Mango with Sticky Rice

Kao Nio Ma Muang

Mango with Sticky Rice
1 cup of steamed sticky rice
1/2 cup of coconut milk
1 ripe mango (peel, remove the seed and slice into pieces)
1-2 tbsp. of sugar (or wet palm sugar, available at specialty stores like Rainbow Grocery)
1/4 tsp. salt
1 vanilla bean (or padang* leaf, if you can get it)

Place coconut milk, vanilla bean, sugar and salt in a pot. Heat until boiling. Turn the heat off. Add steamed sticky rice. Mix together well. Let it cool. Serve with sliced mango.

*Padang is a dark green sturdy leaf that imparts the coconut with a distinct flavor that is similar to vanilla. I don't have a source for it in the U.S., but would be happy to find it someday.

recipe courtesy of The Chiang Mai Thai Farm Cooking School

Do you know how coconut milk is made?...by pressing coconut shavings!

Making coconut milk from shavings at the market

We spent a delicious day at The Chiang Mai Thai Farm Cooking School (www.thaifarmcooking.com), visiting a market in the countryside before touring the school's farm of fresh-as-can-be ingredients, including bananas, mangoes, galangal, ginger, kaffir limes, lemongrass, and more. We cooked a feast with ingredients from the farm, including red curry chicken (kaeng phed gai), basil chicken (phad kaprao gai), pad thai, and chicken coconut soup (tom kaa gai). Are you noticing a pattern? Gai means chicken! We made our curry paste from scratch, but you can see in the photo below that Thai cooks can purchase fresh curry paste in red, yellow, or green from the market in bulk.

Green curry paste for purchase at the market (thai cooks' secret)

Chili sauces and oil at the market

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the 20 baht (70 cent) bag of FRESH green peppercorns.
That's galangal directly behind the peppercorns.

Sarah and I had these little balls of delight in a very thin sauce with red peppers and lots of broth on our first night in Thailand at a street market stall, served on a skewer of chicken, pineapple, tomato, and onion. Oh how I would love to have access to fresh green peppercorns in California.

In case you're wondering how to make sticky rice...
First, you must purchase sticky rice grains. You can't make sticky rice by using regular rice grains. Next, soak the sticky rice in water overnight. Finally, steam the rice in a bamboo steamer until it is soft. Voila!

We learned a very important lesson at cooking school.
How to eat sticky rice...
1. Grab a ball of the rice with your fingers (half the size of a ping pong ball)
2. Roll the ball in the palm of your hands.
3. Flatten the ball into the shape of a blood cell.
4. Use your patty to scoop up bites of yummy Thai food.

Cold Storage

Dreisbach is my neighbor. When I moved in, my landlord told me that they provided cold storage and that, even on the hottest of days, we would see men coming out of the factory in huge coats. What I notice a lot more than the men in the big coats is the mack trucks that idle in front of my house around the clock, while using my short street to turn around and back up to the warehouse. On moving day, my moving truck wasn't able to get to my house because 2 trucks were blocking the street. I asked my neighbor if this was normal and he smiled and said, "Oh yeah! You'll hear trucks right here at 3 in the morning! All the time!" I was scared, very scared.

As it turns out, Dreisbach hasn't been such a bad neighbor. The trucks come at 4am, they idle, they block my driveway in the morning when I'm trying to leave for work. But, all in all, the drivers are courteous when I need to leave, and its kind of exciting having this kind of industry going on right here. The steel manufacturer directly across the street from my house is a story for another day...

I learned from the tour of Dreisbach that they are a 3rd generation family business established right here in 1900, and that they have locations in Pajaro and Watsonville, near where I grew up, where they freeze fruits and vegetable straight from the farm for packaging. They also use the train tracks and rail spur directly behind their factory to load and unload merchandise. They store foods on their way to Asia (eg. "Chicken Paws" [feet!] heading for China pictured above) and foods just arrived from all over the world, on their way to the American market.

Nuts for nuts

Artisana Premier Organics in East Oakland makes nut butters out of mostly raw nuts. They make macadamia, cashew, raw cacao, almond, and coconut butters. They provided tons of samples to taste and then to take home. I must say that I am converted. The nut butters I've been putting on my toast are superb. Its great to know that these healthy exotic products are made right here in Oakland. The nuts come from across the globe to be ground in this factory.

Artisana Premier Organics Sampling Table

Artisana started in the old Sunshine Biscuits factory, but have moved across the street.

Veronica Foods

Cubes of Vinegar

Veronica Foods, near the waterfront of Jingletown, Oakland, receives train cars full of olive oil and vinegar on their own set of train tracks located right outside the back door of their factory. In a year, they import over a million gallons of olive oil from all over the world. Veronica and Michael Bradley run the business. Veronica is the granddaughter of the founder of the company. Their daughter makes countless varieties of flavored vinegars, including violet and espresso flavors.

