Three summers ago, we bought a little house near the Rio Grande. You might recall the dump that it was. It’s still a work in progress (and I’m beginning to think we will never reach completion). But every now and then, I glimpse a few photos of years past and I see that we have indeed progressed—all new kitchen, new floors, new windows and trim.
But the most remarkable changes have taken place outside, in a fertile yard with peaches clinging to young branches, a pomegranate tree that’s nearly doubled in size, five productive varieties of grapes (one so laden with fruit, its bunches touch the ground—we can’t keep them up!), a shaded table for our outdoor dining, and two comfy hammocks strategically placed for alternate daytime/nighttime use.
And the herbs.
Three summers ago, I planted a small herb garden on the north side. I started with a little oregano, parsley, basil, thyme, and a single Egyptian Walking Onion. I knew nothing about this plant, Allium proliferum, except what the store tag told me: this onion would “walk” itself around my garden as it grew. I planted it, gave it some compost and water, and let it go.
Well, dear readers, this is what we have today: an enormous shrub of onions, expanding in every direction. Jerry thinks they’re aliens.
I love the way they form small bulblets atop a hearty stalk. New little onions sprout from the mother below. We sometimes get three generations of onions, all reaching toward the sky, until finally the stalk tumbles beneath so much weight. They’re “walking” now into the neighboring mint, oregano, chives, thyme and Texas tarragon. But it’s not a problem. If the onions walk where I don’t want them, I just pick them up and aim them elsewhere. Most fallen stalks “plant” their new onions atop the soil. It takes months, even years, for the newer onions to dig themselves in.
Both bulbs and stalks are edible, though the youngest growths have the sweetest flavor. The biggest stalks are hollow inside, big as bamboo, with a potency that renders them unpalatable.
But these little beauties are delicate enough to slice and eat raw, or cook as one would with shallots.
These right here are my favorites. Such tender baby green stalks, slowly walking the garden as they await my plucking and chopping and mixing with fresh greens, tomatoes, a bit of crushed young garlic, a touch of mustard, olive oil, paprika, s&p and—when I’m lucky—wild Alaskan salmon.
That is indeed a pretty white glass of milk surrounded by the lovely green leaves of cannabis sativa. Marijuana milk. Pot juice. Call it what you will, but it won’t make you high. Though hemp milk is made from the pulverized seeds of the same family of plants that addle the brain and alter consciousness, the seeds have no psychoactive power. The milk could, however, make you very healthy (it has the grassy, pasty taste of something that must be horribly good for you). Studies confirm the drink is a reliable source of protein, fatty acids, calcium and various vitamins. Plus, people don’t seem to be allergic to hemp milk in the way that many are to cow, soy or nut milk. It’s actually illegal to grow hemp (and thus the seeds) in the United States, but it’s legal to buy the milk. (Most American sellers import the seeds from Canada.)
This particular glass, however, I sipped in the cool shade of an open-air dining room in northern Vietnam. Remember Shu? She’s started Sapa’s first Hmong-owned homestay and restaurant in Lao Chai village near Sapa. Her little place is ringed by tall, bushy cannabis swaying in the breeze. Its wispy clumps of leaves almost reminded me of the desert willow growing in our New Mexico yard. Shu brought out a glass of the milk, which was earthy and herbal and contained little brown flecks of seed. She said the plant has long served as an important part of the Hmong diet, particularly because of the nutritious oil that emerges when the seeds are heated. “If you cook, you see a lot of oil coming,” Shu said. “In the past, people were very poor, and people used to cook like this for tofu.”
Just three eggs in an old blackened kettle, set to boil over an outdoor fire in Sophoon. When I first saw the kettle from the side, I figured water for tea. Then I peered over the top.
One day last week, with a hunger in our bellies, we set off for Bumrungrad. The hospital, a popular medical tourism destination, sponsored a celebration of healthy foods under the title, “World Famous Flavors of Thailand.” By its own accounts, some 500,000 foreign patient/tourists check into the hospital each year. (Medical tourism is a big, booming industry for Asia’s more developed cities.) The Bumrungrad PR department wants to get the word out: they don’t serve any old hospital food. They serve upscale, beautiful and healthy delights created by some of the city’s best restaurant chefs.
