What Did You Eat?

Presto Pasta Night: Cellophane Noodle Salad

Today was our first really warm day, and this tangy Cellophane Noodle Salad was perfect, crunchy and refreshing.  It's been a fish sauce kind of week, and I've enjoyed several recipes calling for it.   Although it has fish sauce in it, there's no fishy taste (cross my heart).  This salad also contains a little ground pork, but it doesn't taste meaty. In fact,  you could leave out the pork altogether and add more thinly sliced veggies, and it would taste just as good.  The backbone of the salad is the cellophane noodles, which are also called bean threads.  You soak them in warm water for 30 minutes as you prepare the other ingredients for the salad, then toss everything together.  If you've never had cellophane noodles you should treat yourself to them. They're so much fun to eat, and have a slightly crunchy texture that I enjoy very much. Kids usually like them too.  And they are pasta, so I submit this to Presto Pasta Night, which was created by the lovely Ruth at Once Upon A Feast .  She should have the Roundup of the other pasta bloggers today.   

Presto Pasta Night: My Comfort Food, Wonton Soup

It's beautiful outside.  My roses are blooming, the birds are singing, my nose is stuffy and I sneeze constantly. It's the price to pay for the majesty of spring.   I decided my nasal congestion entitled me to make one of my favorite comfort foods, Wonton soup.   I''ve been in love with it since we met.  I was 19 years old and it was my first visit to the Peking Restaurant in West Lafayette, Indiana.   I looked at the soup and saw perfection.  The broth was crystal clear, but full of rich chicken flavor.   The wontons looked like plump little pillows, cooked just before they served me the soup.  Resting on top of were a few slivers of Chinese roasted pork.  I lived in West Lafayette for several years and ate many bowls of that marvelous soup.   Imagine my surprise when we moved away and I began to encounter the soggy, overcooked wonton soup so often served in other restaurants. It's a shame.  And it doesn't have to be that way people!!  Buy yourself a package of wonton wrappers and make some soup the way it was intended.

By the way, wonton wrappers are pasta, so that means it's just perfect for Presto Pasta Nights, created by Ruth at  Once Upon A Feast.  The Roundup should be this Thursday, so stop by and see all the different pasta dishes.

WHB: Pork-and-Ricotta Meatballs in Tomato Sauce (Fennel Seed)

Several months ago while reading Food & Wine magazine,  I saw a recipe for Pork and Ricotta Meatballs, served at A16, a San Francisco restaurant.  I remembered how a friend raved about the meatballs after visiting the restaurant. So, my interest was stoked and I made a mental note to make the meatballs and see if they were really as good as people claimed.  Just the thought of making them was compelling, because I have a fatal weakness for meatball.  I don't know why a clump of meat tastes better rolled into a little ball, but it does. As for these particular meaty orbs, I wound up eating 6 meatballs for dinner. Nothing else, just the meatballs. (The tomato sauce counts as a vegetable, and a fruit.)   Later, while putting the leftovers away, I jammed two more meatballs into my mouth.  I will make these again, and feel deliriously happy that there are now several containers of them stashed in the freezer. 

Bacon, Blue Cheese, and Basil Muffins, With Incredibly Vile Green Soup

This weekend, Bob went to the Farmer's Market and came back with a variety of wonderful foods, including spinach and asparagus.  Looking at the produce, I decided to make a simple dinner of muffins and soup. To be honest, there was a muffin recipe using blue cheese, bacon, and fresh basil that I wanted to try. I thought a simple soup primarily made from the spinach and asparagus would be perfect, with the green color to remind me that spring is right around the corner. 

And so, I prepared the muffins, which baked as I cooked the soup.   The batter was very stiff, so much so that I had a hard time spooning them into the muffin pan. I wound up using my hands to pull off chunks of the dough and put them in the muffin cups.  The resulting muffins were good, with a texture similar to biscuits. But the soup?  It was vile.  I was unable to eat it.  This was a case where less was definitely less.  It tasted like liquified grass clippings, with a slimy feel in the tongue.  I warned Bob that it was odious and watched in amazement as he ate a large bowl of it, pronounced it "very good," then refilled his bowl for a second serving.  I don't think he was being perverse. He had just returned from an afternoon rowing on the Sacramento river, and I think he was so hungry he would have eaten a large bowl of library paste and enjoyed it.

Roasted Pork Tenderloin (Yakibuta)

Book Review:  Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America
By Linda Furiya

Several weeks ago I received an e-mail from a publisher, asking if I wanted to review a copy of Bento Box In The Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood In Whitebread America. The book sounded interesting, so I looked forward to receiving it in the mail.  Cautioning myself not to be influenced by the fact that the book was  free, I began reading it, prepared to be honest if I didn't like it.   Well, that attitude quickly fell by the way side as I was immediately drawn into Linda Furiya's experiences of growing up as the only Asian family in a small Indiana town.  Remembering how most children fear being labeled as "different," her experiences are poignant, funny, and profound.  And since this country's history is based on different groups of people struggling to assimilate, but retain their links to the homelands they left behind, this is a very American story, beautifully written.

I enjoyed this book a great deal, and was a bit sad when I finished it.   I had formed an attachment to the Furiya family and wanted to learn more about them.  The stories of what her parents endured were moving, and I was impressed with how they persevered in spite of them.  And I smiled reading how her family was obsessed with obtaining Japanese foods, at a time when it was not easy to do so. Food was the crucial link to her family's identity. They were committed to life as Americans, but Japanese food provided a glue that kept them at one with their identity.  To that end, they would drive hundreds of miles to get fresh fish and Japanese ingredients, to avoid running out of these items.  This was well before the time when foods like wasabi powder, ginger root, and nori were featured in many grocery stores, as they are now.  These foods were nurturing to the author, but they also made her feel apart from her peers. While friends ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, her lunches always included rice balls, which she feared would make her an object of derision.   The book details how she would hide the rice balls from her friends, even though they were one of her favorite foods, and only eat them in the privacy of the school bathroom. 

The Spice Is Right: Pork Stew With Orange And Fennel

I've wanted to make this recipe ever since I bought my At Home With Michael Chiarello cookbook.  The pictures are beautiful and you can't help but be influenced by the author's relentless hunkiness.  I previously made one recipe from the book, Pasta With Uncooked Watercress, a recipe touted as extremely quick, which was a blatant lie. I discovered that tearing individual watercress leaves from their stems proved time consuming and annoying.  However, the idea of this Pork Stew With Orange And Fennel was just too tempting.  But once again, I found myself bogged down by a lot of busy work, cursing a certain good looking chef from the Napa Valley. 

But, back to the recipe. It's full of good flavors, the most dominant being orange, rosemary and fennel.  And the fennel makes this perfect for Warm Me up Baby! It's Cold Outside, part of The Spice Is Right created by Barbara of Tigers and Strawberries, guest hosted this week by Rosie, of Bitchin' in the kitchen with Rosie, who has the rules for taking part in this event..  Although this dish lacks chili peppers, it's rich with the tingle of fennel.  And what could be more warming than a nice bowl of steaming stew, served on soft polenta?  Although it was a cold and dreary day yesterday when I served this to my cousin Charmayne and her handsome boyfriend Julius, a bowl of this stew made us feel quite cozy.  Much to my delight, Charmayne is moving to Sacramento in February, and this recipe was a good way to celebrate that happy fact.