I was recently introduced to an Australian with whom I had a number of interesting discussions (that is not meant as a joke). The first, an hour-long discussion of the age-old cricketing rivalry between England and his native land is of no concern here, but the second, a frank exchange of views about the quality of sausages to be found in the United States has rather more relevance to the subject matter of these here web pages. His view, that American sausages simply aren’t up to snuff compared to the quality and variety of those available in Australia – a country in which the mystery bag has achieved almost legendary status for its role in the great Aussie barbecue – is not one I share, even if there were no other examples of fine forcemeat here than the glorious boudin of Louisiana, although, in his defense, he was careful to exclude American-made Italian style sausages from this otherwise careless dismissal.

Two men arguing about the merits of their sausage could be opening line of a grubby joke, but in fact, it’s a highly meaningful topic. Pork sausage, as it’s widely-known, is the world’s greatest food. I can think of no other food stuff which provides a comparable level of variety and satisfaction. The range of flavorings to be added to the basic mixture of pork shoulder and fat is almost limitless and the unctuousness of pork seems to be the perfect canvas for sausage-makers around the world to demonstrate their flair. All of which means that unless one is sufficiently motivated, like my Antipodean chum, to make one’s own sausage from scratch, one can take one’s pick from the myriad sausages available to us these days.

However, if you’re either deliberately bloody-minded or just feel like gilding the lily, you can augment your local sausage-maker’s offerings with flavorings of your own, which is what I did. Taking inspiration, once again, from Maxine Clark’s “Flavors of Tuscany”, I embarked with six fennel-scented Italian “sweet” sausage, adding some hot pepper flakes, a finger-nail or so of sweet pimenton, a pinch each of fennel pollen and black pepper, plus a generous teaspoon of just-cracked fennel seeds to the sausage meat after extracting it from its casings. Between two moistened palms, I rolled myself some micro-meatballs so-seasoned, browned them off in olive oil and paired them with a risotto bianco, garnished generously with fennel seeds, and washed it all down with an unpretentious Chianti.

As a speedy weeknight meal, it had the twin virtues for the ambitious home-cook of being easy and delicious while making me feel like I’d embellished the store-bought ingredients rather more than I had, which together with the great potential for sausage-based school-boy puns almost justifies posting about it.

One of the great joys of parenting is being able to do stuff with your kids, you know, like playing with them and watching them laugh. One of the great responsibilities of parenting is doing things with them because you have no choice, as this morning when I reached a stalemate with our 11-month old: either he needed to stop being so clingy for a few moments or I wouldn’t be able to get off the toilet. Depending on what kind of parent you are, you’ll find that one of these scenarios is more common than the other, and we’re totally not judging.

The same might be said of eating homegrown produce: some of it you thoroughly enjoy eating; some of it you eat because you have to. Our first real summer as more or less fully-fledged gardeners has certainly not been characterized by optimal growing conditions but we’re still finding that while there are joyous occasions when being creative with our horticultural bounty is a true pleasure, there are plenty of others when facing eggplant for the fourth time in a week becomes a chore.

Like parenting challenges surmounted, finding new and delicious ways to enjoy eggplant – of which, in truth, I’ve never been the world’s biggest fan – provides a great deal of personal satisfaction even if at the time it’s frustrating, because in both cases you emerge mostly unscathed but with a new-found appreciation of both the baby and the ingredient.

The recipe below – baingan bhartha – makes use of eggplant’s previously unappreciated attribute of being able to bind a sauce. Like its nightshade cousin the tomato, eggplant seems as comfortable in this role as any other we’ve tried with it. The smoky flavor gained through roasting is quite startling in its profundity – and it would be remiss of us if we were not to warn you that roasting eggplant over direct flame, like some aspects of parenting very young children, can lead to messy explosions. But we learned that the long-cooking and removal of skin diffuses that slightly cough-inducing, throat-irritating quality we’ve always noticed, replacing it with something approaching a sweetness, believe it or not.