So off we went, to check out the goodies. What you see above are teensy-weensy laap burgers on a bun of sticky rice, topped with mint and chile.
The entire Bumrungrad lobby was stuffed with activity. Swarms of people ogling exquisite arrays of miniature foods. Big lenses, tiny phones—everywhere people jostled for a look and a sniff.
There were steamed rice crepes with herbs and minced chicken, shaped like little birds. Cucumbers carved into minuscule baskets; vegetables made to look like oysters holding healthy Thai herbal mousse. Rice crackers topped with green curried beef, strawberries wrapped in betel leaves.
Sausage burgers (not sure how healthy those were), salmon steak, and the most brilliant purple anchan flowers (butterfly pea) with coconut jelly and fresh fruit balls.
Job’s tears in coconut milk, little paper-wrapped cones of yam nua yang. Traditional Thai jingles played in the background, and a roving puppet kissed visitors on the cheek. So much food, so much commotion.
How did it all taste? I have no freakin’ idea. We left more than an hour later, tummies rumbling. All these artistic edibles, and not a single thing was available to eat. It was all for show until after 3 p.m., long after our appetites grew impatient. So we escaped to a Bangladeshi restaurant up the street and tanked up on curry.
Eretes sticticus larvae, sometimes served with laphet thote
Let’s return for a moment to laphet thote. Long before I researched this article, I’d eaten a lot of Burmese pickled tea leaves. The salad has all the salty-spicy-bitter-yumminess I love on a tropical plate. But I didn’t know about the beetles.
That is, not until I started digging into the details of all the ingredients that could possibly find their way into a batch of laphet thote. Someone somewhere along the line mentioned spirulina. I’d seen it everywhere in Burma. In the West, this cyanobacteria (a.k.a. blue-green algae) is sold as a dietary supplement, high in complete protein and full of vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids. In Asia, spirulina pops up in flavored chips as well as Mandalay beer, which is advertised as a proper way to keep a person young. (The addition of spirulina tastes, ummm, a bit green. And it effectively serves as a colonic scouring pad.) Spirulina proliferates in volcanic craters and natural lakes with high pH levels, particularly in the Twintaung area. And where you find spirulina, you find Eretes sticticus, an edible aquatic beetle. In some parts of Burma, this species is dried and eaten along with the nuts, beans and seeds that give laphet thote its distinctive crunchiness.
One day, I was chatting with the interpreter for one of my writing classes, and his eyes brightened as we discussed the critters sometimes found in laphet thote. The next morning, he came to class with a neatly typed information sheet on the beetle larva known as Twin-poe in Burmese. And here, you will find a description of the way in which these insects are captured using a plastic cup and two sticks of jaggery, beneath a full moon’s light.
For the record, I found nothing outlandish about the taste of these insects. Dry and crunchy, I barely noticed them among all the other goodies in my salad.
Every morning begins with coffee, of course, and usually fruit. But the centerpiece of any Costa Rican breakfast is the spotted rooster, better known as gallo pinto. Rice and beans. “Gallo” means rooster, “pinto” means spotted, and the name refers to the dappled appearance of the dish when the white rice mixes with red or black beans. It’s the so-called national dish of both Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and people in both countries can get more than a little uppity when it comes to the history of this food and the proper way in which to prepare it. According to an article that ran this summer in The SJO Post, Universidad de Costa Rica researcher Patricia Vega has found that the dish originated in the Costa Rican Caribbean region, where Tico and Nicaraguan banana plantation workers ate gallo pinto together.
Of course, my niece’s host mother makes the best gallo pinto. But it’s apparently difficult to get a recipe out of her.
