Texas, NASA, and Bhutan...the new combo!

This year, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival's themes are Bhutan, NASA, and Texas.

The festival is on right now now through Sunday and 7/2-7/6. The Smithsonian website describes this year's themes:

"Bhutan: Land of the Thunder Dragon
Celebrating Bhutan's special approach towards life in the 21st century

Texas: A Celebration of Music, Food, and Wine
Exploring a dynamic and creative society, built upon rich natural resources, thriving cosmopolitan cities and engaging rural landscapes"

On the food side:

Texas:
"...see demonstrations of wine making; enjoy diverse culinary traditions, old and new, from barbeque to Vietnamese soups, from kolach making to chicken fried steak."

Bhutan:

"Since the Festival is intended to be as experiential as possible, cooking demonstrations and conversations about Bhutanese foodways will also take place. This is an important aspect of contemporary culture and gives insight into home and farm life."

Nasa will have a "food lab" covering topics such as creating menus for space, packaging food for space, and planning for the moon and mars.

They will only be be selling food from two of the three exhibit areas. NASA is the exception, so don't expect any Space Food. Freeze-dried icecream or Orange Tang, anyone?

Click here for the Festival Menu! This year's food vendors are Indique Hieghts, Capital Q, La Mexicana Bakery, and Asian Grille. This sure sounds good:

Nakey Tshoem
Chicken (shredded), fiddleheads, cheese, chiles, onion, garlic, ginger, and special seasonings served with Bhutanese rice.

Foodgeek Episode One

For those of you that don't have your eyes glued to channel 25 in Arlington (Arlington Video Network), here is a link to the Youtube version of the first episode of my show. It is the food segment of AVN's magazine show, "Here/now".

In this episode, I visited Arax , an Armenian Coffeehouse in Westover, and Fabian's, the Mexican & South American stand in the Ballston Common Mall's food court.

Join me as I eat my way across Arlington:

Watch here.

Warm Summer Salad with Polenta

Summer for me is all about fresh fruit and vegetables, and cooking things lightly if at all. This is a lovely salad that is best with the freshest veggies you can find, in whatever proportions suit you on that day. The ones listed below are just the ones I used today, though in the past it's included spinach, onions, watercress, apples and chives, in addition to and instead of those. You can also skip the polenta, which I just like for a different texture, or add croutons instead right before the vinegar step for yet another.

Sample Ingredients:

Carrots
Tomatoes
Hungarian Peppers
Cucumber
Lettuce or other greens
Polenta cake
Fresh basil
Crumbled goat cheese
White wine vinegar
Marsala
Olive oil
Mustard Seed
Salt, Pepper

Wash and dice all your veggies, and cut the polenta cake into 1/4 inch cubes, keeping the lettuce separate from the other ingredients. Heat the mustard seed in some oil (not too much! I used about 1 tablespoon) in a pan with salt until they start jumping about. Now add your polenta, and cook it for about a minute over high heat. Next, add your veggies and basil (not lettuce/greens), stir-fry for about a minute, and then reduce the heat to medium and cook till they're all the texture you like. Meanwhile, mix the vinegar and a little bit of Marsala in a glass, with a few shakes of salt and drops of oil.

Remove all that to a bowl, and toss the lettuce on top. As it begins to wilt, turn the heat back up to high in your pan, and deglaze it with your vinegar mixture. When that's reduced by about a quarter to half, pour the hot liquid over your lettuce and toss in the goat cheese. That will kinda melt in; taste it now and add salt and pepper as you like.

You could add hard boiled eggs too, if you wanted to, or bacon might also be nice. As I said, this is really just a template, the basic idea being that the lettuce isn't really cooked itself at all, but just wilted by the heat of everything else. Actually none of it is full cooked except the polenta and sometimes I caramelize some of the veggies, but really it all means that you've got warm salad with little bursts of cool lettuce where the heat didn't get to it, which is really nice.

Simple Summer Spinach

I had a fairly ginormous brunch yesterday, and was consequently not all that hungry for dinner, but figured I'd better get some vitamins (besides those found in eggs Benedict and a Bloody Mary). I wanted something simple and fresh, which those ingredients could easily provide. Much as I love obnoxiously complicated dishes and weird ingredients, I rarely have time (or energy) for such feats, and tonight I didn't want much anyhow.

I also had a bunch of bloody gorgeous spinach and Vidalia onions sitting in my fridge, begging for a home on my love handles. I was only too happy to oblige!

What I used:

Half of a medium Vidalia onion
About half a pound of fresh spinach
2 tbs. butter
3/4 tsp. herbes de Provence
½ tsp celery salt
Salt
Black pepper
Fish sauce (optional)
Cider vinegar (optional)

Wash and tear the spinach into a saucepan (don't dry it fully). Cover the pan and turn on the heat to medium. When the lid gets hot to the touch (there is a reason my fingers have mile-thick calluses!), reduce ton low, and let sit for about three minutes. Now add your butter, herbes, celery salt and regular salt, stirring well. Re-cover and remove from heat, letting it all melt together while you dice your onion. If you want to kick up the flavor a bit, I recommend adding a splash of either fish sauce or cider vinegar here too, depending on your mood.

Once the butter is all nicely melted, remove the spinach to a bowl, using a slotted spoon to keep as much butter as possible in the pan. Set that aside, and return the pan to the stove, turning the heat back on and adding a bit of black pepper. Sautee the onions until they're as done as you want them (I like 'nicely caramelized'). When it's all done, deglaze with white wine.

The finished spinach and the finished onions are each a really tasty dish, and together make a fantastic light dinner. Or a great side dish. Or, if you really must, a stellar burger topping.