Towards the end of what is, in my opinion, his finest work, Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell tells of the bitter street fighting he witnessed in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War when the delicate alliance between communist, socialist, and anarchist factions of the Republican army finally collapsed. While certainly not the bloodiest scene in a war that cost around a million lives, it was one of the most significant, sounding, as it did, the death knell for the Republican cause against Franco’s Fascists. Never after this internicene strife were the respective Republican parties able to trust one another enough to wage a successful war.

Even prior to the Spanish Civil War, anarchist and regional-nationalist groups in Catalonia were making trouble for the shaky Spanish state (then under Republican rule). Indeed, it was during this period of the early 20th century that Barcelona became known as la rosa del fuego, the rose of fire. Modeling their destabilizing tactics on the exploits of Italian anarchists and revolutionaries under Giuseppe Garibaldi, the weapon of choice for Catalan anarchists came to be a round iron ball stuffed with explosives ignited with a string fuse. [Anyone who has ever seen a Tin-Tin or Felix the Cat cartoon will immediately recognize what I'm describing.] In Barcelona, anarchist activity centered around the-then hard-scrabble, now beautifully redeveloped waterfront, neighborhood of Barceloneta, where the mazy streets and crumbling slums provided ample cover for clandestine activity and proximity to the port offered easy access to contraband goods and shady characters.

It was during these unsettled years of the 1920s and ’30s that a Barceloneta bar owner by the name of Maria Pla, during a moment of whimsy with mashed potatoes to hand, created what is now the signature tapas dish of Barcelona, la bomba, the bomb. Potato croquettes with aiolli or a spicy dipping sauce is about as common a tapa as you can name, but Pla’s genius was to shape the croquette and plate it with these two sauces in a way that resembled the anarchists’ favorite weapon.

Today, la bomba can be found in tapas bars and tascas throughout Barcelona and beyond, and its origins in that murky political underworld are mostly forgotten. In fact, we ate it first at Tapa, Tapa a rather touristy tapas bar on the Paseig de Gracia in Barcelona knowing nothing of its fascinating history.

More than its political significance, la bomba is remarkable both as a relic of a turbulent time in the city’s history, and as a statement of the enduring gastronomic playfulness of Catalan chefs. Where today their creations run to rather more extravagant creations — like Ferran Adria’s trick olives (in which olive oil is sealed inside green agar-agar shells, set using a chemical reagent, and served in a ramekin looking for all the world like a simple tapa of olives) — Pla’s invention was just as, if not more so, adventurous, because it was poking fun at the potentially hazardous world of political terrorism.

Perhaps this quality of not taking life too seriously and finding time to play with ones food even in periods when one might be blown-up at any minute speaks to the broader philosophy in the Iberian peoples that George Orwell found both frustrating and alluring in equal measure — and this is not to reduce Spaniards of any stripe to the caricature of gluttonous Sancho Panzas, but rather to celebrate that such is possible even under the greatest duress — that, though they may cling tenaciously to opposing political viewpoints, which in that era, they fought tooth and nail for, nothing is taken quite so seriously as eating and drinking.

So much of what we think we know of Haiti is bad – from the massive human suffering and destruction caused by January’s earthquake, to decades of political and social unrest, to blood-curdling tales of voodoo curses and zombies – that one might be forgiven for wondering how the inhabitants of such a benighted country make it through the day. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s often the case that where there is the greatest suffering, there is also the most joyous celebration – think the wildly over the top bedazzled costumes and deafening samba baterias coming out of the most ravaged Rio slum at Carneval – and so it is in Haiti, and nothing says celebration to a Haitian like griyot.

Grillot/griyo/griyot/griot (pronounced gree-oh) and its accompaniments of sauce ti malice (sos ti malice) and rice and beans constitute one of Haiti’s handful of national dishes, and no Haitian party can be considered a real knees-up without it. This is particularly so on January 1, Haiti’s National Day, recalling the country’s 1804 declaration of independence from France and its arrival on the international scene as the first independent nation in the Caribbean and Latin America, as well as the world’s first black republic, and from whence it took the lead among non-English speaking nations of the western hemisphere in promulgating ideas of liberty and equality. This early split from the colonial power and the country’s several subsequent lapses in to chaos have allowed Haitian culture and cuisine to preserve its African heritage and develop in its own distinct way, largely undiluted by external influences. Ways of which we were almost completely ignorant until we ate our first meal at Kombit – a Haitian restaurant we were lucky enough to have in our neighborhood

We quickly became regulars at Kombit, the sheer novelty of having a Haitian eatery close by (not to mention the raft of delicious and completely unknown dishes) took a long while to wear off. Possibly due to the fact that we were consistently among the few non-Haitian diners, or perhaps because we always asked stupid questions about their food, owners Pascale and Marie began to recognize us, and, eventually, took rather a shine to us two inquisitive but entirely ignorant enthusiasts. Each time we visited they would patiently and smilingly respond to our inane inquiries without ever really revealing much about how the dishes we were enjoying griyot, sauce ti malice or their unbelievably special rice and beans, were made.

