Category Archives: cooking

Kitchen Travels to Persia, with Chicken

Posted on by under cooking, recipes, shopping, try this

Food of LifeI received a Persian cookbook as a gift a couple of months ago (Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies, by Najmieh Batmanglij) and haven’t stopped cooking from it since. I like the way these dishes make my kitchen smell—rich and garlicky and warm, with sweet and earthy spices. They have so much in common with the foods I loved in the Caucasus—delicate combinations of sweet and sour flavors, fruits stewing along with meats in savory dishes, recipes packed with nuts and fresh herbs. This is no surprise—the ancient trade routes brought ingredients and techniques from Central and South Asia west to Iran, the Middle East, the Caucasus, Turkey and back again, forming a culinary continuum that persists to this day.

This swath of Earth Is my gastronomic home. 90% of my most-used cookbooks (including Silk Road Cooking (also by Batmanglij), Plenty, Please to the Table, Classical Turkish Cooking) focus on cuisines in this group. I love tracing how the names for foods made subtle shifts as they made their way across it. For example, eggplant in Hindi is baingan or brinjal, in Farsi bademjan, in Georgian badrijani, in Russian baklazhan, in Turkish patlican, all the way to the (British) English aubergine.

While I already had most of the spices required to make Persian dishes in my pantry and could get most of the ingredients I needed at my local grocery store, there were a few gaps that necessitated a field trip to the Persian store in the ‘burbs. (Sure, I could have filled them online, but that wouldn’t be half the fun!) With a list of items I never knew existed (e.g. verjus (unripe grape juice), dried limes, grape molasses), my intrepid culinary adventure partner Wendy and I set out for Yekta Market, reputedly the best-stocked Persian store in the DC area.

Nuts and dried fruits at a market in Kyrgyzstan, part of the same culinary continuum

Nuts and dried fruits at a market in Kyrgyzstan, part of the same culinary continuum

It took a few U turns and more than a few curses at the GPS Digital Dolt, but we made it half an hour before close. I walked in and wanted everything: the hummocks of raw nuts—almonds, hazelnuts, pistachios, walnuts. Heaping mounds of fresh herbs and bulging bags of dried ones: tarragon, mint, lovage, fenugreek. Pomegranate and sour cherry juice. Flatbreads other than pita. The most interesting jams: mulberry, fig, quince, walnut. Huge blocks of feta bathing in brine, waiting to be cut on the spot. Barrels of olives. Pickled turnips. Dried dates, figs, apricots, cherries, prunes, persimmons. The spidery script over everything. The same dusty clutter I remember from the Russian store in Minneapolis. People come here to taste home.

pomegranate seeds

Georgian pomegranate

We could have easily stayed another hour to peruse everything on the shelves, but the shop was closing and our stomachs growling. We went to the restaurant next door for dinner, where the star dish of our meal was fesenjan, chicken braised slowly in a thick stew of pomegranate, ground walnuts and spices until it falls off the bone. It was the kind of meal I was tempted to prolong by running my finger along the inside of the bowl when all the flatbread was gone and there were still traces of sauce leftover.

I managed to restrain myself at the restaurant, but made a similar dish from Batmanglij’s cookbook for a potluck dinner party with friends the next week. I’m not the only one who couldn’t get enough of it. I promised to share the recipe and haven’t yet, so here it is:

Pomegranate Khoresh with Chicken (Khoresh-e fesenjan ba jujeh)

From Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies, by Najmieh Batmanglij
Makes 4 servings

½ lb. (2 cups) shelled walnuts
5 Tbsp. oil, butter, or ghee
2 large onions, peeled and thinly sliced
2 lbs. chicken legs, cut up (I used a package of chicken thighs and didn’t bother cutting them up)
1lb. butternut squash, peeled and cut into 2-in. cubes
4 cups pure pomegranate juice
2 Tbsp. pomegranate molasses
1 tsp. sea salt
¼ tsp. freshly ground black pepper
¼ tsp. turmeric
½ tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. ground cardamom
¼ tsp. ground saffron dissolved in 1 Tbsp. rose water (I skipped this)
2 Tbsp. grape molasses or sugar (optional)

