Though a resident of Singapore, then a part of Malaysia, during the early 1950s, I doubt very much if my father ever had much of an opportunity to experience its astonishing variety of cuisines. Confined mostly to the Changi district (now better known for its international airport) and the company of other expatriate British military families, his diet hardly differed from that of his older brother, Roger, who stayed in England at boarding school throughout the family’s four year sojourn in the east.

A child of the gastronomic wasteland of post-WWII rationing, when food was extracted from a can and then boiled to the point of annihilation, my Dad is still a picky eater, ever-ready to pull a face if served something strongly flavored. In the broader context of his early years, these culinary proclivities aren’t so surprising. Well into the 1990s (by which time rationing had been over for more than forty years), I remember visiting my paternal grandparents and noticing that their oven was spotless in spite of being nearly twenty years old, having been used exclusively as extra storage space for canned goods.

Widely read, well traveled and knowledgeable about many things, gastronomy is one of the few areas of which my Dad is entirely ignorant. Exposure, at such a tender age, to such perfumed and harmonious dishes as Singapore and Malaysia offer in abundance could have had a profoundly transformative influence on his tastebuds. Instead, the insipid and farty flavors of boiled beef and cabbage became the signature flavors of his youth.

All of which, to me at least, is a great shame since the laksas, curries, stir-fries, biryanis and sambals – culled from an ethnic and religious make-up as varied as any nation – that he could have tasted, are the signatures of a country that for milennia has been the regional cross-roads and melting-pot.

Book Review:
Susheela Raghavan’s family, on the other hand, embraced this tantalizing concoction, and in her new book, The Flavors of Malaysia: A Journey Through Time, Tastes and Traditions, she draws together a collection of recipes from across the full range her country’s diversity into a harmonious whole that is as interesting and educational to read as it is jam-packed with deliciousness. From opening chapters that place her and her family at the heart of Malaysia’s ethnic variety, to much-needed ethnographic and geographic explanations of how it all came to be, to charming anecdotes of recollections and family stories, The Flavors of Malaysia really is a cook book you can read and learn from. In fact, as you read, what you really notice is what a tour de force Raghavan has performed in creating something coherent and comprehensive out of such marvelous diversity.

The Malay fragrant rice that accompanies the lamb peratil (a sort of dry curry) above perfectly encapsulates the depth and complexity of Malaysian cooking (which is why we chose to make it). Using the predominantly Indian spice blend almost as a tea to perfume the cooking liquid, the addition of garlic, ginger, sugar and soy sauce to the rice makes for as cross-cultural a dish as any I can think of. The lamb, on the other hand, is representative of the profound influence south Indian cooking has on Malaysian cuisine, demonstrating that although mixing and borrowing takes place, the country’s resident non-Malay groups have maintained their own traditions too.

If the recipes we made sound exotic, then they should. The food of Malaysia is perhaps the world’s most pungent, combining the abundant spices of Indian cuisine, the fragrance of Thai and Vietnamese herbs and rhizomes, the simplicity of local Malay techniques, the incorporation of Portuguese ingredients and Dutch or British implements, and rounding it out with the balance of sweet, salty, sour and spicy native to Chinese cooking. That this has become a fascinating and unique brew and not a toxic hodgepodge speaks to the generally harmonious philosophy of a country whose moderate Malay Muslim majority lives cheek by jowl with Indian Muslims, Indian Hindus, Eurasian Christians, Chinese and Thai Buddhists and native animist groups.

It would be easy to be intimidated by this exoticism, and certainly, it’s unlikely the average pantry will contain even half the required items – some spice mixes reading like an apothecary’s top shelf – but the spectacular results make it worth persevering. To be fair, though the recipes are remarkably easy to follow, this isn’t really the kind of tome the owner of an average pantry would seek out. One needs to be prepared for an experience quite unlike anything one may have tasted before, and while I would love to suggest this book will fly off the shelves, my feeling is that only the adventurous will seek it out. The fact that not all dishes are pictured convinces me of this (150 recipes, 16 pages of color photographs), as a leap of faith is necessary in making something you have no clue what it looks like. If there were a large Malaysian community in America where one could get accustomed to this kind of food things might be different. For those of us looking for something tantalizingly new for our taste buds though, I can heartily recommend this book. Not only will your house be filled with fascinating aromas, and your stomach filled with astonishing dishes, but your intellect will be stimulated by a country and people of marvelous history, culture and depth.

