Local Produce

Steamed Periwinkles with Garlic Stems & White Wine

When we first saw these green garlic stems in the Korean groceries, my first thought was to pickle them but actually I’ve done everything BUT pickle them so far! Once the stems are trimmed and cut to the desired length, they are sauteed in olive oil creating both a fragrant oil and a pre-cooked aromatic that you can quickly add to anything for a flavor boost — eggs and cheese for a hearty morning scramble or omelet; and pasta sauces, stews and soups to replace or supplement other aromatics such as onions and garlic. Garlic stems have a milder but distinctly garlic flavor, and soften to a pleasant bite once cooked.

One end of the stems has a bud which will eventually “blossom” with miniature cloves that make an interesting garnish, and which will be delicious once pickled. (I *will* pickle these soon.)

In this quick recipe for steamed periwinkles in white wine sauce, we used the same broth we would use for steamed clams and simply replaced regular minced garlic cloves with a half bunch of chopped garlic stems The stems are milder than garlic cloves so the copious amount was necessary to bring out the same garlic pungency.

We first tried periwinkles last year, and the ones we got in Hawaii came from Canada. These were more local, but at H-Mart were labelled as “Bai Top Shells.” They require considerably more cleaning than the ones we got in Hawaii if you plan to use them in this dish where the shells are added directly to the cooking broth, and the broth is consumed as part of the meal. It seems from a scan of recipes for bai top on the web, that in Korean dishes, the meat is extracted from the shell and the shells are discarded so they are sold more naturel, as it were.

The one thing I can say about the periwinkles we got this time is that they were VERY fresh. So fresh that after scrubbing them and draining them, I put the shells in the fridge to keep cool while I prepped the broth, and when I went to take them out, I was greeted with this:

I thought to myself: I can freak out, or I can grab my camera… As you can see, I went for the photo-op. (This photo is going out to Rowena, who first mentioned the possibility of snails in the fridge on her blog last month!)

STEAMED PERIWINKLES with GARLIC STEMS & WHITE WINE
For 4-5 persons

2 lbs. periwinkles (aka bai top)
2 TBL olive oil
Half bunch of garlic stems, washed, trimmed and cut into 1” pieces
4 TBL unsalted butter
1/2 tsp sea salt (not necessary if using regular butter)
fresh ground black pepper
1/2 bottle dry white wine (we used a Vinho Verde)
water
½ tsp red pepper flakes (optional)

Make a saline soaking liquid by mixing 1/4 cup sea salt with 2 quarts/liters cold water, and stir to dissolve salt. Clean the shells by first soaking in this saline solution for 30 minutes to loosen dirt on the shells. Using a hard bristled brush, such as a nail brush or firm toothbrush, scrub shells free of dirt and place in colander. Rinse all shells under running water. Keep in fridge until needed. (Note: If you don’t plan to cook the shells the same day you buy them, don’t clean them until just before you plan to cook.)

In a medium saucepan, heat olive oil and garlic stems over medium high heat until garlic aroma fills the kitchen. Add butter, salt, pepper, and pepper flakes if using, and heat until butter is melted through and bubbling. Add white wine, and bring to boil. Add periwinkles, stir through, and add enough water so that broth comes 3/4 of the way around shells, and cover. Return to boil, stirring occasionally. Cook for 10 minutes.

Serve with a toothpick to extract meat from shell, and lots of fresh bread to sop up the buttery, garlicky broth!

Like periwinkles? Also try Portuguese-style Pork, Clams & Periwinkles. And for another take on periwinkles — adding chorizo and mussels instead, visit Meagan Down Under on her site, Megalomaniac.

A Taste of Persia: Lamb Khoresh with Eggplant

I’ve had a love affair with eggplant, or aubergines, for as long as I can remember. And when I think of eggplant I’m thinking first of the slender, long Japanese eggplant like the ones in this photo, since those are what I grew up with. In Hawaii, we found locally grown eggplant all year round — what a blessing that was!

In her book, A Taste of Persia, Najmieh K. Batmanglij, shares her love for eggplant tied to a memory of frying them with her mother to make a luscious aromatic stew, called Khoresh in Farsi. This slim volume introduces the reader to the most popular dishes of the rich Persian repetoire, including 13 recipes for various khoreshes. I can’t recommend it highly enough, although it can be challenging to find some of the more unusual ingredients called for in the recipes. But well worth the hunt.

This particular khoresh recipe drew me in because it utilizes eggplants that are fried whole, then added to the stew with the stem end intact. It makes for quite a dramatic presentation on your plate. After frying, he eggplant may be peeled or left unpeeled, depending on the diameter of the vegetable. The eggplant used in these photos were nearly pencil-thin and about 10” long — it is a variety I’ve most often seen used to make the Philippine vegetable stew known as Pinakbet. Since the eggplant were so small, the skin softens and becomes meltingly tender, even when fried, so the eggplant were left unpeeled.

Eggplant and lamb have a natural affinity for each other, and although Ms. Batmanglij allows that other meats may be substituted for lamb in her khoresh recipes I hope you try this one with lamb. You will love it!

