Produce News for Week of January 23, 2012

GINGER ROOT (MONDAY, JANUARY 23): Chinese New Year begins today. It's the year 4710 on the calendar. So, gung hei fat choy. So, I thought I would talk about some Asian culinary ingredients this week. You should start out with probably the number one spice used in Asian cooking. And that's right here. You probably would be surprised, yes it is indeed ginger or ginger root. Now, when you’re picking out your ginger root, one of this things that you need to look for is make sure that it is nice and shiny, shiny means it's fresh. I want you to pick it up, it needed to be nice and heavy for it size. Because the heavier it is, the more oil content is inside. Now, look you don't need the entire hand, you can ask the produce guy or the produce gal, I don't need the whole thing. Can you just break a little bit off. They are more then happy to let you do that. Now, when you get this home, it is really easy to peel alls you need is a spoon, and it peels very easily. So, don't forget your ginger in your Asian cooking. What you never tried fresh ginger? Oh, my goodness, it makes a world of a difference.

STATE OF THE ONION ADDRESS (TUESDAY, JANUARY 24): Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Good day Americans, this is the State of the Onion Report. I know…the State of Union Address is tonight. So, I thought I would talk about the State of the Onion. Beautiful onions, you know you have red, white, and yellow onions. But I thought I would teach you very quickly how you need to properly cut these onions. So, here is what we're going to do. We are going to cut off the north pole, and the south pole, but don't cut off the root end. Now, we are just going to cut this thing right in half. Get it so far? So far that's easy. So, now alls you have to do is just take that outer peel and it peels right off, very nicely. So, you are ready to cut. So, how are we going to cut this thing? What we are going to do, we are going to make this first cut here, and we are going to just keep cutting just like so. And when we got all the little slices we need, we are going to turn them over and chop them. There we go. So, now, you got your diced onions for your Asian cooking for Chinese New Year.

CHINESE PARSLEY (WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25) Hey, this week we are having a lot of fun. We're talking about Asian culinary ingredient. Chinese New Year began Monday. The year 4710. It is the biggest year. This year, it is the year of the dragon. That's like the big year in Chinese New Year. So, we have been talking about Asian culinary ingredient. We started the week with the most popular spice used in Asian cooking, of course, ginger. And then we talked a little bit about onions. You got to have onions in there. Now, let’s talk about the most important fresh herb used in culinary in Asian culinary cooking. That's right, well you may know it as cilantro. When I first started actually in the produce industry, we called this Chinese parsley. That's what we knew it as, it is the most used fresh herb. Now, you saw me patting it dry. Now, that is the Marks brother's job when we're about ready to use cilantro, we pat it dry. So, when we are go to use it, here's alls you have to do, you just cut it right off there, and now chop it up. It's that simple.

SERRANO CHILES (THURSDAY, JANUARY 26): Gung hei fat choy. It's Chinese New Year this year it's 4710, they are a little bit beyond us. All right, they ‑‑ we are only 2012. It is the year of the dragon. It's the big year for Chinese New Year and we have been talking about Asian culinary ingredient. And you know one of the things about Asian cooking, they tried to excite all of your senses so the sweet, and the sour, and the heat. Yes, in Asian cooking, they bring the heat and here is the heat. You will not believe how many chili peppers they would use. They use a lot of the Thai, which is even smaller than this. This is serrano chili, jalapeno peppers, a lot of jalapenos. In fact, I use to deliver to Chinese restaurants and Asian restaurants. And man, a ten‑pound unit, I would deliver 5 or 10 of them. Now, when you are talking about handling these, may I suggest use a paper towel ‑‑ a plastic bag to handle them, so you don't get them in your eyes

PINEAPPLE (FRIDAY, JANUARY 27): Hey, all this week we have been talking about Asian culinary cooking, you have some heat, you have some sweet. Yea, this is the sweet. There is a lot of pineapple used in Asian cooking. So, I thought I would bring in some ‑‑ by the way, this weekend is the Pro Bowl in Honolulu. So we better talk pineapple. Now, I know a lot of people when they look at pineapple, you get the one with the color, the most golden color. That is not necessarily true. One of the things that I do first, look at those. The tops there. This one right here, this looks very, very old, this one right here, looks very, very fresh. Even though this one had the most color. Pick them up in your hand. The one that has the green, oh my goodness, it feels like a bowling ball in my hand. You know what that means, that means that there is a lot of juice in there, it means it's go to be full of sugar. The next thing that you are going to do, oh just smell it, if it smells like you are going to the Pro Bowl, that is a pineapple you want to cut up.