Garnish:
Arils of 1 fresh pomegranate
2 Tbsp. toasted walnuts

  1. To toast the walnuts: Preheat the oven to 350 F (180 C). Spread the walnuts in a sheet pan and bake for 10 minutes. Set aside.
  2. In a Dutch oven, heat 3 Tbsp. oil over medium heat until very hot, and sauté the onions. Remove from pot with a slotted spoon and set aside. Add 2 Tbsp. oil and brown the chicken. Add the butternut squash and sauté for a few minutes.
  3. In a food processor, finely grind the sautéd onions with the toasted walnuts, add 1 cup pomegranate juice, the pomegranate molasses, salt, pepper, turmeric, cinnamon, cardamom, saffron-rose water (if using), and grape molasses or sugar,  and mix well to create a creamy paste.
  4. Add the creamy walnut paste and remaining pomegranate juice to the chicken in a Dutch oven, stirring gently. Cover and simmer over low heat for 1 ½ hours, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon to prevent walnuts from burning.
  5. The khoresh should be sweet and sour and have the consistency of heavy cream. Adjust to taste by adding pomegranate molasses for sourness or grape molasses (or sugar) for sweetness. If the sauce is too thick, thin it with more pomegranate juice.
  6. Transfer the khoresh from the Dutch oven to a deep, ovenproof casserole. Cover and place in a warm oven until ready to serve with chelow (saffron-steamed rice). Just prior to serving, sprinkle with fresh pomegranate arils and walnuts.

At Home in the Kitchen

Posted on by under breakfast, cooking, kitchens

My brother and I went home to visit our parents in Minnesota last weekend for their 40th wedding anniversary. We didn’t have much in the way of plans in place, but knew that we wanted to do two things for sure: cook and eat.

When I thought recently about how much our family life has come to revolve around food since I went off to college, it struck me as a bit of a surprise. I didn’t grow up in a “foodie” household. My mother, who did the lion’s share of the cooking, relied on tried and true recipes for heartland classics like ziti hotdish and beef stew. We rarely went out to eat and when we did, we generally went to the Indian restaurant in the strip mall or the Thai restaurant in a different strip mall (both of which, I might add, are excellent). When we went on a roadtrip to Washington, DC when I was 10, we packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in a cooler in the back of the van and ate them for two days straight.

Photo: BecomingLola.blogspot.com

Yet looking back, I realize that our family rituals always centered around food, even if it wasn’t fancy or unusual. Evening mealtime together was something I could count on, like a stake anchoring the day. Sunday mornings I used to lie in bed pretending to be asleep until the last possible moment, hoping Mom and Dad would forget about me until it was too late to make it to church, but the smell of bacon or chocolate Malt-o-Meal eventually got me up every time. Every fall, when the Haralson apple trees in our front yard hung heavy with crisp, tart fruit, Dad would peel and chop them while Mom mixed up topping for apple crisp. We’d eat for dessert later that night while it was still warm, in shallow bowls puddled with cream.

There were the simple snacks we used to make, things I haven’t had in years and am old enough to be nostalgic for now: thick slices of tomato pulled fresh from the garden and sprinkled with sugar; graham crackers spread generously with chocolate frosting and eaten like a sandwich; the popcorn Dad popped in the Whirly-Pop on the stove every Wednesday and Thursday just before we sat down to watch Law and Order or ER.

Photo: Kristin Rosenau at PastryAffair.com

If we were connoisseurs of anything, it was bread. That was the one item my mother refused to buy at the grocery store, instead driving across town to the bakery that made boules and baguettes and babkas the way she liked them. I hardly buy bread anymore (The carbs! The freezer space! There’s no good bakeries nearby, and the good stuff at the farmers’ market doesn’t come sliced!), but as a family we used to go through several loaves of it each week. In the mornings, or as an afternoon snack, there was peanut butter toast, onto which Mom would slather butter underneath the peanut butter. (The peanut butter doesn’t stick to the roof of your mouth this way, and contrary to what you might think, the taste of the butter still comes through.) Sometimes there was cinnamon toast (buttered toast sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar), which is one of the most comforting foods I know. In the winter, when we came in from ice skating on the pond across the street, there was cocoa and toast, which is just what it sounds like, except the toast would be—surprise!—buttered, then cut vertically into four strips for dipping.

Little things have changed about meals at home over the years: there are fewer highly processed foods (almost none, in fact), more alcohol, and vegetables that never showed up before, like kale and chard. It’s often my brother and I who do the cooking these days when we’re at home. What hasn’t changed is the way the kitchen serves as the magnet that pulls us together, whether from different corners of the house or halfway across the country.

Beet the Heat: Beet Ice Cream with Mascarpone, Orange Zest and Poppyseeds

Posted on by under cooking, recipes, try this

Photo: Saveur.com, Issue #140

I have long daydreamed about the delectable concoctions I would create if I had an ice cream maker, but had never actually used one until last weekend. A friend of mine happened to have one (“The beauty of wedding registries!”), so we made a date to try out one of the recipes from a book we’d both been salivating over, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer.

