Slow Food: Hairy Melon

Inspired by a delectable Slow Food evening at Saturday night's IWFS-Columbus dinner hosted by Jack & Vivian Davis, and having enjoyed Julie & Julia, yesterday I tackled the challenge of preparing a dish with Chinese hairy melons grown by Roger & Sherran Blair.

Slow Food is a movement I learned about in my Barolo, Italy vacation with the Blairs 2 years ago. The movement was founded in nearby Bra in 1986 in reaction to the opening of the McDonalds hamburgers there. During our week in Piedmont, we savored our dinners and 4-hour dining experiences and came back looking for the opportunity for more.

The Slow Food philosophy: "We believe that everyone has a fundamental right to pleasure and consequently the responsibility to protect the heritage of food, tradition and culture that make this pleasure possible. Our movement is founded upon this concept of eco-gastronomy – a recognition of the strong connections between plate and planet. "

It's a philosophy akin to that espoused by Michael Pollan in his books In Defense of Food and The Omnivor's Dilemma. I should write a blog on those books, but until then, I'll just note that I was impressed his pragmatic, non-preachy observations and conclusions. Advancing the careful and aware production, preparation, and consumption of real food - in contrast to the highly-processed stuff we all buy today - Pollan has convinced me to change my old eating habits, and he has influenced my thinking about the food industry.

Meanwhile, back to the hairy melons. Every spring, I give Roger & Sherran packets of Chinese vegetable seeds to try in their garden - veggies that they don't find in the local markets. It's always an adventure to see what comes up. The first product this year from these seeds has been two large hairy melons (mo gua in Chinese). A few years ago, they took that year's hairy melon crop to Wing's Chinese restaurant and Kenny had them stir fried with pork for us. Sherran & Roger invited me to dinner and asked how to cook the melons without pork, for dinner in their Kosher home. I picked up the melons on Sunday morning and volunteered to cook them after consulting my collection of Chinese cookbooks.

Most of the recipes I found for hairy melons - or "fuzzy melons" as they're also known - were for soup (like wintermelon soup). Alas, soup wouldn't fit into the dinner menu. In Kim Chee Lee's Chinese Cooking, I found a simple recipe for Stir-Fried Fuzzy Melons, but was afraid the taste would be too delicate to accompany the grilled steaks on the menu. On the next page of the cookbook is a recipe for Abalone Mushrooms and Green Vegetables in Oyster Sauce. It sounded like the delicious dish that Mom and I often order at Central Seafood in Hartsdale, NY. Mom has been excited about the health benefits of eating a variety of mushrooms (and we were delighted with a Braised Mushroom dish at a dinner Ray Chen invited us to at the new Three Ocean Restaurant in NYC's Chinatown last week). Since fuzzy melon takes up the taste of the sauce it's prepared with, I thought combining the recipes would work well.

I drove over to the New Asian Supermarket (which has the best selection of Chinese produce I've found in Columbus), and bought fresh King and Shitake mushrooms and baby Shanghai bok choy. I also found some Mushroom Stir-Fry sauce to substitute for Oyster Sauce (trying to keep Kosher - oyster-flavored sauce is made from oyster extract).

As this was a first-time preparation for me, I tested my approach with a little of the ingredients and tweaked the combined recipe. Since the recipe cooks so quickly, I decided to prepare all the ingredients at home and take them to the Blairs to cook just before dinner.

The dish was a big hit. The melon was tender, but not mushy, and as expected, took up the flavor of the sauce. The King mushroom slices were nicely chewy and contrasted with the tender Shitake mushrooms. The green Shanghai bok choy provided another textural and color accent. The entire dish tasted umami! And it was so guiltless, healthwise. The seven of us happily ate almost the entire double recipe (some of us had three or four servings!).

The actual cooking time was less than 15 minutes, but the preparation was quite time-consuming (about 3 hours for twice the below recipe, but that included the trial run). Though the mushrooms, bok choy, and sauces were not from local sources, the preparation was certainly in the spirit of Slow Food, celebrating the home-grown melon as an experience to be savored, lovingly prepared for and enjoyed with good friends.

As in cooking Julia Child's recipes, I've found that spending hours carefully preparing a dish or a meal for family and friends, then savoring it with them, can and should be a tremendously enjoyable experience. At times, it can even be sublime.


Stir-Fried Hairy Melons, Mushrooms, & Shanghai Bok Choy in Mushroom Sauce

INGREDIENTS (for 4-6 side-dish servings)

1 large hairy melon (football-sized)
1 knob ginger, peeled and julienned
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 lb baby Shanghai bok choy
½ lb fresh Shitake mushrooms
½ lb fresh King mushrooms
2 T cornstarch
peanut oil, for cooking
1 T sesame oil

Seasoning Sauce:
¼ c soy sauce
¼ c mushroom stir-fry sauce
¼ c sugar

PREPARATION

Peel the hairy melon. Scoop out & discard the seeds and inner membranes. (If smaller melons are used – like zucchini - the seeds are tender and don’t need to be removed.)
Slice vertically into quarters.
Cut across into1/8” thick slices, using a mandolin, if available, to ensure uniform thickness.

