You can’t escape it. It’s everywhere. Pumpkin spiced latte, pumpkin spice bread, pumpkin spice air freshener, pumpkin spice candles, pumpkin spice deodorant. No. Seriously. How did we get here?
Pumpkin spiced spice tea. A bit redundant, no?
It started out innocently enough. Ahhh. The aroma and harbinger of Fall. Pumpkin spices equal pumpkin pies equal Thanksgiving. “Pumpkin spice” is basically the same spice mix as that used in apple pie: ground cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, plus extra ginger and clove.
Pumpkin by itself is pretty bland and not particularly aromatic. No one has ever proclaimed, “Oh you smell as lovely as a ripe pumpkin,” or picked up a pumpkin and gushed, “This pumpkin smells soooo divine!”
Standing in a field of pumpkins. Smell anything? Me neither.
With such a lackluster leading star, pumpkin pies just demand more spices than apple pies. The pumpkin pie spices predominate. They become the de facto star of the pie, a coup d’état over the vapid pumpkin. Later at some point the word “pie” got dropped because, well, you know, it isn’t really about pies anymore. And that’s the genesis of pumpkin spice.
Pumpkin pie spice cracker is a mouthful. Pumpkin & Spice sounds better, even if there is no actual pumpkin in it.
The spice world stayed dull for a while until Starbucks decided to make pumpkin spice lattes. They were so wildly popular that shortages ensued. Then all hell broke loose and copy-catters rushed to pumpkin spice everything nice. Good grief.
Pumpkin spice sparkling apple cider. What were they drinking?
The ubiquitous pumpkin spice we see and smell today is but a shell of the original cinnamon-ginger-allspice-clove. It’s fake Franken-spice, more powerful than its earlier incarnation, created in a secret lab by white coat wearing flavor scientists. It’s stronger and longer lasting. It screams in all caps: “I AM PUMPKIN SPICE AND I WILL NOT BE IGNORED!” It’s an aberration. An abomination. And it’s in freaking everything.
The only spice listed on the ingredient label? Paprika. Hmmmm.
Last week someone spilled an entire cup of pumpkin spice latte in the stairwell of the parking garage in Reston Town Center and just left the whole mess there. We had to gingerly step over pools of pumpkin-spiciness slowly oozing down the steps. The enclosed stairwell made the pungent faux pumpkin spices all the more unbearable. It was not a good beginning to date night.
That’s what the stairwell reeked of: fake pumpkin. Hello?
When we returned to the garage after dinner the mess was mopped up but the steps were still sticky from the sugary pumpkin-ness. And the stairwell was rank with the fake sweet smell of pumpkin spice.
“I bet this fake pumpkin spice smell will still be here next week,” I said to hubby. And it was. A week later it was date night again and we parked in the same garage, in his favorite parking space, and descended the same stairwell. The acrid smell of pumpkin spice and sour milk seeped out of the walls and enveloped us.
“I bet if I drank a pumpkin spice latte every day, when I die my body will still smell like pumpkin spice a year later,” I said. “Especially if I use that pumpkin spice deodorant too. Or maybe I’ll smell like burnt pumpkin spice if I’m cremated. What do you think?” Hubby did not find my pumpkin-spiced dead body to be an appropriate subject to discuss on date night. Especially before dinner.
Speaking of dinner – we had a lovely fall dinner: pumpkin filled raviolis with sage brown butter. I detected a hint of nutmeg in the dish but nothing on the level of pumpkin spiciness. The featured beer on tap? Pumpkin spice IPA. No, thanks. The featured dessert? Yep. Pumpkin spice cheesecake. I passed. Next week is Thanksgiving. An orgy of pumpkin spices await at every relatives’ tables. I don’t see pumpkin spices going away any time soon. Until maybe Spring. Let’s hope.
Here it is, my all-time most requested recipe: Thai Chicken Coconut Soup (click here). The soup is called Tom Kha in Thai, which translates to “boiled galangal”. The recipe is a bit detailed so read it completely through before starting. I’ve inserted links to selecting and prepping the fresh ingredients. Let me know in the Comments section if any section is confusing or unclear. This is a work in progress and feedback is helpful and welcomed.
Every Thai has his or her own version of chicken coconut soup. This is mine. I’ve made it for friends who need a warm food hug, family members who are ill, and most recently, last week’s teacher’s appreciation luncheon at my daughter’s school. Making it from scratch takes time and is a labor of love that I enjoy.