Olive Oil vat

Veronica and Michael taught us how to taste olive oil from a cup. Step 1. Slurp, Step 2. coat your tongue, Step 3. Feel the burn on the back of your throat. They also taught us that the number one criteria for good olive oil is freshness. All olive oil should be eaten within one year of production.

Stacks of Olive Oil

Veronica Foods

6,000 pound olive oil sack

They took a hint from the wine industry on how to ship their oil. These 6,000 lb. vacuum sealed sacks never allow air to touch the oil. They travel the world forming relationships with their farmers. They also established a mill in Tunisia to produce their own oils.

Exotic Teas of Oakland

Numi Tea is located in part of the historic California Cotton Mills in Oakland. The tea that started it all for the brother and sister that run the company is a dry desert lime tea that their mother served them as children. They couldn't find the tea as adults and decided to solve that problem. They've since expanded to many exotic teas from all over the world. Numi Tea is organic and they form relationships with their tea farmers in order to ensure the highest quality.

Scenic Historic Cotton Mills Warehouse

Bulk Teas in the "tea garden"

Visitors to the tea garden can sample Numi Teas and nibble on snacks, such as cookies flavored with Numi Tea.

Blue Bottle Coffee (aka torture stop)

The third stop on Oakland's Food Industry Tour was at Blue Bottle Coffee in Jack London Square. To be fair, the owner, James Freeman, said he doesn't like that name and calls it the produce district. The rest of the world still calls the area Jack London. In fact, Blue Bottle's factory was a long-time produce warehouse and quite a few produce wholesalers continue to do business in the area. Why did I title this the 'torture stop'? Because we didn't have time to drink coffee! The smells were intoxicating in themselves. I learned that all their coffee is organic and that they cook their delightful pastries on sight. Mr. Freeman is married to the pastry chef. He showed us raw coffee beans, that kind of look like kids teeth after they fall out.

Blue Bottle's Oakland Factory

If you would like to taste the glory that is Blue Bottle Coffee, they host free and open to the public cuppings on Tuesdays and Sundays at 2pm each week.

California Cereal Products

California Cereal Products, West Oakland

You may have seen this building in West Oakland and wondered what it was. I didn't see a sign, and I must say, it looks more than a little scary from the outside. I was granted entry on the Tour of Oakland's Food Industry with the Samuel Knight Chapter of the Society for Industrial Archaeology. We weren't allowed to take photos so I can't share what it looked like inside. The building opened in 1917 as a Shredded Wheat factory. It was sold to the National Biscuit Company (later renamed Nabisco) in 1928. In 1994 California Cereal Products took over the plant. CCP produces organic breakfast cereals and rice flour, much of which is exported to Japan. It smells nice inside, like cooking rice and toasting rice. They have a giant sugar coating machine for the cereal. Walking through the factory in my hair net and earplugs I realized that this was the first working factory I'd been in. The factory has gorgeous huge windows that I'm more used to seeing in converted loft living spaces. It's striking that organic food can be produced in West Oakland in a building nearly a century old surrounded by barbed wire.

Hodo Soy Beanery

I joined a tour of Oakland's Food Industry on September 7th hosted by Anthony Meadow, President of the Samuel Knight Chapter of the Society for Industrial Archaeology. We visited 8 Oakland food businesses in one day! The tour was led by Margot Prado, Senior Business Development Specialist for the City of Oakland, and Betty Marvin, of the Oakland Cultural Heritage Survey for the City of Oakland.


Our first stop was Hodo Soy Beanery in West Oakland where founder and tofu master, Minh Tsai welcomed us and told us about accompanying his grandpa to the local tofu shack in Vietnam as a child. Minh couldn't find the excellent quality tofu he craved here in the U.S., so he started making it himself. Hodo sold at farmers markets only at first, and now they are expanding to selling in local stores. They are expanding to the southern California and Pacific Northwest markets right now as an experiment. Since tofu doesn't have a long shelf life, Minh doesn't foresee expanding much farther than the West Coast.

Tofu Skin (yuba) forming on soy milk.

Folding the yuba for packaging.

Yuba is so tasty! Minh treated us to samples of many tofu varieties, all of which were delicious!

El Conquistador

We had my birthday dinner at El Conquistador, a very festive colorful restaurant in Silverlake with great art on the walls and super friendly staff. We ate mole enchiladas and enchiladas with an avocado cream sauce. Yum.

For dessert they brought me flan with a birthday candle in it and 3 of the staff joined in singing me happy birthday. The margaritas were superb!

http://www.elconquistadorrestaurant.com/

Los Angeles!

Los Angeles! I visited for the first time in years, soaking up the ambiance by spending lots of the day in the car. Although...we did walk from the Los Angeles County Art Museum (LACMA) to The Farmers Market for lunch. The streets just don't feel the same there for walking. I'm accustomed to the wide sidewalks of San Francisco, whereas L.A. streets are wide, while the sidewalks are narrow. The colorful image above is an installation at LACMA.