Steamed Tangerine Meatballs

I love Pat Tanumihardja's The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook. The recipes are enticing and the interviews with the grandmothers are very moving. For someone like me who never had the chance to get to know her grandmothers very well, it's fun to get a dose of grandmotherly love via these dishes.

Furthermore, the book is beautiful. The combination of the photographs and graphic design is really breathtaking. There is also a great guide to ingredients used in Asian cooking, and this knowledge, combined with what you can learn by reading The Asian Grocery Store Demystified, should get you through any shopping trip or provisioning adventure. You should also check out this visual guide to Asian fruits and vegetables. I can't recommend this book as a gift (or present for yourself) highly enough. It satisfies on all levels.

As soon as I saw the recipe in Patricia's book for Steamed Tangerine Meatballs I was instantly intrigued. I had to try it! The recipe is quick and simple, and the addition of tangerine peel to the meatballs gives them a wonderful flavor. (You can read about my previous personal history with meatballs here.)

Making the Meatballs

I looked in the local Asian and specialty markets for dried tangerine peel but there was none to be found, even though I know I've bought some in the past. Since I couldn't find any dried tangerine peel I bought a fresh tangerine, peeled it, took a knife to the back (inside side) of the peel and made sure I got as much of the pith (soft white part) off the peel as I could. I twisted the fresh peel over the ground meat to catch as much of the oil that was expressed when I twisted it as possible. Then I popped the peel into the toaster oven for a few minutes. It didn't have the same great concentrated flavor and slightly bitter bite that you get with dried tangerine peel, but it was still good.

I chopped the ginger and scallions and added the cornstarch, sugar, salt, and black pepper to the ground beef. I made a double batch since there were six of us for dinner. I rolled the ground meat into balls and then steamed them. They were delicious on their own but I decided to make a dipping sauce to accompany them. I threw together a sauce made of tamari, ginger, garlic, scallions, honey, sherry, and black pepper, and I also added some tangerine juice and pulp from the innards of the tangerine that I had peeled. (My friends who had dinner with me said I should write down the recipe but I was playing Scrabble with them while I was making the sauce, so I was just going by taste and not paying attention, but I will make the sauce again sometime soon, record the amounts, and post it on this blog.)

The meatballs were delicious and I served them with rice and a chopped cucumber salad that my friend made. Six of us devoured the entire batch. I can't wait to make these again and to delve deeper into more of the recipes in Patricia's book.

The Recipe

Steamed Meatballs with Tangerine Peel

(Niu Rou Yuan)

Denver-based nutritionist Mary Lee Chin and her mother Bow yee Lee Chin have always made their own dried tangerine peel, a common ingredient in Chinese dishes. Just save the skins after peeling a tangerine (or orange, mandarin, or tangelo), place them in a covered basket to dry for a week and then store in an airtight container. The peels can also be dried out in a very slow oven or in a dehydrator. Mary says it’s important to scrape the pith (the white inner part of the peel) before drying to remove the bitterness.

Time: 45 minutes

Makes: 4 to 6 servings as part of a multicourse family-style meal

2 green onions, greenparts only, finely chopped

1 1/2-inch-square piece dried tangerine peel, soaked in water until soft pith removed, and very finely chopped

1-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated (1 tablespoon)

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 pound lean ground beef (preferably sirloin)

In a large bowl, mix together the green onions, tangerine peel, ginger, cornstarch, salt, sugar, and pepper. Add the ground beef and mix gently with your hands. Set aside for 15 minutes to allow the flavors to blend.

Set up your steamer. Fill the steamer pan half full with water and bring to a rolling boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to medium until you are ready to steam.

Shape the beef mixture into about 16 one-inch balls. Arrange the meatballs in a single layer on a greased pie plate (or rimmed platter) that will fit inside a steamer without touching the sides. The size of your steamer will determine how many meatballs you can steam at a time.

