Diana Kennedy’s Essential Cuisines of Mexico is considered the authoritative Mexican cookbook in English. If you plan on making her tamales, however, take outside advice. Kennedy is a purist and assumes that you understand some basics of Mexican cooking. This recipe calls for tamale dough, or masa, which can be made from scratch using dried corn and lime solution, or more easily by buying masa de harina which has already been alkanalized and ground. I chose the latter route, but it was not clear that I had to reconstitute the masa harina before weighing combining it with lard for the tamale dough. I ended up with a large bowlful of powdery sawdust.

Fortunately I know Nils Bernstein, who in addition to serving on the board of governors of the Danish National Bank is Matador’s head of publicity, and an accomplished Mexican cook. He guided me through the correct method through a series of text messages:

“Diana’s recipes can be weird. The masa harina needs enough liquid to be as soft as possible without sticking — i.e. when you poke it, none remains on your finger. And when you add the hot liquid to reconstitute, let it sit 30 minutes or so, then add enough cool water fo right consistency. Then measure 3:1 masa:lard by weight.”

Phew! This method produced wonderful tamale dough.

I boiled a 3 1/2 pound chicken with its giblets for 30 minutes, then shredded the meat. Meanwhile, I soaked 15 corn husks in warm water for an hour. I reconstituted 4 cups of masa harina with 2 1/2 cups chicken broth as per above, and then aerated 1 1/3 cups lard (important to use Mexican lard, which still has its porky flavoring) with an electric mixer for 10 minutes. I then added the lard to the reconstituted masa harina to produce the tamale dough.

To make the sauce, puree in a blender: 3/4 pounds of tomatoes, 1 large garlic clove roughly chopped, 1/8 teaspoon crushed cumin seeds crushed, 2 crushed whole cloves, 3 crushed peppercorns. Thinly slice 1/2 white onion, and saute it in a couple tablespoons of olive oil until transparent, then add the sauce and reduce over fairly high heat for 5 minutes or so. Season, then add the shredded chicken, mix well, season again if necessary, and set aside.

De-seed 3 fresh jalapenos and slice into 15 strips.

Remove the corn husks from the water and shake vigorously. Divide the tamale dough into 15 equal-sized balls, and spread each one onto a husk, toward the wide top, in a flat disk. Heap a portion of sauced chicken on top of each disc along with 1 jalapeno, and fold the corn husk from the left and the right so that the dough wraps the chicken into a cylinder. Fold up the bottom of the corn husk, and tie with extra strips of husk if you like.

Place vertically into a tall pot on a steamer, with the open end pointing upward. The pot should be full of water just below the steamer. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and steam for 60 minutes. Do not let the tamales steam dry. Serve with lime and hot sauce.

(Kennedy’s recipe also called for a pitted green olive per tamale, which I chose to omit.)

Saw this at Kalustyan the other day and decided to pick it up. It looks like wild rice but actually has nothing in common with it. The inimitable Kalustyan description says: “GROWN IN CHINA, ONCE EXCLUSIVE GRAIN OF THE EMPERORS & KNOWN AS BLOOD ENCHRICHIN & LONGEVITY RICE. IT IS A MED GRAIN RICE WITH WHITE KERNALS INSIDE THE BLACK BRAN. VERY TENDER WHEN COOKED, HAS NUTTY TASTE, IT IS BEAUTIFUL WHEN SERVED WITH CHEESE AND GREEN VEGETABLE.”

First however you need to rinse it. Startlingly, after the description above, it gives off vast quantities of dark red colored liquid when rinsed. You then cook it as one might cook basmati despite the fact that it’s medium grain. If you happen to buy yours from Kalustyan and are following the cooking instructions on the label, note that the second line of the instructions has been transposed with the fourth. And very importantly, you do not want to cover “lightly”. The correct instruction is to cover “tightly.”

The rice was delicious with roast chicken and green beans. The description above is accurate: nutty and tender, with almost a walnut taste. Recommended.

