Fruit vs. Vegetable

When you've got kids, and you're doing your best to be actively, engagingly parenting at all times, everything is a "teachable moment". And when you're a foodie like me, meal times are especially fraught with opportunities to inform, enlighten, and just generally inflict my personal worldview onto my progeny.

But sometimes, even though I consider myself pretty well informed about food and all matters relating to food, I find myself saying stuff that I'm not even sure is true.

And so it was, the other night, when dinner included dishes featuring spinach, cucumbers, mushrooms, avocados, and grapes.

"Grapes! I like grapes!" says Henry.

"That's nice"

"Grapes are a fruit!"

"Yep, they sure are."

From there, we started breaking down the relevant categorizations of the other foodstuffs of which our dinner was comprised.

Spinach is an easy one. Clearly it's a vegetable. Grapes, we know are a fruit.

What about mushrooms? "Neither", I said. "Mushrooms are a fungus." I think.

Hmmm......

Cucumbers? "Cucumbers are a fruit", I confidently announced. "And so are avocados. If it has a seed, then it's a fruit."

But I wasn't so sure, and found myself doubting this analysis, since, if this is the case, that means there are really a lot of vegetables that are really fruits.

So I looked it up.

The official scientific definition is that anything that is produced by a plant for the purpose of reproduction (so seeds and the stuff that contains/holds/protects seeds) is a fruit. Any other part of a plant (stems, leaves, flowers, roots) is a vegetable.

Crazy, no?

We tend to think of anything we tend to eat with our meal, in a savory preparation, as a vegetable, and things we eat on their own or as part of dessert as fruits. But that's just completely ass-backwards.

Olives and avocados are fruits, just like peaches and plums. They are all drupes. Other examples of drupes are mangoes, apricots, and almonds. Blackberries and raspberries are actually clusters of tiny drupes called "drupelets".

Cucumbers are fruits. Which makes sense, since, if you think about it, they are really similar to melons. Try eating a not-so-ripe green melon and see if it doesn't remind you of a cucumber. Squashes are part of this same "family" as well. Winter (or hard) squashes like acorn, butternut, and pumpkins, as well as summer (soft) squashes like yellow squash or zucchini are all fruits.

(Incidentally, the designation of "winter" or "summer" squash is fairly meaningless in today's horticultural world, although we do tend to eat the winter squashes much more during the cold weather months. Basically, winter squashes are long-keepers and, before the advent of refrigeration and flying in produce from South America, people would keep them in their cellars and eat them throughout the winter, whereas "summer" squashes would rot quickly and needed to be eaten soon after harvesting.)

Tomatoes, as most people know, are fruits. I think people are more open to this one, since good tomatoes do have a lot of sweetness, even though we wouldn't eat them for dessert or out of hand like we do an apple. But many people don't realize that eggplant and peppers (both spicy and sweet, or "bell" peppers) are also part of the same group, the "nightshade" family (Solanaceae).

This family also includes the poisonous belladonna plant, and, because Europeans knew of the belladonna before tomatoes were brought back from the new world (all Solanaceae are native to the western hemisphere), people in many parts of Europe were very slow to embrace tomatoes as a foodstuff. They were used as decorative items for years before they began to be incorporated for culinary use. In fact, the Italian word for tomato, pomodoro, (literal translation; "apple of gold") derives from what was basically a marketing campaign to get Italians to eat the foreign fruit that many associated with a poisonous plant. Considering how ubiquitous tomato products are in Italian cooking, it's pretty amazing to consider that they weren't really widely used in Italy until the 1700's.

Incredibly enough, the question of "fruit or vegetable" as it relates to tomatoes once came before the US Supreme Court. The Tariff Act of March 3, 1883 imposed a duty on vegetables, but not fruits, and so, the case of Nix v. Hedden (149 U.S. 304), in which the Nixes sued to recover back duties paid to the port of New York under protest, the Supreme Court was forced to weigh in on the question.

The court ruled against the Nixes, claiming that the culinary categorization of a tomato as a vegetable based on the way it was used overruled the scientific designation that it was a fruit.

