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Innovate : MRE’s

MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat)

(source: https://www.amazon.com/Meals-Ready-Genuine-Military-Surplus/dp/B005I5ML36)

In the past, military rations were bulky, noisy and most definitely did not taste good. In the civil war in 1861 - 1865, foods and rations varied by location, quality and quantity. A typical ration at the time consisted of a simple carb, salted meat and compressed vegetables, with the addition of other dried goods such as rice and coffee every 100 rations.  As years past, it is only natural that these rations improve. By WWI the amount of rations decrease as the US focused avoiding food West and big bulk. WWII rolled around and the military conducts extensive research to figure out what was best for the troops. They introduced the K-rations (breakfast), D-rations (chocolate) and C-rations (lunch and dinner). These were pre-cooked meals that were delicious and nutritious, however, they were bulky and loud.  

(source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-ration)

In the 50′s something similar to the C-ration was introduced called the MCI or Meal, Combat, Individual but with wider variety and provided more nutrition. 

(source: http://www.mreinfo.com/reviews/mci-reviews/mci/)

However this was phased out for a small phase of dehydrated food in the 60′s and finally for the arrival of the MRE’s

The MRE’s or the Meals, Ready to Eat became the standard ration in 1986, replacing the C-ration completely. It was lighter and more transportable. The early MRE’s were no very palatable, the lack of fibre in these meals lead of constipation. These meals received multiple nicknames because of that; Meals Rarely Edible, 

As we get closer to the 2000s these meals improved vastly, both in taste and nutrition. A version for campers and hikers was even made under the name HeaterMeals.

The way that these meals work is that each pack comes with a flameless heater pouch that is water activated to warm the food which is in a small packet. The advanced technology ensures that the food in this packet remains edible and nutrient-rice for a long period of time. They contain around 1,250 calories on average to ensure that the soldiers receive the necessary energy and nutrient

Here is an example of a MRE

(source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzFKePa2pwc)

As a cook this would affect my career if this type of meal becomes more popular for normal people and choose to stay home and eat these easy heat-packed meals that has more nutrition than the typical microwave meal. As I have seen a lot of interesting new food variations from other countries as well.

Here is an example of a Chinese MRE:

and a Korean version:

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Diets and Dietary Restrictions : Gluten-Free Diet

When I told my roommates about this assignment we all got very excited as one of them has a mild case of gluten intolerance, though she never really got it checked to be sure, which is why this assignment would be good to see if there would be a difference if we went on a gluten-free diet for a week. 

As we discuss in class, we know that a gluten-free diet means the exclusion of all wheat products. And we all initially thought that it would be an easy ride because we primarily eat rice and noodles anyway. We barely consume any bread or western wheat-based desserts anyway because I am lactose intolerant so I can not eat anything with dairy products. “This will be easy” I said. Wrong. We were so wrong.

The first day of the diet was the day I had my baking & pastry for chefs class. we made eclairs and we had also made spritz cookies the day before. So we said “okay, after we finish all of this tonight we start the diet” so we ate what we can and gave other people some of them as well. (Again, being lactose intolerant the custard cream filling did not do me any good either...) 

We were already off to a bad start.

In order here is how our week (weak) attempt at gluten-free went (please bare in mind that two of us a broke college kids and the other roommate works full-time from home and never has time to cook so our food choices are most likely horrible) :

Tuesday 

- I took left over Army-base stew (부대찌개), a Korean hotpot style dish, from monday to school for lunch (it contained instant noodles (Shin Ramyun), hotdogs, kimchi, tofu, potato starch noodles, dumplings with a dried anchovy based stock) accompanied by rice. The instant noodle and the dumpling dough made this dish NOT Gluten-free.

(not my picture, but this is just to illustrate what I ate // credit: https://goo.gl/VyYwuG)

- My roommates ate the same thing, accept they had added more instant noodles to it

- I brought home eclairs, cream puffs etc from baking class. And still had some cookies left from monday AGAIN, NOT Gluten-free.

