Making wontons

This recipe -- and pictorial guide -- for dumplings in soup, or fried crisp, were my dad's one true culinary skill

By Felicia Lee

Topics:Guest Chef, Food traditions, International cuisine, Food

My father grew up in a restaurant. His parents owned the Golden Dragon, a sprawling Chinese eatery in Portland, Ore., that offered egg rolls and grilled-cheese sandwiches on its official menu and bitter melon with black-bean sauce and birds’ nest soup on its unofficial one. He tells stories of after-school hours spent peeling water chestnuts and washing dishes with his brothers and sisters while the flare of hot woks and the rhythm of cleavers filled the busy kitchen. On New Year’s Eve, the kids stayed up all night, serving sweet-and-sour pork and cocktails to mobs of hungry revelers.

Dad’s apprenticeship at the hands of a gifted chef father and savvy manager mother gave him a lifelong love and appreciation of good food and restaurants — and drove him to stay as far away from the culinary biz as possible.

By the time my sisters and I appeared on the scene, Dad generally stayed out of the kitchen. His culinary responsibilities were limited to standard dad stuff — grilling burgers and steaks in the backyard — and a single indoors task: folding wontons.

Wontons — square pasta wrappers folded into elegant little pods around a savory mixture of ground pork, vegetables and sometimes seafood — are dead easy to make, but there’s a catch: there are no shortcuts for folding them the right way. Our hungry family of six could go through a boatload of them in a single meal, but there was no way Mom could fill and fold all of these herself, not with so much housework to deal with and so much childhood misbehavior to monitor.

So the folding fell to Dad, who brought to the enterprise serious mass wonton-folding chops, courtesy of the Golden Dragon.

I can still see the setup: It’s Saturday (or Sunday) afternoon, and Dad is at the kitchen table. Mom’s filling, smelling tantalizingly of scallions and sesame oil, sits in a glistening pink mound in a mixing bowl in front of him. Next to the mixing bowl is an open packet of wonton skins, which Dad keeps covered with a towel so they won’t dry out and crack when folded. At his side is a small bowl filled with beaten egg and a kitchen knife (the egg is the glue that holds the wontons together), and somewhere nearby on the table is a baking sheet soon to be filled with perfectly folded wontons.

By time I got to grade school, I wanted to fold wontons too. I was a bit of a tomboy and seriously into origami, and folding wontons fed both these impulses: Because Dad was the chief wonton folder in the household, I somehow got it into my head that wonton-making was one of those noble masculine arts, like bug-collecting and compass navigation, that would be worth aspiring to. And properly folded wontons are a thing of geometric beauty. By the time I was 8 or so, I’d be sitting beside him, folding away. It made me feel powerful and useful.

For whatever reason, none of my sisters ever took an interest in wonton folding, so I got to see something they didn’t. My parents were masters at keeping up a unified front before us kids, but when it came to wonton folding, this seemingly impenetrable facade ever so slightly cracked. Dad often warned me not to overfill the skins, lest they burst wastefully when boiled in soup or deep fried. Meanwhile, Mom, who grew up on decadent meals Dad could only dream of in his youth, always scolded him for the stingy amount of filling he used.

“Fred! This isn’t the Golden Dragon!”

It took me a while to figure out how to fill and fold wontons in a way that kept both Mom and Dad happy. The optimal amount of filling had to be small enough not to cause the wrapper to tear or the seams to come loose when folded, but big enough to offer diners a generous meaty bite or two. In wonton folding, as in a functional family life, patience and little compromises are the boring but sure secrets to success.

***********

Lee Family weekend wontons

Mom always made ginormous batches of wontons so she could keep some in the freezer for later. To freeze uncooked wontons, lay them on a baking sheet so they don’t touch and put the sheet in the freezer until the wontons are frozen solid. Once frozen, the wontons can be transferred to a freezer bag for storage. On a cold weeknight when you don’t feel like cooking, take some out of the bag, allow them to thaw, and throw them into a pot of simmering broth for a comforting dinner.

I’ve adjusted the recipe to make a more modest number of wontons — only about 100. I’ve also included instructions for the two most common ways of serving them, cooked in soup and fried. The soup recipe serves 2-4; the fried wonton recipe makes as many or as few as you need. Unless you’re serving dozens of people, you’ll still have some wontons left over for the freezer. Folding all of these will entail about an hour of meditative handiwork for one person, or a pleasant bonding experience for two.

