Culminating this chapter of my culinary diary is a collection of not one, but three bakery projects that elevated my repertoire in a colorful fashion. And they all have one thing in common: they’re very sweet! I’ll admit that I fostered a sweet tooth way back when, and among the first of culinary projects that I wanted to accomplish was a plethora of bakery treasures that were bad for you. That’s not to say I didn’t care about my health, which I certainly did, but in my mind every homemade dish is better, by default, than whatever you’ll buy in the freezer section or restaurant. Creative control is the key aspect of baking that makes it truly unique, for one baker might choose four teaspoons whilst I might choose three. The flavors will be different and attributable to the bakers who composed them. I find this fact about culinary art to be fascinating – that’s why it’s considered art. The first of my baking projects started with an enigmatic organism called yeast. For those of you who don’t know (which is no one), yeast is a fungus that allows bread to rise. But it’s much more than that. Yeast develops sugars, acids, and alcohols as byproducts as it ferments, providing layers of flavor to breads and bread-like pastries. Such was the case on July 22, 2016, when I conjured the inspiration to make doughnuts at one o’clock in the morning. The dense and sweet dough featured a variety of ingredients that I no longer consume: eggs, butter, flour, milk, sugar, salt, and yeast. A very dense and milky dough, it was the perfect base for beautifully bready doughnuts to be composed on the morning of July 23. The reason I prepared the dough the night prior was so that it could ferment overnight in the fridge. This is where some of the signature layers of flavor come from – fermentation. The next morning, maybe at 11am, I took to a refreshing start and prepared grits and toast for a light breakfast. Yes, I was finally starting to attach myself to Southern traditions (though, is Kentucky really that Northern? Depends on who you ask.). Afterwards, the doughnut dough was removed from the fridge to warm up for about one and a half hours. At this point, the dough inflated significantly, so I had to deflate and form doughnut holes. Again, these had to rise a few more hours so that they could get very large and puffy. This all seems smooth and easy, right? It is. What’s more a pain in the ass is the frying process. If you didn’t know, most commercial doughnuts are fried in cheap, disgusting oil (that’s why I never get them anywhere). To imitate the deep-frying process, I filled a pot up with shortening in place of canola or vegetable oil (though, depending on the brand of shortening you choose, it’s not much better), and then dropped the donut holes in one at a time, oh so delicately. They fry fast, so keep an eye out! A good rule of thumb is that you know the doughnuts are done once the crust turns a lovely golden brown. The finished (and cooled) doughnuts featured a nutmeg-spiced glaze, which got everywhere might I add. Still, this was such a fun baking project that I might never do again (because oil is a mess). With such fun aspirations, and quite the influx of free time since my life was very boring in July of 2016, I felt it appropriate to try some other neat baking endeavors. After all, baking is easy and accessible in this day – almost anything you could possibly want is within arm’s reach (well, maybe driving distance). Realizing this, I went on a baking spree the next couple days! On July 26, 2016, before making the tomato paninis, I prepared raspberry hand pies with leftover raspberries. This is an interesting story, which started with pie crust. Pie crust can go a variety of ways, but either way you choose is simple, contrary to popular belief. Take cold butter cubes and use your fingers to meld them into your flour mixture. What you’ll end up with is a tough, flaky dough that you can push together into a pie plate to form your dough… except we didn’t do that here. Our raspberry filling was comprised of raspberries, corn starch (which kept the raspberries from oozing everywhere), freshly grated orange zest, cinnamon, vanilla extract (my homemade extract, which you can read about here), and maple syrup. Dividing the pie dough into circles using a cup, I ended with sixteen circles (that’s eight pies). Placing a few raspberries in the center of each, I sandwiched the filling and used a fork to knit the signature edges. Finally, I washed the pies with egg wash and baked them until delicious. A decorative orange glaze finished these jewels off, and the rest of my day was satisfactory knowing that I’d crafted an elegant pastry project. Before I got burnt out from successive baking projects, I devised a plan to shift my cooking focus to Mediterranean cuisine. This is where I naturally began my culinary diary – organizing my cooking endeavors into batches that had a specific theme, so as to diversify and structure my cooking. Doing this meant that I’d always have a reliable cooking schedule and a more manageable budget (since I wanted my dishes to exhibit similar themes throughout each “batch,” as I called them). Up until this point, my cooking was hardly structured. However, especially following this bakery overload, I knew that my cooking wouldn’t cease anytime soon. Here I am, almost two years later, telling you this story twenty-five chapters ahead of time. Yeah, there’s a lot to get through, but I can’t wait to share my whole story with you over the next couple years. The things I’ve learned from food have influenced my everyday life, as I’m sure you have seen already. Cheers to change! To close out this chapter of my culinary diary, enjoy a blurry photo of my final unplanned bakery project: a perfectly baked and unhealthy pecan pie – signature of American cuisine:
