Nice solution to the food desert problem: The Veggie Mobile.

LAZ wrote:Nice solution to the food desert problem: The Veggie Mobile.

Yes, this makes complete sense, much like the bookmobile that has gone out of favor. I've often wondered why the Chicago Department of Health doesn't partner with Peapod to do something similar.

In a recipe vein, I discovered that Walgreens carries Jack Links nuggets, a beef jerky that didn't seem to contain added smoke flavor. I did try these out, making a version of Incan Chairo using dried potatoes, canned carrots and corn, and the beef. Unfortunately, while this stuff rehydrated nicely due to the sugar content, it also imparted a sweet flavor inappropriate to potato soup, so it didn't make it into this thread.

However, it wasn't completely inedible, and tasting the slightly sweet, somewhat chewy chunks of meat reminded me of Bulgogi more than anything else. I've since been racking my brain for a way to incorporate Bulgogi into this project: Kim Bap (my favorite idea) would need Nori, sushi rice, and at least fresh carrots (I played with the idea of different pickles and greens, but Nori and at least one crunchy fresh vegetable seem non-negotiable.) Bi Beem Bap needs fresh veggies and bean sprouts.

I don't think this would work by itself, even if flavored with sesame, but I think it would work in concert with other things. Anybody have other ideas?

You know, if you just let an idea knock around in your head a bit, often a good idea will shake loose. Somebody kindly bumped the lunchbox thread and reminded me that I've been looking for a Sparky-friendly filling for Onigiri - Japanese rice balls(or, as Sparky incorrectly calls it "Triangle Sushi.") Onigiri differs from sushi in that the rice is not flavored with seasoned vinegar, only salt and a filling - one of the more famous Onigiris (that would probably easily work for this project, but for the nori) is Hawaiian Spam Musubi.

Now, traditionally, Onigiri is wrapped in Nori, which I'm certain all but the most sophisticated food deserts lack. However, the grilled version, Yaki Onigiri, typically is just brushed with soy sauce and doesn't have the typical Nori handle or wrap. They are usually not filled, but as filling is not unheard of, I bring you...

Food Desert Yaki Onigiri with beef

Mise-en-Place

Leftover Chinese takeout rice, or cooked short-grain rice (brown rice, if available, works fine)
1 Bag dehydrated beef nuggets, preferably teriyaki flavor
sesame seeds
Oil
salt
water

1 plastic baggie
1 teacup
1 spoon
nonstick skillet
saucepan

Coarsley chop the beef nuggets into large dice. Place in saucepan and add twice their depth in water; bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer, simmer for 1/2 hour or until nuggets are tender. Drain, and allow to dry a bit.

Heat up rice in a microwave or steamer (rice must be piping hot for this to work-one bento blog talks lovingly about the Japanese mothers' red, chapped hands from forming onigiri with rice straight from the cooker) Form your plastic baggie into a cone and put the point of the cone into a teacup or coffee mug; fill the point with rice.

Make a hole in the center of your rice with a spoon, drop in a beef nugget or two. Cover with rice.

Twist the top of the bag, using it to help you form the rice into a tightly packed (tighter than the second photo; that one fell apart after cooking) triangle with flat sides and curved angles

Coat your rice ball with sesame seeds and season with salt.
Preheat a bit of oil in your nonstick skillet, and fry your rice ball, carefully turning after about 2 minutes (or when the rice and sesame smell fragrant) Using a basting brush, lightly coat the top with soy sauce.

Turn again, and coat the second side with soy sauce. Serve hot.

Mhays wrote:Food Desert Yaki Onigiri with beef

Mhays,

Innovative and very appealing, I may just make a version of this for dinner. Though in reading through your nicely detailed procedural I thought, aside from the fact the Teriyaki Beef Steak Nuggets scare me a bit , I would add a light brush of sesame oil to finish.

Enjoy,
Gary

Thanks, G!