Return the water in the steamer to a rolling boil. Place the plate of meatballs in the steamer basket or rack. Cover and steam the balls over high heat for 7 to 8 minutes, or until they are firm to the touch and cooked through.

Turn off the heat and wait for the steam to subside before lifting the lid. Lift it away from you to prevent scalding yourself and to keep condensation from dripping onto the meatballs. Carefully remove the meatballs and set aside to cool. Repeat as many times as necessary.

When the meatballs are cool enough to handle, transfer to a serving platter and serve.

Pat's Notes: Tangerine peel is used to flavor meat and poultry dishes. Large pieces are added to braised dishes, but the peel is usually ground or minced for stir-fries. Dried tangerine peel can be found in plastic packages where seasonings are shelved.

Meatballs: A Personal History

I grew up in a (mostly) Irish family and we never, ever had meatballs, so my introduction to meatballs was via the school cafeteria hot lunches I ate when I was a kid. On Mondays we had meatloaf and then on Wednesdays we had spaghetti and meatballs and I suspect they just crumbled up the leftover Monday meatloaf and threw it into the spaghetti sauce.

I absolutely adored spaghetti (which we rarely had at home) but I never quite warmed to the meatballs. I would eat the starch and ignore the protein (even though I had been trained by my mom to do the exact opposite. I could hear her voice in my head: "Eat the protein first! Only when you're done with the protein may you have some starch!") I really didn't care for the meatballs, though, and never got into enjoying them until years later when I tasted my first Swedish meatball.

Encountering Swedish meatballs for the first time was one of those "Where have you been all my life?" moments. The combination of creamy sauce and savory meat flavor was an instant winner in my book. I still, however, eschewed the classic Italian meatball.

The only Chinese food I ever had growing up was the awful boil-in-bag frozen stuff my mom loved to serve because it was so easy to prepare. LaChoy may have intended to make "Chinese Food... Swing American!", but the dinners we had were sad, gray affairs, featuring lifeless boiled bean sprouts as the main attraction. Nothing had any texture, color, or flavor. (And coming from someone who grew up on Irish cuisine, trust me, that is quite a damning statement!) Blech! I thought I hated Chinese food.

When I was a senior in high school one of my friends invited me to go out to dinner with her family at a local Chinese restaurant. I had never been to a Chinese restaurant before. I couldn't believe the tastes and smells. I found out that I really liked Chinese food that had actually been made from fresh ingredients and cooked in woks rather than boiled in bags. I had what is now my #1 comfort food - Hot and Sour Soup - for the first time that night, thus beginning a very satisfying lifelong affair.

Still, I didn't encounter Peking Ravioli until I moved to Boston right after graduating from college. I love Peking Ravioli but the quality of the dough that surrounds the delicious nugget of meat varies vastly. Sometimes you can get Peking Ravioli with a thin, delicate layer of dough encasing the savory morsel of meat. Other times, the ravioli are covered with twice as much dough as there is filling.

When I am faced with a dumpling that is too doughy for my taste, I use my chopsticks to perform a meatballectomy and I carefully extract the savory meat from the doughy shell. After having done this a few times in restaurants I decided to try to make Peking Ravioli meatballs at home. I experimented with different combinations of ground beef, scallions, garlic, and ginger, and sometimes I would add five spice powder. Usually I'd cook the meatballs in a little bit of beef broth and then serve them over rice using the broth as the sauce. It's delicious!

As soon as I saw the recipe in Patricia's book for Steamed Tangerine Meatballs I was instantly intrigued. I had to try it! The recipe is quick and simple, and the addition of tangerine peel to the meatballs gives them a wonderful flavor. To read my account of making - and tasting! - the meatballs, see this previous post.

“You got a homesick, I got a homesick too.”

UMass/Boston has a reputation as a wonderful place for international students to study business. I taught Professional Writing at the College of Management for several semesters, and I tried to focus the in-class writing exercises on topics and formats one might use in a business setting, such as memos, emails, and reports. I knew that a lot of my students were very homesick, however, so one day when we had to go over how to write a letter, I decided to read them an essay by my friend Monica Bhide about what it was like for her when she was a student far away from home and far from all the people she loved and all the foods that might comfort her.

