On Asparagus and Your Stinking Tinkles

Yes, I said tinkles.  Remember when you used to say you had to "tinkle" instead of saying you had to "pee?"  Well I'm bringing the word back.  Anyway, I digress.

I wanted to talk about asparagus making your tinkles smell funny.  It's not a culinary conundrum, per se, but it's one of those cool "Did you know..." factoids that you can bring up at a cocktail party.  (If you're cool with discussing bodily functions at cocktail parties, which I'm always up for.)

So asparagus makes your tinkles smell funny, but you may not know this because that's how your DNA was written.  Yeah, I know!  Keep reading.  Asparagus has a fancy sounding amino acid in it called methionine.  Methionine contains sulfur, and I think we all know what sulfur smells like.  (And tastes like, if you went to my summer camp in the mid 80's. Thanks for that learning experience of sulfur water, Camp Crucis.)  So when the methionine leaves your body, it gives off that potent sulfuric smell.  But here's the crazy thing- not everyone can smell it!  Only about a quarter of the population (of the entire planet, because asparagus is eaten everywhere) can actually detect the smell, but it's still there, plain as day and they're blissfully unaware.  The rest of us have to experience the asparagus aftermath, which I consider a hidden talent, genetically encoded into my DNA. 

Another oldie but goodie... let's talk veggies and the Golden Girls!

In honor of the departed Bea and Rue, I've decided to pay homage to our favorite girls and talk vegetables.

Dear Tricia, Why do you blanch things? What's the point?

Good question, fancy pants. A lot of home cooks don't blanch veggies when they're getting down and dirty in the kitchen. To start off with, let me explain what blanching is, for all of the readers out there who think I'm talking about the promiscuous Golden Girl.
Blanching is when you take vegetables (most commonly green ones) and you cook them in salted, boiling water for about 10 seconds. Then you take them out and "shock" them by putting them in a bowl of cold water. The ice water stops the cooking process. Fun, right? Well what's the point in it, you ask? In restaurants, this is super convenient because you've already started cooking the veggies, and when an order comes in, the cook can just finish them off in a saute pan with some butter in it. It's a big time saver when there are 30 tickets up, and your chef is screaming at you "Just get the %$!& plates out, you %&!@& &*$%!" (Welcome to my life. It's like working on a pirate ship.)
At home, the big reason why you'd want to blanch your veggies is because it keeps their color. Anytime you cook vegetables (or fruit, for that matter,) they start to oxidize, which is fancy-terms for turn brown. Blanching them keeps their color so that when you finish cooking your green beans, they stay bright and colorful as a rainbow... a green bean rainbow.
The most convenient reason to blanch at home is if you're having a dinner party or cooking for a large group. When you have your veggies blanched ahead of time, you can just slowly reheat them in a saute pan and take them right to the plate when its time to serve dinner.
So, some things to remember when you're blanching:

1. Make sure your water is salted. It adds flavor. (Please refer to my post on pasta for more details and other hilarity.)
2. Have your ice water ready. If you take out the veggies and have to wait to get your bowl of ice water, then you're not blanching. You're just unprepared.
3. If a recipe you're following says to blanch for longer than 10 seconds, like some will tell you 5 minutes, go ahead and follow the recipe. But then send the author of the recipe an email that says "That's not blanching: that's just boiling a pot of green beans for a while and then sticking them in ice water."
4. Be happy about your new vocabulary. You're becoming more and more like me every day!

Now, if we could only find a cooking method that shares the same name with Bea Arthur... That would really make my day.

When Vegetables Attack!

Dear Tricia, I need to find a way to use up everything when I buy a lot of veggies.

I got this question on my Facebook fan page (thanks, Erin) when I opened up a little conversation about vegetables. And its a good one, because no one likes to throw food away, unless you're a waster... and no one likes a waster. On a side note, I can totally relate to this because when I lived in San Francisco, I used to go the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market every Saturday and come home with a bag full of random produce that I had no intention of cooking within a week. It all just looked too pretty not to buy. Some people splurge on shoes, I splurge on pretty vegetables.
When I need to use up random veggies, (which never happens anymore, because feeding my husband is like feeding a 14 year old, garbage disposal stomach of a boy) I always make them into an easy enchilada casserole. I've written about this before too, when I was writing about how to eat your feelings without getting cellulite, but I'm happy to share it again. You'll need said excess veggies, a package of corn tortillas, two cans of enchilada sauce, a can of refried beans, and shredded cheddar cheese. (I like to use non fat for everything, but you can use whatever you want.)
To start off with, cut up your veggies into bite sized pieces. Steaming them without any gadgets is easy; just get a saute pan really hot (and seriously, wait until its really hot or this trick won't work), throw the veggies in there, pour in 1/2 cup of water and put a lid on it. When the water is completely evaporated, your veggies will be just about done. You don't want to crowd the pan and dump like 2 pounds of veggies in there because that's too much to cook at once. So do it in batches... just enough veggies to cover the bottom of the pan. When you're done, put all of your veggies together in a bowl.
Next, get a casserole dish ready. Put two tortillas in the bottom. Using a spatula or a knife, spread a healthy layer of refried beans on the tortillas. Then put a layer of vegetables on top. Pour about a 1/4 cup of enchilada sauce on the veggies. Repeat this until you've filled up the dish. You should use up the entire can of enchilada sauce. Once you've finished, put two last tortillas on top and pour the other can of sauce on them. Top it with a layer of shredded cheese and throw that sucker in the oven at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes. When its melted and gooey, its ready, and you can eat your feelings, not get cellulite, and use up your vegetables. Congratulations, you just killed 3 birds with one stone.
Bird murderer.