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Let’s talk about yoga for just a moment. I’ve often found myself victim of proclaiming that I participate in yoga, when in reality I’ll do some morning stretches and call it yoga. The truth about yoga, as I’ve learned over the years, is that the way in which you orient your body and mind is the distinguishing factor between stretching and yoga. Two months ago, I was offered an exquisite opportunity to participate in a morning yoga class at the beach with a plethora of old folk (hey, I’m an old folk at heart). Appreciating the connection with nature and how we view our lives in the present, with the sound of the ocean waves in the background, is something that I wish I’d done more in the past. Taking just an hour to connect deep within ourselves does so much in shaping our mindset for the day going forward. As an intrinsically introverted individual, I find this fact beautiful, hence why my appreciation and participation in yoga has dramatically increased over the past several years. I want to backtrack to a specific date – July 26, 2016 – when I first engaged in a meaningful yoga session within the constructs of my own home. I found a CD lodged within my mess of random shit and chose to watch it one morning; it was an AM Yoga lesson. While I’m no proponent that digital teaching is the way to go for yoga, it was certainly better than doing nothing. The AM session culminated with what I still believe is the most powerful aspect of yoga – the magic of mouna (Sanskrit for “silence”). When we take a metaphysical approach to our thought process and observe how we tackle communication and the world around us, we resonate within ourselves a deeper understanding of our behavior and its relevance in our day-to-day lives. One might relate this experience to ascending into the astral plane; by relaxing our body such that we distance our mind from the physical world around us, we focus on the most fundamental aspects of existence in a state of appreciation. My story culminates with an epiphany I had regarding motivations: people do shit because of the promise of what is to come, whether consciously or unconsciously. Often, we get so lost focusing on a slate of false promises that we lose sight of the real choices right in front of us. I’m guilty of this; back in 2016, all I could think about was going to New York or jumping ship. Yoga has helped me to rebalance my aspirations and contentment with the present, for there is no journey to the former without the latter. ![]() A year later, on July 20, 2017, I met an enigmatic woman at a park who claimed to be a prophet – a false prophet, maybe, but a precog nonetheless. Curious, I chose to listen and hear what she had to say. Claiming that my future would be endowed with wealth and that a certain someone (baring a name that matches nobody I currently know) will play a significant role in my life, I was smartly skeptical but keen on asking questions. Our conversations lasted several hours and ended with an acute observation about how the present and future coincide: everything we want is within arm’s reach. It’s the decisions that hold us back. Such was a clever nod back to July 26, 2016, a day in which I had no plan, insisting on impulse rather than disincentives. I engaged in my first solo yoga outing, fixed my violin, baked some pies for myself, and made roasted tomato mozzarella paninis (just like the ones at Starbucks). I didn’t plan for any of that, yet it ended up being a good day. It got me thinking about how we frame our lives around the arbitrary schedules we structure. Why not just do things? Why do we waste so much time thinking about them? I’ve asked these same questions throughout every endeavor, the most recent being my decision to initiate an online presence. Why did I wait until 2016? I’ve had shit to say since my eventful childhood. Yet, I still have no answer to that question. Over the past few years, I’ve kept a planner which has helped me do more things I’ve wanted to do, but I’m still somewhat fragmented about the balances we make to sustain ourselves. Structure is arguably the antagonist to our creative potential. At least I have my culinary diary, where I can talk about these topics and mold them within the milieu of food. Perhaps, this diary is hardly even about food, as you can clearly tell by this entry. Rather, food represents a contextual landscape about culture, ourselves, and the world around us. Regarding tomato mozzarella paninis, I took those straight from Starbucks. The story I told with those paninis was that all things can be appreciated, even mass-produced food items (because they inspire homemade renditions of the same thing). Personally, I don’t even like Starbucks’s version of that panini. That’s why I made my own, and they were much better. You see, the world is but a collage of ideas. What we decide in the present moment dictates how that those ideas manifest in our actions – just like yoga. Well damn, that was a mouthful. And indeed, this was a heavier breakfast than the oatmeal and bagels I’d accustomed myself to. But it was not in vain, for my adventures exploring Paula Deen’s wondrous perspective on breakfast