With flavors like Roasted Strawberry and Buttermilk, Rum with Toasted Coconut, and Plum Pudding, we could have chosen any recipe at random and been dazzled. We ended up settling on Beet Ice Cream with Mascarpone, Orange Zest, and Poppy Seeds: I couldn’t think of anyone else who would let beets near their ice cream, much less choose them over chocolate, and she wanted to prove her skeptic husband wrong.

Beets are so naturally sweet and such a gorgeous, rich color that I’m surprised we don’t see them in desserts more often. Other vegetables long ago became mainstays on dessert menus: sweet potatoes, rhubarb, carrots… (not to mention pumpkin and zucchini, which are technically fruits since they are born of flowers).

Britton Bauer’s ice creams all begin from essentially the same basic recipe (heavy cream, milk, corn starch, sugar, light corn syrup, kosher salt, and cream cheese), and then incorporate various other ingredients to create a multitude of unexpected flavors. In an article in Saveur last year (where I first learned about the book), Molly O’Neill explained the chemistry that makes Britton Bauer’s recipes work:

“Ice cream is basically a frozen emulsion, in which components that do not naturally meld—fat, water, and air—are encouraged to marry by adding such things as heat, proteins, sugars, and starches. The stronger the marriage, the more supple the ice cream will be. If water is not bound well with the other ingredients, it becomes nasty little ice shards that disrupt the smooth sensation on the tongue. Rather than using the traditional egg yolk to bind water and fat in the frozen emulsion, Bauer relies on the proteins in milk—casein and whey. She boils the liquid to reduce its water content, concentrating and denaturing the proteins, rendering them more likely to bind the water and fat. Bauer’s other tricks include adding cream cheese, which is high in casein proteins, and using thickeners, such as cornstarch, which absorb water and prevent crystallization, for added insurance. Her use of natural corn syrup in addition to granulated sugar is also key: Its glucose is not as sweet in flavor as sugar’s sucrose, and it binds with water, which helps prevent icing, too.”

Katie had put the metal bowl in which the churning magic happens in the freezer the night before, and I had roasted and pureed a couple of beets beforehand, so all that remained to do was throw together the sweet and creamy base, boil it with orange peel to infuse it with a light citrus flavor, stir in the beet puree, and press “On.’

We sipped our wine while the ice cream maker churned away, and 25 minutes later we stirred in the poppyseeds and dug into the pinkest, most exquisitely nuanced ice cream I’ve ever tasted. The tang of the orange undergirded the earthy sweetness of the beets, which complemented but didn’t overwhelm the nuttiness of the poppyseeds. I closed my eyes. I laughed. It was that good.

If I needed an excuse to indulge this daydream of mine, I just found it. Registry schmegistry!

Don’t believe me? Try it yourself.

On Writing Recipes and Learning to Ignore Them

Posted on by under cooking, recipes, try this

ImageI was recently looking back at a post I wrote a couple of years ago, in which I talked about the “piecemeals” I used to cobble together from the motley collection of ingredients I would bring home from the grocery store. As much as I love eating PB&J, grapefruit, and wine for dinner on occasion, I’ve made a concerted effort over the past several months to plan my meals in advance. I’ve been pleased with the results: faster shopping trips, less wasted food and money, and more exciting dishes.

Far from the onerous chore I once imagined, meal-planning turned out to be one of the highlights of my week. I look forward to the time I spend over coffee on Saturday or Sunday morning, poring over cookbooks and magazines to find inspiration for the week’s menu. Sometimes I follow recipes to the letter, but more often than not, I use them as a basic outline and fill in the details based on what’s in season, what I have on hand, or what I’m craving.

For me, that freedom to improvise, to riff on a theme in the kitchen, makes cooking both a creative outlet and a form of stress relief. It’s a skill I’ve been picking up slowly, through experiments with varying degrees of success, and is something I’ve wanted to share with others who might not yet feel comfortable striking out on their own at the stove.

The weekly recipe column I started writing last month for DCist online magazine is giving me the chance to influence, in some small way, how readers view food and cooking. “Season’s Eatings” highlights local, in-season ingredients available at DC-area farmers’ markets, especially those readers may rarely (if ever) find at the grocery store. My mission is threefold:

1)     Give readers a sense for locality and seasonality of food (what grows when in our region)

2)     Inspire people to taste more mindfully, more enthusiastically, more broadly. Indeed, to experience food through all five senses more fully.

3)     Help others learn to cook more intuitively, with less fear and more confidence in their own ability to create something delicious.