First eaten at our neighborhood Indian restaurant, Kinara, this roasted eggplant and fragrantly-spiced sauce is typical of the Punjab. Best known these days among Westerners for the inimitable musical stylings of Punjabi MC, the Punjab is a region of densely-populated river valleys now shared between India and Pakistan but with a historical relationship with the Persian (Farsi)-speaking, Islamic peoples of to the north and east in Afghanistan and Iran. In fact, Punjab (Panjab in Farsi) means “five rivers”, and it is in this relationship to the baba ghanoush-eating natives and co-religionists of the Middle East that the dish’s roots lie.

Future preparations to try before either the season ends or we turn into eggplants ourselves include, of course, babaghanoush, but also other recipes from both near and far: preserved/pickled eggplant, pasta alla norma, moussaka and miso eggplant.

**Recipe note: If your spices are relatively old and not as pungent, try adding more of them to this recipe. I found that the eggplant really just sucks up anything that is added to it and I ended up adding a few more pinches of all of them. Taste along the way and, as always with cooking, adjust seasoning to your liking.

While Queens may have the reputation for being the most ethnically diverse area in the United States, our very own borough of Brooklyn is certainly not bereft of global flavors. From the side-by-side Mexican and Chinese neighborhoods of Sunset Park to the century-old Italian areas of Carroll Gardens and Bay Ridge, to the more recently established Caribbean community of Crown Heights, there is rather more than a smattering of diverse flavors available to the curious epicure. Even gentrified Park Slope and Prospect Heights reflect the enduring presence of their Puerto Rican and Dominican populations with a wide selection of places offering “Spanish food”, a phenomenon which took me a while to decipher as it certainly isn’t Spanish in the European sense.

Dishes typical of Spanish-speaking countries, especially those ringing the Caribbean, but which also may be derived from actual Iberian cooking — known predominantly on the east coast as Spanish, or Spanish American — it’s basically a catch-all term that to me connotes delicious, often with tropical ingredients, but always complex and filling food. We’ve made mention of several of these neighborhood eateries in several previous posts – El Viejo Yayo, Los Pollitos, Bogota among them – but our most recent crush is on the wonderful Windsor Terrace institution, Elora’s.

Serving Mexican and Spanish food, whereby you can select from the greatest hits of Mexico as well as these Spanish-speaking Caribbean classics, Elora’s serves all these in such volume that one dish could easily feed a hungry family of four. And it is perhaps because of this, and their consequently narrow profit margins, that our regular server at Elora’s should, by rights, be enjoying the benefits of a comfortable retirement.

Pushing 80 years old, Don Nicolas is without doubt the oldest but also the most charming and interesting waiter we have ever had the good fortune to be served by. Born to Sicilian immigrant parents in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and trained as a tango and opera singer, it is his daughter for whom the restaurant is named. His musical career spanned several decades and took him the length and breadth of the Americas, before he retired from singing, settled in Brooklyn and went into the restaurant business with his marital family.

On our most recent visit while we waited for our heavily-laden plates to arrive, Don Nicolas was explaining to us the secret of his youthfulness – “if I stop moving, I become stiff and I might not get started again! When you are young you don’t think about these things and spend all your time on the couch!” Indeed, many less energetic thirty somethings might have struggled with the amount of food he was charged with lugging from the kitchen. But manage he did, depositing immoderate orders of pernil, bistec encebollado and chicharrones de pollo on our table before returning spritely with sides of beans, rice, and tostones. Still not done, he surveyed the table and in a trice was back with a deep bowl of raw garlic in oil. “Prefieren un poco de salsa de ajo por su tostones, no?” (you’d like a little garlic sauce for your plantains, right?), he asked.

When we congratulated Don Nicolas on his fitness and asked if his health is reflection of his restaurant’s hearty fare, he responded diplomatically that he enjoyed the beans and rice and the pollo guisado (stewed chicken) most weeks, but found the Mexican dishes to be too hot for his Argentine tastes. “No tenemos alimento picante en Argentina,” (we don’t have spicy food where I come from.) he explained.

