Best Food Writing 2010 (20 page)

Stocking the Pantry

AVOCADO HEAVEN

By Rowan Jacobsen From
Eating Well

Author of
A Geography of Oysters, Fruitless Fall
, and the recent
American Terroir
, Jacobsen has carved out his niche covering the intersection between food and the environment. Coming from that angle, even a simple avocado can be a fascinating case study.

O
n a jade-tinted hillside in the lush southwestern Mexican state of Michoacán, Chef Rick Bayless held up an avocado as if it were sacred. He halved the avocado around its equator with a penknife, which is how growers check for ripeness, and discovered that this particular specimen was spot on. He could tell by the way the bright-green flesh near the skin paled to yolk-yellow near the pit. An avocado that is green to the pit will taste grassy, he told me. If it’s yellow at the core, it’ll be creamy as custard, rich as ricotta.

The avocado looked like a snowglobe-size model of its surroundings: green hills, yellow fields and dark-domed peaks. This fruit, here in its native land, was one with its environment. Which might have explained the look on Bayless’s face. Bayless is, among other things, the chef responsible for introducing many Americans to authentic Mexican cuisine, as well as one of the strongest voices in the sustainable-food movement. As executive chef of Frontera Grill, Topolobampo and the recently opened Xoco in Chicago, some of the top Mexican restaurants in the U.S., Bayless has seen a lot of avocados in his life, which means he has seen all too many bad avocados. But he was staring at this one with something passingly close to love. And I admit, I was starting to feel it too. Because I had traveled here, with him, to find out why Hass avocados from this little corner of the world are so damn good.

The answer was all around us. Avocados in this valley are so rich because they are born to wealth. The highlands of Michoacán, 200 miles west of Mexico City, are rimmed by towering, flat-topped volcanoes—1,350 in all. Millions of years of eruptions filled the valley with sweet, productive, mineral-rich soil, and the avocado tree pumps all those nutrients into its fruit. Most fruits are primarily sugar, but an avocado is mostly fat—heart-healthy, monounsaturated fat. A fully ripened Michoacán avocado can have a fat content of 30 percent.

Such production takes tremendous quantities of water, which isn’t a problem in this semitropical paradise. From May to October, the mountains are drenched in rain. What doesn’t get sucked up by the trees trickles into the porous aquifer, resurfacing in the sparkling rivers that lace the region. Cisterns in the orchards catch the water to supply the trees during the dry season.

Unlike any other avocado region in the world, avocado trees in Michoacán bloom twice, and it’s not unusual to see fruit and flowers on the same tree. With temperatures softly oscillating between 50° and 80°F, trees can choose their schedule; there’s no killer frost hanging over the day planner. It takes an avocado about 12 months to mature, but it won’t soften until picked; if left on the tree, it will continue to put on fat for an additional six months. It doesn’t just stay good; it gets better. Mountainous Michoacán, whose orchards range in altitude from 3,000 to 8,000 feet, also benefits from a multitude of microclimates. Any given week of the year, some orchard here is at the peak of ripeness. This unique flexibility allows Michoacán to ship premium, fresh-picked fruit year-round.

Due to the drought, recent California avocado harvests have been barely large enough to supply the West Coast. Michoacán supplies most of the rest of the country. In fact, Michoacán supplies nearly half the world’s avocados. More than 200,000 acres of verdant avocado orchards blanket every hill in the region. It’s the kind of success you have when you grow a crop where it wants to grow—indeed, where it has grown for thousands of years. And it’s a vital support for a state that in the past four decades has sent millions of people to the U.S. in search of work. Today 300,000 Michoacáns are directly or indirectly employed in the avocado industry. The graceful, colonial-era cities bustle with shops and shoppers, and the tables in the street markets groan under the weight of freshly harvested fruits, vegetables, herbs and fish.

After a day spent shopping those markets, Chef Bayless was inspired to make me a batch of guacamole. It’s hard to improve on the Aztecs’ original ahuaca-mulli, or “avocado sauce,” made of mashed avocados, chiles, tomatoes and onions, but Bayless may have done it with his roasted garlic guacamole topped with tasty garnishes like crisp bacon and toasted pumpkin seeds. The avocados he used had lovely hints of pine nuts and fennel. “Avocados don’t have a bold taste, but they have a complex one,” he explained. “It can be really fun to play around with different ingredients and see how they bring out different aspects of that complexity.”

