Eight-Vegetable Mac-n-Cheese

So the CC posted on his Instagram a suitably random post about how even vegetable-hating kids love the CC's mac-n-cheese. Lo, to his surprise, there was an inundation of requests for the recipe.

The recipe will be provided but since chez CC we tend to be of analytic bent, let's back up a little and ask ourselves a few questions.

Why is what the CC doing working for kids?

Why exactly?

Here are the claims:

[1] Kids are irrational.
[2] Kids won't eat anything green.
[3] Kids hate vegetables.

These are empirical observations that can be backed up in spades. The CC is not going to contest these observations and concerns. They seem to be real.

They are also demonstrably false as the CC's recipe would contest. After all, the CC is working empirically in the real world against a real set of kids and it's working great!

So let's back up one more time and ask why is this even happening?

Why?

There are two plausible answers - one evolutionary and one cultural.

Evolutionarily, all bitter flavors are banned. There's a very good reason for this. Bitter flavors generally speaking correspond to alkaloid poisons. It takes a very sophisticated palate to start appreciating bitter flavors in vegetables — okra, eggplants, broccoli, kale, spinach, brussels sprouts — even beer and wine!

Culturally, basically kids will eat whatever you shove in their face. Shove enough spicy food slowly amped up and they will learn an appreciation for spicy flavors. Shove bland food in their face and they'll only eat chicken nuggets.

So now we're ready to proceed — kids will eat complex flavors as long as you keep the vegetables on the "sweeter" side and the flavors "familiar".

Both of these words are basically garbage - "sweeter" is all relative - if you roast brussels sprouts properly, they'll turn "sweet" and of course, and as the Greeks might've told you in 3rd century BCE, all of "familiarity" is in the eye of the beholder.

So now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's proceed.

What we're gonna do is pick vegetables that kids perceive (falsely) as sweet and we're gonna cut them into small enough pieces so that they don't stand out (very chef-like) and we're gonna go back to the two classical evolutionary devices — carbohydates and fats.

We're also going to the use full panoply of French and Italian classical cooking devices to make a superior meal — yes, that means understanding bechamél and sauce Mornay. Escoffier to the rescue!

Hey, think of the kids!!!

You wouldn't expect otherwise with the CC and yet, not so hard. Also, it's eminently available for assembly ahead of time. Just pop it in the oven later.

Ingredients

(serves 6)

2 cups macaroni

2 tbsp butter (no substitutions!)
4 cups whole milk (no substitutions!)
4 tbsp flour

2 cups gruyère
2 cups parmigiano-reggiano

1 large zucchini (diced)
1 large carrot (diced)
1 cup french beans (diced)
1 cup broad beans (slivered)
1 cup fava beans
1 cup peas
1 cup cauliflower florets (cut as small as realistic)
1 cup celery (skin shaved and then diced - skin shaving is not optional!)

fresh rosemary/sage (slivered finely - optional)

salt
pepper

panko (Japanese-style bread crumbs)

Recipe

Cook the macaroni in heavily salted water until done. Depends on your brand. Roughly 12 minutes.

Make the bechamél. Heat the butter in a pan. Add the flour and let it "cook" until it is golden. Immediately add the milk. Let it cook completely till it thickens.

(What is really happening is that the milk proteins are denaturing.)

Add the salt and pepper. Add the rosemary/sage (optional.) Taste and adjust. Don't forget the cheese will add extra salt.

Toss in the vegetables one at a time in the order of "hardness" - first the carrots, then the french beans and broad beans, then the fava beans, then the cauliflower and zucchini and celery - finally the peas.

Add the cheese to turn the bechamél into what is technically called sauce Mornay — you can do it at the same time as adding the macaroni. Toss it all together.

Layer in a baking dish. sprinkle heavily with the panko breadcrumbs all over.

The next step depends on your baking dish.

If you have a shallow baking dish, preheat your oven to 350° F. If it's deep (like the CC's), preheat to 400° F.

Cook the dish covered for 25 minutes. Cook uncovered so that the surface crisps for about 10-15 minutes. Check towards the end because there's a tendency of burning.

Serve with a crisp salad (for the adults).

Shave the Celery!

Celery is a completely misunderstood vegetable mostly because people get the technical details wrong.

To fully appreciate it, you must shave it. Take the skin off. No different than a carrot (and not particularly hard either.)

After that, you get a very different vegetable. Very aromatic, even elegant, one that is completely worthy of a first course in a fine French meal.

Ingredients

(serves 4)

8 celery stalks (the best you can find - preferably celery hearts)

1 cup chicken stock (substitute by vegetarian dashi)

salt
pepper

cream
vinegar
mustard

Recipe

Skin each celery stalk using a potato peeler. Be careful because the tops are likely to break when you do that.

Cut each stalk into halves.

Poach the stock in the broth with the salt and pepper for about 8 minutes until the stalks are tender. Pull them out.

Mix the cream, vinegar, mustard with extra salt and pepper like a vinaigrette. Add water. It should be reasonably liquid. Poach the celery stalks into that and refrigerate.

This is best made the day before.

Serve as a first course.

Peace, Love, Granola

Granola is the CC's favorite breakfast cereal. The CC doesn't eat breakfast very much but even so over the years he's bought tons of this stuff from various places. He finally decided to make his own.

The concept is really simple. It's just basically toasted oats. The rest is all putting a bow on top - nuts, dried fruits, sugar, fats, salt. You are making a pre-made ready-to-eat nutritionally complex mixture.

It's already cooked so when you either eat it with yogurt or milk, it hardly matters. You could eat it straight up but it would be too dry.

The recipe is from a famous three-Michelin star restaurant in New York. They apparently hand this out when you leave for your breakfast the next day. (The CC doesn't know. He hasn't been.)

It looked terrific and the CC had all the ingredients in-house. It definitely tastes terrific.

(Source: Eleven Madison Park.)

Ingredients

2 3/4 cups rolled oats
1 cup pistachios
1 cup coconut chips
1/3 cup pumpkin seeds
1/2 tbsp kosher salt

1/3 cup light brown sugar
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup olive oil

3/4 cup sour dried cherries

Note 1: The three groups in the ingredients are deliberate in the recipe.

Note 2: You can substitute the sour dried cherries for a mixture of raisins, dried cherries, and barberries.

Note 3: This is deliberately not too sweet. You can always add more honey when you are eating it.

Note 4: There are two kinds of "kosher" salts. Ones that have been pressed and hence are more salty and others that are not. You want the natural kind here otherwise you will have a salty mess.

Note 5: You can totally gild the lily in the last step by adding roasted sesame seeds and slivered almonds .The CC did.

Recipe

Combine the first group - oats, pistachios, coconut chips and pumpkin seeds - in a bowl.

Mix the brown sugar, maple syrup and olive oil in a pan. Heat till dissolved. (You can also do this in a microwave on low heat for about 90 seconds.)

Pour this mixture all over the mixture in the bowl. Combine thoroughly.

Spread it on a pan and bake in the oven at 300°F for about 30-40 minutes. You will need to keep mixing and spreading the mixture every 6-7 minutes. (Yeah, a bit of a pain but otherwise it'll burn.)

Add the sour dried cherries and combine again. Let it cool to room temperature.

