Praise Allah: Tiger Seasoning!

Before everyone that knows me thinks I've somehow been abducted by aliens or Islamists, this is not a religious rant!  This is simply an expose about one of the best seasoning ingredients that I've come across in my lifetime. 

About the blog title: the incredible seasoning now known as Tiger Seasoning was originally called Praise Allah Seasoning and was originally made in Knoxville, TN.  I found about about this magical seasoning from my younger brother who was attending UT at the time in the latter half of the 1970s.  It came in a decent sized plastic shaker can and the label bore the name, "Praise Allah Seasoning" and had a picture of the Taj Mahal against a purple background on the label. This was just before the insanity happened in Iran with the American Embassy hostage crisis so that things Persian/Middle Eastern were considered exotic or at worst benign.  Unfortunately, this was not to last.  Basically this wonderful locally-produced product that is somewhat reminiscent of a Puerto Rican Adobo seasoning was pretty unique, especially in the spice-deprived Upper South of the 1960s.  Mind you, adobo seasoning from Puerto Rico is nothing like the adobo sauce of Mexico nor the adobo vinegar meat stews of the Philippines.  Even now, very few non-Puerto Ricans know what adobo seasoning is and Praise Allah was a much more balanced combination of flavors than the typical adobo. It basically consists of a combination of salt, dextrose, garlic, oregano, white pepper and MSG and was and still is an incredible seasoning for everything from steaks, hamburgers, pizza, stews, eggs, you name it.  When my brother brought my mother home a shaker can of it home one weekend back then we were entranced by it.  At that time, most folks at least in this area's idea of seasoning consisted of just salt and pepper.  Garlic was an almost unkown ingredient and along with oregano was something those somewhat scary Italians were known to use.  I hope you're getting the picture as to how culinarily and culturally deprived most of us were back then. 

Chinese and Mexican cooking were almost unknown around here then and Italian cooking had made some slight inroads but it was mostly limited to pizza of a dubious quality that was rarely made by real Italians.  I have to thank Pizza Hut and their advertising campaigns that made pizza a legitimate food in the Upper South or otherwise we would've probably had to wait another ten years for it to become so popular among the everyman.   Fortunately, a Sicilian family came to our area about 35 years ago and showed us how pizza and other common Italian foods were supposed to taste.  Chef Boyardee was no longer held in good standing here!

Back to Praise Allah Seasoning: this product had been around Knoxville for many years, even going back to about 1960 when it was considered quite exotic and made by a company called Davis Manufacturing Co. This product was nationally advertised in specialty food magazines at the time and was at least locally well known over the years.  It could even be bought at a couple of local grocery store chains in the 1970s. Then came the problems in Iran with the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the imprisonment of the American Embassy personnel.  I wouldn't doubt that the FBI probably tracked some who bought the product especially in the Knoxville, TN area which had a goodly number of students from Iran going to UT during this time.   By this time, anything Middle Eastern was almost a cussword for many Americans and Praise Allah Seasoning almost disappeared. 

We're going to take a trip around the mountain for a bit that I hope you'll appreciate but I won't get offended if you skip to the next paragraph.  I vividly recall the problems many foreign students at UT from the Middle East or South Asia encountered during this time.  I wasn't really aware of how bad things had become until the fateful evening of July 4, 1979.  I was living temporarily with my brother and his flatmate in a quite nice suites-type apartment building in Sequoyah Hills while in training with my Knoxville-based employer.  We found out that night that we had students from Iran living in our building that we'd never met previously.  We first met them that evening after we began firing off volleys of quite large stick rockets down the hill toward the neighboring apartment complex which was in a friendly pyrotechnic competiton with our building.  One of our first rockets misfired and went down onto our pool deck instead of to the neighbors several hundred feet downhill.  Unknown to us at the time, a young Persian woman, her sister and brother in-law were in our pool area.  When this rocket exploded (it wasn't a little bottle rocket either),  it like to have scared those folks to death and they all started screaming and dove into the pool.  Needless to say, we didn't know they were there as it was almost dark.  They thought they were being attacked by American terrorists for being from Iran!  After they quit screaming, we quickly diffused the situation after assuring them that we meant no harm and they then joined us in the festivities of sending down close to a hundred big rockets down on the neighbors.  Of course the neighbors were firing back but we had gravity on our side and their's rarely made it up to our building.  These Persians had been pretty scared of the political situation for some time and had been keeping a very low profile and only came down to the pool late in the evening when no one else was around.  This incident is how my brother's roomate, the late Brent Potts, met his Persian girlfriend Mitra L.  They were a couple for quite some time.  Mitra, her older sister and brother in-law were great people that hated Khomeini early on for a number of reasons and especially since he kept their professional parents from sending them money.  They almost starved for a time as almost no employers would give them jobs after they found out they were from Iran and all eventually found minimum wage employment after a few months.  I moved to NC after a few months and lost touch with them but hope they have done well.   Unfortunately, Brent Potts, who was an experienced scuba diver and the only person I've ever known to own a Lancia, died in a cave diving accident in Florida in August 1990.  Now, back to our topic.