I’m also including a link here to the Fennel and Citrus Salad that I also made last week. It’s great with pastas or all on its own for a light Vegan lunch. I’ll post the Inferno Deviled Eggs recipe later this week on this website. For those who can’t wait, it’s basically the basic deviled eggs recipe, except you substitute spicy Dijon mustard for regular mayo, chopped cornichons for sour salad cubes, sweet hot chow-chow for sweet relish, and cayenne pepper for paprika. Stir in a good splash of Tabasco sauce and Korean Gochujang hot sauce and you’re set!
Cooking real food is not hard. It should be a pleasure, not a chore. Once you master the basic cooking skills and the nuances of cooking with fresh ingredients you won’t want to go back to the prepackaged processed stuff. I’m posting my recipes and detailed instructions on this website while teaching it to my daughter. Come along with us and let’s have fun.
Shrimp and grits. The ultimate comfort food. This past winter I made shrimp and cheese grits for some dear friends. It’s one of my family’s favorite – a warm homey dish especially for those of us who grew up far below the gnat line. I’ve been tinkering with this dish for years. It’s my go-to for potlucks, teacher luncheons and friends or family in need of a warm food hug. The shrimp and grits were a hit and my friend thanked me with a lovely Facebook post, calling the dish “Thai Shrimp and Grits” and that got me thinking…. what makes a dish Thai? What’s in a name?
Roam if you want to
I was born in Bangkok but spent my formative years in a small town in the deep south. My cooking is influenced not only by my heritage and upbringing, but also by all the places I’ve lived and visited. And vagabond that I am, that’s all over the globe. I collect spices and cookbooks the way that other travelers collect souvenir shot glasses and tee shirts: with reckless abandon, shipping the cookbooks home when the load got too heavy for my luggage.
A little corner of my cookbook library
The Spice Worlds
In my spice cabinet lemon myrtle from Australia sits next to white peppercorns from my cousin’s garden, baharat from a little Lebanese grocery store in Atlanta and lavender from an apothecary in Paris. I collect spices the way some kids collect Pokémon cards, trading them with my other spice hunting friends. And I use all these different spices in my dishes, guided by fragrance and flavor, not origin. Is the resulting dish Thai because I am Thai? French because the spice was purchased in Paris? Or American because I’m American?
Favorite spices currently on heavy rotation in my kitchen.
Tell me who are you
My Australian cousin and I discussed our frustrations with identity on a trip we took together to Thailand. We’re both comfortable in our own skins, assured in our self-identity. It’s how others try to define and categorize us based on appearance alone that’s annoying. Some days we felt like strangers in our homeland. My cousin was born and raised in Melbourne to Thai and Chinese parents. Except for her looks and genes, she is completely Australian in every sense of what the world attributes Australian to be: adventurous, outdoorsy, jolly world travelers.
And though I spent the first eight years of my life in Thailand, in no way do I act like a stereotypical Thai woman, however she is defined these days. I have the Thai vocabulary of a third grader from the early seventies. I don’t know how to curse in Thai. I don’t know any of the “adult” words nor any of the slangs that modern Thais use.
70’s era Thai dictionary and language cassette tapes.
Thai language has evolved since the seventies. When my mom watches Thai TV on the internet at her home in Georgia, she complains of unfamiliar words and slangs. Often these garbled words are acronyms or variants of English words, intentionally mispronounced in the way that Asians often mispronounce English words, combined with a Thai prefix or suffix for good measure. Complete gibberish to the thousands who have long since left the homeland. It’s the Thai version of Spanglish — Thai-lish if you will. Dad complains that the younger generation no longer speaks “real Thai”, as if that were some long-lost dialect only spoken by the diaspora who have remained untainted by the rampant global electronic media.
And speaking of unfettered satellite TV and the internet, we are all really just one giant melting pot now — the entire wired and wi-fi’d world. Influence is no longer one-way. Cultures are fluid and ever evolving, harder to define or pin down. We all appropriate the best and worst of each other’s native foods and make them our own. Korean hotdog pizza bun made by a Korean-French-Vietnamese bakery in Virginia, kimchi carnitas tacos made by surfer dude food trucks in LA, Peruvian chicken hawked by Mexican cooks but actually invented by a Swiss chicken farmer. No wonder we are confused about nomenclature.