Ever since that first experience some six or more years ago, we’ve wanted to try to home-make griyot, and after recently getting our hands on one of two Haitian cook books in print in the United States, we reserved most of a weekend and set to work. The weekend reservation was necessary because – like many flavorful and traditional dishes, preparation ahead of time and patience are necessary – griyot is, as you’ll see if you scroll down, one of several dishes that are dependent on each other, and, if you’re not Haitian and, therefore likely to have some of these staples already hanging around, you have make them in a certain order.

Starting with the griyot – a very rustic and filling dish of marinaded, then braised, then fried pork chunks – you must be prepared to wait at least 24 hours after starting the preparation to eat it, but it is well worth the wait. The texture of it, crispy on the outside and soft inside, combined with the myriad tropical flavors filling your mouth, is quite something in itself, but when paired with its natural partner of rice and beans, it transcends its rusticity to become a truly world-class dish. In complete honesty, Haitian rice and beans are, by a margin, the best I have ever eaten. Smoky, savory and satisfying, these rice and beans are so freaking good that you would be perfectly happy to have a plate, by itself, for dinner. Every night.

We wrote way back in the spring about the Burmese national dish, Own-o Kow Swear, and noted that condiments played a crucial role in that country’s cooking. So it is in Haiti, except that there are far fewer condiments, and the few they have, are used with the same regularity as ketchup in America or olive oil in Greece. Rather handily, both of the two principal Haitian condiments, piklis and sos ti malice, work magnificently with griyot, though since the former is a fiery concoction of scotch bonnet peppers, allspice and vinegar, one should demonstrate restraint in its use in order to avoid the obvious pitfalls.

It sounds anything but appetizing, but sos ti malice – a reddish-brown, thinnish gravy, scattered with a few bits of onion and pepper – is served by the bowlful at Kombit, and we almost always have to order extra it is so good. They serve it with all sorts of dishes, but it is most appropriate with griyot because (although Pascale and Marie never revealed this to us) both the marinade and cooking juices from the griyot are used in its preparation, giving it an incredible complexity and satisfying savoriness.

Please don’t be intimidated by the length of preparation time, the seemingly exotic ingredients or the long list of recipes below. All are very easy to make, the ingredients are fairly easy to find even in an average supermarket, and most of the time you can put your feet up or do something else entirely. Out of the 24 hour (36 hour for piklis) preparation time, you’ll probably be only actively cooking for around 3 hours at the absolute most.

So, for your next celebration meal, consider making griyot and its associated dishes. They really are almost indescribably good and after eating them you’ll certainly be thinking about Haiti in a whole new light.

Being the innate pessimist that I am, watching a small boat being knocked around like a dodgem car on the rollicking, blue-grey seas at the normally placid Jersey Shore this past weekend put me in mind of the Costa de Muerte, the coast of death, on Spain’s north-west coast, where Galician fisherman have taken their lives in their hands for generations. [In a quirk of editorial fate, I may, unwittingly, have taken inspiration for this flight of fancy from the cover (then unopened) of this month's Bon Appetit, but as you will see, if you persevere, there is a mite more detail below than Barbara Fairchild typically provides.]

The ocean’s bounty has never been translated into material riches in that part of Spain, and even in modern times, in spite of renewed interest centered around its albariño and mencia wines, artisanal cheeses, and gooseneck barnacles, it remains comparatively impoverished. Consequently, Gallegos have, for generations, cast their fortunes in the wind and sought better lives for themselves in other parts of Spain and the New World, including Brazil, Uruguay, Venezuela, Argentina, and Cuba.

Interestingly, and this is mostly unrelated, during researching this post, I learned that Fidel Castro’s father was one such Galician emigrant. His mother was also of Galician descent. In fact, Castro is a common Galician family name that is derived from the circular stone-built houses or “castles” of the Castreña — the Celtic Bronze Age culture that left a number of characteristic walled villages across the region. [Ironically, of course, Galician heritage is perhaps the only thing that the communist Fidel shared with his fascist counterpart Francisco Franco, but it was enough for the former to take up an invitation from the-then leader of Spain to visit their shared "home" region in the 1960s.]

The late 19th century marked the beginning of mass Galician emigration to the New World, and an unknown, but significant, number of Gallegos emigrated to Argentina and Uruguay during this period. Today, the two New World cities with the greatest number of people of Galician descent are those countries’ respective capitals, Buenos Aires and Montevideo, so much so, that it is not uncommon for Porteños to refer to all Spaniards as “Gallegos”.

Regular visitors to this blog will, perhaps, recall last April’s post about Argentine pizza which ventured a sociological theory on the impact Italian immigrants have had on the culture and food of their adopted country. It is just possible that I overstated things a little. You see, beyond its magnificent meats, Argentinian cuisine’s next most famous item is not, as I said, its pizza or pasta, but its empanadas. To explain this, I had originally intended to embark on a lengthy discussion of how Galician immigrants were behind the development of the iconic Argentine empanada. Sadly, I could find no evidence whatsoever to support this hypothesis, especially since Argentine empanadas resemble more closely the typical Spanish empanadilla than the much larger Galician empanada, and were likely to have been popular in Argentina long before Gallegos arrived en masse. Instead, a brief description of how we came across Galician empanadas in a veritable sea of Argentine-style pies during our stay in Buenos Aires last year will have to suffice. Sorry about that.

