Tag: Ari LeVaux

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Making carrot and coriander soup.

CREDIT: Ari Levaux

Last year at about this time, I sat down with a stack of seed catalogs, a warm beverage, and a pantry full of dreams. I repeat this ritual every year, fully aware that it’s only a game and that only a token amount of my food will ever come from my garden, regardless of how many seeds I order. But tokens like this have a way of taking me to some cool places, so each winter as I peruse my seed catalogs, I choose a few more. Last winter, I ordered a token pound of cilantro seeds, aka coriander. As a result, I didn’t have to buy cilantro all summer, or coriander all winter, and I became acquainted with one of England’s favorite comfort foods.

In the U.K., where cilantro is called “coriander leaf,” cooks use both seed and foliage in a velvety carrot soup. Carrot and coriander soup is so popular that entire top 10 lists have been written, ranking and comparing the various retail options available on the British market. When I started making batches of my own this winter, I began to understand why.

Ari Levaux

I had ordered my pound of coriander based on conversations with a farmer friend named Luci, who plants cilantro every two weeks, from April through September. It’s her most profitable summertime crop, in terms of output vs. return, she says. Luci recommended the Calypso variety because it can handle more heat than most cilantro plants, she can plant it tightly and cut it like salad mix, and she gets a second cutting from each planting. In the middle of summer, when cilantro wants to flower as soon as it sprouts, Luci uses shade cloth to cool the soil before planting, but token gardeners like myself can use the shade of other plants.

And we don’t need to plant our coriander in perfect rows, either. We token gardeners can just toss our coriander toward the garden by the handful. I tossed mine toward locations that were specifically chosen based on the changing angle of the sun.

When tossing seeds at the garden, one should make an effort to cover them, either by raking them in or sprinkling with topsoil or compost. Unless rain is imminent, give them a good soaking.

My Calypso seeds arrived in February. In April, I began throwing coriander into the middle of the garden, where it would get the most sun. As the days grew longer and hotter, I threw seeds into shadier spots, between raspberry bushes, under the tomatoes, beside the spinach. I threw seeds toward the pathways, the garlic patch, the chicken yard.

In the heat of summer, as expected, most of my cilantro flowered and went to seed. Most, but not all. Because I had so much cilantro in the ground, in so many spots, from full sun to full shade, it was always possible to find enough cilantro when I needed it. That token sack of cilantro seed, which cost me 14 bucks, returned free cilantro all summer long. There wasn’t always a ton of it, but it never quite ran out.

I did what you do when you have cilantro. I made salsa, chutney, curry, tacos. By the end of summer, the garden was full of cilantro plants gone to seed, some of which had dropped and sprouted anew.

I thought about trying to save some of my homegrown coriander for the pantry. Then I remembered I still had about a quarter pound of Calypso cilantro seed.

So I’ve been making a lot of coriander and carrot soup, sometimes without the fresh coriander leaf that most recipes call for — it’s great either way. I use carrots and onions from the winter farmers market, and garlic and coriander from my pantry. What I find most striking about this mellow, satisfying soup is how the coriander disappears. The carrots and onions neutralize the strong-flavored seed to the point where you can barely taste it in the soup. My version is assembled from ideas and ingredients picked and chosen from other recipes. With a dish as simple as this one, even mild deviations can have a big impact on the final character, so there is no need to get fancy. Just get some coriander, and you will be fine.

Coriander Carrot Soup

This soup is pureed, ideally in a blender. An immersion blender or food processor does the trick, eventually. We want zero chunks.

Makes 12 cups; serves 6

1 ½ pounds carrots, sliced (about 5 cups)

1 pound onion (one large one), sliced

1 stalk celery, chopped

1 large garlic clove

¼ pound potato, peeled and sliced

1 tablespoon coriander seeds or 1 teaspoon ground coriander

½ cup cilantro, loosely packed

1 teaspoon salt

8 cups water (no stock necessary)

Garnish: some kind of cream, such as heavy cream, mayo, or sour cream

Place the carrots, onion, potato, garlic, salt, and water in a large pot, and bring to “the boil,” as they would say. Simmer for 30 minutes, skimming any scum that floats to the surface.

Meanwhile, toast the coriander seeds in a dry pan on medium-low heat. When browned and aromatic but not burnt (about five to 10 minutes), grind them (If you don’t have a spice grinder, use the ground coriander) and add to the pot. Simmer until everything is tender, about 20 minutes. Turn off the heat and let it cool to a temperature you can manage in a blender. Blend in batches. Add fresh cilantro and blend again, until the green flecks of fresh coriander are to your liking: not too big, not too small, but just right.

Serve hot or cold, garnished with the cream of your choice, extra coriander, or some grated ginger, if you wish.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Nothing but respect for the super legume, lentils.

CREDIT: HandmadePictures | Dreamstime.com

I am SO PUMPED TO EAT LENTILS!

Said basically no-one, ever. At least in my bubble of America. But the more I look into this sentiment, or lack thereof, the less sense it makes.

As I write these words, I am full of lentils. Not bloated but satisfied, with a tangy, savory lingering aftertaste.

Pound for pound, lentils represent about the most human nutrition one could wring from the earth. They pack more protein than any plant that isn’t soy and are easier to digest. A serving of lentils contributes huge amounts of folate, iron, and other minerals, twice the anti-oxidants of blueberries, and about half your daily fiber needs.

Even a thin-soiled, poorly watered field can produce a crop of lentils, which is why entire societies have been built of their thick mortar. The tough determination of a lentil plant is appealing, and being legumes, each successive crop can improve the health of the soil. India, which grows more than 50 varieties of lentil and consumes half of the world’s supply, is one of the few places I’ve visited where vegetarian options are more appealing than meat-based, thanks in part to the lentil action.

