Baked Cod with Golden Roasted Potatoes & Thyme

The pairing of fish and thyme is a classic combination all over the Mediterranean. Paired with golden roasted potatoes and a salad, it's a simple superb dish.

If you're wondering if this is not just a variation of this, you'd be right. You can't invent new tricks all the time. This is nothing more than the combinatorial approach to cooking which is the proverbial housewife's savior everywhere from Japan to India to the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

The CC will have a lot more to say about this subject but that's for a later post.


Ingredients (serves 2)

1 large cod fillet.

6-8 small roasting potatoes
4-6 sprigs thyme

olive oil
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Preheat an oven to 375°F.

Toss the potatoes with olive oil, sea salt and black pepper. Roast them for 15 minutes. Pull them out and toss again carefully to make sure they don't stick to the bottom. Toss springs of thyme all over them. Roast for another 20 minutes.

Meanwhile season the cod fillet by rubbing it with olive oil. Season with sea salt, black pepper and thyme.

Pull the pan out of the oven. Push the potatatoes aside to one side of the pan. Place the cod fillet gently on the other side and roast for 10 more minutes. Don't overcook it.

A quick salad with a nice lemony-vinaigrette pairs really well with this dish. (The salad above has thinly cut radishes added to give it some crunch and textural complexity.)

An Old Woman Fries Eggs

One of the great paintings by Velázquez is that of an old woman frying eggs while a young boy looks on and helps her.

The wonderful chiaroscuro is a joy to behold with the light appearing to come from the left. It was painted during his Seville period.

(Source of painting: Wikipedia.)

But what is she doing?

She is making huevos fritos con puntilla. These are eggs fried in hot olive oil where the oil is flicked around the edge of the egg to achieve a delicate lacey frill like that of a traje de Sevillana.

The evidence is the hot oil that she should be flicking over the edges of the egg whites with her wooden spoon. This is a reasonably high-risk procedure with the chance of hot droplets of oil splashing all over. Her right sleeve covers her hand to protect it but not her left. Most importantly, since this procedure can easily make the egg whites overcooked without the yolk having set, she seems instructing the boy to add a slug of olive oil to the earthenware cooking pot to cool down the oil.

She seems to be about to speak to him but his interest seems to have wandered. He just wants his abuela to make the damned eggs, and enough with the instruction already.

The eternal drama of youth and old age captured in a succint way!

Winter Mac 'n Cheese

When winter strikes, there's nothing like a warm oven and some comfort food.

This, of course, is a classic but it's been gussied up with winter vegetables. It takes a little longer because you have to roast all the vegetables separately but it's wonderful when it all comes together.

The trick with vegetables of the brassica family (brussel sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, etc.) is to roast them. It brings out the inherent sweetness in them without the smelly part (which occurs if you boil them.) They also happen to be absurdly nutritious.

The house will smell really nice with all the roasting and if you really want to amp it up a notch, a little truffle oil will take it to the next level.

Ingredients

4 cups whole-wheat penne

1 head radicchio (sliced into thin strips)
1 small cauliflower (cut into florets)
1 large carrot (diced)

butter
2 cups milk
1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup gruyère (grated coarsely)
1 cup parmigiano-reggiano (grated coarsely)

4 tbsp fresh rosemary (chopped fine)
4 tbsp fresh thyme

breadcrumbs

nutmeg
olive oil
sea salt
black pepper

2 tbsp truffle oil (optional)

Recipe

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Toss the radicchio with olive oil, salt and pepper and bake for about 15-18 minutes. Remove.

Toss the cauliflower with olive oil and pepper (no salt! - otherwise the mixture will be overly salty) and roast for about 15 minutes. Remove.

Cook the penne in heavily salted water until under al dente (about 12 minutes.)

Meanwhile, make the béchamel. Heat the butter. Add the flour, and let it cook at medium low heat until it is golden (but not brown). Add the milk and continue stirring. The sauce will continue to thicken. Add the salt, black pepper, nutmeg, rosemary and thyme, and take it off the heat.

Combine the penne, the sauce, vegetables, the cheeses, and truffle oil (if using) in a oven-proof casserole. Top off the dish with the breadcrumbs (this is the real secret to success!)

Bake covered for about 30 minutes. Bake uncovered for about 12-15 minutes until the top is golden and crispy.

Arroz caldoso con sepia y coliflor

This is an entirely unusual recipe in that it sounds positively weird on paper but is absolutely delicious in practice.

Arroz caldoso is the ultimate comfort food. Rice, protein and seasonings in a soupy broth that is absolutely perfect when the weather gets cold.

Best of all, it reheats wonderfully (attn: office dwellers) and the taste improves with time.

It's Valencian in origin, and originally features cuttlefish (sepia) but lacking that, the CC used squid.

You will notice below that the technique is entirely unusual. Instead of the onions and garlic being sautéed first, the squid is. There is logic here. Squid needs to be either cooked very little, or a long time otherwise you get a rubbery unappetizing texture. This recipe uses the latter method.


Ingredients

2 cups Valencian short-grain rice (substitute by Arborio)
6 cups fish broth
1/2 lb tomatoes (passed through a food mill)
1 lb cauliflower florets
1 lb cuttlefish (or squid) cut into 1/2 inch slices

4 large garlic cloves, minced
1 large onion, coarsely grated

4 tbsp olive oil

1/2 tsp saffron
1 tsp sweet paprika (preferably Spanish smoked)
4 tbsp fresh parsley (chopped fine)
sea salt

Recipe

Combine the broth and saffron in a pot and keep warm over a very low flame.

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

In an oven-proof casserole, heat the olive oil, and sauté the squid. Sprinkle with the sea salt while this is happening. Stir in the cauliflower, garlic and grated onion and sauté for 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes, parsley and cook for 3 minutes. Turn the heat to low and let cook for 10 minutes.

Stir in the paprika, rice, and sauté until the rice is well coated with the mixture. Pour in the broth and boil for 5-8 minutes until the rice is slightly done. Transfer to the oven and cook for 10 minutes, uncovered until the rice is still al dente.

The mixture should be still soupy at this point.

Remove from the oven and let sit for 5 minutes. Serve.

Asari Gohan

This is a basic every day dish that is so amazing that you will be forever checking how you lived your life before it. It's nutritionally complete, visually appealing, complex enough to be served at a state dinner. (In short, the platonic ideal of a Japanese dish.)

It's neither complicated nor hard in the least but it requires a fairly elaborate explanation of how all the pieces actually work.


Ingredients

12-18 clams
1/3 cup sake
1 tbsp ginger (cut into fine matchsticks)

1 cup japonica rice

2 cups kombu dashi

1/4 cup carrots (cut into matchsticks)
1/4 cup shiitake mushrooms (cut into matchsticks)
1 tbsp ginger (cut into fine matchsticks)

2 tbsp tamari (soy sauce)
2 tbsp sake
2 tbsp mirin

1 scallion (white and green parts sliced thin at a steep diagonal)
nori (sliced really thin)

Recipe

The first thing that you must do is wash the rice in cold water. The rice must be "polished" with your hands until all the surface starch is eliminated, and the water runs clear. Typically, this takes anywhere from 4-6 washings.

Drain the rice and let it sit wet for at least 30 minutes. (Yes, this matters.)

Add 1/3 cup of the sake to the ginger. Bring to a boil. Steam the clams. Remove as they open, and shuck them.

When all the clams are done, filter the liquid (= clam broth) through a cheesecloth/paper towel and reserve.

Combine the dashi, clam broth, 2 tbsp of sake, the tamari and the mirin. Add the rice, carrots, shiitake mushrooms and cook till the rice is well done.

The logic of this step is that the rice is cooked in an intensely umami-laden broth that makes it completely irresistible. Add to that the fact that esterification takes place means that it's almost impossible to resist.