Store in a sealed container in a cool dry place.

Mushrooms on Toast

This is a classic English dish and it's really easy to see why it's amazing.

Short answer = umami.

The CC has always ranted about the lack of respect given to English cooking.

This is another one of those neglects. It's totally ironic since the recipe is entirely vegetarian and yet it's not well known. In an era of "avocado toast" — which fucking sucks! —  one should be shouting this one from the rooftops.

(If you do put an avocado on top of this, the CC really doesn't need to know in exactly the same way that he really doesn't need to know about your bowel movements!)

What is it?

A vast amount of mushrooms gently roasted in butter to which fresh herbs are added along with a judicious amount of both Worcestershire sauce and cream. The last two with an extraordinarily light hand.

Why does it work?

The insane off-the-charts umami — mushrooms, animal products (= butter + cream), and Worcestershire sauce (which is basically umami-central!) The toast adds all the wonders of the Maillard reaction.

How does it work?

You make some toast and put this stuff on top of it. DUH!!!

Ingredients

(serves 4 (= 8 toasts))

1 lb assorted mushrooms (the more varieties the better!)
2 dried shiitake mushrooms

butter
salt
pepper

thyme
parsley (finely minced)

2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp cream

Note 1: You can totally substitute the Worcestershire sauce. Its goal is to add umami. Soy sauce will do the trick. Fish sauce will also do the trick. (You'll need a dash of vinegar and pinch of cayenne with the last two alternatives.)

Note 2: The thyme goes well with the mushrooms. Don't get hung up. They wouldn't have been in old England. Chives will work as would most herbs. Tarragon would NOT work. Too much anise flavor.

Note 3: The CC is going to amp this up one more notch by using dried Chinese shiitake mushrooms because why not? Once you grasp the principles, it's hard not to.

Note 4: You can totally gild the lily by adding parmesan. Why not? We've already dialed it up to 17. By all means, go ahead and dial it up to 29.

Note 5: Yes, the barest amount of lemon would rock this dish. The CC knows. One surmises the "limeys" didn't have access to fresh lemons?

Note 6: The CC knows what you are thinking. One pound serves four people? Yep. Talk to me AFTER you make the recipe and everyone wants more.

Recipe

Pour boiling water over the dried shiitake mushrooms. Not too much. After 10 minutes, pull the mushrooms out and filter the water through a paper napkin. Reserve the water.

Cut the reconstituted mushrooms into lengthwise pieces.

Cut the other mushrooms into lengthwise pieces.

Heat the butter until just under foaming. Toss in all the mushrooms and let them reduce at a medium heat. Add the water from the mushrooms. Add the thyme, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and cream towards the end and let cook until almost dry.

Salt to taste. (The sauce already has a ton of salt so check before salting.)

Make some toast.

Top the mixture on toast with the minced parsley as topping.

Pav Bhaji

What do the laws of electromagnetism, the Portuguese, the price of cotton, time zones, vegetarianism, and the American Civil War all have in common?

They came together to invent the iconic Mumbai street dish known as pav bhaji (pronounced: paav bhaaji — the two "a"'s are actually long vowels.)

Every good military general would tell you that the best way to win a war is through economics. The naval Union Blockade of April 1861 which heavily targeted New Orleans (Louisiana) and Mobile (Alabama) made the cotton exports of the South come to a grinding halt. The savvy Gujarati speculators of the old Cotton Exchange in Bombay knew the drill. Rates were wired in and orders wired out late into the night when the corresponding exchanges in Chicago would've been open.

(Bombay made its fortune on the basis of its cotton mills — a fact that is quite clear even today in its geography. The point being that the price of cotton mattered hugely and the American Civil War and the telegraph provided a mechanism to speculate on the price swings. Note that the world was on a Gold Standard back then so that exchange rates between the dollar, the pound and the rupee, which was basically the pound, would not matter.)

The word for trader in both Hindi and Gujarati is dalal (दलाल) — it's not a neutral word. It has a slightly shady connotation to it. No trader would self-describe themselves as a dalal even though that's exactly what they are. It carries with it the negative connotations of both "speculator" and "pimp". The Japanese equivalent is kabuya (株屋) — stock-broker/stock-slinger (= speculator.)

Now you have a bunch of traders working hard into the deep night. They're largely vegetarian. They're rich (or wanna-be rich) but in the classic tradition of rich people, they're also cheap. When you have a demand, a corresponding supply opens up. It has to be fast, tasty, and yes, cheap.

Where do the Portuguese come in?

India had no tradition of baking leavened breads before the 15th-century just like most of Southeast Asia. The Portuguese were responsible for introducing the yeasty bread (pão in Portuguese) which is paav in Hindi and パン (pan in Japanese).

The dish is made from the cheapest of ingredients — potatoes, tomatoes and onions. Plus fried bread. It's a street dish. It's not fancy. You toss in whatever vegetables you have lying around. It's also infinitely configurable with different toppings depending on the individual taste buds.

The critical point is that everything could be made ahead of time. You're basically stir-frying at the last moment. Even the bread could be made ahead of time. It could even be slightly stale because it would be fried again. Every corner that could be possibly cut was actually trimmed. This is one efficient caloric machine.

Needless to say, it was an instant hit.

Nothing's changed since 1861. This dish is still a hit and will continue to be so.

It's endlessly addictive. It's one carb-laden umami-laden butter-laden bomb!

 

Ingredients

(serves 4)

6 small potatoes (or 3 large ones)
8-10 tomatoes

1 large onion (finely chopped)
1" ginger
4-5 cloves garlic

butter
salt

3-4 tbsp pav bhaji masala

chopped vegetables (peas, carrots, cauliflower, french beans — optional)

12-16 pieces pav

Toppings

red onions (finely chopped)
lime
cilantro (finely chopped)

Note 1: Some of the toppings are missing in the photograph. Specifically, the red onions with lime and cilantro. (The toppings are frequently mixed together so you just add as much as you like including the lime juice.)

Note 2: The CC knows that the bread in the picture is not fried. As Julia says, butter makes everything better, but sometimes a little restraint also works. (People also add extra butter on the bhaji itself which is kinda "over the top".)

Note 3: Yeah, the CC is totally aware that the picture below isn't the "real" paav but one must work with what one has in New York not what one wishes one had. It's the closest approximation to the "real thing". The bread pictured above has the right texture — hard exterior and soft interior. It's from a local bakery.

Note 4: For once, the CC is not going to post a recipe for the spices. You are better off buying this at a Indian grocery store. You could do it yourself but the proportions would be all off unless you plan on making a year's supply. Sorry.

Note 5: Note the presence of two different kinds of sourness — amchur (= dried green mango powder) in the pav bhaji masala and lime juice. This is a consistent theme in Southeast Asian cooking. The presence of a dry "mellow" kind of sourness allied with a wet perfumed "fresh" kind of sourness.

Note 6: The CC knows that it's much more tricky to describe a street dish than it is to describe a more conventional one. However, when you are faced with alternatives and problems, the key question you need to ask yourself is "Would a street vendor in 1861 worry about this problem in the middle of the night?" If the answer is no, then the CC says, "Wing it!" Except for the butter, the spice mixture, onions, potatoes and tomatoes, it's all up in the air anyway!

