Best Food Writing 2014

by Holly Hughes

  The point of this little tale isn’t to self-congratulate the teacher or to boast the number of dishes that the student mastered. The point is that Susan showed up, all five senses engaged, and she jumped off the sidelines.

  I’m sure some of you are asking how this sweet little mother-daughter cooking story has any business appearing in a serious publication about the food system.

  The thing is, home cooking is serious business. It is a conscious decision to turn raw ingredients into a meal to nourish ourselves and the people we love. The food system is more than crops and livestock; it’s what we humans do with them.

  In these disheartening times, when we’re asked to make sense of mega farms, antibiotic-resistant foodborne outbreaks, and poverty-driven obesity, cooking is a beacon. It gives us purpose when we want to throw our hands up in the air in despair and it’s something positive that we can do—me, Susan and you, you and you. It is a call to action that is both self-sustaining and sustainable.

  Back in 1966, a woman named Margaret McNamara founded Reading is Fundamental (RIF), a nonprofit dedicated to eradicating illiteracy. To this day, RIF pro-actively puts books in the hands of millions of children who otherwise wouldn’t have access.

  RIF points out on its Web site that “Literacy—the ability to read and write—is essential to developing a sense of well-being and citizenship.”

  Couldn’t we say the same thing about the ability to prepare a simple meal? Cooking is as fundamental as it gets—to our personal health and nourishment, and to the well-being and longevity of our communities, culture, and society. It can be the cornerstone of a sustainable food system, if we give it a chance.

  In the words of the African-American proverb: “Each one, teach one.”

  See you in the kitchen.

  HOW TO BOIL WATER

  By Irvin Lin

  From Eatthelove.com

  Irvin Lin is a San Francisco food-scene Renaissance man—an award-winning photographer and graphic designer; he’s also a self-taught baker, recipe developer, and food blogger. Readers may come to his blogsite for the dazzling photos, but they’re just as likely to return for his irrepressible wit, as with this April Fool’s Day post.

  I woke up this morning utterly parched with thirst. It was one of those cold mornings in San Francisco, gloomy and gray. Even though the blankets were wrapped around me, I was shivering and AJ had gone to work already.

  I laid there in bed, trying to figure out if there was any substance at all that could help quench my dry throat. Then it hit me. I knew exactly what I so desperately needed, what would warm me up like nothing else. I needed hot water to drink. But how do I boil water? It’s such a difficult thing to make at home! Or is it?!?.

  The first thing I did was do my research. I grabbed my iPhone, next to my bed, and skipped Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Pinterest and Google+ (ha! like anyone ever checks G+ on their phone) and launched my browser. I hit up America’s Test Kitchen, then Saveur and then Bon Appetit. But none of them seem to have a recipe for how to make boiling water at home.

  Then I visited my favorite popular food blogs: Simply Recipes, The Pioneer Woman, David Lebovitz, Gluten Free Girl. Nothing. I mean, boiling water is naturally GLUTEN FREE Shauna! Get on that. Even the apparently misnamed Steamy Kitchen seemed to not have a recipe for boiling water. The site is called STEAMY KITCHEN! Boiling water produces steam . . . oh Jaden, how you missed a golden opportunity. Even when I broke down and checked Pinterest it disappointed me as there were NO moody dark underexposed photos of boiled water that I could find. PIN FAIL.

  Clearly someone needed to show the internet how to boil water. So I got out of bed, while still wearing my Faded Glory (a private label version of Fruit of Loom if you must know, because I’m not fancy) sleepy plaid flannel pants and nearly worn through oversized t-shirt that had a faded burger printed on it with a word bubble coming from it that had the words “I want to be inside you” lewdly hovering above it. I hauled myself into the kitchen and started to experiment with water and how to boil it.