The court got it wrong, of course. Tomatoes are a fruit. This is the precursor to Ronald Reagan's infamous declaration that "ketchup is a vegetable". So the government has a history of (and some would argue, a vested interest in) getting it wrong.

Another yardstick some use to answer the question is; does taking the item and eating it kill the plant? Fruits are totally regenerative--plucking them off and eating them hurts the plant not at all. In fact, that's just what the plant wants you to do, since doing that effectively spreads the plants seeds around and aids in reproduction. This is, in theory, why many fruits are brightly colored and taste sweet. So eating fruits clearly doesn't kill the plant, whereas when you pull a carrot up out of the dirt and eat it, that carrot plant is no longer with us.

This, of course, calls into question the designation of a few "vegetables". Specifically, those that are essentially flowers (squash blossoms, broccoli, cauliflower) and those where the plant isn't killed when the vegetable is harvested, like asparagus. But flowers, while part of the reproductive process, are not, in and of themselves, reproductive in the way that seeds are.

So I'm sticking with my first definition, concerning reproduction and seeds, for the sake of sanity.

Getting back to the first definition, then, peas are a fruit. All peas, in fact--pea pods, English peas, snap peas, and blackeyed peas. Oh, but blackeyed peas are not actually peas, they're beans. But that's ok, because beans are in fact fruits as well. They're seeds contained in a seed pod which you can pluck off the vine and eat. Or, if you plant them, they'll grow a whole new bean plant. So, they're a fruit.

This is pretty crazy stuff once you start getting into it. Nuts are also fruits. They are the reproductive organs of trees like almond, hazelnut, pecan, and walnut. Same thing with nuts that aren't normally eaten by humans, like acorns, beech, and hickory nuts. Cashews are also a fruit, but don't grow on trees. Peanuts aren't really nuts at all; they are legumes. But, since legumes like lentils and soybeans are reproductive, they're fruits. So, a peanut is neither a pea nor a nut, but it is a fruit.

Corn, too, is a fruit. Each kernel contains a seed which can be planted and grown into a whole new corn plant. Which brings the question of grains into the discussion. Grains (rice, wheat, oats, etc) are seeds of certain grass plants. So they are also fruits. Almost everywhere I look on the internet disagrees with this, and most seem to be claiming that "grains" is a whole 'nother category, separate from fruits or vegetables, but that creates all sorts of gray areas with regard to "pulses" like lentils, beans, and, as noted above, corn. So I'm calling them fruits.

And, if that's not enough to really send your mind spinning, consider this; an argument can be made that a potato is actually a fruit. The eyes sprout and are reproductive. If you put a potato in water or the ground, a new plant will grow. Leave it long enough and the sprouts will flower and produce seeds. But, harvesting a potato kills the plant. And potatoes themselves do not actually contain seeds.

Similarly, one can find arguments made that strawberries are not a fruit, because the seeds are on the outside, and because the plant actually reproduces by sending out "runners", not via the seeds on the outside of the strawberry (another tangent; separate arguments exist that claim that strawberries are not actually berries either).

Crazy stuff. My mind is reeling. And, just think; all this started because I wanted to make sure I was giving my kid the right answers at the dinner table. Damn. I liked it better when cucumbers were vegetables simply by virtue of the fact that they go in salad. But it's not like I could claim that blue cheese and crumbled bacon are vegetables.

This parenting stuff is a real pain in the ass sometimes. Next time, I'm just going to take the easy way out and lie. "Yep. You got it. Cucumbers are vegetables. Now, quit squirming and eat your vegetables, Henry."

Spicy Szechuan at Asian Bistro

During the years that my wife was staying home with our kids and I was working, I always thought that she had the easier end of the bargain; I envied her time at home all day--in my mind she was always idly reading, sipping hot beverages on the couch while the kids napped. I'd come home after 10 hours of running around hot restaurant kitchens and wonder why she was always so stressed and ready to hand the kids off to me the second I walked in the door. "C'mon," I'd think, "how hard can it really be? Millions of women have been doing this for centuries."