In North America, most lentils are grown in the upper Columbia River basin, but they are migrating east, over the continental divide and onto the Northern Plains, where grain farmers are planting rotations of lentils to build soil. Being so good for the soil, the lentils themselves are almost a bonus, a byproduct of a healthy cropland system. And something similar can be said about lentils in the kitchen: a lentil-based meal need not contain many of them.

Unless you are cool with a bowl of green-brown, bland gruel that may also be too crunchy, it’s worth mastering a few basic concepts and learning the potential scope of lentil cookery. Sometimes I want more lentil power and less mush, and that’s when I make a pot of rasam, a soup that’s based on the cloudy water leftover from cooking lentils. The lentils themselves are a byproduct.

It’s analogous to the making of a bone or vegetable stock. Eventually, the carcass gives up so much of its goodness that it’s essentially spent, devoid of flavor and nutrients, all of which fled to the broth.

Deep down, everyone feels a nourishing vibe from lentils. But sometimes, the soothing lentil flavor for which you thirst in your bones can be elusive to conjure into the kitchen. I find the flavor and feeling of rasam, a South Indian drink, or soup, depending on how it’s served, is what I want from lentils. No less fulfilling than a bowl of chicken soup, rasam is made with lentil broth, flavored with ground spices and two sources of sour, and balanced with fat, and a fragrant garnish.

I learned about rasam from a yogi named Norman, who lived in India for decade, earning a Masters of Indology from the University of Mysore.

Rasam soup, Norman explained, is something of a power drink for Brahmans, which are the elitists of the caste system. The caste system is messed up, but that doesn’t change the fact that Brahman food can be dazzling. They drink rasam multiple times a day, he said.

In addition to the lentil water and spices, what makes rasam so electrifying is the combination of sour flavors from both tomato or tamarind. When Norman taught me the ways, we happened to be standing under a tamarind tree, and made a paste of fresh tamarind pods mashed in water. For those without fresh tamarind, Knorr brand tamarind soup powder is a great substitute. Mix a tablespoon of that powder into a cup of water for each batch of rasam.

The tomatoes can be fresh, cut into cubes, or from a can — if so, include the water. I use my frozen roasted tomato sauce. If you don’t have tomatoes and tamarind, you can substitute for one of them with fresh lemon or lime juice. It won’t be the same, but it will be good.

As for the spices, Norman claims not to use exact proportions, but I can tell you the ingredients and get you close enough to follow your own taste.

In a heavy pan with no oil, toast a tablespoon each of cumin and coriander seed, two tablespoons mustard seeds (yellow and/or brown), a teaspoon of black peppercorns, and five fenugreek seeds (careful, they are bitter!). Keep the pan moving, toasting until the mustard seeds start to pop. Crush the spices in a mortar and pestle or spice grinder, along with powdered red chile pepper. That is your rasam powder.

To prepare the lentil water, soak a cup of lentils in a pot of water for 10 minutes. Stir, discard floaters with the water, and add two or three quarts of cold water. Simmer for 30 minutes. Split, aka decorticated lentils, have their skins removed and cook faster, producing a creamier broth. Whole lentils, like black belugas, which look like shiny drops of caviar, produce a thinner, darker broth that’s no less rich.

When the lentil water, spices, and sour flavors have been assembled, heat a pan with oil or butter on medium heat, and add half an onion, flat side down, along with the tomato, tamarind water, and three or so tablespoons rasam powder. Bring to a simmer and add the lentil water. Simmer. Adjust salt. Maybe add some garlic powder (and fresh curry leaves if you have them).

That’s about it. At least, that’s all it needs to be. But this point is also a gateway of sorts. Rasam can be a base in which to cook veggies, like cauliflower or potatoes, until tender. You can also add some of the cooked lentils back to the rasam to make it thicker, or make rasam with more than one type of lentil.

Just don’t be afraid to add fat. It needs to be there to balance the acid and spices. Butter or ghee are traditionally used. Coconut milk is amazing. Bacon, inexplicably, not so much.

I serve it simply, in a bowl with chopped cilantro and a dollop of mayo.

As for the lentils themselves, that dense mushy byproduct from the preparation of lentil water, I sneak it into things. Scrambled eggs handle it well — especially the yellow lentils. Of course, you can make dal. But I’ve been enjoying a hummus-like dip, made in the food processor with olive oil, fresh garlic, tahini, salt, and lemon. For extra flavor, I look no further than my fresh rasam powder.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Mastering pho

CREDIT: John Lee

I tend to do my cooking by improvisation, but that doesn’t work with pho, despite its apparent simplicity. The broth is elusive, even if you know what the ingredients are. Inevitably, one or more of the spices will come on too strong, resulting in more of an unbalanced cacophony than the understated, harmonious symphony that has conquered the slurping masses.

My numerous failures left me discouraged, with no other choice than to head for my local pho shop to get my fix. But this drought ended when Andrea Nguyen, the undisputed authority on Vietnamese food in America, was kind enough to email me the keys to the kingdom.

I found myself on a list of recipe testers for Nguyen’s masterful new cookbook, The Pho Cookbook (Ten Speed Press, 2017). My main assignment was to help replicate and troubleshoot the recipe for pressure cooker pho, a method that expedites the usual hours-long simmering of bones behind your typical bowl of pho.

Other than the wholly unexpected addition of a quartered apple — Nguyen’s substitute for Vietnamese rock sugar — there weren’t any surprises in the ingredient list. I’d used them all before in my previous failed attempts.