Bayless’s comment stuck with me as I watched him cook. He used avocados to thicken salsa verde and to add richness to sopa de tortilla, a staple of Mexican cuisine. Later, when he concocted a sweet and luscious avocado ice cream it struck me that the avocado is nature’s emulsifier par excellence. Thousands of years before the invention of margarine or mayonnaise, the avocado tree had already figured out how to whip healthy unsaturated oil into a stable and spreadable paste. From creamy soups to decadent desserts, it has excelled in that role ever since, allowing all of us to savor the fat of the land.

Roasted Garlic Guacamole with Help- Yourself Garnishes

Rick Bayless’s new book is all about how to throw a great fiesta, or party, and a key part of any great fiesta is the food. “I like to welcome guests with this guacamole bar,” he says. “I start off with a basic guacamole made with roasted garlic and set out bowls of toppings so everyone can customize each bite.” (Recipe from “Fiesta at Rick’s” by Rick Bayless; W. W. Norton and Company, July 2010.)

4 cups guacamole, for 16 servings

Active Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients : Guacamole

6 large cloves garlic, unpeeled
6 ripe medium avocados
½ cup coarsely chopped fresh cilantro, loosely packed
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice, plus more if desired
1 teaspoon salt

Ingredients: Garnishes

¾ cup Mexican queso fresco, queso añejo, salted pressed
farmer’s cheese, firm goat cheese, mild feta or romano,
finely crumbled or grated
¾ cup toasted pumpkin seeds (see Tip)
¾ cup sliced pickled jalapeños
½ cup crumbled crisp-fried bacon or ¾ cup coarsely crum-
bled chicharrón (Mexican crisp-fried pork rind)
1 16-ounce bag large, sturdy tortilla chips

Preparation

1.To prepare guacamole: Place unpeeled garlic in a small dry skillet over medium heat; cook, turning occasionally, until soft and blackened in spots, 10 to 15 minutes. Cool, then slip off the skins; finely chop. Scoop avocado flesh into a large bowl. Add the garlic, cilantro and lime juice to taste. Coarsely mash everything together. Season with salt. Transfer to a serving bowl and place plastic wrap directly on the surface of the guacamole. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

2. To set up the guacamole bar: Scoop garnishes into small serving bowls and put the chips in a large basket or bowl. Encourage guests to spoon a little guacamole on a chip and top with garnishes that appeal.

THE KIMCHI FIX

By Jane Black From the
Washington Post

Jane Black’s superb food reportage for this D.C. daily paper is a major factor in keeping food policy ranked high on the nation’s agenda. In this article, she blends international politics, recipe deconstruction, and restaurant reviewing—and whets our appetite.

I
made my first batch of kimchi the first week of October. Since then, there has been only a single 13-day period when I haven’t had some in the fridge. Thirteen very long days.

What started out as a neat addition to a dinner party menu—“Let’s try something from the new Momofuku cookbook”—turned into an all-out obsession with funky, spicy Korean fermented cabbage. It was terrific with the hanger steak at dinner and maybe better with steamed rice or poached eggs after a few more days in the fridge. Soon, I began to crave it, the same way most people yearn for chocolate cake. That’s when I realized that kimchi also tastes pretty darn good right out of the jar.

“It’s like cabbage crack,” I told my fiance as we polished off one of our early batches for a mid-morning snack. Then we both burst into hyena-like laughter. We were in trouble.

My kimchi habit will no doubt be a great relief to the government of South Korea, which has made spreading the word about the country’s national dish an official policy. The Korea Food Research Institute has a traditional-foods division charged with the “scientific research of Korean fermented foods such as sauces, alcohols, and kimchi for their globalization,” according to its Web site.

At first, such a policy might seem odd; Americans have a fierce love affair with hamburgers, but I’m unaware of any government program to evangelize them. We’ve left that job to McDonald’s. But in Korea, kimchi is a national obsession. Seoul has a kimchi museum with a vast collection of cookbooks, cooking utensils and storage jars. Families around the country own special refrigerators designed to maintain the optimal temperature for the stinky vegetables’ fermentation and preservation. Perhaps the most famous example of the nation’s kimchi fever is that South Korean scientists spent years developing a recipe for a bacteria-free “space kimchi” to accompany their first citizen’s visit to the international space station.

“This will greatly help my mission,” Ko San, then a 30-year-old computer scientist, said in a statement quoted by the
New York Times
before he was to blast off in 2008. “Since I am taking kimchi with me, this will help with cultural exchanges in space.”

Kimchi has been an integral part of Korean culture for thousands of years. The first record of it dates to the 7th century, according to Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee, author of “Quick and Easy Korean Cooking” (Chronicle Books, 2009), though it is believed that Koreans have eaten it for far longer. Modern versions didn’t arise until the 15th century, when the first chili peppers arrived from the new world. About that time, cooks also began to add salted seafood, which gives the dish its pungent perfume.