Well. Karma--it's a bitch, isn't it?

Now, I'm unemployed, my wife is working, and I'm staying home dealing with the kids. And now I get it. It's hard. It's stressful. There's no leisurely beverage-sipping, no naps (for me, at least), and even carving out enough time to shower without worrying about coming out and finding Henry pinned under a bookcase is a challenge.

So, now, around six when I'm walking circles around the dining room table with the baby on my shoulder, attempting to employ just the right bounce so that she'll stop frickin' SCREAMING, Henry's telling me for the four hundred and sixty-third time about how, "Hey, Dad--Gordon is fastest and best" whereas Thomas is "really useful", and I see the dog run toward the back door, I breathe a sigh of relief and try to rein in the impulse to hand off the baby before my wife's even got her coat off.

So, yeah--ok. I get it. Props, ladies. It's not easy. In fact, I'm looking forward to going back to 10 hour days in a restaurant kitchen just to get some peace.

All of this is a big reason why I've been making an effort, in recent weeks, to do a regular Thursday night out with Mitch, a friend I've known since fifth grade. My wife doesn't work on Friday, so Thursday is the last day of the week that I'm solely responsible for diapers, spit-up, playdates, and Play-Doh®, so I took it upon myself to make Thursday night an opportunity to get together with an old friend, have a few beers, and try a new restaurant.

Mitch was the friend I mentioned in my review of Burt's Place, and he and I recently went to Asian Bistro in Arlington Heights last week to try what I had heard was some pretty authentic Szechuan food.

This place would've probably never even been on my radar, but Mitch is reluctant to drive too far and he lives in this area, so I did a little research (using this handy suburban restaurant index topic at LTH forum) and decided that this place would be a good one to try.

(A note about my intrepid dining companion: Mitch is not a foodie. He'd be perfectly happy eating a mediocre steak and under seasoned mashed potatoes every day of the week, which is fine. For him. But I like to try new places and new things and, if I'm spending some bucks, some time, and a meal opportunity on a night out, it's important to me to make it somewhat of an experience. If I left it up to Mitch, we'd be at Fox and Hound or Stony River Steakhouse every Thursday.)

That's not a knock on Mitch. Or others for whom restaurants like TGI McHoulihannigan's are just fine. Food simply doesn't hold the intellectual, cultural, and entertainment appeal for them that it does for me. Hey, I'm not really interested in movies or theater, so to each his own.

So while loaded potato skins and chicken fajitas might fill the belly, they don't feed my appetite for authenticity, for real, personalized experiences, or for the novelty of trying new, interesting dishes that I can't make myself or haven't ever heard of.

And Mitch, to his credit, appears to be allowing me to drag him to places that he normally would be disinclined to try. Probably due to the fact that I really had to talk him into making the half-hour drive over to Burt's, where he was blown away by the pizza and loved the classic old dive, hole-in-the-wall-type ambiance.

Burt's vindicated me; gave me credibility with Mitch. A mandate, even. I've got culinary capital now...and I intend to spend it.

Which brings us to Asian Bistro. (Finally. Damn, I do go on, don't I?)

It was practically empty when we arrived at around 7:30 last Thursday. There were two other tables--parties of two and six--and we were the only non-Asians in the place. We were greeted warmly and seated promptly at a nice booth to the rear of the dining room.

When the server first approached, Mitch asked for an iced tea, which appeared to confuse the guy. Mitch repeated his request and then I tried to help the waiter understand--but really, all I did was also repeat "iced tea" with a slight Hispanic accent, which is what I inexplicably tend to do when speaking to non-native English-speakers. Needless to say, this wasn't at all helpful.

Anyway, the guy vanished and we didn't see him for about 10 minutes. We thought maybe he was in back, frantically icing down a pot of hot tea or something, and he did eventually emerge with a pitcher of iced tea and two large glasses full of ice. I didn't order iced tea, and would normally have opted for a Diet Coke, but given the fact that the guy apparently went to some effort on this, I wasn't going to say anything and so just drank some of the tea. It was actually pretty good.

