My Dilemma With Trader Joe's

This is pretty simple. I'm just mystified that some of Trader Joe's products are so good and some are so bad. Like their avocados—always ripen to a lovely creamy consistency. Or their frozen chocolate croissants which you bake at home—turns your home into a bakery. So why are their cheese so bad? Their "Parmesan" is horrendous. Their Monterey Jack doesn't even melt. And their frozen ethnic foods, like the gyozas, have the consistency of wet cardboard. But great apple juice.

My Dilemma With Whole Foods

My dilemma with Whole Foods? They're just weird. Like they've got stuff I really like to buy, but the shopping experience is just so confusing. Like sometimes the meat you get at the counter is really fresh and sometimes it's really not fresh. Like I'm at the produce section and they've got all this stuff with scanner codes but no prices. So finally, I ask a staff guy what's with the veggies with no prices? I'm assuming since they have scanner codes, there must be a scanner somewhere? Like where is it? So the guy says, "Well what do you need the price of?" And I'm like, no—week after week this happens—where's the scanner? Do you guys even have one? So the guy finally gets it and says, "Yeah. I'll show you." And then he take me to the tiniest computer behind some mushrooms and I say, "Uh—don't you think you guys should have a big sign so we can find this scanner?" And he looks at me like, "Why?" Shopping rage. I'm getting a headache just retelling this story.

Coming next, my dilemma with Trader Joe's.

Kitchen Shears

Kitchen shears. Not a very romantic topic, but what in the kitchen is? Kitchen shears are pretty important though. I find it impossible to operate in the kitchen without them, especially in the age of over-packaging. A good pair of kitchen shears will cut through any plastic, no matter how tough, break cleanly through chicken bones, chop up herbs, cut raw bacon better than a knife, etc. On the other hand, a bad pair of kitchen shears will only enhance wrap rage. I had a bad pair; I used them for over ten years. When they finally came apart, I decided I wouldn't buy another pair until I'd done tons of research. Which is how I found my way to Shun Kitchen Shears. As sharp as any pair of shears I've ever had, and built to last, I now cannot live without them. It even comes with screwdriver blades, which I thought I would never use, but I actually did yesterday, tightening the screw on my cheap Ikea pot lid.

Nongshim Hearty Rice Noodle Soup

Nongshim runs some great ads. They always get me to buy their new instant noodle products. My latest try was their "hearty rice noodle soup" or duk bae kee noodle soup.  Nongshim tends to be hit-or-miss and this noodle was a bad miss.  The rice noodles take forever to cook, and if you follow their directions, the soup is just a gross mess.  But the ad is still great!

Basturma

By RosarioVanTulpe [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons

Today, for lunch, I finally tried a basturma sandwich. Basturma is an Armenian cured meat that reminded me a lot of Spanish cured hams, except that it's intensely flavored with spices like paprika, garlic, salt, and fenugreek. Doing some research, I found out that basturma is found all over what used to be the Ottoman Empire and can also be called pastirma. Apparently pastirma has the same etymological roots as pastrami but the two meats are worlds apart, since pastirmas are not cooked. Armenians make basturmas out of beef or lamb, but it can also be made from goat or camel.  I liked it, but a little goes a long way.

There's a great article about the basturma and what it means to Armenians by Nigol Bezjian. Just click here.

The Story Of Three Peppers

Every time a recipe calls for green bell peppers, I groan.  Because, these days, cultivated green bell peppers are pretty horrible:  rubbery, tasteless, old, and expensive.  Almost $3 a pound?  You've got to be kidding.  Most of the time, I just leave the peppers out.  But there are some recipes you really need a pepper for, like sloppy Joes.  So, what does a girl do?  How about replacing bell peppers with Anaheims or pasillas, my brain suggested as I browsed the produce section of an upscale chain supermarket with half-rotten vegetables.

The thing is, Anaheims and pasillas are almost half the price.  And they give really good flavor.  My only caveat is that if you use pasillas, make sure you fry them for at least ten minutes on low heat, because they're a bit tough.  Pasillas, which are actually poblanos, are usually roasted, so they need a bit more extra care if you're going to use them like bell peppers (apparently, US stores always mislabel fresh poblanos as pasillas).

Corn Pancakes á la Bindae Duk

One of my favorite things to eat is a type of pancake made with mung beans called bindae duk. But the problem with making this at home is that you need mung beans, which you have to soak for several hours and then grind. So I don't make it very often. But then one day, I was at a Korean restaurant in London and they served a kind of pancake made with cornmeal that was very much like bindae duk. I thought that was brilliant: a quick, easy way to make bindae duk using a very common ingredient. In addition, they'd added baking powder which made the pancakes fluffy and light. I really liked that. Of course, pancakes made with corn aren't the same as pancakes made with mung beans, but when you have a craving, they're awfully close, and so wonderfully hearty and delicious. Here's my version of it.

Corn Pancakes á la Bindae Duk

About a cup of very roughly ground cornmeal
About a 1/4 cup of flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 egg

Add water to the cornmeal, just enough to barely cover. Let soak for two to three hours. Add flour, salt, baking powder and egg. The batter should be fairly thick, but still runny, so if it's too thick, add more water. If too thin, add more flour.

Heat a skillet. Add oil. Wait until the skillet is fairly hot. Then fry up pancakes — the size is up to you.

There's also a dipping sauce, but it's fairly simple: soy sauce and vinegar, the proportion up to you.

Eating these pancakes with just the dipping sauce is pretty satisfying, but it's so much more fun if you add things like kimchee, green onions, bacon, etc to the pancakes. Just remember that you're going to have to fry up these ingredients beforehand, especially bacon. That's fairly easy. Just fry the ingredients in the skillet until they're mostly cooked and then scoop some batter right on top. Just be careful when you flip the pancakes over.