Top with the clams, the scallion and the nori, and serve.

The clams add the protein, the scallion and the nori, the textural interest.

The Haul (from Astoria)

Anchovies, octopus, Greek chickpeas, the large white beans, bulgur wheat (of two grades), spanakopita, dried oregano, taramosalata, tzatziki, amazing pita bread.

Hazelnut Crusted Cod with Roasted New Potatoes

One of the tricks that professional chefs have is to give thematic unity to a seemingly disparate ensemble.

The dish below is an example of that.

The cod has been crusted with a mixture of hazelnuts, breadcrumbs, thyme and lemon zest.

The potatoes have been roasted with harissa, olive oil and thyme.

The vinaigrette for the salad in the background is made with lemon juice, thyme and hazelnut oil.

As you can see there's a clear thematic element of lemon, hazelnuts and thyme running through the ensemble.

There is also a clear visual and methodic disparateness. Textures, colors, cooking methods all separate to provide interest but tied into an integrated whole at an underlying level.

Organic Chemistry Rules!

One of the great tricks of Japanese cuisine is to cook "stuff" with sake (or mirin) and dashi.

Traditionally, the simplest dish of rice would have this but it extends in general to tons of dishes.

The reason is something that Coco Chanel would know like (the smell of) the back of her hand.

It's esterification.

When an alcohol and an acid — in this case, the various glutamic acids in the dashi — react with the alcohol, you create a whole range of esters. Esters are what give the fragrant fruity smells that we all love.

Add to that, the umami from the dashi and you realize that just "plain rice" is a killer dish.

As far as the CC is aware, this is unique in the world. He has not seen this technique being used anywhere else.

Break

The CC has been taking unusually long hiatuses as of late but he's going to take an even longer one.

Headed to India for even more culinary adventures. Back at the end of January with wondrous photos and recipes!

New Year's Eve

The menu:

Cheese platter (Stilton, Montbriac)
Crusty Baguette
Figs stuffed w. Almonds, Rosemary & Sea-Salt
Spicy Pickled Mushrooms
Walnuts caramelized w. Rosemary & Sea-Salt
Olives
Figs w. Prosciutto

Plenty of Champagne, of course!

Happy New Year!

Food as Metaphorical Horror

Humans have always had a slightly complex relationship with food in as much as it reminds them of their animal origins. For starters, carnivores that we may be, we have always had a slightly problematic relationship with slaughter and novelists, artists and film makers have exploited that endlessly.

Here are some of the best food metaphors in the interest of horror that the CC knows of in the medium of film.

Rules of the Game

Slaughter as a metaphor for the ruthless elimination of an entire generation in World War I.

Bonus: Made in 1939. Looks forward presciently and sees a repeat upcoming.

Rosemary's Baby

If you can make tea horrifying, you have real cinematic skill.

Bonus: The Lipton tea ad-placement near the end of the movie.

Repulsion

It's straightforward enough to horrify using a skinned putrefying rabbit but it takes a special talent to turn toast and (exhausted) marmalade into one for a horrific sexual frigidity gone awry.

Saló

The perfect meeting of medium and subject. Integrated into the film as a logical progression of horrors, Pasolini mentioned that he intended it as a "commentary on the horrors of fast food".

(You'll have to see this one. Can't reveal it without giving it away.)

Bonus: Nails.

Kitsune Ramen (with Onigiri)

The Warrior Class Enters the Kitchen

After the Meiji Restoration, the carrying of swords was banned for the samurai class. Since there was significant industry in providing swords to the samurai, as basic economic theory would tell you, the merchants evolved the product into something else.

That something was the production of knives for professional cooking.

Japanese knives are unique in the world. They are arguably closer to swords than they are to Western knives. For starters, they are frequently, but not always, single-ground (sharpened on exactly one side.) In the modern world, double-beveled knives do exist (e.g. santoku which evolved as a response to the French chef's knife) but the rule still stands.

They are also made to a much harder temper and and seriously sharp. You can cut a piece of paper just by gently caressing it against the blade.

Also, the number and variety of precision knives is far higher than what you would see in a traditional French kitchen. The level of detail and control is far far higher.

Lastly, the tradition of sword-like skills in the kitchen made evolve as a matter of routine, an equally important culture of safety skills. Japanese chefs cut away from the body never towards it. Equally importantly when doing fine fillet-work, the knife will angle away from the body while the top is restrained with the flat-face of the left hand. At all points in time, the blade is kept away from the body. It is quite amazing to watch a master knivesman in action.

Like all highly evolved technical cultures, there's an elaborate array of knives and an elaborate vocabulary to describe their properties, relative merits and demerits but that's just grind for a later post.

Thanksgiving

The CC has been in absentia for a while. Life sometime gets in the way. But he's back!

Here's the Thanksgiving menu chez CC:

Acorn Squash stuffed with wild mushrooms
♥
Pear, chanterelles & prosciutto stuffing
♦
Fingerling potatoes with figs & thyme
♦
Brussel sprouts with pomegranate vinegar, black walnuts & pomegranates
♦
Pears poached in red wine with stilton

Bibingka

Rice cake made with fermented rice flour and coconut milk. It's very slightly sweet with a smoky flavor. It's baked in a banana leaf, and is best experienced literally out of the charcoal oven.

Pili Nuts

The CC had never heard of them before he went to the Philippines.

They have a very high fat content, and are completely unique in taste. The best way to describe it would be like the bastard love child of hazelnuts and brazil nuts.

They are a delicacy because they have an incredibly short shelf-life (that's because of the high fat content which would cause them to go rancid quickly in the hot climate of the Philippines.)



They are frequently blanched and turned into sugary desserts but they could equally well work in a savory dish like any other nut.

Needless to say, they are quite impossible to find outside the Philippines.

The Yikes Meter!

Seen today on a menu, "pad thai tacos".

There is so much wrong with this the CC can't even begin to enumerate. Perhaps there's a reason that those two countries are so far apart?

This is the kinda bullshit that gives "fusion" a bad name.

The Mathematician's Approach to Japanese Cooking

One of the key insights into the nature of cooking is that all cuisines respect the role of limited resources.

One of these limited resources is the number of ingredients that can plausibly be obtained. Traditionally, this has always been limited by the seasons.

If you have limited resources then you might think that you'd have a limited number of dishes. But you'd be wrong!

Humans recognized quite early on that we are easily bored. We crave novelty and variety. The same ol', same ol' was as dreary a millenium ago as it is today.

Traditonally, most cooking was done by women, and women were responsible for coming up with "inventive dishes" each day (to stave off that afore-stated boredom.) They were forced, at the metaphorical gunpoint, to get creative about it.

Lo and behold, the Japanese discovered the combinatorial game. Have a vast amount of ingredients at hand but assemble a dish with just a few and rotate them daily. In fact, outsource a few so that you only need to assemble the rest (the Ricardo-principle applied to cuisine.)

Needless to say, one can't do this with a hard-core mathematician's approach since that would lead to entirely unappetizing dishes so a few rules are imposed on top of that to maintain visual appeal, textural interest and nutritional completeness.

If you understand this then the rules of the so called washoku become entirely obvious.

The rules of go shiki (five colors), go mi (five tastes), go hou (five methods), go kan (five senses) are nothing more than a rulebook to ensure complexity - visual, textural, and nutritional.

The traditional dish is not made with five ingredients. It's closer to between seven and nine in practice. That would imply that you scale as $$n⁷ where n is the number of starting ingredients (and n is very large to start with.) However, the above rules cut down the number of possibilities.

In any case, you are still left with a vast set to play with. Enough to stave off boredom before the seasons change which will alleviate the boredom anyway, and by the time next year rolls around nobody will remember that you played the same game last year!

