Eats, Drinks, and Reads: March 23, 2021
Double cactus feature and mapo lasagna
It’s been a long week since our last newsletter and there’s been so much that our communities have had to process.
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From Brianna
Beyond Larb
Chris and I have already tried this larb recipe from Chrissy Teigen’s second cookbook. We were searching for a side for Chrissy’s (very good) beef rendang, but I think this dish is best served as a main. The first time we tried subbing ground pork with Impossible meat, and this week we switched it up again with Beyond Meat. I think I like Impossible meat a little more, but Beyond is the same price for 25% more product so I’m not too picky. I don’t think that we’ll ever try this recipe with actual meat, it’s just too good as it is. One thing to note is that our larb wasn’t entirely vegetarian due to the use of fish sauce, although I assume any alternative would still be great. This larb was so incredibly simple to make (I still haven’t attempted Night + Market’s larbs, which require a slightly more intensive trip to the Asian market) and was a crowd pleaser for our Asian parents.
Nova Cactus Fruit Hard Kombucha
Nima and I headed back to Nova Kombucha for Taco Tuesday this past week. I think we’ve made a silent pact to only go to Nova for their Taco Tuesday deal, $8 for a pint of kombucha and a taco is too good to pass up. It was our first time back since they originally opened, and I was itching to try Nova’s new flavor, Cactus Fruit. I don’t have a lot of experience consuming cactus fruit, but I don’t think that the flavor was too fruity or cactus-forward. I mostly got a mild to medium spicy sensation due to the jalapeño, just enough to keep things interesting. I’ve had plenty of spicy margaritas but have never had a spicy kombucha or any other spicy drink that could be served in a can. My love for Nova is well-documented within T2HS, so I won’t bore you with another love letter. If you can get your hands on it, definitely give it a shot.
Strawberry Cacti
A double cactus feature! The search for Cacti, Travis Scott and Anheuser-Busch’s new hard seltzer collab, was embarrassingly difficult. For starters, the store locator for Cacti suuucks. Nima and I checked out a handful of stores (did I not say that it was EMBARRASSING?) and none of them had Cacti. Chris got lucky in that the first place he checked, his local liquor store, had multiple boxes of it. Maybe Orange County knows what’s good for them. I read some disparaging reviews for Cacti online, and I truly tried to go in with an open mind.
To keep things succinct, Travis is 1 for 3 with these seltzers. Of the three flavors, I tried Pineapple first because Kelly Conaboy called this flavor “pleasant” in her review for Stereogum. While Kelly is my trusted source of information for novelty food reviews, I felt led astray here. The Pineapple flavor is awful, and Strawberry is only a fraction better. They don’t even taste like the flavor they’re trying to emulate, all that it’s giving is BAD. Bud Light Seltzer’s Strawberry flavor runs laps around Cacti’s, and is maybe half the price. I will say that the Lime flavor is the entire line’s saving grace, I’d call it genuinely good. I’m also a tequila fan, so the bite of the agave didn’t come as a surprise or deterrent to my review. I’ve always wondered why there isn’t more variety in the Hard Seltzer game, but I’m not sure that my questions are answered with Cacti. I’d recommend them for a La Flame enthusiast in your life, but otherwise - skip.
From Stephanie
For my monthly cookbook club, I made chef Lucas Sin’s mapo lasagna, which I encountered on Instagram during my two-month long break from regular cooking when I was home in California. Transcribing the recipe below with a few modifications based on my lasagna assembly, which quickly ran out of bechamel, tofu ricotta and mapo ragu due to the large dish size used.