Note 7: If you've ever watched it being made on the street, you'd realize that your puny home cooking range simply doesn't have the BTU's. Additionally, the tomatoes are simply not ripe enough. They toss whole ripe tomatoes onto the sizzling skillet and de-skin them with their spatula. You have neither the heat nor the skill to do so. Do it the CC's way, OK?

Note 8: The vegetables may or may not have been part of the original recipe but they've become "traditional" with the advent of healthier eating.

Recipe

First boil the potatoes. Skin them and set aside. Mash gently.

Pass the tomatoes through a food mill to get just the pulp. If the tomatoes are not completely ripe, you may need to par-boil them for 5-6 minutes each to get them to soften.

Pound the ginger and garlic into a paste.

Heat up the butter in a pan. Add the onions and fry till they turn pink. Do not let them caramelize. Add the ginger-garlic paste and fry for a bit. Add the tomatoes and let it come to a boil. Skim if you prefer that. Let it cook for at least 10 minutes. Add the pav bhaji masala.

Add the mashed potatoes and let it cook for 8 minutes or so. This concoction has a tendency to act like molten lava splashing everywhere so cover the lid partially otherwise you will be cursing the CC.

Taste. You may need to add more pav bhaji masala. It's hard to predict how much exactly.

Split the bread into two without cutting all the way. Take a skillet. Add butter and let the bread fry on both sides. (This is optional.)

Serve the bread, the pav bhaji and the toppings on the side (as needed.)

The Amazing Edible Seaweed

What classic vegetarian combination resembles seafood so strongly that it acts as a stand in? Would it help if the CC provided the clue that this is the one thing that the Japanese and the Welsh have in common?

The answer is  nori — "laver" in English but today, everyone just refers to it by its Japanese name.

The combination of nori and soy sauce is legendary. It rivals other classic combinations for sheer force because it ticks off all the right notes — salty, umami, seafood-y except that it is vegetarian.

Years ago, when talk of radioactive "dirty bombs" were all the rage in New York, people at the CC's dinner party were talking about stockpiling "iodine pills". The CC just scoffed, "Just come over. I'll cook with nori. That's got more iodine in a sheet than any pill." The CC stands by that statement. If you're gonna die, you might as well have a good time doing it.

It's also very "Japanese". The combination of nori and soy sauce over rice is one of the most-frequently requested items on bento boxes. Apparently, it's so "alien" that non-Japanese can't appreciate it. The first time the CC ordered it, the delivery boy claimed that the CC must've made a mistake and couldn't possibly have ordered this dish. After the CC told him to "fuck off!" in extraordinarily polite Japanese (= "does your head hurt?" = "are you stupid?"), he was charmed. Broad grins ensued as exemplified by the classic bonding moment of bumping fists. Such is the beauty of swearing in a foreign language as done in the context of a genuine appreciation of food.

Nori Tsukudani (海苔佃煮)

Ingredients

10 sheets nori

1 cup dashi

1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup sake
3 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tbsp mirin

sesame seeds/sesame oil (only when serving)

Note 1: This is like a pickle or a preserve, You can make it fresh but it will last for a long time because of "osmotic pressure" and salt. The Japanese would just make a small batch and leave the rest in the fridge for later.

Note 2: This is seriously intense. A small portion goes a very long way. You'd place a small amount on top of a mound of white rice. It's a classic breakfast "power dish".

Note 3: The sesame or sesame oil are added at the last minute. You need one or the other for nutritional reasons. The CC prefers the seeds. They're easier to store.

Recipe

Tear the nori into rough pieces. It doesn't matter much. Just cut it into squares if that's faster.

Bring the dashi to a boil. Add the nori and let it cook down. When the water is almost gone, add the rest of the ingredients and continue to cook until the liquid is almost gone.

It will last for a long time in the fridge. (You can halve this recipe too.)

Nori Sumashijiru (海苔すまし汁)

Ingredients

4 sheets nori

3 cups ichiban dashi
soy sauce
mirin

Note 1: The "home-style" recipe often contains a scrambled egg. It's then "nori tamago sumashijiru".

Note 2: If you've forgotten ichiban dashi (literally: first dashi) is the stuff that is made first. It should be completely clear which is part of the charm. The crystal clear broth contrasting with the black seaweed.

Note 3:  Ideally, you should use clear soy sauce for this as well. It's a visual thing. The CC assumes nobody here has it so just go ahead and use the regular stuff. Call it "home cooking" rather than "fancy cooking" and be done with it.

Recipe

Oh, the recipe?

It's trivial.

Shred the nori. Heat the dashi. Mix and serve immediately.

Nori no Furikake (海苔の振り掛け)

Ingredients

4 sheets nori

1 tbsp sesame seeds
kosher salt

Note 1: This is rather painful and intense to do in a mortar and pestle but the coffee grinder makes mince out of it. You'll just have to do your best.

Note 2: The first time the CC made it for a friend, he was like, "This would be so amazing on popcorn." — "Yes, my good friend, yes, it would!"

Note 3: It's traditionally a sprinkle on "boring" white rice.

Recipe

Pound the nori and the salt in a mortar and pestle. This is just painful painful work. It takes forever.

When crushed "sufficiently", add the sesame seeds and pound some more.

It stores forever in a tightly sealed container and ironically, it's easier to make in large quantities than in small ones.

Holi Hai! (होली है। )

It's the festival of colors and even though New York is hit by the largest snow storm in years, it would be remiss of the CC to not present the ne plus ultra of Indian recipes.

It's called thandai (ठंडाई - literally: coolant.)

It's traditionally served with bhang (edible cannabis - which is legal in India!) but even without that it's truly terrific. It's very sweet but you can cut back.

Ingredients

(serves 2)

2 cups milk

8 cashew nuts
8 blanched almonds
8 pistachios
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1/2 tsp black pepper
4 long peppers (pippali)
4 green cardamoms
4-6 dried rose buds
1 tsp poppy seeds
pinch of saffron

2 tbsp sugar (or more to taste!)

Note 1: The CC has gone easy on the sugar. It's much more sugary than this.

Note 2: The rose buds are not optional. That's what gives the dish its characteristic fragrance. You can find them in your local Chinatown.

Note 3: It also sometimes features magaz seeds (edible kernel of watermelon seeds) but it's reasonably exotic and the CC left it out. Add 8 of them if you have them.

Note 4: The sugar in the recipe catalyzes the bhang in your brain and gives a "higher high". The nuts which have fat help dissolve the fat-soluble cannabis.

Note 5: The recipe has connections to Mughal culture. The Mughal Emperors were massive opium addicts. Oddly, alcohol wasn't much in fashion possibly because of Muslim edicts. The same logic of catalysis and sugar applies to opium.

Note 6: All the spices used are considered "cooling spices" in Indian cooking which makes sense since Holi comes on the cusp of the absurdly hot Indian summer.

Note 7: The black pepper and long pepper are "hot spices" and they're there for "balance". A ridiculous concept but you must enter into the medieval Indian mindset.

Recipe

Soak all the ingredients in the milk for at least two hours. Blend in a blender finely.

Strain and serve cold.

Pommes Anna

When your life is in total disarray as is wont to happen from time to time, only Julia Child will do.