In fact, chicharrones de pollo, deep fried chicken, or more accurately translated as chicken cracklins’, are a popular Dominican dish, sometimes also claimed by Puerto Ricans as their own — we’ll leave it to them to fight over where it truly originated — in which chunks of chicken are marinaded for a lengthy period in adobe, lime juice, rum and either soy sauce or worcestershire sauce before being lightly dusted in corn starch and tossed into hot oil. If you like fried chicken (and those who don’t must ask themselves some searching questions) then you should try this recipe. It goes perfectly well with the tostones we had at Elora’s or the beans and rice we prepared more recently, but it is just as good on its own with a jigger of hot sauce and a cold bottle of Presidente Dominican beer. And, sure, it won’t necessarily help you live well into your 80s, but it will make the next couple of hours more enjoyable.

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.

During his show on Panama, Anthony Bourdain observed that Chinese food somehow gets shinier the further west one goes. He might also have mentioned that it changes in other ways throughout the western hemisphere too, on the whole, becoming less and less Chinese-like. In a similar way to Panama, to which Chinese laborers flocked to help build the eponymous canal, Peru experienced large-scale immigration of Cantonese mine workers during the latter half of the 19th century too, and still has the largest Asian population of any nation in South America. Largely isolated from its home country for the intervening century and a half, the Peruvian Chinese community, like many New World immigrant groups, developed its own distinct peculiarities.

Regular readers of this blog will know of our penchant for the immigrant groups of the Americas, where they came from, how and why they arrived, and how they went about creating their new and entirely unique cultures on foreign soils, often in the teeth of vicious discrimination from those who had arrived earlier. So it was for the Chinese in Peru. Principally from the Chinese province of Guangdong, these immigrants were not just coming for a short time to work, earn a living, and then return home. In a way that is almost unimaginable for us today, given the global mobility many of us have, those who journeyed to South America to work in its silver, copper and silicate mines had to virtually abandon any thought of ever seeing their homes again. It must have been all the harder without any of the comforts of home either – as traditional Cantonese ingredients were (mostly) unavailable in 19th-century Peru.

Culinarily, this isolation and a lack of familiar foodstuffs led to the development of an entirely Peruvian-Chinese phenomenon known as Chifa. Derived from a local corruption of the Mandarin “chi fan” or “eat rice”, chifa cuisine is characterized by somewhat curious ingredient pairings. In the most popular chifa dish, lomo saltado – a beef stir-fry, this manifests itself in the carbohydrate combo of rice and french fries, and the flavoring mix of soy sauce, red wine and spicy Peruvian yellow aji peppers. Purists may quibble that chifa is less fusion cuisine and more mish-mash food given the apparent clumsy pairing of local meat and potatoes with Cantonese stir-fry, but I, for one, find that lomo saltado actually offers the same salty, spicy, sour and sweet tastes typical of Chinese cooking, just with different ingredients.

Understandably popular among hard-working Cantonese miners, chifa cuisine was also a surprise hit among the higher echelons of Peruvian society, and though initially limited to Lima’s Barrios Altos, chifa restaurants soon began to spring up outside of Chinese neighborhoods too, eventually expanding across the capital (where there are now more than 6,000 chifa restaurants) to most parts of the country. Indeed, so popular has it become that today one can find Chifas, as they’re known, throughout the rest of South America. From Argentina and Chile all the way north to Venezuela, chifa cuisine is almost as well known as Peru’s other great gastronomic export, ceviche. Evidently, this trend is growing among the Yanquis too: Chef Jose Garces of Iron Chef America fame, opened a chifa-style eatery in Philadelphia recently, naming it, rather unimaginatively, Chifa.

On a visit to Argentina, Anthony Bourdain commented that the common Porteno carb combo of pizza and chickpea faina must have been invented by drunk people, and rice with fries would seem to fall into the same category. Sure, double starch is weird, but that doesn’t mean to say it’s not good, drunk or sober.

