Bitter Oranges in Sevilla

The streets of Sevilla are lined with Bitter Orange trees, some 45,000 of them.   These trees are so emblematic of the city that they are also known as Seville Oranges.

In late winter the city begins to pick the oranges.  We happened to be in Sevilla when a crew worked on the trees behind my mother's house.

They worked pretty fast.  The trees were cleaned up in a matter of minutes.

Probably more time was spent looking for stranded oranges under cars than pulling them from the tree!

These oranges are too bitter to be eaten fresh.  Instead, they will be shipped to the UK and France, where they will become marmalade.  Their bitterness plays well against the sweetness of jam.  They also happen to have a higher pectin content than regular oranges, so it all works out in the end.

The peel is very fragrant, and it also gets used to make essential oils for the perfume and food industries.

When I was little, I remember boys rolling oranges into the path of incoming vehicles, timing their throws so that the oranges became road kill.  I didn't see any of those games this time.  Maybe there is a PlayStation version already?

I don't know how heavy this bag may be, but poking around in the net I saw that in 2010 about six million kilos were picked in the city (that's over 13 million pounds, or 6,600 US tons).  That's a lot of marmalade!

Note the row of orange trees on the left side of the street.  Pretty soon these trees will be covered in orange blossoms, shrouding the city in one of the most exquisite perfumes ever found in nature. 

My mom and some handsome dude wanted to pose in this picture.  I want to take this opportunity to introduce him to the world.  His name is Ron.  He will be making an occasional appearance in this blog, and I want to call him by his name, not by "my husband", "the husband", "husband", or God forbid, "the mister" (yes, I saw that in a blog once...)

Do you like marmalade?  How do you eat it?  One of my easy go-to appetizers is a crostini with Manchego cheese topped with a dollop of marmalade.  This is a variation of the classic Manchego-quince paste combo, which one of these days we should explore.

Japanese Kit Kats

A while back I stumbled upon a story about Japanese Kit Kats on the NPR blog. Kit Kats in Japan go way beyond chocolate. Part of it may be due to the fact that the shelves on the super-popular convenience stores are very precious real estate, and they must entice shoppers with new and original merchandise at all times. Moreover, Japanese seem to love ‘limited edition’ anything, so Nestle Japan has been constantly coming up with surprising flavors. At NPR a panel comprised of Steve Inskeep and Lourdes García-Navarro, among others, tasted some of these Kit Kats. The comments were fairly negative, but my curiosity chain had already been rattled. I am pretty adventurous when it comes to food, and I love trying new things, especially if that new thing is candy. As for the negative comments, it has been my experience that whenever you take certain people out of their food “safe zones”, they feel as comfortable as a hippie at a gun show. So I made it my mission to find Japanese Kit Kats and judge by myself.

I looked for them online. I asked for them at Asian stores. I went to Japantown in San Francisco. It didn't matter: I came out empty handed… Fortunately, I had a plan B: my good friend Mitsy. Her job brings her to California a few times a year, so I asked her if she could get some of those precious Kit Kats on her next trip. She did, and damn be NPR, they were delicious, every single one of them.

From the top, soy sauce, wasabi, citrus and green tea.

The soy sauce Kit Kat tasted more like maple syrup. I wouldn't mind having it every day.
The wasabi was spot on. This was more of a weekend treat.
The citrus was very creamsicle, and perhaps the least remarkable of the lot.
The green tea was vaguely tea-like, yet again, I'd love to eat it daily.


Mitsy has recently sent another care package, and sure enough, there were more Kit Kats.

She had explained previously that some of the Kit Kats are only available in certain geographical areas. For example, on the back of the apple Kit Kat, she wrote “Special Edition: Apple from Shiusyu, Nagano Prefecture”. The green tea comes from Kyoto, the wasabi from a “wasabi producing area”. I am particularly intrigued about the one that looks like banana, only that’s not what it is. Mitsy wrote: “Special Edition – only from the region – Japanese Chili with one kind of spice”.

There were other goodies in her care package, like this trio of green bags. One looks like toasted peas and corn kernels, covered in wasabi. The spongy round ones remind me of marshmallows, only these ones have the picture of a green tea cup. I have no idea what the round balls with the dark center are. Maybe a dried plum covered in green tea flavored candy?

Otsumami is what we would define here as “beer nuts”: any snack that you would pair with a drink. The bag with the white fibrous bits makes me think it’s going to be some sort of desiccated fish. The other bags have a picture of baby silver fish, the size of minnows, along with slivered almonds (I may be wrong). I have had the silver minnows before, and I could eat buckets of them. The little bottle contains some “Gold Medal Winner” wasabi salt. This is the only item we have opened so far, and it is delicious. My concept of wasabi was the green paste they plop next to your sushi. Wasabi and subtlety were two words I could have never put together, till I had the salt. It is elegant and nuanced, and far superior to any wasabi I have had so far. When Mitsy was here last time, she told me that the soy sauce we see in the US is not really all that great. I don’t know why this surprised me, but like with anything, there are categories of soy sauce, and the gourmet types stay in Japan. The same thing must occur with wasabi paste, judging from this incredible salt. It certainly deserved that gold medal.

