phobic. I won’t lie, I used to be like that too. It took me a while, but I realized that eating is not just about being healthy and eating nutritionally well. Yes, that is a part of it, and there’s no one food that can sustain you. But food is also about the pleasure of eating. What tastes good, what smells good, what feels good is all a huge part in the culture of food.

And it doesn’t matter what shade of brown or tan a loaf of bread is. If it’s tastes good, you can be sure I’ll be nomming on it, because I know that the happiness I get from eating that slice is just as good for me as eating the most nutritionally dense bread.

What do you think?

Pasta, pasta, pasta. If you love food, you love pasta. Heck, if you even eat food, chances are you probably like pasta.

When we think of pasta, we tend to think of the Italian variety; spaghetti being the most common, followed by linguini, farafalle, fusilli, lasagna, penne, and the more humble elbow.

The authors of the book Pasta: The Story of a Universal Food, define pasta as: “the end product of a series of technical operations (on a domestic, artisanal, or industrial scale) applied to a mixture of soft wheat flour or durum wheat semolina with water or other substances, more or less liquid, making it possible to obtain a kneaded dough that is subsequently cut into small regular shapes, which are then cooked in a moist environment.”

But according to this book, grains that were combined with liquids and then cut existed long before the Italian pasta? There are numerous grain-and-water doughs that are transformed into noodles in different parts of Asia, Africa, and northern Europe, limited not just to wheat flours, but rice, barley, and other various cereals.

“Pasta” is most definitely an Italian word, and maybe that’s why we associate it so much with Italian noodles. But at its most technical term, pasta can encompass any shape, size, and type of noodle. Including tortellini.

Making enough tortellini to feed 24 people is a very labor-intensive process. Trust me, I know now.

It starts off with eggs.

egg massacre!

Lots of eggs.

Which are mixed with flour, salt, olive oil, and tumeric.

It is almost guaranteed that kneading this dough will result in the The Thing hands.

I learned that the key to good, pliable pasta dough is first mixing all the ingredients until just incorporated, letting it rest 20 minutes, kneading it, then resting it for another 10 minutes before finally rolling it out.

We used a rolling pin and a mason jar lid to cut out little rounds of pasta dough.

Even after we cut out the circles, we had to use our hands to stretch them out before filling with a kale-walnut filling.

It took us practically all of dinner-cook, but we finally made an army of tortellini, some of which you see in the picture above.

But we couldn’t JUST serve naked tortellini – we had to have a sauce.

A VODKA sauce.

Made with tomatoes, heavy cream, vodka, and seasoned to taste.

Once I was happy with how the sauce tasted and we cooked the tortellini, I let it simmer for half an hour, then moved it to a saucepan 10 minutes before we served dinner to warm through.

I tossed to coat and served the plump dumplings swimming in a creamy, velvety sauce.

Along with the tortellini, we served a cilantro-lime chickpea salad and sesame-grilled asparagus.

So not a very cohesive menu, but delicious nonetheless, wouldn’t you agree?

It cannot be denied.

The air is warmer. The grass is greener. The birds are louder. It’s rainier.

This can only mean that… Spring has sprung.

Ah….

Although the official growing season (or even planting season for that matter) hasn’t begun yet, there’s wild edible greenery that’s begun to pop up in our area. Seeing this, my biology-major roommate and friend, Clare, requested a birthday dinner that incorporated foraged ingredients.

Foraging? As in, going into the wild and gathering plants that you haven’t grown yourself? People still do that?

Apparently, they do. And now the CoOp does too. There’s a lot of edible wild plants that are at their best in early spring, and with the help of Hamilton’s greenhouse manager Hilary-Joy, we gathered and cooked greens and tubers that we found on campus.

Well, technically my sister and I weren’t able to make it to the foraging party that gathered together on Monday afternoon (yes, Calynn was at Hamilton!). But we took a walk through the Glen the same day, and just happened to spot huge bunches of ramps.

So. Many. Ramps!

For those of you who don’t know what ramps are, you should – they are all the rage in farm-to-table cuisine these days. They’re also known as wild leeks, and have a garlicky-oniony taste similar to scallions, although the leaves are more delicate in flavor. Native to the northeastern U.S., ramps lie to grow in rich, heavily shaded soil of a forest floor… Like the Glen!

