adventures in food
Through a not-as-complicated-as-it-sounds process of soaking, straining, draining, boiling, stirring, and recombining, I have now produced some kind of gelatinous turmeric-yellow paste that looks like butterscotch pudding and tastes like split pea gravy, with that gelatinous quality you usually associate with cold turkey stuffing. It is awesome. Hopefully it wants to be tofu later - we'll see what it does. Right now when I poke it is satisfyingly rubbery.
Also, we went to Maido in Narberth and bought Things. Things include some blocks of mochi, some ridiculous beverages and candy, instant broth/soup products, dry konbu, and a 1-m long rapier-like burdock root for experimentation. In addition to Things, we bought Lunch, which was happy-making. Things that they had that we did not buy, but plan to buy at the relevant time, include preserved plums and sliced lotus root. Things they did not have that we will need to buy at some point include chestnut paste (or whatever you make chestnut paste out of, possibly chestnuts in some form) and black soybeans. Presumably we can find those at one of the local Vietnamese/pan-Asian grocery stores, H-Mart (Upper Darby), Wegmans (Cherry Hill), or Sunrise Mart (NYC). (I'm going up to NYC on 12/21 for a roundsing.)
η(7 pm): We had to restock on rice, so we can report that the local pan-Asian grocery store definitely has dried plums, fresh burdock root (but about 2 ft shorter and maybe not as good-quality), fresh lotus (lily) root, and dry black soybeans. The lotus seems to be a very odd plant, given what its nuts and roots look like. The store definitely does not have any chestnut product involving a non-water chestnut, nor does it have (plain) mochi or dried cherry blossoms (despite having dried violets and roses), but it has rice-based macaroni, which is probably better in some way than normal macaroni. Prettier, definitely.
η(8:37 pm): After some experimentation, I am forced to conclude that burdock (a.k.a. gobo, like the expensive tapas place in NYC) is at least as weird as lotus, and the primary symbolism of both of them for the New Year has got to be "winter has been going on so long we are reduced to eating these weirdly textured roots made of cellulose." They are "done", but I am not completely convinced they are digestible.
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Also, we went to Maido in Narberth and bought Things. Things include some blocks of mochi, some ridiculous beverages and candy, instant broth/soup products, dry konbu, and a 1-m long rapier-like burdock root for experimentation. In addition to Things, we bought Lunch, which was happy-making. Things that they had that we did not buy, but plan to buy at the relevant time, include preserved plums and sliced lotus root. Things they did not have that we will need to buy at some point include chestnut paste (or whatever you make chestnut paste out of, possibly chestnuts in some form) and black soybeans. Presumably we can find those at one of the local Vietnamese/pan-Asian grocery stores, H-Mart (Upper Darby), Wegmans (Cherry Hill), or Sunrise Mart (NYC). (I'm going up to NYC on 12/21 for a roundsing.)
η(7 pm): We had to restock on rice, so we can report that the local pan-Asian grocery store definitely has dried plums, fresh burdock root (but about 2 ft shorter and maybe not as good-quality), fresh lotus (lily) root, and dry black soybeans. The lotus seems to be a very odd plant, given what its nuts and roots look like. The store definitely does not have any chestnut product involving a non-water chestnut, nor does it have (plain) mochi or dried cherry blossoms (despite having dried violets and roses), but it has rice-based macaroni, which is probably better in some way than normal macaroni. Prettier, definitely.
η(8:37 pm): After some experimentation, I am forced to conclude that burdock (a.k.a. gobo, like the expensive tapas place in NYC) is at least as weird as lotus, and the primary symbolism of both of them for the New Year has got to be "winter has been going on so long we are reduced to eating these weirdly textured roots made of cellulose." They are "done", but I am not completely convinced they are digestible.
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comments. Leave a comment? (Click "Log in with OpenID?", top right corner.)