Dining In-A Culinary Tour of America: Celebration, Florida

Location: Celebration, Florida

This city is a relatively young city, and has an interesting background. It was developed in the mid 1990's by Disney's real estate division. The city's architecture has a distinct Disney touch to it. To a Disney fan, this city might be heaven on earth, but if you're not a Disney fan, it might be a bit much for you...It's proximity to Disney World is also beneficial to Disney fans. I am a Disney fan and if I could handle the heat and humidity, I would seriously consider living here one day. It would be like living in Downtown Disney and who wouldn't want that! The company continues to do much of their office-related work for the park in Celebration.

As of the 2010 census, there are 7,427 people living in Celebration. 91% are white, and the majority of the rest of the people are Hispanic/Latino. 4.1% of the city's population lives below the poverty line.

You might be asking, why did you choose Celebration? Well, for one good reason: It is the host of the annual "Great American Pie Festival" and 3/14/15 is Pi Day. One must always make pie on Pi Day, so what better place to visit? The festival is held in April, so we're a little early for it, but I think it still works.

The Food: Asparagus Quiche and Bumbleberry Pie

My first thought for dinner-related pie was the obvious: Chicken pot pie. However, I have done something quite similar to that already when I featured Vermont and I don't want to repeat myself if at all possible. So I wracked my brain a bit more and thought of quiche, another savory pie. I was able to find a recipe card that I had never tried and was quite excited about that. I also wanted to make a dessert pie and ran across another card for bumbleberry pie and thought it would be a fun one to experiment with. The quiche I followed the recipe exactly, but the bumbleberry pie I altered so much that I will just write out what I did, as opposed to writing out the original recipe with my notes. It'll be easier to read that way.

Asparagus Quiche: Courtesy of the Taste of Home Magazine, a recipe I cut out forever ago, but have never tried till now.

1lb. fresh asparagus, trimmed
1 unbaked pastry shell, 9"
3 Tbsp. butter
3 Tbsp. flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups milk
4 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup shredded Swiss cheese(I used reduced fat and it worked just fine)
1/4 cups dry bread crumbs(I recommend Trader Joe's brand or make your own. All the other brands from the store have corn syrup in the ingredient list and that's not what I want in my bread crumbs...But to each his/her own...)

Cut 8 asparagus spears into 4" pieces; cut remaining spears into 1/2" pieces. Cook all of the asparagus in a small amount of water until tender(I did it until it was al dente. It will continue to cook in the oven so you don't want to overcook it at this point.); drain and set aside. Line the unpricked pastry shell with a double thickness of heavy-duty foil. Bake at 450 degrees for 5 minutes. Remove foil; bake 5 minutes longer.(This is known as blind-baking, where you prebake the shell for a while without the filling in it. If you ever come across this term in a pastry recipe and don't know what it means, now you know!) Remove from the oven and set aside.

In a saucepan over medium heat, melt butter, stir in flour and salt. Gradually add milk; cook and stir until thickened.(This is called a bechamel sauce and is usually the base for macaroni and cheese, if you have ever made that from scratch before.) Stir a small amount into eggs(this is called "tempering" and it's vital to do this properly or you will scramble the eggs. Do not skip this step and make sure to whisk the eggs constantly while adding the hot bechamel sauce.); return all to the pan. Stir in cheese and 1/2" asparagus pieces. Pour into the crust.(I found it was just a bit too much for the crust and about 1/4 cup of the liquid spilled out. I allowed it to spill and just cleaned it up because I didn't want it to spill even more in the oven and burn. This turned out to be a good way to do it because it turned out just fine.)

Bake at 400 degrees for 35 minutes or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean. Arrange the 4" spears in a spoke pattern at the top.(As you can see from the pictures, I actually did that prior to baking and I think that worked out just fine.)
Yield: 6-8 servings

This was good hot out of the oven and I ate a piece cold for breakfast today and it was good too. I think though that room temperature would probably be ideal. This is obviously good for breakfast or brunch. Because the filling made so much that it spilled, I would not recommend adding anything else to this unless you wanted to leave out or reduce the amount of asparagus. This had no meat in it and I felt like it was just fine without it.)