Cut the King mushrooms across into thin slices (about 1/16” thick).
Remove the stems from the Shitake mushrooms. Wash to remove dirt.

Blanch the bok choy and Shitake mushrooms separately in boiling salted water for 1 minute.
Drain & put into ice water to cool. Drain again. (This process preserves the color of the vegetables.)

Mix together the soy sauce, mushroom stir-fry sauce, and sugar.

Mix corn starch in 3 T cold water.

COOKING

Heat oil in deep fry pan, pot, or wok over high heat.
Stir-fry melon slices. Stir fry for 1-2 minutes, until the slices start to cook. Remove melon from pot.
Stir-fry ginger and garlic. Stir-fry until garlic starts to brown.
Add melon back to pot. Stir and cover to steam 2 minutes. (Add a little water, if needed.)
Add mushrooms, stir-fry, cover to cook 1 minute.
Add bok choy, stir-fry.
Add seasoning sauce (use more or less, to taste). Stir and bring to a boil. Add water or chicken stock, if needed, to make enough liquid for sauce.
Stir in cornstarch mixture to thicken the sauce.
Stir in sesame oil and serve.

Finding Happiness in What You Do

"Be happy in what you do" is a basic maxim of success. I agree completely. But I've learned there are two ways to find that happiness.

When I began my career, I felt I was very fortunate to have found a company in which I really enjoyed working. After 17 straight years of formal education, I would be entering the job market in the depths of the 1971 recession with my newly-minted Cornell MBA degree. There I was, in the Spring of 1971 at the ripe old age of 22, interviewing for jobs. My honors advisor, Prof. Joe Thomas (now Dean of the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University), noted that I was smart and that was a competitive advantage; I should talk to consulting firms, since they look for smart people. After interviewing with the few consulting firms that recruited at Cornell that year, I took the offer of Arthur Andersen & Co. to join their management consulting practice in their NYC office.

Andersen's recruiting process sold me. I would be working with other young professionals, consulting on the data processing needs of our clients. My mother had been a pioneer in computer systems, having implemented the first international airlines reservations system in the world for Pan American Airways. I had grown up with computers and enjoyed my computer courses at Michigan. I had worked for IBM in my summer between MBA years, and wrote my honors thesis using computer modeling for complex inventory control questions. AA&Co. would train me in the firm's methodology and other things I'd need to become a successful consultant - they were paying me to learn! I'd work in the Rockefeller Center area of NYC, with my periodic expense account lunches, when not working with broad variety of clients around the world. What a glamorous career! The partners in the firm explained that their job was to help develop the next generation of partners. If I worked diligently, after 10 years or so I might be admitted to the partnership. Everyone was truly supportive. I was really comfortable with my choice of firm and career. I had found a wonderful match and was very happy - and my career progressed as I expected. I was really fortunate to have found an environment in which I was very happy.

After a few years working, I learned an important lesson from one of my mentors. His name was Paul Tom. Paul had started his career with IBM in Texas and then Washington, DC. He took his position as a manager in AA&Co. in NYC and later became a partner. Paul was a wonderfully personable guy who took seriously the task of developing his staff charges. Early on, I was with several other young staff invited to Paul's bachelor pad apartment, high above Lincoln Center on West 65th Street. Paul waxed poetic about how wonderful it was to live in NYC: The most exciting place in the world to live. Later, Paul transfered to the Stamford, CT office and bought a suburban home in Connecticut. Again, at a social function he hosted in his new home, Paul extolled the virtues of living in suburban Connecticut, with his idyllic home on the Rippowam River. There was no better place to live on Earth. Several years later, Paul transferred to the Toronto office. I visited him in his suburban penthouse apartment with a beautiful view of Toronto in the distance. Again, Paul noted his delight in getting out of the NYC rat race and the wonderful life and clients he had in Toronto.

By then, I had learned my "Paul Tom lesson in happiness." You can be lucky to find the perfect job and location in which you'll be happy (my 1st lesson). But you can also decide to be happy in any job and location in which you find yourself (the 2nd lesson, from Paul).

I have shared these two lessons in happiness with all my staff and colleagues at Andersen and subsequent endeavors. One of my staff told me the 2nd lesson - be happy in whatever you find yourself doing - was something he had learned earlier when he participated in "est" sessions with his siblings and parents. After quickly calming my concerns about est's cult-like reputation, he noted that est put my 2nd lesson very simply: "Happiness is a choice."

So it's pretty simple. I've learned I might as well be happy, since I can choose to be so instead of choosing not to be happy. Why choose anything else?