Panch Phoran

The CC has posted about this classical Bengali five-spice mixture before but the sheer beauty of the spices compelled him to post it again.

It composes of equal parts of cumin, fennel seeds, fenugreek seeds, nigella, and radhuni.

The CC is aware that most online sources suggest mustard seeds but this is wrong. The spices may be fried in mustard oil but you need to have radhuni which are arguably closer in flavor to celery seeds than anything else.

Cactus "Fries" Tacos

Cactii (nopales) are hell to clean. They have both thorns ("modified branches") and spines ("modified leaves"). Generally speaking, the thorns have been cut away before you even buy them but the spines are the size of an individual hair and extraordinarily sharp.

The CC got one stuck in his thumb when he picked up some paddles at the Mexican grocery store and there was hell to pay for three days until he finally managed to get it out.

Of course, this is a defense mechanism against omnivores like us who like to eat them.

Cleaning them is a slightly laborious process. You first have to cut away the spines on the edges so that you can even grasp it flat. Then, you have to scrape away each individual one with a sharp paring knife cutting against the direction of the spine. You need to remove not only the spine but the hard bumps as well. It's best done in the sink with occasional washings under running water.

The cactus as this point will ooze slimy juice which is its defense mechanism against getting injured. You need to wash this away.

You will need to carefully inspect the entire paddle with your fingers to make sure you haven't left any spines in there. You don't want these babies stuck in your throat!

Finally, it must be dried before you can cook it in the recipe below. (There are other ways e.g. boiling for which this is not necessary.)

Is this all worth it? You betcha!

They have a unique taste that's sort of like green beans but with a more tart flavor. They are absolutely terrific with eggs as well just like asparagus but with a sharper flavor.

Ingredients

(makes 8 tacos)

1 medium sized cactus
1/2 cup flour
1 egg
1 cup panko breadcrumbs

salt
ground cumin
chili powder

8 small tortillas
1 small onion (cut into thin rings)
lettuce strips
1/2 cup salsa roja
queso fresco (crumbled)

lime (cut into quarters)

Recipe

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Prepare a flat baking tray on which you assemble the cactus "fries".

Cut the cactus into long thin strips that are about 1/2" across and 2 1/2" long. Each tacos will be stuffed with 3-4 of these.

Assemble three bowls. One with the flour, one with the beaten egg and one with panko breadcrumbs. Coat a cactus piece with egg; dunk it in the flour; dunk it back in the egg; roll in the breadcrumbs and lay it out on the flat sheet. Repeat with the rest.

Bake for 12 minutes in the oven. Check at the 10 minute mark. You want the panko breadcrumbs to be golden brown. Pull out.

Meanwhile, each tortilla must be heated on a griddle (comal) and kept under a pair of paper towels (or kitchen cloths) to keep them moist and flexible.

Assemble the tacos. Each taco is topped with a few cactus fries, some onion, lettuce, a quick drizzle of the salsa roja and the queso fresco crumbled on top.

Make sure you squeeze a lime on it right before you eat it.  A dash or two of hot sauce is also a great addition.

R.I.P. Tarla Dalal

The CC just found out that Tarla Dalal passed away a few months ago.

A housewife who turned her skills at cooking into a food empire, her books were the original recipe books in modern-day Indian vegetarian cooking. She was no academic but she was a terrific home cook. Her focus was the vegetarian recipes of India and beyond. She changed the food habits of an entire generation of housewives.

"Every recipe is guaranteed to work!" was her catchphrase.

And they absolutely do.

Her recipes were scrupulously researched initially by her and then when she had "made it" by an army of assistants at a time when it was unusual to even think of such an idea. They are literally perfect. There are no mistakes which is a rare and wonderful achievement in any domain.

R.I.P.

Parsley, Potato & Parmesan Soup

The CC was confused. How come he saw fresh parsley along with the usual panoply of winter vegetables at the farmers' market?

Turns out that parsley is a biennial and has another component that is not generally well known — parsley root which as a winter vegetable is not very different from turnips, parsnips or potatoes.

This French-style soup which uses fresh parsley is just perfect for chasing away the winter blues.

Ingredients

1 large bunch of parsley
2 medium potatoes (peeled and chopped)
1 medium onion
5-6 cloves garlic

butter or olive oil (or a mixture)
4 cups broth

1 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano

salt
black pepper

Recipe

First prepare an ice bath.