Ever have one of those days where the only thing that gets you through is knowing you are going to have a good meal later on?  I have no idea where I read about this dish, but one day, trying to unwind after a long, frustrating and tiring day of putting out the fires that are usually started by teenage drama (I moonlight as a school counselor, in case you forgot), a mental picture of this dish formed in my head and I immediately went to the store to try and make it.  This dish is definitely not for the nut-hater.   But, maybe it could be?  As a girl who used to eat peanut butter on a spoon every day for breakfast (I’ve now matured to peanut butter spread on multigrain toast), this dish made me very, very happy.

It’s not surprising that Pollo en Salsa de Cacahuate  is a traditional dish from Puebla, Mexico.  Puebla is often thought of as the gastronomic mecca of Central Mexico and happens to be the birthplace of mole, that beautiful, dark, chocolatey sauce made of over thirty ingredients including nuts and seeds, and pipians, another sweet yet savory sauce using ground nuts and seeds.  Peanuts have been part of Mexican cooking since long before Spain invaded in the 15th century and are often used as a thickening agent.  Poblano cuisine, specifically,  is typically made of indigenous and local ingredients and, let me tell you, Pueblo is on my “must go” lists of places to travel to (and eat, eat, eat in).

Traditionally, this dish should be made with dried chiles.  We used dried chiles in ours and I really just wanted to kick it up, so I added some chipotles in adobo.  For me, it added extra spice and the adobo added more flavor than the dried chiles did. In fact, I think you could leave out the dried chiles if you don’t have any on hand and just add some chipotles in adobo. It’s rare I’ll move away from the traditional but, in this case, flavor-wise I think it would be ok.  I also did not make this in a mortar and pestle and, again, although not traditional, a blender worked just fine.

Even though mulled wine should remind me of being in the church choir as a cherub-faced youngster and singing Christmas carols with frosty breath overlooking a seasonally-decorated nave and a sea of pink-cheeked parishoners, it doesn’t. In spite of this being the way I was introduced to this most famous Yuletide beverage, my abiding memories of it from childhood (before I ever got to drink any, I should mention) are of a warm cinnamon-scented aroma spiked sharply with the acrid tang of disinfectant and the musty odor of old people. And this, perhaps unsurprisingly, had put me off it until comparatively recently.

You see, as part of the church’s annual carol-singing calendar, we choristers had to visit all the hospitals, hospices and senior citizens homes in town, and my sensitive smell-o-memory was scarred for many years by this revolting combination of smells. That was, until I visited a friend in the French city of Lyon around Christmastime a few years back.

As an icy mistral wind blew down the Rhône valley, vin chaud or hot wine was being served out of a deep cauldron to chilled shoppers perusing the seasonal wares of Lyon’s famed Christmas market in Place Carnot. And I found the atmosphere of seasonal bonhomie, red noses, black tobacco, and warm, spicy alcohol irresistible. I’m not sure whether it was the cold, the booze, or the giant cans of duck confit and cassoulet on sale that so moved me, but from that moment on, I have been hooked on mulled wine.

A Brief History of Mulling

In days gone by, wine went bad pretty quickly due to poor bottling techniques, so during the Renaissance period, spices began to be added – as they were to virtually everything else in that time – to both delay spoilage and make spoiled products taste less nasty. And since young wines were commonly bottled during the early fall, mulling (which originally only meant to ruminate or ponder lengthily) was necessary by Yuletide as some were beginning to turn to the dark side, and hence how the consumption of “mulled wine” became a holiday tradition.

The exact combination of spices varies from country to country and person to person, but, on the whole, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and bay are mixed into claret or another Bordeaux to form the basis of flavors. Variations (and there are many) include the addition of mace, juniper, black pepper, dry citrus peel or vanilla, and substitutions include honey or molasses for the sugar, cardamom for the cloves, and brandy, sherry, acquavit, brenivin, fruit wine or vodka for the red wine.

Mulled wine, aka vin chaud, gluhwein, glögg, vin fiert, vin brulé, quentão, is drunk in most European countries in some form or another around Christmas, but it is particularly associated with German and Nordic traditions where so-called “glogg” parties are a holiday season staple. At these shin-digs, the spiced wine is typically drunk with other Yule specialties including gingerbread, blue cheese and, perhaps rather curiously, rice-pudding.

In my house growing up, however, we only ever had mulled wine when we were expecting company because my father, who has something of an intolerant nose for anything strongly perfumed, can’t abide the stuff, and, it being during the early 1980s, it was accompanied by cheese and pineapple cubes on toothpicks, cocktail weenies (chipolatas), factory-made mince pies, and potted shrimp. All of which is perhaps another reason why I didn’t really catch on to the subtle flavors and myriad charms of mulled wine until I’d left home.