We snacked almost constantly on empanadas with a variety of fillings throughout our ten days in Buenos Aires, and began taking their quality and ubiquity mostly for granted. It was only later on in our visit when we came across Pizzeria la Americana (aka La Reina de las Empanadas), an established bakery and cafe a block from the Palacio del Congreso de Argentina, that we realized not all empanadas are created equal. In this giant place that takes up most of a city block, a bevvy of savory pastries, large and small, sat glowing warmly under spotlights behind glass screens. These piles of regular small empanadas beckoned, crustily, at us, and we would have reverted to habit and ordered a slew of them had we not spied some giant pies on individual cake stands next to them. We hadn’t seen anything like these before — two or more inches thick, baked to a shiny golden patina and filled with, among other things, greens, boiled eggs and ham — yet they were also described as empanadas. What were they?

Even more confusingly, one of the large ones was labelled “pascualina”, a moniker for pies we had come across only once before, and then in Genoa, to describe that city’s special Easter variation of the spinach/chard and ricotta torta de bietole. Could these pies be variations on that? We weren’t sure, and couldn’t summon enough of our tourist Spanish to ask what might turn into something of a lengthy and garbled question about nomenclature, semantics and gastronomic anthrolopology.

Argentina’s ethnic mix has contributed to a unique South American melding of Iberian and Italic culture and cuisine, in which a pizzeria could quite legitimately describe itself as the queen of the empanada, while simultaneously serving Genoese-influenced Galician specialties without breaking stride or encouraging skepticism from potential customers. We were momentarily confused by it all, but decided there was nothing to do but roll with it, and so ordered a couple of giant slices of the empanada Gallega de pollo, which turned out to be a delicious, if over-generous, appetizer for our subsequent lunch at one of the city’s oldest Italian restaurants.

Neither of us had ever had a pie quite like this before. It didn’t really resemble the free-form tuna and sardine empanadas I’d tried in Santiago de Compostela and Vigo years ago, nor was it like an American-style pot pie we’re so familiar with, brimming with sauce and chunky vegetables. With a bready, pizza-like crust, top and bottom, and baked in a dish about the same dimensions as a deep-pan pizza, the filling was a moist and peppery combination of chicken, sauted greens, onions and red pepper. It was absolutely delicious and we have both been raving about it ever since, but everytime we’ve tried to make any of the many variations on Galician empanadas, we’ve failed to produce anything similar, nor have any recipes for Argentine empanadas worked out the right way.

In truth, the, what I’m going to call, Argentine-style empanada Gallega that we did make, wasn’t quite as good as the one we ate in Buenos Aires. The dough was too firm, not bready enough, and I should have tried using a modified pizza dough instead, but the filling more than made up for its shortcomings. In place of chicken, we slow-roasted half a Long Island duck that we had left over in the freezer from the hand-rolled Tuscan pasta with duck ragu and mixed it with sauted kale, green pepper, garlic, smoked paprika (pimenton) and lots of onions.

Experimentation on this front will continue because I could usefully spend some more time beautifying my rather scruffy attempt at a decoration, but also because one empanada fed the both of us for dinner that night and for lunch three subsequent days, and it just got better with each passing meal. Feel free to mess around with the dough recipe to your heart’s content, just as we will when we make this again, and, of course, the filling is entirely up to you too. Duck is kind of a luxury, and chicken, tuna, sardines, boiled eggs, a variety of vegetables, or plain old ground beef, would be absolutely fine. You should also feel free, should you feel geeky enough, to develop your own specious theories about the development of various global cuisines. They probably won’t be any less likely than mine.

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Do you ever wish you had a secret power? I don’t mean like some stupid superhero who can fly, make it rain, or look great in a unitard. I mean like a gerbil’s ability to store tasty bits in its cheeks for later, or a tiger’s ability to eat 30lbs of wild boar at a single sitting, that kind of thing. No? Hmm, well, I do, and sometimes, in my more reflective moments, I find myself wishing I was blessed with a gizzard. After all, would not my diet be expanded and my ‘intestinal transit’ made smoother if I possessed a specialized second stomach that enabled me to grind up and enjoy commonly indigestible foods?

Having recently questioned a sample group of poultry, reptiles and fish (the only three genera of animals that possess gizzards) about this, I can tell you that 9 out of the 10 chickens surveyed credited their gizzards with giving free reign to their more fibrous dietary proclivities. In the course of my survey, I also learned that while addiction and dependency issues brought on by knowingly being bred for slaughter are a big problem for young roosters, the greater worry among concerned hens is the utter disregard for their gizzards demonstrated by the carnivorous public.

“That’s my son’s (second) stomach they’re throwing them away!”, cock-a-doodle-doed one plump mother of 700 chicks, while another squawked that, “they (humans) should be so lucky to have a gizzard of their own. Ingrates!”

Chastened by these plaintive cries, and encouraged to make a salad we ate at a fabulous gastropub in Lille, France, over New Year’s, we recently explored the potential of confit-ing chicken gizzards. We found that nothing could be easier and more delicious, nor could this preparation be more suited to making the best out of what is a potentially tough part of the giblets.