John Lee

Pressure Cooker Beef Pho

PRESSURE COOKER BEEF PHO

Adapted with permission from The Pho Cookbook by Andrea Nguyen
(Ten Speed Press, 2017)

Ingredients

Broth

3 lbs beef bones

1 lb beef brisket, unsliced

2 ½ star anise pods (20 robust points, total)

1 3-inch piece of cinnamon

3 whole cloves

1 small Fuji apple, peeled, cored, and cut into thumbnail-size chunks

Chubby, 2-inch section of ginger, peeled, thickly sliced, bruised

1 large yellow onion, halved and thickly sliced

2 ¼ teaspoons fine sea salt

2 tablespoons fish sauce

1 teaspoon sugar

Bowls

10 ounces dried, narrow rice noodles

Cooked beef from the broth, sliced thin

4-5 ounces thinly-sliced raw beef steak

½ small red or yellow onion, thinly sliced against the grain and soaked in water for 10 minutes

2 thinly sliced green onions, green parts only

¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro

Black pepper, to taste

Optional: bean sprouts, chile slices, mint, Thai basil, lime wedges, hoisin sauce, Sriracha sauce. (Nguyen gives recipes for homemade versions of hoisin sauce, chile sauce, sate sauce, and garlic vinegar)

Procedure

Rinse bones.

Toast the spices on medium heat in the pressure cooker for a few minutes, shaking or stirring, until fragrant. Add ginger and onion; stir until aromatic and slightly charred.

Add four cups of water to stop the cooking process. Add the bones, brisket, apple, salt, and five more cups of water. Lock the lid, and pressure cook for 20 minutes at 15 psi or higher.

Remove from heat. Allow pressure to go down to the point where you can open the pressure cooker. Season with fish sauce, salt, and sugar if desired. Remove the meat, soak in water for 10 minutes to prevent drying, and set aside until serving time. Refrigerate the broth to make it easy to skim fat, if desired.

While the broth is cooking, soak the noodles in hot water until pliable and opaque. Drain and rinse, and drain again. Divide among four bowls. At serving time, dunk each portion of noodles in boiling water, then replace in the bowls. Top with the brisket, steak, onion, green onion, cilantro, and pepper. Heat the broth to a boil, and ladle into the bowls. Dive in and add condiments to tweak flavor. Invite people over to enjoy your handiwork while you assault them with pho puns. Your audience will be captive until the pho runs dry.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

A new potato salad is a blank canvas.

CREDIT: Ari LeVaux

New potato salad recipes abound online, as do those for normal potato salad. Some versions are tossed with sour cream-based dressings rather than the typical mayo. Others use a simple vinaigrette. A cilantro chutney makes a fine potato salad sauce as well.

Most potato salad recipes call for boiling or steaming the potatoes. I get it. Cooking them this way helps prepare the cut surfaces to really grip the sauce. Nonetheless, I prefer to oven-roast my potatoes, which adds a browned, caramelized flavor. Admittedly, this treatment cuts down on their adhesiveness to the sauce, but not prohibitively so.

I recently made a new potato salad with a bunch of spuds that were as small as they were new: baby fingerlings from the farmers market. They were so small that I didn’t even cut most of the spudlings before roasting them. That, in principle, should have further inhibited their grip on the sauce, but it didn’t matter. I tossed my salad in a batch of homemade garlic and dill mayo, and it held together beautifully.

Beyond the choice of dressings, a potato salad is a 3D blank canvas in many other ways as well, into which you can incorporate the fruits and leaves of summer’s progression. Fresh peas, snap or shelled, can be tossed in at the very end, as can chopped celery. Parsley, dill, or cilantro can be chopped and added, but you will probably want to choose just one of those dominating herbs. Any protein, from tofu to bacon to shrimp, can be added, along with whatever else summer can throw at you. Green onions (aka new onions) are preferable to chopped bulbs, but either will do. That fennel root sitting in your fridge, which seemed like such a sophisticated purchase at the time but now have no idea what to do with? Your new potato salad will swallow that up, along with more misfit produce than grandma’s seven-layer leftover casserole, but with a finished flavor that’s fresh and crunchy.

(Counterpoint: My wife disagrees with me completely. She prefers her potato salad to have just potatoes, olive oil, salt, garlic, and greenery, such as parsley.)

I roasted the new potatoes along with whole cloves of new garlic and rounds of carrots. I should have peeled the garlic first, but I didn’t. I tossed these roots with oil, sprinkled them with salt and garlic powder, and baked at 350 on a tray, stirring occasionally. If you happen to have any garlic scapes, chop and toss them in for the final minutes of cooking.

Be warned: This is a tasty mixture. You should probably roast extra of this rootsy mix for the kitchen vultures, because they will surely be circling. That fennel root could be roasted too, but I prefer to serve it raw and crunchy.

Let this cool before mixing with your uncooked veggies. Then mix together whatever raw veggies you’ve assembled, toss in the dressing, and serve.

The dressing could be Dijon sauce, or balsamic vinaigrette, or something with crème fraîche, but if you find yourself at a crossroads and aren’t sure which way to turn, you can’t go wrong with mayo. Admittedly that’s kind of my motto in general, but especially so here.