When he asked if we were ready to order, I started asking some questions and butchering some of the names of the dishes, so he called for backup and soon we had three--and then four--people at our table making sure we were being well taken care of.

And we were. This is why I love these kind of family-owned, authentic places. If you just show some interest, ask a few questions, and put yourself in the hands of the people for whom this food represents a cultural heritage, you get a really tasty meal, some knowledge, and a good dose of real hospitality.

The owner, an older woman who introduced herself as "Jenny", came over to help with the ordering. I knew I wanted the La Tsi (Dry Chile) Chicken, since I had read about this dish on LTH forum, and I knew Mitch wanted a couple more pedestrian choices, like fried rice and Mongolian beef, but other than that, we put ourselves in Jenny's hands.

She did not steer us wrong. She asked us if we liked spicy, and I said yes, so she recommended the spicy Szechuan wontons, which were fabulously spicy but also a bit sweet--steamed dumplings tossed in a very addictive sticky sauce (they're at the right in the picture above). She also gave us an eyeball-poppingly spicy cold noodle salad with these translucent gelatinous square-cut noodles that were apparently tossed in the same sauce, but with added crushed chiles and, I believe, fermented black beans. This dish was interesting, but too spicy even for me, and also texturally kind of strange.

We also tried Shu Mai, which were just kind of average (that was my choice, not Jenny's) and the Thai Meat Egg Roll, just to have something crunchy to dip into sweet and sour sauce. These were quite good, filled with lots of very good, sweet-tasting shredded pork and cellophane noodles, and wrapped in a very thin delicate skin that reminded me of what lumpia are usually wrapped in.

We liked the appetizers, but the entrees were really what blew us away. In particular the La Tsi chicken, which proved to be so addictive that I got another whole order of it to take home after we were done (it was Mitch's week to pay. Heh.) It's essentially this huge plate of small pieces of chicken that are stir-fried with slivers of garlic, slices of ginger, and about two hundred whole dried chiles. I'm not enough of an expert to know what kind of chiles they are, but they stir-fry them whole to simply infuse the oil with the heat and, while they're served in the bowl, you're not supposed to eat them. Or at least I'm not supposed to eat them. Jenny and her assistant, who kind of doted over us the whole meal, quickly clearing the plates the moment we finished the last morsel off of them, rushed over as the plate came out, making sure to warn us to "not eat the chiles".

I knew this already, but I kind of played up the gringo act for a laugh and picked one up as if I was going to chomp down on it. They got this great look of panic on their faces, so I assured them that we knew not to eat the chiles.

The chicken dish was awesome. The small pieces of chicken were simultaneously crispy, chewy, and tender, in a way that only a thin coating of cornstarch and an insanely hot wok can produce. It's a distinctly Chinese texture that I have never been able to reproduce in a home kitchen setting. The flavors were great. Very spicy, but the heat was balanced well by the large slices of stir-fried ginger which provided a great burst of flavor and relief from the spice. Mitch and I both loved this dish.

I tried the Mongolian beef and was pleasantly surprised as well. They used really high quality, large pieces of beef, and it was cooked perfectly, with lots of that smokey wok char flavor that you get from good Chinese cooking. Also, the fried rice was really excellent. We ordered the house special combo fried rice, which featured chicken, beef, and shrimp along with all the normal elements of fried rice, and it was just loaded. Tons of meat and really large shrimp in there, and, again, lots of flavor from the wok. I'd come back here again just for the fried rice, which, for me, is somewhat of an afterthought when eating Chinese food, especially Szechuan.

(Sorry for the low-grade cell-phone pictures, but you get the gist.)

We raved about the food to Jenny and the two helpful servers continued to attempt to anticipate all of our needs. The guy who came to our table first appeared to relegate himself to iced tea duty exclusively, but I was actually kind of thankful, since I was downing glasses of the stuff to put out the fire from the chiles. Jenny came over about halfway through and asked how I had heard about them and how I knew about some of the dishes I'd ordered, and I told her that I'd seen them mentioned online.