This turned out so well that I’m actually going to post a recipe – something I don’t usually do, because I generally cook from cookbooks and posting recipes is a copyright violation, even if they’ve been tweaked. This one I really made up, triangulating of course from established recipes, my own experience making (non-seafood) risotto, and available ingredients.

Before anyone makes risotto, I recommend that they consult “Desperately Resisting Risotto” by John Thorne in Pot On The Fire, for covering basics, concepts and exploding myths (you don’t have to stir the whole time). As always it’s also an entertaining and thought-provoking read.

I tried to buy fish stock today and failed. So I ended up making my own. I’d bought 1/2 lb wild shrimp from Mexican, unpeeled, and about 5 large Atlantic scallops. I peeled and deveined the shrimp, reserving the shells, and put the shells and half of one of the shrimp to boil in 5 1/2 cups water, 2 bay leaves, 2 smashed cloves garlic, 1 coarsely chopped small onion, and whatever fresh herbs and vegetables I had lying around. In this case it was supermarket flat-leaf parsley, and the last surviving herbs out in the garden: sage and chervil, plus half a zucchini, coarsely chopped. I added 1/2 cup dry vermouth and a splash of dry sherry, brought the whole thing to a boil, skimmed foam, and then kept it gently boiling over medium heat until the stock reduced to 2 cups, and strained it, and then put it back on the heat at just under a simmer. I also brought 5 cups of water to boil in the kettle.

Meanwhile I chopped the scallops into about 5-6 pieces each and the shrimp into 3 pieces. I also chopped a few shallots finely until I had about 3/4 cup (be prepared to tear up – onions are nothing compared to shallots in that dept), and some more fresh sage from the garden. The shallots and sage were then set to saute in 5 tbs well-heated good olive oil. When golden and transparent (4-6 min), I added 1 cup carnaroli rice, and stirred until the rice was toasty-smelling and the tops of the kernels transparent (2-3 min).

Next I added 1/2 cup dry white wine (I used a Sancerre) to the rice and stirred until it evaporated, and then started adding 1/2 cup boiling stock at a time to the rice, and stirred / left it sit until it evaporated, then added more, for about 20 minutes. When the stock ran out, I started adding 1/2 cup water. In the middle of this process, I added a relatively small amount of salt and freshly ground pepper. At 20 minutes, you need to start tasting the rice kernels to see that they are done – a subjective process, because some people like more al dente risotto and some like it more well done a la regular rice. Towards the end of the 20 minutes I heated up another 2 1/2 tablespoons of olive oil and sauteed the shrimp and scallops in them until opaque – 3 minutes at most – and added them to the rice, cooking the mixture for another 3 minutes or so and seasoning well with salt, freshly ground black pepper and some freshly ground Italian dried red peppers as well.

Serve in heated bowls. Sprinkle freshly chopped flat-leaf parsley on the top and serve.

Back to India. Another Delhi recipe from Madhur Jaffrey’s first book. Like many of the dishes in ‘An Invitation,’ you start by stirring and frying onions in butter until they reduce and crisp into little brown rings (what Julie Sahnee calls “brown-frying”). In Jaffrey’s universe this takes 5 minutes or so, but in the real world, it takes about 30 minutes, so leave time. Also like many of the dishes in the book, you remove the crispy, browned onion rings from the shortening (I used ghee), and then cook the rest of the dish in the onion-flavored oil – first by searing the chicken, and then sauteeing the classic onion-garlic-ginger paste followed by spices, yogurt and tomato.

This is a totally delicious dish, and the combination of lemon slices, chicken, sugar and the long, thick, slow-simmered sauce is deeply satisfying. Indian cooks assume that you will be cooking bone-in chicken for its depth of flavor. I used a combination of bone-in and boneless thighs. I removed the bones from the thigh meat, but browned them and put them in the sauce along with everything else.

Served with basmati rice, tomato chutney, lime pickle, yogurt and the dish below.

