Seems slightly paradoxical, but in many cultures around the world, a hot spicy soup is the cure for those who are particularly averse to these stifling summer days. As the streets around Matador’s office become more and more steamy, providence informed that I post my take on a classic heirloom recipe that I discovered several months agone in Eric Hites’ essential ‘Everybody Loves Ramen: Recipes, Stories, Games, & Fun Facts About the Noodles You Love’. The publishers do not exaggerate, in this, “The Perfect Gift for The Graduate” the harmony you’ll find with instant ramen, between affordability and exquisiteness is elegant, and indeed, perfect.

Taking a slight left turn from Hines’ procedure, I find that Nissin’s “Cup Noodles” are superior to the standard brick-shaped “Top Ramen” packets. It’s easier to monitor the noodles, keeping them slightly al dente to enhance their natural nuttiness. The cups also feature much lusher dehydrated vegetables — sweeter corn, crunchier carrots, crispier peas. The broth fresher, more savory. While many prefer the chicken and beef flavors, I’ve taken a certain fondness toward the shrimp variety. It’s a classic and it came as no surprise to learn that in Japan, the shrimp flavor is simply termed “Plain” (though, the complexity in flavor is far from it). The more nouveau permutations of these favorings (Salsa Picante, Spicy Chile, etc) should stay on the shelf.

I find that there is a simple, yet delicate procedures that take a little bit of practice to get the perfect noodles.

I’ve taken a slightly unique approach to flavoring the soup. Add 3-5 dashes of classic Tobasco sauce — more if you’re feeling a little adventurous. I had to venture over to Williamsburg Brooklyn’s C-Town to find this variety as it’s become rarer and rarer to find in certain stores. But trust me, the trek was worth it: the combination of the slight sweet vinegary-bite (derived from the Tobasco company’s aging process) and the relatively moderate Scoville scale rating do not only contribute a slight tang, but I’ve found it draws out the natural umami flavors from the broth powder and baby shrimp. I’ve tried other hot sauces (Tapatio, Crystal, Frank’s, Sriracha, etc) which often yield interesting results, but I suggest that novices start with the “original”.

It is essential that you apply the Tobasco PRIOR to adding the boiling water so as to allow it to coat the noodles throughout the cup, otherwise, you’ll encounter an irregular bite. I’ve found that letting the hot sauce-soaked noodles marinate for a few minutes increases the evenness in flavor.

Bring several cups of water to a slow, rolling boil in a tea kettle or small sauce pan. As soon as the water begins to boil, turn the burner off and let the water cool to about 85-90 °C

Follow the directions closely on the packaging (lift portion of lid, fill water to line and let sit for 3-5 minutes). I’ve found the perfect time to be about 3 minutes and 23 seconds.

I paired my noodles with a 2008 Touraine La Tesniere. Wooden or ivory chopsticks are the preferred eating implements, but I’ve also found that using a plastic fork can also add to the traditional experience of enjoying your noodles. Sip the broth directly from the styrophone cup, as it rolls across your palate, the epiphany in flavor can be described as nothing short of nirvana.

This recipe is really easy and obscenely tasty. It is adapted from Madhur Jaffrey’s An Invitation to Indian Cooking. The original recipe specifies very fresh whole pea pods, to be eaten like artichoke leaves (pull between your teeth, so that you eat not just the peas but the fleshy part of the pod as well). I found that it worked very well with green beans (to be eaten whole, as normally), which I happened to have on hand.

3/4 pound green beans
1 tbs ghee
1/8 tsp ground asafoetida (hing powder)
1/4 tsp whole cumin seeds
1/2 tbs lemon juice
1/2 tsp garam masala (plus addition 1/2 tsp garam masala at end) (see note*)
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp freshly ground pepper
1 tbs warm water

Clean and snap off the ends of the green beans.

Heat the ghee over moderately high heat in a 10″ skillet. When hot, add the asafoetida and cumin seeds and stir once. When the cumin seeds change color (10-20 seconds), add the green beans and stir for 1 minute. Add lemon juice, the first 1/2 tsp garam masala, salt and pepper. Stir, add the warm water, bring to a boil, turn heat to very low, cover, and cook gently for about 20 minutes, until tender (Jaffrey specifies 20-30 minutes for the pea pods, but I found the beans were done in just under 20). Stir once or twice during cooking.