Ingredients

1 pound ground pork
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons minced scallions, both white and green parts
¾ cup finely shredded Chinese (Napa) cabbage
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons sesame oil
¼ teaspoon ground white pepper
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 package wonton wrappers (available in the refrigerated or frozen foods sections of Asian specialty grocers or better supermarkets)
1 beaten egg or ¼ cup water

Directions

Thoroughly combine all the ingredients save wrappers and the egg in a medium mixing bowl.
Get ready to fold a wonton: Take a wonton wrapper and hold it in your non-dominant hand. Place about 1 heaping teaspoon of filling in the center of the skin. Using a knife or small pastry brush, wet the edges of the skin with water or egg.
The first fold is simple: Fold the skin in half diagonally so that it completely encases the filling. Press the edges together, being mindful to squeeze out any air bubbles between the filling and the skin. Be sure the edges are completely sealed, with no gaps.
The second fold tends to throw people. Your half-folded wonton now looks like a triangular turnover, with one perpendicular corner and two “arms” (long, sharp corners). Dip one of the “arms” of the wonton into egg or water. Then pull it toward the other arm and press the arms together so that the top surface of one of them is firmly glued to the bottom surface of the other.
The finished wonton should look something like this:
Repeat 2-4 until the filling and/or wonton skins are exhausted. (Any leftover skins can be wrapped tightly in plastic and stored in the freezer for use with the next batch. Any leftover filling can be rolled into small balls and dropped into soup as meatballs.) Keep folded wontons and skins covered while you work so they don’t dry out.
To cook, simply add the wontons to a large pot of vigorously boiling water until they float and the skins look wrinkly. Or use the soup or fried wonton methods below.

For wonton soup: Heat one quart of chicken broth in a pot until it starts to boil. Carefully place about 12 wontons in the pot along with any meat and/or vegetables you’d like to add. (Mom used wonton soup as a convenient repository for leftovers.) When the wontons float to the top of the broth and look wrinkly and translucent, they’re done. Toss two thinly sliced scallions over the soup as a garnish. This amount will serve two people as a lunch, or four people as an opener to a larger meal.

For fried wontons: Heat about 2 inches of neutral cooking oil (such as canola) in a heavy saucepan over medium-high heat. When it’s hot enough to make a drop of water sizzle on impact, add wontons, one at a time. The number that you can add will depend on the size of your pan, but you don’t want them close enough to touch each other. Fry until the undersides are golden brown; flip and fry until the second side is also golden brown. Immediately remove from the oil, drain well on paper towels, and serve hot with sweet and sour or hoisin sauce.

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Making empanadas from scratch and memory

When my kids' caregiver moved away, she left a dear friend. But we celebrate each other every year by cooking

By Marcelle Soviero

Topics:Guest Chef, Food

“I’ll make the dough this year,” I tell Nelly on the phone. I’m determined, though my talents flourish nowhere near the kitchen.

“I like Nelly’s empanadas,” my daughter Olivia says when I hang up.

“Don’t make them, Mom,” Sophia adds.

In the morning we will drive two hours to Nelly’s house for Empanada Day, a self-declared holiday we’ve been celebrating the Sunday before Thanksgiving for 12 years.

“Nelly always does everything. It’s time I took a turn,” I say, unsure about tampering with our tradition, but Nelly had a hard year, suffering with health issues, and I wanted to do this for her.

I start the dough making immediately. “Get the scrapbooks,” I tell Olivia. Flipping through pages of Empanada Days over the years, I look at the pictures of the girls smushing balls of dough in their highchairs. The note, scribbled beneath the step-by-step photos, says: about half a cup of shortening for every three or four cups of flour. I have no idea how much water to use, so I try to guess at the recipe that lives in Nelly’s heart, not a scrapbook. “We can do this, girls.”

Nelly and I met more than a decade ago; she was the first and last person to come into my kitchen when I interviewed for caregivers. Back to work, I was in need of childcare for Olivia and Sophia, now 12 and 13, then just babies. Nelly lived with us during the week; a few years after she came I had my son Johnny — Juanito as Nelly called him.

