Spanish Cheese Trays and Cold Tapas by Ruth Paget

Spanish Cheese Trays and Cold Tapas by Ruth Paget 

A quickly put together Spanish cheese tray and made-ahead cold tapas, hors d’oeuvres, can be light lunches at the office or at home for home workers. 

My suggestions for a Spanish cheese tray include: 

-wedges of Manchego cheese 

-wedges of P’tit Basque cheese 

-green olives 

-almonds

-membrillo (quince paste that goes well with Manchego cheese) 

-onion confit (author Penelope Casas has a recipe for this in her excellent cookbook Tapas) -thin slices of French bread 

-rolled Serrano ham 

-pickled onions 

 -2 or 3 cold tapas from the following list (The recipes are in my go-to reference – Tapas by Penelope Casas.) 

 -sweet red pepper salad 

 -green pepper and tomato salad 

 -cumin-flavored mushroom salad 

 -cabbage, green pepper, and raisin salad (includes carrots) 

-marinated asparagus wrapped in ham 

Preparing all or some of your meal ingredients ahead of time allows you to have more time to enjoy your meal or check personal e-mail. 

Buen Provecho! 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Chicago Dim Sum by Ruth Paget

Chicago Dim Sum by Ruth Paget 

Eating Chinese dim sum was one of the money hacks I used to lead an urbane existence in Chicago on a budget as a young woman. 

On Sunday mornings, my husband Laurent and I would leave our apartment in Marina City and walk up Michigan Avenue to Water Tower Place Shopping Center. Our destination was Rizzoli Bookstore. At Rizzoli’s we would buy Le Monde and Financial Times newspapers. I would sometimes buy art books or novels by Nadine Gordimer and Salman Rushdie. 

We would check out upcoming movies on the way out and walk down to the Chinese restaurant with dim sum tea lunch, which is what I think is the Shanghai Terrace of the Peninsula Hotel now. I liked the circular booths in the restaurant. 

We ordered fragrant jasmine tea to start as waitresses wheeled carts of steaming dim sum by our table. We pointed at many of them, and waitresses noted our choices with a Chinese stamp and wrote how many we chose. 

There is a very good book for ordering dim sum called Dim Sum Field Guide by Carolyn Phillips. Her book is not a cookbook, but has line drawings of various dim sum, dim sum tea etiquette, Chinese characters for the various dim sum, alphabet spellings for Mandarin character pronunciations, and dim sum ingredients. 

I used the cookbook Dim Sum and Other Chinese Street Food to find ingredients used in three dim sum “dumplings” that you can order in almost all dim sum restaurants: 

*jiaozu – ravioli-like coin purse pasta made with minced pork, Napa cabbage, bok choy, and garlic chives 

*Siu Mai – egg dough cups that are squeezed and twirled before steaming that are made with minced pork and shrimp, bamboo shoots, black mushrooms, and water chestnuts 

*Har Gau – Crescent shaped dumplings stuffed with minced shrimp, water chestnuts, pork fat, and sherry 

Leung’s cookbook shows hot to set up bamboo steamers in a wok over boiling water as well. 

Pre-made dim sum would be welcome to many people who are working at home, because you would just have to steam them or heat them up in an oven. H Mart in California just might have all you need to set up dim sum tea lunches from tea to chopsticks. 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Slow Food Italy Revisited by Ruth Paget

Slow Food Italy Revisited by Ruth Paget 

With more people working at home now, I read the 60 Slow Food recipes made by restaurants in Italy: From the Source with an eye towards great-taste-low-cost dishes. 

If you are at home working, you can have a crockpot of bean soup simmering for twelve hours that not only tastes great, but is very economical to make. Many Slow Food recipes can take twelve hours to make. Some like baccála mantecato from Venice can take two days of dealing with dry salt cod that starts out as hard as a board. 

I used the restaurant recipes in this cookbook to make some moderately slow food recipes for an American home cook. The following five recipe modifications can add variety to your monthly menu planning on a budget: 

*Dry bean or lentil soup 

*Polenta Valdostana 

*Pasta á la Norma 

*Saltimboca alla Romana 

*Baccála Mantecato 

*Dry Bean or Lentil Soup 

According to Italy: From the Source, you can cook dry lentils in 45 minutes. I have always found supermarket lentils and beans to take a few hours to cook. I also like to purée soups, so I do not care too much about beans holding their shape. 