Radish Salad with Dried Anchovies (Dilis)

This is an entirely inspired dish that you are unlikely to find in any Filipino cookbook. That's because it's a simple side-dish that is unlikely to make it into cookbooks which tend to feature fancier stuff.

It follows the most primitive principles of food. Use fresh ingredients, and touch them up minimally.

The ingredients are simplicity themselves - white radish (daikon), tomatoes, ginger, patis (fish sauce) and vinegar, along with dried anchovies (dilis.)

Served with warm rice, it's the perfect comfort food, and yet texturally complex and nutritionally complete.


Ingredients

4 tomatoes
1/2 radish
4-6 tbsp vinegar (to taste)
2 tbsp patis
4 green chillies (minced)
2 tbsp minced ginger

1/2 cup dried anchovies
salt to taste

Recipe

Cut the radish into paper-thin slices. A mandoline will help here.

Dice the tomatoes roughly.

Mix all the ingredients together except the anchovies.

Mix in the anchovies right before serving (so that they remain crisp and don't turn soggy.)

The Luck Factor

Well, we've had a late blast of summery weather, and the tomatoes were still super-ripe at the farmers' market. The CC got there early, and they were selling them for very cheap so the CC bought a ton, and made tomato sauce out of it. It was promptly frozen for future use.

When life gives you tomatoes, you must make tomato sauce!

Ibus

Rice and coconut milk in palm leaves that is boiled. Eaten with fruits or sugar.

To be fair, the CC appreciated it more than he loved it. Wonder if it would've been different with spicy food.

To be fair, this is a wondrous food just not to the CC's taste which shies away from desserts in general.

Spicy Japanese Crack (in red and green)

There is a spicy Japanese condiment called yuzukoshō (柚子こしょう) which consists of yuzu peel and chilli peppers which are then fermented.

It is very spicy (a little bit goes a long way), and has a strong citrusy scent from the yuzu peel. It takes on the color of the chilli peppers used — red chilli peppers yield an orange paste, and green chilli peppers yield a dull green paste.

Traditionally, it's used for nabemono dishes but its popularity means it's showing up everywhere.

This stuff is addictive. Once you use it you can't go back.

Keats

Food as a means of seduction. A theme as old as time.

Stanza XXX from the "The Eve of St. Agnes".

And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep,
In blanched linen, smooth, and lavender’d,
While he from forth the closet brought a heap
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;
With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;
Manna and dates, in argosy transferr’d
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one,
From silken Samarcand to cedar’d Lebanon.

A Bad Wind

It is said that "it's an ill wind that blows no good", and sometimes that can be literally true.

The north-east experienced torrential rain and extreme flooding with Hurricane Irene but apparently there's a silver lining.

From NPR: Irene Aftermath: When It Rains, It Spores.

When Hurricane Irene tore through the Northeast last month, it caused severe flooding and damage to homes, trees and power lines. But it also left behind something rather delicate: mushrooms.

Foragers say they've seen more fungi in the past few weeks than ever before.

There are more than 1,000 mushroom varieties in these woods, McDonagh says, but she eats only about 24 of them. She recommends taking a course on edible fungi before foraging alone.

The CC is a proud member of the New York Mycological Society ("only society that has had zero deaths, and we 'plan to keep it that way'") and goes foraging from time to time. However, he was not aware of this tendency for mushrooms to sprout after summer storms (although it makes perfect logical sense in hindsight.)

Oh well! There will be more storms in the years to come ...

Spicy Tingly Peanuts

The CC received these in the mail as a gift. They are totally addictive - your mouth is on fire, all tingly and numb from the Sichuan peppercorns and all you can think of is you need some more.

Fall is Here!

Last tomatoes of the season. Still amazing, and you can cook up a storm without the house turning into a sauna.

Pesto Trapanese

While the traditional pesto is from Liguria, this one is from Trapani in Sicily.

It's made with the typical products of the region — almonds, tomatoes, chilli peppers. You can see both the medieval and North African influences in this dish.

It's simple yet sultry in that summery way.

Ingredients

1/2 cup almonds (blanched, skins removed)
1 clove garlic
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp grated Pecorino
1/2 cup (tightly packed) mint leaves
2 dried red chilli peppers
4 tomatoes (peeled, cored, diced)
1 tsp sea salt

Recipe

Put all the ingredients in a food processor, and process till blended. Leave it slightly grainy so that it has some consistency.

Toss with long-strand pasta that has been drained, and is still hot.

Serve immediately.

The Syncretic Culture

If there is a a single word that could be used to sum up Filipino culture, the word would be "syncretism".

Over the millenia, the islands that now comprise the Philippine nation have encountered a myriad of cultures and synthesized them into a coherent whole. The influences range from Malay, China, Indonesia and Japan (geography), to India and the Arab world (trade routes and conquest), to Spain and America (colonial.)

In an increasingly post-modern world — "Sushi and Coca-Cola" — as a friend of the CC's so memorably put it; it is extraordinarily surprising that a syncretic food culture should not just be unknown but invisible to the point of surprise when it is mentioned.

There are primarily three reasons for this.

The first that hits the tongue directly is that Filipino food lacks a sharp flavor profile. There is nothing that "hits" you in the way that, say, Thai food does. Instead, the emphasis is on extraordinarily fresh ingredients prepared simply.

This makes it doubly ironic since the phrase "extraordinarily fresh ingredients prepared simply" could equally well be attached to Italian food which has been the subject of food fetishization for the last twenty years.

In an increasingly super-marketized world, it is simply not possible to experience the absolute wondrous nature of this food. In fact, one could argue that in large cities like Manila, this nature has been lost for a very long time.

The CC ate the most magical pork grilled with nothing but salt in the rural Philippines. The pig had been freshly slaughtered. Two days later, it was prepared again on the CC's request but it was nowhere near as good.

The explanation?

My sister prepared it. She doesn't know how to do it. She washed the meat but it's the blood that gives it the taste."

You can absolutely forget about eating stuff like this in a super-market world. In short, you are unlikely to have a "Filipino food experience" unless you actually use the absolutely best ingredients that money can buy. When done right, it should rightfully blow your brains out even lacking the afore-mentioned sharp flavor profile.

The second reason, and this comes from the simple fact that almost any great food culture is the food of poverty. Not only is there an extraordinary "waste-not, want-not" attitude to food but that there is positive celebration of offal.

(Incidentally, the Spaniards amped up this already ingrained agrarian logic, particularly the love of pork, to unprecedented levels.)

Given conventional food mores towards the "nasty bits" then, there seems to be this ick-factor that a lot of people will have to overcome.

(You can read Fuchsia Dunlop talk about the same phenomenon in the context of traditional Chinese cuisines.)

In Filipino culture, every organ is not just eaten but celebrated. Tuna jaw, tuna ovaries, pig lungs, pig offal in pig's blood, you name it. There's a dish. When mentioned, there's almost always a wistful sigh, "Oh, I miss that." (which has its own sentimental ick-factor, "Didn't we just eat that last night? How can you miss it?")

Since we live in a world of increasing offal-fetishization, this argument is going to become increasingly irrelevant. In five years when offal goes mainstream, that will be the time when the hoi-polloi "discover" Filipino food.

The third and very likely, the dominant reason of the invisibility of Filipino food, is that they have never had in the entirety of their history, a firm royalty. Sure, there have been local rulers and chieftains but there has never been an Emperor.

It may come as a surprise that an accident of history like that would have profound consequences on how we eat today but it does. Cultures that have had a firm sense of royalty and there are many -- French, Thai, Italian, Japanese, Indian, Chinese -- have not only a history of "fine dining" but an entire cadre of dishes that effectively migrated "top-down". From the Emperor downwards to the royal classes and then downwards to the middle-classes. Additionally, there is a very strong sense of what constitutes "fine dining", and a sense of how to go about it.