Johnny hung on my hip the morning I told Nelly I was getting divorced. I’d been up all night and the tears dropped into my cold coffee. Nelly, herself a single mother of three grown children, helped us through the custody battle, that excruciating year. Six years have passed since Nelly lived with us, and in that time Sophia and Olivia have been bridesmaids in Nelly’s daughter’s wedding, and I’m aunt to Nelly’s grandchildren. Even though we no longer share our day-to-days, Nelly is still our Nelly, and Empanada Day still stands.

One morning, after Nelly had been with us for a year, she came into the kitchen, put on her red apron, and set out three pounds of London broil. “I make empanadas today,” she said, and began dicing the meat. “It take time,” she said, adding the onions. Hours later, she brought Sophia and Olivia in, and they became a part of Nelly’s handiwork, folding and kneading small balls of the dough while seated in their highchairs. Nelly made more than a hundred empanadas that day; we took platefuls to each house in our neighborhood. We agreed thereafter to make them together once a year. I have few traditions or recipes passed down from my family, so I loved borrowing from Nelly and her Bolivian roots.

I scoop cups of flour into a mound on the counter. I make a well in the center, volcano style, just like in the old photo I use for guidance. “Is this right?” I ask as Olivia cracks eggs into the well. Sophia adds the shortening, I guess at the amount of water and attempt to knead the mixture into a ball. The dough is the size of a football, and it’s way off — mucky, sticky. I add more flour and the powder falls on the floor in fistfuls. I panic, add more flour, the ball grows. “You should have let Nelly do it,” the girls say, laughing now.

On the drive to Nelly’s house the next morning, I pull over and the girls and I run into the Stop ‘N Shop looking for the Goya aisle. I put the premade empanada dough in the cart. I’m stoic at the checkout line; the girls know not to say anything.

When we enter Nelly’s house, I blurt, “Mine didn’t work!” and pass her the plastic grocery bag with the store-bought stuff. She talks us into the kitchen of her tiny apartment with kisses. It’s as if Nelly expected this. “Come, my moneka,” she says to Sophia and Olivia and maybe me, too, her little dolls. “No importa. I do it,” she says, pulling the canister of flour from the cabinet. She is small, the same height as Sophia, her black hair cut into a bob at her chin, her dark skin smooth as a wine bottle.

Nelly is quick with her movements from sink to counter; she once again works too fast for me to transfer her spontaneous measurements to my head. She gives Olivia and Sophia each a rolling pin.

Nelly made the filling last night, a detailed mixture that includes meat with olives, hard-boiled egg and potatoes, all diced to the size of green peas. The girls and Nelly put a spoonful of meat in the center of each circle of dough, and set to work folding them into crescents, crimping the rounded side by hand, so the meat won’t ooze when Nelly fries the thin pouches. I have to crimp with a fork. I can’t pinch the edges the way they do.

As Nelly’s hands seal the dough, I think of her in the kitchen of my old house, making arroz con pollo, the girls playing with letter magnets, sticking them on the fridge. I remember those long days coming home from work late, running upstairs to see the children, bathed and smelling of baby powder, curled up on Nelly’s bed, watching Spanish soap operas. I remember the nights when Sophia was learning to read, and Nelly practiced her English alongside her. All those Frog and Toad books.

The kitchen smells of cumin and olives as Nelly fries the empanadas. She removes each pouch with a slotted spoon and places the crispy crowns on a paper towel.

I sip coffee, watching Nelly and Sophia and Olivia work. Maybe it’s just as well I wasn’t able to make the dough; the pleasure of seeing Nelly with my daughters, her hands over their hands as they roll, makes me as happy as I have ever been. And I know it will be my girls, not me, who will make the dough in the future, when Nelly and I are old, and we all gather for Empanada Day.