Structured potatoes and butter because you need some structure in your chaotic life. And as Julia says, butter makes everything better.

(A judicious amount of duck fat makes it even better. Oh, Julia!)

Most likely, the dish was prepared by Adolphe Dugléré who was a pupil of Marie-Antoine Carême who was quite possibly the greatest celebrity chef of all time. The eponymous Anna is unknown although theories proliferate.

Do we care? No, we don't bloody care. Potatoes and butter, does the CC really need to upsell this?

It's on pages 394-397 of Vol. II.

It should be trivially obvious that when a recipe features just four ingredients — butter, potatoes, salt and paper towels — and yet occupies three whole pages of explanation, it's going to be awesome.

Ironically, it's not hard. It's very easy. It just requires the one thing that's missing in modern cooking — patience.

All you have to do is "nothing". Can you patiently sit with your thumb up your ass for a longish time? That's all it takes.

That and a mandoline.

What is it?

It's a potato pie that looks really pretty and bejeweled if done right except it's made in a skillet.

It's been modified somewhat from Julia. This is more la bonne cuisine femme than it is la cuisine de roi.

Thank me no thankings, Julia, nor proud me no prouds.

Ingredients

potatoes
melted butter
salt

pepper/herbs (optional)

patience (metric tons of it!)

Note 1: You will need a cast-iron skillet or a non-stick pan with a loose cover. Don't sweat it. Even a simple aluminum foil will do. The heat never goes above medium. It's much more important that the heat be uniform than anything else.

Note 2: You need to cook the potatoes as soon as you slice them. You need the starchiness of the potatoes to make sure the dish sticks correctly.

Recipe

Melt some butter in a pan. Take off the heat. (This is what makes the recipe awesomely stress-free. No need to work in real-time. Chillax is the name of the game.)

Now, slice the potatoes as thinly as possible on a mandoline. Layer them in the pan so that they all touch and overlap and look pretty.

Drizzle some more butter over them. Season with some salt. (Add some finely chopped herbs here if you'd like.)

Overlap a second layer. Repeat with the butter, salt, and a third layer and a fourth one.

Put the pan back on the stove at medium heat. Once the butter melts, you should start hearing it sizzle at a low pace. This is when your patience kicks in.

(A generous pour of butter or olive oil around the edges doesn't hurt at this point.)

The pan will sizzle and the fat spit a little. Cover the pan for just  a minute so that the potatoes soften gently. Uncover.

Gently rock the pan to see if the starch in the potatoes have made them attach to each other. Let them keep cooking at medium heat. There should be a continuous sizzle.

When you smell the potatoes turn golden and toasty, it's time to gently turn them over. This is a bit tricky. Use a dish if you need to. You most likely will not need it.

Cook until the other side is also golden and crispy.

Enjoy your, "Oh sweet baby Jeebus, Julia is so much better" moment!

Soy Me Up, Soy me Down!

There are soy sauces and there are soy sauces but they are neither equivalent nor substitutes.

Historically, soy sauce arose in China but it spread across South-East Asia and then the world. As it spread, the production became local and its irresistible umami flavors were tweaked to local tastes.

That means that Chinese, Japanese and Thai soy sauces (just to use three as an example) are totally different. Even within a single culture there are multiple kinds of soy sauce that have different end uses. This parallels the equally different kinds of fish sauce each tweaked to local tastes.

The CC can hear the screams from the peanut gallery already.

"You mean to say, that I must now stock different kinds of soy sauces?!? Are you nuts?"

Sadly yes.

If you want to get the right flavors then yes, and yes the CC is nuts. (Not much doubt, was there?)

The point about the "right" flavor is made most memorably in one of the episodes of the serialized food manga Oishinbo (美味しんぼ).

The name is a portmanteau word between oishii (= 美味しい, delicious) and kuishinbou (= 食いしん坊, glutton). On the one hand, the manga has a simple format which is important in a serialized format just like a sit-com, which is why it ran for 30+ years, but it's so heavy-handed and Oedipal that Freud might have objected!

However, it's both excellent and makes important points. At one point, the father upstages the son by making the same dish with the same ingredients but using Chinese soy sauces rather than the equivalent Japanese versions because the dish is of Chinese-Japanese origin not truly Japanese. (As stated, heavy-handed but still with a point.)

If you choose to engage in this journey, these are not expensive products and they store indefinitely in a cool and dark environment so it's not as big a burden as it sounds.

How many can you get away with at the bare minimum?

The CC is guessing between four and six — two for Thai food, one or two for Japanese, and one to two for Chinese. More if you want to cook Indo-Chinese or Filipino.

Sorry.

Just don't shoot the messenger.

The Dark Side of Food

One of the most important concepts associated with food is that it is pretty much the only activity that we do daily. There's also shitting but that's the end result of eating.

We eat to live. Literally. Our bodies are just a mechanism by which food gets transformed into fuel for our brain.

Every other activity that we do daily is basically optional but not eating.

There are many consequences to this simple observation. We'll proceed from the relatively trivial to the relatively profound.

No, your mother's version of that dish is not the "best". It's not even "typical". It's probably even shit. Let's start with that.

It's just something you ate on a daily basis and hence established the basis on which you rest your (very shaky) foundation of food. You may even perpetuate that because it's the only thing that you know. If you want to break out of the arbitrariness of your birth, and it is extraordinarily hard to do so, then you must first accept this brutal fact.

Did you notice that the CC referred to your mother's cooking as "shit"?

Notice how the metaphor neatly connects to food. We work symbolically through food. Everything from "no free lunch" to "corny" to "sour grapes" to "dish fit for the gods" — Shakespeare made the last one up as he did also "salad days", "in a pickle" and "the milk of human kindness".

There are literally no languages that don't have wondrous phrases related to food. It's so elemental that it's taken for granted. Everything from "essere buono come il pane" ("to be as good as bread" = "as good as gold") to 羊頭狗肉 ("sheep's head, dog meat" = "false advertising".)

Since eating is literally the only mandatory activity that we do, it goes without surprise that it's the ideal mechanism of enforcing group conformity.

There are absolutely no religions in the world that don't have a mandatory taboo on some form of eating. Judaism has kosher laws, the various religions in India have strange forms of vegetarianism, Christianity imposed rules of eating on Fridays, etc.

Needless to say this is all bullshit. Humans are famously omnivore. What one group eschews another embraces. The Chinese would laugh at the Jews. The meat-eaters mock the vegetarians. Fish on Fridays? Please.

Notice the bullshit metaphor also works via food. The only thing worse than your own shit would be the shit of a bull.

These rules have nothing to do with food and everything to do with enforcing group identity. You define yourself not only by what you are but also but what you are not.

The group identity mechanism works via what the Japanese would call  内外 ("uchi-soto" = "inside-outside"). Follow the food rules and you're an insider. Don't and you will be brutally excommunicated.

Lest you think that this mechanism is "religious" in nature, the CC will be happy to pontificate.

Try arguing barbecue in the US. There's great barbecue everywhere from Virginia to South Carolina to Kentucky to Texas. However, none of these groups agree with each other. Everyone seems to think their own version is the "best" — an entirely laughable notion that any outsider (like the CC!) might care to disabuse them of. They're all great; they are just different.

