Jook for a Cold Winter's Day

Last weekend my husband roasted up some delicious Cornish game hens. After we had stuffed ourselves silly, we were left with a few carcasses that still had attached to them a lot of delicious, hard-to-reach meat.

What to do with them? A hot bowl of jook immediately came to mind, prompted, I'm sure, by the cold winter weather that has hit the Northwest. Jook is a Chinese rice soup/porridge that consists of some very basic items: rice, liquid and any meats or vegetables that the cook wants to throw in there.

In Seattle, you can find jook (also called "congee" in some areas) at the more authentic Chinese restaurants. Some restaurants will offer it during their weekend dim sum service, pushing a large pot of plain jook around on a cart with bowls of sliced green onions and other accompaniments offered on the side.

There's no one correct way of making jook. When I was little, my mom would fill a large stockpot with rice, water, ground beef and finely shredded carrots, and feed the pretty, orange-tinged product to my toddler sisters. It was a nutritious, teething-friendly dish.

With my jook, I threw the game hen carcasses into a stockpot and added two cups of jasmine rice (short-grain white rice makes for a smoother consistency, but I only had jasmine on hand and it worked fine), two cups of water, about 6 cups of organic chicken stock, and three carrots, shredded. I simmered everything for about an hour (some of the liquid I added near the end when the jook looked a little dry), removed the bones/cartilage while leaving in the meat, and added a little soy sauce and pepper.

The resulting warm jook is flavorful, comforting and has a pretty carrot-orange tinge to it, just like my mom's concoctions. We've eaten it for breakfast in lieu of oatmeal, lunch, dinner, snack, etc. There's no wrong time to eat jook. Even my kids (who claim they don't like restaurant jook) have had a few bowls of this.

This would work really well with some white pepper and a few salty peanuts sprinkled on top, but we enjoy it plain, too. I think the big pot of jook will disappear soon, and then it'll be time to roast more birds.

Did Someone Say 'Bacon?'

Blame it on a lack of imagination, but I have never once taken a bite of delicious chocolate and thought, "You know this needs? BACON."

Thank goodness more creative minds than mine work at Vosges, which created Mo's Dark Bacon Bar, a combination of 62 percent dark chocolate, alder wood-smoked bacon and alder wood-smoked salt, according to the company Web site. (There's also a milk chocolate version, which I haven't tried.)

It's a very intriguing idea, combining the the sharp sweetness of dark chocolate with the smokiness of the bacon and the light tingling from the salt.

"I don't taste the bacon, but I taste the smokiness," said a friend/guinea pig who was offered the first bite. I concurred, but upon further sampling (and for research purposes only, I consumed the rest of the bar myself), I could also pick up the crispy texture of the bacon, which was just assertive enough to make its presence known but not overpowering.

It's pretty yummy, but with a $7.50 retail price, it's not yum-yum enough to be a regular part of my chocolate repertoire. Not when I have a Frost Doughnuts, with its awe-inspiring Smokey Bacon Maple Bar, just minutes from my door.

As you might have deduced, I have quite the liking for bacon.

Bottom photo courtesy www.frostology.com

I'm Somebody Now!

In the 1979 comedy "The Jerk," there's a scene in which Steve Martin's country-bumpkin character move to the city, gets a job delivering phone books, discovers his name listed in a book, and shouts, "I'm somebody now!"

That is exactly how I feel being featured as September's Commenter of the Month on the most excellent of blogs, House of Annie.

(On a side note, my dear husband, the Silent Swede, was very amused when I broke the news to him. "I don't actually comment on blogs THAT much," I explained defensively. "Sure," he said, and went back to chuckling in his Silent Swede way.)

I mentioned House of Annie last year in this post but want to tell you again how much I enjoy this blog! Married couple Nate and Annie capture their culinary adventures as they cook and eat their way into your hearts. I started reading their blog when they lived in California and it has only gotten spicier (literally) and more adventurous now that they live in Annie's native Malaysia. The photography is outstanding (and makes me a little ashamed of the stuff I snap with my iPhone) and the writing is descriptively fun.

It's high-quality food porn. In fact, should you happen to stand outside my home office window and hear me moaning and muttering, "Oh, that's SO good," and "Please, don't stop," chances are I'm visiting House of Annie.

Turns out that Nathan is from my home-turf of Hawaii. He and Annie met while students at the University of Hawaii, my alma mater. Their blog's August Commenter of the Month, the awesome Ben from Cooking With the Single Guy, also is from Hawaii. We Hawaii peeps are all over the place and we rock!

Well, they rock. I'm still working on it.

Thanks for the shout-out, Nate and Annie!

Magical Mochi

Before photographing my homemade mochi, I had planned to artfully arrange the pieces on a pretty platter and set it somewhere with great lighting before taking a shot. Then I left the room and, when I returned, the mochi fairies had taken off with nearly half the batch, so I was left a few lonely pieces in a Tupperware container. And the constant battle between aesthetics vs. real life continues.

