That's Nuts

Would you put that thing in your mouth? Well, I hardly think so: the nutmeg (and the red, lacy mace) is truly one of the least attractive foods of all time, and that’s before you know how it used to be harvested.

Nutmegs are native to one small archipelago, the Bandas in eastern Indonesia, and having been there myself I can say that getting anyone or anything off the Bandas and onto your dinner plate back home is one of the labours of Hercules, although Mercury would have come in a good deal handier.

But I can also tell you that when you are approaching these islands, you smell them before you see them, and the scent is nutmeg, cinnamon, and clove. And when your boat brings you in over the reef to land on Run, the small island that the English traded to the Dutch in exchange for Manhattan, you step out and it’s as if the island exists on its own plane, halfway between 1600 and the 21st Century. There’s a generator powering a ghetto blaster with music that sounds a bit like Kanye, only in Bahasa Indonesia instead of English. But there is also, outside of every tiny house, a blanket spread, on which are drying freshly-picked spices; cloves, mostly, but also cinnamon, nutmeg, and a couple of things I couldn’t quite identify.

Run is where I learned how nutmeg was harvested for centuries. The Bandas are not only home to the nutmeg fruit, something about the size and shape of a small, malformed apple or possibly a large quince with a skin problem. They are also the home of the nutmeg dove, which looks exactly like a regular dove, only an awful lot closer to the size of a bald eagle.

Nutmeg dove

Perhaps I exaggerate. A large cat. Yes, this is a dove the size of a very large cat, which can unhinge its lower jaw like a snake’s, in order to swallow the nutmeg fruit whole. The pit, including the mace covering, is indigestible to the dove, and passes through.

You see where I’m going with this, don’t you?

Well, it’s a lot easier than climbing trees.

Speaking of admissions, I must admit that having possessed myself of this kernel of knowledge, I had suddenly lost all desire to find out how they harvested it nowadays, because if my stay in Indonesia taught me anything, it’s that they will do things the cheap and easy way because why wouldn’t you do it that way? And nutmeg doves are free.

The Guardian, incidentally, has done a fine writeup on the sociopolitical history of the nutmeg, and you should go read it. There may be a quiz later.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the hunt for nutmeg helped build the modern commercial world. In 1453, the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople (modern Istanbul), embargoing trade across the sole sliver of land through which a few merchants had evaded the Arab-Venetian spice monopoly and forcing Europeans to find new eastern trade routes. Columbus sailed the blue Atlantic looking for a passage to India; and Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1497, his men charging on to the shores of Kerala crying, “For Christ and spices!” The Portuguese military genius Afonso de Albuquerque annexed the Indonesian Molucca islands, of which the Bandas form part, in 1511. The fortresses he built there established and then consolidated a Portuguese monopoly over the world’s nutmeg that lasted almost a whole cushy century.

I have been in the fortresses he built there, and have snorkled through the ruins of Fort Elizabeth, which the English built to guard Run from the Dutch. The Dutch and Portugese, one island over, built a fort they called Revenge, of which little remains, but what little does remain is more than enough to chill your flesh on a day when even the trees are sweating.

Fort Revenge on Pulau Ai by wildstylz

I assure you, my skin starts crawling just to look at the image, even if the place has apparently been turned into a cassava farm. But where was I? Yes, going to talk about breakfast next, now that we’ve covered death, war, politics, third world poverty, and the digestive tracts of grossly swollen pigeons.

Indonesia is that kind of a place.

Oh, and the nutmeg will get you high, apparently. That explains a great deal of the local government.

One thing they do right there, having been conquered by the Dutch every few years for a couple of centuries, is pancakes. And one of the things they do with them is put a little spice in them, pretty much always nutmeg, because their tastes are subtle there and the sharper snap of cinnamon is not so much to their taste in the morning. Nutmeg is a spice that rewards cooking, richens and deepens, becoming much more interesting if it’s actually baked into something rather than sprinkled on top by a smiling barista. And one of the things it’s best in is pancakes, although it also adds a great deal to a savory stew, particularly if beer is one of the liquids in it.

Try it, you’ll like it. Trust me, I’ve spent several decades telling everyone I don’t like nutmeg, when really I just didn’t like nutmeg sitting on top of things. Nutmeg should be in things. Like pancakes.

Musical interlude via the DailyDot:

But am I going to let you settle for powdered nutmeg? No, I am not. I wouldn’t do that to you. Once you’ve had the real thing freshly ground, the stuff that comes in packages reveals itself as bearing the same relationship to the original that Nosferatu did to Ryan Reynolds after the sun came up.

Great.

Exactly.

You need a grater, and you can waste your time and money and skin off your knuckles playing around with several fancy items that look like they belong in a dominatrix’s toolkit, but we here at the ol’ Manolofood blog will take better care of you, and we will recommend only what we’d use ourselves, if we hadn’t spent all our money on martini olives this week.

Cuisipro Nutmeg/Cinnamon Grater (and yes, you will wash it with soap EVERY TIME if you use it for more than one kind of spice. Promise me, now.