When our readers actually read our posts, it feels really good. Because we often write a lot in our post, it is understandable why some may choose not to actually read our words. We understand how many blogs exist, and many only have time to do the “blog drive-by” (you know what I’m talking about – the “I’m going to just look at the pictures quickly then comment something like damn! that-looks-deeelissssh!” drive by? We’ve all done it). But the thing we love the most about writing a blog about food from all over the world, trying to infuse history, cultural anecdotes and as much authenticity as possible, is when we get schooled. It’s almost like a sick, food-centered type of masochism. It’s almost as if we are bent over some Argentinian, Spanish, French or Italians knee as they spank us very hard telling us how wrong we were about _______________ (insert ethnic dish of choice here). Knowing we have people actually reading what we write (and telling us how we can do things better) makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It shows us that people are actually reading our words and are interested in enlightening people about their culture. When we get something wrong on the blog, getting schooled helps us learn and grow and we love it.

One may think that one of the best perks of having a food blog is getting free truffle products (ok, that friggin rocked), free yogurt (didn’t rock as much as the truffle) or free seasoning packets (that basically sucked) but my favorite “freebie” actually came in the form of a scanned in family recipe. A bit ago, we received an email from a reader that asked us when we were going to take a stab at featuring “Arroz con Gandules” on the blog. He read the blog and understood the research we do in regards to authenticity and asked us to please try his “Puerto Rican Lady Friend’s” recipe. It happened to be a dish we had on that lovely “list of things to make for the blog” so, once we received this, we figured to look no further. We tried the recipe (even having to email the reader back to make sure I could understand his handwriting correctly) and didn’t even bother with any more research. It was that good and that easy to make and a perfect weeknight meal. If you want to mix it up a bit, do as our reader Christine does and serve it along with Puerto Rican slow roasted pork shoulder, Pernil, instead of the bits of pork.

Arroz con Gandules is often thought of as Puerto Rico’s national dish. It is the dish that will most often be made for the Christmas dinner table and after one taste, you will see why. What could be better than a one-pot meal with layers and layers of flavor?  What could be better than looking around at your kitchen thinking you have opened up a Goya shop (that is if you don’t make your own sofrito, sazon or use canned peas)  What could be better than being able to create a delicious crust of crunchy rice and spices goodness that can form at the bottom of the rice called “pegao“?(**We aren’t talented enough yet to get the pegao right, but I’ll be working on it as soon as we pony up and buy a real caldero). So, here’s to Robert – the reader who so graciously supplied this recipe. We may never have met you, but we think of you every month we make Arroz con Gandules!

Juan Camilo took us to the place he feels is the most authentic and best Colombian restaurant in the Colombian section of the incredible ethnic diversity that is the Queens neighborhood of Jackson Heights, Cositas Ricas. In order not to make the podcast redundant, I will not write a lengthy description of our experience that day - only a few important details - but suffice it to say that Amy and I learned a great deal about Colombian food over the course of our meal and now understand that we have barely scratched the surface of an exciting and delicious food-culture.

Naturally, I tried their bandeja paisa, the “super bandeja”, and Amy had the similar, but different, palomilla a la parilla (it comes without chorizo or chicharron), after starting with caldo de castillo or short-rib soup (said to be the perfect cure for a hangover), and several Colombian meat empanadas with aji (a spicy, vinegary condiment) as appetizers. Juan Camilo ordered tiritas de lomo (grilled pork ribs), and one of our companions, Don, in a bid to be different, had an enormous plate of the restaurant’s version of surf & turf: chicken and spicy shrimp.

We must take this opportunity to thank Juan Camilo for generously taking the time to share his country’s food and culture with us that afternoon in Jackson Heights, and for his good humor and forebearance in agreeing to the interview that made this podcast.