  After all, if I was going to go through all the trouble of figuring out how to boil water, I needed to make sure I created a recipe that was utterly foolproof. A recipe perfect for summer. And Winter. And Spring, and Fall (though really, San Francisco really has messed me up in terms of the seasons as we don’t really have them). I needed a recipe that is the best ever, utterly amazing and completely delicious. Most importantly, I needed a pin-worthy recipe. The DEFINITIVE recipe on how to boil water. And after 27 attempts, I think I nailed it. Let me know what you think. And ABSOLUTELY let me know if you have any problems with this recipe. Like all food bloggers, I totally LOVE it when I get comments telling me how the recipe doesn’t work . . . especially when the reader who tried it substituted different ingredients. Those are the best comments ever.

  How to Boil Water

  A gluten-free, grain-free, paleo-friendly, meatless Monday friendly, cane sugar-free, soy-free, peanut and nut tree–free, egg-free, dairy and casein-free, vegan, vegetarian, local and organic recipe. NOT water-free though. So if you are allergic to water, you’re out of luck.

  By Irvin Lin

  Forget all those “uni-tasker” items that take up so much space in the kitchen like the novelty whistling tea kettle (it whistles when the water boils!) or those hot water dispensers that are always sitting on your sassy-but-slightly-obsessed-with-wearing-sunscreen-all-the-time Asian friend’s counter. Making boiling water is as easy as buying $4 toast and way easier than making a Kouign Amann or a Green Shamrock Shaped Guinness Infused Potato Irish Cheddar Bread Corned Beef Sandwiches with Orange Mayonnaise. And, it’s just as much fun!

  Now there are a million variables in boiling water, but I’m not going to get all persnickety and tell you how you need to use a scale to measure out the right amount of water to use. Nor am I going to tell you that you have to use that copper All-Clad pot or that you need the TOP notch ingredients like the spring water drawn from the remote part of Canada which takes three days travel just to get to the location where it’s sourced. No, amazingly delicious perfect boiling water can happen with just basic everyday water and any old pot. Seriously. Just follow my easy step-by-step instructions . . . to make sure you don’t make any mistakes in making the absolutely gorgeous fun-to-drink super-fun-to-make cup of boiling water!

  Directions

  1. Find the perfectly sized pot for your water to sit in. The size of the pot is going to limit the amount of water you boil, so make sure to pick one that will hold the right amount of boiling water that you want.

  2. Locate the sink in your kitchen and bring the pot to your sink. Turn the faucet to the “on” position, which means water will be running out of the faucet. If you are pushing the handle or turning the knob and no water is coming out, you are pushing or turning in the wrong direction. Try pulling or twisting the other way.

  3. Run the water until it gets cold, as the end result will be better. I taste-tested cold water, lukewarm water and hot water myself then decided to run a focus group blind taste test with 25 of my favorite food blogger friends and all but one of them picked the boiling water that started with cold water. I later found out that Sean, the sole dissenter, had a sinus cold and stuffy nose so his taste buds were totally off. Why he didn’t tell me up front, I don’t know. I’m never inviting him to one of my taste test focus groups again.

  4. Fill the pot up with as much water as you would like to boil. There is no right or wrong answer to this. This is not a trick question. Just fill the pot up.

  5. Turn the faucet off and walk the pot to your stove. Place the pot on stove top, over one of the burners. If you have an electric stove just place the pot on one of the circles on the glass that specify where the heat comes on (or if you are old school electric, place it directly on the electric coil itself). If you have an induction stovetop I hate you and you’re on your own.

  6. Turn the heat up to high for the burner or electric circle/coil that you placed th
e pot on. You can certainly use medium or even low heat to boil water, but high heat is definitely recommended. You want to make sure to really sear the water surface initially with the high heat. This is called the Maillard reaction and it really gives the final boiling water a lovely flavor and color.

  7. Now cover the pot with a lid. If you’ve lost the lid or the lid is so bent up that it doesn’t fit over the pot properly, then either grab a sheet pan or metal cookie sheet and cover the pot with that, or just skip covering the water. Just be forewarned that the water may take longer to boil, and the resulting water may be more concentrated in flavor because some of it will have evaporated in the heating process. But if you like a more concentrated water flavor, then by all means, don’t cover the pot.