Nelly’s empanadas

Makes about 40 empanadas

Ingredients

Filling

3 potatoes, cut in ½-inch cubes
2 tomatoes, diced
1 onion, diced
1 green pepper, diced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
½ teaspoon cumin
2 packets of Sazon Goya
1½ pounds of flank steak, or other cut of beef, cut into ¼-inch cubes
½ cup of parsley, chopped
4 tablespoons vegetable oil and/or olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste

Dough

3 pounds all-purpose flour
2 large eggs
½ cup warm milk
1 tablespoon sugar
¾ stick of butter, cut into little pieces
a few generous pinches of salt
1 cup water, or as needed
vegetable oil, as needed, for frying

Directions

Filling (Prepare filling the day before)

Boil potatoes with enough water to just cover until cooked. Drain and set aside.
Sauté tomatoes, onion, green pepper and garlic in a pan with 1 tablespoon oil on medium-high heat. Add cumin and Goya Sazon and cook until all vegetables are tender (about 8 minutes). Add salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.
In a large pot, heat 3 tablespoons of oil over high heat and sauté beef with a sprinkle of salt and pepper until cooked halfway. Then add the tomato/onion/pepper mixture into the meat and stir until evenly coated. Let cook for 10 minutes on medium heat. Stir in potatoes and let cook for 10 min. Turn off the heat and stir in parsley. Let cool and chill in refrigerator until cold, or overnight.

Dough and finishing

On a clean countertop, place flour in a mound and create a center like a volcano. Beat together eggs and milk. Add egg/milk mixture, butter, salt and sugar in the middle of the mound. Begin to mix dry and wet ingredients with your hands. Add water little by little as you are kneading until the dough comes together and it is solid, but still pliable for rolling. If it is too sticky, add more flour.
On a floured countertop and with a rolling pin, pinch off some dough and roll out into flat round disk 1/8-inch thick and about 3 inches in diameter. (Through trial and error, you’ll get the hang of how much dough that is.) Add a heaping teaspoon of the chilled meat mixture to the middle of the disk and fold over the dough into a half circle. Seal by pressing along the edge or with a fork or whatever creative technique you know.
In a deep frying pan, fry the empanadas with vegetable oil on medium-high heat with just enough oil where you can fry one side at a time. Fry until each side is golden brown.
Let cool slightly before serving.

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When the turkey took revenge, I took to vegetarian gravy

After a Thanksgiving of food poisoning, I swore off the bacteria-ridden beast and came up with this bird-free gravy

By Bellwether Vance

When the turkey took revenge, I took to vegetarian gravy

Topics:Thanksgiving, Guest Chef, Vegetarianism and veganism, Food

Early November 1999, I was driving down a rural highway on a sunny afternoon. As I rounded a corner, I was startled to see a wild turkey trotting across a cotton field — faster than you might imagine — heading toward the road. Math was not my best subject, but given my speed, the turkey’s speed and our projected paths, even I could calculate that we were a bloody word problem about to happen.

At the moment his body should have been hitting my windshield and exploding like a grotesque feather pillow, he flew back a few paces and I whizzed by without hitting him. “Stupid turkey!” I groused. “You almost got yourself killed!”

A few weeks later, on Thanksgiving Day, I did something almost as stupid. I wasn’t as careful as I should have been when handling the turkey (you know — wash your hands frequently, use a designated cutting board, disinfect surfaces …) and I spent the night singing whale songs into the deep, mysterious hole at the bottom of the toilet. The next morning, I was in the emergency room.

The CDC estimates that in the U.S. there are 76 million food-borne illnesses per year and over 5,000 deaths. Bacteria-laced poultry is the leading source of food poisoning. So there were others like me in the E.R. that morning, women and men with mint-green faces, wretchedly hunched over cramping bellies, clutching an assortment of decorative bathroom trash cans under their chins. One trash can had mockingly happy Disney characters on it. After a miserable, interminable wait, I was given IV fluids, Phenergan and another deliciously heady medicine that had me nattering on about how creepy it is that Mickey Mouse wears gloves but no shirt.

It was pretty easy to give up turkey after that. The next Thanksgiving, I brought a Tofurkey to the family gathering. It wasn’t bad, just a little eerie in its fleshy texture, and in general, if I look at a food product and envision the manufacturing process — a large vat, gelatinous slurry, an extruder — it’s an appetite turnoff. When it comes to the Thanksgiving feast, meat substitutes are unnecessary. There are always plenty of meat-free offerings among the casseroles and side dishes. I’ve never gone hungry.

The most difficult adjustment has been editing recipes to suit a less-than-adventurous crowd. When you remove meat from your diet you have to replace the flavor with other ingredients. Sometimes those ingredients are unconventional, even weird, and Thanksgiving seems to bring out the traditionalist in everyone. They want the same green bean casserole, the same sweet potato soufflé, the same stuffing. If I’m being honest, seeing the same spread year after year is reassuring, comforting. My mother and my mother-in-law are still with us, still healthy, and on Thanksgiving, the kitchen is still their domain.