The TryMe brand owned by Reily Foods Co. of New Orleans then assumed ownership of the brand but distribution was still somewhat local. This company owned the Luzianne brand which previously was well known for their coffee with chicory blend and teas.  They changed the product's name to Tiger Seasoning but kept the TryMe brand and off it went to be marketed nationwide which is where it's at today.  Reily/Luzianne had previously bought the Knoxville-based JFG Coffee Company in 1965 and was familiar with the area prior to the Praise Allah acquisition.  Interestingly, there are quite a few recipes online that call for Praise Allah Seasoning and many folks in East Tennessee still call it that, me included if I don't think very hard about it.  I've known it as Praise Allah far longer than Tiger Seasoning.  In any case, it's a fabulous seasoning that should be in every kitchen.  Locally, Food City and Kroger carry it and it's available online from several sources. A great use that's on the label is to blend it with melted butter and brush it on steaks about a minute before they're done. We regularly use it when cooking fresh frozen peas by adding it along with butter after draining them and also in beef stew or on hamburgers.  We also sprinkle it on popcorn.  It's wonderful!

Crawdad Linguine

The family was over today expecting Sunday lunch and I decided to make my Linguine with Crawfish, Butter, Garlic and Wine sauce.  I know there are many people in this area that would pay $20 for a lobster tail but you couldn't pay them to eat crawdads.  To that all I can say is you don't know what you're missing.  Just think of them as very small freshwater lobsters and you won't be far off the mark.   When I was growing up, we used to play in the creeks and try to find crawdads under the rocks.  I never knew they were edible until after I was grown and learned about Cajun cooking.   


This is a fairly inexpensive dish considering it has shellfish in it.  Fortunately for us, Walmart now carries frozen Boudreaux's Brand Crawfish Tailmeat in a 12 oz. package.  It's less than $7 for the package and is probably at least the equivalent yield of one of the big five pound bags of frozen whole crawdads.  It's aleady cooked, peeled and deveined so all you have to do is thaw it and incorporate it into your dish.  Boudreaux's tails are small so consider them more like popcorn crawdads rather than mini-lobster tails.  The package does include the fat so they're more flavorful.  They come from China but are good quality and I've been using these for awhile.  To quickly thaw the tailmeat, I just place the frozen pack into a larger bowl and cover with cool water.  I place an empty coffee cup on it to keep it submerged.  You'll need to change the water and flip over the package after about fifteen minutes.  After about 30 minutes it should be thawed enough to use.  I usually do this while I'm preparing the rest of the dish.  This dish is also easily adapted to use shrimp or scallops instead of crayfish.  I didn't take any pics this time as everyone was really hungry but the crawfish adds a vibrant red color which makes the finished dish attractive.

Here's my recipe for those interested:

Linguine with Crawfish, Butter, Garlic and Wine Sauce

Ingredients:
2 lbs. Linguine dry pasta
1 pack, Boudreaux's Brand Crawfish Tailmeat 12 oz., thawed
1-1/2 sticks Butter or margarine
5-6 cloves Garlic, smashed, peeled and finely chopped
2 Tbsp. dry White Wine such as sherry or rice wine
2 tsp. Salt (only 1 tsp. if using salted butter)
1/4 tsp. Sweet Basil, dried
1/4 tsp. Oregano, dried
Black Pepper, fresh ground (lightly dust on plated serving)


Directions:
In a large stockpot bring at least one gallon of salted water to a boil and prepare linguine per package directions.  While the water is coming to a boil, in a medium-sized sauce pan melt the butter or margarine and add the garlic.  Bring to a gentle simmer and then add the salt, sweet basil and oregano.  Stir and let this simmer for at least fifteen minutes. About five minutes before the pasta is ready, stir in the wine and add the crawfish to the sauce, gently separating the tails from the block.  As the tails are already cooked, don't raise the heat, just let them get warmed through in the sauce.