I will leave you, thus, with my recipe for dill mayo:

Crack an egg into a food processor, or better yet a cup into which your submersible hand blender can plunge. Add slices of fresh garlic and the juice of half a lime. Blend until everything is fully liquefied together. Slowly add olive oil, in the thinnest of streams, as the mixture whizzes. After you’ve added about a ¼ cup, increase the flow of oil until another ¼ cup as been added. Blend another moment, then continue whizzing and pouring until it thickens into mayo and the oil starts to pool on top. Then, add chopped fresh dill, blend again, and stir it into your new potato salad.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Superfood: An Ode to Pomegranate

CREDIT: Plmrue | Dreamstime.com

The idea that certain foods can make you smarter, faster, stronger, or even younger has led to the recent proliferation of “superfoods,” purported to do such things. This angle on health and well-being has opened big doors for marketers of food, writers of listicles, and those with the resources to pursue the superfoods lifestyle. But it’s buyer beware for consumers who wade into this $140 billion-a-year industry, because one thing many superfoods can surely do is cleanse your bank account.

The pomegranate, while often named in the company of superfoods, deserves a spot above this fray. Yes, it is a superfood, not just for the eater but for the earth, and even for humanity. And for what it’s worth, we’ve been eating them for a long time. Many Biblical scholars believe the pomegranate was the real-life inspiration for the forbidden fruit. Whether or not we owe the original sin to this original superfood, civilizations and cuisines have been built on those ruby red, fleshy arils, which is what the angular sacks that contain seeds and fruit are called.

The trees are tolerant to high heat and low precipitation, are generally easy to grow, and can produce huge crops. The fruits can be stored for months and shipped slowly, helping to make pomegranates climate-friendly and adapted to a planet that is already heating up.

This adaptability, along with growing demand for the fruit, have caused a surge in pomegranate trees being planted. Pomegranate orchards are replacing apple orchards in parts of India that are now too hot for apple growing. Meanwhile, pomegranate trees thrive in many of the same areas that support opium poppies, like Afghanistan and Mexico, which means eating them could help steer rural economies away from the narcotics business.

Though it can be messy, it’s hardly a chore to interact with a pomegranate. The leathery pentagonal orb glitters from the inside like a crystal-filled geode when you open it. The juicy seeds, dense with flavor, sugar, and acid, are refreshing and joyful to munch on. Some people eat the arils with spoons by the bowlful. A sprinkled handful on a meal can transform it, as we will see in a moment in the recipe for Linguine con Funghi e Formaggio, or linguine with mushrooms and cheese.

But first, lest we forget, there are some truly compelling superfood-y reasons to like pomegranate. Antioxidants, vitamins, blah blah, sure.

Meanwhile, research published in 2013 suggests that pomegranates can cause dramatic improvement in rodents with Alzheimer’s. The team then set out to determine what compound or compounds in pomegranates were behind this activity. A follow-up study published in December of 2015 looked at the ability of several suspected pomegranate compounds to pass from the blood to the brain, which would be a crucial quality for an Alzheimer’s treatment.

None of the entries on their list of suspects, it turned out, were able to cross from the blood into the brain. But the team discovered that one of the suspect molecules is broken down by gut bacteria into smaller molecules called urolithins, which do pass the blood/brain barrier. Urolithins have also been shown to be anti-inflammatory, and to remove Alzheimer’s-related plaque from cultured brain cells.

Remember, if one aspires to therapeutic outcomes similar to what may be happening in rats, you would have to eat a lot of pomegranates and might want to consider juice. You could make your own juice by purchasing the fruit and watching videos on YouTube about how to seed them without making a colossal mess.

When buying pomegranates, look for firm fruits with rounded, rather than sunken, skins. Ultimately the best way to determine the quality or ripeness of a particular batch of fruit is to open one.

If you find a keeper, go buy some more from the same batch and store them in the fridge. The fruit’s fridge-life can be extended for months by wrapping them in paper towels and storing in a paper bag at the bottom of the fridge where there isn’t much activity. You want to leave the wrapped pomegranates unbothered, with as few vibrations as possible. Like bottles of wine, the less they’re disturbed, the better they’re preserved.

What you should never do is buy packaged pomegranate seeds, which have a relatively short shelf life and have been the source of multiple decidedly non-super outbreaks of food-borne illness.

Linguine con Funghi e Formaggio owes its magic, in part, to its garnish of pomegranate seeds. It may appear to be almost an afterthought, but it really completes the dish.

Linguine con Funghi e Formaggio

For two big portions:

Half-pound linguine — a thick but not enormous handful.

3/4 cup mix of fresh basil, oregano, and parsley

1/3 cup mix of freshly grated Parmesan and Romano cheeses

5 cloves garlic, mashed

2 cups mushrooms (you can use a mix of white button, crimini, portobello, morel, oyster, and shiitake)

1 tablespoon butter

3 tablespoons olive oil

1/4 cup pine nuts

1 lemon

1/2 cup pomegranate seeds

Heat two quarts of water with 1/8 cup of salt. Add the pasta when boils.

While cooking the pasta, chop the herbs, grate the cheese, mash the garlic, and slice the mushrooms.

When the linguine is al dente (just a receding sliver of a dry, white center), remove noodles and toss them generously in olive oil. Set aside.

In a large skillet or wok, combine butter and 2 tablespoons olive oil on medium heat. Add pine nuts and the mashed garlic.Toss the nuts just until they start to brown. Don’t overbrown.

Add the mushrooms and stir/toss them in. Season with 1/4 teaspoon of fresh ground pepper and a “kiss” of salt.

When the fungus starts to brown, toss in the herbs, then the pasta, then add the lemon juice.