It was such a bizarre experience finding them, because when we started on our walk, Calynn and I weren’t even expecting to find edibles. I wanted to show her the magic of the Glen before we started cooking, but then I just happened to recognize these leafy plants. So we spent a good half-hour digging around with our sticks to harvest these oniony bulbs.

My sister and I gathered a bunch of them (I was better at harvesting then she was, just sayin’), and when we got back to the kitchen, there were baskets full of other foraged greenery.

Dandelions... Just chillin'

Wild garlic!

Dandelion greens!

Wild carrot! (aka Queen Anne's lace)

Our game-plan for this dinner was fairly flexible; there weren’t really any specific recipes that we had to use, except to incorporate most if not all of the foraged goods.

The first thing that we did with ALL of these plants was to wash them.

These were real plants with real dirt.. Lots of dirt. Which meant a lot of scrubbing.

Once the ramps, the dandelions, the wild carrots, and the wild garlic were squeaky-clean, Pat started frying dandelion flowers.

Yup, that’s how it happened. Dipped into a batter and fried on a griddle.

I bet you’ve never seen a dandelion look like that.

Pat also started making focaccia. Such a multi-tasker he is.

Calynn helped. I think she really liked making bread.

While those were rising/baking, Clare made a dandelion green and wild garlic scape frittata.

Wild egginess.

We put that in the oven, and Clare started making a balsamic potato salad with more dandelions.. Dandelions in everything! (But actually).

Coating dandelion greens in a balsamic dressing.

Also added: dandelion flowers, olives, potatoes, red onions.

My vision for the ramps was to make ramp pesto pasta. So I started by making a pesto with both the white and green parts of the ramps, spinach, both the wild garlic scape and bulbs, olive oil, and lemon juice (we have a nut allergy and a cheese allergy in the CoOp, so no Parmesan or pignolis in the pesto this time).

Once that had been pureed and seasoned to my liking, I cooked the pasta and started sautéing the white parts of the ramps in olive oil.

I then added pasta and the ramp leaves. I should’ve sautéed the greens as well, instead of assuming they’d wilt down. As a result, they stayed pretty leafy even when the pasta was done.

To finish it off, I added the pesto and mixed well, making sure to taste and season.

Mm.. So green.

By the time the pasta was done, everything was ready to come out of the oven and bring to the table.

When we introduced everything, some people were definitely weirded out by some of the ingredients. Ramps? Like the things that people in wheelchairs use instead of stairs? Dandelions? You can eat those? What makes wild garlic wild, exactly?

I just told them not to question anything and just go with it.

Because you know what? Everything was delicious. Like, really, really good. And to think that the only things that we had bought for this dinner was flour, potatoes, onions, pasta, and seasonings. It was so strange to think that this was something that I had gathered with my own hands, and not even in a garden or farm, but in a completely uncultivated place.

There’s an article called “Castagna” in the culinary journal Gastronomica’s “Chef’s Page.” Chef Matthew Lightner from Portland, Oregon takes a few pages to write about what foraging means to him. Granted, the ecology of the northwest if very different than that of central New York. But some of the things he said about foraging really resonated with me after my Glen walk. By foraging, “we are simply partaking in the culture of the wild world, one that has largely been lost to modern generations,” says the chef. Chef Lightner tries to think of how the indigenous people ate and utilized the local ingredients, then designs a menu that reflects the connection between the harvester and the harvested.  These days, a product is treated in isolation from its environment. But Chef Lightner sees a product as “a cycle of abundance… [and] when you eat it you become part of the cycle.” This is a man who takes his restaurant further than the farm-to-table cuisine that’s been gaining popularity recently.

Foraging is possibly the most sustainable and most economical form of food-gathering. It’s the most local that you can get with your food; we got most of our ingredients from our backyard (literally). In his article, Chef Lightner also says that foraging has made him open his eyes to what is available to him and his surroundings, and really, really, appreciate it. We’ve become so used to always having a certain type of food and buying all our ingredients, but once you know where to look, there’s a whole meal that can be made from what most people consider weeds. Obviously there’s a learning curve with foraging, but even getting things like garlic and dandelions can give you a connection with the earth and show where you really are getting your food.

