Cookbook Review: "I Dream of Dinner (so you don't have to)", by Ali Slagle

 

This was a random snag at the local library in the New Releases section. Beneath the title says 'low-effort, high-reward recipes', and I'm always curious about that, since food media treats that concept quite variably over time, and quite rarely with any sort of honesty about the preparations. Given that this book was apparently start-to-finish mid pandemic, it offers a very interesting sociological microclimate to analyze. 

Much of what this book seems to focus on is, paradoxically, not focusing on specifics. It emphasizes the notion of being flexible with ingredients while developing an understanding of versatile recipe concepts rather than fixed recipes. That's a laudable notion, and one I regularly espouse on my Twitch channel while educating my viewers towards it, so I had my hopes up to some degree.

This book is packed to the gills with both recipes and recipe concepts that are fairly quick and easy, which is great. But the vast number of ingredients that show up throughout it make me think that in its execution, the book forgets its goal. There are massive numbers of secondary and tertiary ingredients that are either aggressively seasonal, uncommon, expensive, or just unlikely to be used up before they spoil. This cookbook talks about quick and easy but it builds ideas that cry out for a massive pantry, fridge and perhaps a nearby bakery. 

Being geared for a busy life would be just fine if it had any sort of consistency in that regard. The amount of potential ingredients mentioned (and then frequently glossed over) in this book does the concept no favors. If you want to focus on the methodology, don't bury it in excess superflous possibilities. 

I understand the notion- offering large numbers of potential ingredients sounds like a great idea for inspiring people to try new things or get creative with what's on hand. Unfortunately, when your concept is largely geared toward people in a distracted or overworked hurry, the reader is more likely to be mildly overwhelmed by decision paralysis, preventing them from doing the sort of riffing the book wants them to. 

Including a 'tech tree' or flowchart page for each concept or major section with a few nonspecific examples would have been far simpler and more effective at getting the point across for most of the book, and cut a hundred pages out to boot.

Now some other good parts of this book, to my mind, are the visuals. There are tons of pictures, and they do a fine job of making the food look delicious. 

Thing is, most of them are fancy plate-ups that thumb their nose at 'low-effort'. I know full well the time and attention it takes to make simple food look that good, and the average home cook doesn't have it. It's understandable, but disingenuous and not really fair. For a cookbook that's meant to build confidence in a person's capabilities and creativity, it does a great job of setting them up for the "ehh, close enough" sadness when their dinner looks little indeed like the pictures implied. Instagram Inadequacy is a large and still growing problem in food media, and books like this don't help.

I wanted to like this book a lot more than I do. It has a handful of recipe ideas I'll probably use, and it has endorsements from people I would trust. But everyone whiffs sometimes, and this is one of them. I Dream of Dinner takes the best notions from scores of other cooks and mashes them together into a book that won't intrigue or inspire unless you already know how to read it- and the intended audience is supposed to be people who don't. This is a concept that doesn't feel like it's been field-tested properly. Given the circumstances of its creation, that's not a surprise, but it's really concerning that there's so much tunnel vision here. This one goes back to the library as a disappointment.

Cookbook Review: "Mooncakes and Milk Bread", by Kristina Cho

The cover is gorgeous, and the images inside are every bit as beautiful

It's always interesting to see publishings from people I've worked alongside in the past. The better I know them, the more I'm sometimes torn about how critical I ought to be. This time I don't have to worry about it though, because I don't have anything bad to say. For those who know me well, you know that's... not common.

Kristina Cho of Eat Cho Food is a Bay Area local, and on several past occasions joined me and my comrades at our cooking school to host a variety of classes. As such, my fellow chef-instructors and I had the opportunity to test some of her recipes at scale, and I remember them fondly as I revisit them in her 2021 book Mooncakes and Milk Bread. 

This is more than just a cookbook, though it certainly does a stellar job as one. Each section speaks at length on a different facet of Chinatowns, celebrations, family businesses, and the carefully nurtured world of Asian restaurants, bakeries and cafes, doing so from the equally rare perspective of someone near enough to gather and share the in-depth knowledge and understanding without necessarily being buried by it. While not necessarily a 'coffee table book', it's definitely one worth reading through on a leisurely afternoon.

The introduction includes some of the important contextual parts of the book- many cookbooks with similar notions tend to put them at the end. I'm talking about, of course, ingredients and equipment. In addition to the building block ingredients, this section also offers a few pages on navigating Asian grocery stores- something quite useful for the uninitiated.
Rather than add an equipment list to every recipe (as I am prone to doing here on this blog), this section offers a list of likelies, and if anything obvious might be missing from your pantry or cabinets, it makes it easier to check whatever recipe you wanted to make. 

