Artichokes are a Taste of Summer

Saying I grew up spoiled by Mom's cooking would be more than an understatement. I took for granted a lot of the foods that she cooked regularly, never bothering to learn how to make them because I knew my craving would be satiated the next time I went to her house.

But now that she's living 1,500 miles away, I'm finally teaching myself some of the techniques I should have been using long ago.

My whole life, artichokes have been one of my favorite foods, and can't remember a summer barbecue at Mom's without one artichoke for every one to two people. I always knew I could count on my artichoke fix the next time I went to Mom's, so I never even bothered to make one myself.

Needless to say, when I bought my first artichoke a couple of weeks ago, I was at first shocked by the cost, then by the amount of prep work they require before you can even start cooking them. First, you have to cut off all those intimidating spikes (you can see above that I left the ones in the middle — they're not quite as dangerous since they're pointing inward!). Then you have to trim and peel the stalk, which is a bit stringy but still tasty once you get toward the middle.

And after all that, your typical large artichoke takes an hour to steam. Seriously! Luckily, my trusty pressure cooker needs just 12 minutes on full blast to do the trick. The heating up and cooling down adds a couple more minutes, but it's still way short of an hour!

I've since honed my artichoke-trimming skills after discovering that Costco carries a pack of four for less than the same price of two at the supermarket. Heck, yeah, I can eat an artichoke each and every day of the week! Especially since I learned over the weekend that artichokes are detoxifying for my liver, woo-hoo! That's gotta help me get those histamines out of my system!

One more thing to note, before you melt a bunch of butter or grab the tub of mayo to go with your artichoke, try eating it alone. It tastes so delicious and already has the texture of butter, so why bother slathering on the fat? At least give it a try!

Graduating from Kefir to Kimchi

A couple of years ago Mom got the whole family into kefir, which is a fermented food that's similar to yogurt but more drinkable. Even before I started working at Bastyr, where fermented foods or other sources of probiotics are the go-to remedy for practically every ailment, Mom was on the ball.

But since then, she's decided to cut back on dairy, and although you can use the kefir grains to make other fermented liquids, like juice or coconut milk, she didn't like the taste as much as the dairy-based kefir. So to keep her gut healthy with probiotics, I sent her one of our recipes for Fermented Vegetables, and now you can't escape her house without eating at least a half-jar of fermented cauliflower, peppers, carrots and whatever other veggies she stuffs into the brine.

This week, I decided to take the fermentation process even further by experimenting with kimchi. I know I'm going to get teased when I pull it out tonight at my brother's 40th birthday party (HAPPY BIRTHDAY STEPHEN!!!), because my whole life I absolutely hated kimchi. Whenever Mom opened up a jar at any event, I scoffed and made her put the lid back on the stinky fermented cabbage. And now? Well, it's just so dang good for me, that I'm forcing myself to like it! And to be honest, I kinda do like it now. Fermented foods are definitely an acquired taste, and it appears I've finally acquired it!

I based mine on this Easy Homemade Kitchen recipe, except I only used half the garlic and substituted the other half with ginger cut into small matchsticks. I'm also letting it ferment longer — after adding all of the carrots, green onions, garlic and ginger, I left it on the counter loosely covered for a couple more days. I've been trying it daily to get the right flavor, and I think we're there!

One tip I would like to point out is that even though kimchi and other fermented veggies will never go "bad," it's important to keep the veggies covered with the brine at all times. If not, you might get a little bit of mold on the top, which you can just pick off and keep eating away.

What are some of your favorite fermented foods?

Ringing in the New Year with Egg Custards

Since Christmas Day ended up being just a small gathering with Mom and Charlie this year, we made up for it last night with a big party at my Aunt Sandy and Uncle Burly's.

Burly and Sandy prepared an amazing feast with lobster, garlic chicken, egg foo young (with homemade BBQ pork) and Chinese veggies, followed by everyone's favorite dim sum snack: Egg Custard.

Although the actual custard seemed easy enough, the crust was even easier since they came from a giant box of tartlet shells Burly had found at Cash & Carry.

Egg Custards
2 eggs
2 oz. sugar
3 oz. water
3 oz. milk (can use evaporated milk)

Preheat oven to 480 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix ingredients together, then pour into tartlet shells. Bake for 5 minutes, then lower oven temperature to 360 degrees. Keep an eye on the tarts, then remove from oven just before tops begin to blister, about 10-15 more minutes.

Arugula helps bring pesto back to the table

I still haven't figured out what to do with all the arugula I keep getting from my CSA, but I think I finally may have found an arugula recipe that's worth trying again.

Tonight I made some arugula pesto, mixed with chicken, asparagus and penne. I'd forgotten how much I've missed pesto until I took my first bite, which was even better than the more typical basil-based sauce because of the spiciness of the arugula.

So, why has pesto not appeared on my menu for so long? Back in the '90s, I think Mom, Stephen and I may have overdone it with the pesto after we discovered how delicious it is. We also soon learned that it's much too rich of a dish to eat repeatedly, and it soon disappeared from the table.

Perhaps it's time for a return.