This year, I’ll bring a bowl of vegetarian gravy and a big salad with homemade dressing and croutons. I’ll join the matriarchs in the kitchen, chop pecans for the stuffing, set the table, make sure the bread doesn’t burn. I’ll wash my hands a lot, and remind them to do the same! And I’ll be oh-so-thankful I’ve had one more year as a “kid.”

Bellwether’s Vegetarian Gravy

I promise you won’t miss the pan drippings! If you’ve ever had a vegetarian gravy or stew and the flavor was “thin,” lacking umami, the missing ingredient is nutritional yeast. It’s a staple in a vegetarian pantry. I add it to soups, stews, gravies, pot pie and shepherd’s pie fillings. You can buy it at any health food store, just be sure you don’t pick up brewer’s yeast by mistake.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
¼ cup sweet onion, finely minced
3 tablespoons flour
3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1¾ cups vegetable broth (or one 14.5 ounce can of Swanson’s Vegetable Broth)
2 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce
A small pinch each of sage, thyme and marjoram
Kosher salt and fresh black pepper to taste.
¼ cup heavy cream

Directions

Measure the 3 tablespoons nutritional yeast into a small bowl and cover with a bit of very hot water. Stir until smooth and set aside.
In a heavy skillet, heat the olive oil and the butter over medium heat. Sauté the minced onion until it is soft and slightly brown. Sprinkle the flour into the pan and stir to combine with the oil/butter/onion. Cook for a minute or two, stirring constantly.
Time to break out the whisk. Whisk in the nutritional yeast. At this point it will look dreadful (clumpy and oddly colored). Don’t worry! It will come together once the broth is added and whisked smooth.
Slowly whisk in the vegetable broth. Whisk continuously until the mixture is bubbly and thick.
Add the soy sauce, and the herbs. Be sure you taste the gravy before you add any salt. Both vegetable broth and soy sauce can be significantly salty. Add pepper liberally.
Lastly, add the heavy cream and heat through.

Note: To make mushroom gravy, add a cup of chopped mushrooms to the oil when you add the onion. To make tomato gravy, add a large tomato, finely diced, to the pan once the onions are translucent, and cook until the tomato is softened before proceeding with the rest of the recipe.

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Italy’s ultimate answer to bacon: Guanciale

Imagine the flavor of prosciutto but in silky fat form. It's the soul of bucatini all'amatriciana, Rome's favorite

By Andrew Cotto

Bucatini all'amatriciana

Topics:Guest Chef, International cuisine, Food

A recent year in Italy taught me that the pig is the king of its gastronomic jungle. Italians heart hogs. They prepare every imaginable part in every imaginable manner: cured and roasted and braised, even slow-poached in olive oil. One terrifying morning, in the back of a butcher shop, I ate it raw, slathered on a slice of rustic bread. Surviving the sushi-sausage experience would have been the most memorable encounter with the noble swine had it not been for an introduction to guanciale. At a sleepy trattoria, somewhere in the middle of Italy, I had a plate of pasta steeped in such succulence that I had to ask the owner the secret. “Semplice,” he said, pinching my face, “guancia.”

“Guancia” in Italian means pillow, which is synonymous with cheek. And it’s the facial aspect of the word, and the animal, that found its way into the kitchens of central Italy. Apparently pancetta, the familiar smoked and cured pork belly, simply wasn’t bold enough for rendering purposes, so they went to the face and found a far more profound flavor. To produce guanciale, the jowls of a hog are short-cured (three to four weeks) in salt and sugar and spices. The abbreviated process works well with the jowls’ combination of streaked meat and thick fat. And it’s that fat/meat quotient (as opposed to pancetta, which is meatier) that makes guanciale such a solid base. The fat melts in a hot pan, leaving the tender meat and a silky lipid of smoke and salt that informs but doesn’t overwhelm any soup or sauce.

Guanciale is best as the base of a pasta dish. And the most famous pasta using guanciale is the central Italian wonder known as amatriciana. Not surprisingly, there’s some controversy among the Italians as to the origins of amatriciana. Towns from regions of Abruzzo, Umbria and Lazio claim the superior preparation with appropriate noodle, but (with all due respect to the namesake Lazian town of Amatri) the king versions reign in the trattorias of Rome using the bucatini noodle — a thick spaghetti with a little hole (or “buco”) that runs through it. And, of course, within Rome, there are various versions, each the ultimo.

