Making Carnitas for the First Time

I have always loved tacos with carnitas. It's crispy, tender, flavorful and juicy all at once. I always thought about making it, but you can't just make a cup of carnitas. You are either going to make enough for 10 people or you just go buy some from a taqueria. As I started learning Spanish recently, I am more interested in Mexican and South American cuisines than ever.  When a taco potluck at work is coming up, I decided to bring some homemade carnitas. I searched the internet for a simple and delicious carnitas recipe, and this is the one I decided on.  However, I don't have a slow cooker big enough for a piece of 5 lbs of meat, so I had to cook it in the oven.  I can't even remember the last time I bought a piece of meat that big; however, I do have a roasting pan.  It baked in the oven at 325 F. for almost 3 hours.

Pulling the pork apart was the most labor intensive step of this process. Maybe I needed bigger forks. My fingers were sore when I was done. At this stage, the pork doesn't taste like the carnitas I know at all. It didn't taste or look all that good to be honest. There are a few more steps in the recipe, and these steps are "not optional" according to the poster. I was so tired by the time I was done pulling the pork apart, I put everything in the fridge and went to sleep.

When I got up this morning, I was hungry. I made some coffee and proceeded to make some carnitas for breakfast. I fried up some of the pulled pork and warmed up some tortillas. I didn't have anything else to put in the tacos, but who needed anything else when you had homemade carnitas? I ate 4 street size tacos for brunch this morning.  I better save the rest for the potluck!

Making Chicha Morada

I recently had dinner at El Mono, a newish Peruvian restaurant, in El Cerrito. I loved everything they served - from the roasted corn appetizer, canchita, to the purple corn drink, chicha morada.  Ever since that night, I have been thinking about making a huge pot of chicha morada so that I can drink a lot of it whenever I like. This is something I have done for years. Whenever I like something a lot in a restaurant, I go home and make a huge amount of it from scratch. Over the years, I have made seafood gumbo, clam chowder, hot and sour soup, empanada, etc., etc.  I am not rich so I can't afford to go back to the restaurant and order the same thing over and over; besides, I have a huge appetite.

I already had the spices I needed in my pantry such as whole cloves and cinnamon. I have unlimited supply of fresh lemons and apples, so instead of using limes, I used lemons. All I really needed to buy were pinapple and purple corn. This morning I stopped by La Loma Market No. 1 while I was getting a complimentary alignment at Big O Tires across the street.  The produce guy was not sure what I meant by "purple" corn but as soon as I mentioned Peruvian drink, he took me to the Peruvian isle and showed me all different types of corn!  Wow! I was tempted to get some canchita as well, but I figured that I would make the drink first. I found many youtube videos and recipes on how to make chicha morada with slight variations from each other. I made my own modification as well. Instead of using sugar, I added honey to my drink. I have included a link above on how to make it in Spanish. You really don't need to understand Spanish to follow the young girl in the video. If a child can make it, you can, too.

I love this drink and sipping it with little chunks of pineapple in it!

Once a Mushroom Hunter, Always a Mushroom Hunter

One beautiful shaggy mane

It had been over a year since the last time I went out hunting for wild mushrooms. I often think about those delicious morels.  I was walking around Lake Merritt today with the pooches, and suddenly I saw a fresh full size shaggy mane sticking out of the grass. Coprinus comatus, commonly known as shaggy mane or ink cap, is one of the wild mushrooms that I am very familiar with. It is very distinctive with the scales on its cap. This mushroom is unusual because it will turn black and dissolve itself in a matter of hours after being picked or depositing spores.  Another sure way to identify the mushroom is to cut it in half as the photo below. The cross section of shaggy mane has a unique kite line. It's hard to see from the photo below, but I have a better photo I took years ago in my wild mushroom photo album.

The biggest one started to turn black

I walked through the grass over to the shaggy mane and found 3 more smaller ones next to the big one. I took a photo before plucking all of them off the ground. I didn't have anything to put them in, and suddenly I remembered that I had doggy bags in my pocket. Perfect!