I read the class a section from her contemporary Indian cookbook Modern Spice. In it, she spoke about being so lonely when she arrived at graduate school in Lynchburg, Virginia that she cried and prayed to Lord Krishna. She missed familiar foods, so she borrowed some rice and cardamom from a neighbor and began to make her mother’s rice pudding. The aroma filled the apartment with the smells of home. The scent of the cardamom enticed a neighboring Indian Engineering student and drew him, as if by magic, to her apartment.

Dear reader, she (eventually) married him.

All the students in the class – men as well as women – gasped with surprise and then sighed with pleasure at the fairytale ending of this story. (For another retelling of this story, read Monica’s article on cardamom from Saveur magazine.)

As I read this essay to my students, I could feel an odd combination of emotions stirring in the room: sadness and longing combined with the comfort of being in a place where these feelings were not only recognized but shared with others. I could sense some eyes tearing up, including my own.

The students set about responding to Monica’s essay by writing letters to her. Nineteen out of the twenty students in the class were non-native speakers from other countries. There were students from Russia, the Dominican Republic, Poland, Thailand, Nepal, The Republic of Congo, Japan, Taiwan, China, Bangladesh, Korea, Lebanon, and Ghana. There was only one student, a young woman, who was raised in America. I realized that I had placed her in a difficult position: clearly everyone else could relate to what it was like for Monica to be homesick, but what would the native-born student have to say about this story?

As the students composed their letters to Monica, I thought about my own family’s immigrant past. My great-grandfather grew up in Limerick, Ireland, where his father was an estate manager at Croom House, one of the Great Houses of Ireland, and one of the only ones that was still in Catholic hands at the time. There was limited opportunity in Limerick, and my great-grandfather wanted to work and own his own land. He knew he needed to leave home in order to create the life he imagined. First he went to England. He was unable to find work there, I assume because he was an Irish Catholic. He announced to the family that he was planning to go to America. Lady Lyons, the mistress of Croom House, wrote my great-grandfather a letter of recommendation naming all of his gardening and farming skills, and she also wrote a letter to him, imploring him not to go to America. It was the height of the Civil War and, she noted, “Young Irish men are cannon fodder.” He came anyway. He encountered a lot of NINA signs (No Irish Need Apply) and he eventually settled in Vineland, NJ, where he grew tomatoes for a living. His two sons went on to become surgeons – a great leap for first generation immigrants.

I recognize the same ambition and drive in my students. Many have extraordinary job responsibilities in addition to caring for their families. The students who take the once-a-week night classes are so busy that it is sometimes hard for them to find time to do their homework, but they manage it somehow. It was very clear to me that most of them were operating on a huge sleep deficit.

When it was time for the students to read their essays to the class, everyone was completely engaged. Students spoke of being overwhelmed by the price of food. One young woman said, “In Taiwan, the food is affordable, delicious, and you can get it anywhere. Here, the food is expensive, it doesn’t taste good, and it’s hard to find.” Others commented on the fact that the food here just doesn’t taste right because the ingredients aren’t as fresh or as good as they are in their own countries, especially those from warmer climates with year-round growing seasons. “At home, our food is never more than a day from the field, and sometimes only a few hours,” one student observed. “I miss my tropical life,” mused another wistfully.

Learning to cook was an issue for many. “When I came here,” said a student from Bangladesh, “I didn’t even know how to cook rice! Now I can make enough food for a party for fifteen people!” Several students described having to learn to cook for themselves, and those who live by themselves talked about how odd it felt to eat alone. A student from Lebanon described smelling the aroma from a dish prepared by her cousin and recognizing it as one that her grandmother used to make. She said that the scent reduced her to tears instantly.

