2012: The Alien Ingredient Series

Each week of 2012 here at One Block West Restaurant, we are aiming to find, use, and document two new-to-us (aka "alien") ingredients for a total of 100 during the year. I have worked with hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of ingredients from all over the world in the past 30 years of cooking. But a quick trip through our new international food market here in lovely Winchester, VA reminded me that there are hundreds more ingredients out there that I have never worked with.

So the crew and I are on this mission to document what we find and are using, to not only broaden our own knowledge, but truth be told, to have some fun too. We love surfing through markets for cool stuff. We're just like kids in candy stores!

The 2012 Alien Ingredient Series

1. Dwarf Truffle Peaches
2. St. Germain
3. Culantro
4. Epazote
5. Banana Flower
6. Dragon Fruit
7. Pickled Eggplant
8. Coquitos
9. Buddha's Hand
10. Nilgai Antelope
11. Cancha/Maíz Chulpe
12. Tteok
13. Silkie (Black) Chicken
14. Choclo
15. Fresh Green Chickpeas
16. Spondias/Mombin/Jocote
17. Jackfruit
18. Guava
19. Shungiku/Tung Ho
20. Okinawa Sweet Potato
21. Lotus Root
22. Guaje
23. Rau Răm
24. Kinh Giới
25. Ngò om/Rice Paddy Herb
26. Khao Thong
27. Rambutan 
28. Artichoke Stems
29. Korean Melon
30. Goose Eggs 
31. Longan
32. Fresh Lychee
33. Mamoncillo 
34. Dosakai
35. Wax Apple
36. Chipilin
37. Tasmanian Pepper Syrup
38. Lentil Shoots
39. Sweet Lime

Alien Ingredient #39: Sweet Lime

Sweet Limes: Don't Bother

I've tried a lot of citrus in my life and here's one that is new to me: Citrus limetta, the so-called sweet lime. Sweet is right. It is super sweet. And it doesn't have any citric acid to balance that sweetness so it comes off like really insipid orange juice.

The juice has orange juice notes with perhaps a touch of citronella (lemongrass) coming from the rind, but no detectable acidity.

We were going to use these in an upside-down cake just like we use Meyer lemons and blood oranges, but no. These guys went in the trash. Bummer.

Vote: Yeah, nope! No acid, no joy.

Alien Ingredient #38: Lentil Shoots

Lentil Shoots: A Beautiful Garnish

One of my growers brought me a flat of microgreens that I had never seen before and asked me, "What is it?" I tasted a couple shoots and they start a touch bitter then finish distinctly green chickpea. Some tasters said they tasted like green peas, but these sprouts taste more chickpea to me. And they look like a legume as well. She told us that these are lentil shoots.

Vote: with a beautiful texture and a pleasant pea flavor, what's not to love?

Alien Ingredient #37: Tasmanian Pepper Syrup

Tasmanian Pepper Syrup

My specialty goods sales rep called me and said, "Ed, you buy some crazy stuff. You should try this stuff we just got." And he's right, I buy crazy stuff, especially if I have never tried it before. I just have that itch to taste as many foods as I can before I die.

This is a syrup made from the fruit of a small shrub (Tasmannia lanceolata) native to Tasmania and southeastern Australia. This fruit has been used as a black pepper substitute.

When I first heard about the syrup, I thought "duck." And then I tasted it. It combines the flavors of black pepper, cinnamon, and red wine, all of which we use today to garnish our duck breasts and lots of other things.

And most certainly, this syrup will go with the duck breast on our menu this evening. And equally most certainly, I will not pay $13 again for a tiny quantity of a syrup that I can easily imitate by adding black peppercorns to our current red wine-cinnamon syrup recipe.

Vote: delicious! But I can make a gallon of similarly flavored syrup for the same price.

Alien Ingredient #36: Chipilin

Chipilin: A Legume from Sothern Mexico and Central America

I was trolling through the market a few weeks back and I saw some mangy looking plants with leaves similar to peanuts, but they were in too sad a shape to bring back to the restaurant. And they were not labeled. I saw a guy with some in his basket, so I asked him what they were and what they were used for. Alas, he spoke no English, but still I managed to learn that they were called chipilin and were used in chicken soup.

