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Phoenix dactylifera

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Deglet Noor Dates

Deglet Noor Dates

During the relatively fruitless months that stretch between October and February (when the first fresh strawberries become available) is a good time to appreciate the fruit of the date palm, or Phoenix dactylifera.

Approximately 95% of the dates sold in the United States are grown in California’s Coachella Valley near Indio. While we were in the Palm Springs area, Martine and I spent the afternoon preceding Christmas Eve visiting two date gardens, the Oasis Date Gardens in Thermal and the Shields Date Gardens in Indio.

There are a number of different varieties of dates, ranging from the large and hypersweet Medjools to the Deglet Noors (my favorites), Zahidis, Barhis, and Khadrawies, to name just a few. When one buys relatively recently harvested dates in the Coachella Valley, they tend to be more moist. Supermarket dates just don’t cut it. Sometimes I will buy dates from our local farmer’s market in Santa Monica, because the dealer there drives in all the way from Mecca near the Salton Sea.

Below is a photo I took at the Shields Date Gardens:

Date Palms at Indio’s Shields Date Gardens

Date Palms at Indio’s Shields Date Gardens

Note the ladders dangling from the top of some of the trees. During the harvest, they are joined to other ladders so that the dates could be hand-picked. There is, insofar as I know, no mechanization possible that would maintain the quality of the crop. The trees are relatively bare now: As October approaches, the bunches of dates are covered with a cone-shaped paper wrap to prevent rain and predators from damaging the crop.

Most Americans tend to be relatively unfamiliar with dates, which comes as something of a surprise to me because they are sweet, loaded with vitamins and minerals, and relatively inexpensive. But then, I have been buying them from the Coachella Valley for over forty years.

 

The Soup Diaries: Jazzing Up Ramen Noodles

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Some Ingredients for a Perfect Ramen

This week it happened again. On Monday afternoon, I felt that premonitory tickling of the throat that means only one thing: Another bout with a cold or the flu. Fortunately, this time it turned out to be a cold.

The first thing I did when I got home was to ask Martine if it was all right if I made some soup for myself, as she had some leftovers in the refrigerator. I started up mincing or slicing up some carrots, serrano chiles, celery, and even a small potato and started it boiling furiously in three cups of water. I could have chosen other vegetables, such as cabbage, peas, spinach, onions, but I thought four veggie ingredients was sufficient.

It takes about twenty minutes of a furious boil before I add the broken-up ramen noodles, usually Chicken or Oriental flavor. (I like it but have no idea what makes it Oriental.) I stir the concoction for approximately three minutes before emptying the little flavor packet into the soup. Then I serve the ramen with two important ingredients, illustrated above:

  • Sesame oil, usually just a dash or two. Gives a really good flavor.
  • A Japanese chile powder mix called either Shichimi Togarashi (shown above) or Nanami Togarashi. Both add a little extra hotness (good for a cold) with the taste of black roasted sesame seeds.

IThe result is delicious, and a whole lot more nutritious than ramen on its own. What I’ve described here is enough for two people, but Martine will have none of my fire-eating ways, so I ate it all myself. It burned a little going down, but I felt it did me a world of good.

Soup Wisdom

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Sadaf Soup Mix, One of the Indispensable Ingredients

Soup Wisdom is the name of a little book by Frieda Arkin that was produced by Consumer Reports back in 1980. It is one of the two sources of what I know about making soup. It is the lesser source: The main one is my mother, Sophie Paris, to whom this blog posting is dedicated. For the duration of my childhood and well into my adult years, my mother taught me that soup can make for a great meal. Just recognizing what a great soup can do for you is half the battle: The rest, like sex, consists of experimenting with a willing partner.

Here I will attempt to give away my secrets to making a delicious soup. Some of what I say will be general, some specific.

Take Your Time. Soups are better when you take several hours to make them. Once the mixture is boiling, lower the heat and slowly add the ingredients one by one.

Using Your Blender. A mistake that many neophytes make is to make the soup too thin. There are several ways to avoid that. The Hungarian method is by making a rántás, or roue, using butter; minced onion, garlic, and parsley; Hungarian (not Spanish) paprika; and a couple tablespoons of general purpose flour.

What I usually do is, as the soup nears completion, ladle some of the mixture—liquids and solids together—into my blender and add a chopped-up bunch of Swiss Chard, which gives the broth a wonderful flavor along with the thicker texture. If you don’t have Swiss Chard, some other greens could be substituted—but note that the Chard is a really great flavor booster!

“Soup Mix.” Living as I do in an area where there are numerous Persian, Armenian, and Middle Eastern markets, what I always do is buy some “soup mix,” which consists of small pieces of green and yellow split peas, pearl barley, rice, and alphabet macaroni. I add this to the soup as soon as the liquid begins to boil and let it basically cook down to form a nice and very healthy background flavor and texture. I am partial to the brands put out by Sadaf and Springfield Foods.

Soupercharging Your Soup. If you have more time than I have, you might want to make your own beef, chicken, or vegetable broth to use as the base of your soup. Here’s where I cheat a little: I buy some soup broth of the desired variety from Trader Joe’s or my local supermarket. This week, I made a vegetarian minestrone using Swanson’s canned vegetable broth, which was quite good. I love the Trader Joe chicken broths, of which there are a couple of varieties.

Salt at the End. Some ingredients tend to get a little tough if you salt the soup too early. Since Martine doesn’t like salt very much, I don’t add any salt until the soup is served.

I know I said at the outset to take your time, but one of these days, I’ll post a blog about what I do to cheap ramen mixes to make them tastier and healthier without taking more than 5-10 minutes of my time.

