The latest from Twitter: @Peace_Coffee plays cupid with “Caffeinate Your Cutie,” @triplerockmpls is serving @surlybrewing Mild at $3.50 a pint, @bittercube celebrates the long-anticipated opening of Eat Street Social, and @Masu_NE will feature a suggestive little Valentine’s Day roll through Tuesday.
Kate NG Sommers / Heavy Table
Cassoulets may be good for the winter, but no one wants a piping hot dish in the summer unless it’s fresh off a grill. Enter the ever-refreshing, oft-overlooked salad. If you’re already sick and tired of the myriad variations of mixed green, caprese, or fruit salads, try your greens in a new way. Som tum, a Thai papaya salad, plays host to a variety of textures ranging from crunchy to chewy — the tangy zip of lime juice and salt of fish sauce highlight the slight sweetness of green papaya. Laab esan, a ground beef salad, features fresh mint, toasted rice powder, green onions, and the salty-tang of the fish sauce / lime flavor combo. Wrap it up with some sticky rice in a lettuce leaf and you’ve got the ultimate in refreshing summer food. We tested these dishes from four Thai restaurants across the Twin Cities to produce the tasting notes which follow. If you prefer to experience food in your own kitchen, try the recipes below.
Among the multitude of Thai eateries in the area, we selected locations including Sen Yai Sen Lek in northeast Minneapolis, Ruam Mit Thai in downtown St. Paul, True Thai in Seward, and Pad Thai on Grand Avenue in St. Paul. Each restaurant offered its own spin on the dishes, but among them we sought a light, balanced option which didn’t overly stress a salty, tangy, or sweet note over all others. The som tum had a lower variance across the board, while laab from one restaurant tasted quite different from the next.
SOM TUM
Pad Thai’s version featured big chunks of tomato and a middle-of-the-road flavor — not very strongly flavored in any which way. At $4.95 per serving, this was the most economical of those we sampled. Sen Yai Sen Lek’s was, on one visit, the sweetest of the four due to an ever-so-slightly riper papaya — jazzed up with a bit of nam pla prik, or spicy fish sauce, the dish worked quite well. The shredded dried shrimp on top provided a welcome, slightly fishy dimension. True Thai’s version added a bit of shredded carrot to the papaya-tomato-green bean base, which made for extra crunch and sweetness. Ruam Mit Thai, meanwhile, serves their version with small dried shrimp atop the bed of papaya. A thin-sliced, slightly sweet-and-spicy beef jerky served on the side adds a chewy texture to the mix and a bit more substance to those afraid of going vegetarian.
LAAB ESAN
In terms of flavor, these salads were a bit more varied. The version from True Thai, the only one comprised of finely chopped, thinly sliced beef (as opposed to ground beef) featured a tangy, well-balanced flavor and was the best-tasting after a night in the fridge, due to its chewy texture. Ruam Mit’s version, the best-seasoned of the bunch, was an ideal balance of salty-tangy-spicy, tempered by the traditional sticky rice, cucumber, and lettuce leaves. On a recent visit, Pad Thai’s rendition prominently featured off-puttingly sweet sautéed red onions, while on another occasion we were served an overly peppery version of the salad. Sen Yai Sen Lek’s laab gai (the restaurant serves only chicken laab, pictured below) brought the zing of sliced lemongrass to the forefront, with the nuttiness of the toasted rice powder to temper the flavor.
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
Award-winning beer author and national rank beer judge Doug Hoverson and coffee roaster Eric Faust sat down recently to taste a variety of local and international coffee beers including offerings from Flat Earth Brewing and Surly. James Norton and Becca Dilley from The Heavy Table joined them.
The popularity of craft beer and the marketing and flavor challenges of “extreme beer” have encouraged brewers around the world to experiment with new ingredients. As with many beer styles, the impetus seems to have come from homebrewers — who have the inspiration (and low cost of failure) to test new flavors.
