the world loves wannabes
It is possible... just barely possible... that I don't shop for food the way normal people do. It always comes as something of a shock to me when I happen to look up and see, say, a mother, progeny clinging and dangling, confidently grabbing a bag of prewashed lettuce. Or a happy young couple happily checking off recipe items together from their happy stupid little checklist. Or a wizened, authoritative-looking elder poking, prodding and peering at the lemons like, you know, inside they might not be quite lemony enough for the fantastically complex and tasty dish their great-grandmother handed down that they'll be whipping out by sheer learned instinct later in the day. Those people give off a stunning whiff of purpose. No, I would characterize my shopping - especially in the produce section - as driven by a deep and abiding sense of inferiority. Other people buy interesting radishes. Other people pick through candy-cap mushrooms, undoubtedly for breathtakingly delicate savory flans to be consumed by ladies in russet-toned organdie. Other people look carefully up through the bottoms of plastic clamshell boxes of verbena microgreens, which they'll later weave into garnishes. Or salads. Or their hair. I have no clue. All I know is that all that burdock root is there. And it is mocking me. Personally, I blame Alice Waters. MK Fisher. Ina Garten. And many other undoubtedly wonderfully well-intentioned Fresh and Local people who have, as per this week's webcartoon, completely ruined several of my family's meals. It is absolutely not my fault that I forced upon my daughter a salad entirely composed of Persian cucumber and shaved kohlrabi that smelled like feet. That's Michael Pollan's fault. Because I am weak, and drank the Kool-Aid. And now can't pass the latest bizzaro bin at a Farmer's Market without pretty much breaking down completely, buying bagfuls and bagfuls of fresh, local crap I am simply unqualified to make tasty in any possible way. Many of this stuff is just weird, guys, ok?? It's really not meant for rank amateurs wielding Google. Especially with families. Can you maybe next time put a qualifier, just for us, on your latest "I'm all smiles because I licked my latest meal right off my local farmer" bestseller? Here, I'll even give you the copy: "blah blah blah fresh and local, sure; but oh right and also, only buy it if it contains fewer than four consonants in a row and doesn't have weird knobby bits with hair growing out of them. Gee sorry, sorta thought that was obvious but, I guess, better late than never. Loser." A little dispensation is all I ask. Just enough to not have my cooking smell like feet. --- but hey, on foodier notes: if you actually want to risk kobacha/danhobak porridge... personally I sorta thought it was one of the better-tasting things the family has hated. So if you have half a kabocha squash (sometimes labeled Japanese Pumpkin; possibly danhobak if you're in a Korean market) lying around - and these days, who doesn't - it's not a bad weekend morning breakfast if done sweeter style, or starter soup if you add in some pepitos, pine nuts and/or adzuki beans. I probably, in completely innocent but incompetent fashion, screwed something up. It sorta had a faint pumpkin-pie, cinnamony-oatmeal thing going, which was the good thing. Really, it was more flavorable than plain oatmeal by a longshot, so to me it was superior. If - as my daughter pointed out immediately and without mercy - you really like your oatmeal to have the consistency of raw egg yolk. I have some suspicion that's because I rushed and mishandled the glutinous sticky rice, so that it made the porridge too watery and not quite... well, porridgy enough. But *you* could probably avoid that, especially if you're Solidly Western and don't happen to have bagfuls of glutinous sticky rice in the cabinets; several of the recipes I found suggested regular white rice an an acceptible if not great substitute, and I can only imagine with less starch breakdown and poofier rice clumps you'd get a thicker, lumpier consistency more familiar to us raised-on-Quaker-oatmeal types. But the pictures do seem to show it with more of a runny-gooey-soup sort of consistency. Quite possibly it's just the way Koreans grow up with porridges... In any event, link to a recipe is above but it's a nearly-wingable thing to do, if you have any competence in rice-making. If you have glutinous rice on hand then the only wrinkle is, well in advance start your standard 1-2 hr+ soak of about 1/3 cup rice per half-kabocha. I didn't have time so I tried the trick of doing a very-low-burner warm soak for half an hour with a pinch of salt, which if you're gonna blender it all anyway didn't turn out too bad; then boiled it as normal per directions (figure on 15-20 minutes). Otherwise just whip up the same amount of normal white rice; I wouldn't recommend fancy jasmines or browns, you really do want something that will come out a bit stuck together and clumpy (e.g. lots of starch molecules freely swimming about). Meantime you just chop up peeled kabocha into a pot of boiling water - steam I suspect is fine too - and when both rice and kabocha are done and tender, food-process (if you want lumpier, more western style porridge) or high-speed-blender the two together with a touch of stock, a few tablespoons of brown sugar or molasses to taste, and a pinch of salt. You should come out with a variously thinned or thickened gloppy soup; most recipes suggested folks thin/thicken to personal taste, and sweetened to taste. Personally I ground up and added a single star anise and a qtr stick cinnamon - good early fall flavors to go with sweet squash, and one recipe suggested toasted cinnamon on top - and a dash of MSG. But I suspect that drifted pretty far from Korean Peninsula standards... In any event I'd do it again. If I was single. - jeff