were bountifully hearty (pun?). A lot of people shun me for referring to myself as a southerner despite being from northern Kentucky. Ironically, the same has happened when I refer to myself as a northerner. It’s never fun to discuss my origins. Nonetheless, because I now live in Florida, and have for several years, I felt it justified to consider myself well-acquainted with the Southern lifestyle, at least regarding food. Such was tested on July 25, 2016, when I put together a diverse breakfast feast akin to those you might find in family-owned breakfast cafes from the 80s. Paula Deen had a lovely inspiring twist to offer the Southern culinary style, however, as she took all the things associated with Southern breakfast and meshed them into a single baked dish. Let’s talk about what that meant: imagine diced potatoes and grits topped with intact sunny-side-up eggs baked to a crisp, served with a side of corn porridge and, at least for me, a cup of good quality single-origin coffee. That’s basically how my morning went. But there were certainly options available. For example, most traditionalists might consider adding ham, while others would scoff at the lack of hot sauce or ketchup inclusions. Some may say that biscuits and gravy are a necessity! Others may yell at me because I was too lazy to prepare everything separately. Regardless of which box you fall into, the great thing about Southern food is how diverse it is. For example, go to New Orleans and you’ll find the Cajun influence in everything, including breakfast. I’d like to talk about my corn porridge for a moment, because this may seem like a rather odd choice for breakfast to many folks (not to my Southern comrades). At the time, I didn’t have cornmeal, which was initially what the recipe called for. What did I do? The one thing I’ve so far learned from cooking: improvisation. Grits were my alternative since that is corn, so I cooked those the same way I would traditional grits (or, I don’t know, oatmeal). Contrasting with the savory elements of my Southern baked jambalaya, I added cinnamon, vanilla, and brown sugar to the grits, making for a sweeter addition to the breakfast menu. Once the grits reached a smooth consistency, I was able to comfortably mash them into a porridge – you’d never even know I used grits instead of cornmeal. I served the full breakfast with plain bagels (yeah, I didn’t make those) to some family members, who are all from the North. To them, this dish made their choices easier – why choose a single Southern breakfast when you can have them all in one? Well, you could argue that I did skip out on the biscuits and gravy, but hey – there’s a time and place for everything. Besides, I was in a time crunch the day I made this. You might say this was another motivator in my choices – it’s a quick and easy dish that limits the number of pots and pans you must use. And for us Southerners, quick and easy is attractive. What was I in a time crunch for, you ask? Well since you asked, I’ll tell you. Recently, I discussed a writing project I worked on regarding Common Core State Standards and the current state of the education system, specifically arguing the reasons I dislike it and think it is an atrocity to our youth. I finished that project after my Southern breakfast feast – you could say it was a celebratory breakfast. Here, I’ll show you the general consensus of the persuasive paper I wrote (subtext: buy into my philosophy): Agree or disagree? Here is the US on the Global Competitiveness Index pillar of education: I’m open for a collaborative discussion on this topic. As someone who dealt with the effects of Common Core back in high school, I’m shocked at how little I learned in school compared to what I learned after graduating. That’s not how it’s supposed to work. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter. Come on. Tell me that I’m not the only person who has ever taken a recipe off a can and made it into something. Everyone starts somewhere, right? In my case, however, I didn’t start here. In truth, beyond all recipe hunting online, it was the pumpkin puree can that featured the ideal recipe for me. How selfish am I that I’d take that over an authentic and delicious actual pie recipe, right? Wrong. Can recipes can be real too… right (see what I did there)? Can’t they? Even if they are not, perhaps the least they could do is provide reconciliation to those of us incapable of research and in desperation of a last-minute birthday gift. Wait, that is exactly what this was. So, backtrack to July 18, 2016. This was almost two years ago. This was a birthday that I often didn’t celebrate rather bombastically. In fact, for the two years prior (2014, 2015), I showed no interest at all and continued with my life. Well, I think I may have celebrated it, just on the wrong day. But not this time! No, I had intentions on crafting an exquisite pie recipe that I knew would just be enamored and prized. That’s when I ran out of time and opted to craft the corporate-mandated formulaic pumpkin pie recipe that existed on the back label of the can I picked up at the store. Nothing wrong with that, right? At least it came from my heart… and barely my paycheck. There’s a first time for everything, and to be honest I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with showing no creativity at all when it comes to cooking/baking, because some people have difficulty finding creativity in that sort of thing. And that’s perfectly fine; I mean, everyone has their own methods