She was noticeably excited by this and told me that I should make sure to write a review about them. And, really, I should. I mean, this blog is one thing, but I should actually go to sites like Citysearch and Yelp and give these guys some love. The economy's killing little independent restaurants, and even with the huge Asian community in and around Arlington Heights, places like this probably need all the help they can get to survive. It would be a shame to see them close up only to be replaced by another Chipotle or Panera.

So this place was definitely a find. I only wish I lived closer so that we could do take-out from there once in a while. My wife, who is normally very interested in ethnic food and trying new and interesting things, is strongly anti-Chinese food (but I suspect that's due to one too many bad experiences with Amero-Chinese stuff like Egg Foo Yung and Chop Suey) would, I believe, really like this place.

And, of course, it was good to clear my head, get away from the kids, and be able to walk ten steps without sidestepping a Diaper Genie or tripping over the friggin' bouncy chair for the thirty-eighth time this week. I look forward to doing it again. Much the same way I look forward to breathing. Or drinking water. Or having coffee in the morning.

I need these Thursday nights. Really--I now feel your frustration, stay-at-home moms. And I'm already looking forward to my next foray into the northwest 'burbs. Since I'm picking the restaurants, I thought it would be only sporting to allow Mitch to make genre requests. And so...next week will be barbecue. Suggestions welcome...stay tuned.....

The Bacon List--Dutch Farms

One thing I'm learning with this exercise I'm calling The Bacon List is that cheap bacon often tastes as good--or better--than pricey bacon. A lot of it depends on where you buy it. Now, that being said, I've yet to review an artisanal bacon for The List (got one coming up for the next post, I promise), so once those reviews start coming down the pike, that observation may be refuted. We'll see. Suffice to say that in the world of grocery-store bacon, price and quality don't seem to be very closely related.

The bacon that I'm putting under the microscope for this entry is Dutch Farms brand "bacon". No embellishing adjectives. No mention of the wood used or the cure flavors. Nada. It's bacon. What more do you need to know? Nothing, I guess...

I picked up a pound of this at Lincolnwood Produce, which is quickly becoming my favorite grocery store (if you'll remember, that's also where I got the Andy's Deli slab bacon I reviewed). It cost $2.50 for a pound.

The package indicates that the bacon is "distributed by Dutch Farms, Chicago, Illinois". Which leads me to believe it's probably Oscar Mayer or Hormel bacon that's sold to a smaller company and then packaged under the Dutch Farms brand name. But that's just a guess. As far as I know, it could be the same stuff that's sold under Costco's Kirkland brand that I also already covered. It's possible. It's pretty similar. I need to keep this in mind for future purchases, since I really don't need to be wasting time reviewing the same bacon over and over again.

A quick google on Dutch Farms turned up a nice-looking website that tells me that the company is a pretty large distribution house serving most of the Midwest, that they're down on 107th street on the South Side, and that they've been around for about 80 years, but that they've just started carrying packaged meats like bacon in the last 10 years. I searched for some more specific info about their bacon, but although they have a pretty extensive online catalog, the listing doesn't give me any additional knowledge about the product.

Ok, so on to the review; how'd it taste? Pretty damn good. It's a quite serviceable inexpensive grocery-store bacon. For $2.50/pound, it's almost as good a deal as the Kirkland brand stuff, but you can buy this one pound at a time vs. the four pound minimum purchase at Costco. It also doesn't require making a special trip, which is probably worth the extra fifty cents. I'd say the bacon ranks right up there in all the categories. We liked it.

Here's the rundown:

Designation--Fancy or Grocery Store? Grocery Store.

Price--How much did I pay per pound for the bacon? $2.50/lb. purchased in a 1-pound pack.

Uncooked appearance--Color, texture, wet- or dry-ness, mushy or firm, etc... Nice looking slices, medium thickness. Nice fat/lean ratio. Nice color.

How it cooks--Tendency to curl, how much it shrinks, tendency to spatter... Some shrinkage, but not huge. An appealing amount of curl. Just enough to give it that nice, rippled bacon-y look and improve the texture and bit a little.