If you have time, this recipe is easy and pretty inexpensive. Soak dry lentils or beans overnight in water. The beans will double or triple in size depending on how much water you put in the bowl with the beans. Rinse the beans the next day.  

Place beans in a crockpot with 8 to 10 cups of water and ¼ cup olive oil. Place crockpot on high and cover the crockpot. Cook beans for 12 hours. Use an immersion blender to purée the beans. 

*What you can do with puréed bean soup:  

-Season with salt, pepper, and oregano and serve with toast 

-Boil 2 cups of tubetti pasta and stir cooked tubetti into the soup with seasonings 

-Add cream 

-Sauté onions, garlic, and sliced mushrooms in olive oil. Ladle the soup into bowls and top with two tablespoons of the vegetable mixture. To be extravagant, you can dribble truffle oil on top of the vegetables. 

-Fry bacon till crisp and crumble on top of soup in bowls 

*Polenta Valdostanta 

There are brands of polenta that can be made in the microwave instead of standing at an stove stirring for an hour. I use these and mix in butter and shredded cheese. 

Polenta Valdostana is made with Asiago cheese. I have used Swiss cheese and thought I had an upscale oatmeal for breakfast. 

*Pasta á la Norma 

This Sicilian dish has cubes of eggplant in a tomato sauce over pasta. Italian eggplant has to be salted to remove bitter juices. 

I use Japanese eggplant or Italian yellow squash to make this, because you do not need to salt it.

*Saltimbocca alla Romana 

In the traditional recipe, a cook places veal sirloin between wax paper and pounds it flat with a meat pounder. Then, the cook places a sage leaf on one side and covers it with prosciutto for flavor. The other side of the meat is treated the same way before cooking. 

Veal is hard to come by in most American supermarkets. I have used this recipe for chicken breast and think it tastes good, too. 

*Baccála Mantecato 

Basically, this is a purée of boiled fish, water, olive, and seasonings. The Venetians use salt cod for this dish, but frozen white fish can be used as well to cut down on the two days of preparation time for the salt cod. 

The beauty of this dish is that fish for two can be stretched to feed four or five when you spread it on toast or baked polenta. 

I make what I call Monterey Mantecato with leftover salmon. There are no set measures in this recipe: 

-leftover crumbled salmon 

-mayonnaise 

-Cholula hot sauce 

-toast squares 

Mix the salmon, mayonnaise, and hot sauce and spread on the toast squares. 

My recipes are easier than the cookbook’s and might be a good starting point before attempting the more elaborate recipes in Italy: From the Source by Lonely Planet. 

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Beer Economics and Food in South New Jersey by Ruth Paget

Beer Economics and Food in South New Jersey by Ruth Paget 

On a trip to South New Jersey where I visited Fort Dix and Fort McGuire, I was able to sample foods that reflect New Jersey’s proximity to Ellis Island: 

-Philly Cheese Steaks from Charley’s 

-Italian Greek Salads made with the addition of grilled and marinated sweet red peppers from Frank and Mario’s II 

-Veal Wiener Schnitzel from Sebastian’s Schnitzel House 

-Margharita pizza with jammy tomato sauce from Frank and Mario’s II 

-Bagels made with poppy and sesame seeds and kosher salt from Target, whose headquarters are in New Jersey 

As a souvenir of this trip, I bought Dishing Up New Jersey: 150 Recipes from the Garden State by John Holl. The book looked fun, but upon further inspection I saw that New Jersey has a beer economy that directly affects food production thanks to breweries. 

Holl’s book has a recipe for donuts that uses beer to make them and the donut glaze. 

The real treasure in the book is a recipe for bread rolls using spent grain, the leftover grain from beer production. This same recipe can also be used to make chewy pizza dough, pretzels, bread crumbs for frying fish as well as bread loaves. 

Spent grain is mixed with regular flour to stretch the expensive regular flour. In states where regular flour comes from out of state,  using spent grain might save on food bills. 

Besides the bread recipes, Holl provides recipes for various chiils, chowders, and steamed seafood that use beer in their making. One everyday soup uses beer with cheese. You place a fried egg on top of this soup along with chopped ham. 

Holl’s recipes for braised sausages and green peppers in beer and kielbasa and sauerkraut braised in beer both look good, too. 