We served our gizzards and some similarly confit’d chicken livers over a green salad with some boiled eggs, just as we had eaten it in Lille, but an alternative preparation typical to the Dordogne region of France, especially the town of Perigeux/Perigord, serves the gizzards over a lettuce salad with walnuts and croutons, which would be just as good, no doubt.

Those with even a basic understanding of food history probably know that the hamburger as we know it today is an American adaptation of the “Hamburger-style steak” which originated in the now-German city of Hamburg, and was brought to this country by immigrants from Schleswig-Holstein. Demonstrating typical cunning and salemanship, all the Americans did was make this dish portable, and, having done so, they set out to make the world obese and diabetic by drowning these wildly popular sandwiches in hydrogenated fat and salt, and selling them for $1 each.

A marginally less successful, but somewhat healthier, tactic was adopted by Italian immigrants in Argentina, who, when they found that chicken was viewed with only slightly less disdain than fish in their new country, modified their recipe for pollo alla Milanese to include the ubiquitous Argentine beef. Like shooting fish in a barrel, once launched these new breaded and fried beef cutlets quickly became a hugely popular alternative to a steak across Argentina – a country that, since it, statistically, eats more beef per head than anywhere else on Earth, was likely crying out for alternative ways to serve their national dish.

Known as milanesas, they can be found in one form or another on menus and in grocery stores throughout Buenos Aires: most are beef, though chicken and veal (de ternera) are also typical, and they come in a variety of arrangements, the most common of which seems to be alla Napolitana.  This latter dish consists of a breaded cutlet topped with prosciutto (or cooked ham), melted cheese [cuartirola (sic) [Quartirola Lombarda] or Port Salut] and a splash of chunky, crimson tomato sauce, and is often served with fries (papas fritas). Not many people know this, but it is not, in fact, named for Neapolitan-style pizza, or the way the dish is served in Naples, rather it is so-called because it was first served in Jose Napoli’s, now-defunct, Buenos Aires Pizzeria Napoli establishment in the 1930s.

Indeed, this dish, remarkably similar to the French poulet cordon bleu, can be found throughout much of South America, and, in Chile, an almost identical dish is served as Milanesa Kaiser, or simply Escalopa, reflecting, perhaps, more the original central European roots of the dish in the Austrian Wiener Schnitzel, than its later variant the Lombardian cotoletta alla Milanese. In fact, such is the popularity of this technique of breading pounded meat and then shallow frying it, that you can find similar dishes throughout much of the western hemisphere with the wonderfully decadent Southern dish of chicken fried steak being perhaps the best known in this country.

And, resembling the frankly magnificent “chicken parm” sandwiches found in almost every pizza joint in the north-east US, the milanesa also sometimes appears in sandwiches in Argentina. As we had recently received some delicious samples from Napa, Ca., company GL Mezzetta, from their new (to the north-east US) Napa Valley Bistro line, including a jar of tomato sauce and one of peperoncini (pickled hot peppers), with the challenge of using them to create a contest-winning sandwich, we decided to use them to build ourselves a delicious, gut-busting torta de milanesa alla Napolitana.

An hour later, full and sporting messy red-sauce mustaches, we began to wonder how come milanesas do not seem to have had quite the same bloating effect on the Argentine population as the hamburger has in America…

Mezzetta Napa Valley Bistro Products
Tomato Basil Pasta Sauce
Altogether this is an excellent jarred sauce and beats the pants off its competition. It’s pleasantly chunky; the wine provides a nice rounded flavor and doesn’t overpower the tomatoes with too much acid; and the small pool of olive oil that had settled on the top of the sauce was a good sign, showing both that it included olive oil and that it wasn’t fully emulsified with stabilizers or other preservatives. Other bonuses for a jarred sauce include the clear listing of “fresh” ingredients on the label, rather than their dried or powdered counterparts commonly found in regular, generic bottled pasta sauce. Our only complaint, and this is a matter of personal taste, is that it was slightly too heavy on the oregano. If you’re a fan of oregano in your pasta sauces though, this is probably the finest jarred sauce you can find.

Make That Sandwich
If you’d like to enter your sandwich to the GL Mezzetta Make That Sandwich Contest, click here and read the guidelines and other small print, and submit your entry. The grand prize is $25,000!! Good luck, happy sandwich-making and buen provecho!

Last week I had off from work for our “midwinter” break.  It wasn’t a very relaxing week but cooking, for me, is very relaxing. Five hours of cooking can actually be quite relaxing as well.  And that’s what happened when I decided to take on the challenge that Joan of Foodalogue put in front of her readers – create a dish from Ethiopia.  I made six Ethiopian dishes and ingredients and, yes, it took me five hours to create all of it.  But, in the end it was all worth it.

Ethiopian cuisine is one that I have only recently become acquainted with and when I first tasted it, I was hooked.  While researching for this post I realized how little is out there on this fabulous cuisine.  Anthonly Bourdain recently said that he believed Ethiopian food would be the next big trend in eating and I have to agree that it should be.  It’s delicious, communal, flavorful, fun to eat and relatively healthy (except the ridiculously high amount of butter used in the dishes).  We’ll see if his prediction is correct.  I mean how can you go wrong when all you have to eat with is your hands and some deliciously sour, sponge and crepe-like bread called injera?