of application. While I consider myself relatively adept at applying creativity through cooking (which, let’s be honest, is a rather broad playing field), I think there is equally something to be said about taking a foundational recipe and basing your creative decisions off that. By doing this, you step outside of your own head and into someone else’s. Someone created the can recipe, right? It was somebody’s idea. And that is something worth appreciating. On the other hand, I might just be finding excuses for why I didn’t take time to prepare an original pumpkin pie… I even just bought the crust from the freezer aisle. Here’s the can recipe: ¾ cup sugar ½ tsp salt 1 tsp ground cinnamon ½ tsp ground ginger ¼ tsp ground cloves 2 large eggs 1 can (15 oz.) Libby’s 100% pure pumpkin (oops, now you know what can that I used) 1 can (12 fl. Oz.) evaporated milk 1 unbaked 9-inch deep-dish pie shell And there you have it… an unoriginal recipe. But that’s not to say that you can’t make it your own; after all, it was my idea of a birthday celebration. Think of it as a framework. Once you understand how to make pumpkin pie, then you can customize it however you want! There is this notion that you must learn the rules before you break them, and I don’t uphold this philosophy in all contexts. However, since baking is a basic chemistry, the rules are important. This recipe outlines the rules. Have fun with this foundational recipe and I look forward to your own customizations! Someone had to be let go on July 17, 2016… let go home early, that is. And that someone was me! Oh, what was I to do with the extra few hours of my life?! Oh, how perfect the day was that I hadn’t crammed myself into a corner with piles on piles of paperwork and taxes! Oh, what a beautiful day it was outside that I caught the best sunlight of the day, enough that I admired taking a walk… to my car to go home. I was given several extra hours on this day that I otherwise would have spent at work, and at first, I didn’t know what I was to do! But then it became clear: a timely culinary preparation of Italian culture that marries together a rather exotic blend of ingredients. I think that there is a misconception about tiramisu in that it is a very difficult dish to prepare. However, in my experience, the dish itself is not difficult. It just takes a bit of time – something we all have but never allow. That’s why I took the opportunity to make this dish today; after all, how often do you get let home early (unless your boss is planning to let you go)? This is not the delicate harmony of the experience, though, because the backbone of this dish rests in the ladyfingers, not the colorful layers of which the ladyfingers are apart. Surely, I could have bought ladyfingers at the store, except that I could not find them. Rather than waste time trying to derive a substitute or some other half-assed alternative, I chose the time-consuming method of preparing them myself. Go me, right? A+ for effort! The ladyfinger baking incited a new type of baking experience. Have you ever wondered where the angel-food-cake-like texture of certain desserts comes from? Or perhaps, a meringue? The chemistry of this design involves an understanding of a fanciful baking technique that I learned for the first time with this dish: whipping and folding. First, I had to separate egg yolks from egg whites, which I did by cracking the egg in two and dancing the yolk back in forth between the two halves. The egg white separated naturally from here. Once the egg whites were isolated, I had to whip the hell out of them until a cloud was created. This cloud is no simple feat; you must whip those whites until they don’t move – that is, until you can turn the bowl upside-down without the cloud drooping. You want it to form peaks when you release the whisk. Now, this is easy to do if you have an electric mixer… but I did not have that at my disposal. By hand, this project was a workout. Thankfully, though, I learned from my mistakes trying to make coconut macaroons and maintained a froth that was perfectly stagnant. But this is only the first step. Once you create the perfect froth, you must fold – not mix – the froth into your batter. This means you take a rubber spatula or a big ass spoon and gently “roll” the batter, as though you were bringing the bottom to the top and vice versa. If you mix it, you risk losing those air bubbles and ergo the spongey texture that the meringue guarantees. Delicacy is the key to success here, because negligence will yield a horribly incomplete and runny batch of ladyfingers. And you don’t want that, do you? A good thing to remember about this process of folding the whites with the batter: there isn’t too much froth. It may look like that at first, and perhaps you could get away leaving a bit out. But keep folding it in until it’s fully incorporated, and you’ll see that the froth measurements were not misplaced. Be wary, however, because folding too much will cause the froth stress, and it will lose its cloudy texture. Oh, how much meringue resembles a glass vase. You can see how my ladyfingers bulged just a bit, but overall the shape was maintained. And, they were beautifully spongey (because the eggs were not disturbed, they did not separate during baking)! The biggest learning experience with these was learning from mistakes – the mistakes being my coconut macaroons back from chapter one which did not quite turn out as planned. After these were cooled, it was time to put together my tiramisu, which