Bumbleberry Pie: Source unknown, but heavily altered by me, so I will present my recipe.
1 unbaked frozen pie crust, thawed
1 cup each fresh/frozen blueberries(I used fresh), raspberries(I used frozen), blackberries(I used frozen), and sliced strawberries(I used fresh)(If you use frozen, let them sit in your bowl for a bit to begin to thaw)
1 cup fresh/frozen chopped rhubarb(I used fresh)
2 honeycrisp apples, peeled and cored, divided(One apple, dice for the pie. One apple, grate on the small holes of a box grater and make sure to collect any juice that comes out of it. Drain the majority of the juice from the shredded apple and keep these in separate containers.)
1/3 cup flour
1 Tbsp. lemon juice

Oat Crisp Topping:
1/2 cup old-fashioned oats
1/4 cup sliced almonds, crushed(I just had this on hand. You can leave it out or use walnuts or any type of nut you want.)
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
2 Tbsp. butter
3-4 Tbsp. apple juice from the honey crisp apple you grated

In a large bowl, combine all of the berries, the rhubarb, the diced apple, and the lemon juice and mix together. Add the shredded apple and mix well to break up the clumps of shreds. This is replacing the sugar you would normally add to a pie.

In a small bowl, combine all of the oat crisp topping ingredients and use your hands to mix the butter in. When it's well incorporated, sprinkle in the 3-4 Tbsp reserved apple juice from the shredded apple and mix in to sweeten the topping. There will be juice left over from this, so mix it into the berry mixture for the pie.

Sprinkle the flour over the berry mixture and mix well until completely incorporated. Pour the berry mixture into the pie shell. You do not need to pre-bake or poke holes in the shell. When it's filled, place the pie onto a baking sheet. You don't want to bake it without one or you'll spill everywhere and the oven will become a smoky mess. Carefully spread the oat topping over the pie filling and try to make sure it's evenly divided over the top.

Bake at 350 for 40-45 minutes or until the filling is bubbly and the crust is cooked through.

I ate this while it was warm last night and it was good. The flour felt a little gummy and I was concerned that it might have been too much. I ate another piece cold this morning and it was just fine. This is definitely better chilled overnight. The diced apple is still basically raw, however. This was the only issue with the pie. If I do it again, I might saute the apple in a pan to partially cook it before adding it to the berry mixture. The flavor is amazing and you absolutely do not need added sugar to make this taste good. I really feel that I am onto something with this fruit-juice flavored desserts. I might need to develop a cookbook or something...! I would definitely enter this one in the Great American Pie Festival.

This was really easy to make. It was just chopping for the prep. You could make this gluten-free if you wanted too. All you'd need to do is prepare the fruit filling and leave out the flour. You could probably sprinkle a little cornstarch or tapioca in it and mix it together to help thicken it as it bakes. Put it in a pie tin or a baking pan and top it with the oat-crisp topping and you'd have a lovely fruit crisp that's added-sugar and gluten-free! And if you used vegan margarine instead of the butter for the topping, it would also be vegan!

My pies turned out really great last night and some day I will work on my pastry and not rely on frozen pie shells. But last night was not that day...! These were pretty simple baking projects. They'd be good for beginners who feel like they don't know what they're doing. So, if that might be you, then maybe you can try these out next year for Pi day! Happy baking!

Sources:
City Picture

Map

City Information with Pictures of the Town

Other City Information

Great American Pie Festival website

Dining In-A Culinary Tour of America: Monterey Park, California

The City: Monterey Park

 

Why Monterey Park, you might ask. I chose this city because it is one of the smaller cities in California with the highest percentage of Asian/Asian Americans in their community. One of my only rules about this series is that I cannot choose a city I have been to before. Being that it is the Lunar New Year celebration right now, I wanted to feature that in this week's blog post. Since I have been to San Francisco, which might be the obvious choice for California and Lunar New Year, I had to get creative in where I chose to "visit". Other cities around the nation that have large Asian and Asian American populations are already slated for posts later on in the year for other events I want to feature in this series.

The population of Monterey Park, as of 2013, was 61,085. Of that total, 62.9% of the people are Asian or Asian American. 47.7% of those people are Chinese or Chinese Americans. The next greatest percentage of the total population is 30.3% being Hispanic. The East Los Angeles College, located nearby, is the city's largest employer.

Monterey Park is 10 miles east of Los Angeles, in southern California. It was founded on May 29, 1916. By the 1920's, Asian farmers began to come to the area to work and live. Over the years, attempts were made to limit the amount of Asian people moving to the area, but none of them were successful. In the 1970's and 1980's, the city council tried to pass "English only" ordinances two different times, and both attempts failed. In 1985, they successfully passed an ordinance that forced all business within the city to display English language signage on their signs. By 1990, the city became the first in the continental United States to have a population with an Asian/Asian American majority. There is a large Taiwanese community there and the city is even known as "Little Taipei". 