For the unfortunate few who don't know mochi, it's made of rice flour mixed with some type of liquid and has a slightly chewy, sticky texture. In Japanese culture people will get together for mochi-pounding rituals, which can take hours and is quite physical. A lot of places that sell mochi commercially roll it into balls with sweet bean filling in the middle, while other bake it. My niece and her fellow Seattle Pacific University co-conspirators have even found a way to microwave the stuff and roll it into their own creations.

I can't get enough of the stuff, having grown up eating it in Hawaii, where the mochi supply is plentiful and you can even buy packages of it at some drugstores (next to the sushi and Spam).

With all respect to all those crafty college mochi-nukers, I believe I have the easiest mochi recipe EVER, which I got off the Aloha World Web site. Simply titled "Coconut Mochi," submitted by Keoki (mahalo, Keoki!) it involves very basic ingredients mixed together and a quick bake in the oven. The hardest part is waiting for it to cool off so you can cut it into pieces.

You can find the recipe here. For my batch, I also added a few drops of green food coloring for the pretty-factor. Also, if you've never used mochiko (rice flour), check the Asian-foods aisle of your supermarket (or your closest Asian supermarket, if you're lucky enough to have one) and look for it in a small box.

Enjoy!

Under the "Good Intentions" Heading

Aren't they precious? The Lil' Drums are just as yummy as the original-sized Drumsticks, and they are the perfect-sized portion, except for people like me and my if-one-is-good-another-would-be-better congregation.

They really help me in teaching my kids the importance of portion control. Then, after the little darlings have learned this important nutritional lesson, they will go to bed and I can help myself to another crispy sweet cone of dreamy goodness.

Years ago I used to bake tiny little cookies, just smaller-sized versions of the original recipe, for portion control. And guess what? I'd eat twice as many. So now I bake cookies as big as they were meant to be baked and I just eat one or two.

Portion control definitely has its place in our daily nutrition, but leave my ice cream alone.

More WTF, Now With Antioxidants!

Has antioxidants kicked flax off the health-food-fad bandwagon? Flax totally deserved it after giving soy milk a major ass-whoopin'. I hear that soy milk is banding together with the Atkins diet for a diabolical scheme to get back on top. But they’ll have to kick and scratch at gingko biloba, which didn’t get to enjoy its 15 minutes and is now seeking vengeance.

Ginseng is watching this folly from the sidelines and laughing at it all. Ginseng is wise. It would never pair with Jell-O, or so I hope.

'Tis the Season for Germs

You know it's bad when I have to resort to posting cute photos of dogs that aren't even mine.

When the kids return to school each fall, it's like sending them off to germ-incubation factories. Then these Junior Typhoid Marys come home and breathe on me. Now I have bronchitis and the coughing is driving me nuts. Lying in bed with some hot tea and watching a movie would be very nice right now, but I have too much to do and not enough energy to do it. (And the fact that I have energy to blog is an irony that does not escape me.)

Fortunately, I have my cough drops for day and, for evening, that lovely prescription codeine cough syrup, the one that quiets your cough and knocks you out for a full night of snoozy-poo. I kept my love of the codeine syrup under wraps until I cautiously talked to a few friends about it and discovered that they are big fans, too. I also have a prescription for antibiotics, but since my bronchitis seems to be viral instead of bacterial, I don't need to fill it.

One thing that mystifies me is why I crave the most unhealthy foods when I'm sick. Burger-like products from the Golden Arches. Instant MSG-filled ramen noodles. Fat- and salt-filled Hawaiian plate lunches. My only theory is that these warm, gooey, salty, and greasy items represent comfort foods for me, and when I'm sick, I need all the comforting I can get.

Gotta go now and get some rest. And eat a frozen burrito.

I Can Stop Anytime I Want

I don't smoke or drink (much). Just a clean-livin' gal, I am. Here, let me show you my halo. I try to exercise, eat my fiber and get enough rest. However, hell hath no fury as me on a trying day without a Diet Dr. Pepper.

No intervention or 12-step programs exist for Dr. Pepper addicts. There are no Nancy Reagans or school DARE programs advising us to "Just Say No" to its delightful nectar. No matter, because to beat your addiction you must first admit that you are addicted, and I AM NOT ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE. I can ignore the sounds of its sweet, peppery, and cold effervescence calling out to me. Really. On a hot afternoon when my brain is shutting down and my kids ask, again, why we can't buy another Slip 'N Slide, I don't really need its caffeine to keep my head from exploding. Honest.

When I was in college (before I learned to drink coffee), I drank a lot of Jolt Cola. Its marketing slogan back in the day was "All the Sugar and Double the Caffeine," which was good enough for me. One evening, after I had a downed a few cans of this delicacy, I attended a student meeting and was distracting by a constant tap-tap-tapping sound. It turned out that the sound was my fingers involuntarily tapping on the wood-laminate table. Perhaps they were sending out a Morse-Code cry for help or simply trying to get away from me. After that, I limited myself to one can a day.

Jolt is now called Jolt Energy and is heavily marketed on college campuses, as Jolt Cola was back then. Apparently they do not consider sophisticated, experienced, slightly insane middle-aged moms (such as, I don't know, yours truly?) to be a profitable demographic.

No matter. I have my Dr. Pepper. But I can stop anytime I want.