is not a baking delicacy believe it or not. For this dish, I started by separating eggs once more, engaging in the same beating and folding process as before. But this time, the mixture was folded into a colorful blend of ingredients: mascarpone cheese, sugar, brandy (a decent amount), and only a tablespoon of cold espresso, all done over top of boiling water so that the sugar could dissolve. You can see that this dish brings alcohol and coffee together in an authentic way, as these two items might otherwise be thought of as beverage topics and nothing more. About alcohol, I am not much of a drinker. However, I value what it adds to dishes when used correctly. For example, cooking with red wine unlocks beautiful flavor nuances that would otherwise be left undiscovered. And now today, I’m using brandy to add an earthy layer of flavor to a dessert preparation (which complements the notes of coffee rather eloquently). Overlooking the alcohol part of alcohol, every type of alcohol or alcohol-based beverage offers something different to the culinary table in ways that most ingredients could not, because you get acidity, flavor, and body characteristics that can enhance dishes in more ways than one. Flavor is the key characteristic in this case; with brandy being a rather robust spirit with deep flavors that can augment most desserts. With coffee and cocoa both being present in this dish, you can surely see the possibilities of alcohol when considered beyond the after-dinner digestif window. Completing this dish was a linear process; I ripped the fingers apart and dipped them in the cup of espresso that I had previously prepared, layered them in a dish, and piled the egg/cheese/brandy/coffee mixture on top. Cocoa powder was sprinkled generously across the top, and the finished concoction rested in the fridge for hours to solidify. Yes, this dish is made with raw egg. But never fear! Raw egg is not inherently unhealthy. The key is to ensure that your eggs are Grade A or AA, coming from reliable sources and not infested with pesticides and other weird shit. Then it’s just a waiting game. Go for a walk or the archery range or something. Give your tiramisu four to six hours. What did I do for that time? Well, for one thing, I watched the following TED talk: While this TED talk may not have much relevance to this post from a superficial perspective, consider the implications of this talk. What would we be as a society if we based our opinions of others off abstract information like culture, societal norms, ethnicity, age, sex, and what have you? Such could be applied for the mindset of making this dish. You may order this dish from a restaurant and think that it’s a luxurious and authentic Italian dessert, which it is, but making the dish requires you to think about your ingredients in new ways. Brandy and coffee in a dessert? Raw eggs? Mascarpone cheese, which I’ve never even heard of? Think of your familiarity like a circle that expands over time. The more you open yourself up to, the bigger that comfort circle gets. And the bigger it gets, the more prepared you will be for the challenges of life. You start life and are taught the things that you are thought will be required of you, but eventually you must make choices yourself about what you will become. You decide how big your comfort circle gets. There comes a time when all consumers must become producers. The notion of the food chain suggests that there must be a balance, because otherwise anything and everything would be extinct. Furthermore, there would be no food chain unless there was balance among all parties. The case that I’m referring to is somewhat different from that of evolution. No, I’m referring to how we take what we learn from society and create new molds from that knowledge. In other words, think about the food that you order at the restaurant. It’s great, right? Now think about how much you pay for that food. Why spend all your earnings on survival when you are perfectly capable of sustaining yourself? My belief that everyone should know how to cook is more than a belief; it’s a principle of sustainability. If you can’t sustain yourself, then you are a consumer of society – not a producer. You are automatically at the bottom of the food chain. I’ve reflected in prior entries about why I feel that understanding the world in which we live is integral to knowing how to survive within in from an economical standpoint, but I’ve not yet discussed this balance of consumer-producer that is equally imperative to a functioning world. If there are no consumers, then there are no producers, and vice versa. The two depend on each other; think of it like supply and demand. Consumer demands determine what the producers supply. However, there is a limit to how much that supply-demand scale can fall outside equilibrium. If it becomes too far unbalanced, the system will fall apart, and neither will be physically able to sustain the other. How does this relate to today’s entry? Well, consider now the fast food that you buy; it’s a great illustration of this framework. You pay $4 for a breakfast sandwich every day. That’s $28 per week that you spend on breakfast sandwiches alone. Now think about the coffee you buy on top of that – an extra $15-30 per week depending on how much you drink. Now, you’re budgeting around $50 per week on breakfast. That is the economical equivalent of your demand, which requires sufficient supply. But now multiply that by the millions who demand the same. Do you see how the