I finally found a beautiful bunch that I brought home with me to check out. It turns out that I was right in thinking peanuts; chipilin is a perennial legume of the Crotalaria genus. We checked it out raw, quickly stir-fried with garlic, and boiled as a pot herb. The color is beautiful and we could see where it could add greatly to the presentation of caldo de pollo, but the flavor just isn't there. It is a very neutral and fairly boring green leafy vegetable.

Vote: a very pretty leafy green but extremely uninteresting in flavor. Give me spinach or pea shoots!

Alien Ingredient #35: Wax Apple

So here's an interesting tropical fruit that I stumbled on yesterday. It's called the wax apple in the store where I bought it. Officially known as Syzygium samarangense, it hails from Thailand to India and Malaysia to the Philippines.

It's a small fruit (refer to the cherry tomato in the photo) that is firm and has a smooth skin like a pear but with a waxier texture and a dimpled end just like a chayote. Biting into the fruit, the first thing that comes to mind is a pear or a watermelon because the fruit is dripping with juice.

I found the fruit to have a sweet flavor at first, dissipating in the middle, and then finishing with a slight piny afternote that I think comes from the skin. The flesh is fairly pithy and nearly flavorless. I wound up sucking all the juice out of the fruit and spitting out what little flesh there was.

Vote: they're a fun fruit in the summer, but their uses are pretty limited.

Alien Ingredient #34: Dosakai

Dosakai to left of Mango

And here's another random fruit that I found surfing the produce section of the market, this one labelled "Dosaki" [sic]. Almost round, about as large as a small grapefruit, and bright yellow with a smooth skin, this fruit seemed to be a melon from the outset. So I picked one of the more yellow ones with yielding flesh just like I would have picked any other melon (and in retrospect, this may have been a mistake). It didn't have much scent, perhaps just a touch of honeydew. In the photo above, you can see it in comparison to a large Tommy Atkins mango.

Looks like a Melon or Cuke

Cutting open the fruit, it sure resembles a melon, so I scooped out the seeds and spooned out a bit of flesh. It was mealy in an overripe kind of way and sour like the rind of a watermelon, without a whole lot of flavor. I admit that I consigned my bite to the trashcan. Turning to the web, I found that this is a dosakai, a type of cucumber that comes from India where it is used in all manners of ways. Now knowing that, I wish that I had picked a less ripe one that I could have used in a pickle or a curry, like I would use a winter melon.

Vote: I'll pass. Persian cucumbers are better for eating. Winter melons seem better for cooking.

Alien Ingredient #33: Mamoncillo

Mamoncillo: What Exactly is the Point?

I was walking through the produce section of the market when these tiny, lime-looking fruits caught my eye. Yet another fruit I've never heard of, this one called mamoncillo (Melicoccus bijugatus). They are lime green to olive green in color with a skin that approximates that of a lime, albeit without any of that beautiful citrus fragrance in the rind. The skins are very thin and easy to peel off after cracking with your teeth, leaving a pulpy (in a very ripe mango kind of way) flesh that is a light orange in color. Biting into the flesh was a mistake. As you can see from the mamoncillo in cross section in the photo, it's all hat and no cowboy: there's just a tiny layer of flesh around a big, hard seed. Tony tried the seed and wished he hadn't: I've never seen somebody spit something out so fast in my life! He reports it is very bitter.

So, you're salivating wanting to know what the pulpy not quite slimy flesh tastes like, aren't you? It is sour in a tamarind kind of lemony citrus way. OK, not so wonderful. I read on the internet that people boil them to make a juice from which they make aguas frescas. Yeah, I'm going to leave that to them. It seems a whole lot more productive to make an agua fresca from tamarind or lemon or lime.

Vote: What exactly is the point?

Alien Ingredient #32: Fresh Lychee

About 30 years ago, I got turned off to lychees when I was served a plate of canned ones as a dessert at a really bad American Chinese restaurant. They tasted and smelled like bad perfume.

