Omnivore Atlanta

Learning kimchee, by trial and error

By Gene Lee

Kimchi… People either love or hate it. If you were born into it like I was, 99.99% of the time you love it. Koreans, especially older ones, are so fanatically addicted to this dish that they are probably the only race group that will immediately go looking for a Korean restaurant in their first hours on vacation in Rome. I am not kidding.

I am not quite as obsessed as the older generation but understand this craving. Over a decade ago I lived in Aspen, CO, which is hundreds of miles away from Denver – the closest city that I knew of (at the time) that had Korean restaurants. One month into being fortified in that little Hollywood ski town, the cravings for the hot Korean stews, various Banchan (small side dishes) vegetables, steaming bowl of rice and the addictive sour crunchiness of Baechu (cabbage) kimchi started scratching at my salivary glands. I could make the barbeque meats, substandard versions of the soups, and steam the Mahatma white rice that you see in every grocery store in America, but I could not make nor find kimchi anywhere.

Three months into my stay there my cravings for better Korean food, and especially the tangy and fiery flavors of kimchi, reached a fever pitch. That was that. I set out for Denver alone on a Saturday morning with a few scribbled restaurant listings from the cities’ Yellow Pages (the internet and wi-fi foothold really was not common in households at that time). When I got there, I found myself in a part of town akin to Atlanta’s Buford Highway. One long road with all sorts of ethnic eateries, peppered with a few Korean restaurants here and there. It even had the same sort of run-down look to it.

Needless to say, I got my fill that day and then some. Imagine if you’ve been lost in the desert for 3 days without food and water and you cross over a sand hill, and lo and behold there’s a Denny’s. Gorging ensued.

Even though I am closer to places that sell it pre-made in abundance, something always gnawed at me to be able to execute this recipe. Empty store-bought kimchi jars were overflowing in my condo reused as dry food storage, kitchen utensil holders or makeshift grease traps. And I was tired of having to drive 20-30 minutes out of my way on a bi-monthly basis just to buy it (even though it sure beats the 4 hour drive I had to make in Colorado).

Presently, I have made feeble to whole-hearted attempts at making my own version of Baechu kimchi. I have referenced multiple online and print recipes and sought advice from ex-pats and family friends all over. I was met with disaster in my first attempt, and miscalculated disappointments in later efforts. Eleven attempts, multiple hours, and a skinnier wallet later, I have finally made a batch that I personally deem worthy to eat. My recipe has been a hybrid of all written and verbal research that I have collected over the years combined with a sense of “trial and error” intuition that none of the online or cookbook recipes ever conveyed.

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Playing ketchup

By Russ Marshalek

I first discovered ketchup as a weight-loss tool when I was in my early teens. My Marietta trailer-park youth contributed to some serious adolescent obesity in terms of me shopping the husky section of Wal-Mart for cheap jeans (which my family called “dungarees”). Around the age of thirteen, three major turning points happened in my life. First, I got really, really physically ill, as a result of weighing somewhere close to a billion pounds. Second, I became a vegetarian as a direct result of said illness. Third, I realized that (and this only applies to then, not now) I really, really hated most vegetarian options available to me.

Growing up on fast food, my new-found attempts at healthier eating and vegetarianism found me alienated from my family in regards to food. It was possibly a cool, crisp autumn day, or maybe a stinking hot mid-summer afternoon, or all/none of the above, when I was standing in line at a Wendy’s with my folks and suddenly realized that a plain baked potato, with no butter or sour cream, would, in fact, be the healthiest option on the menu.

Upon ordering and digging into the foil-wrapped bundle steaming with the blandness of a tennis ball covered in a sneaker, I realized that baked potato ordered from a fast-food establishment and eaten entirely plain was way better in theory than in actuality. I frantically scoured the restaurant for something, anything, to make the potato better: salt? My minimal knowledge of health and food was enough to know that “salt=bad”. Pepper? My limited taste palette had yet to experiment with it. Ditto with mustard (thank god — a plain baked potato covered in yellow fast-food mustard? Ugh). Ketchup? Ketchup … my still-acclimating-to-healthy-eating-choices brain raced: Ketchup works on French fries. French fries are potatoes+death. Remove death and you still have potatoes. Ketchup!

