Aroma News

I have been reading about the sense of smell, which I've written about on my other blog. I just read a summary of new research about sensitivity to odors here. The summarizing quote from one of the cited articles:

Our team recently discovered that blood cells — not only cells in the nose — have odorant receptors. In the nose, these so-called receptors sense substances called odorants and translate them into an aroma that we interpret as pleasing or not pleasing in the brain. But surprisingly, there is growing evidence that also the heart, the lungs and many other non-olfactory organs have these receptors.

It seems startling that blood cells can also react to aromatic chemicals, though I don't quite understand why their sensitivity would be categorized as either taste or smell. My reading project so far deals with a lot of cultural issues surrounding odors, not just with the role of smell in tasting food, with physiology, and with mechanisms of detecting odors. I've only read a bit about the intricate relationship between aroma sensors in the nose and other sensors like taste buds that are on the tongue or in the mouth. It's fascinating how the science of taste and smell is advancing so rapidly that even the science in 20 year old books is often out of date.

Quiche Questions

New pie weights about to be used

 After years and years of using dry beans or rice to weight a pie shell, I finally bought myself some ceramic pie weights. Wheee!

My culinary reading group is about to discuss The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat: Craig Claiborne and the American Food Renaissance by Thomas McNamee so I decided to use the pie weights to prebake a pie shell for a quiche Lorraine according to Claiborne's New York Times Cookbook. There's quite a bit of information and admiration for this book in the biography I just read, in fact.

So I sort of followed what Claiborne says to do. His NYT cookbook recipe differs in a couple of ways from the Julia Child recipe, particularly as she says there should be only bacon, not cheese, in quiche Lorraine. Further, Claiborne calls for onion cooked in a small bit of the bacon fat -- she doesn't even mention onion. I think I have always in the past made it her way.

Quiche after baking for almost an hour instead of 25 minutes

After the amount of time specified in the recipe (which I later verified is the same as Child's baking time), the filling was still absolutely liquid. I ended up baking the quiche for at least twice as long as the recipe says. The oven temperatures were definitely correct.

Question 1: Does substituting skim milk for milk + cream make the filling take longer to set? The last time I made quiche, I did the same substitution so I'm not sure. I don't know how long I baked it.

Question 2: Am I totally out of my mind if I made this with skim milk instead of cream? It seems to have worked before. What's the problem?

Anyway, it wasn't terrible. It definitely wasn't burned or over cooked, either. Next time I'll use cream or make something else.

Who's Rational?

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss provides an overwhelming insight: big food companies know much more about how humans choose food than anyone else (including academics). If any people still think that humans "intuitively" or "instinctively" choose to eat the foods that their bodies actually "need" -- they should read Salt Sugar Fat! Potato chips and soda aren't nature's most perfect foods, but they are carefully designed with the purpose of meeting a human's strongest cravings for (yes) salt, fat, and sugar. So are lots of other processed foods. Broccoli, we just aren't that into you. Our instincts stink. It's a good read with lots of data.

I was thinking about several other books with coordinating insights about the issue of how humans choose what to eat, and how unlikely it is that our instinctive choices can help us achieve healthy lives, desirable body weight, and avoidance of nutritional maladies like diabetes. Also how hard it is to achieve these ends through rational self-control. Or government intervention. Or medical treatment.

First, I thought about a book that's really not about food at all: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Decision making in the many humans the author has observed is far from the calm rational process that many people believe in -- especially diet prescribers! The last thing you heard, a major event that impressed you, or someone who was manipulating you have a much higher impact on your conclusions than you would prefer to believe. Overlay this with the evidence of direct manipulation of your love of certain flavors in Salt Sugar Fat. OOPS.

Next, a very frequently quoted book: Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink PhD. As I read it a few years ago, I constantly thought about how the food industry had already learned what Wansink's research revealed. They kept their insights mainly secret and used their knowledge to make people eat more. In contrast Wansink presented his research studies as a set of insights that could help one create a strategy to eat less. Yes, we suck up more calories if there's a huge bowl of M&Ms than if there's a smaller one. We'll eat much more from a self-refilling bowl of soup because our eyes are fooling us. If someone takes away the piles of bones, people will eat more chicken wings because they lose track of what they are doing. Wansink's experiments are cited (often out of context) frequently, but reading the book really shows you how little control you have even when you think you're paying attention.