’Tis the Season … for Soup

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Japanese Udon Soup

Shown above is the Pork Udon soup made by the Men’s Club at the West L.A. Buddhist Temple Obon festival each July. Even though it is in the middle of summer, I always go to down a couple bowls of the stuff. I always add a little Shichimi Togarashi (Japanese chili powder with black sesame seeds) to bring out the flavor.

Soup and I go way back, to the beginning in fact. My mother was a great cook, especially when soups and pastries were involved. We always had a bowl of soup for every lunch and dinner we ate together as a family. Sometimes that bowl was all we needed, particularly if the soup was the hearty Gulyás Leves—or Hungarian Goulash, as it’s also called.

I wish I had the recipes for all her soups, such as the Hungarian egg-drop soup, the mushroom and vegetable soup, the green bean soup with sour cream, the Slovak dry bean soup, the beef broth with big chunks of beef in it (Husleves), the tomato soup, the rice and caraway seed soup—and the list just goes on forever. Mom’s homemade beef broth was the stuff of dreams, though I remember not appreciating it as much when I was younger because I thought my Dad asked for it too often.

Virtually all Hungarian soups begin with a roue (Hungarians call it rántás) consisting of minced onion and garlic, real Hungarian paprika (not the Spanish variety), minced parsley, and some flour. I’m still working at trying to get the right combinations to make it taste as if Mom made it.

Martine has not been feeling well for the last couple of weeks, so I will cook a home-made vegetarian minestrone tonight with a broad mix of veggies and crowned with some Swiss Chard that has been blended into the stock. I’ll try to remember to take a picture of a serving of it tonight and save it for later publication, perhaps with an approximation of the recipe I used. (I never follow recipes exactly: Usually I cherry-pick several recipes and add a few elements of my own.)

When we have soup, we rarely eat an entrée with it. Sometimes I’ll have some cheese and crackers.

If you want to get through the winter happy and healthy, I recommend you eat lots of soup. Real soup, not the canned stuff!

Crisp and Lightly Sweet

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Fuyu Persimmons

For someone like me who cannot get through the day without fresh fruit, November provides some interesting alternatives. Because I am in Southern California, some of what I describe may not be available to those of you who inhabit colder climes.

Specifically, I am talking about two fruits that come into their own around now: the Fuyu Persimmon and the Asian Pear. Today, at the Westwood Farmers’ Market, I bought a couple of pounds of each.

Unless you are familiar with them, Fuyus look squat, hard and unripe. If you’ve ever bit into a hard Hachiya Persimmon and got a mouthful of alum, you are unlikely to experiment with Fuyus lest you repeat the negative effects. Fortunately, Fuyus taste good hard. Plus, having no inedible seeds or pits, you can just slice off the stiff top leaves and bite into the whole fruit like an apple without seeds.

You will notice two things right off: First, the Fuyu is quite crisp. And second, it is only lightly sweet. In contrast, a ripe Hachiya is, to my mind, too sweet. I rather like fruits that are not too sweet; that’s why I prefer Deglet Noor dates to the grossly sweet Medjools. Fuyus will keep for a week or more in the crisper of your refrigerator.

Asian Pear

Asian pears are very similar: They are crisp (somewhat like a Honey Crisp Apple) and lightly sweet, though they do have seeds like normal apples and pears. The main difference is that they taste best when peeled.

Predictably, Martine does not like either fruit; though I can’t seem to get enough of them. Not everybody likes the variety of fruit that I eat.

Just to show you how much variety there is in the produce throughout the year, check out this month by month list of what’s in season put out by the Southland Farmers’ Market Association. In contrast, here is what I imagine the offerings are in the Midwest, from which I originally hailed:

January – French Fries
February – French Fries
March – French Fries
April – French Fries
May – French Fries
June – Cherries, French Fries
July – Lots to Choose From
August – Lots to Choose From
September – Melons, French Fries
October – French Fries
November – French Fries
December – French Fries

Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, considering that California and Florida are busy shipping fruits all around the country—especially citrus fruits during the winter months—but the picture tends to be pretty bleak in general.

The Paradise of Apples

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Loaded Branch at Green Mountain Orchard

One of the best things about travel is discovering (or, in our case, re-discovering) some great foods. Although we like the apples from Oak Glen, where we journeyed yesterday, nothing can compare with the tanginess of apples and apple cider from Vermont and New Hampshire. There is something about the granitic soil that does something rich and strange to the flavor. And when you make cider from them—without killing the flavor by pasteurizing—the result is one of the most refreshing drinks on the planet.

The first couple of days of our vacation in September were spent in Vermont. After a brief stop at the Vermont Country Store in Rockingham, we drove to nearby Putney, where Green Mountain Orchard is located. We had heard they sold unpasteurized apple cider, and it was true. Between the two of us, we guzzled a whole quart of the stuff and then spent an hour just driving around the property and seeing their trees (such as the one above) as well as their stands of raspberry and blueberry bushes.

When we crossed over the border into Canada, we hoped to be able to find equivalent quality. We bought a bag from a farm stand just west of Fredericton, New Brunswick, but it wasn’t the same thing. The terrain had changed to fertile flatlands, which are good for most crops, but which result in so-so fruit.

I remember buying apple cider by the gallon from Tanzi’s Grocery (now long gone) in Hanover, New Hampshire, when I was a student at Dartmouth. Because at the time we had no access to refrigerators, the students would hang the gallon jugs by the eyelet from their dorm room windows. Most did this to ferment it into hard cider. I just wanted to drink good, cold cider. (Naturally, it was unpasteurized.)

Northern New England will forever go down in my memory for its apples, its Maine lobster, and a delicious preparation of young cod, haddock, or whitefish called scrod that Martine and I ate in Boston back in 2005.