And thus, it began. (more…)

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Zen cooking

By Julia Stedman

I turned to my husband and said “if Mama asks me to cook supper, will you give me five dollars?” He gave me a very knowing half smile. Surely to God, with an hour left on our four hour drive and the sun setting, I was in the clear. Not so. Fifteen minutes later mama called asking us to retrieve my sociopathically late sister and bring her to join the rest of the family, their families, and a dozen or so out-of-towners all there to celebrate my sister’s wedding. That’s fine Mama, we’re happy to pick her up. Then it came, in a voice that chirped like a song bird – “oh, and when you get here can you cook the etouffe? I’ve already peeled the shrimp for you.” I held the phone towards my husband and asked her to repeat the question, feigning cosmic cellular interference. He gave me another knowing half smile. Of course Mama, I’m happy to help.

While my mother is a perfectly respectable Cajun cook, I tend to be on the more adventurous side. So when some twenty years ago I announced my newfound avoidance of meat, I was pretty much left to my own devices if actually wanted to eat when I visited. Accommodating my constraints was not considered considerable.

We arrived to a chaotic household, and an even more chaotic kitchen. There were two aunts, one uncle, and at least one sister-in-law buzzing about with all the grace one expects from bumblebees. I went into “sarge” mode, which didn’t quite have the effect I was hoping for – looks like I’m dealing with a bevy of conscientious objectors. (more…)

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I’ll take Atlanta

By Jessica Goldbogen Harlan

When I told my friends that, after a decade in New York City, I was moving to Atlanta, they were aghast. “But won’t you miss the bagels and pizza?” they asked.

I just marked my two-year anniversary of living here in Atlanta, and I’m happy to report that I miss neither. In fact, there is very little, food-wise, that I do miss from my previous home.

Tasty, cheap ethnic food that my husband and I would eat while waiting for Friday’s paycheck? Now we just take a trip to have awesome pho on Buford Highway (incidentally, my favorite, Pho Hua, has a location in Flushing, NY, though I’ve never been).

A see-and-be-seen hotspot where my girlfriends and I could down large quantities of great wine, accompanied by tapas-style plates of all varieties? When the girls come to visit, I book a table at Rathbun’s. They’re always especially impressed by those $3 desserts, which we usually order way too many of.

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Adventurous eating

By Cathy Ding

Friends call me an adventurous eater. By that, they mean that I’ll eat anything, from tripe to grasshopper to durian, as long as it is considered a food by some culture out there. While I love being labeled “adventurous,” it’s not quite fitting. After all, I don’t go to the ends of the world in search of food frontiers unknown to man. I’m simply not picky when it comes to eating what others have already determined to be nontoxic and delicious.

In my experiences eating with people who turn away food, the major turnoff is not the food itself, but some preconceived negative perception of the food, which clouds the actual encounters. The head has already decided that the food tastes bad before it ever makes its way into the mouth. Along those lines, it’s far easier for me to try something unfamiliar and like it, because, thanks to my Chinese heritage, I grew up with very few taboos as to what should not be eaten or what doesn’t taste good.

As a child, I was exposed to a large variety of vegetables and encouraged to eat all parts of animals. During extended family feasts, the adults often gave me and my cousins soy braised chicken feet to gnaw on. The dozens of tiny bones and chewy tendons kept us occupied for hours.

The word “delicacy,” which scares most western diners, makes a Chinese menu reader perk up and take notice. The philosophy, as articulated by my doctor mom, is that every food provides a unique source of nutrients, and delicacies are those hard to find sources that complete the eater’s spectrum of nutrients, which in turn, improves longevity. My grandma’s traditional wisdom would also have us believe that eating animal parts supplements the corresponding parts in the human body. In her mind, for growing children, nothing could be better than that wobbly pig’s brain. In a society where elders are respected above all, we don’t question such wisdom. Under this thinking, my parents often ordered things when dining out that they didn’t typically cook at home, and encouraged me to experience the different textures and tastes.

For my family, this was never more evident than when we headed out for Chongqing hot pot, a specialty of my region of Sichuan. The centerpiece is the fiery Sichuan peppercorn and chili imbued broth pot. But equally important are the “exotic” selections of meats for cooking in the broth. Seasoned hot pot eaters never pick the usual chicken or beef. Instead, they focus their attention on sliced dark tripe, more prized than white tripe for its ability to hold on to the spice within the pebbled surface. Also popular were the duck intestines, which, when cooked quickly, retain a delightful crunchy texture. But the most celebrated were always the snowy white pork neck cartilages. Slivered in diagonal halves, the cooked cartilage took on an appearance and a slight chew akin to that of fresh calamari.