When the time came for the American-born student to read her letter, she too described the feeling of homesickness and what it felt like to long for a specific food: “I had always heard that the food in Italy was fantastic, but when I got there, I missed my Nana’s noodles in gravy!” She spoke about the importance of tradition and taking time to cook and eat with family. Everyone in the class nodded in agreement.

One student’s letter to Monica began, “You got a homesick. I got a homesick too.” His grammar wasn’t perfect, but the sentiment was heartfelt and exact. Recognizing and sharing a feeling of loneliness and isolation brought our class together, and it really made me wish that we had access to a kitchen, so that we could share our culinary love letters to home at one big table.

Here's the Spring 2010 schedule for the Culinary Historians of Boston

Wednesday, January 20th
Kathryn Allamong Jacob “King of the Lobby: The Life and Times of Sam Ward, Man About Washington During the Gilded Age“ www.kingofthelobby.com
Why is this Gilded Age lobbyist relevant to the Culinary Historians? Sam combined delicious food, fine wines, and delightful conversation to create a new kind of lobbying in Washington after the Civil War. In a capital city where the food at official dinners was often appallingly bad, Sam reigned over the new social lobby that he created at his dinner table for more than a decade. Those who dined with him gushed that his evenings were "noctes ambrosianae"!

Tuesday, February 23rd
Andy Coe “Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States”

Tuesday, March 23rd
Corky White “Coffee and the Café in Japan”
Corky White is professor of Anthropology at BU and she currently working on a book on Coffee and cafes in Japan.

Wednesday, April 21st
Stephen Cole and Lindy Gifford "The Cranberry: Hard Work and Holiday Sauce”

May 2010 (date to be decided)
Banquet
Newberry College

What I'll be cooking this weekend: Chickpea Curry with Tomato and Mango

I'll be making a dinner for 12 people on Sunday night, many of whom are vegans. Here's what I plan to serve. I published this recipe on Grist.org in 2007. If you want to see the original article, it's here:

http://www.grist.org/article/tis-the-season-for-wicked-curry-in-a-wicked-hurry

I'm doubling the recipe so that we should have more than enough. I'll let you know how it goes...

Chickpea Curry with Tomato and Mango

This recipe is fantastic with Meyer lemon juice added at the last moment. Meyer lemons have a nice lemon flavor but they are not as sour as regular lemons. They tend to be smaller than regular lemons and have a smoother rind. Warming the spices will make the house smell fantastic and make your dinner extra delicious.

Serve with basmati or brown rice.

I thought this would easily serve 8 people, but it depends entirely on how hungry you are.

1 tablespoon curry powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
½ cup canola oil
2 cups chopped yellow onion (approximately 2 medium onions)
1 tablespoon minced ginger
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 big cans (28 oz cans) fire roasted organic tomatoes (it doesn't matter if they are crushed or whole, as you will crush them in the cooking process)
½ cup dried mango slices, cut into strips (a pair of scissors is good for this)
2 regular cans (about 15 oz each) chickpeas, rinsed and strained
a few small red hot chili peppers (I used ones called piri piri that you can buy in a jar)
salt to taste
lemon juice from a Meyer lemon or 1 tablespoon regular lemon juice
1 cup cilantro leaves, loosely packed (more is fine, but you need at least 1 cup)

1. Warm the spices in a skillet over low heat until they become aromatic, then dump them onto a plate. (I say warm rather than toast because they really do not need to change color.) I warmed the spices in the pot I was going to use to make the curry. I just dumped the spices onto a plate once they were warmed through and wiped out the skillet with a paper towel.

2. Add the oil and warm it over medium-high heat. Once the oil is pretty hot, add the chopped onions. Add the ginger and garlic. Cook until they are translucent. They do not need to brown.

3. Add the two cans of tomatoes. If you are using whole tomatoes, use a spoon to break them down. Toss in the dried mango. Cook for five minutes. Add the spices.

4. Add the chickpeas. Add the chili peppers if you want some heat.

5. Cook the curry for about 20 minutes or until the chickpeas are slightly softened and completely warmed through. The dried mango should be completely hydrated and softened by now too. You may need to cook it for 30 minutes, but start checking at the 20 minute mark.