Regardless, a standard version begins with the guanciale, rendered slowly before taking in slow succession: thin red onions, a touch of red pepper flakes, plum tomatoes, torn basil leaves, and, for the finish, some grated pecorino with a swirl of olive oil and a confetti of basil. What you have is a broad balance of flavors with the guanciale holding it all together. Like most Italian dishes, this is simple to prepare. The challenge is coming up with the same quality of ingredients that are abundant in Italy.

For years, American cooks and chefs have used pancetta for dishes that traditionally call for guanciale, since it’s easier to find. But true, imported guanciale can be found in some big town specialty shops and major markets. The local butcher is always the best place to inquire. Guanciale can also be mail ordered from importers and a few national producers.

Bucatini all’amatriciana

There are a number of ways to use guanciale, but it seems appropriate to start with the classic

Serves 4 as a main course, 6-8 as a starter

Ingredients

1 pound bucatini (a thick, dry spaghetti can be substituted)
½ pound of guanciale sliced into long, thin strips (make matchsticks)
1 medium red onion, halved and sliced ¼-inch thick
1½ teaspoons of red pepper flakes
1 large can of whole San Marzano tomatoes (crushed by hand)
½ cup of torn basil leaves plus a handful julienned and reserved for garnish
½ cup of grated Pecorino Romano plus ¼ cup for sprinkling
salt and sugar, to taste
Extra virgin olive oil, as needed

Directions

Put a large pot of water on to boil.
In a large saucepan with a thin coat of olive oil, render the guanciale over low heat, turning the cheeks occasionally until the fat has nearly dissolved and the meat slightly crisps.
Add the onions and red pepper flakes to the pan and soften over medium heat until the onions are translucent.
Raise the heat to medium-high and add the tomatoes. Season them with salt and a pinch of sugar. Bring to a boil and turn down to simmer while the pasta cooks.
Salt the boiling water aggressively and add the bucatini. Stir until the boil returns and stir occasionally until two minutes short of package-instructed cooking time.
Transfer the noodles to the saucepan. Raise the heat and coat the noodles with sauce, simmer until al dente (two minutes more).
Off the heat, add ½ cup of Pecorino and toss.
Plate the pasta and give each a swirl of extra virgin olive oil, a sprinkle of the remaining cheese, and top with the julienned basil. Enjoy with a simple red wine of central Italy, and say arrivederci to pancetta.

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I quit eating meat, but I still smoke … food

How to cure your bacon jones: Get a smoker, and smoke everything in sight

By Bellwether Vance

Four fresh trouts in smoker oven. (Credit: Patricia Hofmeester)

Topics:Guest Chef, Food

Like a lot of once-were carnivores, I miss a few meaty things. Fried chicken. Beef fillet, very rare. Bacon, of course, and smoked pig in piquant sauces. Dealing with these longings is all about rendering them down to individual flavors and textures. When I longed for fried chicken, what I really wanted was anything fried — fried okra or fried green tomatoes. Juicy beef fillet was a desire for salt, in brothy form — a miso-based soup.

Cravings for smoky pork products were harder to satisfy. Smoked paprika and smoked sun-dried tomatoes are great ingredients, fairly new to our grocery store, but they provide background smoke, not smoke smoke. Our only local health food store carried blocks of smoked tofu, and I used it to make quiche and breakfast burritos. Then the store went out of business, replaced by a Zaxby’s.

Frustrated, I took matters into my own hands and bought a small smoker. I’m afraid I’ve become something of an addict. The same way alcoholics look at cough syrup and see alcohol syrup, I look at food and see smoked food: peppers, garlic, tofu, tomatoes, corn, zucchini, okra, kale, eggplant, eggs and cold smoked cheeses. One day, as the fire died out, I had the bright idea of smoking a bowl of dog food, just briefly, to see if the dogs would be as seduced by the flavor of smoke as I had become. (They were. Seduced. When I carry the smoker from the shed they circle it like it’s a smoked kibble Pez dispenser.)

