Post-Pandemic Pantry Management, pt 1

The pandemic and risk of COVID-19 certainly changed how I shopped for groceries and how often I shopped at which stores for particular food items: 

• seasonal organic fruits and vegetables (Chuck's produce)

• organic dairy and snacks (Trader Joe's)

• bulk pantry items such as rolled oats, toilet paper, fresh eggs, fish, or rice (Costco)

• meat, packaged food, canned goods (Fred Meyers)

Pre-pandemic (2019 and earlier) Chuck's, Trader Joe's, and Fred Meyers' groceries were purchased on an as-needed basis, mostly weekly visits. Costco purchases are at most once per month, or less. During the pandemic where protective masks were mandatory for retail stores, Chuck's, Trader Joe's, and Costco stores were visted once per month or less; and Fred Meyers became my go-to store for every day fresh produce and groceries. 

Today in 2023, with inflation and supply chain issues affecting food prices, I am visiting Fred Meyers less than once per month, but about once per month for the other stores. Primarily, this is because Fred Meyers does not carry a decent selection of organic anything (meat, eggs, fruits, or vegetables) at a reasonable price.

The quality of fresh items such as fruit, vegetables, and dairy became an issue during and immediately after the pandemic from both Chuck's Produce and Trader Joe's. Refrigerated dairy spoiled faster than the "use by" date and fresh vegetables rotted quicker. Don't even get me started on apples. The apples from Chuck's Produce, especially when purchased off-season, were all rotten inside. The apples certainly still looked pretty on the outside, but once you cut into the apple, the apple flesh looked as though it had been in cold storage for a year. It was awful.

New rules to prevent food waste:

• purchase enough fresh fruit or vegetable for a week

• eat or cook the recently purchased vegetables within a week of purchase

• always check expiration dates on packaged dairy (milk, cottage cheese, yogurt)

• seasonal produce from farmed produce (e.g., apples from WA state, pears from OR state, oranges from CA, grapefruit from TX/FL) - only buy these fruits when in the producing state's season

• you'll get mixed results between sweet and terrible when buying "seasonal" fruit that comes from outside the US (e.g., grapes/peaches/nectarines/plums from Mexico; kiwi fruit from Australia/New Zealand)

• bananas are an exception since they ripen after harvest

Almond Pulau Rice

This takes ordinary steamed (baked or pressure cooked) rice up to the next level. I used 1/2 jasmine rice and 1/2 basmati rice; only because I am eating through the jasmine rice faster than the basmati. I subbed raw almonds for raw cashews because that's what I had on hand. Also, Indian pulau and rice pilaf are essentially the same thing, except with regional aromatic differences.

Aromatics

1 bay leaf

1/2 c fresh mint leaves (can also use a few dried mint leaves)

1 slice of fresh ginger

2 whole cloves

2 green cardamom pods

1/2 tsp cumin seeds (or 1/4 tsp ground cumin)

20 raw cashews or raw almonds

1/2 tsp turmeric powder

Rice

1 c (200 gm) basmati or jasmine rice, washed and drained

1 c water

Directions

For a rice cooker:

In a separate frying pan, toast the spices (cloves, cumin, ginger, bay leaf) and raw almonds in 1 tbsp of olive oil or butter. Add rice and water to rice cooker, add aromatics. 

For a Ninja Foodi:

Add oil to insert bowl and select the sauté function. Add aromatics and almonds. Toast for a couple minutes before adding the rice and water. Set NF "high" pressure and the timer for 2 minutes. Natural release for 10 minutes.

Note: Placing the whole aromatics in the center on top of the rice will make it easier to remove the spices before serving the rice.

This recipe is adapted from the book Vegetarian Indian Cooking with your Instant Pot.