integrity of economical balance is threatened? Look at how far the US is already in debt – it comes back to supply and demand (the result being industrialization). Most of us have become accustomed to the rushed style of living that almost dictates the kind of demand outlined above. Recognize however that this “dictation” is only marketing. After all, what are businesses concerned with? Your needs or their profits? And with the $50 per week you spend on breakfast, you are giving into the fallacy that your demand is required because of a lifestyle that you chose. Never forget that your life, when broken down, is made up of choices and nothing else. You can choose to spend $50 a week on breakfast, or you can break from that fallacy and discover better uses for your money and time. In the same way, supply and demand is a system based on choices. It’s just that in contemporary society, those choices often appear forced because of corporate marketing. That is why I am writing this blog – to illustrate the big picture with both a consumer and producer perspective. You can’t understand the world unless you have all the perspectives. But you’ll never get all the perspectives, so your understanding of the world will always be limited. Therefore, keeping your mind open is vital to balance; if everyone thought the same way, no progress would be made. Hence, the producer-consumer balance would be threatened. Acknowledging this perspective for me meant taking a step back and recreating one of the most popular breakfast sandwiches at the famous Seattle-based coffeehouse chain known as Starbucks: the bacon gouda sandwich. I’m going to put this very simply: there is nothing special about this sandwich, and it is not worth the $4 you pay for it. So why do you pay it? Do you feel that you have no other choice because of your busy schedule? Let me offer you a new approach to that mindset. Start by clearing your mind. Now, think about what you are good at. What do you do for a living? Are you a doctor or a marketer? Perhaps you are into real estate. Maybe you’re an actor. Whatever you are and whatever you like, it doesn’t matter. Why? Because everyone does the same things. We all eat, sleep, use the restroom, breathe, and drink (some of us more than others). Think about the time you spend doing the things that are necessary for your survival. Statistically, most countries get anywhere between six and a half to nine hours of sleep every night. That’s anywhere from one-fourth to one-third of your entire life. Eating and other necessary things probably take up another significant fraction. Hence, the time you spend working and, well, conscious, is already limited to begin with. But back to the above, how you spend that time rests in your choices. Your productivity is already biologically limited; why do we try so hard to combat that? Take a moment, consider what I’ve just said, and now think about the daily routine that you set for yourself. Do you ever give yourself time? Or do you cram that time as much as you can, consciously aware of the choices that ergo require you to spend so much money on fast food? I am by no means suggesting that business is an excuse for giving into the system’s supply, but the implications I am outlining here is that you always have choices, whether you realize it or not. If you gave yourself thirty minutes one morning at the beginning of each week (or, even better, the weekend!), you could easily prepare breakfast for yourself for the entire week. And make your own coffee at home; you waste no time at all if you prepare your coffee while you get ready. That’s $50 you save right there, not to mention how much better it is for both your body and your wellbeing. Time management is certainly imperative to success in this world; think about cooking as part of that time management, not a hobby. That’s how I fit it in. I always consider cooking a necessary part of my schedule – not free time – and that allows me to ensure that I always have food ready for myself. In fact, this mindset is how I can do anything and everything that I want. I treat it like work, and I encourage you to do the same. Thinking about your entire life in this way removes the distinction of work and play; it instead composes a balance based only on priorities without disrupting your routine (because it is your routine). To bring this entry full circle, stop thinking about how you can make the world a better place. Think about how you can make your world a better place. Balance your consumption with your production. When it comes to food, my suggestion would be not to rely on the world to feed you. Prices will only continue to rise (again, because of supply/demand) and it will never improve you or your state of being. Food budgeting is such an overlooked routine, due in part because of the choices that you feel you do not have. My strategy is to treat my cooking as necessary. I keep a daily planner, and the first thing that goes in is my work schedule. The second thing that goes in is my cooking schedule. From there, I fill the gaps with everything else. Planning your days is so simple; but you must be willing to renew your thought process. Stop letting the world make decisions for you. Remember, you are your own person! Everyone is both a consumer and producer but knowing where to balance the two is dependent on your openness to change. I made that change long ago when I started cooking. And I can attest today how it has positively impacted my own life. I am healthier, more