Modern restaurant culture at the highest end is nothing more than a generalization of royal cuisine. In short, you are still a slave to the whimsies of an emperor of a country that you have never visited and whose name you still don't know.

The pursuit of food as an active object of desire, discussion, detail has always been something that could only be pursued by the relatively well-off. That it even shows up in mass culture (TV shows, food porn!) is based on the fact that we are extraordinarily more economically productive than people in the 16th century. The average person can afford to waste their time in a pursuit that goes beyond daily sustenance. The Industrial Revolution has done its job, and extraordinarily well to boot.

If you were not particularly flush with money in older times, and wanted to eat great food, presentation and all, the only mechanism open to you would have to know someone a member of the elite, and be invited to dine at their table. The elite, after all, have always had their servants to make their food. Excellence was expected as a routine matter of course. If they were bored of the ordinary excellence that came out of their own kitchen, they would just finagle an invitation to dine at their friends' places where they would encounter an ordinary excellence that was totally different from their routine ordinary excellence.

(On a side note, that's why great artists with patrons have always eaten well. They may not be from the elite themselves but the influence rubbed off.)

In the Philippines, this sense of "older times" would be a scant twenty or thirty years ago. The food culture is still evolving because of the absence of a strong sense of royalty and a mechanism of presenting the cuisine. Thankfully, the modern world via its restaurant culture is doing its job, and increasingly in the places where money is flush, you see Filipino cuisine presented in all its glory.

The aging conservative Rimsky-Korsakov once warned his budding student, Stravinsky, about the strange delightful harmonies in Debussy's music -- "Better not listen to him, otherwise you risk getting accustomed to it, and you might even like it."

"Better not eat Filipino food, otherwise you risk getting accustomed to it, and you might even like it."

The Power of Chickpeas

Abu el-Heidja has deflowered in one night
Once eighty virgins, and he did not eat or drink between,
Because he surfeited himself with chickpeas,
And had drunk camel's milk with honey mixed.

(Source: The Perfumed Garden of Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Nafzawi.)

Ginataang Hipon

This was the single best home-cooked meal that the CC had in the Philippines.


It doesn't get simpler than this but it's a flavor complex. Texture from the fresh bamboo shoots, corn and shrimp, flavor from the coconut milk and the fresh chilli leaves, color from the shrimp, corn, and chilli leaves, umami from the fish sauce (patis.)

It's a flat-out masterpiece.

Tuna

Euphemistically, called "tuna collar" in English, it's the jaw of the tuna (panga in Tagalog.)

So incredibly delicious you have no idea. Sushi lovers step up to the plate. This one was marinaded in garlic and ginger before being grilled on a lonely beach on a deserted island.

Eaten with calamansi, soy sauce and hot chilli peppers (not shown.)

The CC still dreams about it!

Heat Quotient

Hotter than Brangelina fucking on a rickety tin terrace. Nine and half pounds of tomatoes - the lust, the lust!

The Acquisitions

Vast quantities of dried anchovies (bulinaw), tiny dried shrimp, organic sugarcane vinegar from Ilocos(sukang iloko), calamansi jam, and crab roe fat (taba ng talangka.)

The last is a Filipino specialty which is both utterly delicious and heart-cloggingly fatty.

Coconuts & Aliens

Coconut trees are known to bear "alien mutant" coconuts. They contain much more flesh, and almost no liquid coconut water. Instead, it contains a gelatinous gel-like substance, and the coconut meat is only loosely adhered to the hard kernel.

These "mutant coconuts" are called macapuno in Tagalog and they are a delicacy. (The regular coconuts are called niyog.)

It's easy enough to figure out which coconuts are macapuno by tapping them since they have a markedly different density structure and will "sound" different.


Once a coconut tree bears a macapuno, it will continue to bear some fraction of its fruits in that form.

Human ingenuity being what it is, we can now breed trees that will yield these alien coconuts with 80% probability.

The flesh is "meatier", "stringier" and tastes quite different from regular coconuts. It's frequently used in desserts by boiling them in sugar syrup.

Delicious!!!

Summer Vacation Time

Well, the CC is off to culinary adventures in the Philippines (more Spanish influences!)

Back in a few weeks!

Garcia da Orta

People frequently ask the CC what he finds so endlessly fascinating about Spain, and the simple answer is that due to their complex society and insane wealth, they produced the most interesting personalities in science and art on the entire planet for their time.

The expulsion of the Jews due to the Reyes Catolicos (Ferdinand II and Isabella I in 1492) caused a massive upheaval among the highly intellectual community of Jews in Spain. They either converted (conversos) or fled.

The Orta family fled to nearby Portugal — little did they know that the Inquisition was coming there next.

Garcia de Orta was born in 1501 or 1502. He was trained as a physician, and practiced medicine in Lisbon. With the growing power of the Inquisition, he fled to India in 1534 and settled in Goa serving kings, governors and viceroys.

He was clearly successful. He was even granted a lease to the then worthless islands of what is now modern-day Bombay (!) though he never lived there.

His culinary claim to fame is his masterpiece Colóquios dos simples e drogas da India (Conversations on the simples and drugs of India) which is the unique book that tells us about the culinary knowledge of pre-New-World India.

It's written in the Galileo-style of conversations between the author and an imaginary colleague, Ruano, and basically walks us through all the known culinary spices and herbs in alphabetical order.

It should be noted that there wasn't a strict distinction between cuisine and medicine in those days (courtesy of Galen) and there is considerable evidence that he was a polymath speaking sufficiently in half a dozen local Indian languages (besides the usual Greek, Latin, Arabic which was expected of an educated man of his generation.)

While his life was not tragic, his story does end tragically. He died in 1568 but was "convicted" posthumously of "Judaism" and his remains were exhumed and burned in an auto da fé in 1580.

What's unique about his work is his independence of "received wisdom" of Greek, Latin or Arabic authorities. It's a strict example of the scientific method where claims have to be demonstrated not just stated as truth.

"Don't try and frighten me with Diocorides or Galen because I am only going to say what I know to be true."

His empirical work on tamarind stands in stark contrast to the "received wisdom" of Arabic writers which considered them as "dates". By restricting himself to empirical observation, he markedly advanced the science of food in the Indian subcontinent.

For all the tragedy, it is useful to know that he was well received in his time, and respected for his unique orignality.

Dealing With Invasions

This is arguably an excellent idea: Answer for Invasive Species: Put It on a Plate and Eat It.

With its dark red and black stripes, spotted fins and long venomous black spikes, the lionfish seems better suited for horror films than consumption. But lionfish fritters and filets may be on American tables soon.

An invasive species, the lionfish is devastating reef fish populations along the Florida coast and into the Caribbean. Now, an increasing number of environmentalists, consumer groups and scientists are seriously testing a novel solution to control it and other aquatic invasive species — one that would also takes pressure off depleted ocean fish stocks: they want Americans to step up to their plates and start eating invasive critters in large numbers.

“Humans are the most ubiquitous predators on earth,” said Philip Kramer, director of the Caribbean program for the Nature Conservancy. “Instead of eating something like shark fin soup, why not eat a species that is causing harm, and with your meal make a positive contribution?”

Lionfish, it turns out, looks hideous but tastes great. The group had to hire fishermen to catch animals commonly regarded as pests. Mr. Heffernan said he would consider putting them on his menu and was looking forward to getting some molting European green crabs to try in soft-shell crab recipes.

Last summer, the Nature Conservancy sponsored a lionfish food fair in the Bahamas, featuring lionfish fritters and more. They offered fishermen $11 a pound — about the price of grouper — and got an abundant supply.