Korean hotdog pizza bun.
The Name Game
Defining a dish by its stereotypical ingredient is one way to name it. Notice how some people call a dish “Thai” just because there are chopped peanuts in it? Yet peanuts are New World crops, more Peruvian than Thai. Few Thai dishes actually have peanuts in them, and when they do, the ground up peanuts are there only as garnishes. Same goes for fiery hot chilies, which originated in the Americas but are associated with Thai food. Such dichotomy is lost on most, but amateur cultural anthropologist that I am, it drives me nuts.
Back to those shrimp and grits. Traditional southern shrimp and grits is flavored with bacon or salt pork, but I like to substitute andouille for the bacon because it’s spicy and less greasy. So is my shrimps and grits really Cajun because of the andouille? If I substituted chorizo for the andouille would that make it Mexican Shrimp and Grits? What’s in a name?
With the exception of a splash of Thai hot sauce and the Thai lady stirring the pot, the dish is more Cajun (andouille sausage) than Thai. But whatever you call it, it’s all good. The Thai Shrimp and Grits recipe can be found here.
When I was nine years old I tasted real southern grits for the first time and was instantly hooked. I fondly remember the grits served at my elementary school cafeteria for breakfast: runny and swimming in a liquidy gold pool of melted Parkay margarine. Swirl in some greasy torn bacon pieces and two of those little foil topped packages of Welch’s grape jelly (!) and you’ve got yourself a creamy, chewy, crunchy, salty-sweet and totally unhealthy breakfast treat.
Every southern diner has its own version of grits. Some places serve grits all day. I love these places and seek them out whenever I’m back down south. The Majestic Diner in Atlanta, Huddle House and Waffle House chains all serve delightful grits. Here in Northern Virginia you can find grits on the menu at the Silver Diner, though the quality can be inconsistent. Sometimes they are delicious and other times they are gummy, bland and undercooked (management, are you listening? Use real grits, cook them longer and stir the pot now and then, ok?)
Will the real corn grits please stand up?
Real unprocessed grits is just coarse ground corn and nothing else. Certain brands of “enriched” stone ground grits may also contain the added ingredients niacin, reduced Iron, thiamine, riboflavin and folic acid (not ideal, but still ok). If you are in the American South, grits means white corn.
Stone Ground Grits
In Italy, grits, or polenta, is yellow corn. Polenta has a stronger corn flavor, more reminiscent of corn muffins, and if that is your thing polenta can be cooked in the same manner as the white corn grits. It may turn out a bit mealy depending on the coarseness of the polenta, so watch out.
Polenta
Cooking real grits requires time and patience but the results are well worth your efforts. You can spend a lot on fancy stone ground grits, which are indeed fabulous, but I find that the cheapest grits works just as well and is just as tasty. As long as it’s not “instant” or “quick cooking”.
And here is where I jump on my soapbox and declare: DO NOT buy instant grits (wallpaper glue) or quick cooking grits (stripped of flavor for the sake of convenience) or flavored grits (food-like stuff you can’t pronounce). These are nasty, nasty things and no true southern cook would be caught with them. They are gritty (pardon the pun), tasteless and processed. Why bother?
I stock up on real grits when I visit my folks in Georgia. The local Piggly Wiggly and Ingalls have a nice selection. Venture outside metro Atlanta and some Krogers may carry it too. Ideally, there should only be one ingredient on the label: corn. Bob’s Red Mill has yellow corn grits that’s organic – important since so much corn grown here in the US is the pesticide laden GMO corn.
Folks living above the gnat line or in other grits desert can easily score true grits on the internet. It’s the fashionable dish du jour with hip restaurants and TV chefs, which I find funny for such a humble dish formerly more associated with the deep south than with high cuisine. Remember Flo’s sassy “kiss my grits?” No, Millennials, not Flo Rida the low-low-low rapper, but Flo the Marge Simpson-haired waitress from the 70’s and 80’s sitcom Alice, which was actually set in Arizona and not the deep south, but then later Flo moves to Houston and gets her own sitcom, and Houston may as well be the deep south food-wise, so my point being…
Grits. Trendy now. Yes. Unbelievable. Next thing you know the prognosticators and the trend setters of all things comestible will be pushing souse (head cheese with vinegar), another southern delicacy. Except they’ll come up with some nouvelle moniker like “pickled southern charcuterie” or “snout-to-tail pork terrine” or the chic “viande de porc de la tête” (which is just headcheese in French), and they will squiggle on some non-native, on-trend sauce like the ubiquitous Sriracha (Californian, not Thai, don’t get me started), lay the whole kit and caboodle on a bed of raw shredded Tuscan kale and quinoa (notice I didn’t just then, like other food scribes, condescendingly give you dear readers the helpful pronunciation of “keen-wah” — oops), call the dish the house special and the foodies will lap it up. Haha. You read it here first. But then again… It’s. Head. Cheese.