Traditional kimchi, the kind I’ve been making, uses Napa cabbage. But there are seemingly infinite varieties. In Seoul, you might find baby ginseng kimchi, while north and south of the city, eggplant and pumpkin varieties are common. Historically, kimchi was made in late fall and buried in earthen jars to preserve it during the winter. Today, it is made year-round and varies with the season, incorporating Asian radishes in winter and cucumbers in summer.

Rice-based (and occupying) cultures such as Japan took a shine to kimchi long ago. The food’s recent entrance into the American mainstream is driven by two larger trends. The first is a new fixation on all things fermented: pickles, dilly beans, sauerkraut and chowchow are now standard at gourmet groceries and farmers markets. Why not stinky pickled cabbage?

The second is broader awareness of, and familiarity with, Korean cuisine. Over the past 30 years, Americans have embraced sushi, pad Thai and the Vietnamese noodle soup pho. But Korean food has been a harder sell. In part, it’s because the cuisine is newer to America. The largest wave of Korean immigrants arrived here in the 1970s and ‘80s. And it is only recently that a second, more assimilated generation has taken over.

I see the change at Korean restaurants. Eight years ago, when I worked near Koreatown in New York, I was relentlessly steered to the “safe” bibimbap despite my pleas for something else. Today, Korean chefs are willing to walk a newbie through a traditional menu (see: Honey Pig in Annandale). Hot young chefs, such as Momofuku’s David Chang in New York and Kogi’s Roy Choi in Los Angeles, are experimenting with using classic ingredients in new ways. “When chefs put kimchi in a quesadilla, they start to get the flavor out, and both Koreans’ and Americans’ impression that it’s just too spicy starts to dissipate,” said Debra Samuels, co-author of “The Korean Table” (Tuttle, 2008).

Once I fell for kimchi, I started to see it everywhere. This week the Source by Wolfgang Puck is launching a new Asian menu in its lounge including a dish of Korean short ribs with cabbage and radish kimchi. At the Bethesda Central Farm Market, Eric Johnson, who made his name as a chocolatier, turned up this month selling vegan kimchi: cabbage pickled with garlic, ginger and cayenne. (A strong believer in whole and raw foods, Johnson won’t add fish sauce or salted shrimp unless he can make the ingredient himself.) Oh Pickles, a vendor at several Washington area markets, also plans to add kimchi to its line of pickled cucumbers and tomatoes soon.

“People really recognize it and love it,” said the Source’s executive chef, Scott Drewno. In summer, he said, when he serves it alongside a soft-shell crab sandwich, people always ask for an extra bowl of kimchi on the side.

These days, most Koreans buy their kimchi, says author Lee. But making it is cheap and easy—plus, you can avoid the commercial brands that add MSG.

First, salt the cabbage and let it sit overnight. That will flavor the leaves and draw out the moisture. Next, add any other vegetables: Scallions, chopped radish and mustard greens are traditional, but I like ribbons of carrots, too. Then, mix in garlic, ginger, Korean chili pepper, salted shrimp and/or fish sauce and a touch of sugar.

The amounts of each ingredient vary. I believe Chang’s recipe, which calls for 20 cloves of garlic, might be addictive. But the quantity of garlic makes it awkward to talk to anyone who hasn’t also been eating it. (That’s why many Korean restaurants offer you strong peppermint gum after your meal.) Lesson: Make your kimchi to taste.

Many recipes make a gallon or more of kimchi. So once it’s ready, there’s the question of how to use it all. A Korean proverb says: If you have kimchi and rice, you have a meal. And that’s certainly true. Other traditional dishes include kimchi pancakes, very fermented kimchi mixed with ground pork, scallions, flour and egg, then sauteed; and kimchi soup, which adds a few clams and fish stock or even water to chopped kimchi.

As part of its effort to globalize kimchi, the South Korean government collaborated with the Cordon Bleu to develop more Western-friendly recipes that are available at the Food in Korea web site. Some, such as sesame kimchi twists and Camembert-and-sesame kimchi fritters, sound promising. The chocolate cake with kimchi and the napoleons filled with kimchi pastry cream? Not so much.

The best fusion idea I’ve heard yet is Lee’s Thanksgiving kimchi stuffing. Add old, very fermented kimchi to her usual bread, celery, onions and walnuts, and use kimchi juice as the liquid to bind it all together. “We used to make a traditional stuffing and the kimchi version, and after a while we thought, why bother with the regular one?” Lee said.

Step aside, bacon. Everything is better with kimchi.