What I learned today (Take Two)

I'm with Peter--if it's not made with Seville oranges, it's not real marmalade. I love orange marmalade but I've never attempted to make it myself.

-Paul W.

The chore, Paul, is removing the pips - there is a multitude of them - and cutting the peel in the thickness you prefer

And there is no people on Earth who enjoy talking about marmalade more than the English:
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/f ... althy-life

Read the letters. Some of them are great.

The chore, Paul, is removing the pips - there is a multitude of them - and cutting the peel in the thickness you prefer

The first time I bought Seville oranges it took me back to childhood in the 1960s. These days most varieties of eating oranges have few if any pips, lots of juice, and thin, easy to remove rinds. Back then there were no common seedless varieties and the oranges were hard to peel. Seville oranges haven't changed since the 1960s.

-Paul W.

New green to me, Tokyo bekana
https://www.edibleuprisingfarm.com/tokyo-bekana
They describe as like Napa, bok choy and lettuce, I would say more between lettuce and celtuce,
But fun to try something new.
Also, my fishmonger has had cod cheeks a couple of times recently (I'm more familiar with halibut cheeks or hamachi collar). More intense and succulent than cod flesh, very much enjoyed. First time they were the size of med-large sea scallops, Sunday a couple were the size of an entire scallop shell.

Shades of "kiwi fruit" vs. "Chinese gooseberries".

The one I shop at has a lot of Latin-x, Brazillian, and Asian clientele and has an exceptionally strong produce department. Among the items sold in this store but not the others is Seville (sour) oranges. I have a few Latina recipes that call for the juice of sour oranges.

-Paul W.

So where is this MB? I've been looking for a good source for Mexican, etc. ingredients and I haven't found one.

Dan, this is the Market Basket in the plaza at exit 8 off the Everett Turnpike in Nashua. I don't do Mexican so I can't speak to their coverage of those ingredients. They do regularly carry sour oranges and several of the Central American starchy tubers. They carry a good selection of Asian produce (Thai basil, curry leaves, bok choy and Shanghai tips, bitter melon, Thai and Indian eggplant, various Southeast Asian greens, fresh ginger, fresh galangal), but not everything all the time. Availability of any particular ingredient on any given day is unpredictable. I go to Saigon Market in Manchester NH when shopping for something I need there and now.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

New green to me, Tokyo bekana
https://www.edibleuprisingfarm.com/tokyo-bekana
They describe as like Napa, bok choy and lettuce, I would say more between lettuce and celtuce,
But fun to try something new.
Also, my fishmonger has had cod cheeks a couple of times recently (I'm more familiar with halibut cheeks or hamachi collar). More intense and succulent than cod flesh, very much enjoyed. First time they were the size of med-large sea scallops, Sunday a couple were the size of an entire scallop shell.

New green to me, too, though I hasten to add that the stores I shop at in Canada have more greens than I've gotten around to trying. This might be one of them. In general, if it's green and leafy I love it, so it's not like anything new is risky. It's just that my trips to same are infrequent, so I am usually hellbent on stocking up on things I'm missing vs. trying new (to me) ones.

I learned recently that the dried tulsi (holy basil) that I bought at an Indian grocery needs to be carefully washed before use. The last dish I used it in had some grit. I didn't have this problem with the dried holy basil from Thailand that I bought at importfood.com (alas, they don't carry it anymore).

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

So Kenji Alt-Lopez is now a Seattle resident and one of the only so-called celebrities I follow on IG. I wouldn't have even done that if I hadn't noticed that he moved to Seattle, and I wondered why. Figured I'd read through some of his things to figure that out and then dump it.

I never dumped it. Instead I've come to like and admire him enormously. He's a brave, kind, fair and curious soul, the kind who truly makes the world a better place. Many of us wish we could do better; but he DOES better. He recently opened up about his alcoholism and mentioned a significant milestone in days sober. Backfilling, I'm guessing this was behind his move to Seattle--selling his California restaurant/beer hall and cutting ties with his drinking buddies.

His new life in Seattle obviously agrees with him--his new book Wok was a big success and he and his wife had a new baby last year. He skis often and bikes all over town. He writes for the NY Times. His latest project--he always has at least one on the fire--is visiting every Teriyaki joint in Seattle. He gets the food, eats it pretty much on site--sometimes on the hood of his car or seat of his bike on sunny days, and films himself discussing the results.

So what I've learned so far is that Teriyaki is a very formulaic thing. I honestly didn't know--I've never been to a Teriyaki joint and I will admit to having a rather snobbish opinion about what I have thought is just meat with a heavy, overly sweet sauce. Every single visit of Kenji's so far has been: iceberg salad with a thin mayo-like dressing, steamed rice, fried gyozas and grilled/sliced chicken thighs. So while each meal has consisted of the same parts, the sameness puts the differences in preparation under a microscope. Slight variations in texture or sweetness and acidity become major. It's been kind of fascinating to watch. And I think I'd like the food.

There's a Teriyaki place down by the Harbor--I'll make a point of trying it out soon.