This one is nice and practical; it knows if you only use it for nutmeg, you’re not going to wash it out every time, so it has a lid that keeps your leftovers fresh, and it’s easy to handle, so there will be very little knuckle skin mixed in with your pancakes. Yay!

My personal favorite, because it’s just so cute and the perfect size for a singleton, is the Gra-Mini mini grater. It’s also around five dollars, so it’s perfect for a stocking stuffer they’ll think is useless and end up using every single day. Major smug points for you.

I happened to pick one of these up at the hardware store while buying a box of rat poison (what can I say, it was a bad breakup) and the Italian man behind the counter nearly infarcted from laughter. With tears in his eyes he picked up the grater and mimed freshening a dish of rat poison with some parmesan. Oh god, that moment really lightened his life, I can tell you.

There are some words of power in the Productosphere, and “Peugeot” is one of those words. Therefor, we present the Peugeot PM19488 Amboine Nutmeg Grinder which is extravagant, tasteful, gloriously indestructable, and perfect for rich fussbudgets who don’t like to actually touch their food with anything but the inside of their digestive tract. You know the type. Excited about molecular gastronomy so they can eat steak foam and save on the calories. But they are generally important and must be placated with extravagant gifts, like ancient gods. So, here. It’ll probably be the most useful item in their kitchen and they will never touch it, because they eat out every night anyway.

But when I win the lottery, I’m buying one. And then renting a cleaner, to wash it out for me all the damn time (I’m two-timing nutmeg with cinnamon; yes, I am THAT GIRL).

This is the kind you don’t want. Seriously, 7.5 inches? Wasn’t that thing on an episode of Law and Order, Special Victims Unit?

Anyway, you’ll be a Special Victim if you try to use this with your bare hands.

I have a confession to make. I’m only including this one because of its name: The Nut Twister. Yes, I am twelve.

But at less than half the price, it’s not a bad riff on the Peugeot, even if that chrome case will not be as durable as the wooden one (trust me on this!).

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is about 1437 words more than I ever thought I would write about nutmeg. Pay heed!

Oh, they do also make nutmeg jam, out of the fruit itself. You don’t want it; it’s like apple butter, only mealier.

We’re big fans of the Pronunciation Book videos chez Manolofood, but the visuals are distinctly lacking.

This video, which is basically a YouTube commercial for a New York Pho place, has great visuals and some snappy wordplay. Just what the doctor ordered (and then presumably added bean sprouts and lime to).

From the An Choi Pho Society of New York. My own favorite in Vangroover is Hanoi Pho, and not just because they let me run a tab!

Thai Ice Cream Pr0n

Goodbye, Summer! It’s not you; it’s not me. It’s September! There is only one solution to this conundrum: Affogato!

Seeing red. Red sushi from Hapa Izakaya

Some beautiful sushi in a beautiful photo from Cathy Browne, a legally blind photographer. And very tasty it was, too.

That's hot!

You would think this would be a joke. You would be wrong.

This exists: Soup for Sluts instant noodles.

Also exists: Wasted & Broke instant ramen.

Again, how did they know?

Oh, where have you been all my life, Ironically Named Pot Noodle Company???

Suck on this, Skyscrapers! Gyeongbok Palace by Laszlo Ilyes

Prepare to be gobsmacked by this gentleman of the road, a mere street food vendor in the humble Namdaemun Market in Seoul, Korea. In only a couple of minutes he spins a hunk of chilled honey into 16,000 delicious candy threads, then rolls and stuffs them to form individual desserts. While he calls this an ancient Korean delicacy, it’s really nothing more or less than a dressed up version of that staple known as Dragon’s Beard in any Chinatown, or Cotton Candy in any county fair.

I’d tip big for a snack served with a side of this fresh charm.

So it felt fitting that while attending the inaugural outing of the LA Flea Market, I stumbled upon last year’s also ran, Chef Debbie Lee, serving up her “mobile take on Korean pub grub” from way up high in her new lunch truck, Ahn-Joo.

She was among most excellent company at the event’s truck food court, which also included the mobile kitchens of other TV-made famous chefs, Susan Fenniger (Border Grill truck) and Ludo Lefebvre (LudoBites Fried Chicken Truck.)

While under normal circumstances, I probably would have opted for the food of Fenniger or Lefebvre (whose culinary renown came before TV fame as opposed to the path taken by Lee), it was about 10,000 degrees at Los Angeles’ Dodgers Stadium where the event was held, and the thought of eating anything warm made me want to cry.

After quick survey of the cold offerings on hand, I realized that my choices were sushi from the truck Fishlips (but a hot truck plus sushi does not equal love in my book), ice cream from Coolhaus (line too long) or the spicy soba salad from Ahn-Joo.

As there was no line to speak of Ahn-Joo, and I thought a little spice might be just what I needed to cool off, I went that way, not remembering that Ahn-Joo was the not quite Next Food Network Star’s new project. So imagine my surprise when who should take my order but no other than the somewhat cranky seeming (but it was hot so we forgive) Chef Debbie, herself.