A note: I have officially changed the cooking technique that I'm using to cook bacon reviewed for The List. Using the rack just became too annoying because the bacon always stuck to it and it was really hard to get it off the rack without breaking it all to bits, since I cook my bacon crisp. I have now switched to a straight parchment paper method (which can be viewed in the two pictures in closest proximity), which consists of placing the raw bacon strips onto a piece of parchment paper (a much utilized product in restaurant kitchens that has recently surfaced amidst the plastic wrap and tin foil at the grocery store--it's about time!) on a sheet pan, placing in a cold oven and then turning on the oven to about 300-325º. With this method, you don't need to flip the bacon strips over at any point, as the rendered fat will cook them on both sides evenly, but you do need to rotate the sheetpan to account for any uneven heating of your oven, and I actually move the strips in the center of the tray to the outside so that they cook evenly. This is now the new Official Cooking Method of all bacon reviewed for The Bacon List.

Cooked appearance--Color, shape, texture. It's fine. Attractive curl. Nice color. Some loss due to shrinkage, but nothing major.

How does it taste--Sweetness, saltiness, smokiness, texture (melting, chewy, flabby, spongy), "porkiness". Great texture. Salty. Salt is the first flavor you get and it's by far the strongest. There's some smoke flavor, and some sweetness, but not sugary cure sweetness, more porky sweetness. The fat is very melting and tender, which is lovely. The texture is great. Crisp, with a little chew, but not too much, and a luscious amount of melting fat that just disintegrates on the tongue. We enjoyed it very much with our breakfast, especially as a foil to sweet breakfast items, like the frangipan pancakes that we ate with maple syrup.

Overall rating--All bacons reviewed will be given an overall rating from 1-10, with 1 being practically inedible (I say "practically" since, you know, it's bacon--how bad can it be?), 5 being a perfectly serviceable bacon for use in cooking or on a sandwich, and 10 being....well, let's be honest; there won't be a 10. 6.0 Overall, this is a completely decent bacon for everyday use, especially considering the price. It's a good value. Nothing to go out of your way for, but if you see it in your store for the price I paid or less, pick up a few pounds and stow them in the freezer.

Chocolate Pudding

I've stated many times on this blog that I don't do recipes. And I don't. Usually. But when it comes to desserts, I break my own rule.

In professional cooking, there's a clear divide between the sweet and savory sides of the kitchen. It's a completely different mindset. Line cooks and chefs cook by feel, smell, sight, sound, and intuition, grounded solidly in classic technique. But they generally don't utilize recipes, because the products are not always exactly the same, and adaptations have to be made on the fly.

In contrast, pastry chefs almost always use recipes, and not only do they use them religiously, but they scale everything, weighing their flour and sugar on a digital scale to account for slight atmospheric and product variations that might throw off their precise formulas. Cooking pastry is like science whereas cooking on the savory side is like, um....basketball? or improv jazz, maybe? or...I don't know. Something.

Anyway, my point is that when I make desserts, I usually use recipes. Here's one that I've made a few times recently and is very good.

Chocolate Pudding

1 Cup sugar
1/4 Cup cornstarch
pinch salt
8 ounces Baker's semi-sweet chocolate
3 Cups whole milk or half and half
2 egg yolks
2 T. butter (unsalted)
1 vanilla bean

Mix the sugar, cornstarch, and salt together in a heavy saucepan.
Chop the chocolate and add it to the mixture in the pot.
In a bowl, mix the milk and egg yolks together and then add them to the mixture.
Split and scrape the vanilla bean and add the pods and the bean to the mix as well.
Put the pan on the heat, over medium-low heat and bring gently to a boil, whisking constantly.
Allow to boil for about a minute, until mixture thickens, continuing to whisk.
Pull off the heat, remove vanilla bean, add butter, stirring to incorporate.
Divide into ramekins. Allow to cool before covering with plastic and refrigerating.
Serve cold topped with whipped cream.