6. Take the curry off the burner. Throw in the lemon juice and stir. Taste the curry. Now add a pinch of salt and taste again. Correct the seasoning with more salt if necessary.

7. When you serve the curry, throw some cilantro on top of each portion. Ask your guests to stir it into the curry.

-----

Thaiish Cabbage Salad
This is completely inauthentic. I made it up out of my imagination, using flavors that I associate with Thai food, and then I threw in some weird stuff, like apricot jam. You can use the other half of your bunch of cilantro in this salad.

Serves 8 as a side dish

Salad
1 head Napa Cabbage, roughly chopped
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded if necessary, cut in half lengthwise, and sliced into crescents
1 red bell pepper, seeded and cut into small triangles (cut the pepper into strips and then cut the strips on angles to make triangles)
1 blood orange, tangerine, or regular orange, peeled, seeded, and cut into sections
a few leaves of basil (optional: this is just as good without it if you don't want to spring for it)
½ bunch cilantro, leaves stripped off the stem
1/2 cup unsalted roasted peanuts, roughly chopped

1. Wash the chopped cabbage and shake it semi-dry or put it in a salad spinner. It doesn't have to be completely dry for this salad.

2. Add all the rest of the ingredients except for the peanuts.

3. Dress the salad and toss it. If there's too much dressing move the salad to another bowl, leaving the extra dressing in the bottom of the first bowl. (But save the extra dressing in the fridge for your next salad!)

4. Now add the peanuts.

Salad dressing
1 tablespoon peeled chopped ginger
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
juice from one blood orange or 1 regular orange
2 tablespoons apricot jam
2 tablespoons lime juice (or more to taste)
juice from a Meyer lemon or 1 tablespoon regular lemon juice
2 tablespoons rice vinegar (option: rice vinegar with ponzu flavoring)
1/3 cup olive oil
a few tiny red hot chili peppers (I used piri piri from a jar)
pinch salt
1 or 2 teaspoons sugar to taste (optional)

Place all ingredients except sugar in a blender. Blend until uniform. If you use a blood orange, the dressing will be an odd shade of pink. Taste it and see if you need to add sugar to tame the tart nature of the dressing.

Verrill Farm Tomato and Corn Festival: photos

These are the first two tables.

The third table was under another tent.

Plate number one included a mozzarella-tomato salad and tomato
risotto, zucchini pancakes, and some polenta, as well as all manner
of tomatoes...


This was plate #2, mostly red tomatoes

I couldn't resist these images of bounty...

Happiness is LOTS of tomatoes...

I took a quick trip out to Verrill Farm today. The tomatoes were beautiful, plentiful, and delicious. I had some of my old favorites, like Black Prince, and tasted some new ones, including one that I'm growing but have never had before, the Paul Robeson. A black tomato called Carbon was fantastic - juicy and almost salty-tasting all on its own - and an orange one called Orange Blossom had a nice flavor - a good balance between acidic and sweet with a true tomato flavor. There were some orange cherry tomatoes called Garden Sweet, and a variety called Aunt Ginny Purple that was bright red. (Maybe Aunt Ginny was colorblind?) There were some Ultra Sweets and a cherry variety named Sappho Cherry.

I skipped the corn and went to the sample tent, where I had some really good tomato risotto. I am not normally a fan of risotto because I find it's texture too monotonous, but the fact that this had a strong tomato flavor made it palatable. There were also plates of polenta and some zucchini pancakes. I detest zucchini pancakes but, being the consummate professional food writer, I forced myself to eat one and decided, "Yup! I still hate them!" (What don't I do for you, dear reader?) The tomato-mozzarella salad was good, but truly there is nothing better than straight-up sliced tomatoes.

I do have a caveat for anyone planning to attend tomorrow. BYOS&P: Bring your own salt & pepper. There were a few containers of salt near the corn table, but to use them you had to stand on the corn line. There weren't any salt containers on the condiment table.