Active Dishonesty in Food Blogging

Of course, food bloggers aren't saints. They are trying to make a living off of it. The CC happens to be an exception.

However, one must be intellectually honest. One shouldn't delete criticism ever. The answer to criticism is a response not censorship.

However, most are not capable of doing so largely because they don't have the intellectual chops.

One such is a David Leibovitz whose blog the CC used to love until he realized that he is in the business of deleting criticism.

Sorry, David, but criticism is good for you. It takes you away from the adulators, allows you to learn new things, and enhances your reputation. Rising to a challenge is part of being intelligent. You're an EPIC FAIL when you squash criticism rather than rise to it.

The CC posted on this particular posting, and the comments (mild as they were) were deleted.

The proof of the offending comments being deleted (they are long gone!) is presented below:

Bold Radical Idea

Whenever the CC flies — which he loathes with a vengeance only reserved for the worst of the worst of food — he frequently muses why there isn't a category whereby you could fly Coach and get the food catered from First Class?

Surely some people would be willing to pay a premium for not eating plonk, right? And it can't be that much more work given that this is just an extension of the "special meals" category (which exists currently, one may add!)

Fancy restaurants do this all the time — they open a (very) lucrative "casual bar" that features their greatest hits without the obsequious service and stratospheric prices.

It surely fits into all the right economic categories:

Unbundling? CHECK.
User experience? CHECK.
Predictability of demand? CHECK.

This has to be one of the most obvious of ideas.

So what's the freakin' holdup?

Hiyashi Chūka

In the dog days of summer, there is pleasure in eating cold dishes. Nobody knows these more than the Japanese who have hot, humid summers.

The name gives away the origin of the dish. It quite literally means "Chilled Chinese". In Japan, you will see this dish on restaurant menus only in summer. In fact, its arrival suggests that summer is here.

It basically consists of cold noodles topped with cooled vegetables (of various kinds), other cold toppings like crab and shredded eggs covered with a Japanese version of a very light, sweet-salty, umami-laden "vinaigrette".

The noodles can be varied — popular ones include ramen, somen, even soba (which is what the CC used.)

The toppings are traditional too — cucumbers, carrots, thinly sliced Japanese-style omelette, crab sticks, tomatoes, negi, even various kinds of seaweed.

True to Japanese washoku style, the entire assembly requires some effort but it's entirely worth it when the weather is as hot and humid as it is now. It mostly consists of chopping stuff, and assembling it, and is very amenable to making in advance.

There is a free-form element to this dish so the "recipe" should be taken as a starting point not as "definitive". In fact, there's no such thing. Restaurants vie with each other to produce versions that attract clients but there's a core logic that must be respected.


Ingredients

1 cucumber (kyūri)
3 crab sticks
1 tomato
1 carrot
1 scallion (diced thinly at a steep angle)
2 eggs
1 tbsp mirin

noodles

1 cup dashi

Dressing
8 tbsp dashi
1 tbsp white sesame seeds
1 tbsp black sesame seeds
1 tbsp sesame oil

Recipe

Toast the sesame seeds. Mix with the ingredients for the dressing and set aside.

First make a very thin Japanese-style omelette with eggs, mirin and 1 tbsp of rice vinegar.

When cool, roll into a tight roll and slice very very thinly.

Dice the cucumbers, carrots and tomatoes into strips. Boil the crab sticks in the dashi, and when done, cut into thin strips.

Cool all of the above while you make the noodles. Dunk the noodles inside iced water to cool.

Assemble the lot and pour the dressing all over them.

Making Lemonade Out of Lemons

If you find yourself with a bunch of slightly hard lemons, you aren't going to be able to ripen them since they are not climacteric fruits but there's still something you can do about squeezing juice out of them.

Just stick them in the freezer for an hour or two while they freeze. Pull them out, de-freeze, and they will yield a ton of juice without a lot of effort.

What's the reason?

The water content inside the cellular walls turns into ice shards which in turn puncture the cellular walls breaking down the structure. When unfrozen the walls are ready to give up the juices much more easily.

Elementary, my dear readers!

Official Status

In a historic vote, aligned with another historic bill, the New York Senate has voted "sweet corn" as the official vegetable of the State.

Which is ironic since corn is a grain not a vegetable. If it were a vegetable then we should probably debate whether Medicare vouchers, and "pulling the cord" apply to it.

(No corn (or corny) jokes please, we're skittish.)

It's probably a good thing that they didn't have to debate over the official "fruit" (which already has been deemed to be "apple") since that would've been just way too weird!

Goodness Gracious, Great Scapes of Garlic!

Nothing screams summer like the first garlic scapes. Clearly, the CC went just a tad overboard when he bought ten of them so it was inevitable that he would put them to good use.

If you've never had them, they have the mild pungency of garlic but a texture like that of asparagus stems which makes them quite versatile.

Garlic-Scape FritattaIngredients

2 garlic scapes (sliced real thin)
1 carrot (grated
3 eggs
1/4 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Heat the broiler.

Mix the ingredients. Heat a skillet at medium low heat. Toss in the mixture. When barely set (30 seconds) stick under the broiler for about 2 minutes.

You will need to keep checking when it's done otherwise it will burn. The bottom will set automatically because of the residual heat from the skillet.

Garlic-Scape RisottoRecipe Logic

The CC had garlic scapes so the idea of a garlic scape risotto was never far from his mind.

To add to the rustic taste, some mushrooms would be ideal. The CC happened to have large Chinese shiitake mushrooms which would augment the taste of the garlic scapes with their earthy flavor.

However, the dish would be too monochromatic visually and texturally incomplete so to punch it up a notch, the CC thought about adding a truffle breadcrumb topping. The truffles would complement the earthiness of the garlic scapes and mushrooms and add a textural component to the dish.

The silky risotto punched up with crunchy salty breadcrumbs is a wonderful early summer delight.

Ingredients

1 cup carnaroli rice
4 garlic scapes (cut into medium pieces)
1 head spring garlic (diced fine)
4 fresh Chinese shiitake mushrooms (cut lenghth-wise into thick strips)
2 cups white wine (one for the recipe, one for the chef)

3 cups broth

breadcrumbs
truffle salt
olive oil
1 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Fry some breadcrumbs in olive oil and set aside on a paper towel to drain. When cool, add in some truffle salt and powder with a mortar and pestle.

The recipe follows the standard risotto template. Bring the broth to a boil and keep warm at a very low simmer.

In a separate pot, heat up some olive oil and fry the spring garlic at a medium heat (4 minutes.) Add the garlic scapes and fry for a bit (2 minutes.) Add the mushrooms and the rice, and fry for a bit (4 minutes.) Add the salt and pepper

Toss in the white wine and deglaze. Add a ladleful of the hot broth, and keep stirring. When the broth gets absorbed, add another and keep stirring. Broth and stir, broth and stir.

Towards the end, toss in the parmesan for the mantecura.

Serve with the truffle-breadcrumb topping.

Velvety Chickpea Soup

Most chickpea soups are earthy and rustic but this one is refined and silky. It's wonderful either hot or cold and perfect for a light summer meal.


Ingredients

1 cup chickpeas (soaked overnight)
4 cups broth
4 garlic scapes
1 head spring garlic (finely diced)

1 tsp cumin (roasted)
1 tsp coriander seeds (roasted)
1 tsp sumac (finely powdered)
1 lemon (zested + store the rest for garnish)

olive oil
salt
pepper

8-10 leaves mint (for topping)

Recipe

Precook the chickpeas in salted water. The CC used a pressure cooker. If you don't have one, will probably take you about 60 minutes.