Transfer the fragrant mixture onto a large plate, and garnish with handfuls of pomegranate seeds, and the rest of the grated cheese. Squeeze a quarter lemon over the loaded plate, and place the remaining quarter lemon on top.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Move Over, Pumpkin Pie

CREDIT: Ari LeVaux

Perhaps the only thing that I can say with certainty about pumpkin pie is that I could live on it, probably forever. In fact, years ago when I had a seasonal pumpkin pie business, I survived on it for weeks at a time. We even made crusts, flaky, buttery, and delicious crusts that were tedious and messy to prepare. I don’t miss them one bit.

For a while I called my crust-free creations pumpkin pudding. Then I went through a pumpkin custard phase. Now I’m into pumpkin pot de crème. Or pots de crème, in the plural form.

Pumpkin pot de crème — or crustless pumpkin pie, if you wish — is a flexible and forgiving dish. It handles chocolate very well. Cocoa powder can be added to extra-sweet fillings, while chocolate chips or chunks can be added when extra sweetness is in order. Adding cracked tapioca or tapioca pearls will add suppleness to the filling. (Tapioca is my secret weapon for many fruit pies, from apple to blackberry.)

A friend recently sent me a recipe for a Southern-style pumpkin pie that contains “cocoanut.” When I asked him about that unusual word, he said it was “coconut” and apologized for his spelling. Interestingly, the Internet is full of examples of the cocoanut spelling in the South. However it’s spelled, cocoanut, like cocoa, makes a fine addition to most any pumpkin pie filling. My friend’s pie, made with a cup of shredded fresh coconut, is almost more macaroon than pie.

Since tasting that cocoanut pumpkin pie, I’ve been playing around with other coconut products, like coconut flour, coconut cream (as a partial or total replacement for cow cream), and shredded dried coconut. Shredded fresh coconut is my favorite, but you have to be OK with a little extra fiber, as it definitely changes the custardy consistency for which pumpkin pie is known.

With so many important variations to try, who has time for crust? And even if a crusted pie on the Thanksgiving table is your ultimate goal, testing your filling in pudding or pot de crème form will be a lot more efficient than making a crust for each experiment.

There is a pumpkin pot de crème recipe that I’ve practically become monogamous with since first trying it. Spiced Pumpkin Pots de Crème With Pistachios and Spiced Apples comes from the French blog “La Tartine Gourmande.” It includes the very cool trick of steaming the squash with a split vanilla pod.

Despite my fascination with this pot de crème recipe, I can’t stop experimenting. I’ve been doubling the pumpkin/squash amount, adding coconut and tapioca, and omitting the sautéed pistachio and apple topping (which admittedly sounds good, but who has the time?).

I guess with me and pumpkin pie, monogamy isn’t really in the cards. That’s another thing I can say with certainty. But here is the recipe, anyway.

Ari LeVaux

Ingredients

1 cup red kuri squash or pie pumpkin, cut into chunks (optional: double that amount, and add an extra egg)

1 vanilla pod, split, with seeds scraped out

1 cup milk

1 cup heavy cream

¼ cup sugar

2 large eggs

½ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ginger

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

(optional: ½ cup grated, fresh coconut)

(optional: 1 tablespoon cracked tapioca)

Steam the squash with the split vanilla pod. When soft, allow to cool. Puree.

Preheat oven to 320.

Beat eggs and sugar together in a bowl.

In a heavy-bottom saucepan, heat milk and cream and spices to a simmer.

Stir the pureed squash into the milk and cream. Stir the milk/cream/squash into the egg and sugar.

Pour the mixture into little cups, jars, or ramekins.

Bake creams in a covered water bath for about an hour. Let cool to room temp, and refrigerate overnight to set completely.

Serve with sliced apples and pistachios sautéed with butter and sugar or whipped cream.

Serve. Freak out. Eat more.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Two ways to eat your spinach.

CREDIT: Ari Levaux

When the airborne fluff of cottonwood flowers floats on the sweet breeze of my hometown, it’s my cue that the summer solstice is near, which means the spring crop of local spinach is near its peak. Those fresh, meaty leaves are a seasonal reminder of where I am, as well as what season it is, among the many benefits of eating locally. But as much as I love spinach, it can become a challenge to keep the fire burning for Popeye’s little helper. That’s when the other side of the world comes in handy. With a bit of knowledge and just a handful of ingredients from another hemisphere, the resulting infusion of exciting flavors will keep you eating your spinach with enthusiasm.

Specifically, I’m thinking of the northern Indian dish palak gosht, meat with spinach, for which the only ingredients that need to be imported are spices and ginger. Or the related dish palak paneer, spinach and cheese, which can be made with only those imports. Similar is saag paneer. The main difference is that the saag version includes additional greens, like mustard.

The vegetarian version contains cheese instead of meat. In both cases the sauce is dark green, as if made from pure spinach, but is actually equally tomato-based, with the green from the spinach covering up the red of the tomatoes. These recipes use spinach in ways I don’t often get around to, and learning to make them can be a good way to exercise my creativity in the kitchen. The ability of a few seeds, roots, and powders to transform local ingredients into something exotic is why merchants like Marco Polo become de-facto explorers, and why spices like black pepper were once more expensive than gold.

The interwebs are full of recipes for both of these dishes, but as both can be found in my go-to cookbook for Indian cuisine, 50 Great Curries of India by Camellia Panjabi, I need look no further. Panjabi is a legendary chef and founder of a family of restaurants in London known as the Masala Zone.

Indian recipes like Panjabi’s can seem overwhelming at first, as they contain so many ingredients, mostly spices. But aside from their whirlwinds of flavor, the main ingredients are few, and humble.

These recipes are edited slightly for space and clarity. Panjabi is a stickler for freshly ground spices, with the seeds being pan-toasted before grinding. It’s a rule worth sticking to with Indian food.