in control of my life, less dependent on others, and therefore more productive because I am happier on my own. Additionally, I no longer order breakfast sandwiches from Starbucks, because in thirty minutes I can make six of them. That saves me a lot of money, which adds to my satisfaction. This is the message that I intend to share with you. Give your life the potential it deserves! Take some extra breaths and have a good day. Are you one of those people who admires the notion of adding peanut butter to anything and everything? Yeah, so am I. Sometimes, I do like to switch things up and do almond butter or some other type of nut butter (ever tried sunflower seed butter?). Today, though, I want to share an anecdote on how I composed a dish out of nut butter. “What?!” you’re chanting. Peanut butter is a great and easy way to add both protein and comfort to any dish, whether sweet or savory. But in my limited experience, it’s difficult to sell on its own. And to many, it may seem like a basic additive not worth including in an otherwise exotic list of inclusions. Though peanut butter makes itself useful in cooking with many Thai dishes, there is much more that peanut butter can be. The title of this entry is purposeful, because I’ll not only show you an innovative way to present nut butter, but I’m going to show you how to make it. Peanut butter, almond butter, cashew butter… sunflower seed butter with pumpkin seeds and oats – you name it. It’s the easiest thing in the world because all you need is a blender and, well, your nut/seed of choice. Throw them in the blender with some salt and blend the hell out of them. You may have to bend over backwards every now and then to keep the nut paste off the edges; give the mixture ten minutes or so and voila. Ten minutes will give you smooth butter, but even chunky/rough butter takes no longer than a couple minutes to blend. All you’re looking for is texture. Nut butter is just nuts. Those few extra ingredients added in most commercial nut butters exist because they’re commercial. You may choose to add salt or (for that matter) anything you want, but nut butter is no secret art. Making it presentable, however, is more so an artistic challenge. My nut butter of choice: cashew and almond blend. I could have paid ten dollars plus for it at the grocery store, or I could blend the nuts myself and save a quantifiable amount of money (hint: I chose the latter). I also did not want a smooth butter for this recipe. Instead, I wanted something closer to a rough dough. Ideally, the nut butter would not be rough, but it would not be too smooth to hold itself up. Thankfully, because I didn’t leave it in the blender too long, the oils didn’t fully emerge (hence the thicker and rougher texture). While I could have left this paste as is for use in sandwiches and wherever else one might use nut butter, my goal today was different. Adding such ingredients as vanilla bean seeds, honey, and almond extract, I prepared the nut butter for a delicious snack to be served. Meet strawberry baby cakes… except that mine got all f’ed up. You’ll find many different recipes depending on where you look, but my version is made straight from the nuts, not their nut flour counterparts. In this way, nut butter plays a role more significant than the annoying best friend. It’s the foundation for this dish – the lead who stands out from an otherwise ordinary cast. What makes it unique is that this standout dish does not rely on foundational elements to support it. It’s the only element, which means that it must support itself. The show must go on! The strawberries were doused in lemon juice in honey – a delectable balance of sweet and sour – giving the baby cakes a sweet edge. I could have just as easily prepared a savory snack from this. By choosing some other topping (like, I don’t know, roasted asparagus or chili peppers stuffed with cream cheese) and omitting the honey, this would have been a hearty snack for lunchtime. You can see how versatile nut butter can be in this area. It’s a remarkable and playful ingredient, often overlooked in lieu of its rather unfortunate abuse for temporary satisfaction. That’s all I have for this entry. A new experience with a familiar ingredient is just as exotic as a new ingredient if you ask me. Think about the fundamental idea of that: it’s not the ingredient that’s new. It’s what you do with it that renews your cooking experience. I’ve used lots of unique ingredients in my day, but there are many that don’t stand out and offer very little on their own. One clear example is canned bamboo shoots – a crunchy inclusion to curries but otherwise boring on their own. Looking at your ingredients from a fresh perspective independent of Western standards will allow you to fully appreciate and realize the creative potential that you possess. Never lose sight of that.