So here are some smoking tips, from someone who knows:

Before smoking blocks of super-firm tofu, press it, freeze it, thaw it, cut it in half lengthwise, and marinate it in soy sauce for a couple of hours. Smoke it for four hours, or until it’s the firmness of ham. Hickory gives it just the right amount of flavor and color. Mesquite smokes it to a burnt hue, although the flavor is fine.
Plum tomatoes are the easiest to smoke because they are fleshier than other varieties. Halve them and smoke them for four hours. Slip the skins off before using. If you want a drier tomato (more like a sun-dried tomato), slow-roast them in the oven first, and then smoke briefly.
Large portobello mushroom caps should be heavily oiled before they are smoked, otherwise they get very dry.
Roast and peel bell peppers before you smoke them.
Don’t hang your laundry anywhere near the smoker, unless you want to smell BBQ as things heat up during your morning walk.

Recently, my mom and dad went fishing and brought home five pounds of mullet fillets. For those unfamiliar with mullet, it’s what some might call a trash fish. It’s plentiful along the Gulf Coast. You see them running the bays and bayous in large schools, showoff jumping and landing with a splash. Anyone proficient with a net can scoop up a mess with one toss. Mullet has a strong, unique flavor and is typically fried or smoked. Roadside mullet smokers used to be common, but I haven’t seen one in the Panhandle for many years. My dad remembers large cans of salted mullet that they soaked before cooking, the way you’d soak salt cod. That was before my time.

I commandeered most of the mullet fillets for my smoker, because nobody needs five pounds of mullet lying around unless you’re running a booth at the Mullet Festival. I cut out the blood line (essential for fishy fish), dry-rubbed it with kosher salt, pepper and brown sugar, and smoked it for three hours. Since then, we’ve eaten smoked mullet with eggs and grits, smoked mullet tacos, smoked mullet bacalhau, smoked mullet hash, and smoked mullet straight, like a shot of vodka.

High on hickory smoke and bloated with salty fish, I needed to use up all of the smoked ingredients that were bursting from my refrigerator, so I threw a Halloween picnic for my daughter and her friends, who were visiting from college for the weekend. The menu featured everything smoky, including — yes! — the very last bit of smoked mullet.

Every mullet-loving Gulf Coast family has its own recipe for smoked mullet spread. Here’s our version.

Smoked mullet spread

Makes about 3 cups

Ingredients

8 ounces cream cheese, softened
3 green onions, mostly tops, finely diced
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Zest of one lemon
Juice of half a lemon
½ teaspoon fresh ground pepper
½ teaspoon Vietnamese garlic chili sauce or sriracha (or to taste) – we like lots.
2 cups finely diced smoked mullet (use the thick, meaty portions, not the hard-smoked ends)

Directions

Combine the cream cheese, onion, mayo, Worcestershire, lemon zest, lemon juice, pepper and garlic chili sauce. Add the smoked mullet.
Taste and add additional heat or lemon juice as needed for balance, and add mayonnaise as needed for consistency. You may or may not need to add salt, depending on the saltiness of the smoked mullet. Our smoked mullet is on the salty side because we prefer to use a dry rub rather than a brine.

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Creating my own ethnic cuisine

A white Southerner, I seem to have no "ethnic" roots, but my immigrant neighbors' flavors are in my boiled peanuts

By Bellwether Vance

Creating ethnicity: A recipe for Thai boiled peanuts

Topics:Guest Chef, Immigrant cuisine, Food

I have no ethnic heritage. My parents grew up poor and white in the rural South, born into families with no discoverable history prior to the early 1920s. No one remembers a homeland. Being “American” and “Southern” should be enough, and it is enough, but I long for connection to an Old Country, to know traditions and recipes that have been kept alive, lovingly tended, across geography and time. Denied that connection, I console myself by visiting the ethnic markets that have sprouted up in our modest-size town.

Visitors to the Gulf Coast of Florida are often surprised by the diversity of our population. In the mid-1970s, thousands of Vietnamese refugees were relocated here. Military installations dot the coastline and the interior, and servicepeople returning home from foreign assignments often bring families from overseas. We have large Thai, Vietnamese, Korean and Filipino communities, and smaller groups from England, Turkey, Germany, Italy and Japan. Following the run of hurricanes a few years back, Mexican workers poured in to replace blue tarps with new roofs, and stayed for the construction boom. Once that passed, many moved on, but some have settled and opened restaurants and markets.