The two biggest staples of Ethiopian food are a spice mixture called berbere and a spiced clarified butter called niter kibbeh (see both recipe below).  Many Ethiopian recipes utilize one or both of these ingredients.  The other staple and accompaniment to Ethiopian food is injera bread which is traditionally made from a specific type of flour called teff and usually takes three days in order for it to ferment causing its sour taste.  I didn’t have teff flour so I utilized Saveur magazine’s recipe which wasn’t as delicious as the authentic type but did the trick.  Brushing lemon on the bread gave it a bit of the sour flavor I was craving.  As mentioned earlier, injera bread is used as your plate, fork, knife and spoon when eating Ethiopian food.  Your food will come in small piles scattered on a a big injera where you will tear off bits of the outside layer in order to get the food in your mouth.  You continue until you eventually have to eat the layer that has sopped up all the flavors of each dish you chose.  These are some of the best bits but you’ve got to get to the end of the meal to savor them.

Ethiopian food is like no other – it borrows ingredients from Portugal (chile peppers), the Orient (ginger) and India (spices) to create a taste that is very, well, Ethiopian and very different to anything you’ve ever eaten.  Most of the recipes found below are based on things found in the cookbook Exotic Ethiopian Cooking and a blend of other website recipes I found.  I recommend you all give Ethiopian a try, whether you have five hours to cook or have always been curious to try that Ethiopian restaurant down the street.  Vegetarians and non-pork eaters will have a field day and even the pickiest of eaters will enjoy this fun and fabulous cuisine.  So thank you, Joan, for pushing me to finally create Ethiopian food at home.  Now that I’ve done it I’ll be doing it again.  Now, I hope you will try your hand at it!

BERBERE (Ethiopian Spice Mix)

• 1/4 cup ground red pepper (about 8 Dried Chiles de Arbol, blitzed in a spice grinder)
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon ground fenugreek
• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom (about 6-8 cardamom pods, blitzed in a spice grinder)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon cloves (about 4-6 cloves blitzed in spice grinder)
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
• 3 tablespoons paprika
• 2 teaspoons dried onions, blitzed in grinder, or 2 tsp. onion powder
• 1 tablespoon salt and 1/2 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper

**Grind chiles in a spice grinder. Toast all seeds for about 3 minutes, allow to cool and add everything to spice grinder and blitz. 

NITER KIBBEH (Ethiopian Spiced Butter) – Makes about 1/3 cup – for the effort you may want to double or triple this recipe

• 1 stick + 1 tablepoon unsalted butter
• 1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and then grated on a microplane or grater
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/4 red onion, finely chopped
• 1/4 teaspoon ground fenugreek
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 1/2 teaspoon tumeric
• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
• pinch of salt

What to do:

1. Melt butter on low heat and skim off the foamy, white layer that that floats to the top as butter melts (this is how you make clarified butter).
2. Add onion, garlic, ginger and spices and allow to cook on low heat for 15 minutes.
3. Turn heat off and allow to rest for 5 minutes.  Strain the butter mixture using a fine sieve or cheesecloth and store in a cool place.

YEKIK ALICHA (Ethiopian Split Peas)

• 1 cup yellow split peas, soaked for 1 hour
• 1 cup of water (or veggie stock)
• 1 cup chopped red onion
• 1 tablespoon ginger (1 inch piece, peeled and grated)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 jalapeno peppers, minced
• 1 tablespoon nitir kibbeh (spiced butter)
• 1/2 teaspoon tumeric
• salt and pepper to taste

What to do:

1. Bring soaked split peas to a boil and then lower to simmer for 30 minutes.
2. Drain if there is extra water and then mash well (they will be very soft and will mash easily with a fork).
3. Add butter  to another pan and stir fry onion and garlic for a few minutes till onion is translucent.  Add ginger and spices and give a quick stir.  Add back the mashed split peas, jalapenos, salt and pepper and a cup of water (or veggie stock).  Reduce for a few minutes until you have a thick puree.  Serve on or with injera.

GOMEN (Stewed Collard Greens and Cottage Cheese)

• 1 lb collard greens, stems removed and chopped
• 1/2 lb of cottage cheese (about 10 ounces), drained
• 1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced and smashed to a paste
• 2 tablespoons nitir kibbeh (spiced butter)
• salt and pepper to taste

What to Do:

1. Boil greens until tender.  Drain and press down to get rid of all the excess water. Finely chop greens.
2. Add butter to a pan and cook onions for five minutes then add ginger and garlic and cook for a minute or two. 
3. Add greens and stir. If you find it needs a bit of moisture, add a touch of water or stock.  Add salt and pepper to taste.
4. Transfer to a bowl and stir in drained cottage cheese.