- For dinner I just kind of threw together whatever was left of the budaejjigae with rice, more hot dog and ripped up some dried seaweed sheets (minus the extra hotdog, they actually do this at Korean restaurants - if you had some broth left by the end of your hot pot meal, you can order rice with seaweed and eggs if you wish. You mix it up with the leftover broth and it becomes a very delicious fried rice)

Wednesday

- My class was not super early so I woke up and had time to make lunch for everybody. I made Stir-fried Potato starch noodles with chicken, eggs and veggies, accompanied by rice. Not too much as the were already noodles in it. This was ACTUALLY Gluten-Free

- For dinner we had Korean BBQ (pork belly slices), rice, kimchi stew to cut the grease along with lettuce leaves, and more kimchi - This was definitely Gluten-free

we did pretty good on Wednesday

Thursday

- Thursday came along and I had to skip school because I had a stomachache from over eating kimchi. When I finally felt better in the late afternoon I made instant noodles (a lighter, Seolleongtang flavour one) and fried up some of the frozen dumplings we still had left in the fridge. - Definitely not Gluten-Free.

- That evening we realize that we have run out of groceries and none of us wanted to go shopping so we ordered in. We ordered Vietnamese food (XL Pho, two orders of spring rolls, Chicken curry with buns) - only the pho was fully gluten-free.

we were already slipping

Friday

- I had culinary concepts class. I ate a the Arctic char and whitefish tempura for lunch before heading back home.

- My friends ate leftover pho and curry from the night before.

- I cooked up the halibut roe I kept from class out of curiosity. It really did not have much of a flavour so I added the pickle marinade from the mackerel escabeche to it. It was edible. Then I took too long of a nap that I did not cook and that meant no one ate dinner that day because the cook/mom of the household was sleeping.

Not too bad except tempura was most definitely not gluten-free.

Saturday

- I ate the mackerel escabeche for breakfast because there was nothing else in the fridge.

- I had work at the Thai dessert cafe (Patchmon’s Thai Dessert, you should come and try our desserts some day chef, its amazing, and mostly everything is gluten-free and vegan and peanut free.) I was fed the staff meal which was rice, Thai spicy basil chicken stir-fry and Thai style omelette.

(not my picture, but this is just to illustrate what I ate // credits: https://goo.gl/oMq3lY)

- For dinner my boss gave me a big take out container of Panang Chicken Curry that she had left from the day before. I got home and cooked rice to go with it.

This day would also have been fully gluten-free if it wasn’t for the light flour batter on the mackerel.

Sunday

- I finally bought in some groceries and did some major cooking because we had ingredients again. I made Thai style soup noodles with a broth of simmered beef bones, pork tenderloin, garlic, onions, Korean radishes, black peppercorns, spring onion roots, soy sauce, dark sweet soy sauce, sugar, and fish sauce. It was simmered for at least 4 hours. (I started the night before) The noodle I chose for this was extra small size rice noodles. The pork tenderloin meat was shredded, the meat on the bones easily fell off the bone and was cut up into smaller pieces. I garnished the noodles with blanched bean sprouts, yuchoi, chopped spring onions, and garlic oil with crispy pieces of garlic that when added to any dish, casts magic over it making the dish beautiful. It is very Thai of me to always have a container of that available. I think I fry up a new batch bi-weekly.

-The first meal was most definitely vegan. When it came time for dinner however, my roommates both had a craving for KD.. so we all complied. We added caramelized onions and hotdogs to it. It tasted really good but I felt horrible afterwards because lactose.

-NOT TO MENTION WE HAD ICE-CREAM SANDWICH FOR DESSERTS. WHICH WAS NEITHER GLUTEN-FREE NOR LACTOSE-FREE.

Monday

- I tried to redeem myself by eating 2 slices of gluten-free bread that I bought to try. It tasted horrible, it had a crumbly texture and tasted like granulated cardboard boxes. I finished eating it though. The no name strawberry jam was delicious.

- When I went to school my friend ate popcorn for ‘lunch’ so when I went home i made a proper meal of noodle soup again. same ingredients as the noodles from Sunday except the noodle was chow mein instead of rice noodles because we ran out. Chow mein is not gluten-free.