I know, my spring break seems to teem with efficient plans (harhar). But I also spent 4 days in Providence, RI with my friend who’s a student at the Rhode Island School of Design. My main objective? To do what I can as an out-of-town student from a liberal arts college in helping a group of ambitious students get a project called Radish off the ground.

Radish? Isn’t that a vegetable?

Well, yeah it is, but to a group of select RISD and Johnson and Wales Students, Radish is much more than a pink root vegetable.

It’s an idea, a collaboration that will unite all three schools in Providence, RI: Brown University, the Rhode Island School of Design, and Johnson and Wales University.

The Radish flagship will be its food truck; coined as “the farmer’s food truck,” the Radish food truck is “a seasonal food truck that specializes in serving sandwiches and other dishes made from only the most local and fresh ingredients” (from the Radish Kickstarter page).  It’s an amazing idea, because not only will this truck be supporting the local agricultural economy, it will also be a hub for the students of all 3 schools, a movable eatery that will serve three very distinct student populations and unite their creativity and artistry at the same time.

I found a New York Times article that described exactly who the Radish crew are and what they’re doing:

Young, college-educated, Internet-savvy, unemployed and hoping to find a place in the food world outside the traditional, [they are] typical of the city’s dozens of new food entrepreneurs. As the next generation of cooks comes of age, it seems that many might bypass restaurant kitchens altogether. Instead, they see themselves driving trucks full of artisanal cheese around the country, founding organic breweries, bartering vegan pâtés for grass-fed local beef…

It’s gutsy and these guys are definitely going out on a limb, but I personally feel that their cause is something well-worth supporting. The fact that kids who haven’t even graduated from college are taking the initiative to serve organic, local food speaks volumes to the growth of this crazy food movement.

But how exactly did I help Radish? By doing what I do best: eating and taking pictures.

On one of the days I spent in RISD, Danny Do (the head Radish chef, and also a student at JWU) put together a tasting of some of the things that the food truck would serve. It was my job to take pictures of the process, eat it, and critique. I’m telling you, I was living the sweet life in Providence.

So far, the Radish menu looks like this (taken from their Kickstarter page):

SEASONAL SANDWICHES:

• Ciabatta, White, and Wheat Breads
• Banh Mi Pork Beef, Seitan Vegan option, Grilled Vegetables
• Grilled Cheese with Tomatoes
• Sliders

SEASONAL SOUPS:

• Butternut squash, Lime, Puree
• Carrot, Ginger, Puree
• Hungarian Goulash stew
• Glass noodle soup

SEASONAL SPECIALS:

• Seasonal Salads
• Nightly Pancakes
• Weekly Baked Goods
• Signature Herb Fries

DRINKS:

• Fresh Juices
• Coffee French Press
• Iced Tea

The menu is still very much in the works, and the food offered will vary from season to season depending on what’s available at the farmer’s market. But I was there to taste and criticize, offer advice and take pictures. So that’s what I’m doing.

I’ve bolded the things that I got to eat that day.. First of which was the bánh mì. It’s a Vietnamese sandwich that combines the best of Vietnam and its French influences, with a pork liver pâté, pickled carrots and daikon, cilantro, mayonnaise, and pork.

The ground pork is mixed with seasoning and baking soda, then wrapped in a banana leaf and saran wrap, then boiled.

It takes about a half-hour to cook, but when the pork is done it looks like this! Magic! Danny told me that this is a French technique, and it puffs up the pork and makes it soft and tender.

The pork is sliced then layered on a baguette that’s been spread with the pâté and mayonnaise with vegetables and herbs. I ate this (I know, I ate meat!) and I enjoyed it; the textures were good but I felt that the seasonings could be a little better. A little spicier or a little saltier? It didn’t have the punch of flavor that I expect from Vietnamese food.

Also another issue with this sandwich: since Radish is promoting itself as a food truck that uses local/organic produce, I feel that it’s only natural that they source their meat would be sourced likewise. Grass-fed pork and beef, that are raised properly by farmers who let the animals roam around (which is the kind of meat we try to get in the CoOp). And I’m not sure about the origin of the meat that I ate this day, but I feel that there will be difficulties getting pork and pork liver in the quantities that Radish would need. It’s more of an infrastructural problem, but one that I foresee as being problematic.

