Thai Style Ginger Carrot--Replica of a Missing Hit

There used to be a wonderful dish called Thai Style Ginger Carrot, which I bought regularly at the frozen food section of my Trader Joe's store. It was a simple dish of shredded carrot--orange and yellow, shredded ginger, and some slivered almonds. It was not spicy at all, despite ginger, but wonderfully crunchy and savory and tasted not the least like a ready made frozen food. It was a very popular dish also for my kids, who do not like carrots in any other incarnation. So, on my weekly trip to TJ's, I was always buying a few bags of ginger carrot and served it as often, as they asked for it.

Unfortunately, as many good products, one day it has disappear forever. I have learned that it has been discontinued due to insufficient client interest. Strange, as often times my local store was not able to keep up with the demand. But perhaps DC area consumers are different and most elsewhere this product was not popular enough to be sold nation-wide.

When the other day my son asked about ginger carrot, I decided to recreate it myself. I bought a bag of shredded carrot, and a big piece of ginger. The rest was just improvisation.

There were obvious ingredients that you could taste and see--carrot, ginger and almonds, but the sauce in which they were fried was not so evident. It was not very greasy but tasty in a way that made the whole difference. I made the base sauce form oil and soy sauce, but it was not rich enough, as it was in TJ's ginger carrot. Since the dish was coming or was inspired by Thai cuisine I added a little bit of peanut butter to the sauce--thinking about the taste of a typical pad Thai. That made the whole difference. The sauce became thicker and very similar to what we remembered. Here is how I made it.

Thai Style Ginger Carrot
(Serves four as accompaniment)

Ingredients:
4 cups (10 oz) shredded carrot,
2 tbsp ground ginger,
1 tbsp olive oil,
1 tbsp peanut butter,
1/3 cup slivered roasted almonds,
2 tbsp light soy sauce,
1/4 cup chopped Italian parsley.

Preparation:
1. Heat oil on a large roasting pan, and when hot, add ginger and fry for about one minute.
2. In a separate bowl, mix peanut butter and soy sauce into a homogeneous sauce, and add it to ginger.
2. Throw carrot and almonds into the pan and coat with the sauce.
3. Fry for about about 3-4 minutes--carrot should be al dente and crispy.
4. Take off from the heat, add chopped parsley, and serve.

Pineapple Roasted in Rum--Cuban Style

I tried a fresh pineapple for the first time many years ago when not much food was on the shelves of Polish food stores. My neighborhood vegetable store with his obnoxious manager was selling them together with all the other typical vegetables that were so dirty that you hardly could see their color.

Those pineapples were coming from Cuba, as did some other strange products that one could find in Polish foodstores even during the worst economic crisis--Cuban cigars, Havana Club Rum, stuffed baby crocodiles, and oranges that looked like grapefruits. But these pineapples were really wonderful. I think that arrogant man must have been a KGB agent to get them for his little smelly shop.

At that time all I knew what to do with those pineapples was to peel them and eat straight. They were my exotic luxury.

Recently, I noticed that it must be a pineapple season somewhere in the world. They are on display in all DC food stores, and on sale for 3-4 dollars a piece. I succumbed to their charm and bought three pineapples in the past two weeks. I let them ripen for a while while and decorate my kitchen. From the first one I made a salad. From the second one I made an upside down pineapple cake. The cake was good, although I am not sure if the pineapple in a cake was an idea that I would ever cherish again. I like them on their own, in particular when they are very mellow and honey sweet.

Following my appetite, I baked yesterday the third pineapple with spices and rum (not the Cuban though). Fruit desserts are already light and zesty, but the day was unusually hot so I added a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. It did the job but, in my opinion, the pineapple tasted more delicate and all the spices where more detectable when it was served alone, just in the sauce it was baked.

Pineapple Roasted in Rum and Spices
(Serves four)

Ingredients:
1 whole pineapple (cut in 8 slices);
3 tbsp honey,
4 tbsp orange juice from fresh orange,
2 tbsp butter,
2 tbsp dark rum,
3 anise star fruits,
1/2 vanilla pod,
1 cinnamon stick.

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 400F (200C),
2. Put butter, honey, orange juice, and spices in a small pot and heat just until the butter melts. Take off from the heat and add rum.

3. Cut bottom and top of pineapple and later going from the top to bottom cut off the skin removing all the hard parts.
4. Cut pineapple in half-inch slices and remove the hard core from the center of each slice.
5. Place the pineapple slices on a roasting pan and the rum sauce with spices on them.

6. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the slices are slightly brown.

Serve warm plain with sauce.

or with vanilla ice cream.

Bread Dumplings--Bread Recycling

I cannot speak for others, but in my culture bread has always been a symbol of hospitality and kindness, and throwing it away is considered a sin. Therefore I always feel very uncomfortable when a perfectly good bread becomes stale and there is not much to do with it. I collect all bread remains in a paper bag and use them for breadcrumbs (so useful for lining the baking tins) or use it for different dishes in which soaked white bread is needed.

But as I already said many times we are bread lovers, so I often have good breads at home. Many of them, especially an Italian ciabatta or a French baguette, or the one I make myself, become dry very quickly. Last month, I found a huge bag of stale bread in my pantry and it came to me that it could be used to make dumplings. I dug out the recipe to make it again and also did a little more research on that subject.

Surprisingly, my research yielded a lot of interesting recipes. For example. I learned that stale sweet bread can be turned into attractive desserts, very popular in France and England. Unfortunately, I almost never buy sweet bread or even a typical American toast bread. My recipe for today works with any European style bread, that has no sugar, or virtually no sugar in it. It is particularly worth trying if you happen to collect more stale bread than you know how to use.

Those dumplings can be served as a dish in itself or be done without mushrooms and served as meat accompaniment. Those who like hearty meals can add also fried bacon to the dough or put some fried bacon on top with instead or in addition to the mushrooms. If you are curious of that dish but do not have stale bread you can use breadcrumbs, although they have usually a little bit of sweetness that can be detected in those dumplings.

My favorite version was the vegetarian one, served with melted butter or shredded Parmesan, and accompanied by crispy cabbage or lettuce salad.

Stale Bread Dumplings
(Serves four)

Ingredients:
2 and 1/3 cup breadcrumbs (11 oz),
1/2 cup shredded cheddar,
8 oz white cup mushrooms,
2 eggs,
1/2 onion, thinly chopped,
1/2 cup table cream,
salt and pepper,
2 tbsp olive oil.

Preparation:
1. Wash mushrooms and grate them on a grater with large holes.
2. In a frying pan heat the oil, add onion, and fry it on a medium heat until transparent.
3. Add mushrooms, salt and pepper, and continue to fry for 5-8 minutes, until water evaporates and mushrooms become lightly gold. Take the pan from the heat and let it cool down.
4. Put the pieces of dry bread in a food processor and pulse them several times, until they make breadcrumbs.
5. Place the breadcrumbs in a large bowl and add mushrooms with onion, cream, cheese, and egg yolks.

6. Beat egg whites into a stiff foam and add to the dough. Using hands mix all the ingredients until they form a homogenous dough.
7. Form dumplings about one-inch wide and two-inch long. Place them on a board sprinkled lightly with flour.

8. In a large pot boil water with a tbsp of salt. Throw in dumplings and cook them for about 3 minutes from the moment they rise to the surface. Drain them on a colander.

Serve with melted butter or shredded Parmesan.

and with fresh salad.