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Okra

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Last week, I visited the big Wednesday Farmers’ Market in Santa Monica and picked up a bottle of pickled okra. I have always liked okra, though Martine won’t touch it. (The seeds hurt her gums.) I remember liking to cook a vegetarian Indian dish called Aloo Bindhi, which consists of a dry curry of okra and potatoes. Quite tasty, though you have to dry the okra with paper towels after washing it so that it doesn’t turn to mush.

What I haven’t tried is the main okra dish that is part of American cuisine, namely gumbo. But that has nothing to do with the okra per se as the fact that I am not fond of chicken, shrimp, or crawfish.

Today I chowed down on the pickled okra while warming up my ground turkey tamale pie. I am very fond of pickled vegetables when the temperature outside begins to soar.

By the way, if you’re interested in trying Aloo Bindhi, here is a recipe that looks pretty good.

Limes

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Of late, I have become addicted to limes. In the morning, I squeeze a wedge of lime into my cup of hot tea (currently Darjeeling). At dinnertime, I mix the juice of half a small lime with a glass of tea remaining in the pot since morning, and add a packet of non-caloric Splenda to sweeten it.

Sometimes, when I think I am drinking too much tea (as I am wont to do), I just replace the cold tea with water, sometimes adding a dash of tequila, particularly when it is hot.

Typically, I buy limes by the bag. The unit price at the market is ridiculously high, and I have no difficulty finishing a bag of twenty or so limes within a few days.

What about lemons? I used to use lemons the way I use limes, but I have come to prefer the flavor of limes. During my travels in Mexico and Central America, I have rarely seen lemons at all. I presume that they grow there, but the locals, like me, probably prefer the taste of limes.

Good Plain Food Since 1908

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Philippe’s Dipped Roast Beef Sandwich with Pickled Egg

Martine has always liked good plain food, preferably old-fashioned American chow. There are fewer and fewer places which serve that type of food. One of the best is Philippe’s The Original, which sits at the corner of Alameda and Ord at the edge of Chinatown and just a few steps north of Olvera Street and its Mexican restaurants. Also, it is within walking distance of Union Station.

Philippe’s was opened 114 years ago and has been popular from the first. Whenever there is a home game at nearby Dodger Stadium, the lines could run out the front door. On any given day, you can find policemen, firemen, railroad employees, and God only knows. Everyone could use a great sandwich. Once Martine was there when there were even a bunch of Contra Costa County cops from Northern California chowing down on Philippe’s famous single-dipped roast beef sandwiches.

Philippe’s Restaurant

At a time when there are any number of “creative” chefs building little towers of unlikely ingredients into tasteless messes, it is good to find a place that knows how to (1) keep it simple and (2) keep it tasty.

I do not share Martine’s requirement for simple food, my preferences being Asian and Mexican; but I do appreciate having a restaurant in town where I can take her without giving her a pain in the tum. And I actually like their food, too.

By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them

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White Peaches—Yum!

What I like best about the summer months are the fruits that are available in the markets. By the end of May, I get very tired of apples and oranges and look forward to the arrival of peaches, apricots, and cherries. The apricots and cherries are available for only a short time, but the peaches last until the end of August or the beginning of September.

I particularly love white peaches. At this point of the year, they are not quite freestone, but they are delicious even if you have to cut around the stones.

Every day, I try to eat two or three different types of fruit. The most frequent are limes, which I squeeze into my hot and iced tea. Occasionally, I squeeze a lime into a glass, fill it almost to the top with water, and finish it off with a glug of tequila. Few drinks are as refreshing on a hot day.

In really hot weather, I make a pitcher of iced tea with lemon, a little dark rum, and several packets of artificial sweetener.

Later in the summer, the peaches become easier to divest of their stones, and tasty plums of different varieties become available. In September, I regret the passing of the summer fruits and look forward to fuyu persimmons. After persimmon season, it’s strictly apples and oranges until strawberries become available in February.

Hawaiian Cuisine

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Three Typical Hawaiian Plate Lunches

There is more to Hawaiian cuisine than the simple “plate lunch,” but it is as typical for Honolulu as Hamburgers and French Fries are on the mainland. Typically it consists of:

  • A meat serving, such as kalua pork in the meal on the right
  • One or two scoops of plain white rice
  • Macaroni salad

What you don’t see is a salad. You get meat and a ton of carbs. Usually it tastes pretty good, but it drives haolies (mainlanders) nuts not to see their favorite grindz (food) on the menu. So many of them stick to hotel restaurants that cater to their expectations.

Oh, yes, there’s also poi, made from taro leaves.

Actually, poi is supposed to be very nutritious—even if it resembles slimy purple goop. I’ve never had any, but promise to sample some when Martine and I go to Honolulu later this year.

There are several other Asian cuisines that are part of Hawaiian food, especially Japanese and Chinese, with a hint of Portuguese in the form of their excellent linguica sausage.

Since Martine flat out doesn’t like Chinese food, and will only eat one or two Japanese dishes, I suspect we will eat mostly plate lunches (but no poi for her) or whatever mainland American chow she can find, even hamburgers and fries.

Strawberry Fields Forever

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At a certain point in autumn, many fruits suddenly become unavailable—unless they are flown in from Latin America or grown in greenhouses. Apples and pears still abound, and there are always oranges and grapefruits, though initially, these are not at their best.