Fair warning, the one thing you really ought to have to get the most out of this book is a stand mixer- but that's to be expected for any baking-focused book. There are also A Lot Of Gadgets that see occasional use, so if your home kitchen is cramped, you may have to get creative. Though that's something gently encouraged in the text itself too, so don't fret if you don't have, for example, a Taiwanese Pineapple Cake mold. I don't, and I do Asian cuisine for a living!

Chapter 1 starts with the titular "Mother Of All Milk Bread". The how, the why, and the emphasis on its versatility are right there at the start, giving you a clear heads-up on what's to come. From there, we're treated to some great baseline recipes like Fluffy Steamed Bun Dough(p.17), the (Scallion) Pancake(p.23), and the Mo(p.35), along with things to serve in, on, or alongside them. If you were waffling on a purchase, this section alone more than justifies it, and there's so much more to come.

Chapters 2 and 3 are largely recipes that start with "Mother of All Milk Bread dough to step X", so getting that down perfectly is a must- but if you bought this book you were probably planning on doing that anyway. It also demonstrates in a more practical sense the abstract concept of baking and pastry bulding blocks- '5 ingredients, 500 combinations, 50,000 results'. The biggest winner here is pages 48-49 though, where you're given the trick to shaping most of the fancy looking buns you see in Asian bakeries!

This is going to make a world of difference in your baking presentation

Chapter 4 is titled 'Cakes and Tarts', but it also gives a look at the Chinese celebratory calendar and the treats one's likely to see around those times so it can be quite helpful if you're looking for something specific. The recipes in this section's first half vary widely, with another major building block (Chinese Puff Pastry, p.157) and delicious treats for the oven, stovetop, and steamer alike. The second half is Mooncakes in all their (Lala) glory. This bit is where most of the specialty gadgets come into play, so read carefully and twice before attempting things in this part of the book.

Chapter 5 is 'Cookies', and shorter than the others so far. But in brevity it offers decisiveness. The recipes in this chapter aren't terribly complex (with two notable exceptions on pp.199 and 207) and have great versatility. Mostly this is due to the recipes being centered around some sort of nut or seed, and those are largely interchangeable with no more than an easy tweak or two.

Chapter 6 is 'Chinese Breakfast'. Oh, man. This is the good stuff. It's dim sum classics and traditional tasties with some clever new fillings and flavors. I won't spoil anything here but reading this chapter made me go out for dim sum. (I'd have made them myself but dim sum for two is A Lot Of Work and I was very, very hungry.)

Chapter 7, 'Sips', is brief but thorough, giving a number of basic recipes and clever drink concepts that can also function as templates for a myriad of other flavor combinations. Having worked in a boba shop before, I got a good chuckle out of some of it and wholeheartedly approve.

This is a fantastic book, full of history, humor, family, friends, and food. I'm delighted it exists, because it has so much to offer so many. Well done indeed, Kristina. You've done this very proud.

Another Sushi 101, Another Success

 

Wasn't a terribly large class, but everyone really wanted to be there and had a lot of enthusiasm- something that doesn't happen often. Did have a bit of a messy time preparing things though, since the list of allergens I was given -no dairy, no gluten, no nuts- wiped out my default snack tray plan completely. But once I figured out sufficient substitutes and made sure to buy tamari instead of more standard soy sauce, it all came together quite nicely.

Not bad, right? Comfy!

The class was designed to be geared around basics. Fewer hard and fast "recipes", more techniques and principles that help the students make their own delicious food. I find that to be more effective than just handing people things to memorize and follow by rote- such techniques have their place, but copying makes it more difficult to understand how to apply the technique elsewhere.

For a starter, I taught them the fingertip method for rice after demonstrating a suitable rinse, and recommended a couple of rice cookers.

Sushi vinegar is a lot more than just vinegar, but mine isn't complicated.
This makes a batch large enough for a family dinner or two, and it keeps in the fridge for ages:
2 cups/500ml unseasoned rice vinegar, 1/4c / 65ml mirin, 1/2 cup/100g granulated sugar, 1 Tbsp coarse salt, and a 2"x2" piece of kombu.
Throw all that in a pot, bring to a gentle simmer for 15 minutes, and let it cool naturally. 

I also showed them all a nice easy snack in Kinpira Gobo, introducing them to an uncommon ingredient in a way that makes it familiar, delicious, and easy to handle. Julienne burdock root and carrots, saute in a hot pan with oil for a couple minutes, add sake, mirin, and tamari/soy, then cook it till it's dry. Hard to be much simpler than that.