I think it's best to bring your own. I have fantasies of a sort of a holster that holds both a salt shaker and pepper grinder, or something sort of like an ammo belt that contains multiple salt and pepper shakers so you can also offer salt and pepper to your friends.

BTW, if you are not a fan of port-a-potties (who is?) there is a Dunkin' Donuts down the road a little bit past the farm. If you bring a hat, sunscreen, and your own salt and pepper, you should be all set and have a great time. Bon Appetit!

Happy Birthday Pete Seeger!

Pete Seeger turns 90 today! I was lucky to be able to sail on the Clearwater in Long Island Sound when I was in 5th grade. I was already really interested in the environment and the health of the ocean, but that trip was one of my first experiences of how to put caring about something into action in a way that was concrete and effective.

We sang on the trip as well. Whenever I feel discouraged, I just remember the lyrics, "The river may be dirty now but it's getting cleaner every day" and I think about how dramatically much cleaner the Hudson is now than it was when P.S. and the other members of the group started out their campaign to get polluters to stop dumping waste into the river. I've also seen Pete at many of the rallies, festivals, and demonstrations that I've attended over the years, and he was no spring chicken then!

And, of course, I have very precious memories of listening to his albums with my dad, and it gives me great pleasure to sing the same songs with my friends' children.

Lastly, I once read that when asked about the fate of the human race, Pete said something along the lines of, "Honestly, I think we are doomed - but it would be wrong to go out without a fight." That is an accurate description of my belief as well.

One of his lyrics that has always haunted me is, "If it happens to me, then also, without fail/it can happen to you/sang the world's last whale." And, as an echo of that, I think of the poem by a Russian child that he put to music during the Cold War. It goes, "May there always be sunshine, may there always be flowers, may there always be mamma, may there always be me."

So far, we are all still here. May there always be music, may there always be whales, may there always be concerned individuals who take action, may there always be Pete.

My little farm...

It never varies: every year I plant morning glory seeds and every year something else comes up instead.

The raspberries came up under the fence from my neighbor's yard. The first year there were lots of berries, but none have appeared since then, just the gigantic plants. Two other anonymous plants have sprouted as well. I have some tomatoes tucked in there in an Organic Tomato Success Kit from Gardeners Supply in Burlington, Vermont. So far the tomato plants are going strong. The tomatoes have set. The species that I am growing include Red Zebras, Paul Robeson, Matt's Wild, Brandywine, and Supersonic. Now I just have to hope that they don't pick up the blight from any of my neighbors' plants.

My clematis plants never bloomed last year and they have hardly grown at all this year. The lilac bush I planted survived the winter but had no blooms. Sigh. I am hoping that next year things will pick up. I can't remember a summer as rainy, cool, and sunless as this one.

The squirrels ate most of the bulbs I planted last year, but I did get a few hyacinths, narcissus, and tulips. I'd like to add grape hyacinth, snow bells, and checkered lilies at some point. Also some irises. I know that there's a Cummins tulip, which I think is purple, so someday I am going to order some of those.

I have no idea how to get wisteria and honeysuckle to grow, but they are on my list as well. I love the scent of the heliotrope that I have in a window box, which is particularly powerful at twilight. I am almost afraid of introducing too many other scents, but it seems a risk worth taking. (Would that that were our biggest problem: that there are too many fantastic, competing scents in the garden.)

For now, though, I am just concentrating on my tomatoes and herbs. And wishing that the morning glories would germinate one of these years. Why are they so hard to get started?

If you want to see the crazy-looking Organic Tomato Success Kit, check out:

http://www.gardeners.com/Organic-Tomato-Success-Kit/37-852RS,default,pd.html

I can't help but wonder if it's really a good idea to use the red plastic cover... doesn't it outgas or degrade and get into the soil as it bakes in the sun? For now, though, I am giving it a try. I will do almost anything for a really good tomato.