The menu is divided into “Small Grub”- a smattering of pickles, skewers, and kimchi; “Medium Grub”- salads, dumplings, and kimbap; and “Large Grub” – fried chicken, meatloaf, and nachos.

I went for the spicy chilled buckwheat noodles with fugi apples and Korean veggies and an order of spicy chicken and Korean peppers skewers.

I can’t say I was overly impressed with either dish.

The salad was basically an enormous wad of soba noodles, which though well cooked, majorly overwhelmed the crispy fuji apples and the Korean veggies (which ended up consisting merely of some julienned carrots, cucumbers, and red onions.) The dressing was cloying and not particularly spicy. But at least there was a hard boiled egg, as everything’s better with egg.

The skewers were better. The chicken was nicely fried and chewy and the peppers had a good crunchy char.

Overall, a general eh meal. But it came with a semi-celebrity sighting, which is always good for digestion.

I am not an anti-patriot — a barbecue just wasn’t happening for me this year — and as Elena Kagan joked during her confirmation hearings, when outside of the American mainstream holiday celebrations, Chinese food becomes the next best thing.

So I whipped up some Chinese tomato and eggs — a simple, but gloriously flavorful and satisfying dish that I fell in love with while traveling through China a few years ago — and listened to the sounds of fireworks in the distance. And after all, doesn’t being American mean the freedom to take off from hot dogs sometimes and to embrace ones’ inner Chinese soldier.? God bless the USA. Here’s the recipe.

Katie’s Fourth of July Chinese Eggs and Tomatoes

Ingredients

-two eggs

-seseame oil

-salt and pepper to taste

-olive oil or butter

-soy sauce

-three green onions (diced)

-one clove garlic (diced)

-one tomato (cut into small wedges)

-soy sauce

-fish sauce

Directions

-Beat eggs with a dash of sesame oil and salt and pepper.

-Heat olive oil or butter in pan. Add eggs, scramble as you would normally, adding a dash of soy sauce, and leaving the eggs pretty loose. When they reach a cooked but still runny consistency, turn eggs onto plate to keep from overcooking (you’ll cook them more soon.)

-In same pan, add more oil or butter. When heated, add green onion and garlic. After about a minute, add tomatoes, soy sauce, and about a half teaspoon of fish sauce (more if you’re like me and love the stuff.) Stir fry until the tomatoes have grown soft and let go some of their juices.

-Add eggs back into the pan and stir fry until combined. (At this point you can also add a few tablespoons of Chinese brown sauce if you like.)

Serve over rice. Delicious.

(Serves one. Easily doubled, etc.)

Apparently, in Korea, however, after school food treats tend more toward kimchi fried rice with cheese and ramen with Spam. Or at least that’s what School Food, the new Korean import in Los Angeles’ Koreatown would have us believe.

School Food Blooming Roll, which is the full name for the joint, purports to specialize in the kind of food that K-pop teenagers enjoy after a long hard day of school (and from what I gather the Korean school day is long and very exhausting, so these kids have worked up an appetite.)

In addition to an assortment of ramen, topokki (soup with rice cake), and fried rice dishes, many of which are topped with cheese (the only thing that could make ramen and fried rice even yummier,) School Food offers a wide range of kimbap, Korean-style sushi rolls.

I heart kimbap, so I stuck to that.

Thinking myself conservative, I ordered two rolls, both of which, it turns out, were massive and came with free soup. One would have been enough even for a person with an enormous appetite comme moi.

A great lover of teeny, tiny fish, I went for the hot pepper and anchovy roll-

These were whole, head-on baby anchovies, the sort you pop by the handful as free banchan appetizers in Korean restaurants. A little sweet and a little chewy, the fish were matched nicely by the tang of a pickled raddish and the unctuous bite of the spicy oil sauce.

My second behemoth roll was actually a mix, called the Special Roll II, which came with three offerings – -

At the top is smelt eggs with daikon sprout. A little oily from some sort of sauce, the smelt eggs themselves had a nice pop and the daikon a good crunch, so with the toothsome nori and rice, it was a veritable textural symphony.

Next up, the Spam roll, featuring a “special School Food Sauce.” Folks, spam gets a bad rap. While the way my great aunt in North Carolina served it on a white bread sandwich with mayo and wilted lettuce may not have been fine dining (but in retrospect, perhaps delicious), what Asian and Pacific Island cultures do with the canned wonder meat is pretty fantastic. From Hawaiian style Spam musubi to Samoan Spam and eggs with rice, the salty, texturally challenged blob does wonders when paired with some spicy sauce and rice. This was no exception.

Finally, at the bottom, with the black rice – squid ink rice with teriyaki squid. To my surprise, this was my least favorite of the bunch. The squid ink rice didn’t have the subtle briny flavor that squid ink pasta often does and the teriyaki squid was too chewy and cloyingly sweet. But I did find that when I popped out the squid and replaced it with Spam, somehow the black rice sang.

Spam it turns out is the answer to everything. Or at least to Korean after school specials.