I improvised a side dish of mixed zucchini and butternut squash. Going by memory of a Bengali okra dish, I heated oil in the khadai, added nigella seed, cinnamon stick and a red chili, followed by the chopped squashes. Once they had cooked to al dente, I added salt, stirred a few more times, and drained the vegetables, reserving the oil. I put the oil back in the pan, added a chopped green chili, black mustard seed, turmeric and cayenne powder, fried for about 30 seconds, added some water, reduced, and poured this dressing over the vegetables. It was delicious – I recommend.

Another Iranian recipe adapted from Batmanglij’s New Food Of Life, this is sort of the Persian borscht. Beets as well as pomegranate contribute to the rich purple color.

We used lamb meatballs, made the usual way with grated onions, salt and pepper. You start the soup by browning onions and garlic in ghee, and then add pomegranate juice, chives, mint, parsley and chopped beet to simmer for 20 minutes. Next, tilda basmati rice and the meatballs go in and the mixture cooks for 30 minutes longer, half covered. Finally, you add angelica powder (if you have it – we didn’t) and simmer for another 35 minutes.

We omitted the split peas, coriander and angelica – otherwise this was roughly by the book. The result is sweet, sour and meaty and very satisfying on a chilly day.

[Some corrections made to the above description since this was first posted.]

Good Persian food is something we eat too rarely in the Northeast, except when we’re lucky enough to visit Lala Rokh on Beacon Hill, with its mouth-puckering torshi (Iranian pickles) and gormeh sabzi (aromatic beef stew with dried limes). All too often Persian restaurants here in New York serve overcooked kebabs and not much else. But Persian cuisine is a wonderful thing, a bridge between what we call Middle Eastern food (the cuisines of the Eastern Mediterranean) and Indian food. Above all, there is a huge emphasis on the careful preparation of long-grain rice, usually with much more subtle spicing than that found in India and Pakistan. The rice is often cooked with potatoes or fruits.

Of course, Iranian rice (polo) is not easily found here, so we made do with tilda basmati. Washed multiple times, and soaked for hours, it was then boiled in salted water and cooked slowly on a bed of ghee in a heavy pot tightly sealed with towels to absorb the moisture. At the same time, we sauteed zereshk, barberries (above), in a mixture of ghee and sugar. The top part of the rice, the polo, gets mixed with the zereshk for an astoundingly sour, sweet and buttery confection that is the basis of the meal.

The bottom part of the rice forms a circular crust. You carefully separate this with a wooden spoon on all sides and then invert the pot to drop a (hopefully) circular crunchy, browned rice disc onto a plate. This salty, buttery rice crust is called tahdig. You just grab chunks of it with your hand and eat it like bread.

Along with some vegetables and pickles, this would have been a meal in itself, but we made chicken as well. Jujeh is the Persian word for chicken. We took Murray’s breasts, pounded them, cut them into chunks, and brined them for several hours. We then set them to marinate in the fridge overnight in lime juice, orange zest, garlic, saffron, yogurt and several cups of chopped onion.

We threaded the chicken pieces on to skewers and cooked them under the broiler for a few minutes, then roasted them. The result was astounding – intense sour lime and onion laced right through the kebabs, with a nice sear on the outside. The juice from the chicken was poured over the polo. We crunched on the tahdig. A honeyed, mellow 1990 Geschwister Erhard spätlese from Uva in Williamsburg complemented the food perfectly, along with Linda Jo Rizzo on the turntable.

These recipes were mainly based on Najmieh Bamanglij’s New Food Of Life, plus some experimentation.

If you grew up in New England, it’s very difficult to stomach what passes for chowder in the rest of the country. Thick white concoctions packed with cornstarch and a few unidentifable clams, or worse, tomatoes. True chowder is buttery and only barely thickened by the crumbling of the potatoes. Milk or at most, light cream, are the dairy ingredients, and the flavor is based on salt pork and the freshest seafood you can buy.