LAMB KHORESH WITH EGGPLANT
From A Taste of Persia by Najmieh K. Batmanglij
Serves 4 persons

5 TBL unsalted butter or ghee
3 small onions, thinly sliced (used 1 large)
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
1 lb/455g fairly lean lamb, beef or boneless, skinless chicken, cut into thin strips
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp fresh ground pepper
1/ tsp saffron threads, soaked in 4 TBL hot water
1/4 tsp ground turmeric
3 cups/483g fresh or canned pureed tomatoes
1 cup unripe grapes or 4 TBL fresh lime juice (used lime juice)
2lbs/900g long Japanese eggplants, peeled and sliced lengthwise into 1/4” strips
(I used ultra-thin baby eggplants)
2 egg whites, lightly beaten
1 TBL oil
1 small tomato

Heat 3 TBL of butter or ghee in a skillet over medium heat. Add onions and stir-fry 5-8 minutes, until translucent. Add garlic and meat, and fry for 15 minutes, or until golden brown.
Add salt, pepper, saffron water, and turmeric. Add tomato puree and unripe grapes or lime juice, and bring to boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 15 minutes while you prepare eggplant and pre-heat the oven.

Peel eggplant and slice them lengthwise into quarters if they are large. Brush each side with egg whites to reduce oil needed for frying.

Heat remaining 2 TBL of butter or ghee in a skillet over medium heat. Fry eggplant until golden brown on each side, about 10 minutes. Drain on paper towels.

In the same skillet you fried the eggplant, heat 1 TBL of oil over medium heat and saute the tomato whole.

Transfer meat to oven-proof casserole, and arrange eggplant and tomato on top. Cover and bake for 30 minutes, then remove cover and bake 15 minutes longer.

Taste and adjust seasoning for balance of salt and sourness (add lime juice).

Serve with saffron steamed or plain basmati rice. We also added a yogurt salad.

Visit Ms. Batmanglij’s site for a preview of and more recipes from this book.

Amerika no Yomogi (American Yomogi)

Last spring I was shooting envy spears at everyone harvesting wild greens and herbs all over the planet. This year I get to join in the hunt since we’ve already identified 2 wild things growing right in our neighborhood. One is something I grew up with and knew well; the other I was introduced to last year while reading about everyone else’s fun in the wilds. First up is a familiar and long-missed favorite: Mugwort. Another time we’ll look at: Spruce Tips.

What we’re still hunting: Wild leeks, aka Ramps, aka Bärlauch. Does anyone have any leads on where we might find some???… Anyone??…

Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris, right side of above illustration) grows to be a tall shrub, and is a member of the chrysanthemum family. You get a hint of that relation from a close look at its leaves, which do look like the edible chrysanthemum leaves known as shingiku (Chrysanthemum coronarium). The mugwort featured in this article is common in Europe and North America, and is closely related to 2 varieties that enjoy much more fame and notoriety — the Japanese mugwort (Artemisia princeps), also known as Yomogi (click for photo); and Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium, left side of above illustration).

Yomogi is widely used in Japan and other Asian countries as an herb to flavor rice cakes, porridges, cookies, and as a vegetable in soups and stir-fries. And in Traditional Chinese Medicine, the fuzz on the underside of the leaves is collected and used in heat treatments along acupuncture points, a process called moxibustion. Wormwood, as hinted in its Latin name, is the key ingredient in the infamous liqueur known as Absinthe. More on these at another time.

The common mugwort is not what the Japanese would recognize as Yomogi — its Japanese cousin has smaller leaves, more lobe-shaped than pointed. But for the purposes of this article I will use the Japanese name because that is what I know it as, and I will use it in the same ways its Asian cousin is used in Japan, namely as an herb for flavoring.

At this time of year, yomogi is quite prolific here, as it is in Europe. In both continents it is most often viewed as a weed — even a noxious weed since it is quite invasive once established. But yomogi also enjoys a long history of medicinal (both to ease digestive ailments and to purge parasites) and ritual (to keep evil spirits away) use. In Germany (where it is known as Beifuss), we found it most often in wooded areas and near river banks; and here (eastern U.S.) the wooded park near our home is nearly overrun by patches of it along most of the footpaths and open fields. While still young, the strong bitter flavor that is most prized in yomogi has not fully developed, and the flavor is still very fresh, and almost minty tasting, with only a hint of the bitterness that will develop with sun and time.

Yomogi and its cousins are immediately recognizable by the silvery, slightly fuzzy undersides of their leaves, and their distinctive aroma when the leaves are bruised. Even when I’m not “harvesting” yomogi per se, I will snap a few stems if I pass a shrub, keeping them in my pocket and gently crushing the leaves for a whiff when I’m starting to feel tired or when I’m on public transit.

Last weekend I took a basket to harvest a small batch of American yomogi from the park. Of course, when harvesting near a footpath or well-travelled path, go as far from the path as you can! Getting away from the path may keep you away from areas visited by pooches making their rounds, but there are other wild animals that don’t necessarily follow the path so you still want to wash your harvest well. I normally wash store-bought produce in a vinegar wash and 2-3 rinses, but for these I did 2 vinegar rinses and 2 fresh water rinses. (BTW, rinses after the vinegar wash are recycled to water the outdoor plants or to flush toilets — conservation tips I learned from living through the California drought in the 1980s.)