Yes, if you're not in a food desert, I'd also suggest using larger salt, like sea salt. They are, indeed, delicious: I also made them with Thai (?) brown sticky rice and we snarfed two cups worth as fast as I could fry them. If you have homemade beef jerky that has some sugar in the cure, that would probably be better than processed - but as scary as the nuggets look, they weren't bad.

These would make great bar snacks, except that the serving may be a bit large for that application. A caveat: I did discover that they get greasy easily, so it's important to be minimalist with oil in the pan.

It's extremely gratifying when I run into LTHers and they ask me about this project: I almost always say I'm near the bottom of my bag of tricks - except the other day; I'd just been thinking about making baked empanadas (which we often keep in the freezer for fishing trips; they usually unfreeze by lunchtime and are easy to eat with icky fingers) and I realized suddenly that they might fit the parameters here. So, off to the internets for a little background, as my mother's recipe was somehow absent from my recipe book, and, searching in Spanish, I come across a recipe entitled "Empanadas de Cerveza."

Beer Turnovers? Instantly, my mind is swirling with the sensation of pastry exploding in your mouth with a gush of foam, like soup dumplings but with Modelo Especial...or of an eggy, beery, dessert custard...I'd be the toast of Chicago, of Firehouses everywhere.......Sadly, after google-translating the recipe three or four times, I realize it's beer pastry you can fill however you like (what threw me was the ingredient ROYAL{sic} which is apparently a latin brand-name baking powder and not custard )

Still, beer pastry seemed like a good idea, but I needed at least one filling without ground meat (although many food deserts do offer frozen ground beef patties, and I'll include the recipe for the ground beef filling I grew up with, sometimes called pino in South America or picadillo in Mexico - but my mother's Argentine version includes hardboiled eggs as well as raisins and olives) I thought of spinach, or ham and cheese, both common fillings - but I wanted something more. I finally stumbled across Empanadas de Atun, or Tunafish turnovers, which immediately piqued my interest. (I also stumbled onto an amusing 12-page argument about the correct translation of "empanada" into American english: turnover? pie? pasty?)

The Argentine empanadas I grew up with trace their history to the Empanada Gallega, or Galician Turnover - a (usually) codfish pie that was the hallmark of this Celt-influenced northwest corner of Spain. Often, the individual versions of these savory pies are historically linked to the Cornish Pasty; but considering the ingredients and method, I think it's more likely that Latins copied the size and shape of the convenient handheld Pasties and retained the recipes' otherwise Spanish roots. Still, in many other ways this recipe shows off the incestuous relationships of international foods - note the similarities between this recipe and this one

So, I offer several options, all beginning with -

Masa de Cerveza: Beer pastry (Traditional Galician empanadas use olive oil and wine in the same proportions)
1 cup of beer
1 cup of oil
4 1/2 - 5 cups of flour
1 tsp salt

Mix beer, oil, salt and add flour until a soft, but not sticky, dough forms. Let stand while preparing filling.


Empanadas De Atun
2 6-oz cans tuna
2 hardboiled eggs
4 slices Bacon (because Argentines like a little extra protien with their meat)
2 tbsp dried minced onion, rehydrated in 1/4 cup wine
2 tsp minced garlic
1/2 jar roasted red pepper, chopped
1/2 cup chopped green olives with pimiento
Tomato sauce to moisten
Egg wash or oil

Fry the bacon until rendered, drain fat to taste - add chopped onion, garlic and pepper and fry until fragrant. Remove from heat, mix in a bowl with tuna, tomato sauce and chopped hardboiled eggs.

Gallega-style: Divide dough into four parts. Form each part into a ball, and roll out two balls into a disk about 1/4 inch thick, slightly larger than a dinner plate. Place one round on cookie sheet, and top with half of your filling, spread out, leaving a 1" edge (an aesthetic change I'd make next time: reserve the olives and eggs, slice them, and put them on the pastry in separate layers with the tuna mixture in between)

Top with second pastry round and crimp the edge all the way around by pinching it between your finger and thumb, rolling the pinched part inwards and pinching again.