The book Why Some Like it Hot by Gary Paul Nabhan is about evolution (though not going all the way back to our prehistoric ancestors and not particularly applicable to most urban westerners). He discusses traditional foods in some relatively isolated areas where the native people over time adapted to the available food supplies, and he describes how a change, usually a forced change, to a western and modern diet has harmed them, especially by causing obesity and diabetes. Among others, he explores the foods of the eastern Mediterranean island of Crete, Native American foods in parts of the southwestern US, and native foods of Hawaii. He describes some efforts where people have reintroduced foods of their recent ancestors. His research theme: "how food reflects the interaction between biological and cultural diversity." (p. 2)

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan tackles similar themes from a different angle. His exploration of what the term "organic" has meant at various times offers an alternative view of what people think they are doing when they think they are rational.

Science applied to nutrition is not new. Perfection Salad by Laura Shapiro describes the well-meaning but often misguided efforts of the late 19th and early 20th century women to create the new discipline that they titled "home economics." Shapiro illustrates how their efforts paved the way for mass-produced and highly processed foods to be accepted into the American diet, and how the longest-lasting achievement was pathetic "home-ec" classes that may recently have at last disappeared from junior high schools. (I sure remember Miss Gordon, our home-ec teacher!) These well-meaning advocates of scientific nutrition 100 years ago or so also tried to change lower class eating habits in American cities, especially among the very poor and immigrant communities, but people preferred to eat what they liked, not what someone told them was good for them. One amusing thing: how the same type of reasoning is going on now, and probably has never stopped since the era covered by the book.

When I read libertarian arguments about the freedom to choose whether to drink a 32 ounce soda or not, I wonder about the rationality of the writer. When I read about people who think they are on a "paleolithic" diet because their food choices become so rational and evolutionarily sensible, I suspect that they don't know about actual food history. Same for the fad for "intuitive eating" and a number of other claims about how our bodies can guide us to health. (Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism by Sarah Conly as reviewed here sounds as if it has a lot of relevant material, but I haven't read it yet.)

No to Dish Drainers

I have recently been informed that my aversion to dish drainers is even stranger than my dislike of bananas. Dish drainers, in my view, take up too much room and enable clutter to stay around. Without a dish drainer I am much more likely to put away little stuff instead of leaving it out. But I am open to suggestion so I bought a totally flat dish drainer made of silicone that can be rolled up when not in use. I'll see how it goes.

Are dish drainers a fit subject for a food blog? I hope so. Cleaning up in any case is a consequence of cooking and eating, if not the real deal.

Art/Food Food/Art

I love painters who make images of food, and often write about their works here. The L.A.Times food section just reviewed a book about making cakes and desserts with themes taken from many modern artists -- WOW!

The author, Caitlin Freeman, must be incredibly patient -- just looking at the amazon.com "inside the book" page makes me think I'd never try one. The great thing is that the table of contents shown by amazon gives a little picture of each of her creations.

Easter Eggs

Alice, Delia, Miriam

Delia

Miriam

Alice, Delia, Miriam

Alice, Mae, Delia, Norbert (the Dragon), Miriam

Just before we ate them for breakfast

Not just crab cakes

Baltimore's inner harbor is impressive, and home to a variety of dining places. So yes, I did eat crab cakes for dinner last night at an old-time restaurant called Phillips Seafood, which has been in that neighborhood for over 30 years, though mostly in another location. Now it's next to the really cool Barnes and Noble that occupies a former power plant, and incorporates all sorts of chimneys and other mechanical leftovers.

The inner harbor used to be unsightly and industrial, before becoming a tourist attraction full of shopping malls with not only seafood but also lots of chain restaurants. Once upon a time, the McCormick's spice factory was right on the harbor: just where our hotel now stands. I found the photo at right on the McCormick website, to try to picture how much the harbor has changed. I had always heard that the aromas of spices sometimes flooded the harbor area, though the aromas of many other industrial processes competed in a not so nice way.

In the shopping mall that now stands in front of the hotel (where the shipping buildings stood in the old photo) there's now a McCormick spice store with a selection of spices from their various divisions in the US and internationally. This includes Zatarains New Orleans spices, Old Bay spices, and a number of others. They even have smell-o-vision; that is, a game where the aroma of various spices is presented as a multiple-choice challenge. Since they also fill the air of the shop with cinnamon (as sort of a memorial to the old factory) it's hard to pick out the challenging smells. I got 3 out of 4.