I dreamed of ceviche before landing in Costa Rica. And when I finally dig into a bowl of it for lunch one day, I dream of what I would do to this dish, were I in charge. It comes with big fleshy chunks of fish (not sure the variety, but certainly fresh and tasty) in a boat of lime, cilantro and mild onion. A little too mild, a little too blah. I imagine a stronger onion, chile, a pinch of garlic, a sliced homegrown tomato….
Now, something of note: see that packet of ketchup? It’s part of the ubiquitous duo, ketchup and mayo, perhaps the Costa Rican salsa. As my niece says, locals slather it on everything. I’m mildly appalled until it accompanies a Tico taco I order one night: deep fried shrimp-filled tortilla, smothered in cabbage slices and that red-white salsa. And it’s good! So prevalent is mayo, I buy some as a souvenir for people I know will appreciate it. It’s flavored with lime, and it comes in a squeeze pouch!
Mostly, though, I’m fascinated by the colors, and the way they dazzle in the light. From juice dispensers…
…to the little market in Miramar, where my niece spent her time. I love the radiance; and I love the way food centers in this rainbow, painting the Costa Rican backdrop.
Funny, I was just wondering whatever happened to Molly Ringwald. And then, thanks to Yahoo, the answer appeared on my email page and I didn’t even have to search for it!
But this isn’t about Molly. This is about a little tidbit I picked up from the great wide world of the Internet(s). I read somewhere—no idea where—that a cook could turn chard stems into hummus. Just substitute the stems for the chickpeas and there you go.
Well, I just happened to have a bunch of beet and chard stems left after an evening with greens, so I decided to experiment on our friends. (The best friends, of course, always volunteer for experiments.) Here’s what I did:
I fried the stems with a little chopped garlic and olive oil until they were tender but not thoroughly cooked. Then I blitzed them in the food processor and added a bit more olive oil, a squeeze of lemon, a couple spoonfuls of tahini, a pinch of cumin, a pinch of chile powder, a pinch of salt and a pinch of black pepper. And this is what emerged. Look at that luscious color! Beets, shining through! A bit strange, as the utter pinkness felt misleading—as though this should be ice cream, not hummus. But I dipped a chip, tasted, and thought, “Huh! We might be on to something here!” When everyone else declared the dip a big success, I rejoiced. No more stems for the compost bin! We’ll eat to our delight.
Had haggis this morning for breakfast. We’re in Edinurgh, winding down our tour. I wanted to try the dish, as the first and only other time I’d eaten it was during an international festival in Oregon years ago. It was awful then—a chunky, rank pile of glop, straight from the stomach it was cooked in. I’m not sure it was prepared properly. But this morning’s haggis was served in a little round sausage patty sort of thing, and I could clearly see the appeal. I’m just not a huge fan of offal, no matter how or where it’s served. But this, at least, I could understand, especially when accompanied by grilled mushrooms, tomatoes, beans and potatoes.
We’ve seen some interesting sights here in Edinburgh, and learned a thing or two. We arrived the night before last, hoping to catch a drink in the bar before retiring to our room. Just one drink—but instead, we were swept into the storm of a surly old coot (half English, half Scots) who pounded the table and spoke with abandon. Things quickly devolved after he told the hotel/bar owner to “shut up.” That was our cue to leave the bar. From the lovely bay window of our room, we listened to a brawl in the foyer, the arrival of cops and their departure an hour later with the offender in cuffs. Somehow, our travels always lead us to the strangest events.
In all of that, however, we learned a bit of local lingo. In the US, we say “one for the road.” Apparently in Scotland, the phrase is “a b*#ch for the ditch.” One for the road surely puts you in the ditch, and one for the ditch leads to the gutter. So we were told, anyway.
You are currently browsing the archives for the Curious food category.
Welcome to my ramblings on food, drink, travel, politics, history and all the other avenues that converge in life. I’m a journalist, author and media trainer; and for five years I was Gourmet's Asia correspondent until the magazine's recent closure. I’m a bit obsessive in the kitchen. Much like my mother, I start thinking about dinner well before breakfast….
My books:
