TEA-RRARIUM

This is a "hydroponic" drink - steeping fresh ginger, vanilla-cinnamon, dried Grecian flowering sage, dried kamias (a SlowFood Ark of Taste heritage fruit [very tart] from the Philippines), chai mix tea, whipped honey and sugar for two days. Decant to tea-rrariums, then chill!


The achieved flavor of this iced tea is marvelously complex it's like tasting an entire orchard at once, with the lemon and the mint specimens spraying like rain. The kick is a kickback pleasure of cold in the summer heat -

and you must assume a passion fruit is growing in your heart. Pour tea into freezer-frosted highballs, and watch the yachts go by... 

Read more »

"WRITE" FOOD

I cook by instinct - but I don't swing out traditional flavor profiles. Let me explain. As I develop the food in my head and pulling ingredients (especially spices) to mise en place, experience of that country's cuisine serves as my parameter, and I never comprise. One just knows. Yes, you might call it purist. But I think the conception of food historically is native, and the influences are proximate; and true, spices have crossed over oceans, yet food is a function of availability. Last night I made a whole wheat spaghetti with pickled baby red eggplants (the size of kumquats; I quartered them) and tender garlic, semi flashed-fried in butter and fresh-cracked peppers and chili oil. The eggplant is a Syrian "addition to the Roman empire," so I went for it. Another example: I didn't have lemon to juice but had sumac powder, so for freshness to my falafel filling I used it. It is comprehensively Mediterranean. And, thanks to a foodie friend of mine who called on my plan, how could you add sweet or smoky paprika to the chopped hard-cooked egg topping your loin of salmon bagel with chives cream cheese and capers? That's too far removed. Even to be inspired by something, say, tasting marrons glacés thinking of making chestnut cheesecake, though the boundaries are nuanced - is it French, Italian or American? -fundamentally, there's no disservice. I was reading Mark Bittman's Eat piece this morning (oh the fried clams cornmeal-dredged in a roll) - he's always been to me a great teacher, and he sticks to his "line." I want to make a pozole with purple corns from Peru, or use them in a lorco, an Argentine oxtail stew - right? Now you know "where" I'm coming from.          

Read more »

FILL IN THE TART

 With brown tomatoes and braised dandelions
(Set oven at 360. In skillet, sauté greens in oil with a little minced garlic, salt to juice it out, adding homemade stock to wilt down. When braised, taste and add black peppers - then turn off heat and mix in the tomatoes. Sprinkle some salt and chili flakes and herbs de provence.)


 Then top with yogurt dip and cottage cheese
(I had made the dip by adding chopped, fresh dandelion leaves and scallions to the Greek yogurt - and adjusted to taste - then the cheese, with a sprinkling of a lot of fresh-ground black peppers. Fold dough to make an open, concentric square as seen, and pinch to seal corners with wet fingers. By the way, this is a lard dough. Brush sides with grape seed oil.)  

Bake to this coloration for about 45 minutes.   

I present:

BROWN TOMATO AND BRAISED DANDELIONS YOGURT CHEESE GALETTE

Read more »

PHOTOSHOCK

Lizzie Skurnick (of the Times One-Page Magazine, hello), "that should be a word," right? I say it means... a random lighting to an image. In this case, from an aluminum foil. Yes?

When I write about my food... I don't know - it's a "different" analysis, and different in a sense it can't be just about food - and which should also be differentiated from trying to be different. The picture here of my plantain and dried currants honey cake (I had taken this morning), its image was that, without having intended so (blogging about it, yes), but one never ever knows when cooler than blogging about food can strike. Be careful.

For prevention's sake, I will leave this space for now and return to my kitchen, and if it happens "twice" - then my food's lucky. I can line up more actors - the brown tomato and braised dandelions yogurt-ricotta topped galette I have left in the fridge; or the amaranth-cornmeal garlic sancor parmesan polenta; or the salad I had last night with the polenta - the cilantro-mint-chives and thymed almonds salad... - like a firing squad. Don't rest, Gabo, we still need you!   

Read more »

FOODNOTE

This is BAKU restaurant in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, offering Nigerian traditional cuisine. (By the way, the off Broadway theater company Jack is a couple of blocks away on Waverly Pl. at Fulton. An idea where to eat after a show.)

I started with a cocktail infusion of guava juice and white rum on the rocks, served pink and sweet, called "Go Slow." The appetizer I chose to go with it (fried white yams cut like French fries) was very interesting in terms of its dip: smoky (with moderate heat) red bell peppers braised to its oil. The combination is "dynamite!" - to borrow a Lynne Rossetto Kasper expression - and very distinctive, with the interplay of guava and coconut rum with the yam tasting like Japanese taro but smothered.

For my main dish - a grilled, whole red snapper with tomato rice (I had actually commented on the spice rub used on it to the owner afterwards and he explained was a mixture of powdered dried ginger and peanuts and indigenous herbs - oh wow - I ended up buying some), and what's noticing about it was how it made a freshness and tenderness and flavor to the fish that didn't require a "lemon" to lift its taste. It was fresh-catch simple yet enlighteningly... I don't know ... "African." I had never had a fish dish without some measure of citrus or acidity to it, so, yes, the degree to which it had broken down standard taste practices, why my appetite grew from hunger to wonder! In the end I have fossilized the fish to my heart's content - you just have to imagine. (I am already thinking about using the spice rub for a country pork chop breakfast, or a baked-clam soup.) Please, go slow.  

Read more »