When the pasta is done, drain in a colander and run water over it to stop the cooking process.  You only need to do this for maybe thirty seconds and it will also help keep the pasta from sticking to itself.  Put half the drained pasta back into the stock pot and add half of the sauce with crawfish and mix in thoroughly.  The repeat with the rest of the pasta and sauce.  This way the meat and sauce will be more evenly distributed within the pasta and it doesn't give the pasta a chance to stick together.  Break out the plates and serve with garlic cheese bread and perhaps a small salad and you've got a big meal for four or five hungry folks.  Enjoy!

Not So Common Ramen

About everyone younger than eighty knows what ramen instant noodle soups are.   They are the salvation of hungry but destitute college students and touring metal bands.  They have to be without a doubt the most inexpensive meal available in the world today and are commonly available here for less than $0.20 per packet.  I don't know how they can make them so cheaply in the USA when a pack of chewing gum costs over three times as much.  Even in times of crisis like is happening in Japan today, they are a quick and easy belly-filling meal that only requires the addition of water and heat to prepare.  If they have a nutritional downside, it is that their seasoning packets contain quite a lot of sodium.

While ramen instant noodle soup is of Japanese origin being invented by the founder of Nissin Foods in 1958, they are being made all around the globe now.  The basic pre-fried wheat noodle remains somewhat consistent in most countries but the seasoning packets reflect regional flavors.  In the USA you see flavors such as chicken, beef, pork, shrimp and "oriental".  In other countries that produce them, you see flavors such as curry, crab, dashi (fish), Vietnamese Pho, Thai Tom Yum (spicy lemongrass shrimp), Korean kimchi (fermented spicy cabbage) and many more.  I've noticed Walmart is beginning to import some of the foreign varieties and they can be found in their Asian foods section.  I particularly like the Tom Yum Shrimp flavored made by Mama in Thailand but be forewarned, it's very spicy.  They all bear the basic characteristics of being fairly inexpensive, and easy and quick to prepare.

While most people eat them as just a noodle soup seasoned with the packet that comes with them, you can jazz them up quite a bit to make a more flavorful and nutritious meal. Additions of fresh vegetables can make a big difference when making these soups.  Next time you make some try this: when the water comes to a boil, put in the noodles but also add some of any or all of the following: cabbage, Chinese cabbage (Nappa), carrot sices, broccoli or snow peas. They will cook sufficiently in the three minutes the noodles take to get done.  Drain off the excess water and along with the seasoning packet try adding a shot of Sriracha Hot Chili Garlic Sauce or a bit of Thai Red Curry paste.  Give it a glug of Thai Fish Sauce.  Adding a can of mixed, diced vegetables will also fill it out.  You can bring it up a notch further by adding bits of deli meats or leftovers such as ham, roast beef, turkey or even surimi seafood (artificial crab).  Top with a couple of slices of  hard boiled egg when it's ready to serve. Try experimenting by adding combinations of vegetables, meats and seasonings.  You may be surprised about how wonderful your finished soup has become. What would've been just a simple soup has now become a tasty and nutritious meal. Enjoy!

1st Review: China One

Before I go into my very first restaurant review, I need to let you know that I'm not just a casual eater of Chinese and Asian cuisines.  If you'll allow me to puff up my chest feathers a bit, I'll give you some background of my experiences.  After first trying and then learning to enjoy mostly Cantonese varieties of Chinese foods that were shall we put it, "Americanized" at places like Joe Gongs back in the late 1970s, I decided to delve a bit deeper. 

In the latter part of the 1980s, I took a series of Chinese cooking classes being taught by Karen Yau through Kingsport Adult Education at D-B.  Karen, her Eastman engineer husband Cheuk and her father owned and operated the China House Restaurant in the Greenacres Shopping Center in Kingsport.  After thoroughly enjoying the classes and expressing enthusiasm, Karen allowed me to take it a step further and employed me to learn real restaurant-style Chinese cooking at her restaurant.  This was a most eye-opening experience where I learned a great deal.  Her father was about seventy at the time and spoke almost no English.  When Karen wasn't available to translate, he taught by example and he was quite a teacher. Just learning to operate the typical Chinese restaurant gas stove was quite an experience.  You may not realize this but the stove is also a sink!  Quckly cutting up 10 lbs. of onions, making two gallons of fried rice on a wok almost three feet across or beating eggs with two chopsticks was educational.  The family meals, down home Chinese-style at the end of  the evenings were most enjoyable and I quickly learned that instead of lots of the meat with a bit of rice like we eat it, they make it a bit of meat with lots of rice.  I guess that's how they stay so trim!  I shall forever be in Karen, Cheuk and her father's debt for these experiences.