ZIGNI WE’T (Ethiopian Spiced Beef Stew)

• 1 lb minced beef
• 1 1/2 cup chopped red onion
• 1/4 cup berbere
• 1/4 cup nitir kibbeh
• 1 tablespoon ground fenugreek
• 1 1/2 tablespoons ginger, peeled and minced
• 1/2 teaspoon cardamom
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 cups water
• 1/2 cup wine (red or white)
• salt and pepper to taste

What to do:

1. Fry onions for a few minutes and add garlic and ginger.  Add berbere plus water, stir.
2. Add nitir kibbeh and sprinkle beef while stirring.  Allow all the beef to cook and all the liquid to be cooked away. 
3. Add rest of spices, stir. Allow to cook until meat is done, about 15 to 20 minutes.  Serve on or with injera.

Perhaps the day that both our teams (Manchester United & Philadelphia Eagles) won unlikely decisive victories in the realm of competitive sports, is the best day to dwell on the recent personal glory of our seafood soufflés staying up. However – even if (quite sensibly) you don’t give a rat’s ass about sports – anyone who has tried making them before knows the all-too-brief satisfaction of the fully puffed soufflé, and, though, we’ve experienced the saddening deflation of failure, we now also know the pride and joy that is a fully erect soufflé.

And, lest you think that we traded our heroes for ghosts, this was none other than a snorting, full-on multi-fish and cheese souffle that not only satisfied our desire for classic French cookery, but provided much-needed stomach-lining on a day that required some serious daytime drinking.

Even if you’re not planning on a full day of sports-related drinking, these souffles are a fantastically light, yet rich, first course, or a great light main with bread and an arugula side-salad, not to sound all non-contact-sports metrosexual on you.

We’d like to thank Taste With the Eyes whose comté soufflé gave us inspiration for this dish. 

Mixed Fish & Gruyere Soufflé with Parsley Sauce (serves 4)

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp unsalted butter
• 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup (6oz) milk
• 3 eggs, separated
• 1 cup grated Gruyere cheese (Emmentaler or Comté would also work well)
• 1 cup assorted cooked shellfish (shrimp, scallops, mussels, + white fish, if you like)
• 1 bunch flat-leaf (Italian) parsley, chopped
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tbsp water
• 1 good pinch salt

Recipe

• Cook off your chosen seafood and allow to cool. Drain of as much cooking fat as possible.
• In a high-sided saucepan make a bechamel sauce with butter, flour and milk.
• Remove pan from heat and beat in egg yolks, one at time.
• Stir in grated cheese until fully combined, then stir in fish. Allow to cool.
• In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until until soft peaks are achieved.
• Gently fold in 1/3 egg whites into bechamel and continue adding beaten egg whites until completely combined.
• Pour mixture into buttered soufflé dishes until 3/4 full.
• Cook immediately for 20 minutes at 400F (210C), then increase to 450F (230C) for 8-10 minutes or until fully-risen and browned on top.
• Add parsley, water, oil and salt to blender. Blitz until consistency of vinaigrette. Pour into squeezy bottle and squirt gaily over your fish soufflé.

Not your average Christmas meal…

We couldn’t let this month go by without doing some sort of “holiday themed” post. We were scratching our head trying to come up with this months “Top 5″ contest thinking of such winners as, “Top 5 Most Friggin’ Annoying Christmas Tunes” and “Top 5 Christmas Sweaters Your Mom Owns” but settled on our original, and simple, idea of asking you to divulge your Top 5 favorite foods and/or drinks that you only really have around the holidays.

The first Christmas Jonny and I spent together was his first Christmas living in America. It was a bittersweet time for him because it was a reminder that he was really, really living in the US and not going home to the UK for awhile. It was also a serious reminder to him that he was stuck spending more time with my family than with his own. Not that there was anything wrong with him thinking this – my family is very loud, very loving and very crazy (in a good way?) and a quiet ‘ole Englishman would sometimes love to press the “mute” button on all of us every once in awhile if he could. That first Christmas, I thought I was pretty clear about our family’s traditions. We “do it up” for Christmas Eve dinner and our Christmas Day is basically spent leisurely opening up gifts and watching 5 reruns of “A Christmas Story” in a row only to be interrupted around 1PM by my mother screaming “brunch is on the table”. Brunch usually consists of some eggs, scrapple, pork roll, bagels and anything else that is found in the fridge. It’s nothing really that special, I guess.

This particular Christmas, I believe we all slept in. If memory serves correct, we all didn’t start opening up gifts till about 1PM and brunch was moved to about 3 or 3.30PM. After brunch we continued our normal Christmas Day which usually also involves a nap. Jonny and I awoke from our nap on the couch to find my sister also asleep and my mom and dad gone. They were invited to the neighbor’s house for dinner as were we. But Jonny was still in his “getting to know everyone” phase and, during this time, he was often treated as a specimen, being poked and prodded as though no one had ever encountered anyone from another country in their life. “So you really are English, Jonny, huh!? That’s soooo cool!”