A few commercial brewers introduced coffee beers in the 1990s. New Glarus Brewing Co. of Wisconsin was earning medals with its Coffee Stout as early as 1996. By 2004, the World Beer Cup had created a category just for coffee beers, and entries grew from nine that year to 24 in 2008. Coffee beers are also popular seasonal features in many brewpubs, including Minnesota’s own Town Hall Brewery of Minneapolis and Fitger’s Brewhouse of Duluth.
The complicated flavor combinations created by roasting share a common chemical background, but they become evident in different ways. The flavors created depend upon the composition and moisture level of what is being roasted.
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
Applying dry heat to an organic substance (as opposed to boiling it) accelerates several chemical reactions — most important for flavor are the Maillard reactions. These follow when a sugar or carbohydrate is combined with a nitrogen-bearing material (usually a protein) and heated in the presence of some moisture — the process commonly called caramelization.
Barley malt and coffee beans are both roasted to provide color, flavor, and aroma to their respective beverages. As technology improved over the centuries, it became possible to control temperature better and to create lighter, more delicate roasts (and similarly lighter and more delicate flavors). While dark-roasted ingredients are popular for both coffee and beer, some experts prefer lighter roasts since one can actually taste the original character of the bean or malt instead of just the results of the roasting process.
Combining coffee and beer requires many careful choices by the brewer. “Oatmeal stout and dark coffee — it makes sense — but not all good tasting things make sense,” says local coffee roaster Eric Faust. Brewers typically start with base beers which already have a prominent roasted or caramel character such as stout, porter, or brown ale.
Most brewers then select a very dark roast coffee to ensure that there is enough coffee flavor and not just a hint which could be confused with dark malt. A further consideration is how a coffee tastes at different temperatures. As Eric pointed out, not all coffees cool well, so brewers must recognize that their favorite cup of morning coffee might not be the best blend with the pride and joy of their brewhouse.
For many brewers, economic and social concerns also factor into the choice. Most craft brewers and brewpubs get their coffee from small, local roasters who usually feature fair- or free-trade coffee.
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
Creating the proper blend requires extensive testing and consultation. When Jeff and Cathie Williamson of Flat Earth Brewing Co. in St. Paul, MN, decided to brew a coffee beer, they first created a test batch of oatmeal stout on Jeff’s old homebrewing system. They worked with representatives from their coffee roasters through a series of tests to select the right coffee and the right proportion. Since they switched from Paradise Roasters to Dunn Bros. between batches, they had to redo the whole process. The flavor and intensity will vary depending on whether coffee is added as a liquid or if beans are added to the brew at some point in the process, so brewers also must consider how the coffee should be added.
To see how this plays out in practice, let’s get to the beers. Coffee beers come and go, but when it was time to taste, six beers ended up on the table. Most were poured from bottles which had been removed from the refrigerator about a hour before tasting, allowing them to warm better show off their flavors.
Lori Writer / Heavy Table
“Bánh mì means sandwich,” said Lisa Bui, one of three owners of Saigon Restaurant at 704 University Ave. W. in St. Paul.
Lori Writer / Heavy Table
Roughly pronounced “bun me,” bánh mì is the “national sandwich of Vietnam,” wrote Andrea Nguyen in her book Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. “Bánh mì merges European and Asian food traditions. Each mouthful reflects how Vietnamese cooks co-opted French ideas to create new foods. All bánh mì use the same basic framework of ingredients… At Vietnamese delis, you make the call on the main protein element.” Nguyen doesn’t list what the framework of ingredients is, but in restaurants around Minneapolis and St. Paul, it’s a crusty and airy French baguette layered with house-made mayonnaise, sprigs of cilantro, slivers of pickled carrots (and, often, pickled Daikon radish), a slice of jalapeño pepper, and often a slice of cucumber. Protein options typically include grilled chicken, beef, or pork; cold cuts and pâtés (more co-opting of French ideas, this time, of charcuterie); meatballs; tofu; or mock duck.
Lori Writer / Heavy Table
Bánh mì prices range from $1.75 to $3.75, depending on the fillings; most hover around $2.50.
