Real Food Real Kitchens

This is a show airing on Amazon Prime. The camera crew goes into homes and individuals or family members demonstrate how they put together a meal. The scenes are cut between the kitchen and outside discussing their family history and how the recipes came down to them and showing how they are passed along. You get to see splendid family dynamics. Sometimes the children are right there helping. Sometimes it's the grown children doing the demonstration.

Some of it is really bad.

They guy demonstrating shrimp and grits has a container of Quaker grits on the counter and I'm going BLAH! He shows how he prepares his shrimp then tosses them into his preparation. He comes very close to how I do this myself, with bacon and cream, but I like to add cheese and jalapeño. And I mill my own corn that day. The amount I intend to use so it doesn't sit around, and the difference between freshly milled and oxidized old stored and transported corn can not be overstated. Freshly milled corn goes BLAM! with fresh bright sweet corn flavor that actually aggressive, while old commercially milled corn goes thud. He adds orange juice to counter the fat from his bacon but he does not bother with the more powerful orange zest. And the whole time he's holding up the orange and discussing its contribution his shrimp is boiling away blub blub blub blub blub blub blub blub  blub blub blub blub  blub blub blub blub  blub blub blub blub  blub blub blub blub  blub blub blub blub  blub blub blub blub  blub blub blub blub  blub blub blub blub  blub blub blub blub  blub blub blub blub  blub blub blub blub  blub blub blub blub getting tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter and I'm going out of my mind watching it.

It' done already! Ten minutes ago.

Then he and his wife sit down and enjoy the heck out of it. So who am I to complain?

Similar thing with the guy who makes his dad's chowder. The two of them describe it as fisherman's catch chowder, then the son makes it. He prepares mirepoix vegetable in a pan then puts the cooked vegetables in the chowder pot. He prepares triggerfish (that's where I heard that word) in the same pan then puts it in the same pot. Then shrimp. He layers the ingredients from pan to pot.

Why not do it all in the pot? A stew, staged, in the manner of stir-fry. There is no particular reason for them to be sautéed. There is no Maillard reaction creating layers of charring intensity and caramelization. And all of the seafood is way overcooked by about 500-700%. They need cooking only to the point of denaturing and that happens quickly. Within minutes. At low heat. Anything beyond that is deleterious to texture.

The best that I saw is the Vietnamese guy showing how his family makes spring rolls and deep fried whole fish (tilapia), actually shallow-fried in a wok. He must flip each fish. His small children help in the end crushing peanuts. He takes us through an Asian market, he explains lemongrass and show how Asian herbs are marketed. He demonstrates how each element is prepared. He explains his decisions, oil type, cooking times, and so on. He soaks his spring roll wrappers under running hot tap water. I never thought of that. I always thought they had to be soaked in a flat plate of hot water.

Story time.

This was during a period of woeful illness. Our family was simultaneously shattered and pulled together tightly. I sold my house, had an apartment, but was staying with my parents. My dad liked to drive around and have me with him. We stopped at a Vietnamese restaurant on Federal Boulevard near Colfax where such places are clustered. I never had spring rolls but this was the perfect food. A fantastic discovery. They brought us each a serving which in large part is shared. I ate the whole thing. And asked for more. I could not get enough of this perfect food with its two perfect sauces. They brought another serving for two and I ate those too. And I still wanted more.

I go, "Sorry, Dad, apologies for being a pig. I don't know what's come over me."

He roared laughing. Truly delighted. Pushed back from the table leaned backward and laughed openmouthed upward to the ceiling, then looked at me and through laughing he said, "I'm just really happy to see you eating."

I ran up the biggest lunch bill ever and sat there and grazed for hours.

I love everything about these spring rolls. I like everything that goes into them. Beansprouts and mint, shaved carrots, lettuce, and cool shrimp sliced laterally. Come on, each spring roll is only 1+ 1/2 shrimp. You can eat a million of these things. Possibly, reasonably six. That day I must have eaten about fifteen.

The Vietnamese immigrant who does the Real Food Real Kitchens episode makes a sauce with a few of my favorite Asian ingredients that I wrote about yesterday. They show the family assembling spring rolls, but they do not show what they do with the fried fish. Either chunks go into the spring rolls or they are something separate.

A video of the episode is not available online. The woman in this video uses different ingredients, pork belly, no beansprouts, and uses a slightly different approach. It shows you that possible combinations are near endless.

Here is one of my efforts.

Here is another.

Her accent and pronunciation is sweet.