Paint with a little oil or egg wash (this isn't crucial, truthfully, I forgot it - but you'll get a more lovely golden-brown crackly looking exterior.) Bake at 400 degrees for 1/2 hour until pastry is golden brown and delicious.


Cut into wedges and serve warm. Makes 2 Empanadas Gallegas, or 1 large and 4 individual: serves about 8.



To make individual empanadas, divide your remaining dough balls in half again (one recipe makes 8 empanadas,) roll them into dessert-plate sized disks (or use a tortilla press) and fill the center with tuna mixture.

Pull both sides to meet at the top, and crimp as shown here. Place on a cookie sheet and bake as directed for Gallegas.

Other empanada fillings (follow dough and filling directions for individual empanadas above):

Creamed spinach
1 1/2 cups of chopped spinach (frozen would be better than canned)
3 tablespoons of shredded mozzarella
1/4 cup of chopped olives
3/4 cup of bechamel
2 chopped hardboiled eggs
salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste

Mix ingredients together and stuff empanadas.

Ham and cheese (seems to be ham of your choice and cheese of your choice, just that simple)

Pumkin (use 1 can sweetened canned pumkin pie mix straight-up, or for a firmer filling, combine it thoroughly with 2 eggs and 2/3 cup of evaporated milk)

Pino or Picadillo
Oil 2-3 Tbsp
2 tbsp dried minced onion, rehydrated in 1/4 cup wine
1 tsp minced Garlic
Ground beef 1 lb
Paprika 1 Tbsp
Ground Cumin 1 tsp
Oregano 1 tsp
Water or stock 1 cup
Flour 1 Tbsp
Raisins (opt.) 1/2 cup
Olives, green (opt.) pitted, chopped 1/4 cup
2 chopped hardboiled eggs.

Fry the onion and garlic in the oil in a heavy skillet. Add ground beef; after the fat has rendered, drain, reserving fat. Sprinkle the flour over and seasonings, fry briefly until fragrant. Add water or stock, raisins, olives, and cook for a few minutes - the beef should be fragrant and saucy, with a red hue from the paprika -add back some fat if it's too dry. Cool slightly and add the chopped hardboiled eggs. Stuff into empanada shells.

Here's another article on the Veggie Mobile, which really seems like a terrific solution, at least in part, to the problems of food deserts. I wonder if there's any way to make it economically feasible without government funding.

A hundred years ago, pushcart vendors selling all kinds of food were common in poor neighborhoods. Today, we see the Baylor watermelon truck, the beleaguered elote sellers (some of whom also stock some fresh fruit), and I sometimes see a truck dealing produce in Chinatown, which is certainly not a food desert.

What restrictions might there be if someone wanted to do this as a business today? Are high-end, organically minded sellers like Irv and Shelley's and Natural Direct the only models that can succeed, or is there a place for someone selling produce to low-income communities as well?

Rustic Crabmeat Enchiladas (from The Great Outdoors Mhays Style)

6 Flour Tortillas
1/2 bag shredded mozzarella
1 medium jar peppers (in this case, I found sauteed green peppers, but red are fine)
(I omitted, but if you're not spice-averse add) 1 small jar canned jalapenos
2 cans crabmeat, drained, water reserved
1 tbsp dehydrated onion, rehydrated in wine as illustrated earlier in this thread
1/2 tsp garlic powder
about a tablespoon of flour
about 2 tablespoons of oil
1 cup of milk
Sour cream
salt and pepper to taste