Wash the parsley discarding all thick roots. Leave the thinner ones on. In a large bowl, pour boiling water over the parsley and let it blanch for about a minute. Plunge the parsley into the ice bath. This helps preserve the vibrant green color otherwise you will end up with a dull green soup.

Heat the olive oil in a pan. Sautée the onions and the garlic for 6-8 minutes at a low heat. Fry the potatoes for at least 8 minutes till they are fraying around the edges and coated with the fat.

Add the stock, salt to taste, black pepper and bring to a boil. Simmer at a low heat for 25-30 minutes until the potatoes are soft. (It really depends on the size of the pieces.)

Skim the fat as it comes to the surface.

Add the parsley to the soup and blend really fine. Add the parmesan. Bring to a quick simmer again and serve.

You can pass the soup through a fine sieve if you want a really smooth version. A drizzle of crème fraîche works great for serving as would a crumbling of blue cheese.

Pomiane's Tarragon

The CC has mentioned Edouard de Pomiane before.

Whenever the CC reads all these articles about city-slickers waxing eloquent about gardens and farming, he is reminded of a wonderful paragraph from Cooking with Pomiane. The recipe is "New Potatoes with Tarragon".

I used to fancy myself as a botanist, but my illusions were shattered when I asked a charming young saleswoman for seeds of parsley, chervil and tarragon. "Tarragon does not produce a fertile seed," she replied. "If you want a plant, here you are. In three years it will die. Come back again and see me."

Tarhana aka Trahana

If Britain and America are two countries separated by a common language as George Bernard Shaw so memorably put it, then Greece and Turkey are two countries separated by a common cuisine.

Oh the horrors and the wars! And Cyprus. Let's not even go there.

The difference in most of their common food names is "nationalistic branding". Something that you see in many adjacent "warring" countries which share a common cuisine. The choices are both boring and endless — India and Pakistan; Israel and Palestine; Eritrea and Ethiopia.

It gets depressing after a while.

The CC definitely belongs to the distinct minority of "Make food not war!" but it's a hard, not to mention, impossible sell to fanatics with no education and millennia of hatred.

But we will always have linguistic adjacency to remind us that you can theoretically separate ideas but, in practice, the same ol', same ol' geography dominates as it logically should.

Which brings us to tarhana or trahana. Pick your favorite one. The former being Turkish and the latter being Greek.

Tarhana, Trahana, let's call the whole thing off!

What is it?

It's an ancient mechanism of preserving both wheat and milk for the long winters. In an age of refrigeration and air-transported food, this is a fairly quaint notion so we appeal instead to its deliciousness.

The idea is simple. Take wheat flour, mix it with sour yogurt, pass the dough through a fine screen so it breaks up into tiny pieces and let it dry in the abundant Mediterranean sun.

The chemistry is complex. By introducing sour yogurt, you are lowering the pH to acidic levels. By drying it, you are reducing the moisture levels. This makes the environment inhospitable to most pathogens and you still preserving the wheat and milk proteins.

You cook it by just introducing it to some broth. The wheat thickens the broth and acidity introduced gives it a tangy umami flavor.

There is a separate product called "sweet trahana" which is the same idea except with milk rather than yogurt. It lacks the lactic tang and is much harder because of the need to remove moisture even further and so needs to cook a little longer.

The presence of both wheat flour and yogurt means it acts as a thickener typically in soups and stews.

You can pretty much thicken any soup which could use a sour lactic tang. Tomato soup is a classic. Less commonly is a mushroom soup referenced by Diane Kochilas presented below for your delectation.

The CC was informed that this was a "superior" mushroom-barley soup.

"Fair enough, it's the same concept just with superior food technology."

The mushrooms came from a Japanese market with some others brought by a Russian friend from the Russian markets all to make a Greek soup. Not exactly world peace and arguably closer to whirled peas but it's a step.

All raise your hands and shout out, Trahanosoupa me Manitaria!

Ingredients

4 cups mixed wild mushrooms (coarsely chopped)
2 garlic cloves (minced)
2 medium onions (sliced thin)
olive oil

1 cup trahana
6 cups water

salt
black pepper
lemon juice

1/3 cup grated kefalo-graviera cheese (substitute by feta)

Recipe

Heat the olive oil and sautée the garlic for a minute. Make sure it doesn't burn. Add  the onions and cook over medium heat until wilted for about 7 minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook leisurely till for at least 10 minutes.