The Dish: Chop Suey and fried rice

Why Chop Suey, you might ask. Well, for one thing, I've never had it before. I've never made it before. For another, I am intrigued by its history. Nobody actually knows the true origin of this dish. In case you did not know, this dish, along with the fortune cookie, are actually American dishes. They are not Chinese at all. So why do it for Lunar New Year? Because America is about blending things together. People from other nations come here and they bring their own culinary traditions with them and from there they are altered to fit the tastes of their local communities. These Americanized dishes are a success story. They show how we all fit in together and work together and come together, particularly at the dinner table. I think it's beautiful and worthy of celebrating. That's the entire point of this blog series. 

Legend has it that chop suey, which basically means a hodge-podge of leftover vegetables and meat, stir-fried and served with a sauce, was created at a restaurant in Chinatown in San Francisco in the late 1800's. It was a great way to use up all of one's inventory and pass it off as authentic to unsuspecting American tourists. It became a great hit. But another legend says that it was created at a hotel for a Chinese diplomat who had come to visit. The chef invented the meal in hopes of appealing to both Chinese and American taste preferences. Some say that it really was invented in China and the name has been changed over the years. Nobody truly knows, and that's what makes it fascinating.

The dish itself is rather uneventful. I found a good recipe online to base mine off of but I changed a lot about it. The biggest alteration I made was to veganize it. It called for pork tenderloin, but that can be so expensive and also depending on how it's prepared, the flavor can get lost. Since this was going to have a lot of other flavors vying for attention, I didn't want to spend all that money on something that would be drowned out in the end. I am not a tofu fan, so I chose tempeh, which is a fermented soy bean product that has a nice firmness to it that tofu doesn't have. I got the kind that is marinated in a soy/ginger sauce and it turned out to be pretty good. I used vegetable broth instead of chicken and oyster mushroom sauce instead of oyster sauce, which I can't bring myself to eat. I already had the mushroom sauce on-hand. As for the vegetables, the biggest one I swapped out was the celery. Celery is a big component of chop suey(probably because it's cheap), but I cannot stand celery. I put in carrot slices instead and I think it was fine. I left out the green bell pepper since I'm not a huge fan of those either. (The name of this blog is "Persnickety" and now you are learning why...!) I used baby bok choy, cremini mushrooms, snow peas, onion, green onions, a can of water chestnuts, a can of bamboo shoots, which for some reason do not smell good at all, and canned bean sprouts. Yes, canned bean sprouts...We now live in a world where I cannot get fresh bean sprouts from a grocery store because everybody is afraid of getting sick from them. I cannot even begin to express my outrage and dismay over this. Do you know the horror of using bean sprouts from a can? Probably not...But I do, and it is not ok.

To accompany the chop suey, I made homemade fried rice. I have made this in the past, though I have usually used one of those mixes from the store for the flavoring and I think this recipe was good and easy enough that I would never need one of those mixes again. Actually I'm a bit ashamed to admit to having used a mix at all now that I know how simple it truly is. I kept this one vegetarian too, though I included the scrambled egg, so it depends on your definition of "vegetarian" if you consider it to be truly so or not. The biggest alteration I made was to switch out the frozen peas for snow peas that I trimmed and sliced thinly. I have never liked frozen peas and knew I'd just pick them out if I used them. I love snow peas and thought they would work just a well, and they did. They gave it a little added crunch which was very nice. I used reduced sodium soy sauce and found it needed a lot more than the one teaspoon the recipe called for.

The actual assembly of the food was pretty simple, though it took a bit of time to stir-fry each item individually and take it out of the pan before moving onto the next. The biggest time consumer was the prep work. It took nearly an hour and a half to prep everything for both dishes. The above picture, from end to end, is all the food that went into the meal. At the bottom are the eggs and veggies for the rice. Next to that is the veggies for the chop suey. The smaller bowls are the bean sprouts, water chestnuts and bamboo shoots, the sauces, and the sliced tempeh that was later marinated. And at the far end is the pre-cooked rice I made earlier this afternoon. I portioned it out and spread it flat on a sheet pan that I put in the fridge to cool down properly. I can see now why Chinese food at restaurants is so expensive. It's a very labor-intensive cuisine. They definitely earn whatever profit margin the dishes are set to.

I'm not sure I would ever make chop suey again or even order it in a restaurant when there are other more interesting dishes out there, but it was a lot of fun to make and enjoy today. It was a good way to celebrate the Lunar New Year, in my opinion. The holiday is becoming more and more popular in America, and will probably evolve and change into something unique in time, just like dishes I made tonight did, once upon a time.

Gung Hay Fat Choy/Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Sources:

Map 

City Picture 

Chop Suey Recipe 

Fried Rice Recipe 

Monterey Park History 

Monterey Park Stats 

Chop Suey History