Sadly, Cositas Ricas has no website of its own, but you can check out their menu here. If you are ever in the vicinity of Jackson Heights and have a serious hunger (and I mean serious otherwise you probably shouldn’t bother), we strongly encourage you to check this place out, or indeed any of the hundreds of restaurants and food outlets in this neighborhood. The sheer diversity is staggering and the myriad aromas are enough to make anyone salivate.

Note on Colombian Juices
I’m still working on figuring out the English names for some of the fruit we drank as juice at Cositas Ricas, but here are some links that might help you visualize what we are talking about: Coruba; Lulo; Maracuya

On our final day in Madrid, it was pissing down with rain. We spent about 4 hours walking around the Reina Sofia drooling over Picasso’s Guernica (the size of a giant museum wall) and the large amount of Dali and Miro works. We’re not really artsy-fartsy folks, but that museum made me wet myself with joy. The more we travel, the more I’ve been enjoying museums. But the second my stomach growled in the hallowed halls of the Reina Sofia, I knew it was only a matter of time till I either ripped a painting off the wall and attempted to eat it or I ripped off my husbands head just because he was there and I was annoyed. See, when Amy gets hungry she becomes a bit of a biotch. Ok, that’s an understatement according to anyone who knows me. When Amy gets hungry and can’t find food right away she is basically a total bitch. Even worse, when Amy is wet and hungry she will let you know that she’s pissed and take it out on who ever is closest to her. I know, I know, it’s not fair and it’s mean, but I think of my stomach the way a man thinks of his penis. Just as many men think with theirs, I think with my stomach and when I need it satisfied, it must be satisfied immediately.

As we walked around Madrid on our final afternoon of vacation, starving and cold (I know, poor me, right?), I thought I was going to die if I didn’t get some food in me. It always happens that when you want something you never can find it, but the second you stop looking, there it is. Well, the second I just gave up on finding an open restaurant, there she was – a warm, inviting, cozy and delicious-smelling Galician restaurant – Taberna Maceira. The menu offered an array of food and if I had my choice, I probably would’ve ordered the whole menu. But the thing that caught our eye was the Arroz Marineiro (that’s the Galician spelling for Arroz Marinero) which happened to be a mid-day special. The fact that the menu specifically told you, in so many words, to be patient because this dish takes at least 25 minutes to make, even as hungry as I was, made me smile. We ordered a huge cheese plate with five different types of Galician cheeses and a large jug of wine. Within five minutes I was warm, buzzed and happy. When the steamy hot cauldron of rice, tomato stock and various types of seafood came out, I started to realize that I could be happy sitting in that cozy Galician restaurant with the jug(s) of red wine, my husband and this steamy hot bowl of Arroz Marineiro for the rest of my life… or at least until the rain passed in a few hours.

This dish is similar in flavors to a paella but the main difference is the consistency. It should be like a soupy stew with a bit of the broth left on the top of the rice so you can get a bit of the broth with each bite. Most recipes have a variety of fish included in it. Kind of like the livornese fish stew we made ages ago – it all depends on what’s fresh and what’s available. The dish’s name translates to Marine or Sailor Rice. The small bit of history I could find about this dish told me that it was an easy dish for those that lived on the sea to make with what was readily available. We brought back some razor clams with us from Spain, so we used some of these along with whatever else I could pick up at my local store. Although we weren’t sitting in Madrid when we ate this fabulous healthy meal, it did bring me back to that afternoon.