Lori Writer / Heavy Table
If a warm, gooey cheese sandwich on toasted bread is your idea of comfort food, then you’ll love Salvadoran pupusas. Pupusas (pronounced pooh-POOH-sahs) are savory corn pancakes stuffed with cheese, beans, or pork and griddled until they are mottled brown and the filling is heated through. They are traditionally eaten topped with curtido, a pickled and sometimes spicy cabbage and carrot slaw, and a mild tomato sauce.
Pupuserías in Minneapolis and St. Paul typically offer a variety of fillings or combinations of fillings including queso (cheese), frijoles (beans), chicharrón (shredded pork or pork cracklings), ayote (squash) or loroco (an edible, green flower commonly used in Central American cooking). Revueltas is a combination of fillings. Two or three pupusas, at $2-$3 a piece depending on the fillings, are usually enough for a meal. And while they’re considered finger food in El Salvador, it’s not uncommon for Twin Cities restaurants to provide you with a fork and knife.
Lori Writer / Heavy Table
Matters of table etiquette aside, are the pupusas we get at restaurants in the Twin Cities authentically Salvadoran? To find out, the Heavy Table called Rosario Diaz, the owner of Mañana Restaurant in St. Paul, who agreed to tell us, with her son Moris Páiz serving as interpreter, everything a person would want to know about pupusas, which she calls “the main dish of El Salvador.” Continue reading On the Trail of the Perfect Pupusa »
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
The banana flower, while striking, is one blossom more at home in woks and pans than in vases and centerpieces. With most buds weighing in at a pound or more, the petals, actually called “bracts,” are too densely wrapped to really blossom. But however brawny they may be for bouquets and the like, banana flowers have abundant uses in the kitchen, including soup, stir fries, meat and vegetable stews and salads. The inner petals, or bracts, are the edible parts. Eaten straight off the cutting board, they are starchy and bitter. But once soaked in a lemon juice/water mixture for half hour then rinsed, they are leek-like, both in substance (thin with a slight crunch) and taste (delicate).
Common to Southeast Asian cuisine, the flower has many monikers: banana blossom, banana heart, and the unfortunate vazhai poo, to name but a few. Deep magenta in color, banana flowers hang like tear-drop-shaped pendants at the end of banana clusters and grow in tropical climates.
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
While not a staple to American palates, they can be found year-round at most Asian or Indian grocery stores. In the Twin Cities, try Asian supermarket United Noodles (2015 E. 24th St., Minneapolis), where banana flowers cost $1.99 per pound. But call in advance, as they are not always in stock.
Choose flowers that are firm with tightly packed leaves. It’s always nice when they come wrapped in plastic, which keeps the outer leaves that vivid, freshly plucked purple hue, as well as pliant. If you don’t plan on using yours right away, be sure to wrap it well with plastic wrap or it’ll metamorphose into a sad, dingy, large-animal dropping overnight, like mine did.
Preparation for most recipes involves a simple yet tedious process to drain the bitter sap from between the bracts. A medium-sized bowl filled with water and a healthy squeeze of fresh lemon juice is kept nearby. Then two to three of the tough outer layers are removed, revealing pale pink leaves, which are tender and edible. The closer one peels to the heart, the whiter the bracts. Once peeled, the bracts must immediately be submerged in the lemon water or the torn side will oxidize, turning an innocuous, yet unappetizing sooty color. And there’s one more important precaution: the leaves are mightily attached to the stem base, so unless you have superhumanly strong hands, you’ll need to cut off a little bit of stem as you peel or your hands will be very sore by the time you strip the last leaf.
Beneath every layer lies an orderly row of lithe, yellow-tipped fronds. These are the little buds that eventually become bananas. I tried one, and it tasted bitter like a ripe banana peel, go figure. These smaller flowers are equally incorporated into dishes and discarded. This process of removing the leaves, then the smaller fronds is repeated until the leaves become too small to peel. At this point, just chop off whatever remains of the stem, and slice or dice the smaller leaves and small heart at the center. This method is used in the recipe for Vietnamese Banana Flower Salad below.
Banana flowers are high in vitamins A and C and have modest amounts of calcium and iron. And ladies, listen up, they have even been known to alleviate the pain from menstrual cramps, according to common natural remedy practice.