So you see, your mother's version of that dish is not the "best". It's your own fierce form of enforcing identity. You are sticking by what little you know and even if your mother is a terrific cook, you are trying futilely to convince others that it is food fit for the gods.

The most famous example of this "food as identity" enforcement was the Spanish Reconquista — the re-establishment of Christian rule in Spain. The Arabs and the Jews were forced at sword-point to eat pork in public as proof of their "conversion" to Christianity. The Spanish then took their concept to the Philippines which had no particular ban on pork and hence turned the pig into a newly formed "religion".

The great ramen maker, Momofuku Ando, neatly also turned these religious identity rules to his advantage by casually observing that there was no religion in the world that didn't embrace the chicken. The first ramen noodle flavor was chicken. (He wasn't particularly interested in the vegetarians.)

Which brings us to the fact that vegetarianism is another example of an entirely post-facto-rationalized system erected on extraordinarily shaky foundations.

Humans are omnivorous. We will literally eat anything which you can plainly observe because what one country or ethnic group rejects, another will happily eat. Since they all can't be right and they're all equally human, it stands to reason that they all must be wrong.

Science backs it up in spades. We are omnivorous, and we definitely evolved because of our capacity to eat meat. Arthur Clarke famously points this out in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Kubrick gives this profound notion the utmost respect by filming it most memorably with a magnificent jump-cut.

We even have specialized meat receptors in our stomachs. Evolution at its finest. It gave us a powerful concentrated source of fuel and pushed our brains to much larger sizes.

Is there a point to this depressing discourse which is almost tailor-made to offend just about everyone? Why yes, there most certainly is.

If you really want to get to understand another culture, the ideal mechanism is through its food. Not only will you be wearing a different identity, it will make it far easier to discard your own. Discarding your identity is not for the weak. You will be left adrift and will be forced to fend on your own. The group enforcement mechanism will kick in dressed in full riot gear.

However, it's one of the few ways to throw off the arbitrariness of your birth (which you had no choice over) and get to enter into entirely new mindsets.

When phrased like that, you're looking at the greatest adventure in life. Needless to say, it's highly recommended.

Watercress Soup

The CC has been obsessed by this soup both because of the taste and the color. It tastes like early summer and it's both delicate and hearty at the same time. It's very French in that you are making magic out of crap that grows by the side of a ditch.

Making it well, however, requires a certain level of skill.

Watercress is an aquatic weed that has an aggressive peppery flavor. It's been commercially cultivated forever so it's not hard to find.

The problem with greens is that overcooking turns them from a bright green color to a drab olive-green. The reason has to do with the science of chlorophyll which is tied up in cells. When the cellular structures are broken typically in an acidic environment, the magnesium in the chlorophyll gets displaced by hydrogen ions which changes the color.

The choices to preserve the color are pretty much all poor.

You could quickly blanch the vegetables and dunk them in an ice-bath which preserves the cells. You could cook the vegetables in a slightly alkaline environment but that has a tendency to turn them into mush and taste soapy. You could cook them for the barest amount of time while watching the clock and reheat them to the barest minimum.

You can easily see how the word "skill" would attach itself to these three choices.

Ingredients

2 bunches watercress
1 tbsp butter
1 large onion

1 potato

1/4 cup peas (frozen is fine)

3 cups water (read the notes below)

chives

salt

pepper

Recipe

Note 1: The CC prefers that the taste of the watercress be dominant. Broth is too aggressive. A dashi made with just kombu is ideal but water is preferred over most broths.

Note 2: The watercress leaves must be plucked. This is a tremendous pain in the ass because the plant is basically a weed and grows copiously in all directions so you will have to work hard to strip the leaves.

Note 3: If the CC may use the oxymoron that is "conventionally unorthodox", the peas would be it. They help with the nutrition and the color.

Heat the butter in a vessel. Toss in the chopped onions and sautée for a while. Add the potatoes and let them cook for a bit. Add the broth and let it come to a boil. Add the peas and let cook until the potatoes and peas are tender.

This is the critical step.

Bring the mixture to a boil. Toss in the watercress and turn off the heat.

Purée with an immersion blender or with a regular blender if you don't have one. You can pass the mixture through a sieve if you want a refined presentation or just leave as is.

If you need to reheat, make sure you do at the barest of temperatures just up to the serving point.

Garnish with chives. Serve at once.

Japanese Five-Grain Rice (五穀米)

Every country has a healthier version of its staples in the modern world. This is a recipe that you are unlikely to find in a standard Japanese cookbook.

The number "five" (go - 五) has a special significance in Japanese cooking. Traditional Japanese cuisine — washoku (和食) — has long been characterized by the principles of  "five colors, five tastes, five ways, five senses, five outlooks".

It's really a shorthand for how to make meals more nutritious and serves as an organizing principle for daily meals. (It sounds hard but the CC assures you that it's shockingly easy in practice.)

The five grains mentioned obviously feature rice but there are other grains from the wheat family. They add both texture and nutrition.

The recipe below features -- white rice, brown rice, black rice, barley (mugi) and oats but in the modern day, you'll see everything from Job's tears (hato mugi) to farro to quinoa.

The general principles stand though. You want rice and you want a complementary set of grains for nutrition and texture.

The black rice turns everything purple and the dish is visually arresting. It also has a nutritionally complete set of amino acids and with the addition of the sesame provides a complete meal (even though that's not how it would be served.)

Lest this sound some like some "austere" dish from the land of peace, love and granola, the CC will tell you that you will be chowing this dish down faster than you can say "roast pork".

It's herushi (= healthy), it's visually appealing, it's delicious, it's nutritious, and it's addictive!

It's a modern-day classic of Japanese cooking.

Ingredients

1/2 cup white rice
1/4 cup brown rice
1/4 cup black rice
1/4 cup barley
1/4 cup rolled oats

2 1/2 cups dashi

1 tbsp sesame seeds
salt

Notes

[1] The proportions are 2:1:1:1:1 with the white rice being 2. That adds up to 6 units so you want about 10 units of the dashi. You can always add more water later.

[2] The various soaking times are different because the stuff is cooked together. If you don't follow this, the softer stuff will be mush while the harder grains have barely softened.

[3] The sesame seeds act as a white counterpoint to the purple. They are also necessary for nutritional reasons. The fat is needed for the absorption of the amino acids. The CC also sometimes sprinkles gomashio (= sesame and salt roasted and powdered into a fine white powder.)

[4] The purpose of letting the dish to sit for a few minutes afterwards is that the starches bind the dish together. It makes it easier to eat with chopsticks. If you're not a chopsticks person, ignore this point. Also, this dish is made for bento boxes. It's awesome at room temperature.

[5] The dish is a game of texture. It's chewy and each bite is different because of all the various grains. This is one of the reasons it's "addictive".

Recipe

Soak the black rice in a bowl for at least 4 hours.

Soak the brown rice in a bowl for at least 2 hours.

Soak the barley in a bowl for at least 2 hours.

Wash the white rice in copious water until it runs clear. Wash the oats too. Let them drain together in a colander. (This level of "soaking" is sufficient to get the right texture. You don't want them too soft.)