Flaky little secret
Back to the grits. Cheesy grits is the only dish that my mom, the utmost excellent cook and supreme ruler of her kitchen (she: the head/sous/line chef, entremetier and garde manger chef, me: the lowly prep cook), requests I make for her when I visit. At my daughter’s school I am known to some as the cheese grits lady, which is a really weird thing now that I think about it. Hmmm.
My cheesy grits are said to be unctuous and addictive because of a secret ingredient which I will now reveal. Drum rolls please. My secret to the cheesiest tasting grits ever: nutritional yeast. Surprised? Definitely not something most southern grandmas have in their larders. But the times they are a changing, because if your grandma is vegan, she probably makes her southern mac and cheese with quinoa (pronounced “keen-wah”) elbow macaroni and nutritional yeast.
Nutritional Yeast Flakes, tasty by the spoonfuls or atop popcorn.
I said good-bye to meat
During my short-lived foray into wholly vegan cooking, I discovered nutritional yeast. Inspired by the likes of former NBA star and fellow Yellow Jacket John Salley, former president Bill Clinton and other formerly-pudgy-but-now-slim-and-trim baby boomers who tout the healthfulness of going vegan, I took the plunge and tried to do the same. Headfirst into veganism, I purchased the latest vegan tomes like Veganomicon and Vegan Yum Yum and devoured them cover to cover. Styled and photographed in the most flattering light, such food porn never looked so tasty!
That little dilettante with veganism lasted less than a month. Living with a die-hard carnivore did not help. Watching him eat a medium rare strip dripping with juice while I toyed with my thick slice of dry, pasty grilled cauliflower that looked like a cross-section of the brain with grill marks on them did not help. Craving my usual Wednesday date night at the Tap Room Buffalo wings and Loose Cannon IPA did not help. Before I too could proclaim, “My cholesterol level is lower than ever!” I was back to my old carnivorous ways, seasoning with anchovy sauce and noshing on Zacos tacos.
Zacos tacos and beer, not a vegan combo
But some lessons from the vegan world stuck with me, the best ones involving how to finesse more flavors from plant-based ingredients. These techniques really help improve your cooking repertoire, meat or no meat. Even though we still eat meat at home, a larger real estate on our plates goes to more flavorful vegetables and fruits to accompany that meat, a satisfying and healthy compromise.
Yeasts are fungi, and fungi are not animals, right?
Right. Yeasts are fungi, and fungi are not animals, but they are not plants either. Fungi are fungi. Like mushrooms are fungi, yeasts are fungi. Nutritional yeast is fungi. Dead ones. Cultured, snuffed out, then desiccated. Do not confuse nutritional yeast with brewers yeast or baking yeast, which are totally different, living fungi critters, and are no substitute for nutritional yeast.
Baking yeast, not the same thing, do not eat raw!
Nutritional yeast, also known as vegan cheese powder, is a great vegan substitute for adding cheesy flavor and umami to any dish. It comes in powdered and flake forms. I like the version with the larger flakes because you can use as-is or easily ground it to powder if needed. Try different brands and find your favorite. Bob’s Red Mill, Braggs and Red Star brands of nutritional yeast are all good. You can also find it in the bulk bins of most heath food stores. Not only does nutritional yeast add a nice depth and cheesy flavor, it is a complete protein that packs a powerful punch of B vitamins and iron, making this cheesy grits, dare I say it, healthy.
More addictive secrets to reveal
To make the grits even yummier and healthier I add a good dose of garlic, which in my book elevates any savouries in both taste and healthfulness. Slowly cooking fresh garlic with the grits adds a sweet, subtle garlicky flavor to the grits without overwhelming the corn flavor. The trick is to thinly slice the garlic bulbs instead of smashing them, and to cook the garlic slowly until it disintegrates and melds into the grits. These techniques will help avoid any bitterness and bring out the sweet mellow side of garlic.