After taking them home, I sautéed them in some olive oil with some baby spinach then sprinkled some gorgonzola cheese on top. It was delicious!  We are supposed to have more rain. I can't wait to find more presents like this while out walking!

Lékué Egg Cooker

Last week one of my new colleagues gave me a set of Lékué egg cookers as a holiday gift.  They are just the cutest things. If you have been following my blog, you know that I love mushrooms and anything mushroom shaped. I have only been at my new job since end of August this year, so I was just amazed how she picked this gift for me.

Today I finally got the time to try it out. I brushed inside of the cooker with olive oil and lined it with some baby spinach. I put a couple grilled shishito peppers in there just because I grilled a bunch last night. Now about these shishito peppers, according to Wikipedia, about one of ten peppers is spicy. Last night I had them for the first time, and the first one I ate set my face on fire. I was very surprised and wasn't sure if I could eat another one.  Fortunately, the next 2 peppers weren't as spicy, but I would say one out of five is spicy for the batch of peppers I got. They are very good though, so I couldn't stop eating them. I think my tolerance for hot peppers just went up a notch last night.

I sprinkled a little salt and pepper and put the lid back on. It was cooked in microwave for about 50 seconds, then I heard it popped. I guess the egg popped.  Luckily it didn't make an explosive mess in there because it had a lid.  The egg was fully cooked after 50 seconds.  Next time I will try 40 seconds for a softer egg. This is a great way to cook an egg with other vegetables or meats. I am going to pick up some gorgonzola cheese and mushrooms later for more experiments.

Making Thai Chicken Curry

I woke up this morning to pouring rain pounding on the roof. It's been raining cats and dogs this weekend and the forecast states that more rain to come for the entire week. On a day like this, a pot of hot spicy soup feels like the perfect meal. I decided to make some Thai chicken curry.

I tend to improvise when I cook. For making Thai curry, you need some essential ingredients - Thai curry paste, coconut milk, and fish sauce. Everything else is up to your liking. Most recipes call for chicken breast for chicken curry, but I prefer dark meat, so I used chicken thigh meat. I also added some bamboo shoots, straw mushrooms, and green bell pepper to my curry. Usually you eat Jasmine rice with Thai dishes, but I only have Nishiki rice. I started cooking a couple cups of rice with the rice cooker as I prepped for the curry.

Here's how to make Thai curry:

Cut up the meat into bite size pieces and bell pepper into strips. Heat up a couple table spoons of oil, add a couple table of Thai curry paste (I use red curry) and saute the meat in the curry. If you like it super hot, add more curry paste or a couple pieces of chili. As the meat is almost cooked through, add half can of the coconut milk and fully cook the meat. Add bamboo shoots, straw mushrooms, and bell pepper strips to the pot and pour in the rest of coconut milk. If you like it soupier, add some water or chicken broth. If you like it thicker, you can use coconut cream instead of coconut milk. As everything is heated through, add a table spoon of fish sauce and a table spoon of palm sugar (or brown sugar if you don't have palm sugar handy). Stir the fish sauce and sugar into the curry and let it simmer for 5 minutes then you are done. The rice should be done cooking as well.

Pour a couple ladles of the coconut curry over some steamy hot rice, and you have the perfect meal for a cold raining day.

Making a Quick Indian Dish

Baghara Baingan (an Indian eggplant dish)

I have been cooking international dishes for over 20 years now, but I have always shied away from cooking Indian. The spices are complex and unfamiliar to me. When I lived in the Silicon Valley, I was surrounded by awesome Indian and Pakistani restaurants. Spice Hut, an Indian fast food restaurant was less than a block away from where I lived in Sunnyvale. I had no reason to even try making Indian dishes at home.

Sadly, Indian restaurants in my neighborhood are not so impressive compare to what I had before. Besides, I can't just walk a few doors down the street to get it. Luckily, I work with someone from India in the office, and she is more than happy to give me some instructions on cooking Indian and explain some of those complex spices. I told her that I love eggplants and often order Indian eggplant dishes at the restaurants. She typed up a recipe just for me so I can go shop for some Indian spices. I can find just about anything I need to cook Indian at Vik's Market in Berkeley.