But, of course, now that I have, I’m almost obsessed with making it every year, and so impassioned am I about it, that I’ll frequently pour myself a large glass and then go and stand outside in the cold to drink it to try to recreate the Lyonnaise atmosphere of years ago. Of course, it doesn’t work that well, but it beats the shit out of taking my glass and hymn book to a seniors center and evoking older memories…

Happy Boozy Holidays to you all!

Jonny’s Holiday Mulled Wine (serves 6-8)

Ingredients:

• 2 bottles of red wine
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon of cloves
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 star anise
• 4 sticks of cinnamon
• 12 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1/3 cup of orange juice
• peel of 1 orange
• peel of 1 lemon
• 1 orange sliced in 1/4 inch rounds

What to do:

1. Optional: Tie all spices in a piece of cheesecloth using kitchen twine. You can skip this if you’d prefer to laugh at guests with cloves stuck in their teeth.
2. Heat wine in pot gently with spices/sachet and peel until aromas fill the room (at least 15 minutes). Do not boil, only simmer very, very gently.
3. Stir in sugar and orange juice. Taste for sweetness and adjust if necessary.
4. Place orange rounds in mugs and ladle in wine.
5. Stir and serve with a cinnamon stick and enjoy!

Although we are still recovering from our 14-hour cooking fest that was Christmas Eve, we had an absolute blast and were proud of ourselves for successfully producing 6 courses for 11 people. It was EXHAUSTING, make no friggin’ mistake. We cooked from about noon till 7PM on Sunday and from 10AM till 5 on Christmas Eve day. The hardest part of the meal was the Fritto Misto because we were cooking on an electric stove (arrrrrrrrrr) and we only had one cast-iron pan (fried so much quicker and more evenly). I had a bit of a mini-breakdown during the fritto misto cooking because people were bumping me, talking to me, staring at us and doing the #1 most annoying thing you can do to a cook (now this was all my mother) saying, “Ummmmm, can you tell us when this may be done?” or “Are we any closer to eating?” SHEEEEEDDDDDDD UPPPPPPPPP!!!!!

So, since there are lots of elements to our meal, I figured I would post one or two recipes at a time. Most of the things we made were not from recipes and just kind of happened so I’ll do the best I can with measurements. But, like I always say, cooking should not be all about recipes – recipes are like a bit of a helper but you should never feel like they should be followed exactly. Always taste as you go along and you’ll know whether you need to add more stuff.

Thanks to my sister, Alison, we had one of those festive Christmas drinks that you always see in those dorky Christmas spreads in magazines or in those fake, made-up ‘party scenes’ on Michael Chiarello’s ‘Napa Style’. You know he doesn’t have that many different friends! And you KNOW people wouldn’t be having that much fun with him. Anywho’s, you know how much I hate on The Food Network, but this recipe comes from there. It also comes from a very annoying personality on TFN – Guy Fieri. Anyone with the name “Guy” can not be trusted. Anyone with a friggin’ goatee a different color than the hair on his head can not be trusted. ANYONE with a pinkie ring should NEVER be trusted!! But, you know what, even with a nerd-o, cheesy title like “Gingerbling”, this drink was very delish and not heavy like many creamy Christmas drinks made with eggnog. So, for my first posted recipe is one I can lift straight from The Food Network. God, I hope this never happens again.

GINGERBLING CHRISTMAS DRINK – FROM ‘GUY’ FIERI ON TFN

Ingredients

For the sugar rim:
Apple slice
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
Grated nutmeg

For the drink:

1 ounce cinnamon schnapps
1 ounce vodka
4 ounces ginger ale
Ice

What to do:

1. For the rim, combine all ingredients in a shallow dish or saucer.
2. Wet the rim of a martini glass or tumbler with the slice of apple, reserve for garnish. Dip the rim of the glass in the sugar mixture and reserve.
3. In a cocktail shaker, pour the cinnamon schnapps, vodka, and ginger ale over ice, shake and strain into the glass. Garnish with the apple slice.

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The owners, the Abi-Najm family, had a really cute ‘coming-to-America/America the land of opportunity’ story that is often unheard of these days. They fled Lebanon on a cargo ship during the civil war with only a few belongings. In 1976, they settled in Arlington and by 1979 they bought a small pizza place called Athenian Taverna and had only enough money to replace half the sign, and the first Lebanese Taverna was born.

Warms your heart, right? Maybe makes you reconsider your opinions on the current immigration policy, huh? Maybe it’s just me?

Anyways, that night I ate the most delicious and different meal. The dish was called Fatteh Djaje – seasoned, shredded chicken with crispy pita bread, smothered in a yogurt sauce and (my favorite part) sprinkled with pomegranate seeds. Every time I visited Shannon, I asked if we could go to Lebanese Taverna so I could satisfy my craving.