Drain the water from the other three components and mix together.

Combine the five grains, the dashi with some salt and bring it to a boil. Let it cook in an open pot till the liquid has been absorbed, roughly 10-12 minutes. Check that the grains are cooked. If not, add some water and let cook further. They should still have a chewy bite (= al dente).

Turn off the heat and let it sit for 4-5 minutes.

Meanwhile, lightly roast the sesame seeds in a skillet till they are golden. Set aside.

Sprinkle the rice with the sesame seeds and serve.

Israeli White Bean Soup

There's an Israeli hole-in-the-wall restaurant that the CC has patronized for more than a decade now.

The owner is a curmudgeon who knows exactly how amazing his food is.

(For US readers: think Soup Nazi from Seinfeld and yes! the CC is perfectly aware of the idiocy and offensiveness of using the term "Israeli Nazi" but that is the only characterization that fits.)

Only two things soften him up — an appreciation for his cooking, and cute chicks, and the latter sometimes doesn't cut any mustard. He once tossed out out two clueless cute giggling girls. Then he turned to the CC and said, "They don't know anything about food."

The CC has always been on the good side but it took time and patience to become an insider. One fine day, the maestro said in a mocking and ironic way, "So you like my soup, eh?"

And that was that. The gates of paradise had been thrown open.

A decade later (yes! it's a slow burn), the CC asked him why his soup was so good and the answer was as blunt as the man, "Everyone knows the recipe. It takes time, and people don't want to spend the time."

The ingredients are humble, the technique is straightforward and there's nothing difficult about it.

People just don't want to take the time.

Ingredients

1 cup white beans

1 large red onion (diced fine)
4 cloves garlic (diced fine)

4 tbsp tomato paste
8 tomatoes (passed through a food mill)

4 tbsp olive oil

salt
pepper (lots!)

Recipe

Note 1: You can't hurry this recipe up. Don't even try. In fact, this is ideal for a slow cooker kind of situation except that since it involves two steps, it doesn't fit the mold of the slow cooker recipes.

Note 2: For most of the recipe, you are doing nothing. It's eminently week-day friendly. Set the timer and forget about it.

Note 3: It is very important to use fresh tomatoes. If you don't have any double down on the tomato paste. Do not use canned tomatoes. The final color of the soup should be a pale orange not a deep red characteristic of tomatoes. The beans are the star not the tomatoes.

Note 4: You may be tempted to add herbs — the dish is very Mediterranean and Israel is part of that Mediterranean culture but be judicious. Less is more here.

Heat up the olive oil in a pot. When it shimmers, add the onions and garlic. Let them cook at a medium heat until they are translucent. Do not let them caramelize. You want the color to be this sublimely clear white.

Add the beans and stir them around. Add 3 cups of water, salt and black pepper. Turn the heat down to the lowest possible setting. Let them cook for an hour. Sample to see if the beans are barely done.

When they still not cooked, add the tomato paste and the tomatoes. Cook for another 20 minutes. The acid in the tomatoes will slow down the cooking of the beans.

Check again that the beans are done. More salt and pepper if necessary. Add more water if necessary. It's a soup after all.

Serve with some pita.

Chilled Pea-Broth Basil Soup

The CC is finding abundant fresh shelled peas at his local farmers' market these days. The season is coming to a close and this luxury will soon go away.

Experienced cooks know not to throw away the shells of the peas. We've talked about pea-broth risotto on this blog before but there's something else that works like magic.

The peas tend to be starchier later in the summer and this recipe works perfectly with them. It's involves using the pea-broth to make a chilled soup which goes down easy in this absurd summer heat.

The recipe is a little laborious since it involves making the pea-broth and then making a soup based on it but it's easier than it sounds. You just need some pots and a dishwasher (either mechanical or of the human kind!)

The ideal accompaniment to this as a light summer meal is parmesan toast.

Ingredients

Pea Broth

1 lb organic pea shells (yes, they need to be organic!)
1 large onion
olive oil

6 cups water

salt
pepper

Pea Soup

pea broth (from above)
2 tbsp butter
2 shallots

1/2 cup peas
3-4 cups basil

salt

Recipe

Notes 1: You need a lot of basil because flavors are muted with cold soups. Same goes for salt and pepper.

Notes 2: When the soup cools, it will separate out. Just whip it again with a whisk before serving.

Notes 3: Do NOT use cream as you see in a lot of online recipes. Yes, there is a place for cream in the soup world but it has a tendency to flatten out the recipes and make all soups taste the same. This is all about the pure taste of summer peas!

First, make the pea broth. Fry the onions in the olive oil till they are limp. Add the shells and fry them for a bit. Add the water, salt and pepper and let cook for at least 30 minutes until the pea shells are limp. Blend with a stick blender. The shells are fibrous and will never blend completely.

Filter the broth using a strainer pressing down to extract the maximum amount of the broth. Toss the fibrous residue.

In a separate clean pot, heat up some butter. Fry the shallots on a medium-low heat. Add the pea broth and bring to a boil. Add the peas and let them cook for about 10-12 minutes until soft. Turn off the heat.

Add the basil and blend the mixture together until it is very smooth. Check for salt and and some if necessary. You can strain the soup if you want a finer presentation or just leave it as is for a slightly more rustic version.

Chill the soup. It will take at least 6-7 hours before it is nicely cold. Serve.

Golden Beet & Beet Greens Soup

This is the ultimate meta-recipe for a simple soup based on the barest minimum of ingredients.

The modern-day conception is unmistakably French although soups of this nature undoubtedly floated all around Europe before the codification of national cuisines in the 19th century.

They rely on only a handful of ingredients for flavoring and they can be tailored to both the seasons and the occasion. The soup can be made limpid and elegant or hearty and robust using just a few tricks.

The recipe at its heart is simple. Onions and/or related alliums — leeks, garlic, shallots are sautéed in olive oil till they are golden. Then water (or a clear broth) is added and the mixture brought to a boil. To this are added some vegetables which are cooked until tender. The vegetables (typically root vegetables) add their own flavor to the broth. At the last minute, finely chiffonaded greens are added and the soup is taken off the heat and served.

The recipe is so extraordinarily simple that naturally the CC needs to explain it in copious detail.

Simplicity frequently belies an underlying deep complexity.

The allium family, of which onions are a member of, are rich in volatile sulfur compounds. This is what causes their pungency and all the tearing. Only a small amount of molecules make their way to your eye but it's enough for you to start crying. It's a defense mechanism to prevent them from being eaten by animals but, of course, we humans figured a work around.

Cooking.

The flavor is coming from the sautéeing of the alliums. The sulfur compound that causes the tearing (1-propenyl sulfenic acid)  converts in the presence of heat into another compound (3-mercapto-2-methlylpentan-1-ol) that is strongly present in meat broth. This is perceived to our tongues in the presence of salt as a very strong savory flavor. We're using alliums but our tongues and stomach are screaming  "MEAT!!!".

This is why many cuisines worldwide use onions as the base of any recipe. It also shows how strongly the evolution of our tongue and diet has relied on meat, the last few thousand years of modern-day vegetarianism notwithstanding.

The addition of vegetables to this broth increases the savory quotient and results in an intensely flavored broth. The greens add complexity, nutrition, textural and visual interest.