A Ginger-Bling Would be a Fine, Strong Christmas Drink

Needless to say, Jonny didn’t want to go to the neighbors. He pouted as he looked around wondering what the frig was going on. “It’s Christmas! Where is everybody? When is everyone going to start cooking!?” I sat there unable to really understand why he was so upset, “Well, Jonny, we don’t really cook Christmas Day dinner. We have our big night on Christmas eve. I guess we could just go to the neighbors if you want to eat.” He couldn’t believe it… he began to get very irritated and sad… actually sad! As the night unfolded, we ended having our first disagreement based on our different Christmas traditions. I tried to do the best I could to make him feel better pouring him a huge glass of something strong and telling him we were going to make this work. WE were going to cook our own Christmas Day dinner. In my fantasy we’d start our own tradition. And then we looked in my parents fridge – nothing, not even leftovers from Christmas Eve dinner. We looked in the freezer – holy shit. Nothing but a ball of hamburger meat!!! And then I walked to the pantry with a desperate look on my face and there it was in all it’s glory – a can of Sloppy Joe mix. And that’s what I made my new love who moved across the ocean to be with me – canned slopply joe on toast. Why he’s still here I’ll never know. One thing I can tell you is that sloppy joe’s will NOT be on Jonny’s Top 5 Holiday Food list!

So, without further ado, I have based my Top 5 Favorite Holiday Food/Drink on the traditions I grew up with. You know, those things that only rear their head in December or only on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

1. My mom’s kind of gross, but very delicious Crab Dip that is on the app table every Christmas Eve (recipe involves mayo, cream cheese, sherry and lump crab or KRAB if you must).
2. Chestnuts (roasted on an open fire – kidding, we’ve never done that at home)
3. Egg Nog (the processed kind that is local to the Philadelphia region – ie: Wawa brand)
4. This delicious appetizer that our good family friend always bring over that involves a dried apricot topped with nuts and some cream cheese. Not sure what the hell it’s called but it’s DAMN good.
5. Communion. Let’s be honest, the lord’s communion tastes better after 2 cosmo’s, 6 glasses of wine and 2 Sambuca’s before midnight mass.

Hey, Jonny, why don’t you chime in with your Top 5?

1. mulled wine (gluhwein/vin chaud). Nothing says Christmas to me like the taste and smell of the aromatic spices in mulled wine, not to mention that warm alcohol goes straight to your head.
2. brandy or rum butter/hard sauce: I actually hate this stuff with a passion, but again it’s redolent of the Christmases of my youth when my grandma (gawd bless her) would have a tiny piece of Christmas pudding topped with about a pint of hard sauce, and then pass out about half an hour later. Not sure whether it was the booze or the cholesterol.
3. mince pies: another English tradition, but this one I really like. there’s no mince (it’s dried fruit & nuts, sugar and spices) in a sweet pastry sprinkled with sugar. perfect combination is a glass of mulled wine in one hand and a mince pie in the other, possibly mumbling some Christmas carols and trying not to spit raisins and hazelnut bits everywhere.
4. cheddar cheese and pineapple cubes on cocktail sticks: the essential 1980s hors d’oeuvre that always seems to get resurrected at Christmas.
5. Christmas cake: again, I’m not that keen on this traditional cake of dried fruit, nuts, sugar and spice wrapped in marzipan (frangipane) and thick white icing which is left to improve for at least a month before Yule, especially since I have awful memories of taking my sister’s Barbie plate and destroying my mother’s perfectly smooth icing one year and making her cry.

Nominate and Win!
Tell us what your top five Holiday comestibles are and win yourself some hand-made sachets of mulling spices and enjoy the holidays with some spiced-up booze!

The purpose of this trip was, principally, to visit my new nephew, William, who, we discovered, is a charming young chap with pink cheeks and a propensity for chewing his fingers, drinking milk, and synchronizing his burps and farts – some skills you just can’t teach. However, we also planned to visit old friends we hadn’t seen since our wedding 18 months ago, and, if we could fit it in, actually see some of London.

I’m sure many of you have heard and/or seen about the culinary renaissance that has been happening in the UK over the past ten years or so, that the country is rightfully proud of. Marco Pierre White, Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, Rick Stein, and Heston Blumenthal, among others, have all made huge names for themselves domestically and internationally for their reinterpretations of classic British dishes and focus on the excellent produce of the British Isles. Much of this gastronomic progress has been realized in the restaurants of London, turning it from culinary wasteland to hot spot almost over night.

Now, my experience of dining in London as a resident were generally not at these temples of fine food, but instead at more down-at-heel places like the many gastro-pubs and curry houses. So, the first opportunity we got, Amy and I raced off to a local boozer in Putney (the Coat & Badge) for a quick pub lunch of pork pie, chips and mushy peas, washed down with a couple of pints of Fuller’s London Pride (a bitter made just over the Thames in Chiswick), and that evening, followed it up with a typically Anglo-Indian take-out curry from the totally average but completely wonderful Putney Tandoori.

Chucking back a chicken tikka jalfrezi and a lamb dhansak was like putting on an old sweater – familiar, comforting, and with a smell that evoked many happy memories. Rose-tinted memories for certain, because I’ve committed some fairly miserable and embarrassing mistakes of judgment at Indian restaurants over the years, including the time I ordered a fahl (an insanely-spiced dish), took one bite and then rubbed my eyes with a chile-soaked finger, and spent the rest of the night feverishly rinsing out my sockets fearing I’d blinded myself.

The day after our curries, we headed into London proper – to the centre/center – to revisit the nasty-ass basement bar where Amy and I stumbled across one another nearly six years ago, do some shopping down Neal Street, and then head up to Farringdon for lunch. Amazingly, the Gardening Club (the basement bar) looked like it had been given a face-lift, and was now, curiously, serving lunch, but neither of us could really face going inside for fear that it might change our cherished memories of the place. So, pushing on, we enjoyed the recent fall in value of the pound vs. the dollar and actually did some non-food shopping for a change.