ARROZ MARINERO – SPANISH MARINE RICE (serves 2 to 3 as mains)

Ingredients:

• 1 onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 to 6 whole, peeled tomatoes (can be from a can), chopped
• 6 cups hot stock (preferably fish stock)
• 1 roasted red pepper, peeled and cut into 2 inch strips
• olive oil
• 2 tablespoons pimenton (paprika)
• pinch of saffron
• a variety of seafood: squid cut in rings, clams still in shell, shrimp with shells removed, mussels, white fish cut in 1-inch chunks
• 2 cups of Valencian rice (Arborio or Bomba rice would work – regular white rice would work only – ONLY – if you can’t find the other 3)
• some chopped parsley
• lemon
• Optional but not traditional: some peperoncino or a hot pepper to spice it up

What to do:

1. In a pot, saute the onions and garlic for a few minutes in some olive oil. After a few minutes, add the clams and mussels along with a bit of hot stock (like 3 or 4 tablespoons) and stir a bit. Put a lid on the pot and give it a few minutes to steam. Don’t let the onions and garlic burn. Lift the lid every 2 minutes to check if the shells have opened. Stir around if necessary and put lid back on. Keep doing this until the shells of the clams and mussels have completely opened. Remove to a bowl and hold until ready to plate.
2. Add the chopped tomatoes, roasted red pepper, squid and fish to the sauteed onions and garlic. Cook for a minute then add the pimenton and saffron. Stir for around for a minute then add the rice and stir, allowing rice to absorb all the flavors in the pot.
3. Add all the broth and stir. Bring the rice to a boil and then turn heat down a bit and allow the rice to cook in the heavy simmering liquid. You want in between a boil and a simmer. The rice should cook in about 20 minutes, but, like me, keep testing it for doneness every 5 minutes. About five minutes before the rice is finished cooking, add your shrimp.
4. When the rice is done, turn heat off, taste for seasoning and ladle rice along with some extra broth and plenty of seafood into a bowl. Top with some of the reserved clams and mussels. Squeeze some lemon juice on to the top along with some chopped parsley. Enjoy!

Check out some other posts you may enjoy:

• JAMAICAN JERK CHICKEN
• SHREDDED CHICKEN SOPES WITH TOMATILLO AVOCADO SAUCE
• FRITO MISTO DI MARE (FRIED MIXED SEAFOOD AND VEGGIES)
• SALAD NICOISE (Salad with Seared Tuna)
• PROVENCAL RABBIT WITH OLIVES AND CAPERS
• BRAISED PORK CHOPS WITH LIME AND OLIVES

Well, fear not, kind readers, for we are definitely not in the business of recommending high-end wine pairings, in fact, our wine recommendations, such as they are, tend to be in the $8-$12 range, where you’ll find plenty of very drinkable, but mostly forgettable, plonk, that even when corked or tasting like a wet dog, is a financial loss that most of us can live with. No, instead of suggesting wine pairings, we’re beginning a new monthly feature today that focuses on beverages that you might not be that familiar with in the hope that you’ll try them, enjoy them, perhaps even come to love them given enough time and support from your family and friends.

The first recommendation then, is the delicious, but relatively unknown, Korean beverage soju. Almost everyone knows of sake – the “wine” (properly, sake is a beer, not a wine, because it is produced through brewing) made from rice that can be found in nearly every sushi restaurant, and that many of you have tried in several forms – hot, cold, clear, and unfiltered, but just across the Sea of Japan, the Koreans have been making a different kind of clear, rice-based beverage for about 700 years.

A Little History
Around A.D 1300, the Mongols introduced the technique of distilling liquor from grain to Korea, a nifty trick they had learned from the Persians, who had taught them it some 70 years earlier. All of which was very magnanimous considering the Persians had just been slaughtered mercilessly by the Mongol hordes as they rampaged across the steppes of central Asia. The Koreans then, seeing that distillation was indeed a meritorius concept began setting up distilleries around the city of Kaesong immediately, a tradition of distilling that is still maintained in that city to this day. And the trend spread. Today, soju is produced throughout the Korean peninsular, both in the north and south, by a great number of different companies.

Traditionally, soju is distilled from rice, but from 1965 to the early 1990s the (south) Korean government forbade the use of fermented grain for soju production due to its scarcity. Because of this, many soju manufacturers began using pure ethanol derived from a variety of sources including potato, barley and tapioca mixed with water and various flavorings to make the drink, though some have since returned to more traditional methods.

