bostonzest

Tag: food lovers

  • Put This Chinatown Food Tour on Your Calendar and Shopping List

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    Back in September I received an email from one of my favorite social media friends, Jacqueline Church. She wrote:

    "I'm inviting you to experience my "Chinatown Experience" tour, which is the full tour including a bit of history about Chinatown's founding, its immigrant origins, Chinese/American food, and more. 

    We'll walk through Chinatown sampling some favorites, both traditional and modern; visit a traditional Chinese herbalist shop, taste fantastic barbecued pork and more. Finally, we'll enjoy dim sum at Hei La Moon."

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    As the guests for her tour group gathered at our designated meeting spot, I realized I would be touring with one new friend and a three men who have supported people and programs I care about over the past few years. Adam Castiglioni from Boston Hospitalilty and Tourism Industry Blog, Max Grinnell from The Urbanologist, Richard Auffrey from The Passionate Foodie, and Chanie from Life By Zen made up a fun group to enjoy this tour that proved to be very true to its title Food, Fun and Fables. 

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    We gathered as a group of food lovers but, as anyone who reads BostonZest or our newspaper columns knows, I'm also an architecture, history, and Boston details fan. I'll never look at the Chinatown Gate again without thinking about all the little tidbits that Jackie fed our minds as she described its background and details to us. 

    I'll never visit this neighborhood again without appreciating my better understanding of its foundation, evolution, and continuing cultural traditions.

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    As we walked we learned about these tiles in the sidewalk as Jackie pointed a toe and translated some for us. 

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    Why do some gamers in the park play alone, while others have a crowd of coaches? Jackie knows and she shares. 

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    Now I know exactly where to go when I want fabulous Chinese barbeque pork, a whole roast pig with crackling skin, or a roasted duck that may be from the same batch that was delivered to area restaurants.

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    Don't worry about sticky fingers, Jackie has this magic bag of goodies that assures her guests have what they need when they need it. From toothpicks to snag a piece of pork, to wipes to clean your hands before eating pastries with them, to smaller cups to share a bubble tea – she has you covered! And, you don't have to take notes. She'll provide handouts with the highlights and some extra tips. 

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    As bakery samples are passed around, they are followed by stories. You'll learn how each item is made, how authentic this example happens to be, how seasonal, and where it fits into this culture.

    JACKIE herbalist

    As a Tai Chi student, I realize how important Traditional Chinese Medicine is in this culture. I had been to Jackie's favorite herbalist before. She had taken me there when we met for lunch one day. I think she knew I was having problems with asthma and the shop owner, Patrick, recognized it right away and suggested a ready-made tea that would help.

    On the tour Jackie explained how you would consult Patrick and his staff of traditional Chinese herbalists and how your prescription would be filled by the experts in front of their drawers of healing products.

    JACKIE grocery

    Jackie is a fun person and our visit to a Chinatown grocery shop was filled with laughter as she tried to convince one member of our tour he might even like those lovely green things, if he would only give them a chance.

    Along the way all of us learned that she chose this shop because there was more likely to be someone on staff who spoke English should we have questions. And, as we walked the aisles, she pointed out a few of her favorite items among the brands on offer. 

    JACKIE dim sum

    Then came dim sum with our expert guide explaining the etiquette of using our chopsticks or pouring tea in a communal setting, ordering from the carts as they passed, explaining how the bill is tallied and how to pay it.

    Jackie also divided large portions, gave details of the dishes selected, and made sure everyone was offered a taste of everything. (She even made sure a plate of greens was available for our reluctant produce eater, just in case…)

    As you may have noticed, I didn't give you the details of the shops or the answers to the questions that you might have from the photos posted here. Those tales are Jackie's to tell and she tells them far better than I would.

    If you have always wanted to learn more about Boston's Chinatown, I highly recommend you gather a few friends, click over to Jacqueline Church Central, and schedule a tour.

    Or, if you find yourself in Boston for a day or two by yourself or with a friend, join a tour that she has already scheduled. This is something you can enjoy on your own or with a group. I asked Jackie about a shorter tour with dim sum that would accommodate a friend with limited mobility and she was happy to work with me to figure out what we could include.

