Episode 7: Gettin’ Jalapeño Business (with Rachel Khong)

Samin and Hrishi brainstorm great snack ideas for hiking, but sometimes wander off the trail, and author Rachel Khong (@rrrrrrrachelkhong) breaks down her quest to find the best way to cook rice—without a rice cooker.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

Food ideas discussed in this episode:

Homemade tortillas
Mix masa harina with water and let stand to hydrate. Press in a tortilla press, or roll flat between two plastic bags with a rolling pin. Cook on a cast iron pan until they puff up a little bit, then steam under a towel until they're totally soft. The wonderful Pati Jinich walks you through every single step here. 

Jalapeño poppers
Scrape the inside ribs and seeds out of jalapeños. Fill them with delicious melty cheese, bread the outside, and deep fry. Try this recipe if you’re feeling up to it. 

Huevos a la Mexicana
Slice onion, tomato and jalapeño. Sauté the onions for a little while, then add the jalapeño and the tomatoes. Cook briefly, then add your eggs and scramble it all together. Add salt and pepper.

Homemade hot sauce
Clean chilies: remove stems, and remove seeds to taste (more seeds make hotter sauce). Put peppers into a big jar and add garlic cloves if desired. Add 2% salt by weight and sugar and spices as desired. Cover with water, making sure everything is submerged. Seal and leave on the countertop. Ferment until peppers float and liquid is slightly fizzy (5-7 days in warm weather, up to 2 weeks in cooler weather). Move chilies to a blender and puree them with a small amount of the brine. Continue adding brine until desired texture is reached, and adjust seasoning as desired with vinegar, sugar, salt and/or lemon or lime. Store hot sauce in the fridge. The leftover brine can be used as a condiment or base for vinaigrettes. Try this recipe to start with. 

Kale Pesto
Try Joshua McFadden’s Kale Pesto, but use whatever greens, nuts or cheeses you’ve got on hand!

Oatmeal cookies
Try substituting goji berries in Stella Parks’s recipe. 

Alice Medrich's Dried Fruit and Nut Cake
It is so good!

Lindsey’s energy cookies
½ cup sunflower seeds
½ cup pumpkin seeds
½ cup sesame seeds
2 tablespoons flax seeds
4 cups flour
2 cups oats
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 cup raisins
1 cup hot water
1 cup oil
1 cup honey
¾ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips 

Toast the seeds. While they are cooling, in a large bowl, combine flour, oats, baking powder and salt. Soak raisins in hot water for about 15 minutes. Drain, but preserve the raisin water. Add the raisin water to the dry mixture. Add canola oil and honey. With a rubber spatula, stir until combined. Add cooled seeds, raisins and chocolate chips. Stir to combine, but don't over-mix. Form teaspoon sized patties on cookie sheets and bake for 15 minutes at 350.

Ashure cereal [ link ]
(Try making with puffed quinoa instead of puffed wheat for higher protein content)

Peanuts and ranch dressing
It kind of tastes like corn nuts.

Microwave chocolate cake [ link ]

Pickled beet eggs
Place hard-boiled eggs and sliced beets into a jar with vinegar. Refrigerate.

Bloody Mary with pickle brine
Try this one

Pickle brine fried chicken [ link ]
Brine chicken thighs overnight in pickle brine. Deep fry, then put some pickles on your fried chicken sandwich.

Sweet potato home fries
Precook sweet potatoes by boiling until soft. Dice onions and cook in hot fat, like duck fat or coconut oil. When onions start to brown, add sweet potatoes. Do not turn until a crust has started to form, then turn and let sit again, etc until a crust forms on all sides. Drain off excess fat and serve with a poached egg, hot sauce, and an herb salad.

Shepherd’s pie with sweet potatoes
Make a base of vegetable stew (e.g. onions, carrots, corn, peppers), or use ground meat and peas. Shepherd's pie with peas. Make a mashed sweet potato topping and pipe or spoon it over the base. 

Bake at approximately 400 degrees until brown and bubbly on top.

Sweet potato pie
Dolester Miles’s version is probably the best one out there 

Sweet potato bebinca [ link ]

Plum Icebox Plums (plum sorbet)
Put ripe plums into the food processor with some sugar, and a little water if needed. Optionally, add a little plum liquor or another fruit liquor. Puree, and then freeze in a sorbet machine. (Inspired by “This Is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams.)

View this post on Instagram

This past Sunday, a very important event took place. The Khong-Horowitz and So-Haeg households held a socially distanced, cooked-rice taste test, aka The Great Very Scientific Rice Off!!! We cooked the same Koshihikari rice four ways (Tatung steamer, stovetop, donabe, and microwave; neither household owns a rice cooker), and tasted each rice blind, ranking each on aroma, texture, and taste. (Texture, of utmost importance, was given double weight.) The final results? *drumroll please* Both members of the Khong-Horowitz household chose donabe-cooked rice as their top choice, and the So-Haeg household chose Tatung steamer–cooked rice!!! Tatung took first place when total points were added, and Donabe took first place in ranked-choice voting. 🏅🏅🍚🍚 My personal ranking was 1 Donabe (19 points), 2 Tatung (17 points), 3 Stovetop (16 points), 4 Microwave (5 points). Stovetop and donabe rice ranked 5 on my texture scale, with fully hydrated yet distinct, separate grains. I docked a point for the Tatung rice’s texture because its grains were *too* separate for my taste, almost under-hydrated. I found the microwave rice serviceably good, but unevenly cooked: harder in some spots, gummier in others. “Can taste flavor of water” I noted for the Tatung-cooked rice. Steamer and donabe ranked highest for aroma, though the aroma of Koshihikari rice remained fairly elusive. “More of a smell” was my highest praise. Our final findings: rice is good and you should cook it however you want! Video edited by @natalie_so with additional camerawork by @searchresults

A post shared by Rachel Khong (@rrrrrrrachelkhong) on Jul 21, 2020 at 2:04pm PDT

Illustration by Mamie Rheingold