Weird Culinary Science

Howdy, folks.

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," as the saying goes. Now personally, I always thought Jack was a bit of an asshole. Selling his ma's cow for a handful of beans, murdering giants (and probably sleeping with their wives – I often suspect the story of having been "sanitized"…), jumping over candlesticks, building houses that aren't up to code…

Any way you look at it, Jack was a borderline sociopath at best, and a barking moonbat at worst. "All work and no play?" What the faaaaaaa? Sounds to me as if Jack's never done an honest day's work in his life. (Not to mention that a little dullness might actually improve the li'l peckerwood's disposition.)

I, on the other hand, have done more honest days' work (and a few dishonest – or at least borderline-shady -- days' work, for the record) than I can recall. And because I'm on vacation this week, I thought I'd post a few photos and have a little fun before bashing out the reams of spiteful, profanity-laden invective to which the Gentle Reader has grown accustomed.

As most of you Green Hell "oldtimers" know, I'm an avid gardener. (During a bad trip, I once fancied I was Ava Gardner -- but the less said of that, the better.) I planted my first "serious" garden in 1990, at the age of 22, and have done so every year since. In 1995 my father and mother reconciled after an eight-year de facto separation, and for the next decade, Da and I gardened together, until his chemotherapy left him too weak to continue.

Despite droughts, bugs from hell (we have everything from Mexican bean beetles to tomato hornworms in this state), I see a net profit every year, and usually have enough produce to foist upon the neighbors. My wife, Maggie, moved in with me back in '07, and has since developed a passion for gardening that nearly equals my own. As she's a little more adventurous than my father was, she doesn't go ballistic when I employ Mel Bartholomew's "square foot" method, companion plant, or otherwise ignore the rulebook. And she's remarkably tolerant of my penchant for planting "weird shit."

Whether it's Turkish orange eggplant, garden huckleberries (an edible form of nightshade), West India Gherkins, Indian corn (which I use for meal rather than ornaments) or luffa gourds, my garden is a veritable cornucopia of "weird shit."

It used to drive my Da (God rest him) nuts.

"Jesus Christ, Jeff! What the hell is that?" he roared, when I lugged a two and a half foot, thirty-plus-pound cushaw squash into the garage. My uncle Laszlo -- who'd probably never seen anything like it in his native Hungary -- just stared at in silence for a seeming eternity (and probably wondered what kind of family he'd married into). Mags, though, doesn't mind a bit. She's still subject to the "Holy shit!" reflex when I pull something really odd out of the back forty, but on the whole, she's far more tolerant of my "Hey! I wonder if _______ will grow down here?" approach to planting than was my father. In some respects, she's a little more adventurous when it comes to cooking and eating our produce, as well.

Now Da was nobody's "culinary coward." He introduced me to oysters on the half-shell, calamari, octopus, cuttlefish (to Daddy's mind, one couldn't make a proper paella without including at least one species of cephalopod) and any number of other foods Ma Bean wouldn't even look at -- let alone eat. When it comes to animals, I can't even bribe Maggie to try jellyfish – to name only one "exotic" dish. But when it comes to fruits and vegetables, she's usually a little bolder than Da was.

An interesting exception to the general rule – and pardon the digression -- is durian. Several years ago, I brought one home from the Vietnamese farmers' market at the corner of Buford Highway and Clairmont. After halving it with a blow from one of my swords, I toted it into the kitchen.

"Pardon my ignorance, O fruit o' my loins," says Da (who'd probably had a few -- whenever he spoke that way, it meant he was at least halfway "in his cups"), "but what the hell is that?"

"This, father dear, is a durian," says I, matching his tone. "Care to try a bit?"

"What, pray tell, is a durian, good sir?"

Ignoring the fact that he was obviously trying to piss me off (one of his grandmothers was a Kraut, and I suppose he inherited the exaggerated-formality-as-insult tactic from her), I answered his question.

"It's a big-ass tropical fruit. It's considered a delicacy in Southeast Asia."

"Rotten fish is considered a delicacy in Southeast Asia," he reminded me.

"Fermented fish," I corrected. "So y'awn try this sucker or not?"

"I think you got screwed, m' bairn. It smells a little off."

"Nah, it's s'posed to smell that way, Da. If it doesn't; it ain't ripe."

At any rate, he finally tried it and remarked that is wasn't bad – once one learned to ignore the odor. In retrospect, I shouldn't have found this surprising. Daddy was a cheese connoisseur, and thusly, comfortable eating foods that (as the saying runs) "taste great -- once you get 'em past your nose." He could eat Stilton, Roquefort, Tilsit, Liederkranz, Handkäse and even Käse "mit Musik" (Limburger, marinated in olive- or sunflower oil and served on rye bread with a sprinkling of minced raw onion) without so much as wrinkling his nose – let alone shedding a tear. I should have known that the smell wouldn't put him off.

Even Ma Bean eventually tried a bit – but dubbed it "garlic custard" and indicated that it was something she could live without. My wife, in sharp contrast, wouldn't even sample the last one I brought home. A single whiff of the slightly fetid, cheese/garlic/onion aroma durian fans come to adore was enough for her. When it comes to vegetables, though, she's more courageous than ever Da was. He loved zucchini, crookneck and pattypan squash, for example, but I actually had to trick him into trying luffa, edible gourd and chayote. By now, Mags eats all the above – plus a few of the other oddities we grow. This is good, because we've been exchanging exotic and heirloom seeds with our friend, Tim, for the past two seasons, and I hate seeing anything go to waste. This year, in addition to sending us a longer, thicker cultivar of Chinese yard-long bean (a.k.a. "asparagus beans"), Tim plied us with a bag of luffa seeds.