Heat up some olive oil in a stock pot. When shimmering, toss in the cumin and the coriander seeds. Fry for about 30 seconds. Toss in the diced green garlic and garlic scapes at fry at low heat until softened (roughly 6 minutes.)

Add in the chickpeas and the broth and bring to a boil. Cook together for about 6 minutes at a low simmer.

Add the zest and purée the soup in batches, and pass through a fine sieve. (This is the step that gives the soup it's soft silky texture.)

Reheat gently. Garnish with the lemon, sumac and mint just before serving.

Sorrel Soup

This silky sour soup perfectly captures the mood of a lazy summer evening.

The sourness comes from oxalic acid which is poisonous in large quantities but delightful in small ones. Sorrel has very little so that this is quite safe. However, the veins of the leaves must be removed.


Ingredients

2 bunches sorrel (veins removed)
1 head spring garlic
4 cups broth (or water)
olive oil
salt
pepper
chives (to garnish)

Recipe

Fry the garlic languidly in olive oil. Toss in 4 cups of broth, salt and pepper Bring to a boil. When boiling, toss in the sorrel. The sorrel will wilt immediately, and turn color from pale green to dark green. Cook for about 30 seconds.

Purée and pass through a fine sieve. (This is what gives it a silky texture.)

Serve with toasted bread and chives.

Thai Food from Isan

So the CC was treated to a restaurant that cooks food from the North-Eastern part of Thailand (Isan.) The food is closer to Laotian than to the more well-known Thai food (which stems mainly from the South.)

As you can guess from the geography, it's heavy on the freshwater fish and pork. Also, the heat quotient in true Thai style is very high.

The first dish is your traditional papaya salad but it has pickled crab in it. (If you squint, you can see the bluish crab sticking out on the right hand side.) The crab is intense! It has the consistency of jelly but it's like a concentrated sea-flavor which has absorbed the sweet-sour-salty dressing. Also, featured as a topping is fried crispy pig skin.

The second dish is fried catfish. The fish is cut into thin rounds, and fried in such a way that you can eat it bones and all. Quite delicious!

Som Tum Poo Plara
Pla Dook Pad Ped

Butter Massage

From the inimitable Julia Child:

"Not everything I do with my roast chicken is necessarily scientific. For instance, I always give my bird a generous butter massage before I put it in the oven. Why? Because I think the chicken likes it -- and, more important, I like to give it."

Summer Frittata

Summer Haul

Sorrel, garlic scapes, chives, zucchini, eggs.

Summer is here!!!

Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Italian painter (1527-1593) best known for his paintings made entirely out of fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, etc.

His most famous cycle is the one about the four seasons.

He was a favorite of the Surrealists for fairly obvious reasons.

Please note that there are no tomatoes in summer nor potatoes in winter since the produce of the New World had not yet made its way into common knowledge.

Taking the Short Bus

Today the new USDA "food chart" was released.

Hello? Anybody home?!?

"Protein" is not a "food substance".

You can eat fruits, you can eat vegetables. you can eat grains. If you blink, you can even eat "dairy" (which really refers to "dairy products") or substances "high in protein" but there's no fuckin' thing such as eating "protein".

Not unless you have a liquidizer and a spare high-speed centrifuge lying around, and even then the CC doesn't really recommend it.

If you needed further proof that the USDA is basically filled with a buncha utterly corrupt, mouth-breathing retards with oatmeal-for-brains (yep, oatmeal and brains - both real edible substances) then you need look no further!

Spaghetti with Spicy Kabocha, Pan Grattato and Pine Nuts

This is the last of the "winter" dishes with the leftovers in the CC's kitchen.

However, it's a masterpiece of texture and flavor. It requires some effort but it gets repaid in spades!


Ingredients

1/4 kabocha (scored and diced into bite-sized pieces)
1 red onion (cut into thin semi-rounds)
1/2 cup sage
2 red chillies

1/4 cup breadcrumbs
2 anchovies
2 dried red-chillies (crumbled fine)

1/2 cup pine nuts

olive oil
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Toast the pine nuts in the oven at 375°F until they are lightly toasted roughly 12 minutes. Be careful as they burn easily.

In the meantime, you must prepare the pan grattato with the anchovies and crumbled red-chillies as described here.

Prepare the spaghetti in heavily-salted water until just under al dente.

In a large pan (which can hold both the squash plus the spaghetti) heat up some olive oil. When it shimmers, add the onions and fry for a fit. Toss in the kabocha and fry languidly for at least 3-4 minutes. Toss in the red-chillies, chopped sage, salt and black pepper. Add a small amount of water, and let it cook at a medium-low heat.

When done, toss in the spaghetti, and toss the mixture together.

Serve with the pan grattato and pine nut toppings.

Chinese Chefs Taste Cheese

As many here know, the CC is a big fan of Fuchsia Dunlop and her two books on authentic Chinese cooking. She is the first foreigner (and woman) to train at the famous Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine in Chengdu.

Here, she writes about her experience with having chefs taste cheese which is basically milk that has been precisely spoilt.

Cheese is not a favourite food in China, to put it mildly. Traditionally, dairy products were associated with the nomadic people who lived on the fringes of China and who were regarded as fearful barbarians. The Han Chinese, with a few notable exceptions, avoided eating dairy foods altogether: many were, and still are, lactose-intolerant. Cheese, however, is still generally regarded as beyond the pale. A few sophisticated Shanghainese might eat Stilton just as sophisticated Londoners eat tripe and chitterlings, but many people, especially in the provinces, have never tasted it.

Over several visits to Shaoxing, I wondered what the locals, such ardent lovers of rotted soymilk and vegetable stalks, would make of rotted cow’s milk, otherwise known as cheese. Finally, I returned to Shaoxing with a boxful of artisanal cheeses from Neal’s Yard Dairy in London, including the smelliest I could find in the shop. I had selected one mild hard cheese, Isle of Mull, to serve as a kind of toe-in-the-water; Stichelton, which is an unpasteurised version of Stilton; pale, veined Harbourne Blue; Ardrahan, a fairly whiffy washed-rind cheese that I adore; Milleens, another washed-rind variety with a punchy, farmyardy aroma that acquires a hint of ammonia as it ripens; and a wildly smelly Brie de Meaux. By the time I reached Shaoxing after a week on the road, the cheeses had all ripened nicely, and some were beginning to ooze.

At the Xianheng, a waitress cut the cheeses into pieces, and the assembled tasters began to pick them up with their chopsticks, sniffing and tasting. And where I had been impressed by what cheese and stinky soya products had in common, these culinary professionals were immediately struck by their differences. “Although in some ways you could say the flavours of cheese and fermented beancurd are similar,” said Mao, “vegetable stinky foods are very clean and clear in the mouth (qing kou), and they disperse quickly, while milky foods are greasy in the mouth (ni kou), they coat your tongue and palate, and they have a long, lingering aftertaste.”

Two other chefs said the cheeses had a heavy shan wei (muttony odour), an ancient term used by southern Chinese to describe the slightly unsavoury tastes associated with the northern nomads. Another said that the selection “smells like Russians”. “The difference,” he added, “is that the stinky things Chinese people eat give them smelly breath, while stinky dairy things affect the sweat that comes out of your skin.”

The entire article is fascinating!

Pasta with Asparagus, Lemon and Oregano

This is an wonderful spring dish that sounds like a repeat of the former and guess what?

It is!

Doesn't mean it's not equally brilliant though!


Ingredients

2 cups penne
1 bunch asparagus
1 lemon
dried Greek oregano

parmigiano-reggiano
black pepper
sea salt

Recipe

Cut the delicate tops of the asparagus and set aside. Quickly strip the woody bits with a knife. Cut at a steep diagonal angle into thin spears, and set aside separately.

With a peeler, zest the lemon and keep the strips. Dice finely. Set the lemon aside.