This recipe was adapted (yes, I copped it) from one I found on The Food Network's website, credited to Sara Moulton of Gourmet Magazine. I made a couple minor changes, but it's essentially the same recipe.

The technique is kind of interesting. Usually pudding involves heating the dairy and flavorings, and then adding the starch and tempered eggs to the hot mixture, much like making pastry cream. This can be kind of dicey, as there's always that question about whether your mixture is too hot, whether your starch has thickened as much as it should have, and you have to be careful not to scramble your eggs.

This recipe avoids all that by simply dumping everything into the same pot and bringing it all up to temp at the same time. The eggs warm slowly so there's no danger of scrambling, and once the mixture boils for a moment, the starch thickens and it's done. No muss, no fuss. Plus, less clean-up. I love it.

Even better, this recipe employs a pretty large quantity of high-quality chocolate, rather than using cocoa powder, as many pudding recipes call for. I've detailed my disdain for the choice of cocoa powder over real chocolate in the past. Suffice to say that I strongly dislike the 'dusty' taste that using cocoa powder in lieu of chocolate imparts. Frankly, I'm not sure I understand why anyone would choose it if using chocolate is an option.

So, thanks, Sara! Good recipe.

As a gossipy aside, the fact that Sara Moulton isn't on the Food Network any more speaks to the demise of quality and the embrace of lowest-common-denominator pandering that the network has recently employed. Moulton was famously told that the network wouldn't be renewing her show, Cooking Live, as part of a still on-going effort the network was making to move away from using professional/classically-trained chefs as hosts of their shows in favor of more camera-genic, cleavage-sporting "personalities" like Rachel Ray, Giada Giganto-mouth, and--feh--Sandra Lee. This whole deal is well-chronicled all over the web. You can read more about it here, here, here, and here.

I'll stop here in order to ensure that this post doesn't devolve into an all-out rant about The Food Network and how much it sucks, save for a few decent shows. That topic really deserves its own separate entry. [This space reserved for link to future blog post]

Suffice to say that while Sara and her pudding recipe may not have been the direction that The Food Network was going, I like her--she's got a show on PBS, a network where the focus is on cooking instruction rather than catch phrases and cleavage (if any proof of that is needed, this guy is the host of what appears to be their most popular show right now)--and I like her pudding recipe. 'Nuff said. Let's make some pudding!

Dry ingredients go into the saucepan.


Everything in the pan, applying heat.

Color gets darker, milk begins to froth. Keep whisking!

Mixture thickens very quickly.

Presto! I now pronounce it to be pudding. Portion into ramekins.

After the portioned pudding cools down to room temp, cover the ramekins with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Opinions vary, of course, on the appeal, or lack thereof, of pudding skin, which forms on the top of the pudding when it's allowed to be in contact with the air. In our house, we hate pudding skin, so I place the plastic wrap over the ramekins and then gently press it down so it's in direct contact with the surface of the pudding, ensuring no disgusting skin forms.

And that's that, really. It's a deceptively easy recipe. It is a bit thicker and denser than your average pudding recipe--almost like a pot de creme. But that's a good thing in my book.

Top it with whipped cream and enjoy it--it's a classic comfort food indulgence, which, even though it's served cold, somehow seems appropriate for cold winter weather.

Istanbul Photos

Istanbul is a bustling city with street vendors everywhere,
people running by with giant loads on their backs,
and seemingly endless markets where you can get lost for days.
It's worth the trip just to visit the famous Spice Bazaar.
I feel lucky to have made it there in my life. Enjoy.

Fresh Chiles at the Spice Bazaar


This guy would scurry into a crowd, set up his stand and sell half his stack in about two minutes.



Persimmons



Haggling at the Spice Bazaar



Where the Spice Bazaar gets its name.



Doner vendor



Gotta love a market where you see offal just glistening in the sun!


In Italian, corn is referred to as Granturco, or "Turkish Grain", because it was first introduced to the Italians via Turkish trade routes. Istanbul was and still is a world crossroads, serving as a gateway between Asia and Europe.