midweek gems #9

fresh ramen noodles, pumpkin tofu, your Pimento Cheese tweaks, how red and blue communities shop and eat, Beatlemania

Hello! Hello! Hello, from Napa, CA.

It’s been a dramatic week and I assembled these gems for you while hustling out of the house to get to the Culinary Institute of America’s World of Flavors conference. I’m a presenter this year and have to cook/demo/talk. So, I’ll be brief.

💎 Products: Sun Ramen and Pumfu

Whole Foods has been trying to get more Asian ingredients on its shelves, which explains why you may spot Shaoxing rice wine in the ‘ethnic’ aisle (look on the lowest shelf). This week, I noticed cult favorite Sun Noodles at my Santa Cruz WF. It was on highest shelf near the refrigerated tofu and vegan dairy products.

Don’t know about Sun noodles? Chewy tender, they are considered a primo ingredient for ramen aficionados. Restaurants that don’t make ramen noodles in house often use Sun Noodle, which calls Hawaii its homebase. I thought I had to go to an Asian market for them but now, I just have to look on high at Whole Foods. The noodles come with a soup base but you can just use the noodles. I had Sun Noodle in mind when I shared Joe Yonan’s recipe for creamy sunflower ramen.

Sun Noodles for Sunflower ramen!!!!

Speaking of Joe and because of Joe, I road tested Pumfu in my Raleigh, NC, Airbnb. What is Pumfu? It’s not a seasonal pumpkin spice thing! It’s pale green tofu made from pumpkin seeds. I saw it at Weaver Street Co-op (a local North Carolina chain health food cooperative grocery) and had to try it out.

Like many green foods, the color dulls with cooking. But the flavor is better!

Pumfu is pricey (about $6 for 8 ounces) but super densely packed with protein — 17 grams per 4-ounce serving. It’s super duper firm — firmer than super firm soybean tofu. Given that, you can very thinly slice Pumfu up and fry it to a crisp like bacon. In its raw state, it is blander than soy-based tofu so you definitely want to aggressively season it with salt, soy sauce, spices, nutritional yeast, or heck — go with MSG! I fried slices in a skillet and also sauteed crumbled Pumfu for a grain bowl. Once seared or fried, the pumpkin seed tofu reveals a pleasant nutty flavor (as it naturally should). It absorbs seasonings well, like tofu does.

Distribution is limited to the Eastern part of the United States but Joe Yonan has a Pumfu dupe recipe in Mastering the Art of Plant-Based Cooking, a recent Midweek Gem pick. He told me it’s one of his proudest achievements for the book.

💎 Your Tweaks: Indiana-style and jalapeño pimento cheese

From last week’s Midweek Gems comments — a few people shared their pimento cheese experience and suggestions:

• per Gillie and Ann: Indiana-style pimento cheese is creamy, with cream cheese replacing mayonnaise.

• per Anne: Pimento cheese made with jalapeños is tasty and an option in Raleigh, NC.

• Kristine asked: Could gochujang (Korean red pepper paste) be used instead of sriracha? Absolutely! The texture will just be firmer than usual.

Jalapeno pimento cheese and Ritz — a happy hour treat.

I soak up food and cooking tips like a dry sponge on a wet counter. So, when I went to re-up our pimento cheese supply, we were out of mayonnaise. There was an opened package of goat cheese so I mixed that in instead of the mayo. Delicious. I also used Viet-style chile garlic sauce for heat instead of sriracha. I didn’t have gojuchang to try out but it would be fine!

Because I can’t eat too much dairy, a few days later I made a plant-based pimento cheese. It wasn’t as simple as swapping in vegan cheese, which is made to be melty more than sharp tasting. I had to doctor it up to boost flavor. I ran out of roasted red pepper so made up the difference with raw jalapeño, which added a vegetal note. Jalapeno pimento cheese is colorful enough for the Christmas season or for celebrating Ireland’s flag day.

All these riffs and tweaks have been appended to the post. Get the the Sriracha Pimento Cheese recipe(s)!

💎 Reads: Red and Blue Shopping Habits + Beatlemania

I have not traveled to most parts of America but I’d like to better understand where people are coming from. Before Tuesday’s election, the New York Times published “How Red and Blue America Eat, Shop, and Live.” It’s mostly data on what kinds of businesses are concentrated where: Golf courses vs breweries, Piggly Wiggly vs Food Lion. Analyzing this sort of data is fuzzy and the reporters admit so. But it is interesting to note where there are more IHOP and Waffle House outpost — whether you want to know about your fellow Americans or if you want to pick a place to eat when traveling. Read the NYT story (gift link, expires 12/4).

Stats and Beatlemania. Read both stories!

Regardless of whether or not your candidates won this week, you’ll enjoy this sweet story about Beatlemania (gift article, expires 12/4). It will transport you to another time and place, even if you’re not a Boomer.

And, thank you to Katherine for catching a Washington Post mention of Vietnamese Food Any Day. Published in 2019, VFAD was my supermarket cookbook. In my mission to normalize Asian cooking, I wrote tasty accessible recipes that didn’t require Asian market shopping!

What Kristen Hartke wrote in the article:

One of the best books you may never have thought to read is probably sitting on your bookshelf right now or, more likely, on your kitchen counter: a cookbook. . . . Read Andrea Nguyen’s “Vietnamese Food Any Day,” for instance, and you will learn not only how to make Crispy Lemongrass Salmon and Shaking Tofu but also hear the story of how Nguyen’s family learned to adapt to American culture after arriving from Vietnam in 1975.

Stay caffeinated because I’ll be focusing on Viet coffee in the next Sunday Special!