No matter the selection, eating everything the parents ordered was a requirement, not a request. Pickiness was frowned upon. In this environment, I learned to embrace variations and to appreciate the different and new.

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Varsity love

By Molly Spruill

When co-workers ask where I am from and I tell them “Atlanta”, they say, “That’s a rarity!” As the hub of the Southeast, Atlanta seems to have far more out-of-towners than native Atlantans. As a result, many of the people that I work with don’t have the history or memories of our fair city that I do.

These memories often come up when people want to know why I have an affinity for places like the Varsity. Just take a glance at the reviews for the Varsity on Yelp. Many of the negative ones are from people who went to the Varsity because it’s an “Atlanta institution”. That’s like a vegan telling a hardcore meat eater that tofu tastes just like chicken. People who haven’t gone to the Varsity all their lives probably won’t appreciate it in the same way that native Atlantans do.

Okay, yes, it is greasy — incredibly greasy — and don’t even think about going there if you have a rigorous day planned. But, if you grew up in Atlanta like me, you probably have a soft spot for The Varsity, too. Early memories of trips to there include always getting a trademark Varsity paper hat! (more…)

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The Gourmet-ification of everywhere

By Lindsey Zuckerman

It used to be that you could only find great food at home or in a restaurant. Lately, though, good food is popping up in all sorts of unexpected places.

Whether you’re enjoying BBQ Pork Ribs at Turner Field, sushi at Seattle’s Safeco Field or clam chowder at San Francisco’s AT&T Park, you’ll know this isn’t the baseball grub you remember from childhood. More and more, stadiums are upgrading their food in an attempt to lure casual baseball fans to the game. The idea makes sense — I am far more likely to brave the blazing Atlanta afternoon heat if delicious food is involved.

Turner Field still seems a bit behind the curve on upscale baseball dining. There’s nothing coming out of its concessions to compete with San Francisco’s fresh crab sandwich or Seattle’s Pad Thai. What Turner lacks in quality, though, is made up for in volume, and you can now purchase an all-you-can eat ticket. Whether your waistline can handle a pulled pork sandwich, 50-chicken wing and 3-beer calorie bomb is another issue.

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Last week I extended an invitation to readers to contribute to Omnivore with stories of food and life. I’ve had quite a response already, and today I’m happy to present our first guest blogger, Lauren Leschper. Lauren writes about how for her, baking is way cheaper than therapy. Enjoy, and if you’re interested in blogging for Omnivore, send me your ideas at besha.rodell@creativeloafing.com.

Cheaper (and tastier) than a psychiatrist

By Lauren Leschper

Everyone deals with stress in a slightly different way. Some people eat, some exercise, and some do nothing at all. Me? I bake.

I don’t know why, but at least since I’ve been in college, the best way for me to calm down and de-stress is to make a cake, pie, whatever. I have little desire to eat the resulting dessert, however. I always manage to cover myself in homemade icing when I make cupcakes, so by the time I finish I have usually eaten my fill of sweets for a while.

Which is the interesting fact about baking, for me at least – making lots of cupcakes actually keeps me from eating many desserts on a daily basis. Luckily (for them or me?) my boyfriend and his four roommates are more than happy to scarf down whatever treat I’ve decided to make. Otherwise, my roommates would certainly throw me out for keeping them from fitting into their formal dresses.

Brownie and muffin mixes were basically the extent of my mom’s baking when I was growing up, other than the blackberry pies she would make for special occasions. My family was never a “dessert” family. Yet somehow I discovered the absolute magic of from-scratch baked goods. In my experience, there are few things as sure to brighten someone’s day as a homemade cupcake. Knowing this fact helps make the preparation and effort worthwhile for me, but there’s more to it than that. The combination of art and science, creativity and precision, is the paradox and essence of baking. I think that inherent contradiction is what gives baking its therapeutic qualities for me. I have to concentrate and devote my full attention to what I’m doing. Depending on the recipe, sometimes the smallest mistake could lead to disaster. I don’t have time to think about my midterm, or my fight with my boyfriend, or anything else that might be weighing on my mind.

Plus, I get to eat some yummy frosting. Calories from icing licked off your fingers don’t count, right?

(Photo from Wikimedia commons)

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