As I made this at the campsite, measurements are a bit approximate, at any rate: saute well-drained peppers, onions, and garlic powder in the oil. Tip your pan so that the liquids run towards the heat, and allow water to boil off. Add flour to the remaining fat, and then add water from crabmeat and the milk, whisking over medium heat until thickened. Stuff each tortilla with equal parts of shredded cheese, crabmeat and a large dollop of the above sauce (make sure all the peppers get inside the enchiladas, and reserve a little cheese and sauce to top) Roll, and place in a deep baking pan. Mix a little sour cream (maybe 2 tbsp?) into the remaining sauce, and pour over the top. Sprinkle with remaining cheese and put in a 400 degree oven for about 10 minutes, until the top is golden brown and delicious. Serves 3

On our last camping trip, I created a much easier and equally delicious clam sauce recipe, based on the original in this thread:

Clams Giardinera

2 cans of clams and their juice
2 tbsp dried onions
2 tbsp white wine
1 tsp granulated garlic
1 jar giardinera of your choice
EVOO

Rehydrate onions and garlic overnight in wine as directed earlier in this thread. Saute both with olive oil (or use the oil from the giardinera) until fragrant in a skillet. Drain giardinera lightly and add, along with clam juice. Cook until liquid reduces a bit; add a tablespoon or so of pasta cooking water to increase emulsification of sauce. Add clams and heat through. Pour over pasta and serve.

This is a totally different experience than the original clam sauce; the texture of giardinera tends to be crisp, a nice foil to the chewy clams, and the vinagery bite is a nice balance to what is ordinarily a silky kind of dish.

Mhays wrote:This is a totally different experience than the original clam sauce; the texture of giardinera tends to be crisp, a nice foil to the chewy clams, and the vinagery bite is a nice balance to what is ordinarily a silky kind of dish.

M,

I'm going to try this dish, even if not camping. Though I will sub fresh garlic and onions, unless you think that essential for taste and texture.

Far as the giardineira, I'm guessing you did not use XXHot with Sparking in attendance, though am curious as to what size jar? I typically buy 8 or 16 oz jars of giardiniera, but I'm guessing you mean 4 oz.

Enjoy,
Gary

Truthfully, when I made it, I used 1 onion, 1 shallot, and 1 clove of garlic, thinly sliced and sweated them before dumping the rest in (easy to pack aromatics when camping;) being the weenie that I am, I used mild giardinera - but for a heat-lover like yourself, I see no reason why hot wouldn't be delicious! I should have specified - I used an 8 oz jar of giardinera, forgot that they come in so many sizes.

Sorry if I posted this after the fact!

Just saw this via Chicagoist and thought of this thread:
Sunday Rally to Protest "Food Deserts"

Thanks for the heads-up, Banana!

More info: Food Desert Awareness Month was declared by the National Center for Public Research, Mari Gallagher (mentioned upthread) has several very interesting PDF files specific to this month on her website. They include PR for the month, definitions specific to the food desert issue, and a photo description of foods unavailable in a food desert.

Mhays, what a terrific and inspiring thread! I've lived in a number of food deserts in Chicago over the years and was lucky enough to have a car, but I always wondered how my vehicle-less neighbors managed to eat a healthy diet. Many of them had gardens to supplement local offerings, but not all, so it seemed a rather bleak situation.

Have you tried any recipes out using that most ubiquitous of food desert protein staples, Spam? I see it in every neighborhood market and every drug store, so it seems to be an accessible item. It would be interesting to see it elevated beyond sliced and fried.

Thanks, Ursiform! I did actually do a bit of experimenting with Spam, but didn't come up with anything more interesting than Spam Musubi (which really needs the Nori to work right, but you could do a filled, grilled onigiri with a Spam center, see recipe with beef jerky above) However, there's an entire recipe site on their website, including Spambalaya, Spam a la Orange, and Spam and spinach mini-quiches, though only the latter is adaptable for this project (I haven't tried any of these, feel free to post if you do!)