Finally, we got soba noodles. I’ll venture that soba is Japanese comfort food. You can eat them hot or cold, in a wide variety of styles. I like them in a simple broth. Mitsy is quite the noodle purist, so I am sure these will be wonderful. We will do our best to honor her by not overcooking the soba, a terrible offense. So this little window into Japan makes me want to go there much more. All the flavors and textures I may be missing! Thank you, Mitsy, for this incredible gift.



(Note: since I first searched, a couple years ago, it looks like now you can order Japanese Kit Kats online. In fact, I am very curious about the Chocolate Grilled Sweet Potato)

The Big Waste

The Food Network aired a pretty impressive program last Sunday: The Big Waste. Four celebrity chefs were in charge of feeding 100 people using only food products that were discarded or earmarked to go into the garbage.

The Food Network should be renamed ESPNFood, because everything is a damn competition these days, and this was no exception. However, the point was well made: about 40% of our food is wasted. The chefs visited butchers, fishmongers, bakeries, farms and supermarkets, where they were confronted with this sad reality.

My heart really hurt while watching this program. I knew things were bad, but not to this extent. The owner of a peach orchard summarized the problem: “We've trained the American consumers to expect perfection”. This is why he was standing in a field with hundreds of good peaches at his feet. Some had a little blemish, or a tiny scar, so they could not be sent out. They would simply be rejected, like the tomatoes below. No big chain supermarket would allow all that scarring and lack of uniformity.

At a poultry farm, a quick walk through the coop showed that eggs are not uniform. What a surprise... There was one as big as an avocado, most likely a double-yolker. Some eggs were tiny, the size of walnuts. Eggs that are too big or too small get destroyed. They cannot be sold, because they do not fit in the standard egg carton.

One of the chefs hooked up with a Freegan, someone who feeds himself for free (my kind of hero). He explained how he doesn’t do this because of need. He had a good job, made enough money. He was a freegan because he was outraged at the vast amounts of food wasted in front of his eyes. He took the chef to the back of a supermarket. When they rummaged through the trash bags, they were able to find all sorts of goodies. There were tons of deli containers, discarded because the “Best by” date was the next day. This is another huge issue: we see the “Best by” date as an expiration date, when it is nothing of the sort. “Best by” is an indication of quality. After that date, quality may not be 100%. That doesn’t mean the food becomes inedible or spoiled, yet to the eyes of the consumer, that’s exactly what that means. Many believe that if the lid says December 28, at 11:59 pm on the 27th that food will start transforming into poison, like the Cinderella pumpkin. Expiration dates are only required for infant formula and baby food. Everything else gets the “Best by” or “Sell by” qualifiers.

I am a thrifty person, so I love shopping at the Grocery Outlet. I can find fancy yogurts, like Stonyfield, Brown Cow, Athenos or Liberté, at 25 or 50 cents a container, because they are very close to the “Best By” date. It never fails that by the time I eat one of them, like the one above, the “Best By” date happened to be two weeks ago. Maybe if I tasted a fresh-off-the-dairy yogurt next to this two-week discard I could tell the difference in quality, but my taste buds are not that well trained. I am getting the same amount of protein and calcium, I spent a fraction of the money, and I helped reduce a little bit of waste. And I didn’t get food poisoning.

I am very familiar with the expectations of the American consumer. Once upon a time I studied Plant Science in college, and I quickly realized that there is a whole bunch of pests and diseases that get treated not because they have a yield impact on the crop, not because they change the nutritional or flavor aspects of it, but because of AESTHETICS. When we walk into the grocery store to buy apples, peaches, potatoes, we inspect every single one before we put it in the bag. They have to be picture perfect. Growers cannot afford not being able to sell their crops due to looks. Nature doesn’t work that way. Anyone who has ever had a fruit tree in the backyard or has grown a vegetable garden should know that. Nature is a constant battleground. Bugs, molds and anything alive have the biological mandate to reproduce, and in order to do that they need to feed. They are going to be on the lookout for tender leaves, sweet fruits and yummy roots, like the raccoon I suspect was in the yard last night, judging from the number of half-eaten persimmons all over the ground. We consumers place an incredible burden on the grower, who in many cases may be forced to treat crops solely to preserve their appearance.

A few nights ago The Food Network aired an episode of Chopped, another food sport competition, where they featured four lunch ladies. One of them explained that she always serves pasta on Mondays, because there are many kids who go through the weekend without a meal. She wants to fill them up when they come back to school. She tries to send those kids off into the weekend with packed lunches, but obviously she can’t help them all. I was thinking of her while watching The Big Waste. I am sure that if she were watching the program, her heart would have been aching, just like mine. I could only think of all the schools, soup kitchens and nursing homes that could benefit from all this food waste. We need to change our ways, urgently. There are people in this country that go to bed hungry, yet 40% of food ends up in the trash. This is immoral.