Palak paneer (spinach with curd cheese)

¾ pint milk

½ cup yogurt

2 tsp lime juice

½ – ¾ lb of spinach

2 jalapeños (or similar small green hotties), chopped

½ tsp chopped ginger

2 Tbsp cooking oil

Pinch of fenugreek seeds

1 onion, minced or grated

1 garlic clove, chopped

¼ tsp cumin seeds

2 tomatoes, pureed

For the cheese, carefully bring the milk to near-boiling, then add yogurt and a pinch of salt. Simmer for 7-10 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Place a strainer over a bowl, and pour the milk through it. Press down on the curds with the back of a spoon to get the water out (or squeeze in cheesecloth).

For the spinach sauce, cook the spinach, ginger, and jalapeños in a pan with a pinch of salt and a splash of water. Allow to cool, then puree in a blender.

Heat the oil in a pan, on medium, then fry the fenugreek seeds for 30 seconds. Add the onion and fry until translucent. Add the garlic and cumin seeds. Stir them around, then add the tomato puree. When the water from the tomatoes has evaporated and the sauce thickens, add the cheese curds and spinach puree. Stir it up and serve.

Palak gosht (meat with spinach)

1 lb meat (lamb, mutton, beef or venison, as long as it’s red and tender)

1 minced onion

1 ½-inch cube of ginger

2 good-sized garlic cloves

2-3 jalapeños (or similar green chiles)

½ cup yogurt

¼ + ½ tsp freshly ground cumin

½ lb fresh spinach

¼ cup cooking oil

1 cinnamon leaf (optional, because, cinnamon leaf?!? otherwise, use a bay leaf)

1 cardamom pod (preferably black)

3 cloves

½ teaspoon freshly ground coriander

3 tomatoes, finely chopped or pureed

pinch of nutmeg (optional)

1 chunk of butter (optional)

Puree the ginger, garlic and jalapeños in a food processor. Add the yogurt and ¼ tsp cumin powder. Marinate the lamb in this for at least an hour, preferably overnight.

Blanch the spinach for 10 or so seconds in boiling water. Puree.

Heat the oil in a pan, add the cinnamon (or bay) leaf, cardamom, and cloves. When the spices begin to brown, add the onions. Slowly fry until they start to brown. Add coriander and ½ tsp cumin powder. Stir, and add a splash of water.

Add the meat and marinade. The meat will release water as it cooks. When this moisture is nearly gone add the tomatoes, two cups water, and a teaspoon salt. Cover, and simmer on low until the moisture is again nearly gone. Add pureed spinach, cook gently for five minutes. Sprinkle with nutmeg powder, and add a chunk of butter if desired.

Both can be served with rice, or an Indian flatbread like parathas, rotis, or naan.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

A Look at Lentils

CREDIT: Mk74 | Dreamstime.com

Lentils are a humble ingredient that appear in many earthy foods. Not the fancy dishes that tap dance around the table, but simple, nourishing foods like Indian dal or hippy mush — the kind of food that feeds villages. It turns out that lentils come from a plant that has a similarly beneficial impact on the land where it grows and on the communities that cultivate it.

During the height of the 1980s farm crisis, four Montana farmers joined forces in a hunt for alternatives to the commodity agriculture system that was destroying their land and communities. The soil was losing its fertility, thanks to the predominant industrial agriculture practices in the region. Droughts were becoming more frequent, which exacerbated the soil’s issues. Farmers were going broke, crushed between rising prices for inputs and lower prices at market.

The four friends were determined to farm their way out of this mess and began by exploring various crops that would add fertility to the soil. One, a lentil named Indianhead, was bred as a cover crop, intended to be plowed into the soil to add nitrogen. But when plants make nitrogen, reasoned David Oien, one of the four founders of the Lentil Underground movement, what they’re really making is nitrogen-rich protein.

“Indianheads were cheap,” Liz Carlisle writes in Lentil Underground, a book about Oien and his movement. “They were great for his soil. And since they were bred to make nitrogen, they were 24 percent protein. Why not add them to the cattle ration? Or for that matter, why not try some himself?”

The Indianheads were delicious, and Oien began eating copious amounts, though it was a while before he admitted to his neighbors that he was eating his soil-building crop.

Oien and his friends, founded a company, Timeless, to market what they grew. The name came from a meeting that went way into the night, and nobody knew what time it was.

Twenty-five years in, the Lentil Underground includes a widening base of organic farmers that grow for Timeless, including old hippies, young environmentalists, gun-loving rednecks, conservative Christians, Libertarians, the state’s organic certification inspector, and Montana’s Democratic Senator Jon Tester. The personalities and “against all odds” tension of the book makes for a fun read that’s as much about ecology and economics as it is lentil farming.

In addition to being an agricultural and social movement, the Lentil Underground is also a political movement. While working for Montana lentil farmer and Senator Tester, Carlisle first learned of the Lentil Underground. Members of the Lentil Underground weren’t shy about calling their senator with ideas, especially since their senator is a lentil grower.

Thanks in part to their efforts, the recent Farm Bill contains a pilot program called the Pulse School Pilot provision — Pulse being the plant family of which lentils are members. The Pulse School Pilot provision funds the purchase of $10 million in lentils and other pulse legumes.

Lentils are such a nutritional powerhouse that USDA classifies them as both a plant and a protein. And those high-protein Indianheads? They are still being grown, marketed as Black Beluga Lentils, and are popular with high-end chefs. Many other varieties of lentils, in a rainbow of colors, also bear the Timeless label, as does the Black Kabuli Chickpea, which functions ecologically like a lentil (and makes a striking hummus, Carlisle says).