One characteristic of my own diet is that I must eat fresh fruit every day. Sometimes, I’ll eat figs or dates or other dried fruit, but nothing quite matches the experience of biting into a piece of fruit at its best. Fortunately, February has great oranges and tangerines, and you can start getting really good strawberries from Ventura County.

From now until November, a new fresh fruit season has begun. It will reach its height in June, when cherries and apricots are at their height. And later in summer, the freestone peaches and plums are there, at least until September. Then, I must wait for the Fuyu Persimmons to come into season. And after the persimmons, I am back to apples, pears, and dried fruit.

I suspect I became addicted to fresh fruit because, In Parma Heights, Ohio, we had about twenty fruit trees in our back yard. They were great eating, though a misery when it came to mowing the lawn around all the fallen fruit. If my health can be said to be good, I owe it largely to eating habits developed when I was very young.

Tortillas de Maiz

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There is something uniquely satisfying about eating the peasant cuisine of the area in which one lives. In the case of Los Angeles, that means chiles, beans, and corn tortillas. I even prefer honey in which the bees gather pollen from mesquite and desert wildflowers.

Today, I had chilaquiles for brunch with refried beans and eggs over easy at Gilbert’s El Indio Restaurant in Santa Monica. What are chilaquiles? You see the photo of corn tortillas above. They cut into wedges, fried, and cooked in a tomato salsa. I’ve had them—mostly for breakfast—all over Mexico, even in Yucatán. Nothing simpler, yet eminently satisfying when prepared by someone who knows what he or she is doing.

Gilbert’s El Indio Restaurant

The benefit of eating foods native to your area is mostly psychological, but my guess is it’ll do a lot more for you than any so-called “superfood” like kale, beets, or acai berries.

Pilgrims and Indians

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I have always had my suspicions about the first Thanksgiving feast in 1621. There is no record of what was on the menu, only a few words by Governor William Bradford about the preparations for the feast:

Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week.

Were potatoes served at the first Thanksgiving? Not likely, as potatoes were a South American tuber originating either in Peru or Chiloe Island in Chile. And it is highly unlikely that the Spanish conquistadores made any contribution to the Pilgrims’ harvest feast. Were green beans available to the colonists in Massachusetts during November? I doubt it.

Cranberries and pumpkins might very well have been at the feast, along with various types of squash and beans.

Turkey may well have been among the fowl served, though there probably were a number of other types, not only of fowl but other types of meat as well, including, perhaps, venison.

Whatever you choose to have at your family’s gathering tomorrow, I hope you all have a good time. Just remember one thing: Do not, under any circumstances, discuss politics, even if everyone is likely to be more or less in agreement. As with religion, everyone has his own bête noire where governing is concerned.

Politics in America is one thing for which we have scant reason to be thankful.

Stuffed Cabbage

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Not all my cooking creations are successful. The first time I tried cooking Hungarian stuffed cabbage rolls—a dish I was brought up on by my mother and great-grandmother—the rolls all fell apart. I didn’t know the trick of trimming the thick “veins” in the cabbage leaves, and I don’t remember parboiling and coring the cabbage.

This week, I got it right. First of all, I consulted with my brother, who is by far the best cook in the family. Then he sent me the recipe he uses. Here it is.

It took me five hours to cook the cabbage rolls from start to finish, though much of that time was waiting for the rolls to boil for 1½ to 2 hours. I used four different kind of meats in my recipe: smoked Hungarian gyulai kolbasz, Hickory smoked bacon, ground pork, and ground beef. Fortunately, there’s a great butcher shop at Alpine Village in Torrance which has several different types of kolbasz.

Once you make stuffed cabbage rolls, it’s easy to cook enough to feed a family for several days. Our lasted five days, with some left over that we had to discard because i have a rule that no cooked dish I make can be eaten for more than five days.

If you should try the recipe, be sure to get some fresh dill and some marjoram and—most important of all—real Hungarian paprika from Szeged, Hungary. The Spanish stuff has the color, but not the flavor.

Marketing Metastasis

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It All Started with Coca Cola

In 1985, the Coca Cola Company came out with New Coke, which never really took off. To recover from their gaffe, they decided to keep the old formula as Coca Cola Classic. In the process, they discovered that taking over more shelf space with other products bearing the Coke logo was a win-win for the Corporation. So now today you can buy Coke with exclusive new chicken liver flavor, with crushed pretzels, with overtones of sulfuric acid, and with extra corn syrup.

At the same time, all the other old brands have similarly metastasized. Ritz Crackers. Doritos. Ocean Spray. Reese’s. Cheez-It. Cheetos. Triscuit. The list goes on and on. Note, however, that the brands involved in multiplying themselves are products with a long shelf life. You can’t achieve the same success with celery, parsley, Gravenstein apples, or dragon fruit.

When I had to buy some Ocean Spray cranberry juice a couple of weeks ago (it’s good if you have a urinary tract infection), I had a hard time find just plain original cranberry juice. Needless to say, I was not swayed by the new Clam*Berry flavor or the one with sauerkraut flavoring added.

I suppose the idea is to make smaller brands scared by the multiplicity of variations—though what happens when you run out of all the popular variants?

Even Trader Joe’s has gotten into the act, with a kind of dill pickle flavored popcorn. It really wasn’t very good.

At some point, a lot of these *NEW* flavors will be duds. Then maybe we won’t be presented with so many weird options.