During the afternoon, I spent some time at the Baltimore museum, where there were a couple of recent works depicting food, or at least using images of food to make some sort of statement. I also ate fried clams in their restaurant. Full Baltimore experience.

Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker Inkjet Print on Drywall, untitled, 2011

Rachel Harrison Inkjet Prints, also untitled, 2008

Continuing with "Jerusalem: the Cookbook"

Ottolenghi's Kofte

My record now stands at 8 recipes done from the Ottolenghi cookbook. Every one of them was worth the effort!

Earlier this week, I made his spinach salad with pita croutons, almonds, and dates. Another night I made the very simple roasted potatoes with prunes and caramel (which is clandestinely a version of tzimmes without any carrots). I served it with plain baked salmon filet.

Tonight's dinner was Ottolenghi's kofte; that is, meatballs made from ground veal and lamb and quite elaborately spiced including toasted pine nuts. The sauce on the side is made from tahini, lemon juice, garlic, and ice water. My Israeli chopped salad with tomato, cucumber, lemon, and cilantro was better in total than each of its winter ingredients.

Mujedara is the lentil dish that is a favorite of Ottolenghi -- I like the version from Hiller's Market that comes in a box, visible in the photo at upper right. Steve's, the maker, also offers great hummus and babaganoush. Maybe I'll try the recipe for Ottolenghi's mujedara some day.

A New Look at Canned Goods

From Harold McGee, "Age Your Canned Goods," a very eccentric article about the way that the flavor of canned goods changes as they age: not always for the worse. In fact, he cites a number of experiments where people liked older canned goods better than more recent ones. Aged canned tuna! Aged canned sardines! Even Spam! His subtitle summarizes this view: "Why I now think of best-by dates as maybe-getting-interesting-by dates."

Mc Gee writes:

"As far as I can tell, European connoisseurship in canned goods goes back about a hundred years. It was well established by 1924, when James H. Collins compiled The Story of Canned Foods. Collins noted that while the American industry—which started in the 1820s and took off during the Civil War—focused on mechanization and making locally and seasonally abundant seafood and vegetables more widely available, the European industry continued to rely on handwork and produced luxury goods for the well-off, who would age their canned sardines for several years like wine. Today, Rödel and Connetable, both more than 150 years old, are among the sardine makers that mark select cans with the fishing year and note that the contents 'are already very good, but like grand cru wines, improve with age' for up to 10 years.

"But the appreciation of can-aged foods wasn’t unknown in the United States. Collins recounts an informal taste test conducted by a New York grocer who rounded up old cans from a number of warehouses, put on a luncheon in which he served their contents side by side with those from new cans, and asked his guests to choose which version they preferred. Among the test foods were fourteen-year-old pea soup and beef stew, and twelve-year-old corned beef and pigs’ feet. The guests preferred the old cans 'by an overwhelming majority.'"

McGee, of course, always explores the chemical and mechanical details of his subject matter, so the details in the article are absolutely fascinating!

Restaurants with Views

Sunset at Island Lava Java Cafe and Bistro

Captain Cook Bay from the Coffee Shack

We've been eating delicious meals during our trip, mostly at restaurants where we have eaten before, and where I've taken the photos of the food. Anyway, photos of restaurant food are getting kind of boring everywhere. So here are the views from two places where we have eaten, and that's enough!

Native Species and Canoe Foods

I had a long discussion today with Julia (above, holding a segment of sugar cane). She was giving out samples of food at a cultural festival at the Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historica Park -- one of my favorite parks in the whole world! We got into a conversation about the food plants that are native to the Hawaiian islands prior to human arrival, "canoe foods" that came with the Polynesian settlers, and foods that Europeans brought after the arrival of Captain Cook. Besides a variety of plants, the canoe foods included pigs, chickens, and dogs. Julia has wondered if eggs from the chickens played a role in cooking in pre-western-contact times -- she has been unable to find any references to the use of eggs.



Served on a ti leaf, the sample foods at the festival included coconut, taro, breadfruit, sugar cane, Hawaiian purple sweet potato, and Kalua pig (not shown). A beverage from a plant that grows up on the higher hills tasted to me like tea. While the sugar cane and sweet potato are very sweet, the taro and breadfruit are rather bland, though not bad at all. I believe that in more recent times, the way people ate these foods may have become more complex and highly flavored.

