Mexican Brown Sugar

This week’s food item may not seem odd to all, but it was to me, so it counts. If you go to a specialty market, like Lola's, and see something unusual, it is odd. So to me, Mexican Brown Sugar is odd. Mexican Brown Sugar, also known as Panela and Piloncillo, is unrefined sugar that tastes like brown sugar and molasses and comes in a cool cone shape. It can be substituted for brown sugar in many recipes, but I wanted a recipe that called specifically for it. One popular recipe was Pralines, which normally uses pecans. The one thing I really do not like is nuts, except for pine nuts. And would you guess that they had a recipe using pine nuts instead of pecans?! They did! I headed to Safeway and bought a cup of pine nuts for $7.00. I was not happy with that price considering I paid .43 cents (where is the cents symbol on the keyboard?) for the brown sugar. I thought this would be a cheap meal.

In any case, I started the pralines by grating the brown sugar. This took an entire hour. One hour to grate a cone of Mexican brown sugar. An hour. Straight.

Did not get quite 1 3/4 cups, but it worked nonetheless.

After I complained a little more, I began to cook the brown sugar, salt and water. Now, its says to cook until it reaches 236 degrees, but I do not have a thermometer so I had no idea when it was supposed to be done. I just kept watching it boil until I felt satisfied. I would recommend low to medium heat for about 15 minutes. Until it starts to get really bubbly and thickens up a bit. I then took it off the heat, added the butter and vanilla and let it sit for 8 minutes to thicken up. If you do not think it is thick enough, put it back on the heat until it reaches your desired consistency. Lastly, I added the pine nuts and mixed them until all the nuts were coated with the sugar. I dropped spoonfuls onto my already prepared foil covered baking sheet and let them sit until they hardened, about 20 to 30 minutes.

These turned out extremely sweet and as much as I love sweets, if the majority of it is not chocolate, I do not want to eat it. The pralines were too sweet for my taste, but my friend Brian seemed to enjoy them. He ate 5 of them. I was getting tired of my roommates not enjoying anything I cook, so I let them off the hook as taste-testers this week. If you like the Nuts & Chews box from See's, I would recommend these. If not, spend $7.00 on something else.

-Em

Mung Beans

I have to give a shout out to the other Emily in the class that suggested I check out Asiana Market across the street from Sift Cupcakery in Cotati. Thank you! :) 

Asiana market is very small but they sure can pack a lot of items into that little store. Among the items were...I don’t know. They all had Asian lettering on the packaging making it difficult to tell what everything was. I did, however, recognize those Pocky chocolate dipped things, I love those. Anyway, I ended up picking up a bag of mung beans for this week’s meal. 

I immediately associated mung beans with Creed from The Office and could not pass up buying them. And for only $1.69 a bag, they were a bargain! 

I looked up recipes using mung beans while in the store (thank you, smartphone) and decided on Mung Bean Stew. Just the sound of that makes your mouth water, doesn’t it? I stopped by the grocery store on the way home picking up carrots, sweet potatoes, celery, an onion, vegetable stock and spices.

The first step is to boil the beans for about 20 minutes, but I would recommend boiling them for 30 minutes because mine were not completely soft after just 20 minutes. After draining and rinsing the beans with cold water, I moved on to boiling the potatoes. I used sweet potatoes because if there is a sweet version of anything, I prefer it. Those take about 10 minutes. After setting those aside with the beans, I started the rest of the vegetables.

I combined celery, carrots, onion and garlic in a pan with heated oil. I left out the mushrooms because I am not a fan. Those became tender after about 10 minutes and I added the vegetable stock and spices. In addition to the salt and pepper the recipe called for, I added cayenne pepper, cumin, rosemary and a bay leaf. I can guarantee you the stew would not have tasted as good without these spices. I am a big believer in spices, I do not think they can really hurt a meal unless you add too much of one spice. But I urge you to use and experiment with different spices.

After cooking the vegetables with the vegetable stock for a few minutes, I combined it with the potatoes and mung beans in a casserole dish. Cover with a lid if you have one, if not, like myself, simply cover with foil. Place the dish in a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes. I do not see the point in putting the stew in the oven, it did not cook anything more then it already was. In any case, it came out very delicious. The sweet potato added some sweetness to the meal and the beans did not have a very distinct taste to me but did not taste bad. I saw them as just a substitution for peas. My roommates were not as fond of the meal as I was.

Angie: "Oh...this is not what I was expecting."

Maygor: “No.” (Makes disgusted face)

About 10 minutes later...

Maygor: “What do you want me to do with this? Do you want it?”

No I do not want your picked over stew Maygor. 

Although Maygor did not eat much of it, Angie finished the majority of it and Nicole got out of tasting this week. Luckily, I had lunch and dinner for the next few days. 

With this recipe I would like to make more of a gravy then just a thin stock and possibly try it as a pot pie filling. If there is anything you should know about me, it is my love of chicken pot pies. Maybe I will start a chicken pot pie blog. But overall, I really enjoyed the stew and the mung beans. I think the beans would be good as just a side dish, too.

-Em