I realized I may never have actually spelled this out, but a primary goal of mine in this project is to find to foods that are as "whole" as possible - meaning that, though they may be preserved by drying, canning or freezing, the food itself contains 5 or fewer ingredients (except in cases like giardinera or mixed dried fruit) Spam does actually qualify, as it has only 5 ingredients, (though I wouldn't frame my diet around it )

It's always fascinated me that Spam should be so popular in places like Hawaii. I know the islands have to rely on a lot of imported foods, but with the amount of fresh fish and tropical fruit available there, you wouldn't expect something like Spam to continue to appeal.

I'll bet that in Hawaiian food deserts, if there is such a thing, nori is easy to come by.

Just received this email:

Dear Clients, Partners, Colleagues & Friends:

This has been an exciting time for our firm and for me personally. For starters, we accepted an invitation to be a featured blogger on the Huffington Post. The national site has become the premier news and opinion web alternative, drawing 9 million unique visitors per month. Our blog launched this week. Come join the conversation!

On August 31st, we launched the first-ever National Food Desert Awareness Month (September) in Chicago with a rally in the Far South Side neighborhood of Roseland, a Food Desert. The awareness month is sponsored by the National Center for Public Research, an organization I helped found to provide meaningful and unbiased data and information to improve quality of life, quality of health, and financial well-being.

On September 23, we will co-convene an invitation-only Grocer Expo with the City of Chicago.

On September 30th, we will release an updated Food Desert analysis that reflects all the grocers that have moved in and out of Chicago since our 2006 study.

In terms of our HuffPo blog, after September we will move on to other topics, providing neutral data and analysis. We'll lay out the facts. You tell us what you think.

We hope to hear from you.

Sincerely,

Mari Gallagher

The first blog entry is entitled "Brother, Can You Spare An Apple"

Personally, I have to admit, I'm kind of tickled that I'm on her email list (I had contacted her for information when I started this thread.)

Mayor Daley weighs in on Food Deserts in Chicago.

Russian Salad (or "Olivie" as the Russians call it):

canned peas
pickles
potatoes (boiled then peeled)
carrots (boiled then peeled) (or can use canned ones)
boiled chicken or canned tuna
mayonnaise
optional: boiled eggs

Cut what can be cut into small pieces, add salt and pepper to taste, mix the whole thing up - voila!

Roughly equal proportions?

You could use canned potatoes, too, for even more food-desert portability. Which reminds me of something my mom did all the time when I was a kid:

Rinse and drain canned whole potatoes. Place in a shallow casserole with a generous drizzle of oil or some butter. Sprinkle heavily with sweet paprika. Add salt and pepper to taste. Bake at about 350 degrees (or at whatever temperature you're running the oven at anyway), giving them a stir now and then, until browned and crusty, about 20 minutes or half an hour.

They really turn out quite well and are much faster than starting with raw potatoes. Mom used to add dehydrated onions, too, but I think they're better without.

LAZ wrote:Roughly equal proportions?

I normally do

4-5 large potatoes
1 can of peas
3-4 pickles
2 carrots
1 can of tuna or 1 breast of chicken (can also use other chicken meat)
3 tablespoons of mayo
optional: 2 eggs

But these are approximate and can always be changed to taste. Enjoy.

I know – at the GNR Dinner I mentioned a much more ambitious Food Desert idea I’m working on…and I haven’t forgotten it, but need some time and perhaps therapy to overcome my phobia of foodstuffs that need to be pleated.

In the meantime, I was acting as Sparky-chauffeur and dreamily listening to Corinne Bailey Rae on my ipod, and this idea popped into my head:

Choux Pastry Hearts – Food Desert Style

Pâte à choux – Choux pastry
1 cup milk
1 stick butter
1 cup flour
Dash of salt (if using salted butter)
4 eggs


Combine milk and butter in a pan and heat slowly to melt the butter (or, if you’re not lazy, cut the butter into small chunks and use a higher temp) When the mixture reaches a boil, dump all the flour in at once and stir vigorously until the mixture clumps together, pulls away from the sides, and becomes shiny - we’re almost there in this picture.


Remove to a bowl and let cool for five minutes,

then beat in 4 eggs one at a time until you have a beautiful shiny dough.