  8. Now wait for the heat to do its job. If you covered the pot, you can periodically check underneath the lid to see if the water is boiling. Just be aware that the more you uncover the pot, the slower it will take for the pot to boil. So check JUST frequently enough to see if the water is boiling, BUT not frequently enough that you slow down the heating process. The range of checking usually is between 2–5 times but sometimes is more and occasionally less. Just try not to go over 8 times because then you look like an impatient fool. Plus the whole “a watched pot” thing . . .

  9. The water is boiling when large rapid bubbles are vigorously appearing and are coming up from the bottom of the pan to the top of the water surface. If you only see small tiny bubbles, you haven’t fully reached the boiling point and you need to let the water heat ever so slightly more. Once the rapid large bubbles appear, you can turn the heat off. You have boiling water!

  BONUS STEP

  10. Carefully pour the boiling water into a drinking container of your choice. Mugs with handles are the preferred drinking container, but you can use glasses, or other heat proof drinkware, even cute mason jars wrapped in baker’s twine or polka dotted ribbon. Be careful that you don’t spill the boiling water on yourself or pick up the mason jars immediately because the boiling water is hot and will burn you.* Let it cool a bit to pick up or to drink.

  Makes exactly 3 2/7ths cups of boiling water.

  * I am not responsible for any burns you may suffer from drinking boiling water. Please check with your doctor or health care provider if burns do happen. This post was not sponsored by First Degree Therapeutic Burn Cream as I have never used it before because I practice common sense when it comes to drinking boiling water. All opinions are my own.

  Special thanks to Sabrina of The Tomato Tart for loaning me baker’s twine, as I do not own any and really didn’t want to buy any for this post. The stripey paper drinking straws are my own though. I stole a handful of those from a friend of mine’s wedding.

  This has been a special April Fool’s edition of Eat the Love. I write this disclaimer because inevitably someone will believe that this is a legitimate recipe for how to boil water and try to correct me about the Maillard reaction listed above. To that person, I say . . . you are a fool. Good day.

  THE LIONS OF BANGKOK STREET FOOD

  By Matt Goulding

  From RoadsAndKingdoms.com

  Exotic travel, music, politics, food—it’s all fair game for the digital magazine Roads and Kingdoms. Co-founder Matt Goulding, a former Men’s Health food editor, needs no excuse to jump on a plane, especially if there’s adventurous eating at the other end. Note: Check out the full online version, where Singapore and Saigon are added to the street food mix.

  The worst meal I ever ate in Southeast Asia was at a beautiful candlelit restaurant in Bangkok. The waiters wore sarongs and offered lemongrass-scented towels to wash off the day. Back in the kitchen, the chef, a young European, had taken to reinterpreting traditional Thai food, adding modern twists and foreign “refinements”—replacing chicken with duck confit, daubing noodles with foie. It was twice as expensive and half as good as any other meal I ate on that trip (including the tame farang fare of the island bungalow circuit). Later that same night, I went out and ate the dishes the young chef was trying to approximate and promised myself to never eat inside a real restaurant in this part of Asia again.

  That experience, coupled with other letdowns over the past decade of travel to the Far East, helped form the basis of what I’ll call the Pretty=Shitty Postulate: That is, the more attractive the restaurant in Southeast Asia, the less likely it is to serve delicious food. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, but they are shockingly scarce. No, to eat well in this part of the world, look for the establishment with the tiny plastic stools, the gathering insects, the fluorescent glare of a hospital waiting room.

  While you’re at it, might as well skip the place with the credit card machine and the his and hers bathrooms. And there’s really no use for that team of waiters. Or even a menu. Come to think of it, what you’re really looking for is a stretch of cement with just enough room for a few plastic stools and a raging fire. That’s where the good stuff is.

