Pommelo

While numerous studies have shown that taking Vitamin C has no curative effect on the common cold, I nevertheless crave citrus when I’m not feeling well. Maybe it’s because the placebo effect has taken root after a childhood of being told to drink orange juice if you’re sick, but I swear it actually does make me feel better. Or at least like I’m doing something. I’ve been trying to fight off a cold with this method all week, guzzling orange juice and eating an orange or grapefruit with every meal. I was feeling marginally better, but then I passed by the green grocer and saw something I had to have: the biggest dose of citrus found in nature. The pommelo.

The pommelo, pictured here with a large grade AA egg for size comparison, is native to Southeast Asia. It’s easy to find at Chinese supermarkets like Ranch 99, and thus the fruit made several appearances on afternoons during high school when we had nothing better to do than drive around El Cerrito buying novelty snacks, then trying not to get too much pommelo juice on the leather seats of the ’85 Volvo station wagon (though juice stains would have been the least of its problems, since it lacked functional seatbelts, the ability to go above 40 mph, and a muffler). Katherine and Jess also expertly rigged up a pommelo as the vehicle for their egg drop project in Physics class (the results were positive; the egg suffered no cracks).

I hadn’t had a pommelo in a while, probably because they’re a bit high maintenance. First of all, they’re not exactly a single-serving fruit. And though I’ve managed to eat one in a moving car, even on a kitchen counter they’re not exactly easy to prepare. Prying off the skin takes some effort, and then you’re face with hacking away at a thick layer of spongy pith before you even see any of the edible flesh. But today, this dissection process turned out to be more worthwhile than I could have imagined. If a colony of bees ever raised a grapefruit to think it was a honeycomb, it would taste like this fruit. The segments were succulent but not messily juicy, unlike the cruel grapefruit that spurted all over my dress on Saturday. I thought we were a bit past citrus season at this point, but it must be prime pommelo time – hurry out and get one today.

I think I’m feeling significantly better, but I’ll probably keep eating pommelo just to be safe. I have a feeling pommelo might be a habit-forming substance, but until conclusive studies are conducted, I’m going to take my chances.

Irish Inspiration: Beer Bread and Green Soup

St. Patrick’s Day, for me at least, approaches with less anticipation than most other holidays, with the exception of, maybe, Ash Wednesday. I try to remember to remind myself to wish my dad a happy birthday over the phone, but that’s pretty much it. I’m not that into parades or Irish-themed drinking establishments – for both genres, it seems like if you see one you’ve seen them all. But for some reason, when I walked into the office today to find that my friend had made chocolate Guinness cupcakes for the occasion, I suddenly felt like I was under-celebrating.

I needed a festive cooking project, and beer cupcakes reminded me of a phase I went through during senior year of college: beer bread. At the time, cooking with beer seemed like a novelty (actually, the novelty of cooking of any kind hadn’t quite worn off), and the claim that mixing flour and baking soda with a can of beer could get you homemade bread required testing to be believed. In trying it, I learned that beer bread is unbelievable. Stirring in the beer creates a tantalizing yeasty aroma without the stress of activating any yeast, and the elastic dough bakes into a moist, dense crumb with an impressively professional crust. This time I mixed in some chopped basil and cubed cheddar, little bursts of cheese and herb flavor throughout each slice. Now that I’ve revisited the recipe with this loaf, a list of hundreds of variations to try has been running through my head: figs and gorgonzola, olives and goat cheese, fennel seeds, citrus zest, flax seeds, hazelnuts. I promise, the basic recipe is a magic trick that makes perfect fresh-baked bread appear in your oven.

Of course, I have no evidence that beer bread is particularly Irish. The fresh pea soup I made to go with it didn’t fit with the holiday’s ethnic aspect any better, but it was a strikingly bright green, as I the rolling hills of Ireland are said to be. All in all it was one of the best meals I’ve produced in a while, so I wasn’t concerned with whether it paid an accurately homage to St. Patrick or his native land. I was, however, very grateful for the inspiration.

Beer Bread

1 ½ cups whole wheat flour

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

4 ½ teaspoons baking powder

1/3 cup light brown sugar

1 ½ teaspoons salt

1 12-ounce can of beer

Optional add-ins: ½ cup to 1 cup cheese (diced or crumbled), dried fruits, olives, nuts, 1-3 tablespoons fresh chopped herbs, anything else that sounds good

Whisk together all ingredients besides beer in a large bowl. Pour in beer, and stir until completely incorporated, forming a fairly stiff, springy dough. Pour into a greased 9 X 5 inch loaf pan. Bake at 375F for 50 to 60 minutes, until the top is crusty and toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Bright Green Pea Soup

1 pound frozen peas

1 large onion, diced

½ - 1 cup chopped fresh herbs (mint or cilantro; use more if cilantro)

2 (or more) cups chicken or vegetable stock

Salt and pepper

Saute onion in a medium pot until it softens and becomes translucent. Add peas, and pour in enough stock to cover all ingredients, plus a little more. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes. Puree in a blender in batches (filling it no more than 1/4 of the way each time, or else the hot soup will explode all over you when you turn on the blender – just trust me), adding in the herbs. Alternatively, use a blender stick directly in the pot. Add stock to desired consistency, salt and pepper to taste. Serve with a squeeze of lemon or drizzle of olive oil.