At this point you can bake, or refrigerate the dough for up to a day and you can use it straight from the fridge.

Using a piping bag with a large tip (I’m using a frosting press that I like a lot, I think I found it at Michael’s)

pipe your choux paste into hearts by drawing a fat “v” with your tip that’s about ½” thick and about an inch and a half long. If the pointy bits bother you, push them in with a wet fingertip after everything is piped.


Bake in a 400 degree oven for 10 minutes, reduce the heat to 350 and bake for 10-20 minutes more, until golden brown and set (they should be firm to the touch.) Allow to cool and fill as desired or freeze for later use.


It’s funny, I’d never made choux paste before, at least I don’t remember making it – but I remember as a little girl that my mother made crab puffs for a school bake sale (sometime in the late seventies) and they were all the rage. I remember hating the darned things because she made hundreds, and we spent hours poking tiny holes in them and squishing them full of mayonaise-y filling. The above choux recipe is technically geared towards savory applications like that one; most choux-paste dough for sweets contains sugar, but I don’t think it needs it. So, here are two very different ways to use this all-purpose dough, first, a dainty tea sandwich:

Crab Béarnaise filling:

2 egg yolks
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tbsp water
3 tbsp olive oil
¼ tsp cornstarch
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper
1 tsp each tarragon, parsley, onion flakes and chives rehydrated in 2 tbsp wine, drained
2 tbsp chopped olives
1 tbsp capers
2 cans crabmeat, well drained

Combine the egg yolks, wine vinegar, water, and olive oil in the blender. Blend well. Add the cornstarch, salt, pepper, and drained herbs and blend to combine. Pour into a heavy bottomed saucepan (or a double-boiler) and heat slowly until thickened (note how it thickens so you can see the bottom of the pan when you swipe the spatula across it.)

Fold in remaining ingredients. Cut Choux Pastry Hearts in half, fill bottom with crab mixture, replace top and serve.




Next, a sumptuous and easy dessert, especially if you’ve socked away previously-made pastry hearts in your freezer:

Cranberry-Almond Fool Filling

2 cups sweetened whipped cream (about 1 cup of unwhipped heavy cream, whipped with about 1/3 cup confectioner’s sugar or to taste)
½ can jellied cranberry sauce
1/3 cup slivered almonds
¼ cup confectioner’s sugar
1 tbsp corn syrup

(If you’re not in a food desert you can probably sub almond paste or marzipan here, but you need to grind it up with some confectioner’s sugar so that it blends with the cream)

Process almonds and confectioner’s sugar in food processor until fine. Add corn syrup and process again until it sticks together when pinched between your fingers (keep it loose) Mash cranberry sauce with fork. Fold almond mixture and cranberry sauce into stiffly whipped cream, chill for ½ hour. Place in piping bag. Pipe into halved choux pastry hearts. Serve.

MHays,

Maybe you did this and didn't comment: to maintain the crispness just a bit longer, you scoop out the doughy stuff in the middle when you open them.



Maybe for your project, tossing the middle away is like throwing away money.

Interesting ideas just keep popping from this thread. Thank you!

Regards,

Thanks, Cathy!

I don't know that I'd say it's a waste: I usually eat the middles after I scrape them out. I skipped that step here because they were small (not much to scrape) and being eaten immediately, but, yes, if you're planning to freeze or if there's any wait filled or unfilled, or if the bubbles inside aren't big enough for your filling, scrape out the tender insides...

Mhays, have you heard about the One Dollar Diet Project run by a San Diego couple?

They each spent a month only spending one dollar a day on food. I read their entire one month blog tonight and thought of this thread when on day 26, they started talking about a community with 53 liquor stores, one Dollar Store, and no grocery store.