One of the other “new” breed of British chef/restaurateurs, we knew about from having read about him, seen him on TV and bought his book, but who has garnered far less international celebrity is Fergus Henderson of St. John Restaurant near Smithfield Market. He is most famous for his widely-copied dish of roasted veal marrow-bones and parsley salad which we had eaten and loved at both Gabrielle Hamilton’s fabulous Prune, in NYC, and more recently at L’Express in Montreal. Now we wanted to try the original.

Below a sign featuring a hand-drawn pig, we entered the restaurant down a short hallway (the building which houses the restaurant is a Georgian-era carriage house, and one enters via the former carriage entrance the courtyard of which is now covered and serves as the restaurant’s bar, bakery and cafe area), and ascended a short flight of stairs to to the dining room full of anticipation. Factory-style lamps illuminated a white-walled space completely circled by head-high coat-hooks, and a thickly-painted floor was decorated only by ordinary white-clothed tables and dark, well-worn chairs.

Check out the slideshow above to see what we had for lunch, and then listen to the podcast below to learn more about St. John Restaurant, and our excitingly awkward meeting with chef/owner Fergus Henderson.

And, while you’re at it, good fellow, I’ll have a warm bath with virtually anything you’ve got on the menu: pasta, potatoes, fish, chicken, soup, bread…

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…

A man goes to the doctor complaining of neck ache. The doctor gives him some painkillers telling him to take two after a warm bath every evening for a week. When the man returns, the doctor asks him if he’s feeling better. “No,” replies the man, “my neck still hurts and it’s getting worse.” “Really? Did you not take two painkillers after a warm bath every night like I told you to?” asks the doctor. “I tried,” says the patient, “but I couldn’t swallow the pills after drinking the whole bath…”

No, dear readers, (and apologies for the excruciating “joke”), we’re not talking about any old warm bath, and certainly not the kind with bubbles and floating soap-dishes, no we’re talking about bagna caôda, the famed “warm bath” of the Piemonte and Liguria regions of northern Italy, that, as much as you might want to, you don’t actually climb into yourself.

Also spelled bagna càuda, this garlic, anchovy, oil and butter dipping sauce is to these parts of Italy what fondue is to the Swiss, and is typically consumed communally from a large central pot into which sharers dip their bread or raw, boiled or roasted vegetables. Like fondue, bagna caôda is always served hot, as it’s name suggests, and is usually eaten in the autumn and winter as an appetizer, starter or, even, a main course.

Quite apart from being phenomenally good and easy to make, it’s the ultimate combination of land and sea in the world of condiments. Combine anchovies fished off the Ligurian coasts with bright green and fruity Ligurian olive oil, tangy Piemontese garlic and sweet butter from the head of the Po Valley and you’ve got an awesome sauce that might be paired with anything. It’s not traditional – and you should try it the original way first – but we see no reason why bagna caôda couldn’t be made into a delicious pasta sauce with some tonno (Italian oil-cured tuna), spread on a fresh loaf for an amazing garlic bread, over grilled fish or chicken as an enhancing sauce, or mixed with mashed potatoes for a wonderfully flavorful side dish. Just be careful, it really is so damn good, you’ll be putting it your coffee next…

**I’d like to dedicate this post to Dana at Dana Treat for reminding me that a bit of  meat-free posts could be ok sometimes! I, like a carnivorous idiot, commented on her vegetarian blog post about brussel sprouts asking her to “just add pancetta” for a tasty twist (something cheesy like that). I was quickly reminded that that would be a great idea if she wasn’t a veggie. Anyways, although this isn’t purely vegetarian, it sure as hell does not contain meat. Thanks, Dana!**

Bagna Caôda con Verdure Miste Cotte (anchovy, garlic sauce with grilled mixed vegetables)

Ingredients (serves 4-5 as an appetizer)

• 20-40 pieces of your favorite veggies, cut into bite sizes (cauliflower, broccoli, fennel, carrots, mushrooms, potatoes, green beans and asparagus work well)
• 3/4 cup + 2 tsp good olive oil
• 6 cloves garlic, crushed
• 4 1/2 oz anchovy fillets, minced finely
• 2 1/2 oz unsalted butter
• ground black pepper

Recipe

• Over medium-low heat, gently cook garlic, anchovy and 3/4 cup olive oil in a saucepan until garlic softens and anchovy has pretty much dissolved, stirring occasionally. Do not brown garlic at all.
• Season with black pepper to taste.
• Stir in butter and allow to melt. Combine thoroughly and keep warm, do not allow to boil or cook anymore.
• Parboil root (and cauliflower/broccoli/fennel types)vegetables until beginning to soften. Remove to a ice bath and allow to cool thoroughly.
• Toss the cooled + still raw veggies with coarse sea salt, pepper and remaining olive oil , and grill over a hot fire until blistered and crunchy.
• Serve immediately with a warm bowl of bagna caôda and lots of fresh bread to catch the drips. Enjoy!