- Because it was monday, that meant I had a baking class. As luck would (not) have it, we made bread (Pain au lait) I couldn’t NOT eat it. I paid for this. And I felt that if I did not eat it while it was fresh out of the oven, it would be a sin.

This diet has proven to be more difficult that I had expected. I want to blame it on my bakery class but that would be falsely pointing fingers because I could have improved it in other aspects but it really was quite difficult. Even when the majority of our daily meals is Asian cuisine which does not contain that much wheat. Yet here we are, having completely failed this diet.

If I didn’t like bread, pasta and egg noodles so much I would definitely continue with this diet choice. However, knowing that gluten-free bread tastes nothing like bread. I’m afraid I must say no to this diet in the future.

[steamed-egg]

Soups

I know I go to culinary school to learn to make fancy food. I know that. I know that it may or may not be expected to exceed expectations and create a really fancy soup for this blog entry. But this was my childhood and my family. I make this soup very often now that I am a broke college student and not living with my parents. This soup, in Thai is called “Khai-Nam”, literally translated as “Water-egg”. It is a type of egg soup but my family calls it the “clean-the-fridge-out soup”. This soup consists of 2 main things: stock and a Thai style omelette. If you have meat, then great. If you have vegetables, even better. The version of the soup that I have made for this blog post has Asian Chives, ground pork, eggs and clear mung bean noodles. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

-2 cups of your preferred soup stock or whatever you have available, if none, use water

-1 bundle of dry mung bean noodles soaked in water for 15 minutes

-Asian chives cut into 1 inch length. (as much as you like)

-One egg

-Cooked ground pork (to make this dish cook faster)

-1 tbsp vegetable oil

-Fish sauce to taste

-Soy sauce to taste

-sesame oil to taste

-pepper to taste

Whisk the egg with ground pork. Mine was already cooked and seasoned (I used the Thai basil pork stir-fry that I had in my fridge already) so I did not have to season the egg any further. If not, season it with soy sauce, fish sauce and sesame oil as desired.

In a pot, boil 2 cups of stock or water. And at the same time in a small pan, heat up a 1 tbsp of vegetable oil, and cook the omelette, flipping to the other side and continue cooking until both sides are golden brown.

with a spatula, cut into bite sized pieces.

I had more pork than I had anticipated so I just added it to the stock to add more flavour.

next, add the fried eggs directly to the stock along with the chives

Followed by the mung bean noodles

Serve while hot, with a hot plate of cooked Jasmine rice or alone.

I served this soup to a friend and they really liked it, saying that they like it even more that its made from leftovers in the fridge.

I would say that this soup was a success seeing as my friend enjoyed it and I enjoyed it too. And I was happy to get rid of the asian chives in my fridge.

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Preservation

My chosen raw product is an onion. I will pickle it using white vinegar, soy sauce, sugar and water. This is a common Korean pickled onion side dish called Yangpa-JangaJJi. 

Recipe

-1 Onion (mine was a little small, could have used about 2)

-1/2 cup Vinegar

-1/2 cup Sugar

-1 cup Soy sauce

-3/4 cup Water

-1 Thai Chili pepper (I usually use the bigger red chili pepper but this was what I had on hand at the time)

Making this is very simple. Dice your onion.

Cut your chili. 

bring all of your liquid ingredients and sugar to a boil then lower the heat and let simmer for about 5 more minutes

Layer the onions and chili in a container. Pour all liquid content while hot onto the onions. You can see here that I could have fit another onion in there. 

All my mason jars disappeared somewhere so I ended up using one of these plastic container instead with cling wrap to ensure that it is air-tight. 

Leave in the fridge for at least two days before eating.

And with the magic of television here is the huge batch I made months ago in my recycled kimchi container. (...or what’s left of it that is)

As you can see the colour of the onion has changed but the crispiness is retained. The onion has absorbed the tangy, sweet and salty pickling liquid flavour while the liquid itself now has the onion flavour as well. This dish is amazing as a side dish/ sauce for Korean Chive Pancake. (.. I once experimented with this to make an Asian Oil pasta sauce. I was inspired by the Ume Shiso Pasta. It was... interesting)

I think I like this pickle with the bigger chilies more because I can actually eat the chili itself too. With the smaller Thai chilies I find it to be a little too spicy but that is just how I prefer my pickled onions. 