Homemade Buckwheat Noodles

How to make soba noodles from scratch. I looked on YouTube for the buckwheat to flour ratio, and the first recommended video was on Japanese 101 cooking. In the video, the demonstrator cooks up a package of soba noodles and proceeds to plate it with other ingredients. This is not what homemade noodles means! So anyways. This recipe ratio is from Food52, and I must say, if you sub the spelt flour for all purpose flour, the taste is.. hideous. I mean, it doesn't taste like any commercially made soba noodle I ever ate at home or at a restaurant. I don't quite know what spelt flour tastes like; though I've heard it is a healthier alternative to all purpose white flour; even though spelt is just hulled wheat berries. It makes me wonder what the actual difference is between "white" unbromated/unbleached flour and spelt flour since both are using hulled wheat. Maybe it's a marketing thing. It simply boggles the mind how we lie to ourselves about what is and isn't healthy for food ingredients. Though, I've read that while spelt is a wheat, it's a cousin of modern wheat and more nutritious. I digress. This post isn't about the nuances of wheat plants.

For the noodles...

1 c buckwheat flour + more for rolling
1/2 c kamut or white spelt flour (can substitute AP flour)

up to 150 ml hot water

For my climate (Pacific Northwest) and season (late summer), there is some humidity in the air and I used 120 ml of water in this batch which made 10.78 oz of fresh noodles.

Directions

In a bowl, mix the two flours together and gradually add hot water until a shaggy/rough dough forms. Sprinkle buckwheat flour onto your work surface and knead the dough until all the flour is combined (no dry spots remain) and the dough ball is smooth.

Once you have rolled the dough out into a big rectangle. Sprinkle the dough with buckwheat flour, then fold the top third down and the bottom third up, like you are folding a 3-page brochure. You can trim the edges if straight edges are important to your noodle making but it is not necessary since they come out terribly shaped no matter how you cut these with a chef knife. 

With your hands, shape it into a rectangular blob and start rolling it out until it is 1/4 a centimeter thick. Tessie Woo cuts her noodles thicker for her dish on Food52, but I'm sure you've had noodles that you've either bought at the store or had at a restaurant. Cut the noodles to that imaginary width. For me, I aimed for 1/4 to 1/2 centimeter wide, which is still pretty wide for a soba noodle.

Toss the cut noodles in buckwheat flour to prevent the noodles from sticking to each other.

Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add a large handful of noodles to the water. Boil for 1-2 minutes, then drain and rinse in cold water or let drain/cool in an ice water bath.

End notes:

I think I'll stick to making ramen noodles from scratch. While they take longer to prep, they don't have the grainy "I'm eating sand" texture that buckwheat noodles have.

Kitchen Notes: Yeast, Part II

The type of bread yeast used depends marginally on the type of breads you are making and how controlled the environment is for bread making (bread machine vs oven). If you're not an avid baker, you are not going to know the difference between the types of yeast nor should you (there really is no difference, unless you need the yeast to ferment faster in a shorter span of time). Is it a noticeable difference in taste? Hmm, that'd be like comparing the taste differences in same flavor carbonated water of different brands where the mineral ratio of different water sources and final product pH are what makes the taste difference.

Did you know that the company that makes SAF also makes Red Star?

Types of Bread Yeast

• Active Dry Yeast (what I use in all these recipes) - requires warm water to activate
• Instant Yeast - does not need to be proofed before using; also known as Fast-Rising, Rapid-Rise, Quick Rise, or Bread Machine Yeast
• Fresh Yeast (this is exceptionally hard to find in the US) - same organism as the active dry or instant yeast and packaged in small bars or cake form; short shelf life
• Osmotolerant Yeast - specific to sweet doughs, such as cinnamon rolls, danishes, or brioche rolls; SAF Gold Instant Yeast

What about Nutritional Yeast? Well sorry, you can't use it like the aforementioned bread yeasts. This yeast is for eating. It's high in B-vitamins and is sometimes used as a flavor replacement for dairy cheese in some vegan recipes. It brings a savory taste to some dishes, such as popcorn-style (breaded and deep fried) cauliflower florets.