If you’ve never heard of curry before, do not be alarmed or ashamed. I was there once, too. Specifically, it was on July 14, 2016, that I cooked my first curry. But what is curry? Well, that depends entirely on what part of the world you are coming from. In Thai cuisine, for example, curry is a sauce-based dish, prepared with complex arrangements of herbs and pastes. Vegetables and some protein base (shrimp or tofu are usually my preferred choices) provide a base for the sauce. In India, curry can be thick and saucy, or it can be dry and more like a stir-fry. In either case, Indian curries are far more spice-based, contrary to Thai curries which rely much on fresh pastes and aromatic herbs. Outside those two cuisines (wherein curry is most popular and well-known), many other Asian cultures feature variations and definitions of curry that fall somewhere in-between spice-based and paste-based. In this post, I’ll share the first time I prepared one such curry, which fell somewhere in-between. You can assume that this curry was not authentic. You’d be accurate. The dish that I prepared was called baingan bharta – an Indian stir-fry curry featuring eggplants as the base. My limited knowledge of Indian cuisine meant that I did not own many of the authentic Indian ingredients that make up traditional dishes, i.e. curry leaves. I didn’t even know that curry leaves existed. This, however, did not stop me from using what I had to prepare a delicious curry, albeit one that had been altered to suit contemporary Western kitchens like mine. I was excited to try something new! Considering especially that my only prior use for eggplant was in a lasagna, curry would certainly be a new application for ingredients that may superficially seem limited. For this, I baked the eggplant tender while taking a short shopping trip for many of the upcoming entries (including this one). Some Western ingredients that are not Indian at all made their way into this dish, because recall that neither my kitchen nor supermarkets (Wal-Mart, Publix) supply ingredients that would be required for authentic Indian dishes. This meant that such herbs as thyme and oregano were added. Curry powder was also a principal spice added, but this powder is not authentic at all. In fact, curry powder as you may be familiar with in supermarkets is a Western invention. It does not reflect any Indian dish or ingredient at all, made up mostly of turmeric and dried onions and garlic. Speaking of which, onions, garlic, and ginger are all very traditional in Indian cuisine, but for the ginger I used a pre-packaged ginger paste which blended better than trying to mince a fresh piece of ginger root (which can be a pain in the ass if you’ve never done it before). Whole cumin seeds are a staple in Indian kitchens (and most international kitchens, for that matter), and they provided the signature flavor of this dish. Somewhat smoky, but very robust, cumin is a powerful spice that can be easily overdone if not controlled. That’s why I used whole seeds instead of the powder – it’s less pungent that way and doesn’t coat the entire dish. By using seeds, I kept the cumin controlled as it melded with the other flavors of the dish. To finish the dish, I diced the eggplant and tossed it into my spice mix, now beautifully aromatic with its complex assortment, and added plain Greek yogurt with tomatoes to create a tomato sauce around my spice mix. Yogurt and coconut milk are the two most common choices for liquefying curry dishes, but at the time I knew not of canned coconut milk. Indeed, the international aisle of most supermarket chains gives you the tools necessary for dishes like this. One such tool, which I picked up impulsively, was canned bamboo shoots. These are common additives to stir-fries and curries not because they add any flavor. Rather, their crunchy texture gives the dish some depth and character. Because these were canned, all I had to do was rinse and toss them in. Finally, I salted the dish and topped it with fresh cilantro – a necessary garnish to balance the deep spicy flavors present in this dinner. I prepared white rice and steamed broccoli to accompany the curry and enjoyed a new experience that highlighted exactly why I’ve come to love cooking. Curry is a lost art – that’s the main takeaway that I took from this dish. It allows you to experiment with ingredients and combinations that you’ve never done before. With its foundation as an ethnic staple, you can probably curry almost anything without worry of failure. Contrary to popular belief (that curry is a complicated dish), curry is very easy to make, requiring only a basic knowledge of what goes in. Even in Western culture, where authentic ingredients may not be readily present, you can imitate the flavors of curry with the right choices. What we’ve established in this post is that curry can be whatever the hell you want it to be. I started with a recipe for what is typically an authentic Indian preparation, but I ended up throwing a myriad of different things into it. Bamboo shoots? Thyme and oregano? Curry powder? You’ll never see these in Indian curries. But alas, what I made here was a one-of-a-kind, bringing India to America in a roundabout way. I would say that the most important thing about making curry is to remain open-minded. At first, especially in a culture where American cuisine is literally shoved in your face, curry can seem exotic and odd, sometimes off-putting (I mean, let’s be honest, would you eat bamboo shoots routinely?). However, when you open your knowledge about what food is and what it can be, acknowledging that the culture you know is just one of many, then you can more readily reap the benefits of a delicious dish like curry. It’s not weird. It’s just different. Embracing its diverse application in this way will not only improve your cooking but will improve your outlook on life all the same. I look forward to sharing more with you as we progress through this second part of my exotic explorations!
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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
June 2018
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