Hearts of Palm: Are they that girl group that sang "Barracuda?"

Dear Tricia, I've seen hearts of palm in salads, but what exactly is a heart of palm? Something about it seems really wrong.


Well, when you find out that words like "self-suckering" and "burglar's thigh" are associated with it, I'm not surprised that you thought something was wrong.
That's such a good question because I wasn't too sure when I got this email. So this one's a learning process for both of us. From my research, I learned that hearts of palm come from the very inner core of the stems of certain palm trees, usually ones called "peach palm trees" when they're grown in the US. South America has different kinds of palm trees that they harvest hearts of palm from, and I couldn't pronounce a single one of them. Its classified as a vegetable (How creative. Who's the genius that decided to put them in salads?), has only about 30 calories for a 4 ounce serving, 2 grams of fiber, and 3 grams of protein.
Peach Palm Trees are "self-suckering." I didn't know what that meant, so I googled it. Take my advice: do NOT google that word. My eyes were not prepared for those search results. I eventually found the meaning of it in reference to botany, and its when secondary shoots will grow out of the base of the tree when you cut shoots off. Palm farming didn't used to be like that and hearts of palm grew to be very expensive because humans are naturally greedy money-whores who decided to cut down tons of palm trees to harvest them. But now they've been domesticated as a farm-raised tree and it has become more sustainable. On a side note: the French are the number one consumers of hearts of palm in the world. Go figure.
To harvest them, fancy heart of palm people cut down the tree and remove the bark. The fibers are removed leaving the center core or heart of palm. While the entire core edible, the outside part of it is more fibrous (I would imagine it being like chewing on carpet,) and the very inner part of it is what is packed in water, canned, and shipped to your grocery store. In Florida, you can buy fresh hearts of palm.
Other weird facts about them: apparently they're also called "burglar's thing" and "swamp cabbage." I'm not sure who designated these nicknames for hearts of palm but I think they might be a little crazy. Or just bored. But the next time you order a hearts of palm salad, I triple dog dare you to call it "A Burglar's Thigh Salad with a little bit of extra swamp cabbage." Let me know how that works out for you.

Blanching: It's not just doing a Golden Girl impression anymore

Dear Tricia, Why do you blanch things? What's the point?

Good question, fancy pants. A lot of home cooks don't blanch veggies when they're getting down and dirty in the kitchen. To start off with, let me explain what blanching is, for all of the readers out there who think I'm talking about the promiscuous Golden Girl.
Blanching is when you take vegetables (most commonly green ones) and you cook them in salted, boiling water for about 10 seconds. Then you take them out and "shock" them by putting them in a bowl of cold water. The ice water stops the cooking process. Fun, right? Well what's the point in it, you ask? In restaurants, this is super convenient because you've already started cooking the veggies, and when an order comes in, the cook can just finish them off in a saute pan with some butter in it. It's a big time saver when there are 30 tickets up, and your chef is screaming at you "Just get the %$!& plates out, you %&!@& &*$%!" (Welcome to my life. It's like working on a pirate ship.)
At home, the big reason why you'd want to blanch your veggies is because it keeps their color. Anytime you cook vegetables (or fruit, for that matter,) they start to oxidize, which is fancy-terms for turn brown. Blanching them keeps their color so that when you finish cooking your green beans, they stay bright and colorful as a rainbow... a green bean rainbow.
The most convenient reason to blanch at home is if you're having a dinner party or cooking for a large group. When you have your veggies blanched ahead of time, you can just slowly reheat them in a saute pan and take them right to the plate when its time to serve dinner.
So, some things to remember when you're blanching:

1. Make sure your water is salted. It adds flavor. (Please refer to my post on pasta for more details and other hilarity.)
2. Have your ice water ready. If you take out the veggies and have to wait to get your bowl of ice water, then you're not blanching. You're just unprepared.
3. If a recipe you're following says to blanch for longer than 10 seconds, like some will tell you 5 minutes, go ahead and follow the recipe. But then send the author of the recipe an email that says "That's not blanching: that's just boiling a pot of green beans for a while and then sticking them in ice water."
4. Be happy about your new vocabulary. You're becoming more and more like me every day!

Now, if we could only find a cooking method that shares the same name with Bea Arthur... That would really make my day.