[Jenise]

So a few days ago we learned that Lays Lightly Salted Potato Chips are outstanding. 'Lightly salted' in my mind translates to 'barely salted', which I usually enjoy, but taste-wise these are a lot more than barely even if the "50% less sodium" claim is accurate. In fact, they're so satisfyingly seasoned we wondered how we could ever enjoy a chip with twice the amount of salt.

I used to buy Lays potato chips all the time. Then about 20 years ago I noticed the legend "NEW improved taste" in the upper corner of the bag. I thought to myself, "Uh-oh, this probably isn't good." And indeed it wasn't. They had increased the salt level to the point where I found the chips almost inedible. I switched to Utz.

My guess is that this "lightly salted" Lays is just a return to their old recipe.

BTW, Lays sells a whole line of flavored potato chips in Thailand. Importfood.com sells several of them here in the US. The Thai have a very different idea of how to flavor a potato chip than Westerners do.

-Paul W.

And there's internet flavors, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-__hMt0lKPc

It's a good thing that Middleswarth BBQ chips are a Pennsylvania regional brand or I'd weigh as much as a container ship.

I like the 'kettle-cooked' type of chip best.

So do I. Especially Grandma Utz's Kettle-Style chips. These are made in a manner very similar to the very first Utz potato chops. They're cut a bit thicker than usual and kettle-cooked in small batches using lard as opposed to a vegetable oil. Alas, our supermarket doesn't carry them anymore. I have to settle for the regular Utz kettle chips.

I find that the cooking fat makes a big difference in the taste of potato chips. The aforementioned lard-cooked chips are my very favorite. I also like chips made with sunflower or cottonseed oil. I detest canola--I don't use it in cooking and won't buy potato chips made with it.

-Paul W.

I like the 'kettle-cooked' type of chip best.

I also like kettle cooked, but I prefer the Middleswarth BBQ thin chips over their kettle-cooked version (although ATK ranked the kettle version #2 in a taste test). It's possible to buy tubs directly from the factory. I think the shipping cost was the same for either one or two boxes, so I convinced my receptionist to order a box, too. Yum. They're like heroin to me.

I detest canola--I don't use it in cooking and won't buy potato chips made with it. -Paul W.

I agree. I don't like fishy oil, either. I forgot once and made popcorn with canola oil. >gag< I suppose cats might like it, though.

FWIW, several years ago, I toured the Snyder's and Utz's plants in Pennsylvania. Interesting. I found the pretzel-making machine rather fascinating.

I recall reading an article years ago stating that the way Canola oil was processed made it unhealthy to consume. I can't remember the details but I never liked it anyway. My mother always used Wesson oil and I grew up with that so it was my go-to oil for a long time until olive oil became the "thing". I love Olio Santo, Lisbon Lemon infused, fresh garlic infused, and a few others. I also have Safflower and Sunflower oil in my oil drawer.

"Canola" is an acronym for "CANadian Oil Low Acid". Rapeseed is a plant in the genus Brassica (cabbages, mustard, etc.) grown widely for the oil expressed from its seeds. Rapeseed oil has high levels of erucic acid, as also does mustard oil. There were some studies in the 1970s that indicated that erucic acid might be toxic at the levels found in conventional rapeseed and mustard oils. This led to bans on the sale of such oils for use in cooking. Mustard oil sold in the US must be labeled "for external use only", although it's widely sold in Indian groceries (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more). Rapeseed oil is the most popular cooking oil in Sichuan. Rapeseed and mustard oils are typically heated to the smoking point (which breaks down the erucic acid) before food is added. It also tames some of the sinus-clearing pungency of mustard oil.

Cultivars of rapeseed that are very low in erucic acid were developed in Canada, and the resulting oil is called "canola" and is very widely used in processed foods. I don't care for either the aroma or the flavor of canola, myself.

-Paul W.

I learned that top round is a better cut of beef than flank steak for Sichuan dry-fried beef slivers. Flank steak is my go-to beef cut for Chinese stir-fries because it packs a lot of flavor and the even grain makes cross-the-grain slicing easy. But the supermarket had no flank steak when I went shopping. I chose top round as a substitute because it's lean and has a consistent, even grain. It is more tender than flank steak and thus easier to cut into the very thin slices and then shreds needed for this dish. The texture matches the dry-frying process better than flank steak as well. And it doesn't hurt that it costs only half as much per pound. Flank steak has become hideously expensive around here.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

This weekend I learned that something's gone very wrong in the world because the price of ground lamb has DOUBLED. For years it has routinely been $10/lb but when shopping on Friday, the first store I went to (Safeway chain) had none, the second had some but it was very fatty so pass, the 3rd store I went to wanted $15 for a 12 oz package/fresh/organic and it was the Food Co-op whose prices are generally higher and at the fourth market I went to: $20/lb--which of course is the same price as the Co-op's, but it was frozen not even fresh. What in the world has happened?

Last I looked, that hasn't happened here. Packaged product is $10/lb.

Walmart has a nice ground lamb for 6,88 a lb here and in other places at $7 and up to $10. Safeway has Open Nature gr, lamb 10.99.

[Jenise]

Karen, really? I absolutely despise Walmart but I'm going to check it out. Thanks!