Just these basic recipes make the book worth the purchase, but the added bonus is that the Asbury Park Festhalle let Holl’s crew photograph its European beer menu. I sampled many of these beers when I lived in Germany and think the beers are worth trying. 

I had fun eating in New Jersey and love the recipes in John Holl’s Dishing Up New Jersey with their easy-to-follow directions and easy-to-find ingredients.

Note: There is a recipe for apple beignets in Gabriel Kreuther: The Spirit of Alsace by Gabriel Kreuther and Michael Ruhlman that uses beer in the batter for frying apple rings that is both beer economics and apple economics. 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Studying Latino Culture by Ruth Paget

Studying Latino Culture by Ruth Paget 

When I worked on team projects with classmates whose parents had come from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Bolivia in high school and later when I volunteered at intercultural skills workshops for exchange students from Latin America, Spain, and other countries, I knew I would like to work with Latinos and learn Spanish in the future. 

The future finally came when I was middle aged and started working as the Youth Services Librarian for Monterey County California. The County had a 51% Hispanic population according to the U.S. census and was growing. Many households only spoke Spanish according to the census as well. 

I had studied Spanish independently for twenty years and could read the language. Now I had speak Spanish for work. I began memorizing all library materials that we had in Spanish. 

I next went on Radio Bilingue in Salinas, California to do an hour show in Spanish about library services with call-in questions. I did a prepared speech about library services and then fielded questions. People spoke slowly. I was able to respond in Spanish after some quick translation in my head. The hour seemed very long, but was fun at the same time. 

That radio show gave me the confidence to speak in Spanish at community events about library services. The result was tremendous participation in summer reading programs for children and at homework centers during the school year. I also loved doing bilingual story times during Latino Heritage Month. I put together a kit of stories, songs, and art projects to do and encouraged children to learn English and Spanish perfectly by high school, so they could learn a third language in high school. 

One project that I did not get around to was making a suggested reading list for Latino Heritage Month. I have finally done so with books that helped me better understand Latino culture. The list follows in four categories: 

-Politics 

-History 

-Culture 

-Cookbooks 

Politics: 

-Latinx by Ed Morales 

-The Hispanic Republican by Geraldo C. Cadava 

-Recovering History, Constructing Race: Indian, Black, and White Roots of Mexican Americans by Martha Mancheca 

History: 

-The Caribbean: A History of the Region and its Peoples by Stephan Palmie

-The Oxford History of Mexico by William H. Beazley 

Culture: 

-Puerto Rico is Music! By Maritza Ramirez 

-Latin American Folktales from the Hispanic and Indian Traditions by John Bierhorst 

Cookbooks: 

-Quesadillas by Donna Kelly 

-Empanadas: The Hand-Held Pies of Latin America by Sandra Gutierrez 

-Taqueria Tacos: A Taco Cookbook to Bring the Flavors of Mexico Home by Leslie Limon 

-The Best Mexican Recipes by America’s Test Kitchen 

-From My Mexican Kitchen: Techniques and Ingredients by Diana Kennedy (Very good on tamales) 

-The Native Mexican Kitchen by Rachel Glueck and Noel Morales  

-Salud: Vegan Mexican Cookbook: 150 Mouth Watering Recipes from Tamales to Churros by Eddie Garza 

-Authentic Mexican by Rick Bayless 

-Puerto Rican Cuisine by Oswald Rivera 

-Cuban Cooking by Michael Holtby 

Smithsonian Online Latino Resources

UCSF Latino Resources

I am sure I will find some more book treasures to add to this list for upcoming Latino Heritage Months. 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Hawaii Trips by Ruth Paget

Hawaii Trips by Ruth Paget 

The first trip I made to Hawaii was in 1979 after spending a month in the Peoples Republic of China as part of a youth tour from inner-city Detroit, Michigan. 

Tropical Honolulu reminded me of Guangzhou and Hong Kong after flights from wintry Tokyo and Beijing. Peking had recently changed its name when the PRC resumed formal diplomatic relations with the U.S. We had to fly from Tokyo to Honolulu, because there were no direct flights from Beijing to the U.S. at the time. 

The youth tour members were staying in Honolulu with host families before our long trek home to Detroit. The house I stayed in was surrounded by trees with two-feet leaves, which looked like swaying teeth. 