Panch Puran

So I picked up a bag of Panch Puran (also called Panch Phoran, Panch Phoron, or Bengali Five-Spice Mix) which is a spice mixture used in Indian cuisine. It is made of equal parts of five spices:

* fenugreek seed (methi)
* nigella seed (kalo jira)
* mustard seed (rai or shorshe)
* fennel seed (mouri)
* cumin seed (jeera)

Whenever I feel like a quick dish that tastes like Indian food, I cook it with Panch Puran, turmeric, and cayanne pepper. For the eggplant dish, I heat up some vegetable oil and put 2 teaspoons of Panch Puran and a teaspoon of turmeric, let the spices cook in the hot oil for a minute then put bite size eggplant pieces in there. Coat the eggplants pieces with the spices then add a little water, cover it and let it cook through.

You can add some onion or substitute eggplant with potatoes. I am sure you can also cook cauliflowers and other vegetables in the same way.

Cooking with Herbs

Monday nights are school nights for me this summer. I am learning about useful herbs from Master Ken. Tonight Master Ken wanted to do a live demo of decoction, also known as making soup, during the class. He brought in some celery, sweet corn, carrots, herbs and a few loquats from Alemany Farm, where he volunteers on Monday afternoons.

Before we started cooking, we got to take a walk through the campus garden to pick more veggies and herbs. I immediately grabbed my basket and ran out there. I love the campus garden! We will never go hungry there. We picked big fat zucchinis, green beans, new potatoes, a couple heads of broccoli, basil, rosemary, rose pedals, garlic, onion, strawberries, etc. My basket was getting really heavy. I left my camera on my desk otherwise I would have taken pictures.


While the soup was cooking, Master Ken started making a special blend of pesto. In addition to basil and olive oil, he also added some blueberry juice and loquats. The pesto was naturally neon green and sweet. It wasn't bad at all. Later on he added some salt and perhaps a few other herbs to it. I had some tortilla chips with the sweet pesto.

The soup turned out quite well, too. How could it not? Everything was so fresh. The soup tasted great and healthy. Food tastes so much better when you get to pick it from your garden where you have put in the time and sweat.

Making Gyoza for Lunch

When you grow your own food, you tend to cook your own food, too. I spend a lot of time on the farm, so it's only natural that I cook frequently. I usually pack my lunch for the day job, and this morning I woke up thinking about gyoza (a.k.a potsticker). "Thinking" is an understatement. I had an urge of having gyoza for lunch and actually got up at 7 A.M. on an office day.

I bought a pack of ground beef for making curry beef puff pastries a couple nights ago (that was another craving). I knew that I would have leftover ground beef after the puff pastries, so I got a pack of gyoza wrappers as well. I chopped up a bunch of farm fresh scallions and one store bought king oysters mushroom. They were mixed in with the ground beef along with spices. After all the ingredients were mixed well, I started folding the gyoza together. I figured 15 gyoza would be enough for lunch. For those of you who know me, if you want to learn how to fold gyoza, ask me to do a demo for you.

I heated up a few table spoons of oil in a non-stick pan (a well seasoned cast iron pan works, too) and put all the gyoza in there as shown in the picture above.


Let them sizzle for a minute or so then pour some water in there and cover the pan. Reduce the heat to low and let the water steam the gyoza. This way you don't need to turn the gyoza to cook them through. When they are fully cooked, you will see the change in color as they become semi-transparent. I used a Pyrex lid, so I could see them while they cooked.

When they are cooked through, lift the lid and let the water fully evaporate. The oil you put in the pan earlier will start to brown the bottom of gyoza and give them a nice golden brown color. I like my gyoza crispy.

When I was about to have my 15 pieces of gyoza for lunch, all 3 people I was having lunch with asked me the same question, "Are you going to eat all that?" Well, I was going to try. As a result, I offered each of them a piece to shut them up.