Here's the link
http://onedollardietproject.wordpress.com

Thanks for that link, Kim - I hadn't heard of it, but it's funny this should come up today: I had received an email a couple of days ago from a friend who works at the Howard Area Community Center: their emergency food pantry is struggling. I'm in the process of figuring out what they need and how I can organize donations or a food drive, but in the meantime, cognizant of Vital Information's advice, I made a stop at the grocery store. I was kind of thinking I might put together all the ingredients from the one or two of these recipes that are made from nonperishables and maybe even offer some copies of the recipes (I picked up regular stuff as well: a couple little jugs of oil and bags of flour, pasta, Jiffy mix, salt-free canned veg.) I knew I was going to be surprised at the total: $40 for about five bags of groceries, all nonperishable staples, not including the seasonings.

We'd talked in this thread about eating on the $3 per day food stamps offer; it's amazing to me how expensive raw ingredients - even shelf-stable ones - are. I'll have to take some time to read over the blog: I read the newspaper article that offered an overview: the constraints they were under are amazing: vegan, $1 per day (guests eat on the host's dollar) and they live in a food desert. The fact that they made it through the month at all is a testament to their ingenuity.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I've been toying around with this recipe from Epicurious for some time now, and realized it could be easily adapted to a healthy-ish snack for this project. While I've got other recipes on the back burner that are taking some time to adapt and tweak, this one seemed like a no-brainer - which indeed it was. While you can make this recipe in a standard metal loaf pan (don't use pyrex here) or I suppose double it and use a small jelly roll pan, I discovered that the perfect pan for the recipe is a brownie pan I have that's designed for the toaster oven that is 9 1/2" x 6 1/4," just a tidge wider than your average loaf pan. A good serrated knife is also crucial to the success of this recipe; it will be impossible to cut with a straight blade.

So, here are the ingredients:

4 large egg whites
Dash of salt
2/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup (2 ounces) trail mix of your choice (make sure you dice big chunky things)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Other than baking these twice, this is a pretty simple recipe:
VERY IMPORTANT: Line the entire inside of your pan with lightly greased aluminum foil or parchment. Leave no gaps, as this stuff has the tenacity of a limpet.
Whip the egg whites and salt until they reach soft peaks.

Add the sugar and continue to beat until the meringue is stiff and glossy.

Fold in the remaining ingredients,

spread gently to a level thickness in the prepared pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes, until golden brown on top.

Remove from oven and carefully remove the batter in its liner from the pan. Allow to cool completely and gently remove the foil or paper (if your batter contains chocolate, you might want to consider refrigerating it to make the next step easier.)

Using a gentle sawing motion, slice your loaf into 1/8 thick slices,

and lay the slices out on a cookie sheet.

Return to a 300 degree oven and bake until golden brown and crisp, about 20 minutes. Enjoy.

As I reach further and further into the pantry and my bag of tricks, sometimes ideas come to me that I'm afraid are overreaching. I had this idea months ago, but my fear of fine handwork and beautifully-presented foods kept me from trying. However, a long stretch of bad weather combined with the economic downturn left me stuck at home,bored, with nothing to do...except experiment. And the results of my mad science in the kitchen? Well, it's a quintessential American recipe: a century-old, famous recipe from the Federal Government itself, adapted by a half-Argentine Ohioan in a Suburb of Chicago, blanketed in Chinese ingenuity. LTH, I present to you, yes - you saw it here first:

The Food Desert Senate Bean Soup Dumpling

First, the soup. If you take a look at the linked recipe, you'll note that many of its components probably aren't readily available in the Desert - no carrots, no onions, no ham hocks. Still, beans are something I'm working hard to get into this project, so I thought I could make a few substitutions and still come up with a good, smoky bean soup. If spending a day traversing the dumpling learning curve isn't for you, make the soup and omit the gelatin.