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Fruit Hunt

St. Lawrence Market is one of those places that has always been there but, being the tourist that I am (no, you’ve been here for three years, there’s no excuse-- shhh), I have not set foot in it until I started at George Brown College and I saw so many things I usually don’t see. Usually a lot of people experience this in China town because that is the go-to spot for tropical fruits and more. However, I am a tropical being myself, the fruits at China town are somewhat familiar to me. (Though I still enjoyed bringing my new friends there and got to witness their reaction as I point out to them some dehydrated sea cucumber) I have been to St. Lawrence a couple of times but I did not really take notice to the fruits available there. So there I went, to hunt for some unfamiliar fruits.

Nothing in this picture is unfamiliar to me it was such a beautiful site I had to take a snap of it. (PS. Buy local product guys, support local farmers)

So far, still nothing unfamiliar. 

There were so many different types of Tomatoes there (among our group of friends we definitely had the “is it a fruit or a vegetable” debate, before we came upon another item that sparked yet another debate...)

Chestnuts! Is it a nut or a fruit???? After a light argument and some quick google search that wasted everyone’s data, we came to the conclusion that, it is a nut but a water chestnut (which was what a lot of us were confusing it with) is a fruit.

Anyways.

Moving on.

I have no idea what this fruit is still. Google tells me it is a pear-like fruit. Very interesting, I will have to return to grab some for a taste.

This is also a very interesting looking fruit. I don’t have the courage to try it out just yet. 

Remember when I said that tropical fruits don’t surprise me because I’m tropical too? Well, apparently I was wrong because I had never seen a kumquat before in my life. I have maybe seen a similar looking small orange, but I always had to peel them. A friend told me that you can actually just eat the entire thing, peel and all. I felt like I was experiencing a culture shock. So this is the fruit that I will be focussing on today.

The Kumquat is a citrus fruit that originated from the South-Eastern parts of China. However its official genus name is Fortunella, named after the man who brought it over from China to Europe, Robert Fortune. There is nothing like bringing a fruit that is not from your country and slapping your name on it without taking into account its original name (which is by the way “Jinju-shuu” in Mandarin or “Gam-gat-sue” in Cantonese, both meaning “Good Luck”) but I get it, the genus name has to be in Latin. Kumquat are seasonal fruits, available in Winter through Spring. There are many types of kumquat but only 4 are grown widely: Nagami kumquat, Marumi kumquat, Meiwa kumquat and Hong Kong wild.

And so I bought a few to eat and dissect them (Not really sure how much it cost me because I forgot to keep the receipt but it was fairly inexpensive). If I am not mistaken, the one that I bought was Nagami kumquat, it is oval in shape and is grown widely in the USA. The flesh of the fruit is fairly tart on the inside while the peel is a little on the sweet side, still a little bitter like most citrus peel. When eaten whole, like a grape, we have to watch out for the seeds.

While doing research, I realised that I have come across the name Kumquat very often and that is on the menu of Bubble tea cafes. Kumquat, like other citrus fruits such as Yuja or Lemon, are cooked in honey and/or sugar and simmered down to a jam-like texture, to be preserved. A few spoonfuls of the mixture mixed with hot water will make a very delicious tea. This is the recipe that I found:

24 kumquats (seeds removed, cut in half)

4-5 key limes (seeds removed, cut into thin slices)

1/2 cup Honey

3/4 Organic cane sugar

1/2 Water

In a pan on low heat, add all of the ingredients and cook down to a thickened, caramelised consistency. Add water and simmer for 5 minutes. Wait for mixture to cool down and transfer to a jar for later used. This mixture can be kept for a few months.

Another good way to cook it was probably to turn it into a jam, like marmalade, or add to a glaze for ham etc. Turning it into a candied fruit would also be delicious.

References:

http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/kumquat-fruit.html

http://www.hawaiifruit.net/kumquat.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi7mDLE8UVk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hx247WvycE