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What is eating well? Is it cooking healthful meals? Is it\u00a0enjoying<\/em>\u00a0meals? Are these mutually exclusive?<\/p>\n\n\n\n For this week I’d like to make Daisy Choy’s Steamed Fish (120), Angela Diaz Porta’s Cuban Black Beans (169), and Haydee Martinez’s Tostones (209). The relatively simple and sparse preparation of the steamed fish highlights what its introduction states, and what Dunlop elaborates on: “…the Chinese look to food for its medicinal qualities…” (120) What foods are good for us when? <\/p>\n\n\n\n The basic (and shelf stable) primary ingredients of the black beans can show us how we can build layers of flavor with what we have in our cabinets, and the tostones remind us of the importance of snacks. I don’t know about you, but snacking is an essential part of my socially-distanced day, and what better opportunity than this to learn how to make some snacky finger foods of our own? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Reading: Pp. 118 & 120, 164-65 & 169, 204-205 & 209<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Response Prompts:<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n For the fish:<\/strong> For the sauce:<\/strong> For serving:<\/strong> 2 1\/2 lbs dried black beans 3 green plantains Notes: Skin on or off the ginger? In this recipe, you don’t bother peeling the ginger for the fish because it’s mostly there for flavor, and you can easily pluck those slices off. The matchsticks have been peeled because we’ll be eating all of it. Usually it comes down to a matter of what you want to eat, and how you want it to look. There isn’t a significant difference. That being said, the kindly woman behind the counter at Capitol Market did<\/em> emphatically advise me to leave the skin on, because “that’s where all the nutrients are.” So, make of that what you will. There’s something to folk wisdom, I think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What kind of oil should we use?? Solid question. Oils in recipes fall into basically two categories: Neutral oils for cooking, and flavor oils. The former includes basics such as vegetable, canola, avocado, peanut, rice bran, pomace, etc. Oils such as toasted sesame, or extra-virgin olive, fall into the latter, and are usually added towards the end of a recipe, once the bulk of cooking is finished. For our purposes, these cooking oils are generally interchangeable (though you might hear differently, probably from people who either know less or more than I do). They won’t have a strong impact on the flavor of your dish, and we’re basically just going for clean taste, with a high smoke point. If you have a cornucopia of oils at home, go ahead and match the type with the flavor profile of what you’re cooking (regular olive oil with Italian, peanut oil with Chinese, etc). Long story short, if you don’t have peanut oil in your cupboard, vegetable, canola, or regular olive oil will do just fine for your general cooking needs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you don’t have a food processor at home, no worries. Just go to town and chop those pimentos to small bits, they’re soft enough that it really won’t matter much in the final product. If you really want, chop them up then mash them through a strainer. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Food Lab with CTA Stephen Garfield Steamed Fish, Tostones, Black Beans, & “Eating Well” What is eating well? Is it cooking healthful meals? Is it\u00a0enjoying\u00a0meals? Are these mutually exclusive? For this week I’d like to make Daisy Choy’s Steamed Fish… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/cookingduringcovid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/cookingduringcovid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/cookingduringcovid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/cookingduringcovid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/cookingduringcovid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/cookingduringcovid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":366,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/cookingduringcovid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions\/366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/cookingduringcovid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/cookingduringcovid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/cookingduringcovid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Ingredients for Steamed Fish:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
1 lb white fish filets of your choice (Daisy prefers grouper, snapper, sole, or turbo)
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp white pepper
1 tsp corn starch
3 scallions, white parts only (reserve greens for sauce)*
1 inch piece fresh ginger cut into thin strips, skin on*
1 to 2 tbsp peanut oil* <\/p>\n\n\n\n
2 tbsp peanut oil*
2 inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and cut into matchsticks*
3 scallions, green parts only, sliced very thin, crosswise
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cooked white rice<\/p>\n\n\n\nIngredients for Black Beans:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
2 lbs green peppers (about 5 or 6), 1 cored and left whole with the remainder chopped, medium dice*
2 cups extra-virgin olive oil
2 large yellow onions, diced*
6.5 oz jar fancy pimentos, pureed in a food processor*
3 tbsp + 1 tsp coarse salt
1\/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1\/3 cup apple cider vinegar <\/p>\n\n\n\nIngredients for Tostones:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Coarse salt
2 cups vegetable or canola oil* <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scallions and green onions are the same thing; log that away. Solid rule of thumb for these guys: cook the whites, garnish with the greens. Of course, there’s lots of flexibility here, but generally you’ll want to cook the onion-y bite into whatever you’re making, and get that freshness from the raw green parts at the end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n