Makes one 9 x 13 lasagna
Spice Mix
1 tbsp of Sichuan peppercorn (ground or whole)
1 tbsp of black peppercorn (ground or whole)
1 tbsp of coriander (ground or whole)
Sichuan Bechamel
4 tbsp butter
4 tbsp flour
4 cups of milk (warm or room temperature)
Spice mix
Mapo “Ragu”
Olive oil
2 packages of uncooked sweet Italian sausage (about 32 oz total)
1 one-inch knob of ginger, finely minced
8 garlic cloves, finely minced
4 stalks of scallions greens, chopped
Spice mix
2-3 tbsp doubanjiang
Chili oil as needed
2 cups of chicken/beef/vegetable stock
Tofu Ricotta
2 container of ricotta
2 16oz container of silken or soft tofu (cubed)
1 bunch of parsley
Other
Lasagna noodles (enough to cover 9 by 13 pan multiple times)
12oz of leafy green vegetables (kale, spinach, collard, etc; remove stems as needed)
16 oz of fresh mozzarella
Steps
Preheat the oven to 375F.
Combine the Sichuan peppercorn, coriander and black pepper. If using whole spices, grind and mix together.
Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Add the flour and quickly stir together to make a roux. Add the 1 tbsp of the spice mix to bloom. Continue to stir for 1-2 minutes.
Add the milk to the saucepan and quickly whisk to break up the roux. Bring the mix to a boil and keep on heat for 2-3 minutes, or until it thickens. Remove from heat.
If your lasagna noodles need to soak for 30 minutes, soak it now.
In boiling pot of water, blanch the tofu for 4-5 minutes. Remove from water and drain.
Once the tofu has cooled slightly, blend the tofu with the ricotta. Add chopped parsley to the tofu-ricotta and mix.
Heat some olive oil in a sauce pan or dutch oven. Remove the skin from the sweet Italian sausages. Add the sweet Italian sausage ground meat to hot oil, breaking it up into small pieces.
After a few minutes, add garlic, scallions, ginger, and 1 tbsp of the spice mix. Mix for a 20 seconds, then add the doubanjiang. Add chili oil if needed.
Add 2 cups of chicken/vegetable stock and reduce.
While the mapo ragu is reducing, blanch your greens in boiling water for 30 seconds. Remove from water and drain.
Once the mapo ragu has reduced so that there is minimal liquid and the lasagna noodles are done soaking/cooking, layer the lasagna in a 9 by 13 pan bystarting with the bechamel sauce at the bottom. On top of the bechamel sauce, layer the lasagna noodle, the mapo ragu, blanched greens and tofu ricotta. Repeat as needed. (According to his IG story, Sin repeats the assembly 3-4 times, but I only repeated twice since I ran out of mapo ragu and tofu ricotta. Or maybe my layers were too thick? Readers, please report back if you use Sin’s original recipe or my modified approach.)
Add a healthy layer of shredded mozzarella to the top of the lasagna, covering the top.
Put the lasagna in the oven and bake for 40-45 minutes. Towards the end, broil the lasagna for 2-3 minutes, until golden brown.
Other notes:
For T2HS readers’ stay-at-home experimentation: Incorporate some layers of tomato sauce into the lasagna for some acid. One 12oz can of tomatoes, with the last tablespoon of the spice mix mixed in, should do it.
Reads
Unsnackable by Folu Akinkuoto
Unsnackable, Folu Akinkuoto’s weekly newsletter, has been the delight of my late quarantine season. Folu is quite possibly the only person who appreciates a novelty snack more than yours truly. Each week I discover new snacks and food-ish items to add to my hit list, ranging from sweet to boozy. It was through Unsnackable that the presence of McDonald’s Germany’s Limited Edition McFlurry Body Wash was brought into my life. Just the knowledge of knowing something like this exists is quite enough for me, not that I ever expect it to grace my undeserving body. - BN
Mango and Peppercorns: A Memoir of Food, an Unlikely Family, and the American Dream by Tung Nguyen, Katherine Manning and Lyn Nguyen, with Elisa Ung
Purchased on a whim at Bold Fork Books, Mango and Peppercorns pulls back the curtains at Hy Vong, a Vietnamese restaurant that rose to become one of Miami’s top culinary destinations. It uses a parallel narrative format that goes back-and-forth between friends and culinary partners Tung and Katherine, illuminating each of their personal stories as their worlds collide after the fall of Saigon. The challenges that Tung overcomes throughout her life is especially inspiring, creating a powerful narrative on family and immigration. - SY