I like to browse the Mexican market, pick up bags of glossy dried peppers, inhale their smoky bitterness. I buy a new variety each time and experiment. The outrageously expressive man who runs the deli counter says, “Mamita linda! What do you want today?” If he has something new, he is insistent that I try it, and I oblige, always nodding my approval effusively enough to make him smile in satisfaction. In an invented familial history, he is my brother-in-law. One who delights everyone with his extravagant gestures and compliments, and who will surely — we all see it coming — break my sister’s heart.

The improbably blond, olive-skinned woman who owns the small Mediterranean market wears a permanent scowl. She has no patience for the Southern roundabout way of talking, the lack of urgency, the incessant smiling with intent to charm. She’s like a misanthropic aunt who visits once a year, very briefly, leaving behind hurt feelings and strange, miserly gifts. I’ve learned to suppress my need to win her over and get straight to the point. “What is this?” I ask, pointing to a new cheese in the case. Or, “Is this bread fresh? Made today?” Questions that would be rude to anyone of Southern sensibilities, but which seem to please her, or to not displease her.

In the Thai market, the elderly man speaks little English. The elderly woman’s English is much better. I’m short, and she comes to my chin. Frail-boned with a grip that hurts my hand as she leads me through her store, pointing to the things I need, explaining how the ingredients must be used. Being led down the aisles, tightly packed with exotic ingredients, it’s easy to imagine I’m in Thailand, visiting relatives. I visit infrequently and, given her age, I won’t see her again; she has limited time to teach me all she knows. We had better hurry. It explains the clutched hand, the seriousness of her instruction.

At home I unload my purchases onto the counter. A bewildering, intimidating assortment of products. Panic rises. Then I recall the words of my new Thai relative. After all of her insistence, when she packs my grocery sacks, she grants me this: “I tell you how to make, but you make your own.” I relax, because nothing that tastes good is foreign.

Maybe a country’s culture and history, when borrowed and eaten, can in some small way create ethnicity. I hope one day I’ll visit the places of my favorite foods — Greece, Italy, Mexico, Thailand and Vietnam. When I step foot on the land, I might feel instantly at home. I might hear these words: I know you! You are one of mine!

I created this dish to honor my homeland and one I’ve adopted, something familiar and something new.

Boiled Peanuts, Thai Style

In the South, most people prefer their boiled peanuts cooked until they are very soft. If you’ve tried boiled peanuts and found them mushy and unpalatable, try cooking up a batch that isn’t boiled completely soft. Despite the debate among my family and friends (some a’gin me, some with me), I hold firm in my opinion that they taste better when they are the texture of canned chickpeas rather than canned English peas! You can cook them however long you like.

Ingredients

3 pounds unshelled green peanuts, thoroughly washed and sorted. Discard any with broken or discolored shells. (Green peanuts aren’t green in color; they are raw, fresh peanuts that haven’t been roasted or dried.)
2-3 tablespoons chili garlic sauce (preferred) or sriracha
Enough water to cover peanuts completely
Enough kosher salt that the water tastes distinctly salty, almost too salty
Juice of 2 limes
2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon fish sauce (Go easy on the fish sauce. It’s an acquired taste, but essential in small doses.)
½ cup finely chopped cilantro

Directions

In a large pot with a lid, cover the washed peanuts with water. Add the red chili garlic sauce and salt. As it heats up, taste the water for salt and heat. It should be quite salty, and quite zesty. Cook the peanuts at a slow boil with the lid on until they are done. It’s difficult to say how long done will take. It depends upon the size and age of the peanuts. They become drier as they age and need more cooking time. Start taste testing at about 2 hours and every half-hour after that. If you like them soft, it may take 4-6 hours. Be sure to taste several before you decide on their doneness. Let them cool in the cook pot until they are just cool enough to handle before proceeding to the next step.
In a large bowl, mix the lime juice, honey, fish sauce and cilantro. Scoop the warm peanuts from the boiling pot. (Don’t worry about draining thoroughly — a little bit of the salty water is good.) Toss them in the cilantro lime mixture. Use your teeth to split the shells so that you taste plenty of the seasoning as you eat them. We eat them on the back porch, sipping green tea with ginger or Singha beer. If the squirrels take off with the shells, you didn’t make them hot enough!