Drunk in the West
Typically, soju’s alcohol content is around the 20% ABV mark, though there is a considerable range with some soju’s being as strong as a vodka, at around 40% alcohol. In terms of taste, some compare soju to vodka because of its clear color and relatively neutral taste, but to my mind, soju is considerably sweeter than vodka (often because sugar or corn syrup is added to it), though I should stress it is far from a sweet or sugary beverage. Some soju we’ve drunk has had a slightly appley kind of flavor, though most of them have barely perceptible flavors that are crisp on the tongue but without the fumes that characterize vodkas. And, it is this neutral/slightly sweet flavor, clarity and reasonably high-alcohol content that has made soju the new sake in designer cocktails. For example, in upscale Manhattan bars the sake-tini (a martini with sake instead of vodka or gin) is now the soju-tini, and the sake-rinha (a caipirinha with the cachaca replaced by sake) is now the soju-rinha.

A Traditional & Popular Tipple
Of course, this is a far cry from how soju is served in Korea. Usually taken at large social gatherings, soju is always taken unmixed and out of shot-sized glasses, and often knocked back in one go. Etiquette forbids the filling of one’s own glass as this promotes selfishness and greed. Instead, it must be filled by someone else, promoting camaraderie and thoughtfulness for others. The traditional way of pouring soju is quite a complicated ritual that requires the pourer to hold the bottle in their right hand while touching their right forearm or elbow with their left hand. The recipient of the soju should then hold out their glass in the palm of their left hand and steady it with their right hand while bowing their head towards the pourer as a sign of thanks.

In spite of this ritual and the availability of western alcoholic drinks like whiskey and vodka, soju remains one of the most popular drinks in Korea with around 3 billion bottles consumed annually, or 90 bottles per adult per year. Containing around 7 shots per 350 ml bottle, this means that every Korean adult drinks a bottle of soju themselves every four days. Fair play to them for really enjoying their national drink!

Soju in America
So, now that you’re clued-up on what soju is, I suspect you’ll be wanting to know where you can get your hands on some. Well, your local Korean restaurant is the best place to start, of course, and it’s quite likely that they will have several different kinds – some better, some worse – on their menu for you to sample. Korean-owned grocery stores are also likely spots because, perhaps curiously, in California and New York, soju is classed under the same liquor licensing laws as beer.

We definitely encourage you to give soju a try. Don’t be scared. It’s not going to blow your head off, unless you’ve never had a drink before, that is, but just because it’s classed the same as beer at the store, doesn’t mean that you can have a bottle of it to yourself and then get in your car and drive home. Not only is drinking and driving dangerous and illegal, but you’d also be behaving selfishly and greedily, and that is not in the spirit of drinking soju!

Ahhh, jerk chicken. One of my favorite dishes. It’s spicy, kind of sweet and when made well should almost melt in your mouth. On a cold winters night, there’s nothing that can snap you out of a cold-weather-depression than cooking up something from the Islands.

Jerk was used as a way to preserve and cook meat and was originally only made with pork. Interestingly, I found that the work “jerk” comes from a Spanish word called “charqui” which means dried meat. This is how we coined the term “jerky” for that awesome, chewy and salty dried meat we can pick up in 711′s or other corner stores or truck stops. Another possible meaning of the word stems from what happens to the meat when you prepare and cook it – you poke it/or jerk it to produce a hole in order to fill it with the spice mixture (which I didn’t do). I also read that it could come from the reaction your body has as you eat the spicy meat – your body jerks. How about the way you cook it – you ‘jerk’ the meat off the coals. Whatever the derivation all I know is that it’s absolutely delicious! What’s even cooler is that jerk pork’s origins can be traced all the way back to 1655 during the pre-slavery days of West African hunters (the Cormantees) through a group of Jamaican slaves (Maroons) that escaped from the British during the invasion of that year. The Maroons supposedly developed and perfected the jerk as a way to preserve the meat while they lived in the mountains fighting the British troops.