Once the yomogi was washed and dried, I made something I’ve been craving a very long time: Okayu. Okayu is simply a rice porridge, but my mother always made it with yomogi, so in my mind okayu must be scented with fresh yomogi leaves. Okayu was something my mom made for us when we weren’t feeling well, or when our stomachs were out of sorts, such as arriving home after a long plane ride (10 hours from the West Coast to Guam via Japan or Hawaii, for instance).

Strangely, we never did find fresh yomogi, either in markets or as a potted herb, while we were in Hawaii. With the large Japanese, Korean and Chinese populations (all which use yomogi in some way), I thought it would be easy to find in the Islands. Nope. So this was the first real okayu I’ve had since we lived in Germany. It was so-o-o good. Especially after being sick for most of March and April (and just getting another diagnosis of yet another infection this week).

Now that I have a ready supply of yomogi, I know there will be a lot of okayu in the near future. But I’m also going to try for the first time to make my own Kusamochi since fresh Japanese pastries are no longer a retail option, and yomogi pasta for the summer. I hope you will join me for those adventures, too!

OKAYU
Serves 4 persons (or 2 greedy people)

3/4 cup medium grain rice
1/4 cup short-grain glutinous rice
7 cups of water (or half broth, half water)
1 slice fresh ginger
3 handfuls cleaned and dried yomogi leaves

Wash rices separately by gently rubbing grains in water until milky, then draining. Rinse repeatedly until water runs clear. Set aside.

Bring water and ginger to boil over high heat in a large 3 qt/L saucepan. Stir in washed rices and bring back to a boil. When boiling, turn heat down to medium high and cook with cover slightly ajar over pot to allow some steam to escape, but keep the mixture at a slow boil. Cook for about 40-45 minutes or until mixture has thickened but is still soupy, stirring occasionally to keep rice from sticking.

Just before adding to porridge, roughly chop yomogi leaves and immediately add them to the pot. (Don’t cut leaves too early or the volatile oils and their glorious aroma will be lost by the time the leaves are added to the porridge.) Stir leaves through, cover and cook another 8-10 minutes. Remove from heat and let rest for 10 minutes.

Serve in deep soup bowl, with side of Umeboshi, Japanese pickled plum.

Cod with Mango-Sake Sauce

We’re still catching up with recipes and photos from Hawaiii, so here is one for the current mango season there. This recipe for a mango and sake sauce for fish was created after we were visited by an enterprising tween-ager last spring who was selling ice-cold peeled, ripe pirie mangoes door-to-door for $4.00 per bag!! We bought 2 — I wanted to buy his whole stash but that seemed too greedy. Each bag weighed in at almost 2 lbs. each of pure mango! It’s hard to imagine such decadence now when the closest thing we can find to the silken mango-iness of tree-ripe piries are the champagne mangoes from Mexico at $1.99 per mango! *sob*

The mango was cooked down into a puree with just a touch of water (no sugar) to keep the fruit from sticking to the pan, then they were ready for use in baking and cooking. Sure, there was a mango bread or two, but I wanted to use them in a savory dish too. A jigger or two (probably two) of sake, a knob of butter, a pinch of sea salt and white pepper were added to some of the puree to create this sauce. The cod itself was seasoned with sea salt and a fish curry powder from Singapore, but any curry powder (Jamaican, Japanese, Malaysian, Indonesian, South Asian) with a bit of turmeric to lend a touch of bitterness to balance the sweetness of the mangoes will work.

The fish was then pan-fried and plated, and the mango-sake sauce napped before serving (in truth, this was too generously napped — probably half this amount would make a better presentation but it was very good! ). This was made with Alaskan cod but any flaky white fish would do — halibut, haddock, even tilapia.

Those are not black sesame seeds, but onion seeds, or kalonji, over the mango sauce. Kalonji are a staple of Middle Eastern and South Asian/Indian baking and cooking, and add a nice bit of tang as well as color. On Oahu you will find kalonji at India Market on S. Beretania near UH, and maybe in the bulk spice drawers at Down-to-Earth (??); here in the D.C. area we often see aisles of Indian spices and dry goods in the larger Korean supermarkets, such as H-Mart, but there’s also a market in Hyattsville called Patel Bros. that has quite an extensive assortment of South Asian fresh, dry and frozen goods.

I meant to do this recipe again during the second wave of mango season on Oahu last year so I could measure out the ingredients, but we were caught up in the re-location frenzy at the time. I hope the photo is enough to get you started playing with your ingredients at home.

The fish is plated with watercress mashed potatoes (Flash-cooked Watercress + Mashed Potatoes) and a homemade shiso-flavored rakkyo (pickled scallions).

If you’re somewhere in the world where it’s mango season now, please have one for me!!

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More fun with mangoes…..
Double Mango Wholewheat Quickbread
Double Mango Yeast Bread
Mango-stuffed French Toast