Funny Food Combos

Sliced ripe mango topped with Best Food Mayonnaise

When I was growing up in Hawaii, my Popo (grandmother) would regularly stop by to share whatever good deals she landed at the supermarkets or Chinese produce stands. One day she brought over some avocados. Now, I love avocados and will eat them in almost any form, but what Popo proceeded to do next traumatized me for several years: She splashed soy sauce (or shoyu, as we call it) into her avocado half and began to eat the concoction with a spoon.

Not being the most subtle kid, I'm sure I made loud gagging sounds. Popo just smiled and said, "Try it. It's delicious!" Politely declining, I made a silent determination that the poor woman had lost her facilities and was trying to poison all of us.

Then a few years later, the TV miniseries Shogun became a hit and suddenly all things Japanese were cool. Japanese restaurants decided to capitalize on this new-found popularity and reel in timid American eaters by creating less-exotic types of sushi. One of the most popular of these creations is the California roll, which contains avocado and is usually served with -- You guessed it -- shoyu. The first time I ate one of these puppies, I realized that the creaminess of the avocado went beautifully with the earthy saltiness of the shoyu. Dang, Popo wasn't crazy after all.

I was reminded of this the other day while reading one of my favorite blogs, The Tasty Island, which is pure food porn and a real tease to those of us who no longer live in the islands and don't have access to the variety of foods and restaurants found there. In an entry titled Mayo Mango Madness, writer Pomai describes how his mother enjoys sweet ripe mangos topped with ... Best Foods mayonnaise. He also posted, in an earlier entry, his recipe for Mango Bruschetta.

It really got me thinking of all the food combinations out there that sound kind of weird but are actually pretty yummy. I mean, who first thought of wrapping brie in puff pastry, baking it and serving it with crackers? Who in the Chinese restaurant trade first decided it would be smart to coat Honey Walnut Prawns (one of my favorite dishes) in warm mayo? Who in Chicago decided that the city's archetype hot dog should contain tomato slices but not ketchup? I read that the most popular pizza topping in Japan is fish. Soo desu ka?

This is why I try to keep an open mind when it comes to eating. Even if something doesn't really sound very appealing I will "at least try a bite," as I tell my kids. And I usually end up liking it! So if Pomai from The Tasty Island ever shows up at my door (yes, come visit!) with a delicious platter of mangos topped with mayo, you bet I'll give it a go. But I don't think I'll be in a hurry to make this on my own. (Sorry, dude.)

Image courtesy tastyisland.wordpress.com

Life is a Bowl of This...

We're in the midst of cherry season and life is good. Call me opinionated, but I think the sweetest, plumpest cherries are grown here in the Northwest. Unfortunately, the harvest season is short (about 6 to 8 weeks), so we spend part of the year waiting for cherries, a few weeks enjoying them, and then the rest of the year moaning that we should have eaten more cherries when they were around.

My favorite is the Rainier cherry, which is a hybrid that is sweeter than most other varieties. Alas, it also requires optimal growing conditions and more careful handling, so it's usually in much shorter supply and, therefore, more expensive.

Today the kids and I were driving around and decided to visit a large produce stand in Seattle, where we found Rainier cherries being offered for a song ($2.99/lb., about a third of the usual price in supermarkets). I should have taken a photo of our stash before our family decimated it; what you see in the photo above is what's left, and I'm surprised there's any left at all.

They're so juicy and sweet like candy and I find the process of chewing on the tender-but-firm flesh and then spitting out the pit to be very therapeutic. Hey, we all have our fetishes.

Going loco for loco moco

I could really use a loco moco right now. For the uninitiated, a loco moco is a delectable combination of eggs (cooked however you like; I prefer fried) lovingly dumped over a hamburger patty that is smothered in hamburger gravy and delicately slapped over a large serving of white rice. Delicious, satisfying, and you don't even have to be hungover to enjoy it. I crave it when I'm sick, I crave it when I'm cold, I crave it just because.

Loco mocos are commonly served in Hawaii, even though it's not really "Hawaiian" food. Like much of the cuisine found in the islands, it's the result of the diverse ethnic melting pot found there. Early immigrants from all over the world (predominantly from Asia) found themselves together and eventually mixed the best and tastiest of their native foods to create a new "local" food. A lot of it is comfort food, full of fat and salt, enjoyed by the common folks, not be confused with the trendy "pan-Asian" menus so prevalent nowadays that drive me nuts.

The best part of living in the Northwest is that there are several Hawaiian-style eateries nearby so I can find loco mocos here! Here's how I eat a loco moco: First I take my fork or chopstick and pierce my fried egg so that the golden liquidy yolk oozes out over the entire concoction. Then I cut the hamburger patty into bite-size pieces. I make sure that each forkful contains some rice, some gravy, some burger and some egg. Sometimes I throw caution to the wind and eat the rice separately, but only when I'm feeling daring.

It's a lot of food. Do not wear tight jeans while eating a loco moco. After I polish off this delectable concoction, my stomach feels warm and happy and my spirits have lifted. I promise myself that I'll eat a salad later.

(Image by Christian Razukas. Mahalo!)