Potato Tempura for Afternoon Snack

I have been harvesting the red potatoes I planted in January. So far I have pan fried them, made Indian potatoes, and deep fried them. Just last weekend, I have deep fried all sorts of garden veggies for my herb class. If you ever cooked for others, you know that you generally don't get to eat much. I was feeling hungry this afternoon, and as usual, there are hardly anything in the fridge other than jars of assorted homemade pickles. I went out to the farm and started digging into the potato patch.


I found a few decent size potatoes, washed them, and thinly sliced them. I used the same setup as last week - flour, egg wash, and panko. Instead of using the deep fryer, I used my cast iron pan on the stovetop since I was only going to fry a small quantity. The panko coated potato slices were fried to a nice golden color. I like to eat these potato tempura with Bull Dog Worcestershire Sauce.


Many people asked me about this "panko" (パン粉) I used last weekend. This is Japanese style bread crumb, the same stuff for making shirmp tempura, tonkatsu, and croquettes that you get in Japanese restaurants. Last Thanksgiving, I made Alton Brown's Green Bean Casserole and panko was one of the ingredients. It's a recipe I will definitely use again.

What Can't You Fry?

Fritz Fry was such a success at Solstice Convergence that I decided to do it again for the herb class. I brought in my deep fryer and some farm fresh produce. I had to make some onion rings just like how my college roommate/best friend used to make - with panko (Japanese style bread crumbs).


I had everything prepped and lined up just the way I wanted. There were onion rings, button mushrooms, green beans, sliced red potato, sliced zucchini, sliced yellow squash, and other assorted sliced squash. Everything was dipped in flour first, egg wash second, and then rolled in panko before dropped into hot (~375 degrees) oil.


Master Ken suggested that I experiment with different herbs and edible flowers. I deep fried some lavender blossoms, zucchini blossoms stuffed with mushroom and garlic or strawberry, mushrooms rolled in panko with fresh rosemary, rose pedals sandwiched between zucchini slices, mint leaves sandwiched between squash slices, and a bunch assorted edible flowers. Basically I was deep frying everything in different ways I could put them together.

I couldn't sample everything, but everything I fried was consumed by someone. It felt festive with all the mixed aroma in the air and colorful fried goodies to share. I was glad that I wasn't asked to fry bugs.

Permaculture Solstice Convergence 2010

This was quite an ambitious schedule. I was not able to attend everything that was on the list, but it was definitely a fun filled day. It was also the first day of Master Ken's herb class, so I went to the class first. There were mostly new people in this class, and unlike Master Ken's two other classes, mushroom cultivation and beneficial beast, this one is mostly women. I was a little surprised by that. Maybe guys just don't feel like learning about herbs?


Two guys were in charge of the fritter fry booth at the outdoors kitchen. They fried up all kinds of vegetables, fruits, mushrooms, cheese, and snails. They had a beautiful display of squash blossoms. I had fried strawberries, raspberries, bananas, cheese, oyster mushrooms, and even a squash flower stuffed with garlic and blue cheese, I think. I am not sure exactly what he stuffed it with, but it was delicious. I am a firm believer of anything deep fried tastes great. It was my first time having a deep fried flower. I always felt a little weird about eating flowers. I have zucchini flowers on the farm. I should just pick them to make some tempura.


Tellur, a herbalist from Blue Wind Botanical Medicine Clinic, had a nice display of various medicinal herbs. He also did some demos. My association of medicinal herbs while growing up in Asia was not exactly a positive one. I have been skeptical ever since due to childhood experiences. However, I like Master Ken's approach, which is to use medicinal herbs to prevent illness and not to cure illness after already falling sick.


The convergence ended with a potluck. I had not been eating much meat for quite a while, the BBQ was actually a little hard to eat. Other than that, it was excellent. I even got to take some mixed vegetable soup home. I was glad the shortbread cookies were gone pretty quickly. I think they were just the right size. Everyone I talked to liked lemon-lavender cookies better than rosemary cookies. I already have a couple ideas to improve the lavender cookies for next time.

I would like to grow a cabbage this size in the front yard just to show people how awesome it looks. I wonder if the deers would eat it?