The Big Waste will air again on January 14. Check your local listings and spread the word!

Nochebuena - The Countdown

In Spain, Christmas Eve is known as Nochebuena (The Good Night). One day, when I have more time, I'll research the reason for the name. Perhaps it came about from the delicious foods that are eaten. Maybe because it is a night of good wishes and warm feelings. Whatever the reason, it is a special night for a Spaniard, in a sense similar to what Thanksgiving is for Americans: the family gets together, turkey is usually involved, lots of cooking...

We are hosting a small dinner party for Nochebuena. A group of friends will come over and we will drink, eat and exchange gifts. We wanted the menu to be primarily Spanish. On Friday I prepared this red cabbage soup, fried the bread stars (mine look far less professional than the ones on the photo: I cut mine freehand), and even practiced the feathered cream touches on top. Lombarda, or red cabbage, is something that I associate with the holidays, perhaps because I don't remember seeing it at home at any other time of the year. This is the first time I make this soup. This recipe is a keeper.

My husband is in charge of the main course, leg of lamb. I am not sure how he will make it, but as a lover of all things Spanish he will probably stick to rosemary and garlic. I believe he is planning on serving it with Brussel sprouts and this delicious sweet potato puree with braised leeks, which has been already made. One less thing to worry about tomorrow.

For the dessert, I will make warm chocolate pudding cakes with caramel sauce again, because they were such a smashing hit last time. I cheated somewhat, though, in that I bought some Mexican cajeta in one of the multiple supermarket forays we did today. Making caramel, one less thing to do.

No Nochebuena would be complete without some turrón. In the same supermarket where I got the cajeta, I found Turrón El Almendro, which is such a quintessential brand. What a surprise!

I took care of a few last-minute details, like decorating the windows with junkmail snowflakes. From the street, at night, they look magical. During the day they give interesting shadows. It gives me such pleasure to create something so pretty out of something so humble. I learned how to make them here.

I also made some Epsom salt luminaries out of empty jam and olive jars. On Friday I ran around like crazy, and by the time the lighting outside was good for a photo, I was on my third supermarket trip, so this is all I got of the process. Luckily, this tutorial will show you how to make them. My luminaries will light our dinner table.

I still have to make a mushroom compound butter, wrap a couple more gifts, sweep the floors, load a Christmas playlist on the iPod... I better go to bed.

I hope you have a wonderful Nochebuena!

Vegetable Stock, à la Jacques Pépin

To say that we are big fans of Jacques Pépin is quite an understatement. I love him, but my husband idolizes him, and it is easy to see why. Jacques Pépin is a culinary genius. He is, above all, a great teacher. His cooking is simple and delicious. I can say so because my husband has made pretty much every single dish from Fast Food My Way and More Fast Food My Way. Our copies are so well-loved that they are falling apart. We have also seen pretty much all of his TV series. My favorite is Cooking Techniques. It was a thing of beauty to see him create a teddy bear from a lemon and some peppercorns, or decorate a paté with scallions, carrots and a paring knife. He is a true artist.

As I have seen so many of his programs, I can't remember exactly where I watched him make vegetable stock using kitchen scraps. This method is true Pépin: simple, inexpensive, and delicious.

Open the top of an empty half-gallon carton of milk or juice, and rinse well

Any time you prepare dinner, save the vegetable scraps: onion tops, tough mushroom stems, carrot peels, pepper cores... The possibilities are endless

Keep the carton in the freezer till it comes full. Once full, get ready to make the stock

It may be hard to get a solid brick of frozen vegetables out of the carton. It is OK to tear it apart (or so I tell myself)

Pour enough water to cover the vegetables. Season generously with salt and pepper

Bring it to a boil, reduce heat, cover, and let it simmer for 30 minutes or so

You will end up with the best vegetable stock you have ever tasted.

When done, strain it and use or freeze.

This is ridiculously simple and so tasty. This stock will be a terrific base for your soups, and useful in any recipe that calls for some broth.

You can also add chicken bones to the stock, or that turkey carcass you haphazardly threw in the freezer just last week. Before you do so, I recommend you roast the bones in the oven, because doesn't everything taste better roasted?

Cacao

My closest supermarket is a Fortune 500 company. It is not an exciting place to shop. When you walk in, you are usually greeted by pyramids of the latest ultra-processed potato chips, semi-artificial cookies, or soda in a new flavor. This is why it is refreshing to walk into a little grocery store catering to a Hispanic clientele and find something like this:

I had never seen cocoa beans before, so I had to buy this. It is somewhat of a cliché that women love chocolate. This woman certainly does. I have been reading about how to process these beans, and I'm going to follow the directions from eHow. Then I hope to make some brownies. Betty Crocker, you can kiss my butt!