Cooking in Polynesian times was mainly done in pits dug into the ground and lined with various leaves.  They thus cooked a whole animal. The pit's contents was steamed slowly over a long period of time, and thus quite soft. Other preparations included use of water heated by adding hot stones to water held in gourds, or fermentation as was done with poi. Julia described to me the use of salted fish for long sea voyages, but said she was not aware that other meats would have been preserved by salting. The stone-age Hawaiians had no pottery or metal, so there were no cook pots.



Breadfruit was available at the farmers' market this morning as shown above. I also saw some of the purple Hawaiian sweet potatoes, which are quite small and have a light-colored tan skin.



Here is Julia, getting ready to serve a sample of Hawaiian foods.

Curry: maybe the oldest cuisine

"Curry is not only among the world’s most popular dishes; it also may be the oldest continuously prepared cuisine on the planet," according to Washington State University researchers Arunima Kashyap and Steve Weber. Working in the remains of an ancient city along the Indus river, they used modern molecular and archaeology techniques to identify residue from cooking pots as much as 4500 years old and discovered residue from ginger, turmeric, garlic, rice and other grains, and chicken. A Slate article dated last Tuesday,  The Mystery of Curry, explains their findings.

"Kashyap used what is known as starch grain analysis. Starch is the main way that plants store energy, and tiny amounts of it can remain long after the plant itself has deteriorated. If a plant was heated—cooked in one of the tandoori-style ovens often found at Indus sites, for example—then its tiny microscopic remains can be identified, since each plant species leaves its own specific molecular signature." In addition to cooking residue, the research team examined the teeth and bones of humans and animals from the archaeology dig, which also provide evidence of the same foodstuffs being consumed.

Eighteenth-Century French Kitchens

Kitchen Maid Peeling Turnips by Chardin, 1740

I'm reading A Revolution in Taste: The Rise of French Cuisine by Susan Pinkard. Among many interesting ideas in the book, I was interested to learn of the genre paintings of kitchen scenes by Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, which I found here. I love the way that Chardin depicts humble women and their workspace. Chardin's art, writes Pinkard, "came to be admired not only for its verisimiltude but also for its authenticity, that is, the trueness of the subject to itself." (p. 183)

Another Kitchen Maid by Chardin

Woman Drawing Water from an Urn by Chardin

The revolution in taste that the book describes appears cyclical. Cuisine in France became more and more elaborate for a while, and then cooks and discerning eaters would rediscover the taste of fresh seasonal produce, more basic ingredients, and simpler dishes. Sometimes of course these dishes were deceptively simple, requiring hours in the kitchen to produce what seemed to be a plain slice of meat with a glaze on it.

The characteristics of cooking that was modern in the 17th century at times seem to have been discovered anew in the 20th century. "A skillful modern cook achieved variety not through fanciful invention, exotic seasonings, or complex combinations -- paths that had been well trodden by his medieval predecessors -- but by subtly highlighting the elemental properties of raw materials," writes Pinkard. "By the 1650s, proponents of delicate cooking  had evolved a series of techniques and novel recipes -- including a new class of silky sauces that were emulsified with butter, cream, or egg yolk or thickened with roux -- that were intended to highlight the goût naturel of carefully chosen principal ingredients." (p. 64)

Health and taste were both motives in the development of 17th and 18th century cuisine in France; some of the prescriptions also sound as if they were reinvented in the 20th century. One practitioner suggested reducing consumption of meats and alcohol while increasing "vegetables, grains, dairy products, and mineral water." If that didn't make one feel healthy, he suggested "lowering" diets "that sequentially eliminated meats and fish, and then eggs, fruits, and vegetables." Eventually one might end up eating only milk and "seeds such as oatmeal, rice, and sago." (p. 167)


I've also been reading The Expert Cook in Enlightenment France by Sean Takats. The book covers the same era, but concentrates on the responsibilities, the life, the environment, and the reputation of cooks. Most of the cooks worked in private kitchens, as public dining was in its earliest stages at the time. Their pay could be very high -- the cook was often the best-paid employee of the house. They not only cooked but they were responsible for elaborate purchasing of all the food and material for the kitchen. They had to be expert at account-keeping to inform their masters where the large sums of money were going. Many cooks had to be aware of new trends in cooking and theories of health and cleanliness.

The chapter on kitchens was especially interesting. One debate about kitchens at the time was where they should be located. Kitchens were feared; fumes from charcoal stoves and noxious smells from foods that had gone off were clearly dangerous. However, even if a large home or chateau had space, if the kitchen was too far from the dining room the food would arrive cold and extra servants would be required for carrying and serving it.