The next dish that we had was the carrot ginger soup:

When I first tasted it, it was just carrot-y and bland, but after Danny seasoned it, it was really quite delicious. The salt-pepper level was good, and I think that the coriander went really well with the carrot. It’s a good fall/winter root vegetable soup when there’s not a lot of other vegetables available.

The 3rd and last dish that Danny made for us was gnocchi with a simple red sauce.

Unlike the time when the CoOp made gnocchi, Danny fried these potato pasta in olive oil instead of boiling them. I would never have thought of doing this, but they turned out so good. Crispy, and perfectly cooked (I feel like it’s pretty easy to overcook gnocchi when you’re boiling them).

The red sauce was simple, made with sautéed garlic and onions that were simmereed together with baby tomatoes.

Really simple, but also really delicious. But again, I had qualms about this dish. I feel like it won’t be easy to make gnocchi in a truck, although I’m sure some of it could be done ahead of time. But again, gnocchi-making is also just a really labor-intensive process. Another thing is the unseasonality of this dish – tomatoes really aren’t in season until mid-summer (maybe early summer if they’re greenhouse tomatoes) so this would be a dish that would be offered in the summer.

Of course, a lot of these problems are nitpicky. And, as with all institutions that tries to do organic and local, we we run into the problem of supply; a lot of the times, you just can’t get (or afford to get) all the produce and meat that you want that’s sustainably raised.

But regardless, I think that Radish is doing something great – for both the food and the community in Providence, it’s going to be a flagship for the creative and the local community.

I’m switching things up. Since the arrival of my new camera, I’ve been playing around with the video function, and during spring break I learned a little bit about how to use Adobe Premiere Pro. So make videos I did.

Most of my short clips were video-focused, and there was one night when I recorded my mom cooking dinner. She was making pa-jeon, or Korean scallion pancakes. Although this was purely coincidental, my mom making Korean pancakes was exactly in line with my midterm paper for my Kitchen Culture class.

The pancake that my mom makes in the video is not the one that I wrote about in my essay; that one is very special to our family, made with potatoes, salt, and lots of love. But really, these pancakes can be made with any kind of batter (white flour, rice flour, grated potatoes, buckwheat flour) and any kind of filling (in this case scallions, but they can have seafood, meat, or any assortment of vegetables).

(This one is a more elaborate scallion pancake that we had in Korea, that also had a copious amount of eggs ladled into it).

It seems to me that pancakes are ubiquitous to any cuisine. You can call them pancakes, or jeon, or naan, but anywhere you go, you’ll find some sort of flat, bread-y thing that’s been cooked over a hot pan or griddle.

They can be sweet…

these are made with glutinous rice flour and served with honey.

or savory.

these are made with ground up mung beans, and have fern sprouts in them

Although jeon or buchimgae is most often eaten as a side dish or banchan, it’s also an important dish for the dining table during ancestral ceremonies or any sort of festival. On the other side of the spectrum, these pancakes are also really popular food to eat when drinking – because who wouldn’t want delicious fried, flat circles when you’re getting belligerently drunk?

But my family’s special potato pancakes are super-simple. (This is it, by the way, in case you couldn’t tell).

I know, it looks really plain. And it is. The only things you have to do to make this is grate up some potatoes, strain out some of the water, add salt, then fry the potato mix in a pan.

So what makes it so special? Well, it’s a jeon that I feel is pretty unique to our family; I’ve never seen it on a restaurant menu, and although that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, it’s definitely not as common as a scallion jeon or a seafood jeon.

Second, as plain as it is, this is a dish that we have at every family reunion. Every time my maternal family gets together, guess what’s guaranteed to be on the dining table. Yup, this potato pancake. It sits, in all of its golden, crispiness, beside plates and plates of more elaborate dishes. But we also eat it on any normal weeknight dinner, because it’s so easy to make. But the question remains.. Why is my family so attached to this jeon out of all Korean foods?

While doing research for this paper, I interviewed both my mom and my grandpa on why this was so special to our family.

It turns out that both my grandparents are from North Korea. Technically, it’s just northern Korea, because they lived there before the Korean War, and before the 38th Parallel, and before there was a North and South Korea.