4 cups chicken stock - either canned or homemade
1 cup water, divided
3 slices bacon, fried crisp and crumbled
1 cup of dried beans, soaked overnight
1 cup of sliced dehydrated potatoes (from an au gratin or similar style box) crumbled
2 tbsp diced red peppers
2 tbsp dried onion flakes
1/2 tsp granulated garlic
1/2 tsp granulated onion
1/8 tsp celery seed
1/4 tsp salt or to taste
A good grind of pepper
2 packets unflavored gelatin

Combine stock, 1/2 cup of water (reserving 1/2 cup,) and remaining ingredients except for gelatin in a large saucepan.

(I didn't think to pre-crumble my potatoes, but I went after the contents of the pot with kitchen shears when they were soft)
Simmer for 25 minutes, until beans and potatoes are cooked thoroughly. Mix your remaining water in a bowl with the unflavored gelatin and let it sit until you get something that looks like applesauce.

Add this to your simmering soup (which should be reduced by about half at this point - you want to wind up with about two cups of soup) and allow it to come back to a simmer. Remove from the heat, and pour it into an ice-cube tray (note, you will either have to cut these in half or fill them only half-full.)

While it freezes, you can start your dumpling wrappers.

So, my bao recipe is stolen completely from Trixie-pea, with a modification courtesy of Cathy2 (see, if you read LTH carefully, it really pays dividends) It's a combination of two doughs, a noodle dough and a yeast dough. I was too lazy to make 4 times the amount of yeast dough that I needed, so I quartered the lovely Ms.Pea's recipe thusly:

1/4 tsp yeast
1/2 tsp sugar
1/3 cup plus two tablespoons warm water (took me forever to figure that out, I had to convert back and forth from millileters)
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp shortening or bacon grease
1 1/2 cup AP flour (assuming that high-gluten flour isn't available in a food desert, though it probably works better)


So, all this was mixed in my new Kitchenaid until it came together in a ball, and set aside while I began the much easier noodle dough:

2/3 cup flour
1/2 cup water

This reminded me of making the choux paste a bit; you bring the water to a boil in a saucepan and dump the flour in, beating it in with a spatula or wooden spoon.

As soon as it's cool enough to touch, throw it in with your yeast dough and allow the mixer to work it a bit. The mixer, I thought, wasn't really sufficient, so I also kneaded the dough until it was smooth and stretchy.


After kneading, it went back to the bowl, covered, for four hours. I then divided the dough in half, greased up my hands with cooking oil, and formed the half into a 3/4 inch wide rope - which I then cut into 12 pieces.


These pieces were then squashed in an oiled tortilla press - they will tend to be thinnest nearest the side where the lever is, so peel off your dough, turn it, and squash it again until you have a thin round.


I discovered a bit late in the game that the soup ice cubes were too big - so I cut them in half with a serrated knife. In future, I might only fill the ice-cube tray halfway. At any rate, a soup cube goes in the middle of the dough round, and the edges are brought up to the top and pinched off.



As Trixie-pea notes, there's a stiff learning curve to the pleating, which I haven't really completed yet, but you'll be OK if you pinch off the top carefully - a slight twist is helpful. A hole at the top is OK as long as you don't have any holes on the bottom. Note my first few compared to the later ones with more practice and less filling (none beautiful, but at least I got better at sealing.)


I started out by putting the bao on little squares of aluminum foil, but it turned out to be just as easy to oil the bottom of my steamer basket as I continued the process. Steam for about 8-10 minutes, it doesn't hurt to give them a little poke to make sure that the soup cube is entirely liquid. It also helps to let them stand a bit before serving.


How'd they taste? Well, I have to say here that I'm not really a good judge - I'm not really a fan of this particular soup. It turned out to be quite smoky, porky, and appropriately soupy and starchy. The dumplings turned out OK, not as refined as I'm used to either by Ed's potsticker House or by H-Mart standards; I imagine that as my technique improved, the dumpling wrappers will as well. The two together were a bit starchy for my taste, but the whole recipe came together pretty much as I'd imagined it.

How do you sauce American-Argentine-Chinese dumplings? With Worchestershire, of course!

For my own reference: Bean Pie

Those soup dumplings are really impressive.