  Street food is big news these days. Guidebooks dedicate entire sections to street food safety, tour operators take westerners to not-so-secret locations to observe this exotic style of eating, and vast blogging communities busy themselves with mapping out the best of a city’s sidewalk offerings. All the while, the Western world tries to find a way to make it theirs. Some people buy trucks and pass black bean burgers and Korean tacos through the window. The more ambitious ones, the chefs with names you might recognize, make the pilgrimages to these cities, often with their team of underlings in tow, where they eat and eat and eat. Back in their spotless kitchens, they set about recreating the stars of the street scene with impressive precision and first-class products. They add that garnish of fried shallots they tried in the Chiang Mai market; they serve their shrimp with lime and black pepper like it’s done in Hanoi. But when you bite into that $19 “small plate”? It is fine. It is perfectly satisfying.

  But it isn’t street food. Not even close.

  The first thing I do in Bangkok is the first thing everyone does when they come to Bangkok: I get lost.

  I spent weeks doing research, emailing experts, marking maps, setting up interviews—doing what I would normally do before eating my way though a town. Only, when the bus doors open and spit me out into that cauldron of spice and sin, all of the preparation evaporates into the warm city air. In Bangkok, where the best places to eat come without names or addresses, you can’t Google your way to the promised land; you just need to feel it out.

  As someone accustomed to planning Thursday’s lunch before Monday’s breakfast is fully digested, this takes time and patience and a considerable surrendering of compulsive behavior. But once you accept the reality, there is something deeply liberating about intuiting your way to a good meal.

  It’s well past noon and my hunger burns as hot as the midday sun. I come across a sad set of stands under a freeway overpass, but just before dismissing this shabby collection, I spot two tables of well-dressed men, all silently attacking the same dish. I follow the smell and the breath of the wok until I come upon the tiny old woman responsible for the small crowd. She stares up at me blankly from behind her wok. I point to the men behind me. She turns around and goes to work.

  Ninety seconds later, out comes a heartbreaking version of pad kha-prao: roughly ground pork and wilted leaves of holy basil, spiked lavishly with chilies and a beautiful sheen of fish sauce, a violently fried egg resting atop it all. Whatever expectations I have for the meal come not from the months of reading books and blogs before the trip, but in the seconds between ordering and eating.

  With even the most rudimentary skills of observation you can sniff out an astounding meal on any block of the city. A few clues: Is that wok firing especially hot? Is she cooking to order, rather than scooping out the warmed-over creations cooked hours prior? (The latter is, of course, the only way to serve many of Thailand’s great dishes—jungle curries, tom yum—but if it’s a dish that comes from the wok or the fryer, it should burn your lips with the first bite).
Is the cook’s prep area well stocked with vegetables, herbs and protein? Is the menu short? Better yet, is there no menu at all?

  When it comes to density and intensity, Bangkok is unrivaled in the world of street food. Next to the wild tastes of Bangkok, the hawker flavors of Singapore seem domesticated. Take my 3am nightcap at the Huay Kwang Market. After a round of beers and sundried pork that has a sweetness and chew stranded perfectly between satay and jerky, I order a plate of raw prawns. The fat crustaceans are plucked live from a fish tank, summarily executed, shelled and butterflied on the spot. They are then slathered in what looks like pesto and buried under tufts of fresh herbs and nickel-size circles of raw garlic. Everything looks so fresh and innocent . . . and then you bite down. First, a rush of sweetness from the shrimp, then a sharp hit of garlic, and finally, blackout levels of spice from the puree of green chilies painted onto the crustaceans. It takes two large Chang beers to extinguish the fire.

  Thai food is a high-wire balancing act, one that pits salty, sour, sweet and hot against each other in equal and opposite measures. Ever wonder why you find yourself so consistently disappointed with Thai food in places that aren’t Thailand? Out of fear of offending sensitive Western palates, the kitchen holds back on the heat, they pull back on the fish-sauce punch, and the whole dish falls apart.

  But it’s not just the impossible juxtaposition that makes Thai street food so special. Thai street cooks, like great restaurant chefs, know the value of the little touches that take a dish over the top: the leaves of crunchy fried holy basil that add texture to a salad, the crust of coconut encasing molten chunks of fried bananas, the drizzle of vinegar infused with chilies and lemongrass that makes your whole body buzz.