Once the war broke out, my grandmother’s family moved down south to safety; however, my grandpa’s family left later, and he ended up getting drafted into the South Korean army.

As a soldier of the Korean War, my grandpa traveled all over and around the Korean peninsula for both training and fighting. During his service, he ate potatoes in every size, shape, and form. Korea is a mountainous country (ideal for growing potatoes), and they were cheap (cheaper than rice) and very filling.

Among the many potato-based dishes that he ate during this time, the potato pancake was my grandfather’s favorite. I’m guessing that its crispy exterior and warm, chewy middle won him over.

my grandpa was an architect!

Since the war’s ended and he’s moved to Seoul, my grandfather has perfected the potato jeon recipe and made it many times for our family. Even though my grandmother, my mom, or my aunt are usually the ones who do the cooking, this particular dish is the only one that my grandpa alone can make right. He’s always made it for my cousins and I, and it’s a dish that he takes pride in making. I remember him feeding it to me since I was a baby, and even now when he visits us in New Jersey, he never fails to to make it at least once.

(By the way, my grandpa still loves anything that has potatoes, although this is his very favorite).

So there it is. The actual history and the family history of the Korean pancake. Pretty personal, I know, but I hope it was informative. And now it’s up to me to learn how to make this potato pancake. It’s a family dish you know.

Ah.

AHHH.

Life-wise, this means that I’ll be done with my midterms in 2 days, spring break will start in 3 days, and I’ll be home in 4 days. So close, but so far…

CoOp-wise, this means we only have 4.5 hours of work this week. Which means I had to choose between granola-making or dinner-cooking, which are both 2.5 hour jobs. I can’t do both, since that would be 5 hours (yeah, math!).

I opted for granola-making. Weird, I know; normally, I’d take cooking over any job. But I’ve been on a granola kick lately. I made granola last week too. This, with the stress of midterms week, means that this post is actually crunch time, both metaphorically and literally.

This bowl holds much potential for greatness.

Last time, I made a stellar cranberry-orange-walnut granola. But I wanted to change it up today.. So I made this sweet & salty, olive oil and maple granola. It’s really, REALLY good. I highly recommend you make it. Right now.

It involves 12 cups of oats, 4 cups sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds (which I substituted for 1 cup sesame seeds), and 4 cups shredded coconut. This is the scale that you work at when you’re making enough granola to last a week for 20 people. I used the biggest bowl we have in the house.

Postnote: it is my firm belief that shredded coconut is key in all granola. It’s not that you really taste coconuttiness.. It just gives the granola a crazy good background flavor and browns beautifully – trust me on this.

Wet ingredients included 3 cups of maple syrup and 2 cups of olive oil.

The olive oil will smell very “green” when you first add it to the granola. Don’t worry about it, it’ll fade as it cooks.

Other ingredients consisted of 2 cups brown sugar and 4 teaspoons of COARSE sea salt. Coarse salt is key here.. It doesn’t dissolve as much as regular salt and as a result, hits your tongue differently. It makes for a phenomenal salty flavor, even if you don’t use that much of it.

Mix everything together, making sure the oil and the syrup is thoroughly incorporated into the dry ingredients, and that the brown sugar clumps are broken up. Little chunks are okay.. They’ll melt into little chunks of caramelly goodness in the granola.

Spread the mix into sheet pans and bake in a 350°F oven.

Stir every 10-15 minutes to ensure even browning/cooking. Granola can go from perfectly cooked to burnt in a second, so make sure to keep a close eye on it.

The granola above is perfectly cooked, but that’ just my personal opinion. Different people have different preference for granola browness. When the granola comes out of the oven, sprinkle a pinch more of the coarse salt over the pan, toss to mix, then press it flat with a metal spatula before it cools (the spatula-ing is optional.. it just gives better clumps).

Yay, flat granola!

Wait until the granola has cooled before it to an airtight container for storage (and occasional nomming).

Ah, my friends. Here is my granola. All 8 quarts of it. This granola. Is. So. GOOD.

Have it with milk, with yogurt, or just straight from the spoon.It makes for perfect snacking/breakfasting/midnight eating.

Keeping the CoOp crunchy. It’s what I do.

P.S. How are you guys liking my new camera? PRETTY AWESOME, HUH?

