Combining Flavors, Making Memories

“Cooking is like painting or writing a song. Just as there are only so many notes or colors, there are only so many flavors – it’s how you combine them that sets you apart.” ~Wolfgang Puck

To me, cooking is an art, as much as it’s a science. While cooking can be pretty scientific (and I’m not even talking about the chemistry of baking!), it is also just what Wolfgang Puck gets at in the above quote: different ingredients being put together by someone who knows what they’re doing.

Just as important is combining those flavors while making food memories with your favorite people.

Someone Who Knows

I have already mentioned more than once, I think, that these folks at Food & Wine knew what they were doing when they put the list of their 40 best-ever recipes together, but how about the chefs?!

It should go without saying that of course a chef would know what they’re doing, but seriously. Who thinks of combining the different ingredients that make even the simplest meal taste amazingly good, and different? Who? Well, for the purposes of this blog post, it’s the two talented people who created the two recipes below.

Hope you enjoy reading about them as much as I enjoyed eating them!

Photo of the magazine cover. — Best-ever recipes? Let’s see if the next two recipes rate as some of the best…

Cook the 40

Why take on Food & Wine’s best-ever recipes from their forty years in publication? Because I do like to eat, I like to cook and well, I also like a challenge.

Plus, it’s something to write about.

40 Years of Food & Wine

According to the September 2018 anniversary issue of Food & Wine, and editor Hunter Lewis, https://twitter.com/notesfromacook?lang=en, what makes a good recipe is it being delicious, of course, and (I think even more important sometimes) the best recipes “tell a story worth repeating.” Well said, Hunter.

Let’s see what stories I can tell with these next two recipes.

Soboro Donburi. A new dish for me to try!

Recipe Eighteen: Soboro Donburi

Soboro Donburi? I had never had this dish before I made this recipe. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I was excited to see how it would turn out.

Not too complicated of a recipe, but it does include a few very strong ingredients in fresh ginger and soy sauce.

First, stir together ground beef, sake, soy sauce and cook.

Last, add peas and ginger. That was it! Easy and tasty!

This really was one of those recipes where simple ingredients added together create a really nice tasting dish.

Soboro Donburi? Yes, please!

What Was I Doing in 1981 when this recipe was published? What Did I Eat? Where Did I Go?

1981. The year I turned 11, and the year I am sure we didn’t go many places other than to Texas to visit family in San Antonio, as we did at least once a month or so when we lived in New Orleans.

We lived in New Orleans in 1981 and I remember it well because that is the year my dad went on strike. In fact, my dad and his fellow air traffic controllers went on strike that August. It was late summer, and while labor issues had been brewing for awhile, it didn’t come to a head until early August, 1981.

It is not so much a story for this blog post, but I will say that 1981 changed my family’s life as we knew it. At least as my brothers, my sister and I knew it. Tough times would be coming in the next few years: my mom having to go to work (she pretty much stayed home with all of us before then), cars getting repossessed, my dad working jobs that he probably hadn’t considered in a long time, and our family moving wherever and whenever those jobs became available.

For me, the best thing that happened because of 1981 and the Patco strike was that we eventually moved back to San Antonio. San Antonio had always been home even though we had moved away before I started kindergarten. It was always where my parents bought their first house, where my grandmother and my favorite cousins and family lived. While I knew we moved because we were beyond poor and needed to be able to live in my grandmother’s house on W. Gerald in San Antonio’s South Side basically rent free, I was happy to be home. The move didn’t happen until 1984, but it was because of 1981.

Me with my sister in New Orleans in 1981. We’re sporting my dad’s Patco baseball caps, proud to represent. We didn’t travel much that year but we sure did experience a lot.

Recipe Nineteen: Kimchi Creamed Collard Greens

Another Cook the 40 recipe that includes kimchi? I’m game!

This next recipe was also pretty simple. And really, really tasty!

Let’s see how this one was made…

Prep for the collard greens dish was pretty simple: dice up some onion and bacon, fry it up, add the cut up collard greens and other ingredients…

This recipe started by heating oil in a pan, adding the onions, bacon, then the collard greens, vinegar and crushed red pepper; while heating heavy cream and the kimchi in another pot.

Once the pot of collard greens and the pot of kimchi and cream are both done, mix the kimchi into the collard greens—and it’s done!

And What About 2011?

Hmm, I don’t think I went anywhere that significant in 2011. I did start a new job that spring so perhaps that is why. It was a great year, though. My Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup—my first time seeing them win the Cup! That I remembered right away when thinking about 2011, but I didn’t remember too much else, which is why I started looking at photos on Facebook from 2011.

What did I find? Photos from that year’s tamalada. Are you familiar with a tamalada? It’s the traditional get together around the holidays to make tamales. It’s a long-standing tradition that women in Latino families get together with family and friends to make dozens and dozens of delicious tamales. Tamaladas are usually held around Christmas, and it’s usually done with people you love. You sit around, eat and drink, laugh, engage in lots of chisme (think good-natured gossip) —which is said to enhance the flavor of the tamales—and well, you make tamales until you really can’t make them anymore. It is hard work but it’s worth it.

Sammy

What was significant about 2011’s tamalada? It was the last time I saw my best friend’s brother, Sammy – or Chiro, as he was also called.

I had known Chiro for as long as I have known Cindy, which is since 1986. While he was her brother, he was also like my brother, and like my own brothers, I always loved seeing him. Chiro’s sense of life was full of fun, smiles and laughter. He always wanted to have a good time.

Chiro was found dead at home just a few weeks later. He had suffered from high blood pressure from a young age, and it took its final toll just after the new year in 2012.

His death was a painful life lesson for me, or at least a reminder that we never know when we’ll have our last memory of someone, or that it will be the last time we hear their laugh or see their smile. Cherishing and enjoying every moment then is even that much more important.

My first official hoja of the 2011 tamalada.

The masa…part of the hard work is getting the masa ready.
The hojas…also work to get them soaked and ready for tamal filling.

Lorraine’s son, Jared, making his first tamal, and a great memory.

Note: one is called a tamal (not tamale), more than one are called tamales. I don’t know if you’ll remember that or if it will make a difference, but at least I tried. 😉

With two of the most important people in my life: Lorraine and Cindy.

Food Memories are Life Memories

Enjoy all of your food memories, while they last—but even more important is to enjoy them while they are happening. We definitely did on that tamalada day in 2011.

Elda XO