Nowadays, various jerk recipes are passed down from Jamaican family to Jamaican family, but each recipe always includes allspice, hot chilies, salt and various spices and herbs. Traditionally it should be grilled slowly over a wood fire made of pimento (allspice) wood, just to infuse the flavor even deeper into the meat, and continuously basted with the marinade. Because it’s winter in NYC and we will be purchasing a new grill this summer, I enjoy oven-cooking my jerk. If you stick on the broiler for a bit at the end, you can get a bit of crisp on the skin. WHOOOO HOOOOOO… absolutely fabulous! Give it a try yourself – it’s easy. Make it along with a some rice & pea and fried green plantains for the perfect balance of salty and sweet. The crunch of the tostones (SEE BELOW FOR A PICTORIAL “HOW TO”) make the dish. Our friend, Bren, has a great piece on all the different ways you can cook plantains

Also, we’d like to thank our friend, Pixie, who gave our recipe a whirl and had a taste of the Islands in the UK one night. THANK YOU!!

JERK CHICKEN WITH RICE & PEA AND TOSTONES (FRIED PLANTAINS) (SERVES 2-3)

For the chicken and marinade:

• 2 breasts of chicken, skin on
• 2 legs of chicken, skin on
• 2 tbsp. allspice
• 1 tbsp. dried thyme
• 1 teaspoon hot paprika
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1 scotch bonnet pepper (or other spicy hot pepper)
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1/2 cup of cilantro (you can substitute 1 teaspoon coriander seed)
• juice of 1 lime
• splash of orange juice
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 scallions
• 1 teaspoon soy sauce
• pinch of salt and pepper

What to do:

1. If you are using allspice berries/seeds and whole cinnamon sticks, grind the spices down with a spice grinder. Then blend all the ingredients together in a blender until smooth (or smooth enough – you’ll have a bit of chunks of garlic and hot pepper). I used the olive oil to make it a wet rub. If you feel like you need more or less, adjust so it’s a thick paste.
2. Slab this on your chicken (remember to get under the skin if you can!). Wear some gloves if you have ‘em… this marinade contains hot pepper. Allow this to marinate for an hour at least, if you have the time. If you can marinate overnight, even better.
3. Cook your chicken pieces at 400 degrees for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until juices run clear. For the last minute, put on the broiler and allow some of the skin to crisp up a bit. Don’t let the marinade burn!

RICE AND PEA

What to do:

• 1 cup white rice
• 1 can red kidney beans
• 1 small onion, minced
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 scallion, sliced
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder (optional – I really love garlic)
• chicken stock

What to do:

1. Saute your onions and garlic over medium heat for a few minutes (keep em a bit crunchy). Add your rice, the garlic powder, scallions and beans. Add the rice and stir all together.
2. Pour enough chicken stock over your rice that it comes up the width of 2 fingers above the level of the uncooked rice (make the peace sign, put your 2 fingers together, turn your 2 fingers clock wise 90 degrees – that’s how you measure – I’M TELLING YOU – IT WORKS EVERY TIME PERFECTLY). Bring to the boil and allow to cook down until it reaches the level of the rice. When the chicken stock has reached the level of the rice, stir ONCE, turn your heat to low and cover. Cook on low for 20 minutes.
3. After 20 minutes your rice will be perfect, give it a stir and enjoy.

****Traditionally, Jamaican rice & pea should be made with coconut milk. Just replace the chicken stock with 1 can of coconut milk plus enough water so that the total amount of liquid follows the “2 finger rule” (see above).

TOSTONES (FRIED GREEN PLANTAINS)

Ingredients:

• 2 Green Plantains
• veggie oil
• salt

What to do:

1. Heat your veggie oil – you want enough to almost cover the plantains.
2. Peel plantains and cut into slices, about 1 inch thick.
3. Fry your cut plantains once for about 2-3 minutes. Drain on paper towels.
4. Smash with a mallet and then fry again for another 1 1/2 to 2 minutes. Drain and season with some salt.

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