My Dear C –

I think you would be better served having our former classmate Darrell as your epistolary blog mate. He keeps posting fascinating foodstuffs he is making that I have to look up. Just this week I think – soubise, tangzhong, and tepache.

Soubise is apparently a French sauce made of onions, butter, and cream – Darrell noted Caramelized onion soy “butter”! From Calvin Eng’s “Salt, Sugar, MSG” cookbook. Really more of a sobuise sauce…so good! He made a rye tangzhong. I had to look it up on Wikipedia and to be honest I still don’t quite get what it is. It’s a roux/gel that makes bread more tender? Tepache is a traditional Mexican fermented beverage, often pineapple-based. That I get.

On that note – my mother made beet-based kvass when I was visiting her. At a farmer’s market foray, she’d bought this quite pricy and delicious tonic and had the inspiration to make her own. She skipped the spices, for better or worse, but it’s still tasty although less concentrated for sure. She basically applied the pickling concept to create it. But I found this recipe that looked good to me, partly because it uses whey – which is great if you make your own farmer’s/cottage cheese, because you’ve got a built in use for that nutritious stuff. I will try my hand at it.

I discovered that all the pickles I’d made last year didn’t get eaten – they just got hoarded and languished in their own brine at the back of the fridge. Super sad. I bought some pickling cucumbers (dubiously fresh) at a Russian store over the weekend and shoved them into the old brine to try to redeem this. We shall see.

Did I tell you I found a Magic Bullet on the street? With 6 containers. I used it to make a pesto yesterday. It’s – excessively smooth. But I used the analogous thing – that my mother found on the street by her house – to make a nicoise dressing and it was quite lovely. I put in a ton of basil and parsley and garlic and spring onion and olive oil and it was delicious.

Trader Joe’s canned tuna in olive oil in full effect. And the first good tomatoes of the season. Plus green beans that I had already made into a salad with a fancy white wine vinegar and shallot dressing.

Back at home the tomatoes aren’t yet ready. But I did get some Japanese eggplant and sweet peppers and zucchini – and picked some makrut lime leaves off a tree nearby – and made a lovely curry. I marinated very firm tofu in red thai curry with a little aminos and soy and rice vinegar.

Sautéed onions in avocado oil – threw in the 4 lime leaves, added the sliced eggplant when the onions were translucent, then a few sliced cloves of garlic and the marinated tofu, followed by the sliced peppers and then the sliced zucchini when everything seemed near cooked. Finally a bit of coconut milk (I had half a can moldering in the fridge – once I took off the bad bits it was probably 1/3 cup or less). Truly one of my better efforts. Despite the overcooked basmati rice on the side. I still haven’t learned to cook rice.

I am feeling like a damaged lemon, hence the title (courtesy of Blonde Redhead).

Much love –

M.