Mostly I skipped the history lesson this time, but there were a great many questions about sourcing ingredients- particularly seafood, naturally, but also brands of soy sauce, mirin, even vinegar. (I inadvertently made a short primer on soy sauce just the other day- quite informative, if I do say so myself)

The student dynamic varies widely from one cooking class to another even if naught else changes, so an educator's ability to adjust to their audience on the fly is one of the more important qualities to have honed. My personal approach starts with things everyone should hear, even if they've heard them before- safety, cleanliness, communication, etc. How they react to that allows time to adjust the meat of the matter.

It's funny, though. As much as I harp on about not giving recipes, the one recipe I did design specifically for the class is also the one every single person goes completely gonzo for, and that I get the most gratitude for sharing.

A pound/500g of sliced mushrooms (shiitake preferred, but most any will do), 1c/240ml water, 1/2c / 120ml soy sauce/tamari, 1/2c / 120ml mirin, 2Tbsp sugar, a hand's worth of ginger, and spice. Combine in a lidded pot and (again) gently cook till all but dry.  

I rather like them in chawan-mushi myself, but the beauty is in their flexibility. Simple and excellent alone, or as a component of vegetarian sushi, stir fry, soup, or whatever you might deign to do with them. Understanding the principles behind the construction is what allows you to get more broad-spectrum use out of even somewhat niche preparations.

Ingredient In-Depth: Let me Shoyu!

 

Soy in Asia is just about everywhere and in most everything. It's as solid a staple as starches like rice or wheat, and while not as popular a protein choice as pork, it's pretty prevalent.

What I wanted to expand upon is geared more toward Shoyu-醤油(JPN)/Jiangyou-醬油(CHN)/Ganjang-간장(KOR)/Soy sauce, so I have to start at the beginning, and detail some of how it's made. The key ingredient is the koji mold, or aspergillus oryzae, which occurs naturally on rice, and has been utilized for thousands of years in various applications. 

Japanese-style, the process of making soy sauce (and often miso too, because the technique is similar) is fairly simple. Steam your soybeans, combine with some (usually) toasted wheat, add some koji spores, and set it in a high-humidity environment for a few days until the koji multiplies and it all gets a little fuzzy.

That's the base. It gets mixed with salt and water to make a mash (諸味/moromi, a term also used for the mash used in brewing sake), then it hangs around for as many months or years as you've got. To keep air contact more even, it gets regularly stirred, too.

Once the brewer's intended fermentation period is up, the moromi will be (in cheesecloth, muslin, or other porous thing) packed, racked, stacked, and pressed. What comes out of the mash under that pressure is the baseline raw soy sauce, that's then gently cooked to stop the fermentation process, which presumably also helps stabilize the flavor to some degree.

That's soy sauce in brief. Now for some common variants.
In Japan, you're likely to see these:

• Tamari, made the same way but without the wheat- thus, gluten free
• Usukuchi / 'Light' soy sauce 
• Koikuchi / 'Dark' soy sauce (The common Western supermarket stuff)
• Shiro / 'White' soy sauce, made with more wheat for a lighter color

In China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan, you may be more likely to see:

• Light soy sauce (Comparable to the Japanese Koikuchi for utility, if not exact flavor)
• Dark soy sauce (Often sweetened with something, this is Very Intense, and it stains hard)

China being as big a place as it is, these vary extremely widely in flavor from region to region, so from a practical perspective it's often easier to look for a particular brand with the flavor you're looking for rather than roll the dice.

Soy sauce in China is most highly regarded coming from the provinces around Shanghai. Not only are they home to the best soy sauce, but also things like Jinhua cured ham, Zhenjiang "Black" vinegar, and other fermented culinary fundamentals of regional Chinese cuisine. Historically, this area has the fermentation and preservation bit really dialed in- though other areas have their own specialties, like the Doubanjiang/豆瓣酱 so intrinsic to the food of Sichuan (another soy product, something akin to a coarse miso fermented with chilis and other flavorants).

Now I could go a fair bit longer about the more adulterated variations, such as the Indonesian sweet soy kecap manis, or the more vigorously flavor and aromatic-infused soy sauces you often see in the already complex Sichuan cuisine, but I don't want to lose the few readers I have, so that will be for another day.

Modern Inconveniences: Hybrid Theory

 

One of my most severe pet peeves is when a piece of equipment or technology gets it flat-out wrong. Not just mean visually or mechanically, but autonomically and ethically as well.