So you might be wondering about this Pineapple Debacle. Why would a harmless pineapple cause a debacle? Why is that even a part of my post?

Well, in order to fully understand the role of the pineapple, we have to look at our menu for Tuesday night.

Pineapple Quinoa
Kale Red Onion Salad
Baked Sweet Potato Fries

Very simple and healthy, but still delicious. Mostly seasonal. Except for this pineapple…

But before delving into the pineapple issue, let’s talk about the other food prep we needed to do to make this dinner.

Quinoa (pronounced keen-wah, not like this) is a great grain. The only grain that’s actually a complete protein, it’s a nutritional powerhouse. And they get all cute and round when they’re cooked, with little curlicue tails.

But before you cook the quinoa, you have to wash them really well; the grains themselves have a bitter coating that serves as a defense mechanism against hungry quinoa-eating creatures.

Once those were washed, I put them in a big pot with pineapple juice, water, and soy sauce. Quinoa is a little tricky to cook in such large quantities.. It can absorb too much water, and end up sticky and clumped instead of being separated into nice, little grains. Which is kind of what happened here.. But don’t worry. I MADE IT WORK.

Next, I steamed the edamame (more protein!), and shelled them.

Let’s just say that next time, we should definitely buy edamame that’s been pre-shelled. It’ll make all of our lives easier, I promise.

Next, I chopped up lots of other vegetables/herbs/fruit:

Bell peppers.

Scallions.

Ginger and garlic.

And…

Alright, here’s the issue with pineapple. Obviously, pineapples are not grown in the mainland United States. There are some grown in Hawaii, but most of the world’s pineapples come from Southeast Asia, or South America, or the Caribbean. So no matter what, our pineapple isn’t going to be local. And considering that most of these countries are developing or undeveloped countries, the workers’ ethics aren’t ideal, to say the least. Workers get only 4% of the final value of pineapple sales, and they work without shelter, exposed to harsh sun and rain. Most pineapple plantations and packing facilities also work 24-hour days, and the work required is physically intensive.

This is the case with most tropical fruits: avocadoes, bananas, mangoes, sometimes pomegranates… So whenever we want to add these fruits to our menu, meal planners will bring it up at the meeting and ask if anyone is against us eating un-local or unseasonal produce. No one usually has a problem with it, especially if we’re only using one pineapple or avocado, but we do try to limit these “special” fruits and eat them only once or twice a month. Trust me, we all love avocadoes and pineapples, and if we could eat them every week we could. But thinking of our food values and the worker’s conditions, we try to do our part and limit our tropical fruit intake.

With that in mind, let’s get to dissecting this pineapple. The way my mom taught me to cut pineapple is to first lop of the top and the bottom so you have a flat surface to work off of. Then cut the pineapple into quarters vertically and cut off the spiney skin, making sure to get the seeds. Also remember to take off the core.. That part isn’t very edible.

Once all the individual vegetables had been chopped and I had my mise en place set up (i.e. everything is ready), I started getting my sauté going.

I started cooking the edamame and bell peppers first, sautéing them in a little oil until the peppers had softened.

Afterwards, I added the scallions, garlic, ginger, salt, pepper, and a pinch of chili flakes. The recipe called for jalapenos, but we didn’t have any.. so chili flakes it was!

Once the veggie mix started getting fragrant, I tossed in the cooked quinoa, stirred, added the pineapple, stirred some more, and drizzled some soy sauce for seasoning, stirring one more time.

I finished this quite early, so once everything was mixed together, all I did was take it off the heat and covered the pot to keep the quinoa warm.

My fellow dinner-cooks were busy making their respective dishes:

Peeling and cutting sweet potatoes into sticks, tossing them with oil and seasonings, then baking them until they turn into sweet potato fries.

Not quite as crunchy as french fries, but nonetheless delicious with ketchup.

The kale salad involved …

A lot of kale. Obviously. Which took a lot of time to de-stem and slice. Because kale stems aren’t the easiest things to chew..

And also sliced onions, which were marinated in olive oil, salt, and pepper to reduce some of their bite.

Then the whole thing was tossed together, and drizzled with a little more dressing. I know raw kale isn’t the most common use for kale.. It’s usually sauteed or baked into kale chips. But the CoOp has been really into raw kale salads lately. When done right, the kale has been well-massaged and tenderized with dressing, and tastes really yummy.