Add the trahana and stir for several minutes. Add the water and bring to a boil. Simmer for 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve hot with lemon juice and the cheese as topping.

The Indian Peas' Process

"What is it about Indians and peas?" a friend asked the CC recently, "Why are they so obsessed about them?"

A most worthy question and certainly one that requires more than an offhand answer and since its her birthday, the CC will answer at leisure.

("Does the CC ever answer not at leisure and without copious footnotes?" is the query from the peanut gallery which is a question he will ignore.)

Perhaps this should be a series? "What is it about Russians/Korean/Japanese and mushrooms?", etc. which follows roughly the same line of questioning and the same analogous answer as well.

The answer, slightly speculative as it might be, involves geography, growing seasons and plant biology.

Peas are ancient and have grown all along the Mediterranean and the near East since ancient times. Even in what is modern-day India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, we are talking at least 2500 B.C.E. or earlier.

Peas are annual plants. They produce a seed within the year and die.

Peas are a cool season crop. They can only germinate from late spring to early summer. In fact, last summer, the CC couldn't get fresh peas at all the farmers' market because the waves upon waves of heat destroyed all the pea crops.

India lies just north of the equator and has a short winter but an even shorter spring. Summer arrives with a vengeance right around April.

So the answer should be clear. You can only grow these for the shortest of growing seasons in the winter which is not as cold as the rest of the world. The window is barely a few months (Feb. to late Mar.) which explains its nature as "delicacy" not particularly different from the way that asparagus is considered a delicacy in Europe or North America.

In fact, the Mughal emperors used to grow them in Kashmir which has an extended growing season for peas because of its altitude. We have additional evidence from ingredients in rare royal dishes which are paired with peas like mushrooms. These are not any old mushrooms. They were morels (gucchi) from Kashmir. Morels are seasonal, rare and expensive and require foraging since they couldn't be cultivated easily.

(We are just beginning to understand the science to cultivate them right now!)

Also, if you look at it from the Emperor's perspective, you can't just chomp down a bunch of foraged stuff. You have to have an "official taster" to make sure you're not getting poisoned from mushrooms which means you need even more of them than just for the dish.

Almost every modern-day Indian dish that substitutes the common button mushroom comes from these rarefied dishes that served Emperors once upon a time!

In the modern world, all of this is not particularly germane because you can get ingredients shipped from anywhere in the world right down to your home. Not to mention frozen stuff which doesn't matter if you are going to purée the peas anyway.

However, cultural habits are reinforced by geography first and foremost and modern technology cannot make up for millennia of habit. (Have absolutely no argument for the fact that "habit" and "culture" are nothing more than pseudo-legitimatized bias in some shape or the other!)

So peas. And Indians. And pea-shelling, pea-eating, pea-loving Indians.

Of course, this wouldn't be complete without the CC providing a favored recipe. This one is a Gujarati classic that is both simple and lip-smackingly delicious.

Ingredients

2 cups fresh shelled peas
3 small tomatoes (chopped really fine)

1 tbsp. dhanajeeru (equal parts cumin + coriander, roasted, and ground fine)
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp amchur (dried green mango powder - NON-NEGOTIABLE!)
1 tsp chilly powder (or to taste - not so important)
pinch of asafoetida

1 tbsp. corn flour or chickpea flour

oil
salt

Recipe

Heat up the oil. Fry the asafoetida till it is fragrant. Add the rest of the spices and the tomatoes and fry till they are soft. Add the peas and some water and let it cook till done.

Sprinkle the flour all over and mix vigorously till the sauce is thickened.

Eat with rotis or parathas. The CC is biased. He prefers the latter.

This stores well. Easy to reheat too although the peas will not have the starchy crunch which is partly what makes the dish so irresistible.

The Polyglotism of a Chef

If you truly want to be a great chef, you are going to have to be really good at picking up languages and cookbooks in those languages.

This is both insanely difficult and yet not as hard as you think.

Arabic and Japanese are fairly difficult languages particularly for people trained in the Indo-European tradition. (The same goes in reverse. No chauvinism is either intended or even entertained.) And learning a language is hard no matter what since it takes time and energy both of which are in finite supply.