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    As it turned out, that friend was so interested in the tour I had, we are planning to gather a group and enjoy the full three hour Chinatown Experience! She'll take her cane and her friends will help out as needed.

    With the holidays ahead, you might consider giving a gift certificate for a tour as a holiday gift. It has been said that many of us today would rather have a great shared experience to remember than something that will add to the things in our lives.

    What's on your Food Lover's Shopping List?

    Details:

    Words: Penny Cherubino
    Photos: ©2017 Penny Cherubino ( I was Jackie's guest on this tour here is a link to our disclosure policy.)

  • Minestrone: a Soup for All Seasons

    When was your last bowl of hearty, delicious, nutritious minestrone? This classic but adaptable vegetable soup seems to have slipped off menus and off the radar of home cooks like me. Yet, it deserves to be rediscovered, explored, and adapted for today’s food lovers.

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    Jacqueline Church’s pot of minestrone is not only delicious, nutritious, filling, and economical, it’s also vegan. A soup for all eaters! (photo credit: Jacqueline Church)

    Great Minds …

    Food writer Rachel Roddy featured minestrone in one of her recent columns for the Guardian. She wrote that minestrone, “… sums up the Italian knack for taking the most basic and economic ingredients and bringing them together in a delicious way.” She referred to her trusted Italian food experts, like Marcella Hazan, when writing about all the regional and seasonal variations on this pot of goodness.

     

    Roddy's book My Kitchen in Rome: Recipes and Notes on Italian Cooking is one of my favorite cookbooks from the past year.

    From my own bookshelf, I reached for Lynne Rossetto Kasper’s “The Italian Country Table” and found a summer minestrone that she says should be served at room temperature. This was followed by her more traditional recipe for the soup with serving variations and a brilliant two-page spread of tips for perfecting your own pot of vegetables and broth.  

    "Eating Down the Fridge’ Meal …"

    A few days later, Jacqueline Church, culinary instructor at Brookline Adult & Community Education and private cooking coach, posted a photo of a steaming pot of vegan minestrone on her Facebook feed. Since I always seem to learn something new from this food educator, I asked her what she loves about this soup.

    Her answer was, “It's perfect for an ‘eating down the fridge’ meal, key ingredients can be kept on hand in the pantry: box or can of beans, dried porcini, handful of pasta, can or box of tomatoes. In the fridge, we almost always have carrots, celery, onion. Add a bit of cabbage languishing in the bin, some seasonal squash (zucchini in the summer, butternut in the winter) a few potatoes. With kidney beans and porcini you've got umami (strain the soaking liquid and add that) so the whole thing can be customized to what you have on hand. Hearty and satisfying, it may be the ultimate comfort food!”

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    Finally, one of the chilly days we spent in Provincetown recently was warmed by a "Spring Minestrone" with chard, peas, carrots, and chicken from the wonderful food team at The Canteen.

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    Learning Experience

    This is also an excellent soup for cooks to learn basic skills. Roddy writes, “Minestrone is made with a staggered march into the pan. By adding the ingredients gradually you lay down foundations of flavour, one thing sizzling gently while you chop the next. Once everything is in the pan – including the marvellous, umami parmesan rind if you have one – let everything simmer, slowly, until the flavours have come together.”

    The Italians call this process, “insaporire” which sort of translates to “making tasty.” Marcella Hazan describes it as drawing out the flavor of an ingredient or set of ingredients before adding the next one. It’s like sweating onions, celery, and carrots in oil before adding broth or meat.

    Big Soup!

    Perhaps restaurants found that if customers ordered a bowl of minestrone, they filled up on it and didn’t order much food to follow. In Italian the word for soup is minestra. The suffix “-one” adds the concept of “big.” Therefore minestrone means big soup.

    But that doesn't mean it has to be a heavy, wintertime soup. Perhaps this is the time of year for a green minestrone. I found Joanne Weir’s recipe for that in Food and Wine. She uses many of the first green vegetables we find at the farmers markets. It has leeks, fennel, peas, asparagus, Swiss chard, and mint with just a shaving of Parmesan on top.

    Buon Appetito!

     

    What's on your Food Lover's shopping list?

    Details:

    Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
    Photos: ©2017 Penny & Ed Cherubino 

    (Adapted for BostonZest from one of our Fresh & Local newspaper columns.)