I had to rent a hybrid vehicle for a couple of days, and I absolutely hated the thing. Why? Because it constantly did things I didn't direct it to, that I would never have expected or wanted.

Bear in mind that this is decidedly not an Old Man Yells At Cloud problem. I'm a genuinely good driver- taught by professionals, including a former racecar driver. I can operate almost anything from a go-kart to a backhoe. This thing fought me at every step.

Audible chimes and dashboard notifications when I was 'too close' to a highway lane edge? Dinging at me while I backed up like it was a damn bulldozer, or even more loudly when there might be something nearby?

These aren't benefits or warnings, they're hazards. They're distractions.
But it gets worse.

I'd be stopped at a red light, and the engine would just... disengage. Then when I tried to move, the engine would start back up! Not only did that create another auditory distraction, it created a delay. It actively prevented the movement my pressure on the accelerator should have yielded- which is an obvious safety hazard to any competent vehicle operator.

Last among the stunners, the manufacturers appear to have dismissed the notion of personal responsibility. 

The sun was up, so I toggled off the headlights.
While switched off, they turned back on again! The damn thing wouldn't LET me keep them off!

In short, it appeared to be more dangerous to more qualified vehicle operators than to poorly skilled ones. Without a fair bit of time in the manual, I'm not even certain I could have fixed these dangerous settings. If a function doesn't suit my need, then the ability to readily disable it is absolutely essential, and this was anything but clear.

Now the question is- why? Why are the designs deliberately, obviously handicapped? The engine disengage problem is probably a hybridization issue- knowing where to put what in terms of optimal engine implementation seems a solvable issue, one currently technically functional but not ideal.

What also seems to be missing is the understanding of how to do so in a way that doesn't create a hazard for an operator with preexisting expertise, and so for those around them. Just as a skilled cook doesn't need a smoke alarm unless they're not in the kitchen, a skilled driver doesn't need to be told when they need their lights on, nor warned about where they are on the road... unless they ask for it.

Such things have a place. But they are only, always, and ever to be operator-engaged.

Potato Poblano Soup

 

Just a quick, easy recipe, dialed in a bit more thoroughly. The directions look long, but it's quite simple.
Shoutouts to Walter Carranza, wherever you are. This was largely his brainchild many years ago as a way to use up leftover mashed potatoes, but it's just as easy from scratch.

Ingredients:
1# Russet Potatoes
4oz Unsalted Butter, melted
4 Poblano Chiles
Neutral Oil
6oz Sharp (ideally smoked) Cheddar Cheese, grated
1qt Whole Milk
Water
Vinegar
Salt
Garnish (Sliced Jalapeno? Scallion/chive? Cheddar? Crumbled chips? Roasted garlic?)

Equipment:
Stove, Oven, Medium pot, Silicon/rubber spatula, Potato masher (or similar tool), Immersion blender (or powerful standard blender), Fine strainer, Medium bowl, Sheet tray, Aluminum foil, Vegetable peeler, Box grater, Cutting board, Knife.

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400F/200C. Fill the medium pot halfway with cold water, and salt it aggressively, as though cooking pasta.
Peel the Russet Potatoes, cut them into relatively uniform 1-2" pieces, and place them in the salted water.
Place the pot on the stove and start heating on medium. Bring to a simmer and cook through.
While the potatoes cook, line the sheet pan with foil. Split the poblanos in half vertically, removing the seeds and pith from the inside, as well as the stems.
Oil the halved peppers gently, season with salt, then place on the foil-lined tray skin-side up.
Put the tray in the preheated oven for 20-30 minutes, or until the skin has colored and visibly pulled away from the flesh of the chiles.
Once the potatoes are cooked, drain them and allow to dry/cool slightly in the strainer.
Melt the butter over low heat in the pot used to cook the potatoes, then remove from heat.
Remove chiles from the oven when adequately roasted, place in the medium bowl and cover tightly with foil. Allow to steam for 10 minutes.
While waiting for the chiles to finish and the potatoes to cool slightly, grate the cheddar cheese.
Remove and discard the skins from the roasted poblanos, then finely chop what remains.
Return the potatoes to the pot with the melted butter. Mash coarsely and season.
Over medium heat, add the milk to the potatoes, stirring gently to ensure the potatoes start to disintegrate.
Add the poblanos, then blend the mixture till smooth.
Remove from heat, strain into the bowl, add the grated cheese, and stir till evenly melted in. 
If there is significant mass caught in the strainer, return that to the pot, then blend and strain it again to ensure as little waste as possible.
Season with salt, a teaspoon or two of vinegar, and possibly a few dashes of your favorite hot sauce.
Enjoy.