There's a silver lining though. Cooking is a fairly narrow and technical subject and it's easy to master narrow and technical matter in almost any language given a little aptitude, a ton of work, and the usual panoply of modern-day tools.

The payoff is stupendous beyond belief.

Let's first talk about the two adjectives stated above — narrow and technical.

Cooking is narrow because we do not need to understand the full massive vocabulary of a language that pertains to all the various kinds of situations we could ever possibly encounter in our lives. We only need to know the names of food items and instruments (nouns), how much of the food (cardinal or weight measurements), what things to do to the food (verbs) and how long to do it to them (time measurements).

This is a very narrow amount of vocabulary.

You are not being asked to master linguistic flourishes, idiomatic phrases, or cultural complexity just a very straightforward act of doing things to other things in so much size for so much length of time with prescribed patterns that are insanely repetitive. (Any good cook with a solid knowledge of the grammar of a culture is surely bored silly with reading a recipe book. You read the ingredients not the recipe! The CC can scan almost any recipe is less than ten seconds unless it is suitably complex which happens increasingly less often as time goes by).

Technical refers to the fact that the basics of cooking are (mostly) the same in any language. Just learn the verbs and a few oddball quirks of verbs — do they take direct objects or not, some dative and genitive cases, the conditional constructions ("if, when") — and you're pretty much there.

There are not a lot of verbs because there is not a whole lot you can do. About 30 verbs gets you 90% of the way there and surely you can manage to memorize all the forms in any language which should be around 125-ish (if that). Also, you are not being asked to conjugate the verbs in all their complexity just read them. The CC is pretty sure that he would be hard-pressed to conjugate "bake" in multiple languages but he damn sure can read the recipe which, as sure as sunshine, calls for some "baking". (Comprehension is not the same thing as fluency.)

Technical also refers to the fact that a recipe written in Japanese follows the absolute same rock-solid pattern as one written in Italian. The structure of the format is perfectly predictable. It follows a very strict pattern of logic — ingredients followed by process (with the rare exception of notes for complicated stuff or variants to be made.) In addition, the process always consists of verbs in the imperative mood. ("Do X. Take Y. Mix P with Q. Bake for N minutes.").

There is very little linguistic legerdemain. ("If only X had procured P from Q, and had Y not intervened then Z might have been able to bring A to B's office for a tête-à-tête").

Nope, never happens in a cookbook. Not in the recipe section anyway. That's strictly for the gossip column or the pseudo-literary bullshit that accompanies a cookbook.

Which brings us to the payoff.

The payoff is that you can read cookbooks that are vastly more complex than those that show up in translation in English, or that are historical in nature of which there will never be an English translation. The best cookbooks have always been written for natives and while it is increasingly true that these "best" cookbooks nearly always have an English translation, this is by no means a law of nature. It's a commercial decision and these things have a tendency to drift towards the capriciousness of both editors and the market.

The Internet additionally opens you up to recipes written in all the languages in the world. There are blogs on just about any culture but you will need to be able to read it at least roughly. (The automated translators are a little "iffy" even at this point.)

All of this depends naturally on your level of commitment to the culinary arts and to languages as a whole and there may be a natural tendency to think, "Why do it? The CC is there to translate." to which the CC only can say, "You have no idea of how little makes its way to the blog."

So push your culinary linguistic boundaries outwards and watch your culinary skills strengthen!

Spaghetti with Foriana Sauce

This is an interesting and obscure Italian recipe from the eponymous town of Foria on the island of Ischia near Naples. The CC has tried but failed to find any references for it in any of his cookbooks in either English or Italian.

It's a Lenten recipe so no meat (but seafood is fine.) Its Moorish and medieval origins should become obvious when you read it.

It's truly great tossed with spaghetti. Add a few cooked scallops or seafood of choice and watch the recipe shine.


Ingredients

1/2 cup walnuts
1/4 cup pine nuts
1/4 cup raisins
2 cloves garlic
6 anchovy fillets

1 tsp. dried oregano
pinch of red pepper flakes

olive oil
sea salt
black pepper

parsley (to serve)

Recipe

Place the walnuts, pine nuts, garlic and anchovies in a food processor and pulse until it is ground into coarse pieces like granola. Do NOT grind it to a pulp. You want some texture left.