Bring the heavily-salted pasta water to a boil. Cook the pasta until al dente.

Meanwhile, heat some olive oil in a pan. Fry the asparagus strips at a low heat until they are well-done (roughly 6-7 mins.) Toss in the spears for about a minute and add the lemon zest, and the oregano. Toss in 1/2 cup of the pasta water.

Toss in the pasta when done. Squeeze the leftover lemon all over it, and toss. Serve with lots of black pepper and parmesan on top.

Pasta with Asparagus, Lemon and Goat Cheese

A wonderful spring dish that's impossible to resist!


Ingredients

2 cups penne
1 bunch asparagus
1 lemon
goat-cheese

black pepper
sea salt

Recipe

The "sauce" in this recipe doesn't really need to cook. All you need is a large bowl to mix everything in.

Cut the delicate tops of the asparagus and set aside. Quickly strip the woody bits with a knife. Cut at a steep diagonal angle into thin spears, and set aside separately.

With a peeler, zest the lemon and keep the strips.

Bring the heavily-salted pasta water to a boil. In a colander, dunk the diagonal asparagus spears for about 3 minutes. Then, toss in the delicate tops for only about 30 seconds. Fish out, and put them in a large bowl.

Cook the pasta until al dente.

Meanwhile, cut the lemon strips extremely fine and add to the cooked asparagus in the bowl. Toss in the goat cheese. Add in about 1/2 cup of the pasta water (which should be boiling) and stir it until it makes a thick sauce.

Toss in the pasta when done. Squeeze the leftover lemon all over it, and toss. Serve with lots of black pepper on top.

Better Living through (Pastry) Chemistry

One of tricks that works when using fine corn flour as dough (think masa not ground corn) is that freezing the dough allows you to roll it out without the dough splitting up.

This is one of those great tricks that can be learnt from the pastry world where the traditional mechanism of wheat gluten is basically out of bounds.

Keep the dough cold enough and you will be able to roll it out without gluten.

Incidentally, this is the "secret" behind classically made Japanese soba as well which are made with buckwheat flour which doesn't contain any gluten. You need cold water.

This is also the "secret" behind well-made makke di roti. Cold water to prevent the dough "sticking" while you slap the stuff directly on to the grill.

The key word here is cold.

Early Riser

Waking up before the sun is overrated.

When the CC got to the farmers' market at 8:00am, they were barely unpacking. After a fruitless (!) 20 minutes pondering the silence of New York, he finally got his goodies.

Asparagus, spring onions, and eggs.

Spring is finally here!

Kabocha Risotto with Fried Sage and Pine nuts

This is just an epic recipe and exemplifies what is best about understanding the science of food. It combines Italian and Japanese elements in a transparent way so that what you get is much much greater than the sum of its parts.

You can make the broth and the risotto with minimal effort. (You may skip the instructions for making the "broth" if you already have some but this recipe shows you how to get away with making it "on the fly".)

But first, you must be aware of this particular culinary trick.

Secondly, you can streamline the ingredients and the pots so that there is very little wastage of either time or effort.

The important thing to note about kabocha is that unlike butternut squash, it doesn't need to be peeled. The skin is thin and edible and delicious. What you need to do is scrape it with a peeler to get the hard bits off. The Japanese adore this particular technique because it renders the squash with alternate dark and light green colors which is visually quite appealing.

Follow the instructions closely, and be amazed at what you can achieve on a weekday when you are "exhausted".

Ingredients

1/2 kabocha
1 large red onion (diced very fine)
4 cloves garlic (diced very fine)
1 cup arborio rice
16-18 sage leaves
4 tbsp pine nuts

4 cups dashi

1 cup parmigiano-reggiano
salt
pepper

Recipe

First, soak the konbu in 5 cups of cold water. Let it sit for 30 minutes or so while you do some prep and/or enjoy a nice glass of wine.

The onion and garlic can be pulsed in a food processor. Just make sure that you don't purée them.

Heat the oven to 350°F and roast the pine nuts for 7 minutes. Set aside.

Cut up the kabocha into large pieces. Don't get too technical. Rough shapes are fine. Also, cut up a little bit of the kabocha into neat little diced pieces. Set aside.

Bring the water to a boil. Pull the konbu off just before it boils otherwise it will taste bitter. Toss the large kabocha pieces in. Let it simmer for 10-12 minutes at high heat to get the squash to soften. When done, blend the mixture in the pot, and keep at a very low simmer.

Meanwhile, heat some olive oil in a pot. When hot but not smoking, toss in 6-8 of the largest sage leaves. Let them fry for about a minute and fish them out and set aside on some paper towels to absorb the oil.

In the same oil, toss in the onions and the garlic. Fry for 6 minutes or so until they are colored but not caramelized. Toss in the rice and fry for a bit. Add the salt and black pepper. Just before the broth, toss in the neatly diced kabocha pieces and fry for a bit.

Now comes the standardized risotto procedure. Toss in the blended kabocha broth and stir. Toss and stir, toss and stir, toss and stir.

Finally, the mantecura. Put in the parmigiano-reggiano and stir well.

When done, garnish the risotto with the fried sage leaves and the roasted pine nuts.

Asafoetida

Depending on who you ask this is either the stinkiest of stinky spices or the most wonderful smell ever.

De gustibus non disputandum est.

What is clear is that this seems to be the grandchild of the legendary silphium which has long since vanished into extinction.

The plant is legendarily stinky. When the CC bought pure asafoetida in India, he packed it in four, count 'em four bags of plastic, and an air-tight plastic case, and he could still smell it. He was terrified that it was not going to make it through customs but the cold weather in the airplane cargo at 30,000 feet seemed to do the trick.

When fried, which is how it's supposed to be used, it smells sublime. It's like a combination of leeks, onions and garlic. That's why we put up with the stinkiness. That's why the Romans did too, and no less an authority than Garciá de Orta defended it vociferously.

The love-hate affair is quite clearly expressed linguistically. The French call it merde du diable (= devil's shit.) Even the English name channels the "fetid" part from Latin.

What you get commercially is laced with wheat flour. It would be a stretch to call this adulteration since there is a method to the madness but it's still not the real deal.

The real deal is priced more like a precious metal than a food ingredient, and there's a reason that connoisseurs adore it. It just smells great (and it's an excellent anti-flatulent to boot!)

It's almost impossible to make people "switch camps". Either you love it or you don't.

The clerk who sold some to the CC in Spain of all places, was like, "What do you see in this? It smells awful." His boss, who was clearly knew better said, "Ignore him. This stuff is amazing. I love it."

Which camp are you in?

What Nonna can learn from Obaasan!

The recipe for spaghetti with clams is justifiably a classic.

However, there's a subtle way in which it can be improved, and we have the Japanese to thank for that.

The classic Italian (or French) way is to dump all the clams in, toss in some wine, and let them steam. Fish them out as they open, and then reduce the broth to get it to its logical clamminess.

The classic Japanese way improves on this in many many ways. It's subtle and it works because it interleaves the two steps to make it all better.

The CC first learnt about this trick when he was making asari gohan — an elementally simple dish of clams served over rice. Very simple and eminently suitable for a day when only a simple home-cooked meal will do.

When he first read the instructions, he was a little mystified but decided to follow them anyway. The logic of the procedure jumped out with such immense force that he realized rapidly that it would enable him to take his Italian clam recipes to the next level.

The trick is very very simple.

Instead of steaming the clams all at once, we are going to steam them in batches. Typically 3-4 batches depending on the number of clams. The idea is that each batch not just steams in the previous clam's broth but that the broth reduces at the same time so that there is very little wastage of time. What seems at first like "taking longer" is actually a very clever way of combining the two steps. Each batch steams, opens up, and releases the juices. Meanwhile the next batch steams while the previous clam broth reduces itself.