My host family was native Hawaiian. I liked taking a long shower and letting my hair dry in the warm, tropical Hawaiian breezes. As they made dinner, they teased me about tourist eating all the Hawaiian food. I ate roasted pork, pineapple, mangoes, and macadamia nuts. I had recently learned to like Chinese food and was learning to like Polynesian food, too. 

The entire youth tour was treated to a beach luau prepared by our host families. Afterwards, we made our first presentation about what we had learned from our travels in China to the Honolulu chapter of the U.S. – China Peoples’ Friendship Association. 

Before we left Hawaii, one of the Japanese members of the U.S. – China Peoples’ Friendship Association gave us a presentation about immigration to Hawaii. The Japanese and Portuguese were the largest groups, who made up the farmworkers on the pineapple plantations. 

My next trip to Hawaii came decades later with my husband Laurent and daughter Florence. We went to Honolulu and rented a car. Florence drove all week around O’ahu. 

The first place we visited was Pearl Harbor. I noted that ports tend to be in working class neighborhoods. We drove from Pearl Harbor and went to a golf club for cheeseburgers. 

Florence had a Moon touring guide and made a checklist of places to stop at and photograph and film with the video function on her phone. 

We spent the week eating poke – a kind of seasoned sushi with sesame seeds, visiting the Dole Plantation and eating sweet-and-sour pork made with pineapple and shave ice there, and eating grilled red fish with tropical fruit sauces at the hotel. 

We began our days at Wailana Café, which served coconut milk as creamer, unctuous Portuguese sausage, and sweet Portuguese bread. 

I have had grand times in Hawaii and discovered that I really like coconut milk in my Kona coffee. 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia Trip by Ruth Paget

Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia Trip by Ruth Paget 

In 1979, my Pennington grandma began to nag my mother that I had been to communist China and fancy French and British Montreal, Canada during my freshman year of high school without visiting her in Pennington Gap, Virginia. 

“I know Ruth would like to visit aristocratic England, but tell her Pennington Gap is like Scotland where the royals are educated,” she might have said to my mother. 

In any case, my mother drove from Detroit, Michigan down to Pennington Gap, Virginia and then out to Robbins Chapel (another surname from my family tree) where the Pennington cousins were staying for the summer. 

Robbins Chapel, Virginia is about one mile away from Kentucky and three miles away from Tennessee. Pennington Gap leads to all points west. 

Pennington Gap was different from Kentucky and Tennessee according to my grandmother: 

“We’re midway up the Appalachians. We’re ridge runners not hillbillies like those people in Tennessee and Kentucky. Hillbillies got rich making moonshine and running it up to New York during the Prohibition. They still hide their ill-gotten gains.” 

“The Penningtons are church. Your Pennington ancestor, Isaac Penington, was the father-in-law of William Penn. Our family started as Quakers, but we’re Baptist now.” 

My petite grandma could be daunting, so I did not ask if the Penningtons got rich being overseers in coal mines in Virginia. 

After the welcome lecture, my cousins and I were allowed to play games and amuse ourselves. 

In the mornings, we would walk down to the general store, which had a pool table in the back room. We played all morning and drank Dr. Pepper soda while being Vegas. We would walk up the hill to our various relatives’ houses for lunch. Then, we would play several rounds of croquet on the hillside for physical exercise. In the late afternoon, we would play rummy with the aunts while waiting for the male relatives to get back from golf.  At night, we would play kick-the-can, a version of hide and seek where you kick a can up and hide in a fixed spot when the can hits the ground.

Besides games, my Aunt J. taught me how to can blackberries to make the blackberry gravy (jam) that I loved to eat for breakfast on biscuits. That alone was worth the trip to Pennington Gap. She also took me to the family graveyard to help me do genealogical work. She had also done this and was helping me fill in the gaps on the family tree I had been working on. 

Sometimes we would go to Kingsport, Tennessee to visit the stockbroker. I loved watching the ticker tape spit out of the ticker tape machine. 

Other times we would go to Kentucky for lunch. Kentucky looked like Pennington Gap, but had more Pentecostal Churches. “The Pentecostals handle rattlesnakes without fear, because they are holy,” Aunt J. told me. 

I thought Appalachia was more dangerous than Detroit and was glad to be with my family. 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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