The Salad Maker by Etienne Jeaurat 1752

The author mentioned the painter Jeaurat's depiction of a salad maker -- L'Eplucheuse de Salade, above -- as showing some of the furnishings and equipment in an 18th century kitchen. Cooking equipment involved a large number of tin-lined copper pots, as well as various strainers, ladles, and equipment for cooking on the kitchen hearth as well as on the charcoal-burning stove that was typical. However, cooks in private homes didn't own any of the elaborate and expensive equipment that they needed to prepare the wide variety of foods that were expected. "A single copper cooking vessel could cost the equivalent of several days of a cook's wages." (p. 70)

On the death of the head of a household, cooks and other staff lost their jobs and the kitchen tools were often sold at an estate sale. Obviously, the records of these sales are now valuable as primary sources, as are the newspaper ads and other notices in which cooks sought new employers.

Tu B'Shevat

Fruit and Wine for Tu B'Shevat Celebration

Saturday is Tu B’Shevat, a Jewish holiday that honors trees, especially fruit trees. Although it's in the depth of our winter, it falls in the earliest part of spring in Israel. In antiquity, this was the traditional time to plant trees. Modern celebrations for Tu B'Shevat include eating a wide variety of fruits and nuts, especially the “seven species” – wheat, barley, olives, dates, pomegranates, figs, and grapes (for eating and for wine). Each of these items has many special associations and symbolic meanings in rituals, Jewish literature, and Biblical lore.

Although the exciting parts of the menu for Tu B’Shevat rituals are the delicious fruits, especially those that grow on the trees, the holiday expands to celebrate barley and wheat as well. I find the history of grains and how they were eaten in Biblical times to be a very interesting subject. Wheat wasn’t just ground into flour for bread or fermented into beer, but was eaten as a kind of whole-grain or wheatberry pilaf; some wheat could even be eaten raw right from the fields before it became too hard. 

Freekeh is a middle eastern dish that offers a way to understand what the ancients did. It's made from fresh, green wheat berries. Recently in food articles I've seen some references to it, and I think it has appeared on menus at trendy restaurants. According to an article in this week's L.A. Times freekeh “in Aramaic means ‘the rubbed one,’ a reference to rubbing off the roasted husk to reveal the grain, still green because it has to be harvested when young.”

The cookbook Jerusalem by Ottolenghi and Tamimi gives two recipes using either a whole or a cracked form of freekeh: spicy freekeh soup with meatballs (p. 148) and poached chicken with sweet spiced freekeh (p. 182). The authors write: "We use it for making pilafs, in salads, and for serving with lamb or chicken... . Its earthy flavor and slightly coarse texture go particularly well with sweet spices."

An article in Gastronomica “Roasting Green Wheat in Galilee” describes a few Arab farmers in Israel who still harvest and prepare unripe wheat, which they call farike. Their methods are much the same as  in ancient times. Timing is essential – “there is a short interval of a few weeks during which the mature wheat, though still green, is soft and full of starches and protein. This is the only moment at which the wheat can be eaten fresh from the stalk, and the time when farike can be prepared.”

The article explains the connection to Biblical tradition: “Roasted grain (kali in Hebrew) is mentioned several times in the Old Testament. It appears in the list of foods that Isaac commands his sons to bring to their brother Joseph in Egypt, and it is the love offering that Boaz extends to Ruth as they rest on the threshing floor. Different English translations of the Bible refer to roasted grain as ‘parched corn’ (corn being a British term for grain) or ‘parched grain,’ yet in Arabic biblical translations the term that is used is farike.”

Wheat berries from mature wheat are available at farmers’ markets and various stores; however, the pilaf that I have made from them is probably quite different from the interesting and historically relevant dish described in these articles. Some time, I’ll have to try one of the many recent freekeh recipes.

Grains both ripe and green were important nutritionally and culturally in the past; references to bread in Biblical passages show how central it was to the ancient diet. Tu B'Shevat makes us aware that the tree fruits of Israel 2000 years ago and more were also central and also much loved for their tastes and aromas. Centuries before sugar arrived in the Middle East, date honey – a sweetener extracted from dates -- was an important internationally traded commodity. Cleopatra Queen of Egypt demanded to own the orchards near the Dead Sea that produced the best dates and date honey in the Roman world. Having one's own "vine and fig tree" was a symbol of peace and security. And in modern times, citrus orchards became one of the keys to the economic success of the state of Israel.

