The taste and feel of ‘Cooking for Her Eyes’ - Wednesday Journal |
- The taste and feel of ‘Cooking for Her Eyes’ - Wednesday Journal
- COOKING WITH THE SNAP - Quinoa With Brussel Sprouts - The Stanly News & Press | The Stanly News & Press - Stanly News & Press
- ‘Waffles + Mochi’ and ‘Nadiya Bakes’ are the cooking shows I watch even when I don’t want to cook - The Washington Post
- The Joy of Cooking With a Donabe - The New York Times
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The taste and feel of ‘Cooking for Her Eyes’ - Wednesday Journal Posted: 23 Mar 2021 03:24 PM PDT In the memoir, Cooking for Her Eyes, former Oak Park resident, village trustee and architect Susan Uehara Rakstang recounts growing up in her Okinawan family, raising her own family in the village, and ultimately serving as caregiver to both her ailing mother, Helen, and her dear friend, Margaret. Rakstang's story of music, food, love and death is an intensely personal read centered on three women and the power of food to bond and nourish them all. Rakstang spent eight years coaxing Cooking for Her Eyes into existence and considered herself to be an "on again off again writer" because parts of the story were very difficult to write. Emotions often forced her to separate herself from the story that gracefully jumps back-and-forth through time. An endless parade of Japanese meals dot the timeline leading Rakstang to adulthood. She delights the reader with memories of using her well-honed origami skills to become her mother's "best and only wonton maker." She shares details on how to make perfect bias sliced scallions and recollects Christmas buffet tables brimming with Char Sui short ribs, table-top sukiyaki, and shrimp tempura. Rakstang and her husband Bob arrived in Oak Park in 1976 with a toddler and an infant in tow. As they raised their children in the village, the young mother embarked on a new career path and met Margaret, a pastry chef who would become her dear friend. The memoir effortlessly recounts Rakstang serving as a "small "p" politics" trustee, navigating a male dominated industry and even stepping aside in the kitchen while her mother and Margaret whipped up a batch of caramel-colored fried rice together. As Rakstang's mother began to grapple with dementia, Margaret was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that caused severe throat pain and robbed her of her sense of taste. Rakstang became an advocate and caregiver to both. 
Credit: Melissa Elsmo While savoring fleeting moments when her mother instantly remembered how to fold wontons despite being unable to complete a child's jigsaw puzzle, Rakstang simultaneously developed a pureed food technique designed to nurture and nourish Margaret through her rigorous cancer treatment. Applying her architectural mind to meals, Rakstang created unseasoned purees made from colorful whole foods arranged in sculptural ways to create three-dimensionality. The whimsical, beautiful, memorable meals were plated to resemble Margaret's favorite comfort foods like burgers and fries, pork chops and applesauce, or a colorful Cobb salad. "It was an adventure for me. Just being in my kitchen was cathartic because I was accomplishing something," said Rakstang. "I was able to depart from the realities of life and death that faced me every day — when I was in the kitchen I was just in another world." The technique allowed Margaret to feast with her eyes first and paid homage to the knife skills and artful plating techniques Rakstang had learned from cooking in her mother's kitchen. While the family memoir is vulnerable, Rakstang describes the process of making Margaret's meals in detail in hopes the technique will be valuable to others in need. Cooking for Her Eyes is Rakstang's first book. She completed it in time for her five elderly Hawaiian aunties to read and appreciate her deft storytelling. The memoir is currently among 20 books advanced to the semifinal round of the BookLife Prize Nonfiction Contest and is available on Amazon.   |
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Posted: 23 Mar 2021 06:54 AM PDT  Editor's Note: Let's celebrate the past with some of our favorite recipes of our grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles. Email bj.drye@stanlynewspress.com with recipes and a small story about the famous cooks that go with the recipe. Pictures can be included of the cook. Quinoa With Brussel Sprouts 1 Bag of fresh Brussel sprouts (approximately 10 ounces) Dressing Prepare quinoa – Rinse in water before cooking. Add 2 cups water or 1 cup chicken broth plus 1 cup water and salt (you may not need to add salt if you have used chicken broth with sodium). Bring to a boil uncovered. Add lid and turn burner to low, simmer for 10 minutes or until the water is absorbed and quinoa is tender. Check throughout the cooking process to make sure it's not too dry and sticking to bottom of pot. Prepare Brussel sprouts by cutting off ends and shredding in a food processor with the slicing blade attachment