Heat up the olive oil until it shimmers. Add the above mixture with the raisins and cook for 3-4 minutes. Keep stirring. It has a tendency to stick and burn. Add some water if it cooks too fast. Do not add pasta water like most recipes since this mixture is already considerably salty.

Serve over spaghetti with seafood (if using), parsley and black pepper.

Caldo de camarónes secos (Dried Shrimp Soup)

One of the great achievements of traditional food technology is drying various fish and meat products. This calls for a longer post which the CC promises but a highlight is "dried shrimp".

It may not be immediately obvious but shrimp come in a variety of sizes from the size of your smallest fingernail to the size of your palm. The various cookbooks frequently call Mexican dried shrimp as the "best" but the CC has found zero evidence for this culinary chauvinism. Your best bet is the Chinese markets where these babies are literally dirt cheap. A few dollars keeps the CC truckin' for a whole year. Just keep them in the fridge if you buy them packaged. (The CC buys from the bins mostly.) It's the humidity that spoils them. They are already "dried". In a fridge, they will last a year or two. In a freezer, they will last five years or more!

This recipe originally started in Mexico as a "bar recipe" whose goal is to keep you on target and "keep on truckin'". It's also insanely delicious and very nutritious so it's jumped the fence and become a regular home recipe for kids.

Yes, kids, it's so delicious that a "bar recipe" served for free with beer and booze has become a "kids' recipe". Such is the wonder of life.

The "keep on truckin'" portion comes from the absurd umami that is embedded in this recipe. You want more, more, more. The hangover recovery part comes from the fact that it is very high in protein and it's a very light broth. So you are getting rehydrated and getting a solid boost of nutrients while you are it.

The two dried peppers that go into it are not spicy at all. They have this intense complex smoky flavor which is unmistakable. Substitutions are not going to work. The tomato and the shrimp do all the heavy lifting of the umami with the synergistic effect.

The CC has a friend who hates shrimp and yet when the CC served him this he claimed that this was the best thing the CC had ever fed him. Seriously, dude?!?

And so it goes with things that you don't know about!

Ingredients

Salsa Roja

2 guajillo peppers
1 ancho pepper
3 small tomatoes
1 small onion
2 cloves garlic (unpeeled)

1 tsp cumin seeds

olive oil (or lard)

Caldo

1 cup dried shrimp

1 small onion
6 cloves garlic (peeled)

6 cups water

1 tbsp. epazote

sea salt

Serving

2 tbsp. chopped cilantro
1 lime

Recipe

First make the salsa roja. Heat a dry skillet (comal). When hot, put the peppers on it and dry roast them till they are fragrant but not burnt. Remove. Open them up when cool and remove the seeds and the veins. Don't stress. We are going to purée these babies.

Add the unpeeled garlic and the onion to the dry skillet till they are brown in spots. Put the garlic in some aluminum foil and let it sit for a bit. Peel the skin off when they are cool.

Roast the cumin seeds.

If using fresh tomatoes, put on top of the skillet and dry roast till they are burnt in places and soft. Peel the skin. If using canned tomatoes (like the CC is right now in winter), skip this step.

Add everything for the salsa to the blender and blend to a very fine sauce. Pass through a fine sieve and set aside.

Heat the lard (or olive oil) in a pan. When shimmering and very hot, add the salsa and fry. Be careful. This has a tendency to give off a lot of splatter but this step is absolutely crucial to the taste. Stop when the salsa has cooked and no longer has a raw smell. Set aside.

In a separate pot, cook the dried shrimp, onion, garlic, and epazote with the water for about 20 minutes at a low simmer. The time depends on the size of the shrimp. No less than 15 and no more than 30.

There will be a lot of nasty froth that comes to the surface. Skim, baby, skim.

Blend the mixture really fine. An immersion blender works great here. Pass the mixture through a very fine sieve retaining the liquid and tossing the solids.

Combine the two liquids and bring to a rolling boil. The idea here is to emulsify whatever fat there is left in both liquids. It is a bar food after all but it's a tiny amount. Most of it has been skimmed away and if you wish, you can skim away more by heating a lower speed which will cause the fat and the broth to separate.

Serve hot with a topping of cilantro and a big squeeze of lime. The lime is non-negotiable. It's what brings the tangy soup to life at the last moment with that "hit me!" taste.