More fruit for Tu B' Shevat -- also bright green olives

Earlier this week, I attended an event to learn more about Tu B’Shevat, including how to prepare some traditional and modern foods, such as date-oatmeal bars, platters of dried fruits, and decorative arrangements of totally non-biblical fruit such as chocolate-covered strawberries, pineapple, and blueberries. Our hostess for the evening says that her preferred tree fruit to eat for the holiday is carob -- another Biblical species though not in the traditional list of seven. I knew little of this holiday until one of our visits to Israel in the 1990s, when we went to a secular Israeli celebration with similar platters of dried fruits and arrangements of fresh produce. I’m delighted to think of the numerous meanings and possibilities of the celebration of trees.

Right-Side Out Cookies

Right-Side Out Cookies

Alice and I baked these cookies during her visit last week. She suggested that we make "Inside Out" cookies. We found a Betty Crocker recipe on the web but we changed it a little -- here it is as we made it:

Right-Side Out Cookies

INGREDIENTS

1 cup sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 & 1/4 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
2 & 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup Hershey's cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 & 1/2 cups white or chocolate baking chips OR 54 Hershey Kisses
1 cup chopped nuts (we used pecans)

METHOD

1. Heat oven to 350ºF. Measure and mix together the flour, soda, cocoa, and salt.
2. Cream sugars, butter, vanilla and eggs in large bowl of mixer until smooth. Slowly add dry ingredient mixture. Add the chips (if you are using them) and the nuts.
3. Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls about 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheet, leaving room for the cookies to spread out. If using kisses, unwrap them and press one into each cookie.
4. Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until set. Cool slightly; remove from cookie sheet. Cool on wire rack. Makes 54 cookies.

Napkin Folding

Miriam folded the napkins into beautiful flowers for a dinner last weekend. Alice set the table. The menu included Ellen and Alec's Texas Red. Also some refried black beans (a separate dish -- is this ok?) and salad.

Jerusalem, Continued

Ingredients for stuffed eggplant

The completed eggplant

Butternut squash spread with tahini

Miriam ready to eat Israeli food

I am continuing the attempt to make a number of recipes from my new cookbook -- Evelyn, Tom, Miriam and Alice arrived this evening and I had several dishes all ready. I'll post the recipes I made today when I have more time. For earlier posts about this ongoing project see:

• Ottolenghi Inspired
• Jerusalem: A Cookbook

Ottolenghi Inspired

If you were surprised a couple days ago to learn that I carefully followed three entire recipes from my new cookbook, so was I. (For details, see my last post, Jerusalem: A Cookbook, in which I described how I made authors Ottolenghi and Tamimi's recipe for spiced carrots, Pilpelchuma pepper and garlic spice blend for the carrots, and chicken with fennel and tangerines.) I continued reading this cookbook, and today during a visit to Barnes and Noble I even looked through Ottolenghi's other cookbook, Plenty, a vegetarian cookbook -- lots of recipes for eggplant, salads, and grains. He's quite an inspiring recipe author.

Tonight for dinner, I intended to make even more recipes from Jerusalem. I thought I was ready. I ended up just taking some inspiration and following my own ideas, however. I expected that this would happen eventually but didn't realize it would be so quick. I have reasons.

First of all, I had bought some lamb chops, which I thought would be a good choice for middle eastern food. As it happens, all of the lamb recipes in Jerusalem are for lamb meatballs or similar dishes using ground or minced lamb, not whole chops. So I had to improvise, and use some of the Pilpelchuma as a rub, adding a bit of lemon juice and rosemary. I braised them with a bit of really good red wine that Lenny got out of the wine cellar.

Second, I planned to make roast potatoes with prunes -- a delicious-sounding recipe which Ottolenghi says is inspired by the Ashkenazi dish tzimmes. Oops, I waited too long and there wasn't enough time to boil then roast potatoes and to make caramel as the recipe calls for. If I'm in a hurry caramel is too scary since it can burn up if you so much as look the other way at the wrong moment or have some bad result if you mess up when adding the ice water to it. Please, Mr. O, could I be a coward and just use honey? Oh, never mind, I want to try the real recipes.

Tonight, though, I just made mashed potatoes, using the microwave to cook them in their jackets and then mashing them while the lamb simmered. Instead of using prunes with the potatoes, I put them in the pan with the braised lamb chops. The result was actually quite delicious. Pipelchuma is quite a nice spice rub, and the prunes were a nice taste contrast with the meat and potatoes. The photo shows how I put the potatoes on a platter surrounded by chops, prunes, and sauce. Inspired, I felt.