Top seafood chowder can be had at the Maine Diner in Wells, ME – a day trip from Boston. This chowder was based on their recipe, with some hints from John Thorne’s Down East Chowder (since reprinted in the sublime Serious Pig. Since good salt pork is impossible to find in New York (if anyone has a source, please post), we used nitrate-free bacon from Vermont, blanched to remove as much of the smoke flavor as possible. Potatoes are ideally from northern Maine, Aroostook County, but if you can’t find them, use small yellow potatoes such as creamers. They need to be firm, not crumbly like Idaho or russet potatoes. Seafood was the picked meat from a whole lobster (discarding the tomalley), rock shrimp, medium scallops and cherrystone clams. None of this was ideal except for the excellent scallops – you want a lobster right out of the Penobscot, tiny coldwater Maine shrimp, and steamers or soft-shell clams rather than cherrystones.

The lobster bodies were simmered in water to make a stock, and the other seafood was cooked in a strainer in the same water. Meanwhile the blanched bacon was rendered and fried. One diced onion is added to the bacon frypan along with a half stick of butter, and fried until translucent. The potatoes were chopped into half-inch cubes and boiled until cooked but still firm. Lobster shells continued to simmer until close to suppertime, then the broth strained off along with the grit at the bottom, and reduced a bit. 2 cups milk and 2 cups light cream were then added slowly. The translucent onions, butter and blanched bacon are added to the milky broth, and simmered – the seafood goes in at the last minute, along with salt to taste. One eater preferred some fresh ground pepper in his bowl. Common crackers should be sprinkled on top, but since these no longer seem to be made, we used non-salted oyster crackers instead. The result was sublime, as you can see from the photos.

When Jewish immigrants came to this country in the first part of the 20th century, mainly from Eastern Europe and Russia, they rapidly adapted other culture’s dishes. This particular transformation of Italian pasta comes from Robert Sternberg’s Yiddish Cuisine: A Gourmet’s Approach To Jewish Cooking, as reprinted in the sadly defunct John Thorne-edited newsletter CookBook, a review of books about food. (I got it in a stack of back issues of Simple Cooking from the wonderful Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks. No link for CookBook- try Googling it – the title makes it an impossible search.)

This is a recipe from Sternberg’s grandmother, who didn’t see any point in preparing lokshen any other way than snapping the spaghetti in two and after cooking it, baking it in a rich mixture of sour cream and farmer’s cheese. The recipe clearly has an Italian origin, starting with a soffrito of celery, carrot and onion in butter, just like Marcella Hazan’s bolognese. However, green pepper and Hungarian hot paprika rapidly follow, along with tomato sauce, the aforementioned cheese and sour cream, and the whole thing is baked in a buttered glass dish at 350 degrees with the cooked noodles and generous dollops of butter on top.

The dish was supposed to have a crust but I was unable to get this in my oven. I didn’t have sauce, only plum tomatoes, which may account for the dish’s strangely unattractive top. I had never come across farmer’s cheese before, but Wikipedia says that it’s sort of a refined version of cottage cheese. I did not go to Murray’s for this but rather the Morton Williams on La Guardia Place, where I found it next to Kraft sliced American cheese. The brand claimed to be Amish, but I doubt that very much.

In any event, it was rather nice tasting, slightly tangy, much like the homemade cottage cheese at Ray Radigan’s steakhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The cheese and the sour cream make this a dairy dish in kosher terms; apparently ground beef may be substituted (for both) for a meat version.

I have to admit that the thought of this dish made me salivate. I miss the rich Americanized pastas, slathered with sauce, from my childhood. Even if I never had this specific dish, it has elements in common with my mom’s spaghetti and noodle casseroles. However, it turned out to taste sort of lasagna-esque, and I don’t mean that in a great way. Perfectly OK, but not sublime, unless (I suspect) you grew up with it. Also, I made the full recipe not noticing that it serves 6-8 people, and now have vast quantities in the fridge.