All posts filed under: Food Musings

Mad for Shad!

Published by Kathy Hunt

Last Saturday I made what’s quickly becoming an annual pilgrimage to Shad Fest in Lambertville, New Jersey. Although hundreds go to check out the art, crafts and antiques on display, I’m there for the shad that swims upriver to spawn each spring. Shad has been called the world’s boniest edible fish. Native American lore attributes this boniness to an unhappy porcupine who yearned to look different than he did. The porcupine asked the Great Spirit Manitou to alter his appearance. In response Manitou turned it inside out and tossed it into a river. At that moment the shad was born. While its numerous, small bones make it impossible to eat whole, a filleted shad is outstanding. Possessing a rich, oily, succulent meat, shad has a remarkable flavor that needs few extra ingredients or fancy techniques to shine. Just slide the fillets under your broiler or plunk them in a pan and cook until lightly browned. You can also bake or grill this fish. I’d advise having a skilled fishmonger or fisherman fillet it for you. …

As Perfect as a Gingered Pear Tart

Published by Kathy Hunt

Some food moments stay with you forever. For me, it’s that first bite of a pear. Thinking that he’d introduce his only child to a delightful, new food, my father had plucked a pear from his lone fruit tree and handed it over to four-year-old me. Willing to please and try anything, I chomped into the golden skin and pulled off a huge piece. It all went downhill from there. As the story goes, I grimaced, pronounced the pear “gritty” and spit out the offending, unripened piece. That’s the assessment that I made over three decades ago and the one that I’d cling to for almost as long. Care for a pear? No thank you! Today, though, I’m quite fond of this bell-shaped fruit. When allowed to ripen off the tree, it can be a divine treat. With over 1,000 varieties and seasons that spread throughout the year I can find a soft, honeyed pear almost anywhere. Similar to its cousin, the apple, the pear originated in the border between Europe and Asia known as …

Falafel Frenzy

Published by Kathy Hunt

Okay, maybe there isn’t an all-out, nationwide frenzy for falafel. Yet, on the same night this week that I made falafel sandwiches for dinner, I learned that Subway now sells foot-long falafel subs. Although I walk past a Subway shop several times a day – coincidentally, en route to the actual subway — I hadn’t been aware of its new offering. What I do know and have experienced are countless croquettes of spiced, ground chickpeas known as falafel. A specialty of the Middle East, falafel reputedly originated in ancient Egypt. Today it’s one of the country’s national dishes and served as an appetizer as well as a snack. Among Egypt’s Coptic Christians, it’s acts as a substitute for meat during Lent. Tucked inside a soft, fresh pita and dressed with tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and/or tahini or a yogurt dressing, falafel makes a delightful sandwich. In Egypt falafel are made with white broad beans or fava beans. In Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Israel they come from chickpeas or a mixture of chickpeas and fava beans, …

Shrimp!

Published by Kathy Hunt

They’re Americans’ favorite shellfish and, after canned tuna, their preferred seafood. Yet, until the 20th century, shrimp were not readily available to diners. Unless you lived in the South, where shrimp were sold live, you missed out on these flavorful, little crustaceans. By the early 1900’s, though, advances in fishing trawler refrigeration allowed the mass marketing of and subsequent nationwide craze for shrimp. Over 300 species exist worldwide but I tend to find six or seven in our markets. Gulf White, Pink and Brown, Ecuadoran or Mexican White, Chinese White, Black Tiger and Rock are the types that I see. As the names suggest, Gulf shrimp hail from the Gulf Coast, Chinese and Black Tiger come from Asia, etc. Of these Black Tiger is the largest, growing up to one-foot in length. It’s also one of the more expensive. As a general rule, the larger the shrimp, the higher the cost. Buy shrimp and you buy according to number per pound or count. The smaller the number in the count, the larger the shrimp will …

Tap into Maple Syrup

Published by Kathy Hunt

If you live in the Northeast, the arrival of spring means many things. Warmer temperatures. Less snow. More rain. The end of maple tapping season. Starting in mid-February and lasting for roughly six weeks, maple trees across this region get tapped for their sap. Once warmer weather hits, tapping season ends and my quest for the tastiest maple syrup begins. Every time I pour rich, Grade A syrup over my French toast, waffles or pancakes, I should thank the Native Americans for this lovely sweetener. As they did with so many other useful foodstuffs, Native Americans taught the early settlers how to tap maple trees and create maple syrup and sugar. The process is fairly simple. Put in spout in a sugar or black maple tree. Attach a bucket to the spout. Collect the tree’s sap in this bucket and then boil it down so that the most of the water evaporates and the sap becomes thick and dark. Want maple sugar? Just keep boiling the sap until it becomes granulated like sugar. Until the …