I definitely plan to select, shop for ingredients, and try other recipes in detail. I mean it. Honest.

Jerusalem: A Cookbook

Yotam Ottolenghi, an Israeli Jew, and Sami Tamimi, an Israeli Arab, work together at Ottolenghi’s restaurant in London. Their recently-published cookbook presents the foods of their native city: Jerusalem. They describe the era of their childhood as a much more peacful and harmonious time than the present, and hope for peace which they think might come through a shared love of hummus. I wish they would prove to be right.

The book is beautiful. Abundant photos illustrate a variety of Jerusalem city scenes, restaurant interiors just as I remember them from past trips, and totally appetizing recipe presentations. Narratives about the foods and the relationships (often troubled) between the many communities mingle with the recipes.

One recipe particularly appealed to me because its ingredients are so perfect for a winter dinner in the frozen north -- though thanks to a perturbed upper atmosphere, Jerusalem has received far more snow this year than my home Ann Arbor, Michigan. I made the recipe this afternoon, and we ate it for dinner -- fresh fennel, clementines, and chicken marinated and roasted with a delicious sauce. Anise-flavored liqueur and fennel seeds, along with the chicken and produce, emphasize the flavor of the fresh fennel bulbs. The recipe calls for Arak, an anise liqueur made in Beiruit, Lebanon; or Ouzo, the Greek version; or Pernod an anise-flavored French apéritif. I chose Pernod.

Here’s the chicken recipe as I made it.

Ottolenghi and Tamimi’s Roasted Chicken with Clementines

Ingredients

6.5 Tbsp (100 ml) Pernod

4 Tbsp olive oil

3 Tbsp freshly squeezed orange juice

3 Tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

2 Tbsp mustard (I used Dijon, orig. calls for mustard with seeds)

3 Tbsp brown sugar

2.5 tsp salt

1.5 tsp fresh-ground black pepper

2 medium fennel bulbs (1 lb) trimmed & cut in 6 to 8 wedges

1 chicken cut in 8 to 10 pieces

4 clementines (skin included) cut in ¼ inch slices

1 Tbsp thyme leaves

2.5 tsp fennel seeds, lightly crushed

Chopped flat-leaf parsley as a garnish

Method

Mix first eight ingredients together. Whisk well to make marinade.

In large bowl place marinade and all other ingredients except parsley garnish. Combine well with your hands. Optional: marinate for several hours or overnight. I did so for around 4 hours.

Preheat oven to 475 degrees F. Place chicken skin-side up and all other ingredients in a single layer in a large roasting pan (around 12 by 14.5 inches).  Place in preheated oven and roast for 35 minutes. At this point, my chicken was cooked through but pale -- to obtain the color shown in the book’s photo, I put it under the broiler for another 5 minutes to get really brown.

Remove chicken, fruit, and vegetables from pan to a serving dish, and boil down the sauce a bit. I put the sauce in a separate serving bowl from the chicken, though the recipe says just pour it over the chicken. Garnish with parsley.

Side Dishes

I tried a couple of other recipes from the cookbook for tonight’s dinner as well. I made a spicy carrot dish, which I believe I once ate in a restaurant in Tel Aviv where our cousin Janet took us. It contains carrots (serendipity: I was making stock from the chicken trimmings so I cooked the carrots in the stock), fried onion, sugar, cider vinegar, and a spice blend called Pilpelchuma (recipe in the condiment section). The carrots are served with arugula.

I also served some cucumbers with Greek yogurt sprinkled with some newly-bought zaatar spice blend, and I put out some mixed Mediterranean olives since I have never been to an Israeli restaurant that didn’t serve some olives.

I just love this cookbook!

Hooray for Ellen and Alec!

Dinner tonight: Alec and Ellen's Award-Winning Chili, made according to their recipe, using their special Texas chili seasoning mix. I'm so glad to have more of this great spice blend. As shown in the photo, I also made cornbread (using a New York Times recipe) and a salad of avocado and grapefruit sections from TEXAS grapefruits.

I followed the recipe carefully -- it makes enough for 8 or 10 servings, but I only warmed up enough for the two of us. As instructed I did not put any beans in it!

Link to first post on Texas Red: http://maefood.blogspot.com/2006/11/texas-red.html