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China One
4334 West Stone Drive
Kingsport, TN 37660-7253
(423) 247-5777

Tucked away in the Allandale Shopping Center is one of the area's best Chinese restaurants.  Many people even on the West side of Kingsport don't realize it's there but should make the effort to find it.  The couple that own it produce excellent cuisine at reasonable prices.  I've been eating there for several years and it just keeps getting better all the time. The lady that takes your order's English also has improved considerably.  The restaurant does primarily a take-out business but has a medium-sized dining room that currently seats 38 people in booths and tables.  It could seat a lot more if they put in more furniture.

My daughter and I had a late lunch there today.  If you go between 11AM and 3PM, they have a long list of lunch specials that average $5.  You get a large entree along with a big mound of some of the best pork and vegetable fried rice that I've eaten in a long time.

I had the Hunan Twin Delights (L18: $5) which consists of tender beef and chicken with vegetables in a very flavorful, slightly sweet and not too spicy brown sauce.  Vegetables included snow peas, bamboo shoots, a couple of water chestnut slices, broccoli, Chinese cabbage and bell pepper slices.  It was wonderful and well deserving of it's name.

My daughter had the Chicken with Broccoli (L7: $5).  Once again, lots of tasty tender chicken chunks with fresh broccoli florets and some sliced carrots in a brown sauce that was somewhat different from my Hunan dish.  Very tasty and is also available with beef or pork along with the broccoli.  She had to ask for a take out box as it was more than she could eat at the time.

My daughter ordered the Wonton Soup as an appetizer and I'll have to say this about China One: at most Chinese restaurants, when you order wonton soup, you get a whole lot of soup and if you're lucky maybe one or two wontons.  At China One, you get at least three large, filled wontons topped with fresh sliced green onions.  Very tasty and not bland like many as they use white pepper to season it with.  They accompany their soups with a saucer of freshly fried wonton noodle strips. So many restaurants have a tendency to serve these soup accompaniments that are hardly fresh.  Nothing says "bleh" to me like getting a bowl of rancid fried noodle strips with my soup.  It makes me wonder about the freshness of the rest of what they serve.  This is not an issue at China One.  Their ingredients always seem to be quite fresh and I applaud them for staying on top of things.

This restaurant also is on top of their noodle dishes.  Their Singapore Chow Mai Fun (#46: $5.50/$8.75) is one of the best examples of this dish that's also known elsewhere as Singapore Mei Fun. Spicy and yellow from hot curry seasoning, loaded with meats, shrimp and vegetables along with fine Mei Fun rice noodles, even the small-sized dish will feed two if they're not famished.  They are also one of the few restaurants around that still offer Shrimp Toast (#11: $3.75/4).  This exquisitely tasty and somewhat greasy appetizer dish consists of seasoned shrimp ground into a paste that's placed between two pieces of bread and deep fried as toast points.   The old Golden Dragon at Wilcox/E. Sevier introduced me to this guilty pleasure.  Also, you should try their Egg Foo Young dishes.  For the unfamiliar, this is basically a meat and vegetable egg omelet done Chinese-style with a brown gravy over it.  It's more yummy than you can imagine and China One does a great job with this dish.  I had the Chicken Egg Foo Young (#49: $6.50) a few days ago and it was three saucer-sized pieces covered with their flavorful brown gravy along with a goodly portion of white steamed rice.  Don't be afraid to try new things: fear no food!

China One also has a Japanese menu I assume was their response to the wave of pseudo-Japanese hibatchi restaurants that have popped up in the area in recent years.  While I can't vouch for these, I've been there when people placed take out orders so they must be acceptable.  They are some of their most expensive menu items.  I would recommend sticking with what they do best: excellent Chinese dishes.  One good result from this diversification is that you can ask for Shrimp Sauce, which is what my daughter puts on her fried rice there.  She says it's good.  I say it's blasphemy! :)


Take it from me, do your tastebuds a favor and visit China One soon.  You and your wallet will not be disappointed.  It's a real family restaurant and don't be surprised if their cute little daughter offer's drink refills.  These are real hard-working folks, not a corporation and deserve the fruits of the American dream from their talent and hard work.

Paczkis!

You ask what the heck is a Paczki?  Well, to start with it's pronounced closer to "punch-key".  It's a special version of a filled doughnut from Poland. A pre-Lenten treat, it's something like a big, powdered sugar coated, fruit/jelly-filled doughnut. It's Poland's version of the German Berliner or Bismarck and the Austrian Krapfen.  They were developed in the theme of giving up rich things for the forty days fast of Lent, primarily sugar, sweets and shortening. Traditionally, they were made on Fat Tuesday (Ostatki) the day before Ash Wednesday.