Brands of Yeast Commonly Found in the US:

• Red Star
• SAF
• Fleischmann's (typically in 3-pouch packets and 4-oz jars)

Additives in Yeast (and what they do):

• alpha-amylase (food enzyme that helps in processing starch)
• ascorbic acid (weakens the gluten in longer fermented breads, helps the dough relax and increases a faster rise); you'll know if a miller has added it to the flour because it'll be listed on the ingredient label (required by law)
• calcium sulphate (yeast food; also, this is Plaster of Paris)
• sorbitan monostearate (abbreviation SMS), or Span 60, is an emulsifier esterified from sorbitol and stearic acid with the European food additive

Examples of Yeast with Additives:

• SAF Red Instant Yeast: Yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), sorbitan monostearate, ascorbic acid
• Hovis Yeast: Dried Yeast (92%),Stabiliser (Calcium Sulphate),Emulsifier (Sorbitan Monostearate),Flour Treatment Agents (Ascorbic Acid, Enzyme (Alpha Amylase)
• Red Star Organic Instant Dry Yeast: Organic Yeast, Ascorbic Acid. Contains: wheat
• SAF Gold Label instant yeast: Yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), sorbitan monostearate, ascorbic acid

Uses:

• SAF Gold Instant Yeast for doughs with 10% or more by weight added sugar
• SAF Red Instant Yeast or Red Star Instant Dry Yeast for regular "lean" breads, less than 5% sugar
• Fresh yeast for a long, slow rising time

Alternatives to Commercial Bread Yeast:

• Barm, a beer-making byproduct from the 1st or 2nd fermentation stage that's usually tossed by the brewer; used extensively in pre-19th century cooking; learn how to do this at The Fresh Loaf, My Love of Baking, or Joe Pastry
• Wild Yeast, probably not going to happen in an urban environment or if you live in a downtown metropolitan area; useful in making a brewing starter, sourdough starter, or homemade natural sodas
• Make a wild yeast starter using juniper berries
• Fruits with wild yeast: juniper berries, elderberries, wild grapes, blueberries, figs, Oregon grape berries
• Substitution: per 1 tsp yeast = 0.5 tsp lemon juice and 0.5 tsp baking soda -- this produces a chemical reaction (carbon dioxide) in the dough that causes the bread to rise. You can use this in sweet breads (not offals) such as banana bread or a quick bread.

Kitchen Notes: Yeast, Part I - Active Dry Yeast

You may have noticed this year that not only did 5, 10, and 20 lb bags of all purpose flour (white and wheat, bleached and unbleached) flew off the grocery store, restaurant grocery outlet, and big box store shelves (e.g., Walmart, Costco), but also all types of bread yeast all but disappeared in the last three months. The last time I saw a brick of Red Star Yeast (active dry) at Costco was back in March. It reappeared briefly on Costco.com in late August this year, but has since then disappeared and never actually showed up on the shelves at my local Costco. Forget supermarkets, they have been out of yeast for months. I guess people are just going to be stuck with non-yeast recipes to use with all that flour. It isn't a bad thing. Recipes such as pancakes, crepes, scones, crackers, some flatbreads (spring onion pancakes), tortillas, cookies, etc., don't use yeast at all.

A reasonably priced 1.5 lb to 2.0 lb brick should cost you roughly $5 at Costco (versus $7-10 for that 4-oz jar at the grocery store), or between $7-10/brick at an online retailer who sells to consumers, such as King Arthur Flour; though, you might not appreciate the minimum $69 order at KAF to qualify for free shipping. And, forget about ordering via Amazon. Who knows how old that stuff is or how it was stored.

Stop buying those 3-pocket packages and 4 oz jars of yeast from the grocery store. If you bake a lot of yeasted items (or brew a lot of ginger beer), you're better off cost-wise to buy a yeast brick. It's called a brick because of how the yeast is packaged. It's vacuum sealed and has a dry shelf life of 2 years.. or longer after you open it if you do the following:

• store in a freezer-safe freezer jar in the freezer (bring up to room temp before using)
• store in a glass jar in the refrigerator, use as needed

I am still using active dry yeast that I bought that had originally expired (according to its manufacturing label) in 2016. But, while I'm an avid baker, I do not make yeasted bread items on a regular basis.

You might have noticed that hardly anyone touched the gluten-free flours or already made gluten-free breads at both the grocery and big box supermarkets, or the bulk retailers. That is probably because all that gluten-free nonsense is just that.. marketing nonsense. Though, it's estimated that there are 18 million Americans with gluten sensitivity.