Banana flowers are commonly used as vegetables for cooking in countries such as Laos, India, Thailand, China, Burma, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam, where the recipe below originates. If you’re looking for an easy introduction to this seductive bud and don’t mind fishy flavors, look no further than this savory, nutritious, cold salad. Twist a friend’s arm into being your sous-chef for the rest of the recipe while you prepare the banana flower, and you’ll both be munching on this fresh dish in no time.
Vietnamese Banana Flower Salad adapted from the original recipe on BigOven
Serves two as main dishes.
Kelly Hailstone / Heavy Table
1 tablespoon nuoc mam (fish sauce)
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon sugar
1 skinless boneless chicken breast, cooked and finely sliced
1 skinless boneless pork chop, cooked and finely sliced
1 ½ teaspoons dried red pepper flakes or 1 finely chopped chili
1 cup bean sprouts
1 big handful mint and basil, coarsely chopped
¼ cup chopped peanuts
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
2 oranges, sliced into thin wedges, pith and skin removed
1 fresh banana flower
1 lemon (for water mixture)
Combine first eight ingredients in a large bowl. Prepare banana flower according to instructions above, discarding undeveloped baby bananas. As you peel, try to keep leaves as whole as possible. Reserve the lemon water in another medium-sized bowl. Once the leaves are rinsed, stack several on top of one another and slice them crosswise into thin strips. To keep the leaves from turning black, place immediately in the lemon water, turning occasionally. You will have a heaping double handful of sliced banana flower. Let the sliced flower soak in the lemon water for 30 minutes.
Rinse the flower in a colander under running water until the water runs clear. Drain the banana flower and toss it with other ingredients which have been marinating in the large bowl. Sprinkle with the peanuts, oranges, and sesame seeds.
Banana flowers also are available in preserved form and can be used in many recipes to reduce prep time. Soak the dried flowers in cold water for ten minutes and rinse.
Kelly Hailstone/Heavy Table
There’s much to like about the lotus root. Like a partially rehabbed bungalow, it’s not much to look at on the outside, but slice it open and be dazzled. Arranged in an odd strand of bulbs the color of Yukon Gold potatoes but without the sheen, the lotus root, when sliced, reveals a dial-phone-like latticework, lovely in its unusualness. The outer layer is typically removed using a vegetable peeler, and the lightly crunchy and sweet meat can be prepared in myriad ways: stir fried, deep fried, baked, steamed, boiled, sliced up and tossed into salads, dropped into soups and stews, or nibbled raw as sliced chips.
A frequent guest at Asian tables, in whose waters this root vegetable is native, lotus roots are loaded with vitamin C and also contain decent amounts of iron, calcium, vitamin B6, potassium, and fiber. Look for lotus roots at Asian markets, like United Noodles (2015 E. 24th St., Minneapolis). When selecting, buy those that are firm to the touch and are devoid of soft spots or bruising. They will keep in your refrigerator for up to three weeks.
If you’ve never cooked with lotus root, here’s a simple recipe to get you started. The natural, delicate pattern of these deep-fried beauties will up the ante at your next dinner party or low-key gathering. Waffle fries, be gone!
Lotus Root Chips
Makes two generous portions
12-18 inches lotus root (about 3-4 bulbs)
Canola or vegetable oil for frying
Coarse salt
Heat one inch oil to 300 degrees in a frying pan. While oil is coming up to temperature, slice rough ends off bulbs and peel off skin with a vegetable peeler. Using a food processor, mandoline, or sharp knife, thinly slice the root.
Slide sliced roots into hot oil. The chips may turn a pale pink after 30 seconds. Let them fry another 30-90 seconds, depending on how crunchy you prefer them. (I sliced some a bit thicker – about ¼ inch – than my food processor would allow, for a heartier, still delicious, alternative.)
Remove the chips from the pan with a slotted spoon, drain on a plate lined with a couple paper towels, and sprinkle generously with salt (and pepper if you’d like) while still warm. Serve plain or with hummus, guacamole, or lemon mayonnaise.
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