Unlike what we that have lived on during the Krispy-Kreme era, the Paczki has a different texture and color than the traditional fried doughnut. They look pretty similar on the outside but the inside is noticeably yellow from the extra eggs used.  The texture is also different as they are more dense and less cake-like than the yeasty fried treats were are familiar with.

The bottom line is that Paczkis are a delicious treat only available for a limited time and amazingly available at of all places Walmart!  They've been carrying them this time of the year for at least four years now. Years ago they were more ball-like but now are bigger but flatter like their European cousins. They're located in their Deli-Bakery area and come in a box of six, usually with a raspberry filling for $4.00.  For aficionados of fried dough treats, you really need to get a move on to be able to try these as they are only available for a few weeks prior to Lent. For folks in more cosmopolitan areas that have a Polish population like Cincinnati and more northern bergs, many bakeries will have these available with a likewise varience in styles. Get a move on before you have to wait another year to try them!

Paczkis!

Shrimp Fettucine Alfredo

We eat a fair amount of pasta at our house, usually spaghetti-type noodles with meat sauce but occasionally change it up.  Tonight I decided to make fettucine with homemade alfredo sauce and shrimp.  I cheated slightly by buying frozen pre-cooked headless, peeled and deveined shrimp from Walmart.  They were farm-raised from Thailand but 14 oz. of medium shrimp ready to go for $5 is pretty hard to pass up when you've got hungry folks waiting to eat.  I know you can also cheat a bit by buying jarred alfredo sauce cheaper than you can make it but I choose to make mine from scratch.  If anyone's interested, here's my alfredo sauce recipe as I made it tonight:

1 pint heavy whipping cream (canned evaporated milk will also work well in a pinch)
1 stick unsalted butter
5 cloves garlic - mashed, peeled and chopped
1 Tbsp. Michiu Chinese rice wine (sherry's fine)
1 ea. 5 oz. tub Frigo shredded parmesan cheese
1-1/2 tsp. salt
2 lbs. fettucine pasta, cooked in salted water and drained

I use a medium sauce pan and on low heat slowly melt the butter and add the garlic and stir. Once the butter's melted good and just starting to slightly bubble around the edge of the pot, I add in the heavy whipping cream and slowly raise the heat to low-medium continuing to stir constantly. When the cream starts to look slighty puffy and the butter begins to separate out, I add the salt and the wine and iimmediately start adding the parmesan a little at a time stirring until it all appears to be melting into the cream/butter mixture. Continuous stirring with this sauce is very important or the cheese will settle out on the pan bottom and you'll end up with globs of cheese that will stick to your spoon.  I use a large plastic-tipped spoon that is flat on the end so you can get good contact with the pan bottom.  Once the sauce mixture begins to actually cook a bit, the sauce is ready to go.  If you keep it on the heat too long, the cheese will try to reconstitute itself making for globs.  For tonight, when the sauce appeared done, I added in the thawed shrimp while stirring to heat them through.  As they were pre-cooked, this only took about two minutes.  I then folded in the shrimp and sauce into the just finished fettucine pasta ready for serving.  I also like to dust the dish with fresh-ground black pepper once it's in the bowl.  The family liked it tonight so that makes it all worthwhile. Buon appetito from our house!

Hawaiian Loco Moco

What a funny name for such great food that anyone can make at home. The Loco Moco is simple: a fried hamburger patty on a bed of white rice, topped with an over-easy fried egg (or two) and covered with brown gravy.  Sounds odd but don't knock it 'til you've tried it.  It's good for any meal of the day, even that fourth meal one fastfood chain keeps pushing on us while ringing their darn bell. 

The loco moco is an interesting cultural mix of foods that came together in that great cultural melting pot of Hawaii in 1949.  It belongs to their great food tradition they call "Plate Lunch".  Sort of like our Southern meat-and-three, it's a meat often with macaroni salad and two scoops of white rice as the sides. Hawaiian-style foods are comfort foods that have origins in Chinese, Hawaiian, Japanese, Filipino and Portuguese cultures as these peoples make up the majority living in Hawaii.  Go to a McDonald's for breakfast in Hawaii and you can have Portuguese sausage or fried Spam with your eggs and rice on a breakfast platter.  It sounds odd to us but is really tasty.  There's a chain that started in Hawaii that I like that's rapidly expanding on the mainland called L&L Hawaiian Barbecue where many of us can now experience these flavors. Aloha!

L&L Hawaiian Barbecue Menu