The vegetables are almost always paired with their corresponding greens. Beets and beet greens. Turnips and turnip greens. Carrots and carrot fronds. Potatoes and dandelion greens (weeds). You get the idea.

This recipe is clearly a peasant recipe that got refined and passed upwards into the nobility. It's origins clearly betray the fact that it was meant as a recipe that doesn't waste anything. You use the beets and the greens that come up with the beets. The entire plant and no wastage. Something that should appeal to the present "back-to-the-past waste-not-want-not" movement.

Heft can be added in one of four different ways:

• Broth instead of water.
• Cooked beans which add more protein.
• Soup poured over stale bread.
• Sprinkling of parmesan on top (more umami.)

The plainest recipe works superbly as a first course in an elegant meal. The recipe with all the bells and whistles performs perfectly as a light but nutritiously complete one-pot meal. It works particularly well as the ideal light lunch.

For the record, the CC once made the lightest alternative for his mom as part of a three-course lunch and he was greeted with, "I want a second helping."

This is a meta-recipe that clearly belongs in the Pantheon of the Greats.

Ingredients

(serves 2)

2 small golden beets with greens attached
2 onions
1 head spring garlic

3 cups water

sea salt
black pepper (lots!)

1/2 cup white beans pre-cooked (optional)
4 slices stale bread (optional)
1/2 cup parmigiano-reggiano (optional)

Recipe

Note 1: The recipe is made with golden beets because it respects the "clean" broth look that this recipe entails. The water has a light golden color. Regular beets would work but they would color the broth pink. The recipe has a clear limpid texture even though that's not obvious in the picture above.

Note 2: For a more elegant presentation while adding heft, make some parmesan toasts.

Separate the beets from the greens. Cut out the central stem of each frond retaining just the leafy green part.

Peel the beets and chop into flat medium-thick rings.

Chop the onions into quarter rings. Chop the garlic into slivers.

Sautée the onions and garlic in some olive oil at medium heat. Add the black pepper. When they are golden (but not colored) add 3 cups of water and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down. Add the beets and beans (if using) and let cook covered for about 6-7 minutes at medium heat until the beets are done.

Taste the broth for salt and add as much as necessary.

Once more bring the mixture to a rolling boil. Add the greens and turn the heat off. Let them sit for 1 minute.

Serve at once over bread (if using) with parmesan (if using).

Rouz Jerbi (Riz Djerbian, Tunisian Spinach Rice)

This is one of the strangest yet most awesome recipes that the CC has seen.

When the CC first encountered it he was mystified. Wouldn't 50+ minutes of steaming turn the vegetables into mush? Was he getting something wrong?

No, he was just forgetting something.

Rice is deeply hygroscopic.

It will absorb moisture like nobody's business so you need to store rice in a humidity-free environment. In fact, it is so hygroscopic that if you ever drop your cellphone inside water and it doesnt' work, first dry it out and then put it inside a sealed bag filled with dry uncooked rice. Chances are it will work in a few days.

The CC has given this advice to quite a few people and they were just baffled. The CC argued, "What do you have to lose? A few cups of cheap rice, right?" Right down to the last man and woman, the smartphones have come back to life. One friend whose young daughter had mastered the art of grabbing his smartphone and throwing it in the toilet particularly appreciated the CC.

Science. It works, bitches!

The recipe is from the island of Djerba in Tunisia. The CC has provided the French spelling as well since Tunisia was a French Protectorate and you are more likely to encounter the dish under that name.

In this recipe, a mélange of dry rice, spinach, parsley, vegetables, chickpeas, optional meat, and a ton of spices are steamed for about 50 minutes. The rice does most of the absorption (including the liquid given off by the spinach and vegetables) and what you get is a perfectly steamed mixture that is intensely flavored and smells magical.

The dish can be extremely spicy but you can control the heat with the amount of harissa that you add to it. It has a slow burn.

It's not a hard dish in the least. You could do the prep in 30 minutes but you will need to endure two phases of steaming with by a precise interlude where you turn everything over and recommence.

Just think two de-stressing cocktails because minus the prep and the tiny amount of the interlude, you're not exactly working very hard. Even the prep is easy.

A steamer works perfectly here but the CC improvised since he has none in his apartment. The recipe is quite forgiving.

You absolutely need a long-grained rice. Short varieties are not going to work in this dish.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups long-grained rice (e.g. basmati)

2 large onions (chopped fine)
4 cloves garlic (chopped fine)
1 large potato (cubed into large pieces)
1 large carrot (cubed into medium pieces)
1 large tomato (chopped into fine pieces)
1 cup cooked chickpeas
1/2 cup peas

2 large bunches of spinach (chopped into fine slivers)
1 large bunch parsley (chopped fine)

chicken/lamb/beef ‐ (optional) ‐ cubed into small pieces

1/2 cup tomato paste
1/3 cup olive oil

1-2 tbsp. harissa

4 tbsp. coriander seeds (roasted and ground fine)
1 tbsp. caraway seeds (roasted and ground fine)
1 tbsp. turmeric
2 tsp. red chilli powder (or to taste)

Recipe

First, toss the rice with the tomato paste and olive oil and mix thoroughly. The goal is to coat the rice with the oil to make sure that each grain remains separate. This is the aesthetic hallmark of Arab cuisine which you will see everywhere from Northern Africa to Iran to India.

Then you just add all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix them thoroughly.




The mixture must then be steamed in a tightly-sealed steamer for about 25 minutes. At that mark, you must pull it out into a bowl, very gently mix everything together and steam it again for about 20-25 minutes. (Add more water to the bottom if necessary.)

The length of the second steaming depends on the age of your rice. The older it is, the less you will need to cook it.

Rouz Jerbi

Orecchiette with Peas and Buttermilk-Parmesan Sauce

This is emphatically not an Italian dish. It's clearly a riff on "Alfredo Sauce", which while invented in Rome and which was itself a riff on fettuccine alla Romana, was definitely made for Americans. Rumor has it that its popularity owes itself to the Hollywood duo of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford.

The substitution of cream by buttermilk makes sense. For one, you get a much stronger tangy lactic flavor. Secondly, you get a strong umami taste. It's also lighter. The emulsification works the same way as in the original.

The peas come from another classic Italian dish - pasta with peas, ham and cream. Similar idea just with fresh peas. Fancier versions substitute the ham with prosciutto.

The combination works magic and it requires a light hand. The peas definitely need to be fresh. Frozen is not going to cut it. It's also a dish where you need to make the sauce quickly while you are making the pasta at the last minute and toss it all together.

The reason to use orecchiette is to cradle the peas while holding on to the sauce. Substitute with conchiglie (shells) in the same logical vein.

Even with questionable authenticity, this dish is definitely both simple and magical.



Ingredients

(serves 2 generously)

2 cups conchiglie
1 cup fresh peas
1/2 cup buttermilk

1/2 tbsp. butter

1/2 cup parmigiano-reggiano
black pepper
1/3 cup chopped parsley

Recipe

Bring the heavily-salted pasta water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook till al dente. Roughly 12 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat up the butter in a pan at medium-low heat. When melted add the peas and let the sautée for a bit. Add the buttermilk and let it warm up and boil at the lowest possible heat. Add the parmesan and whisk the sauce.