added. If you don't have a food processor, you can slice them in thin strips. Once quinoa is cooked, add Brussel sprouts to saucepan with quinoa, mix and cover with lid and let it warm up in the pot. I cooked mine a bit by warming and adding 1 Tablespoon olive oil mixed in. Prepare honey mustard vinaigrette. In a small bowl, combine vinegar, mustard, salt, pepper and garlic. Whisk in honey. Slowly add olive oil, whisking until incorporated. Mixture should be creamy, with oil mixed in. In a serving bowl, add quinoa and Brussel sprout mixture. Add cranberries and almonds. Mix well (I actually mixed everything in the pot that I cooked the quinoa in to make it easier for a weeknight dinner). Drizzle honey mustard vinaigrette over salad and combine by tossing. After mixed well, serve as a side dish. Recipe was enough for five — three for dinner and two servings for lunch. From the Kitchen of Lori Ivey  |
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Posted: 23 Mar 2021 07:00 AM PDT  To say these are the kinds of shows that will light a fire under you in the kitchen would be an overstatement bordering on condescension for many of us. The early pandemic enthusiasm about sharpening our cooking skills, about rolling out of our home offices into our home kitchens to make a lovely from-scratch dinner nightly has long since faded, if it ever existed. After so many meals made, so many dishes washed and so many recipes turned away by our restless and hurting kids, we're just trying to get by. An evening spent on the couch with Netflix, the streaming network home to both series, isn't going to fix that. Among the things "Waffles + Mochi" and "Nadiya Bakes" share, besides high production values, is an inherent sense of wonder. I'm not talking about some romantic notion that standing over the compost bucket cutting eyes off potatoes is somehow a beautiful act to savor. It's something less practical and more inspiring than that. As a series aimed at kids (but already beloved by adults), "Waffles + Mochi" has a wow factor baked into its DNA. Wannabe chefs Waffles and Mochi, frozen foods who escape their icy home, find work at a supermarket run by former first lady Michelle Obama (she and her husband, former president Barack Obama, are among the executive producers). Think "Sesame Street," "The Muppets," "Chef's Table," "The Lego Movie," "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?" and more all rolled into one. The fun facts come hard and fast. Did you know you could make a battery out of a potato? That salt is harvested high in the mountains of Peru? Kids will, well, eat it up. Grown-ups will, too, but the moments I have found most uplifting are the little ones. The way the sun shines through the tomato plants in the garden with Samin Nosrat. The unbridled dad energy of José Andrés doing the blender dance while a batch of gazpacho whirs in the Vitamix. (No way, José, is that lush and mountainous landscape outside the window in "Washington, D.C.") Sight gags? I'll take those, too. Try not to laugh at a pink mochi wearing wire-rim spectacles and a sleep mask. Speaking of landscapes, the kitchen and environs in "Nadiya Bakes" feel as much like a character as the star herself. Big picture windows, with a garden, lake and a riot of flowers steps away. Nadiya, where are you? Is it your house? Is it an Airbnb? (Does it matter? Can I come?) Still, nothing beats the screen presence of this former "Great British Bake Off" champion, whose transformation from an anxious contestant to a luminous TV host is enough to give you as many warm and fuzzies as the puppets in "Waffles + Mochi." "We all know that life can be tough," Hussain says in the intro. "But when I bake, somehow it makes me feel that little bit better." Watching her bake makes me feel better. The fact that I'm not baking or eating those bakes is beside the point. I feel as if I am beside Hussain, and that is enough, more than enough. I can't help but be pulled in by her enthusiasm. Her sheer elation at flawlessly turning out a chocoflan ("look at it, look at it, look at it," she whisper-chants) or pulling apart a freshly fried barbecue chicken-stuffed doughnut ("listen to THAT," she sings as the shell crackles beneath her fingers) is enthralling. Even moments not about baking per se are enough to make you want to slow down and watch — and rewind and re-watch. Ribbons of chocolate cascading onto a counter for tempering. Confectioners' sugar blowing away in the wind. The looks on the faces of the crew as they take a bite of Hussain's treats. (Sharing food! With other people!) Have I suddenly found myself inspired to cook on a whim for anything other than sustenance and work? Not really, and that's okay. Watching other people give in to joy in the kitchen reminds me that one day I probably will, too. Whether through the eyes of a puppet waffle or a baker-turned-TV-personality, we're reminded that even after the year we've had and the uphill battle we still face, moments of delight are still possible. And we need every one of them, now more than ever.  |