Freshly harvested purple and white garlic
I won’t bore you with detailed geeky chemistry, save to say that the traditional squeezing of the garlic clove with a garlic press or smashing it with the flat side of a knife crushes the garlic clove’s cell walls, causing a chemical reaction in the myriad noxious sulfur-containing compounds and resulting in increased pungency (i.e. it makes the garlic so much stinkier). Great for flavoring a stir-fry with a heady punch of garlic. Not so great for smooth creamy grits. So do not take shortcuts. Don’t just smash some garlic cloves and lazily toss them into the grits pot. Unless you are trying to repel vampires. Then by all means, smash away.
Fresh Corn
Finally, to gild the lily even more, if fresh corn is in season I cut the kernels off one ear of sweet corn and swirl them into the grits at the end of cooking, just before serving. The residual heat from the grits barely cooks the corn, leaving a fresh corn taste that’s popping with sweetness, a lovely contrast against the smooth and creamy mouth feel of the cheesy grits and the mellow aroma of slow cooked garlic. True grits perfection.
I’m mad for citrus. I love the colors, tastes, textures and scents of citrus. Lemons, limes, oranges, tangerines, grapefruits, pomelos, bergamot, lemon verbena, lemon thyme, lemon myrtle, limoncello. Put the word “lemon” in front of it and I’m likely to swoon.
A Citrusy Shade of Winter
Citrus makes the winter bearable. Citrus and snow. Each winter we await the succession of orange varieties that the onset of cold weather brings. Shiny Satsumas at Christmas time, often sold with the stem and emerald green leaves still attached. Santa even brought the girls the strangely named Buddha’s hand in their stockings this past year. It smells of citron and lemons and is utterly delicious candied.
Buddha’s Hand.
January brought clementines from Spain, deep red blood oranges and big fat Sumo oranges. We enjoyed them all. I truly believe that our consumption of mass quantities of citrus is one of the reasons that no one in our family caught a cold, flu, virus or had sore throat this winter, despite my Lyme compromised immune system, my husband’s business travels on trains and planes to even chillier places, and my daughter’s exposure to the germ factory that is elementary school.
Sumo oranges
February brought Minneolas and the lovely Cara Cara navel oranges, all pink and ready for Valentines Day. Oranges seem to taste sweeter and more refreshing when they are peeled, sliced into pretty half-moons and refrigerated until cold.
Cara Cara oranges
Cuts Like a Knife
We have a saying at our home: cut fruit gets eaten. The corollary of the saying is: uncut fruit goes uneaten, sits lonely and sad on the counter, spoils, attracts fruit flies, annoys husband, gets tossed in the trash can by the husband, gets fished out of the trash can by the wife and re-tossed into the compost bin, where it festers un-decomposed until winter’s thaw. Sad but true. To avoid being another culprit in the global food waste problem, I try to cut fruits promptly after purchase.
Orange peels destined for the compost bin
Perhaps it’s a throwback to my childhood in Bangkok. There was always a platter of peeled and cut fruit on the table at every meal, lovingly arranged and within easy reach of little hands. Starfruit. Rambutan. Mangosteen. Rose apples. Jackfruit. Longans. Anything ripe and in season. Grandma preferred her fruits simply peeled and cut, while Mom loved to make fruit salads, tossing in a shot of Chambord or Grand Marnier when we were old enough to appreciate such niceties.
Cut tropical fruit salad
Fresh cut fruits are sold by street vendors at all hours. Thailand is a nation of snackers and nibblers. After school we munched on skewered pineapple cubes and green mangoes dipped in chili salt the way that kids in other countries munched on potato chips and Fritos. Of course this was Thailand in the sixties. American style junk food has long since reached Thailand, where you can now munch on crab and squid flavored Lays potato chips along with that bag of cut guavas.
Back to citrus. This is how I peel and cut oranges. It’s a simplified version of the fancy but wasteful technique of supreming an orange, which sounds like something the great Diana Ross would do in the kitchen. Come to think of it, Ms. Ross’s music is the perfect accompaniment to peeling and cutting oranges, Supremes or no Supremes. Crank up Stop! in the Name of Love, sharpen your knife, and let’s prep some oranges.