These legumes are grown in rotation with grain and oilseed crops and sometimes a pasture phase. The oilseed phase could be flax or sunflower or safflower. The grain phase could be one of several heritage grains like Farro or Purple Prairie Barley, marketed by Timeless. Other heritage grains, like Kamut and Spelt, are bought by the friendly competition, Montana Flour and Grains.

Legumes are able to build their legendary proteins and thus supply the plant with in-house fertilizer, thanks to a symbiotic relationship between the plant’s roots and a type of soil bacteria. This trans-species cooperative effort that goes down below the lentil plants is a metaphor for the entire Lentil Underground movement. And the more I learn about it, the more I feel the urge to eat some lentils.

There are no recipes in the book, alas, but the companion book is in the works: Pulse of the Earth, by Claudia Krevat.

Carlisle explained her default Ethiopian-style lentil recipe to me. It’s a recipe that she never tires of. I’ve cooked it twice, and I’m hooked.

It uses red lentils and Ethiopian berbere spice mix, and results in a dish called messer wot, aka spicy lentils.

Ingredients

I cup red or yellow lentils

1 medium or larger onion, minced

2 cloves fresh garlic

1 tablespoon garlic powder

2 tablespoons berbere mix

¼ cup olive oil

salt

A key step to this recipe, Carlisle said, is to “…let the onions, water, and berbere enjoy each other’s company for a few minutes.”

Add a minced onion to a pan with enough water to cover it. Add your choice of spice. While Carlisle usually uses berbere, sometimes she uses Indian dal spices, sometimes curry powder, sometimes plain cumin.

Simmer the onion, spice, and water for 30 minutes.

Then add olive oil, garlic, and salt. After another 5 minutes, add lentils, and more water or stock as the lentils start to swell.

I was surprised that she added the lentils dry, without soaking or cooking them first.

Most red and yellow lentils are decorticated, she explained, which means the outer skin has been removed. The Timeless Petite Crimsons that she uses cook in 5-10 minutes.

Keep adding water or stock as the lentils swell, and cook until they are done to your desired tenderness.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

What is “real” mayonnaise?

CREDIT: Ari LeVaux

As you may have heard, start-up food company Hampton Creek was recently sued over the branding and labeling of its egg-free sandwich spread, “Just Mayo.”

It’s not mayonnaise, complained the plaintiff, food giant Unilever, maker of Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise. Unilever, however, ended up backing down and the suit was dropped, thanks to a perfect storm of public-relations blowback it created. But the question remains, for those of us who care to ponder it: Was Hampton Creek wrong for saying, “It’s just mayo,” or was Unilever out of line for crying, “No, it’s not!”?

The debate comes down to the meaning of mayonnaise. And how it’s defined depends greatly on the context. There is a legal meaning under which a relative few materials would qualify, and there is a functional meaning, a street definition of mayo that is relevant at the table where it counts the most. Egg-free products like Just Mayo easily qualify for the latter category, as does the carrot mayonnaise I once encountered in the dining hall of a Brazilian commune.

Before I reveal the details of this carrot mayo, I should dole out enough mayonnaise theory to convince you that carrot mayo is real mayo. At least at my table.

According to the FDA, mayonnaise must contain at least 65 percent oil to qualify. The reason Miracle Whip isn’t mayo is because it doesn’t have enough oil. (It has added starch as a thickener.) One can be sure that if Miracle Whip were to call itself Miracle Mayo, Unilever would have its lawyers all over that infraction with squirt bottles blazing. The same definition also says that real mayonnaise must contain eggs. I’m no legal scholar, but based on that requirement, it’s hard to deny that Unilever had a good point, at least in a legal sense.

In the context of a food lab, meanwhile, mayonnaise is recognized as an emulsion of oil and water, two substances that don’t normally mix. They are coaxed into forming a stable partnership with the help of an emulsifier, which, in the case of mayo, comes in the form of various molecules in the egg’s yolk. The resulting emulsion has a thick texture and a fleshy body that’s sturdy enough to stand in a glorious, three-dimensional dollop.

As has been demonstrated by the toned bodies of Just Mayo and others like it — including my favorite fake mayo, Vegenaise — it is possible to make a fantastic oil in water emulsion with pea- and soy-based emulsifiers rather than yolk-based. These vegan emulsions are nearly as impressive as the ones formed with eggs. The one discernable shortcoming is that the vegan emulsions need to be refrigerated in order to retain their form, while mayo, amazingly, can hold its form at room temperature.

In practice, mayonnaise is less about the specifications of the product and more about a niche that needs to be filled. More than almost any other edible item, mayonnaise embodies lubricity, a quality that facilitates the chewing of food. Can you imagine trying to eat tuna salad without some mayo to lube it up and send it down smoothly? Plus, you need creamy stuff on your food.

Yet despite its all-around awesomeness, mayo is humble, mild mannered, and doesn’t try to steal the show. It is literally the glue behind the glitter of whatever dish it’s in, quietly getting the job done, dollop by dollop, on the noodles, on the meat, and even in the soup.

There are some rare cases when there’s actually no need for mayo. With Middle Eastern food, for example, hummus fills the niche. Hummus isn’t an emulsion, doesn’t contain eggs, and isn’t usually very thick. But it’s got the creamy lubricity we need from mayo, and everything it touches — or better yet, everything smothered in its silky embrace — becomes more delicious.

Along these lines, in the mountains of Bahia, Brazil, a chef named Jeu made a vegan potato salad that was held together by a substance that she called carrot mayonnaise. Even the Hellmann’s lovers at the table couldn’t protest.