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The Joy of Cooking With a Donabe - The New York Times Posted: 24 Mar 2021 02:00 AM PDT  A donabe is a Japanese cooking vessel made of clay — do means "clay," nabe means "pot." But if you talk to Naoko Takei Moore, it's also a way of thinking about cooking, a way of finding joy in the day-to-day of the kitchen. Takei Moore, who was born in Yokohama and grew up in Tokyo, remembers the communal-style donabe at the center of her family's dining table year round, and how it drew everyone toward it for the simmering dish known as a nabe, or hot pot. "The most common style when I was growing up was yosenabe, which means anything goes," she said. Some nights, that meant a pot of fish and vegetables in a miso broth, or a clean-out-the-fridge pot of scraps simmered in dashi. Some nights it was tiny handmade meatballs seasoned with white miso and ginger, or big wobbly cuts of soft tofu with whatever vegetables looked good. "I loved it, but didn't think it was anything special," she said. That changed after Takei Moore immigrated to Los Angeles, where she worked in the music industry. On a visit home, Takei Moore tasted rice cooked in a traditional donabe again and saw it all differently. "I had a moment of crazy happiness," she said. "I already knew how rice cooked in a donabe could taste wonderful, but this was just so striking." The pot seemed almost magical to her, though she knew exactly how it worked — unglazed clay, which is porous, takes time to build up heat, and the donabe's thick walls distribute that heat gently, then cools down slowly. Like the clay pots of so many other cuisines, the pot didn't just distribute heat differently from stainless steel and cast iron; it also imparted flavor — a certain level of sweetness, richness and possibly even some minerality from the clay itself. "Some people want to feel happiness that's too big," Takei Moore said. "But for me, every day, I just look for something small." It can be as small as cooking something delicious for herself, or even teaching someone else to cook it. Back in Los Angeles, she started to teach Japanese-cooking classes out of her home, showing people how to use a donabe, how to steam and braise with it and how to build one-pot meals in layers. She explained to each student how the clay from Japan's Iga region was a lake bed about four million years ago, and how that clay was now used by ceramists to make the donabe she sold. Online, Takei Moore even started to go by the name Mrs. Donabe.
As demand for the pots and other Japanese cookware in Los Angeles grew, Takei Moore opened a small shop called Toiro in West Hollywood, full of clay bowls and many different styles of donabe — some brushed with stripes, some with curved lids that doubled as serving platters. For anyone not used to cooking with clay, a row of beautiful and delicate donabe can be intimidating. As the donabe is used, over and over, it gets darker and the inside fills with fine crackles, which can also make newcomers to clay cooking nervous. "The patina grows," Takei Moore said, referring to the changes in the surface as the pot ages. "And that's part of the donabe growing with you." She doesn't think chips or stains are anything to worry about. "If it still looks brand-new after a year, then you get embarrassed — it means you're not cooking with it!" Takei Moore cooks with a donable daily, and even wrote a cookbook titled "Donabe" in 2015. She regularly shares new nabe recipes on her website. One of my favorites is her tsukune miso nabe, a chicken-meatball hot pot made with a mix of mushrooms, big pieces of delicate fresh tofu and tender greens, added just at the end so they wilt into the seasoned dashi. The meatballs, mixed with miso and grated raw ginger, come together in just a few minutes. And as the meatballs simmer in the dashi, they complicate it and infuse it with even more flavor. Although the recipe calls for dashi, Takei Moore says you can get away with just soaking a piece of kombu in water because the meatballs and mushrooms release so much of themselves as they cook, making the dish richer and richer as it simmers. If you don't have a donabe, you could make it in another kind of wide, heavy-bottomed pot. Or, you could try getting an inexpensive donabe to see how you like it. Though high-end handmade donabe can be expensive, they aren't the only kind. My only donabe is an old online purchase — nothing fancy — chipped and singed and still completely reliable for that meatball nabe with scoops of soft tofu and a tangle of pea shoots on a rainy spring night. And as Takei Moore reminded me, earthen pots shouldn't be set aside on a high shelf just for display, or only reserved for special occasions. "I come from donabe culture," she said. "And over there, the donabe is really for everybody, and for every day." Recipe: Tsukuno Miso Nabe (Chicken-Meatball Hot Pot in a Miso Broth)  |
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