Flash forward to 2012. The local FoodMaxx had a huge display of fresh lychees at a very reasonable price, so I brought a big bag back to the restaurant, where we immediately set about them. You can see in the photo above that they have a thin red skin which peels off easily revealing a very juicy white fruit with the consistency of peeled grape. Some have a big pit like you see here; others have a very tiny pit and correspondingly more fruit.

Fresh, ripe lychee tastes like good Gewürztraminer, sweet with essences of rose petals and other floral characteristics and none of that old-lady-with-way-too-much-perfume character that turned me off to the canned variety decades ago. The fresh fruits have a bit of tannins that I was not expecting. This is not a bad thing: the tannins are quite refreshing.

Like most fresh fruit, we don't plan to do anything with them; just eat them out of hand. It's really hard to improve on something that is already good.

Vote: Delicious, affordable, love them!

Alien Ingredient #31: Longan

Here's a small fruit from southeast Asia that I have never encountered before. Longans are small quarter dollar-sized fruits whose flesh resembles a white peeled grape, surrounding a small chestnut-looking seed in the center. The brown husk is easy enough to peel off. The flavor is very mild and very sweet, at honeydew melon with a hint of pineapple.

Vote: Good fruit, but not even close to the top of my list. I won't go out of my way to get any more of these.

Alien Ingredient #30: Goose Eggs

Here at the restaurant, we use a lot of eggs as you might imagine. We are very fortunate to use duck eggs almost exclusively in our pastries and as a result, our pastries are killer rich and delicious. As an aside, all our recipes specify eggs by weight, so it is trivial for us to substitute an equivalent weight of duck eggs for chicken eggs. Doing things by weight, besides being how professional kitchens do things, has always been a necessity for us because we have never used standardized eggs. When our supplier's chickens were young, we would receive tiny pullet eggs and later on, as the Rhode Island Reds got to maturity, we'd get honking great eggs that were twice the size of pullet eggs and half again bigger than a store-bought extra large egg.

Goose, Extra Large Duck, Duck, Extra Large Chicken, Quail

We are super fortunate that our duck egg supplier has a goose or two that are laying eggs, so she brought us some goose eggs for grins. As you can see in the photo, goose eggs run about three times the size of an extra large egg. Besides being huge, the yolks are very different from chicken or duck eggs, almost custardy or pasty. When cooked, goose eggs are much more similar to duck eggs than chicken eggs in that they are intensely eggy and rich. We easily prefer duck or goose eggs to chicken eggs for scrambled eggs, and that is saying something because our fresh chicken eggs taste awesome.

Duck, Duck, Goose

Here you see one application of our goose eggs in a dish that we call Duck, Duck, Goose. On the plate is a slab of sourdough bread French toast made with a goose egg custard and fried in foie gras fat. On top of this is what we call duck bacon, breast tenders that we cure in salt, sugar, and pink salt and then smoke. The next layer is scrambled goose egg with chives, done in the classic French preparation oeufs brouillés, whisked over a water bath until creamy and custardy. On top are threads of duck confit that we have shredded and deep fried. Maple syrup completes this delicious and over the top decadent dish.

Vote: Goose eggs are awesome and we prefer them to chicken eggs. Duck eggs are equally awesome!

Alien Ingredient #29: Korean Melon

Korean Melon, Cell Phone for Reference

I spied this small oblong orange-yellow melon at the market the other day and decided to take it home. I chose it like any other melon: I smelled it for fragrance and felt it for a little give. This one was fragrant and had plenty of give.

On cutting it open, the fragrance is a cross between honeydew and cantaloupe and the flesh is nearly white with a slight yellow cast. The flesh tasted the same way, but despite showing all the signs of ripeness, it was too firm to spoon out of the shell.

Vote: nothing to write home about. Both ripe honeydew and ripe cantaloupe blow this guy out of the water and at $1.79 for a tiny melon, it's very expensive. I'll wait for July and August for our local melons, thanks.

Alien Ingredient #28: Artichoke Stems

Out of the blue, one of our growers recently brought us a big bunch of artichoke leaves. I really don't know of any use for the gray-green leaves, but the central leaf ribs which you see in the picture below can be used like Swiss chard. Stripped down like this, they sort of resemble celery, chard, cardoon, or rhubarb stalks. We braised one of the artichoke stems in chicken stock with a touch of butter and lemon juice and our initial taste of the small end led us to believe that not only was the stalk edible, but that it tasted very much like artichokes, no surprise there.