As it turns out, this was a very Whole Foods-y dinner, aka something that you might eat at the salad bar in Whole Foods. I do not have a problem with that.

One bit of sad news: I’m not dinner cooking this week. Because everyone’s going on spring break this week, our 5 hours of chores have been cut down to 4.5. And I opted for granola-making instead of dinner-cooking, which I will be blogging about. Hurrah for crunchiness (both literal and metaphorical).

But anyhow.. Midterms, here I come.

P.S. I got a new camera – the Nikon D7000. The photos this hunk o’ metal takes are absolutely GORGEOUS, and will be featured on my next post. As will videos, because yes, this DSLR has a video function. Get pumped.

You see, one of the girls who live in the CoOp is OBSESSED with all things Disney. And a few days before this meal, she found out that she got into the Disney College program, which is absolutely amazing news because it’s both competitive and an incredible opportunity. So the CoOp Valentine’s Day dinner was Lady and the Tramp themed, which is kind of Valentine’s Day-ish… Right?

Meat Sauce and Regular Tomato Sauce
Spaghetti
Bone-shaped Garlic Sticks
Eggplant Parmesan
Spinach Salad

So this is how this lovely dinner went down. We started off by (what else?) chopping onions.

Yeah. We rocked it.

Dave, the master of all things saucey and improvised, was in charge of both sauces, starting with caramelized onions, canned tomatoes, and spices.

(According to Dave, a tablespoon of brown sugar will make any sauce taste better… It’s the secret to good sauce!). Dave never follows a recipe and throws whatever he feels like into a pot, but it ALWAYS turns out delicious.

This night was special because we tried out 2 pounds of grass-fed ground beef. A visiting dance professor at Hamilton actually provided it; he raises cows and sheep for meat only a half hour from campus, and he offered some of his meat for us to try before we actually start buying from him.

So we sauteed that with salt, pepper, and a little ground coffee (another secret!) and threw it into half of the spaghetti sauce (the other half was kept vegetarian).

While he was working on that, Pat and I set up an assembly line of eggplant breading.

I striped the eggplant,

then sliced them,

and then made an egg wash

and Italian breadcrumbs by taking regular breadcrumbs and throwing in parsley, garlic powder, pepper, and oregano.

We dipped the eggplants in the egg (haha), coated them in breadcrumbs, and parbaked them off for 5 minutes.

The bready eggplants were then layered with tomato sauce and cheddar cheese. It’s a little unusual, I know. But we were trying to shop as little as possible this past week in order to save money, so instead of buying mozzarella, we threw in some grated cheddar that we had bought in bulk.

It didn’t take too long to get the eggplant parms assembled, so once those were put together, I worked on the breadsticks.

The recipe called for flour, butter, herbs, salt, and olive oil, which were kneaded with yeast activated in warm water.

This is what yeast looks like when it’s alive and well, ready to do it’s leavening work.

After I kneaded the dough, it rose for one hour, and then I rolled it out and tied them into bone shapes (to go along with the Lady and the Tramp, you know?), and brushed them with olive oil mixed with herbs and Parmesan.

Coordinating the oven between the eggplant and the breadsticks was a little tricky… But we made it work, ending up with beautifully browned, cheesy casserole, and garlicky breadsticks.

Aww.. they’re so cute!

Once I cooked the spaghetti (which I tossed in olive oil to prevent stickage) and made the salad, we were good to go.

It’s the quintessential Italian-American meal. Except made cuter with the addition of the bone sticks.

Romantic? Maybe. Delicious? Indisputably so.

Valentine’s Day at the CoOp. We keep it real.

According to the meal plan and the Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant cookbook, I was supposed to cook Eastern European food; a cuisine I am COMPLETELY unfamiliar with. What is Eastern European food anyways? Where’s Eastern Europe? Like, Eastern Eurasia? Or anywhere in Europe that’s not in the western half? Who? What? When?

So I Googled up a map and asked around to get a feel for where Eastern Europe was geographically. Aha… Those countries. The –ia’s (Latvia, Bosnia, Romania, etc.) and the other funny-sounding ones (at least in my mind). But really, what does anyone know about these countries?