Preppy Pickles

Chase is brewing beer again, and, not to be outdone, I decided I needed my own project involving culinary chemistry in glass containers. And I decided it was going to be pickling. Sure, my undertaking was on a smaller scale. While a six-gallon fermenter sat in the corner, on the other side of the kitchen I selected a clean and sturdy pint jar from the cupboard. The brewing took several hours of active labor and would take about a month and a half to become beer, but the pickles were supposed to be ready the next day, if not sooner. Ok fine, we were working on entirely different magnitudes. I was still going to make pickles.

I had tried pickling once before, with an intriguing cinnamon-infused red grape pickle. It had a complex flavor that was great as a sweet-and-sour addition to salads. But I figured it was time to try a savory pickle, and with an over-abundance of baby radishes in the fridge, radish pickles it was. I also threw in a few carrot sticks to see what would happen to them.

Preparing the brine, pouring it over the vegetables in the jar, and sticking it in the fridge was simple enough and came with no surprises. I fished the jar out of the fridge about a day and a half later to see the results. It seems that pickling inevitably makes things become somewhat less attractive, perhaps in solidarity with the wizened women who stereotypically make them. The radishes had shriveled slightly and leached the ruby pigment of their skins into the brine, leaving them a pale pink. But they tasted great. The salty tang was a nice counter to the spiciness of raw radish.

Even though it was gray and drizzly outside, the fact that it was warm enough to replace my winter jacket with a sweatshirt made me feel particularly Springy, and I liked that color of the pickles matched the tulips at the flower stall down the street. With minced pink and orange pickles, bits of pale green celery, and a spoonful of yellow mustard, the tuna salad I made for lunch looked like something from a J. Crew catalog. But much less expensive.

Preppy Pickles

1 ¼ cups water

1 cup white vinegar

¼ cup sugar

1 ½ tablespoon salt

1 ½ tablespoon pickling spice mix (from Sahadi’s)

Baby radishes (with slits cut into the tops of the larger ones) and carrot strips

Place the vegetables in a glass jar and combine the rest of the ingredients in a saucepan over high heat. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for two minutes. Pour brine into the jar and allow to cool. Place in the refrigerator for about a day.

More Praise for Condensed Milk

Time to use up the rest of that can of condensed milk.

And by lucky coincidence, there's an interesting article in the New York Times about the fondness for sugary canned dairy products in the Caribbean, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Someday I'll get around to laboring over a tres leches cake, but for this weekend I decided to go with brigadeiros, a Brazilian confection made by heating condensed milk until it thickens into a chewy fudge.

Though the NYT article gives some worthwhile recipes, I can't totally understand its lamentation of how condensed milk has been shunned by Westerners for so long, or its claim that it's only just now coming to be appreciated. Personally, I've been appreciating condensed milk for a long time. At one fortunate period in high school, Canned Foods must have been selling eight-ounce cans of it for about six cents each, because my mother came home with around 50 of them. After she reminded me of her favorite childhood recipe of fried bread with condensed milk, Katherine and I took to pan-frying slices of bread in butter and dipping them into a communal bowl of the wonderfully sticky milk. It became a common afterschool pasttime, despite Marc's looks of disgust.

But I was introduced to condensed milk long before high school, as evidenced by a quote from one of my favorite books at age five:

"Pooh always liked a little something at eleven o'clock in the morning, and he was very glad to see Rabbit getting out the plates and mugs; and when Rabbit said, 'Honey or condensed milk with your bread?' he was so excited that he said, 'Both,' and then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, 'But don't bother about the bread, please.'"

But the New York Times did introduce me to this foolproof way to make fudge. Regular brigadeiros are flavored with cocoa powder, but Brazilians are well aware that combining rich, buttery sweetness with coconut is a great idea, so I imagine this type is quite popular too. I had to adjust the recipe to the amount of condensed milk I had left, but I wish I had been able to make a bigger batch. All kinds of colorful garnishes, like crushed nuts, colored sprinkles, candy-coated fennel seeds, even a small amount of fleur de sel, could make a very whimsical fudge ball platter.

Coconut Brigadeiros

1 cup sweetened condensed milk

1/2 cup coconut milk

2 tablespoons butter

2 teaspoons corn syrup or agave nectar

1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut, divided

Combine all ingredients except 1/2 cup shredded coconut in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer, whisking constantly, until mixture thickens and starts to come together into a ball (about 10 minutes). Pour into a bowl and allow to come to room temperature, then cool in the refrigerator for at least four hours. Using a teaspoon measure, scoop fudge and roll into balls about 3/4 inch in diameter. Roll in the remaining shredded coconut to coat.