Bowled over by Bisteeya

Published by Kathy Hunt

Lunch this week at the Moroccan restaurant Cafe Mogador reminded me of just how much I love this lively North African cuisine. Heady spices merge with fluffy grains, piquant fruits, and tender pulses, poultry and fish to create some of the most distinctive, delectable foods that I’ve ever eaten. Of the wonderful Moroccan offerings, the most unique has to be bisteeya. Considered by many to be Morocco’s most complex and elegant dish, this flaky, poultry-filled pastry remains beyond compare. Bisteeya has its roots in the Middle East. As early as the 7th century, Arab invaders introduced the concept of encasing spiced meats and nuts in dough. They also encouraged the use of paper-thin leaves of pastry, which Moroccans perfected and now refer to as warka. Warka is one of several ingredients that make bisteeya so memorable. To make warka, you press a ball of well-kneaded dough onto a hot, flat pan. As soon as the edges begin to dry, peel off the leaf and place it on a clean, flat surface. Cover it with a …

Fast Food the French Way

Published by Kathy Hunt

I was all set to chat about the imminent arrival of spring produce but then I stepped outside, saw the ice on the sidewalk, felt the chill in the air and decided that I needed something warmer and heartier today than leeks and asparagus. Looking down at my old, red, wool scarf that I had picked up years ago at the department store la Samaritaine, I started to think about France, which immediately made me think of crepes. I fell in love with crepes on a cold, late December evening in Paris. Famished as well as jet-lagged, I roamed the 1st arrondissement in search of something warm, filling and quick to eat. On a sex shop-lined street near our rented apartment on Rue Saint Denise Impasse I spotted a stout, middle-aged man standing on a street corner, cooking paper thin pancakes on an oversized, portable hot plate. After flipping them once, he filled his crepes with fresh, sliced bananas, the chocolate-hazelnut spread Nutella, strawberry preserves or a combination of the three. He then rolled up …

Clammin’ It Up with Clams

Published by Kathy Hunt

I spent much of this week on the West Coast, soaking up the sunshine and tasting the local specialties. For shellfish fans West Coast dining can be bliss. Home to petite Olympia oysters and gargantuan geoduck clams, it’s the perfect place for these delicacies. Among the bivalves – scallops, mussels, oysters and clams – I’m partial to clams. Sentimentality influences this for they were the first bivalves that I’d ever tasted. Dipped in batter, fried until crisp and golden and paired ketchup, they were the most exotic thing that eight-year-old me had ever eaten. Only two varieties of clams exist – hard-shell and soft-shell. Possessing a grayish shell less than two inches in diameter, the East Coast littleneck is the smallest hard-shell. Registering at two and a half-inches, the cherrystone comes next followed by the quahog or chowder clam. The quahog measures between three to six inches. Hard-shells such as Pacific littlenecks, Manilas, pismos and butter all hail from the West Coast. Contrary to their name, soft-shells possess slender, brittle shells that don’t close completely. …

What’s Cooking in Cambodia?

Published by Kathy Hunt

Ask that question 30 years ago and the answer would be far different than it is today. Ravaged by the Vietnam War and the reign of the Khmer Rouge, folks there were focused on basic survival, not on crafting their country’s cuisine. Yet, in spite of years of deprivation and starvation, Cambodians have persevered to create some of the most flavorful and freshest foods around. Last Friday I learned this firsthand by spending the day with a Khmer chef from Siem Reap, Cambodia’s Tara Angkor Hotel. Since Cambodian cooking focuses on fresh, local ingredients, we took a tuk tuk to the market to pick up the provisions for our meal. Lemongrass, galangal root, kaffir lime leaves, turmeric, onions, string beans and sweet potatoes all made their way into our basket. Along with garlic the first four ingredients would appear in both the curry chicken and amok trey, or freshwater fish amok, that we’d make. Pounded together into a paste, this aromatic mixture is known as kroeung. A distinctly Cambodian or Khmer flavoring, it’s used in …

Taste of Vietnam

Published by Kathy Hunt

For me Vietnam has never meant cuisine. Born at the end of the Vietnam – or, as they call it in Vietnam, “the American” – War, I’ve long been fascinated by that war and this Indochinese country. The food? It just didn’t captivate me the same way that the history and culture did. Yet, the more time I spend here, the more I grow to appreciate the background, flavors and techniques of Vietnamese cooking. Eat in Vietnam and you eat with my nemesis, chopsticks. I have 1,000 years of Chinese occupation to thank for the popularity of these tricky utensils. Along with chopsticks the Chinese also introduced rice cultivation, stir-frying, beef and bean curd to the Vietnamese. Without their influence there would be no pho (rice noodle soup), congee (creamy rice soup), banh cuon (rice rolls) or stir fried meals of any kind. Guess I can forgive them for the chopsticks. China wasn’t the only country to have an impact on Vietnamese cooking. Nearly a century of French rule resulted in affinities for beer, baguettes, …