I peeled the stalks down like celery or rhubarb, removing as many of the strings as I could and then braised them. We unleashed them on an unsuspecting table of guests at our Chef's Table. We served them stuffed with a classic Bolognese sauce made with some of our local rabbit. And the verdict, tasty but too stringy still. Darn! Back to the drawing board.

So we puréed them and served them as-is as a plate garnish, in a soup with asparagus, and as a sauce for some delicate John Dory filets. They worked admirably for these applications.

We're working on thinly slicing them across the grain to see how that works. I'm hoping that lets us use the stems in salad and side dish applications.

Vote: Delicious, but are probably best puréed and passed through a fine chinois. We'll take more any day.

Alien Ingredient #27: Rambutan

This hairy relative of the lichee looks rather bizarre but is really a delicious fruit with notes of sweet melon, peach and jackfruit. The texture of the flesh surrounding the small pit is similar to a firm grape, but like jackfruit the flesh is not juicy. On some, when the flesh would peel away from the seed, it would pull some of the seed coating away attached to the flesh. This seed coating has an almond-like flavor.

I found it necessary to nick the husk with a knife to start opening it. I left a few on the counter overnight trying to see if I could get them to ripen more. Bad move. They shriveled. It seems best to store them covered.

Vote: Fun, tasty, not super sweet, and not cloying like lichees, but at $8/pound with at most 50% yield, probably not worth the price.

Alien Ingredient #26: Khao Thong

On another quick trip to the market to grab a couple of things for the restaurant, I saw a new addition to the line up of Asian herbs. At first, I mistook this herb for sweet potato vines, which I have worked with many times in the past. But on closer inspection, it clearly wasn't sweet potatoes and it was labelled Kha Thong. Google didn't help, which led me to believe that there was a typo in the name somewhere.

It took me a few minutes of puzzling to figure that this was some kind of bastardized Thai name, but fortunately before I could spend too much time digging into the name or running it across the street to the Thai restaurant, a customer put me on the right track. [Tran Huong-Thu, thank you!]

I now see that I was looking for khao thong, or more properly, phak khao thong, aka Houttuynia cordata. English names are heartleaf and fishwort. It was described thus: "The shoots and young leaves of khao thong have a strong fish-like smell with a hint of lemon. They are eaten raw with jeo or laap, giving a slightly bitter flavour." And, "has an unusual taste that is often described as fishy (earning it the nickname "fish mint"), so it is not enjoyed as universally as basil, mint, or other more commonly used herbs."

Yeah, well Tony and I hadn't read this before we chowed down on a leaf and spit it out immediately. We have decided that there is a more fitting name for this plant: Ass Plant.

Vote: Ass Plant says it all. We have already been there and you have been warned. No need to go there yourself.

Alien Ingredient #25: Ngò om/Rice Paddy Herb

Here's another Vietnamese herb about which I have read much but never worked with before, the so-called rice paddy herb, a name that fittingly describes its preference for hot and wet growing conditions.

On tasting it, it presents a bright lemony, sweet, somewhat cumin-like flavor. In fact, it very much reminds me of shiso/perilla and I would use it in situations where I would use shiso. Which is a sneaky way of saying I wouldn't use it at all, not being a big fan of shiso. [When I say I'm not a fan, I'm not saying I won't eat it, because I will eat just about anything, but I am saying that there is no compelling reason for me to ever seek it out again.]

Vote: If you like shiso, you'll like ngò om. Me, I could do without shiso and I can do without rice paddy herb.

Alien Ingredient #24: Kinh Giới

This is a fun herb that I have never heard of before. At first, I mistook it for Lemon Balm, an herb that we grow here at the restaurant for its wonderful lemon flavor. With its square hairy stems, this mint (Elsholtzia ciliata) differs only in very slight ways from lemon balm. Tasting it, the flavor is slightly different too. It reminds me more of lemon zest than lemon balm does. Lemon balm has a slightly more lemongrass/citronella flavor. Of all the lemon-flavored herbs, this Vietnamese Lemon Balm is the closest imitator of lemon zest. It really is quite good and I look forward to converting this to a sorbet or granita for our tasting menus this week.