ImageI’ve been dreaming up dishes for years, but have never written them down before. The process is making me pay attention to details I’ve never given much mind to: is “sauté until asparagus is crisp-tender” descriptive enough? How fine is “finely chopped”? I do my best to strike a balance between precise direction (for cooks who need more guidance) and encouragement of experimentation and modification (for everyone, to reinforce the idea that the recipes are, by and large, suggestions to give the cook somewhere to begin). Nearly all of them end with some variation of “adjust seasonings to taste.” The essence of intuitive cooking lies there, in that line.

Much as I depend on it, I realize how baffling this command can seem for novice cooks. A friend told me recently that seeing it at the end of a recipe has always left her feeling lost. “To taste what?” she wonders. If you have never tried an ingredient or a dish before, how are you to know what it should taste like?

The short answer is, it should taste good. When you come to the end of a recipe and sample the result, you should like what you taste and want to eat more of it. In most cases, that’s a perfectly adequate measure of the success of a dish. Part of the beauty of trying new recipes lies precisely in not feeling pressure to adhere to some kind of external standard. When you’re cooking, you decide. Learn to trust your tastebuds.

You can train your palate by tasting carefully, with attention. Over time and many meals, you’ll learn to look at a recipe you’ve never seen before and know what ingredients will be essential and which can be left out or replaced with something else. You’ll begin to understand which ingredients must be kept in proportion and where amounts can be tweaked to suit your own fancies. You’ll discover what to add in order to balance or bring out certain flavors; for instance, salt adds depth or “backbone,” acid creates brightness or “punch,” sugar lends “roundness” and calms excessively bitter or sharp flavors, and fat gives a dish fullness or “heft” and helps create a silkier texture.

Reading lots of recipes also helps, as does watching cooking shows and, more than anything, peering over the shoulder of a knowledgeable cook and asking lots of questions. And if, having “let go of the handlebars,” so to speak, you end up ruining a dish beyond all recognition, you may even be grateful for the excuse to eat cereal and ice cream for dinner.

Cooking the Everlasting Meal

Posted on by under cooking, food writing, kitchens

It’s a rare cookbook that inspires not only several new recipes, but also a whole new way to think about cooking. Then again, Tamar Adler’s An Everlasting Meal is no ordinary cookbook. It is based on MFK Fisher’s 1942 book How to Cook a Wolf, which, in sparkling prose, taught home cooks to produce simple, elegant meals cheaply in spite of wartime privations.  Like Fisher’s, Adler’s is the kind of book you’ll want both to spill sauce on at the stove and curl up with in bed.

“Cooking is both simpler and more necessary than we imagine,” she writes. “It has in recent years come to seem a complication to juggle against other complications, instead of what it can be—a clear path through them.” I’ve ruminated on this theme in a previous post, at the time when I was first coming to understand cooking as a source of deep relaxation rather just another item on my to-do list.

Adler’s work inspired another turning point for me, though, in her guidance on “picking up loose ends” in the kitchen and letting the ingredients of one meal lead naturally into the next. “Continuity is the heart and soul of cooking,” she reminds us. “If we decide our meals will be good, remanded kale stems, quickly pickled or cooked in olive oil and garlic, will be taken advantage of to garnish eggs, or tossed with pasta. Beet and turnip greens, so often discarded, will be washed well and sautéed in olive oil and filled into an omelet, or served on warm, garlicky crostini.” You can relish her words with your tastebuds as well as your mind.

After reading An Everlasting Meal, I started grinding chunks of stale baguette in the food processor to make breadcrumbs, which I toast in the oven and sprinkle atop quiche for a bit of crunch, or use to form a crust on pan-fried fish. I began taking note if fresh herbs were going to waste in the fridge, chopping them up finely and freezing them in ice cube trays to add later to soups, curries, or pots of beans. I realized that roasting seven sweet potatoes on Sunday need not mean I eat the same thing every day: one can be turned into crisp little fries to dip into garlic-yogurt sauce, another sliced thin and layered on salad with beets and feta cheese, a third simmered in coconut milk with green beans, basil and mint and served over rice.

If you are the type of cook who depends on recipes to guide your hands in the kitchen, this book will help develop your confidence to “let go of the handlebars” now and then, freeing you up to make the most of what you already have in the fridge. If you are already confident improvising in the kitchen, it will teach you to see fresh possibilities in ingredients so common we forget to notice that they, too, can be dinner on their own: eggs, onions, garlic, bread. And if you rarely venture beyond the bare minimum of cooking chicken and heating vegetables, it may at the very least inspire you to do the same thing more mindfully, noticing how oil takes on a sheen and skims faster across the bottom of a pan when it is hot, how quickly the aroma of garlic fills the kitchen when tossed into this oil, how sweet onions become as they soften and turn golden.

It is observations like these that make each meal a pleasure and bring us back to the kitchen time and again with renewed curiosity and anticipation.