After the second time dining there, I knew I had to try to find a recipe to recreate the dish. This was 1999 and the internet was shockingly different than it is today. After much searching, I found something that slightly resembled it, but I knew I would have to get creative and figure it out based on my memory of the dish at the restaurant.

To this day, the Lebanese Taverna’s menu includes Fatteh Djaje (with chicken) and Fatteh Blahmeh (with lamb). Here is how the Fatteh Blahmeh is described on their menu:

Pretty great description for a pretty amazing meal. I know many of you may be scared of this recipe, but if you try it once, I guarantee you’ll be hooked. Since 1999 (and one marriage to an Englishman later), I’ve grown to love lamb and eat a decent amount of it, so this recipe will be the lamb version. Feel free to substitute the lamb for chicken if you’re not a lamb eater. If you like the taste of Moroccan spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, clove, etc.), you’ll love this meal.

LEBANESE SPICED LAMB OVER CRISPY PITA SMOTHERED WITH A GARLIC-YOGURT POMEGRANATE SAUCE (FATTEH BLAHMEH)

For the Lamb

• 3 lbs lamb for stew (small bits still on the bone)
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 two to three inch stick of cinnamon
• 5 cloves
• 1/2 of nutmeg (or about 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg if you must)
• 2-3 cups of chicken stock
• pinch of salt
• 1 can of chickpeas

For the Yogurt Sauce

• 1 1/2 cups of plain yogurt, strained
• 2 cloves of garlic, mashed into a paste
• some mint leaves, roughly chopped
• a squeeze of lemon (Optional: zest of half of lemon)

Garnish and Bottom Layer:

• 3-4 pita bread, sliced through the middle (so they are thin), cut into triangles and toasted till crispy
• 1/4 cup of toasted pine-nuts
• 1/4 cup pomegranate seeds (if seasonally available)
• some roughly chopped mint

What to do:

1. Season your lamb with some kosher salt, a bit of nutmeg and cinnamon. Heat up a small bit of olive oil in your pressure cooker. Over medium heat, sear your lamb until brown – about 1 1/2 minutes per side. ***NOTE: You could also slow cook the lamb in your slow cooker for 5-6 hours during the work day and still get that wonderful, falling-off-the-bone thing.
2. Add your onions and garlic to the pressure cooker and using the leftover oil, saute briefly, stirring around the meat to make some room for the onions/garlic to cook.
3. Make a bouquet garni (if you have cheesecloth or do what I did in a bind tonight – get a misfit (CLEAN!!) sock, cut it, wrap your spices in it and tie with kitchen twine) with the cinnamon stick, nutmeg half and cloves.
4. After another 30 seconds or so, add your stock. Throw in your bouquet garni. Bring to a boil and follow your pressure cooker directions. Cook in pressure for 30-35 minutes.
5. While that’s cooking, mix your strained yogurt with the garlic paste, chopped mint, squeeze of lemon and lemon zest. Stir and let sit so the flavors meld.
6. Slice your pita and toast in the oven for about 4-5 minutes at 385 degrees till crispy. (OPTIONAL: Traditionally, the pita should be fried in butter for a more intense taste).
7. If you have a pomegranate, slice in half and remove seeds. It’s easier to submerge it in water and take seeds out that way – the little bits of sinew will separate from the seeds more easily. Strain so you just have the seeds.
8. When lamb is finished cooking in the pressure cooker/slowcooker, using tongs, remove lamb only out of the sauce and put in bowl. Allow to cool for a few moments.
9. Meanwhile, turn heat on medium to reduce the sauce just a bit more – about 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, add the drained chickpeas and let simmer for another 3-4 minutes.
10. With two forks (or your fingers!), remove the bones from the lamb meat and shred the lamb meat. It should be super tender and fall off the bone easily.
11. Assemble your dish. Put 4-5 toasted/fried pita triangles on the bottom of your dish. Using a large spoon, spoon some chickpeas with sauce over the crispy pita bread. You want a decent layer of chickpeas. Next, top the chickpeas with some shredded lamb. Finally, add a layer of yogurt and top with a sprinkling of pomegranate seeds, toasted pine nuts and chopped mint. Dig in!

CHECK OUT SOME OTHER PRESSURE COOKER RECIPES:

• WINE-BRAISED LAMB SHANKS WITH ROSEMARY AND THYME IN PRESSURE COOKER
• LEMONGRASS BEEF SHORTRIBS
• KOREAN-STYLE PORK RIBS IN PRESSURE COOKER