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Weighty 'n' Worthy African Proverbs - Volume 1

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Vincent Okay Nwachukwu

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“This white broth... ... is soy milk!" "That's right! I mixed a dash of parmesan cheese and a little dollop of miso paste into the soy milk and then lightly simmered it. This is my pike dish... Pike Takikomi Rice, Ojiya Style!" OJIYA Also called "Zosui," Ojiya is soup stock and seasonings added to precooked rice, vegetables and fish and cooked into a thick porridge. It is distinctly different from dishes like risotto, which is uncooked rice that is first sautéed in butter and oils before adding liquid... and Okayu, which is a rice gruel cooked to soupy softness in extra water. "Soy milk?" "Ah, so you finally see it, Alice. Like all soups, the most important part of Ojiya porridge is the stock! He built this dish to be porridge from the start... ... with soy milk as the "stock"!" "Soy milk as soup stock?!" "Can you even do that?!" "So that's what it is! Soup stock is essentially meant to be pure umami. Like kombu kelp- a common stock- soy milk is packed with the umami component glutamic acid. It's more than good enough to serve as a sound base for the Ojiya porridge! Not only that, umami flavors synergies with each other. Adding two umami components to the same dish will magnify the flavor exponentially! The inosinic acid in the pike and the glutamic acid in the soy milk... combining the two makes perfect, logical sense! " "Soy milk Ojiya Porridge. Hm. How interesting!" " Mm! Delicious! The full-bodied richness of the cheese and the mild, salty flavor of the miso meld brilliantly with the rice! Then there are the chunks of tender pike meat mixed in... ... with these red things. Are they what I think they are?" "Yep! They're crunchy pickled-plum bits!" "What?!" "Again with the dirt cheap, grocery store junk food! Like that cracker breading and the seaweed jelly pearls..." "He totally dumped those in there just for the heck of it!" "These pickled plums are a very important facet of the overall dish! They have a bright, pleasing color and a fun, crunchy texture. Not only that, their tart flavor cuts through the rich oiliness of the pike meat, giving the dish a fresh, clean aftertaste. And, like all vinegary foods, they stir the appetite- a side effect that this dish takes full advantage of! Finally, these plums are salt pickled! It is no wonder they make a perfect accent to the pickled pike at the center of the dish!"”

“The soup is based on a traditional Scottish cauliflower cheese soup. I made a rich stock with ten assorted vegetables from the Rigley organic garden. We used their extra sharp cheddar and the double cream to thicken the soup. The sandwiches include soft muenster, slices of smoked ham, and a dollop of the Scottish marmalade for sweetness." Jenny smiled. "How did you make those crispy cheese sticks? The kids seem to really love them." Sophia answered. "We incorporated Parmesan and fresh dill in the dough." "And the fruit flowers? I have a sneaking suspicion that was not the work of our Scottish chef." Elliott grumbled under his breath. Sophia raised a brow. "I made the flowers. My girls loved it when I made vignettes with fruits and vegetables on their plates.”

“Like families all over Japan, that morning we tucked into a special New Year's breakfast soup called ozoni. Although recipes vary from region to region, they all contain mochi because the pounded rice dumplings symbolize the breaking of "bread" with the New Year's deity Toshigami-sama. The rest of the ingredients in the soup, aside from the dashi base, vary according to what is fresh and regionally available. So around Hiroshima, for example, cooks add oysters, prawns, and saltwater eel caught from the nearby Inland Sea to their ozoni, while natives of Tokyo toss in nubbins of chicken, sliced fish cake, and spinach-like greens. For those living in Kyoto, the ozoni always includes lots of sweet white miso.”

“We began with two buttery sweet edamame and one sugar syrup-soaked shrimp in a crunchy soft shell. A lightly simmered baby octopus practically melted in our mouths, while a tiny cup of clear, lemony soup provided cooling refreshment. The soup held three slices of okra and several slippery cool strands of junsai (water shield), a luxury food that grows in ponds and marshes throughout Asia, Australia, West Africa, and North America. In the late spring the tiny plant develops leafy shoots surrounded by a gelatinous sheath that floats on the water's surface, enabling the Japanese to scoop it up by hand from small boats. The edamame, okra, and water shield represented items from the mountains, while the shrimp and octopus exemplified the ocean. I could tell John was intrigued and amused by this artistic (perhaps puny?) array of exotica. Two pearly pieces of sea bream, several fat triangles of tuna, and sweet shelled raw baby shrimp composed the sashimi course, which arrived on a pale turquoise dish about the size of a bread plate. It was the raw fish portion of the meal, similar to the mukozuke in a tea kaiseki. To counter the beefy richness of the tuna, we wrapped the triangles in pungent shiso leaves , then dunked them in soy. After the sashimi, the waitress brought out the mushimono (steamed dish). In a coal-black ceramic bowl sat an ivory potato dumpling suspended in a clear wiggly broth of dashi thickened with kudzu starch, freckled with glistening orange salmon roe. The steamed dumplings, reminiscent of a white peach, was all at once velvety, sweet, starchy, and feathery and had a center "pit" of ground chicken. The whole dish, served warm and with a little wooden spoon, embodied the young, tender softness of spring.”

“The soup was delicious in the way that very simple things can be. There was no seasoning except for salt: a house like this could never afford pepper. But the olive oil in which Velia had fried the onions and garlic, and drizzled over the finished soup, was peppery enough: spiky and throat-catching, it prickled my mouth, balancing the bitter chicory and the bland crusts of bread. And there was dry cheese to grate into it, good salty pecorino with an earthy whiff of the cave where it had been aged. I savored it for a long time, because I had never tasted it before- I'd never tasted any of these things. The oil was different from our Tuscan oil; thicker, somehow, and more flowery; and the cheese tasted the way the air smelled outside in the valley.”

“It's no overstatement to say how good a soup is hinges entirely on the quality of the soup stock it uses. What on earth is this?! A flavor this rich and savory is a sign of high-quality stock! Where did you get this, kid?! I know there isn't a scrap of kelp or bonito or anything you could make stock from our kitchen!" "Oh, that? I just happened to have some on hand." "You made soup stock from cuttlefish jerky?!" "Dried foods like jerky are filled to bursting with savory flavor. Just soak them in hot water and use a little bit of salt to even out the flavor... and you'll have a stock that can be a solid base for any rich and flavorful soup!”