Now I've grown luffas (Luffa cylindrica), a.k.a. "dishrag gourds," for years. Elsewhere on this blog, I've written about using young luffas as food. The older ones, of course, can be peeled and used to scrub anything from dirty dishes to dirty hides. For the past six or so years, though, I've been growing the cylindrical or "rough" luffas we all know and love from overpriced tree-hugger catalogs.

This year, Tim sent us a different kind: the Thai angled luffa. The Thai angled luffa (Luffa acutangula), a.k.a. sze gua, muop or "Chinese Okra," is heavily ridged, and star-shaped in cross-section. Widely cultivated in Southeast Asia, it's available only in specialty markets in the U.S. Its crisp-tender flesh makes an excellent addition to soups and stir-fries, and with its sweet, nutty, squash-like flavor (best described as a cross between Italian Edible Gourd and "Cocozelle" zucchini), I'm surprised that it isn't more popular in this country.

Before I call the Gentle Reader's attention to the specimens we harvested yesterday (see photo gallery), I'll mention that the angled luffa isn't for small-space gardeners (ours devoured over 25 paces' worth of trellis) or impatient gardeners, as they're much slower to bear than the familiar "dishrag" luffa. At 90-120 days from planting to harvest, growing them in short-season areas is a fool's errand unless one owns a greenhouse. We planted ours in late May or early June and just began picking them last week – a mere four weeks before our first anticipated frost.

Once they do come in, though, cooking them is simplicity itself. When harvested at 9-12" long, they need only be cut crosswise into half-inch-thick slices before being added to soups, stews, stir-fries and/or curries. I don't think the uncooked flesh is toxic, but for some reason, they're never eaten raw. I gather that like chayote, it's simply too tough to eat uncooked. In the case of larger specimens (and those grown under adverse conditions) the prominent ribs become very tough, and must be peeled away. (This, incidentally, increases the vegetable's "eye appeal," as the alternating green/white stripes are quite attractive.)

Here's a dish of my own, adapted from a traditional Vietnamese recipe.

Curried Luffa and Mushrooms

1 angled luffa, sliced crosswise into ½" pieces
2T peanut oil
1/2 t sesame oil
1 cup mixed, sliced mushrooms (shiitake, oyster mushrooms, straw mushrooms, etc.)
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ red onion, minced
½ tsp ground turmeric
1 habanero or Scotch bonnet chile, seeded and minced
1" ginger root, galangal root (or both), peeled and minced
1T soy sauce
1/3 cup chicken stock
1T nuoc mam, nam pla, or tuk trey (fish sauce)
½ t shrimp paste
1t sugar
Salt to taste
Shredded cilantro and thinly sliced scallion, to garnish

Heat oil in a skillet or wok. Mix soy sauce, fish sauce, sugar, shrimp paste, chile and turmeric Stir-fry garlic, onion ginger and/or galangal until soft and fragrant. Add luffa and chicken stock, heat to boiling, reduce heat, cover and steam 2-3 minutes. Increase heat and add mushrooms and soy sauce mixture. Stir-fry another 2-5 minutes, until mushrooms are cooked and luffa is crisp-tender. Serve hot, garnished with cilantro and scallion.

As I've mentioned, the Thai luffa's "dishrag" cousin has more than one use in the kitchen. When picked small, it can be cooked in any number of ways. When fully ripe, though, it makes an excellent scrubber. The easiest way to remove the spongy interior is to allow the luffa to dry (or rot, in rainy weather), peel the skin, cut to the desired length, and shake out the seeds. Unfortunately, this necessitates bleaching them, and causes the fibers to become stiff, rough and brown.

Generally, I pick them while they're still green, but when the skin has begun to separate from the fibers. This requires a practiced touch, but the skill is easily acquired within a single season. I then peel them under running water, squeezing out the seeds and pulp as I go. I soak especially tough specimens in a tub of water until the skin sloughs off. (The latter procedure also necessitates bleaching, but only to sanitize and deodorize the finished product. I use a 10:1 or 20:1 water/chlorine bleach solution, incidentally.) Peeling them in this manner results in softer, more flexible white sponges. (See photo gallery for the step-by-step process.)

Once again, luffas aren't the only "oddball" plant we grow. We also raise ornamental gourds, "birdhouse" and "dipper" gourds, and even an edible variety of Langenaria. As it's white-flowered, and has brown, lozenge-shaped seeds, it's definitely a Langenaria – but that's all I can say for certain.

One source claims that it's an edible form of L. siceraria, while another dubs it L. longissima. The names under which it's sold are equally confusing: "New Guinea Butter Vine," "Italian Edible Gourd" and "Italian Climbing Squash." Whatever it is, it's pale green, covered with "peach fuzz" that needs to be scrubbed off, and has a delectable, squash-like flavor. I pick them at 1.5" or less in diameter (12-18" in length) and sauté them with butter, olive oil, garlic, tomatoes and various herbs – or use them in tempura. This particular gourd, like the luffa, is a long-season plant (90+ days), but a single fruit is equal to several zucchini, and the exquisite flavor makes it well worth the wait.

As with most vegetables, the more frequently one harvests the edible gourd; the more the plant bears. I'd been picking them since late August, but a trip to North Carolina last month took me away from the garden for a few days. When I returned, there were only two gourds on the vine – but what gourds! They were well past the edible stage, so I thought I'd save them for seed. When I showed my wife the larger of the two, her eyes got as big as horse turds, and she exclaimed "Holy shit!"

Naturally, we just had to photograph it, and the shot is also in the gallery.

Comments

[Term papers]

I don,t about Culinary Science I think its quite different to understand but nice article its always feel good to know anything new..!