There’s no use in trying to convince anyone that Eastern European food is wildly popular and delicious. Because no one will believe you. It seems that in Europe, the further you get away from the Atlantic Ocean, the less popular the country’s cuisine. In Spain, you have the famous paella, the citrus fruit, and other delicious seafood dishes; the British Isles, although mostly known for pub food, is shedding its reputation of boring, heavy eating and becoming more of a foodie hotspot; then of course France and Italy, which are the 2 gastronomical capitals of the world; and even Germany, with its spaetzle and bratwurst. But Ukraine? Poland? Bulgaria? What do people eat there? And seriously, what do people in Hungary do when they’re hungry (harhar..)?

To be honest, I didn’t know. And I still don’t know. So this dinner cook was especially challenging for me, because although I knew all the ingredients and how to cook them, in the end, I didn’t know what they actually looked like, or what they were supposed to taste like.

So I winged it. And it wasn’t half-bad.

Here’s the menu:

Trannsylvania Eggplant Casserole
Czechoslovakian Apple & Carrot Confetti
Creamy Hungarian Bean Soup
(Sorry there are no links to recipes this time around… all of these came from this Moosewood Cookbook.)

First things first: whenever you’re making dinner with beans in it, always start the beans first. They take the longest, and you need to take all the time you can get to make sure they’re fully cooked.

I started up our monster pressure-cooker, pouring in a 2:1 ration of water and kidney beans.

While the beans were cooking away, I prepped all the other vegetables for the soup.

Like onions (what else is new?).

Carrots.

Garlic (so. much. garlic!).

And leeks. Funny lookin’ things, aren’t they? They’re like giant scallions (i.e. green on the top, white on the bottom, mildly oniony in flavor).

A word of warning: leeks tend to have A LOT of dirt stuck in between the leaves, so you want to wash them extra-carefully. I go about doing this by slicing them down the middle.

Then cutting them into inch-long chunks and agitating them in cold water. After a while, all the dirt stuck in between the leaves will float to the bottom, leaving you with clean leek chunks and a bowl full of dirty water.

That’s how much dirt would be in your food if you didn’t wash it! Ewwww….

I sauteed the onions and the leeks for quite a while.. It took a long time for them to soften up. When they did, I added the garlic, the carrots, and the spices (i.e. salt, pepper, and paprika).

After cooking the spices into the vegetables for a bit, the cookbook said to add some flour to thicken up the soup. So I did.

Once the flour was cooked down, I added the now-cooked and tender kidney beans AND the bean water.

Not looking very pleasant… But I just let the soup simmer for the rest of the dinner cook, continuously tasting and seasoning the soup as I went.

In the meanwhile, the Trannsylvanian Eggplant dish was underway.

It started of with thinly sliced eggplant rounds that were oiled, salted, and peppered, then thrown into the oven for a couple minutes to precook it.

We also prepared a mushroom, onion, and tomato mixture for the casserole.

The eggplant and the mushrooms were then layered in between brown rice, cheddar, and egg, with a breadcrumb and parmesan cheese crust.

I know, it sounds a little weird. And it was a little weird. But in a good way. Except it was still a little weird because we put the casseroles with the raw eggs into the oven, BUT FORGOT TO TURN THE OVEN OFF. We did actually get to bake them, but only for 20ish minutes, and needless to say the eggs were runny and not quite fully cooked. But I swear it was alright.

Once the soup was done and the casseroles were in the oven, the dinner-cooks and I worked on the carrot-apple confetti, which was a sweet slaw mix of grated carrots, apples, dried cherries, and an OJ dressing.

Mmm.. a desserty side!

And the final, completed dinner looked like this:

Not the most attractive plate of food. But I bet it’s some of the most colorful plate of Eastern European food you’ve ever seen. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t thrilled with the flavor of any of these.. They were well-received, and I thought they were alright, but it wasn’t anything particularly exciting for the taste buds. And some might say that it’s because Eastern European food in general isn’t very good, but I’m inclined to say that it’s probably because I have no experience as to what it’s supposed to taste like. And I’m sure there are foods from Eastern Europe that are an absolute delight to eat. But If I’ve never tried food like this, how am I supposed to cook it, let alone make it taste good?

A serious gastronomical dilemma, my friends…