The moral must be that even Italian grandmas, as talented as they are, have something to learn from the rest of the world.

Historic Scientificity : The Anti-Farting Gambit

If you look at Indian food, you will notice a preponderance of cloves, cinnamon, black pepper, etc.

Why were these adopted?

The first principle, as always, is basic economics.

They grow abundantly on the Indian sub-continent and hence, they are extraordinarily cheap. So cheap that the Romans used black pepper as ballast on their ships sailing homewards. If all went well, you got a lot of black pepper. If your ship got caught at sea in a storm, you could toss the stuff overboard, and not suffer terribly because it was so cheap.

The second, which is a lot subtler, is that they are all carminative agents (anti-flatulents.) When eaten with lentils, they inhibit the bacteria that line the intestinal walls from generating gassy flatulence.

Obviously, the Indians learnt this by trial and error, and the "technology" has been passed down ever since. Most use this but few understand why.

The most effective are cloves, cinnamon, garlic and asafoetida. The second tier is made up of ginger, turmeric, and black pepper.

There is a related herb in Mexico called epazote which is traditionally added to black beans for the same reason.

Read carefully, and you'll notice that almost all of the "greatest hits" of Indian food are featured. What's missing, of course, is coriander, cumin and cardamom but not everything has to be functional. Some of it is just pure pleasure.

That's why the born-today vegans are basically fucked. They don't understand the functional component of how to make a successful lentil dish. You can't just boil that stuff and call it a day. You need to spice it right to make it both tasteful and functional.

Skill is required in almost every sphere of cooking even if you decide to follow some arbitrary rules, and this skill determines whether you toot through your rear horn all day or not.

Toodles and toots!

Nasi Lemak

Indonesian Meal

Making nasi lemak with the traditional ikan bilis, sambal chicken, and all the other fixins.

Pictures to follow.

Dhansaak

This is a traditional recipe of the Parsis, almost always served along with paatra ni macchi at a wedding.

The recipe is long and complicated, and is going to take the better part of a day. However, only those that have eaten the real deal can appreciate why the CC loves it made the traditional way.

The title literally means "wealth (=dhan) of vegetables (=saak)", and as you can expect from the title and the context, it consists of a rich stew of lentils, cooked with vegetables, and meat (traditionally lamb but frequently goat), served alongside with a spicy caramelized rice. There are traditional accompaniments — a cucumber-tomato raita and/or kachumber (diced cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions with salt), and fresh slices of salted cucumber and carrots.

The ingredient list is long so the CC will break it up into its functional components. The CC will try and indicate what actually makes the dish the dish, and what parts are frequently substituted by local fresh vegetables, etc.

The spices are absolutely critical (do not deviate!)

A quick note about the spices. They are really a combination of two spice mixtures in a 3:2 ratio. If you're just making this recipe, you can combine them because they follow the same procedure (roasting + grinding) but just be aware that they really are two logically different spice mixes that just happen to be combined in this specific recipe.

(Yes, this is anal-retentiveness of a superlative nature. Deal with it!)

Please read the instructions. If you read them carefully, you can streamline the recipe. In the modern day with modern equipment, you will not need to spend all day in the kitchen. However, that requires more than a little attention to detail.

There is nothing like this in the literature — caramelized rice with heavily spiced lentils and lamb with the occasional complimentary hit of sweetness from the pumpkin and carrots.

Routine recipes are all fine and dandy but this one is for the betterment of your soul.

Magic awaits!

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Ingredients

Lentils

1/4 cup vaal (absolutely critical!)
1/4 cup whole masoor (brown french lentils — also absolutely crucial!)
1/4 cup toovar (pigeon peas.)
1/4 cup whole moong

Meat

1 lb lean lamb (cut into bite-size pieces)
1 cup yogurt
1/2 cup cilantro leaves
2 tbsp garam masala
4 tbsp ginger-green chilli paste

Vegetables

1 tiny pumpkin (chopped coarsely — traditional)
2 eggplants (chopped coarsely — traditional)
1 carrot, etc. (chopped coarsely — seasonal)
2 tomatoes (chopped coarsely — seasonal)

Fresh Spices

1 large red onion
2" ginger
8-10 Thai green chillies (substitute by 5-6 serranos)
1 tbsp turmeric

Spices

Dhansaak Masala

1 stick cassia
2 tbsp coriander seeds (critical!)
1/2 tbsp cumin seeds
8 dried red chillies
1/2 tsp poppy seeds
1/4 tsp cloves
4 green cardamom
1 black cardamom (badi elaichi)
1/2 tsp caraway seeds (shahi jeera)
1/2 tsp fenugreek
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 strand mace
1 tsp dagad phool
1 tsp naag kesar

Parsi Sambhar Masala

1 tsp chilly powder
1/2 tsp turmeric
2 tbsp mustard seeds
1 tbsp fenugreek seeds
1/4 tsp cloves
1 star anise
1 tsp black peppercorns
1/4 stick cassia

Garnish

1/2 cup cilantro leaves (chopped fine)

Other

oil
salt

Rice

1 cup basmati rice
2 large red onion (cut into thin half-moon rings)
1 stick cassia
6 cloves
10-12 peppercorns
6-8 tbsp brown sugar
2 cups water
salt

Recipe

Wash and soak the four lentils overnight in an excess of water. The excess is necessary since they absorb a lot more than you think they will.

For the meat, blend the ginger and green chillies with the cilantro leaves, and toss with the lamb, yogurt and garam masala. Refrigerate overnight or at least for 6-8 hours.

In the morning, drain the water from the lentils. Re-soak.

If you have a pressure cooker (highly recommended!) toss the lentils in with some water, and salt. Pressure cook for no more than 10 minutes. Set aside.

Please be aware that the vaal and the toovar are going to "decompose". This is part of the point of the recipe. The "stew" portion, if you will.

(If you don't have one, cook them until the hardest two lentils — masoor and moong are edible. Roughly 60 minutes.)

Meanwhile, chop the fresh spices (ginger, green chillies, onion) in a food-processor. They should be coarsely chopped not ground to a paste because you need to fry them. Set aside.

Heat a dry skillet on medium-heat till it's hot. Dry roast all the spices — the trick is to toss them in order of size, and add the next batch before the previous is well-done. This is a skill, and needs some experience. You could just roast each one separately but that wastes more time. Make sure you don't burn the poppy seeds.

Put them in a bowl, and allow them to cool. When cool, grind to a fine powder in a coffee grinder. Set aside.

First, make the lamb.

Heat some oil in a skillet. When it shimmers, toss in the lamb pieces straight out of the marinade into the oil. The yogurt will look very disturbing interacting with the oil. Ignore this. Keep adding the lamb with the yogurt coating, and letting it cook with the oil. Slowly, toss in the rest of the marinade. Roughly 6-8 minutes in, you will notice that the lamb is well-done, and there's a lovely brown slurry in your skillet. Set the whole thing aside.

Heat some oil in a stock pot. When it shimmers, add the onion-ginger-green-chilli paste, and fry languidly. When it's fried but not caramelized, toss in the vegetables and fry for a bit. Add the lentils. Mix together, and let it heat up. Add the spices. Then the lamb and the sauce.

Let it all simmer together at very low heat for at least 15-20 minutes. The lentils must be "melting" but the vegetables must still retain their identity.

Now, we make the rice.

Fry the onion half-moon rings in some oil. When limp, add the sugar, and coat and let it cook till they are nicely caramelized. Toss in the spices, and the rice, and let the caramel and oil coat the rice grains. Add in water to let the rice cook, and let it cook at a medium-low heat covered till the rice is done.

Serve the rice along side the stew garnished with cilantro leaves.