Jeu agreed to show me how it’s made. It’s much easier than samba dancing, that’s for sure.

Real Carrot Mayonnaise Ingredients

5 medium-sized carrots, chopped into rounds

1 clove garlic

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup olive oil Optional: tablespoon or so of herbs, like oregano or thyme (omit if using herbs on the potato salad, as discussed below)

Steam carrots until soft. Let them cool to room temperature. Add garlic to a blender or food processor, along with salt, oil, and herbs (if using). Blend, adding the carrot rounds, one by one, letting each round liquefy before adding the next. If it’s not making a smooth, moving vortex add more olive oil.

The resulting sauce, especially if left overnight in the fridge, has the core strength to stand tall, rather than puddle. There are emulsifiers in the garlic and carrots, and they are at work in carrot mayo, binding oil and water as best as they can.

This flavorful binding lubricity, added to potato salad, is a winning combination. Sitting on the dining hall bench of a commune, after pulling weeds and funky yoga moves all morning, we happily gobbled it down. But if you’re stuck in more of an uptown mode, perhaps looking to impress or one-up a dinner guest, I suggest serving this potato salad deconstructed, as an artful pile of roasted potatoes alongside a dollop of carrot mayo.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Winning at Cheater’s Chicken

CREDIT: Ari Levaux

Cheaters never win, or so we’re taught. But I cheat at chicken all the time, and I never seem to lose.

To cheat at chicken, buy a roasted chicken at the store, bring it home, and use it as an ingredient in some other dish, like enchiladas or stir-fry.

Regardless of the final form of the meal, Cheater’s Chicken Soup is a given. A lot of chicken soup or broth is prepared as an afterthought from the leftover carcass, but Cheater’s Chicken Soup can be made as soon as the bird gets home.

Pull the flesh off of the bones, leaving a greasy pile of skin and meat, and cut the bones into small pieces. With store-bought, slow-cooked chicken, you can count on the bones being only marginally more rigid than the buttery flesh, and kitchen scissors should easily reduce the bones into inch-long sections. It’s especially important to slice through the wide ends of the long bones, where much of the marrow, nutrients, and general boney goodness reside.

Simmer the bone shards in a gallon or so of water. You can turn out a pretty quick soup this way, but it’s better to simmer the bones for at least two or three hours. Then, let the pot cool to room temperature, to let the leaching of nutrients from chicken to stock run its full course, and set the pot in the fridge overnight. The next morning, skim any fat from the surface of the stock, and strain out the bones.

The stock can be stored for a day or two in the fridge, or frozen. When you’re ready to make soup, reheat the stock and add carrots and celery, in large chunks, and a peeled onion, cut in quarters. Simmer for at least an hour, and season with salt, a little at a time, as the soup cooks. If you want a simple, brothy soup, salt is enough. If you want something heartier, add some of the chicken flesh, if you were able to set some aside while your family was pulling at that bird like a flock of vultures.

At this point, the soup, like a freshly procured chicken, is a blank slate. You can season the soup with herbs, like dill leaf or thyme. Garlic helps. Green chile helps. Maybe a pinch of lime.

I was at the store the other day getting supplies for Cheaters Chicken Peking Spring Rolls. The plan was to make chicken spring rolls flavored with scallions and hoisin sauce, Peking-duck style.

Alas, the only flavors of cheaters chicken available were unsalted and balsamic. Unsalted sounded terribly bland, but I wasn’t in the mood to roll the dice with balsamic-flavored Peking spring rolls, so I went with bland.

At home, the vultures dug into that bland bird like they always do, barely pausing to notice the lack of salt or any other seasoning.

As the bones simmered, I made my rolls.

I rehydrated a sheet of rice paper by dipping it in a bowl of water and spreading it out on a plate to soften. In the center of the sheet I placed chicken, scallions, and hoisin sauce, along with cabbage, basil, mint, and little dollops of mayo and Vietnamese chili garlic sauce. I rolled and repeated, and then served the rolls with soy sauce.

The meal was great, but I couldn’t help wondering why I had paid three times the price for a bird that was simply heated. Maybe I was losing at cheating.

The next day I brought home a five-pound bird that, according to Whole Foods, had received regular spa treatment and occasional trips to Disneyland, yet cost only a few dollars more than the one-pound cooked birds in the deli area.

I rinsed my happy, dead chicken and put it in the oven at 350, unseasoned. The entire process took about a minute.

I really wanted to add a little seasoning, but for the sake of science I left it plain, wanting to see if it was possible to screw up a chicken.

But after a couple of hours I broke down. Having just flipped the bird to breast-down in the juices, I couldn’t resist sprinkling salt, garlic powder and thyme on the moist underbelly of the freshly turned chicken. Then, I lined the perimeter of the pan with large pieces of potato and carrot, before sending it back in the oven for more. I cooked it mostly with the lid on to keep in the juices, uncovering under high heat at the end for a few minutes to crisp the skin.

All of this hassle took another five minutes out of my day, and the result was spectacular, better than Cheater’s Chicken. The vultures were especially voracious around the bird that evening.

If you’re looking to bust out the cranberry sauce and whatnot, then you should probably do something a little more involved with your home-baked chicken. Brine it overnight in salt water to add flavor and moisture. Stuff it. Use a meat thermometer to make sure it’s perfectly cooked.

But if you’re just looking for a shortcut around the cheating process, either because you’re too cheap to cheat, or are just a better person, the most important ingredient is just a little foresight. Put the bird in the oven, and then get back to your life.

Because luckily, it’s really hard to screw up a chicken, unless you dry it out. And if you do, you can make extra chunky chicken soup.