Vote: An herbal dead ringer for lemon zest. Excellent!

Postscript April 14, 2012. Kinh Giới has found a place on our appetizer menu in our Shrimp, Lemon, and Vietnamese Lemon Balm Risotto. It is proving to be quite a useful herb.

Alien Ingredient #23: Rau Răm

After years of reading in my Vietnamese cookbooks about this magical herb called rau răm (Persicaria odorata), I finally stumbled across some at the market. Excitedly, I brought some of this herb that is also called Vietnamese Coriander back to the restaurant. You can tell from the Latin odorata and the common name coriander that this should be a fragrant herb à la cilantro or Thai basil. And according to my texts, rau răm is used as a fresh herb, often as a garnish, just as are cilantro and basil.

I have rarely been more underwhelmed by an herb in my entire life. I crushed a leaf and it smelled of nothing but crushed green leaf. I tasted it and it was totally blah, just like chickweed. Nothing but a vegetal chlorophyll flavor.

I'll try again if I ever see it again, but this was a total waste of time and money.

Vote: What is the point?

Alien Ingredient #22: Guaje

I was amused to see what looks like locust pods in a bundle on the shelf of the produce section at the store. And even more amused to see them on an episode of Chopped the very same evening that I bought them for this series. These guajes are the seed pods of a Mimosa-/Acacia-looking tree (Leucaena leucocephala) native to southern Mexico. No wonder they look like locust seed pods—the trees are cousins. These have a bronze tint; I have also seen bundles of green pods as well. I am led to believe that they taste identical regardless of pod color.

First things first. There is no way that this seed pod is edible: it is way too tough. That some of the contestants on Chopped would have not figured this out just goes to show what lack of talent that show features. So how to open them? First, they're green (in the sense of immature) so they don't split open as readily as dried bean or locust pods. I've shelled a bunch of beans in my life and these are tougher than some and easier than others. Rip one of the long strings off one of the edges and then starting at the tip, try to split the two sides of the pod apart. Once you get it started, the pods open fairly readily and the beans pop right out.
So what you have left when you shell out the guajes is some green pumpkin seed looking affairs without a hard seed coat. Into the mouth it goes and—drumroll please—it tastes green and vegetal with overtones of avocado and a pleasant undercurrent of garlic. Not too different from the green chickpeas we tried a few weeks ago. The first thing that comes screaming into my brain is guacamole. As soon as the bags of avocados on the counter ripen later this week, these guajes are definitely going into guacamole. Some tortillas are going into the fryer. And I am feasting.

Digging around on the web, I see that guaje seeds are frequently used in guacamole (great minds think alike), in green salsas, and in cooked sauces. I have no doubt that they would be wonderful in my next batch of pepián (a green mole).

Vote: Who would think something this awesome comes from a dry, stringy seed pod? I love these things and am having a hard time imagining guacamole without them ever again.

Alien Ingredient #21: Lotus Root

Don't ask me why I've never worked with fresh lotus root before; I've certainly had the opportunity many times over the past 30 years. My guess is that I have tasted it before in a hot pot and had written it off as another bland vegetable. Take a good look at these lotus roots to the left: they are not what you want to buy. See the discoloration? No bueno. I didn't have any choice in these really; they were all the store had when I needed them for a hotpot requested by a customer. Well, truth be told, I did have a choice; I could have bought pre-prepped ones in the deli section of the store, but I see no need to pay someone else for 30 seconds of work on my part.

It takes no effort at all to peel the roots and then slice them. They do start to discolor a bit after a few minutes, so it is a good idea to cook them right away or store them under water, just as you would a potato. And because they come from fresh water, it is a good idea to blanch them to make sure that you kill any bacteria or parasites that they may be harboring.

Lotus roots fall into my category of bland vegetables that I use for texture in a dish, right alongside water chestnuts, daikon, and jicama. They also braise very well and perhaps surprisingly, they make interesting chips/crisps in the manner of potatoes.

Vote: low in calories, low in flavor, high in cool looks—there's nothing much to love or hate about this mostly boring root.