Add the drained pasta, black pepper and parsley and toss thoroughly.

Serve.

Indian-Style Chinese Corn Soup

If you are not aware of the concept of "Indian-Chinese" food, you are in for a small shock and a treat to follow.

Chinese immigrants migrated from the Hakka region to Calcutta in the 19th-century when it was the de-facto economic capital of India under the British Raj. The laborers were the dark underbelly of the opium trade. Like all immigrants, the path to not being bonded laborers was to open food eateries. (It's the same today right now in modern-day New York!)

They brought with them their techniques but rapidly discovered that neither pork ("Muslim") nor beef ("Hindu") was going to work in the new situation. Additionally, the population wanted a different set of spices than what the immigrants were used to. However, adaptability is the name of the game as you might guess from the entirely analogous fact that there's no such Cantonese dish as "Chop-Suey" — it's a Chinese-American idea catering to vague Chinese ideas about American tastes in the 19th century from whence it spread nation-wide and thence world-wide.

And in the same vein, "Indian-Chinese" fusion cuisine was born.

It was a blockbuster hit from day one because the one fact about human nature that never changes is that we crave novelty.

Money makes the world go round so when the economic capital of India moved from Calcutta to Mumbai, the immigrants and the dishes followed. Now they are ubiquitous all over India.

This is a classic corn soup.

Corn is not Chinese, of course. Nor Indian. It's New World. Its global nature originates from the Spanish conquest of the New World after which it made its way to Europe and eventually along the Silk Road to most of Asia. There are multiple layers of fusion hooked up in this single dish.

It's emphatically not a high-falutin' dish. It's pretty low-brow.

The CC has wondered for the longest time how they got the tangy flavor in the vegetarian versions that they make?  How was it that you could get a superior version in any crap town in India than what he was making at home?

It took a while but it finally struck like the biggest "DUH!" of all times.

"Of course! They are using MSG."

We can now add Japanese 20th-century science to the fusion. Just to recap, we are now talking about Pan-American corn, Spanish conquest, Chinese immigrants and adaptation, Indian flavors and techniques, and Japanese food technology in a single dish.

It's umami that is making all the difference. So by substituting the MSG with the functionally-equivalent dashi, we have a winner with the exact same taste. BINGO!

Why does the recipe work in the first place? What makes it successful?

It's corn soup that's nutritious with a "hit-me-again" umami taste that's off the charts. You can add any protein to it. It's cheap, easy to make, and easy to sell. It reheats well. You can make it ahead of time. It's basically street food is what it is. The only thing stopping it from being street food is the fact that it's a soup — too hard to serve on the street.

So as the CC unambiguously pointed out above, it's low-brow but he means that in the best non-pejorative sense of the word. This dish is simply awesome.

There are a few standard variants — you can add shredded chicken or shredded crab or prawns; and/or a beaten egg.

If you have never had this, you are totally missing out.


Ingredients

Paste

1/2" ginger
3 cloves garlic
4 green chillies
2 scallions (both white and green parts)

1 can "cream-style" corn
1 cup fresh corn (frozen is fine)

5-6 cups dashi

1 cup carrots (diced fine)
1 cup green beans (cut into very thin rounds)

1 tbsp. corn starch
6 tbsp. ice water

salt
white pepper

To Serve

1 scallion (diced into fine rounds)

cilantro (finely chopped)

3 green chillies (diced into fine rounds)
1/2 cup vinegar

soy sauce

Recipe

The recipe is straightforward. It's the side servings that require a little explanation.

There are four conventional ones — soy sauce, finely diced cilantro and scallions are self-explanatory. The last is the super-spicy chillies plonked in a neutral vinegar (rice vinegar works!)

You can add as much of each as you like including the fact that you can just add the vinegar minus the chillies.

First prepare the paste. Just use a food processor to grind the ginger, garlic, green chillies, and scallions together.

Heat up some oil. Fry the paste languidly for about 6 minutes. Add the carrots and beans and let it fry for 3 minutes. Add the creamed corn and the dashi. Add salt and white pepper to taste.

Bring to a boil. You can skim off the fat if you like. Let it cook for 10 minutes or so.

Meanwhile, add the corn starch to the ice water and let it mix. It will not "dissolve". You are making a suspension. Whip well and add to the mixture.

Serve with the fixin's!

Black Chickpea Sundal

This is a street food snack from South India that's easy to prepare and quite healthy.

You can prepare it with a variety of lentils and legumes. The version swapping out the black chickpeas for fresh peanuts is particularly tasty.

The black chickpeas are the small chickpeas that you find in India. They are much smaller than the regular chickpeas and dark black in color. They also have a higher protein content.

Experienced readers will note that the recipe is not substantially different from that of sukke except for the addition of the urad dal which when fried adds a nutty taste and crispy textural note.

Also, since the CC belongs to the "anal-retentive" category of humans, you really want shredded coconut not grated coconut here for the textural interest. Yes, it makes a massive difference. It's available frozen. Just make sure you thaw it before you make it.

Ingredients

1 cup black chickpeas

8-10 curry leaves
1 tbsp. mustard seeds
1 tbsp. urad dal
3-4 dried red chillies
1/2 cup shredded coconut
pinch of asafetida

coconut oil
salt

Recipe

First cook the chickpeas. Soak them overnight and cook for about 20 minutes until they are tender enough to eat. Drain and set aside.

Heat the coconut oil in a wok. When it heats up add the mustard seeds and wait for them to pop. Add the urad dal, red chillies and asafetida till the dal turns golden in color. Add the curry leaves. Be careful. They will tend to splatter.

Add the chickpeas, coconut and salt to taste and combine thoroughly. Sautée for 4-5 minutes and serve.

This snack is great either luke-warm or at room temperature.

Sprouted Lentils

The CC is a total sucker for sprouted lentils.

What you get in the supermarkets sucks but the process of sprouting lentils is shockingly easy.

Even in the dead of this frozen winter, the CC has had no problems getting them to sprout. The reason is that sprouting is an exothermic process which means that the sprouts themselves are giving up both heat and moisture.

You soak the sprouts overnight at first; then put them in a cheese cloth in a transparent bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Put in a warm spot that gets some indirect light. Each day you must wash them to make sure that they stay moist and remove any possible fungal buildup. They will sprout like champs in two days. Wed. night soaking for Sat. breakfast (Thu. for Sun.)

Easy peasy.

The following is a great breakfast dish as nutritious as it is simple.

Ingredients

3 cups sprouted lentils
pinch of asafetida
1 tbsp. dhanajeeru (coriander and cumin roasted and powdered)
1 tsp. red chili powder

oil
salt (to taste)

1 lime (cut into quarters)

Recipe

Fry some oil in a pan. Toss in the asafoetida and fry for a bit. Toss in the dhanajeeru and the red chilli powder and the sprouts. Sautée for 2-3 minutes.

Add water (about 1 1/2 cup.) Let it simmer on low heat until the beans are edible. You may need to add more water.

It's done when the beans are cooked and the liquid is still a little watery but not soupy.

Serve at once squeezing the lime on top. The CC loves sopping up the broth with a crusty baguette.