Serve in a warm dish, sprinkled with the addiitonal garam masala.

* Note: there are many different varieties of garam masala. For this recipe, I used one from Julie Sahni’s Classic Indian Cooking:

3 tbs black cardamom pods
3 cinnamon sticks, about 2-3 inches long
1 tbs whole black cloves
1/4 cup black peppercorns
1/2 cup cumin seeds
1/2 cup coriander seeds

Break open cardamom pods, remove seeds and reserve; discard skin. Crush the cinnamon with a kitchen mallet to break it into small pieces. Combine all the spices including the cardamom seeds and roast them in a thick-bottomed pan, stirring frequently, until they darken slightly and become richly aromatic. Allow to cool, grind in a spice grinder, and then store in an airtight container in a cool, dark place. Recipe may be cut in half.

I served the green beans with Jaffrey’s kheema with fried onions, plus dishes of Kalustyan’s lime pickle, mixed pickle and mango chutney.

The incomparable John Thorne provided this American with an introduction to champ, an Irish mashed potato dish made with greens cooked in milk. The recipe can be found in Pot on the Fire, which I recommend for general reading about food and food history.

This came out fantastic the first time around, and it’s very simple to make. Take 3 “all-purpose” potatoes (I used Yukon Gold), peel them and put them in a pot with a tight-fitting lid. Dissolve 1/2 teaspoon sea salt in 1/2 cup water and pour that over the potatoes. Cover, bring to a boil, lower heat to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes or until the water is gone and the potatoes cooked through. This is not simple (Thorne writes that it will take several tries until you figure out the right proportion of water to potato) – in my case, I ended up raising the heat, cooking for an extra 10 minutes, then adding another 1/4 cup water, boiling again, and cooking for another 4-5 minutes. Much depends on the size of the potato.

Remove from heat and crush potatoes in your fingers until fully mashed and all lumps are gone. Return to pot and cover.

Meanwhile mince 4 scallions – the whole thing including all of the green stalk that isn’t wilted – sprinkle lightly with salt, pour boiling water on top, and drain. Add minced scallions to 1/2 cup milk and gently bring to a simmer. Simmer for 5 minutes so that the milk has absorbed the scallion flavor.

Now put the flame to low under the potato pot, and gradually add the scallion milk, beating with a wooden paddle until luscious and creamy. Add more milk if necessary (I added a splash), as well as generous amounts of salt and freshly ground pepper.

Serve immediately with butter at the table. Can be a main course or side.

Now that I’ve finally figured out how to make them, I can’t get enough of tamales. And neither should you.

After a Zipcar expedition to Linden, New Jersey for sliders at White Rose System, I happened to drive back through the Mexican neighborhood in Port Richmond, Staten Island. The main drag is lined with Mexican groceries, and I thought (correctly, as it turned out) that they might be superior to what’s available in Manhattan. At the first place, they were totally confused when I asked for lard, and I couldn’t remember the Spanish word (pork fat! you know, the kind you use to make tamales!), but at the second place, my memory revived – it’s manteca. The guy was delighted that we were making tamales and insisted that we buy Oaxacan string cheese for a Oaxacan version. The next time we came, he promised, he’d give us directions for sweet dessert tamales.

In the event, I ended up preparing Diana Kennedy‘s chicken tamales for a second time (link at the top of this post), as well Oaxacan cheese ones (main contents: Oaxacan cheese and jalapenos) and a marinated skirt steak tamale recipe that I found online. Unfortunately I can’t find the recipe any longer – post yours.

Serve with limes and copious quantities of different kinds of El Yucateco hot sauce.

P.S. I need to do this with fresh masa sometime… available from Tortilleria Nixtamal in Corona. See this excellent article on where to buy Mexican ingredients in NYC (Port Richmond, sadly, is overlooked).

I thought I’d posted about Marcella Hazan‘s pasta with tuna before, but apparently I haven’t. It’s very simple indeed and requires the best ingredients – imported Italian tuna in olive oil, superb olive oil of your own, San Marzana tomatoes and good butter:

4 tbs extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp garlic chopped very fine
1 1/2 cups canned San Marzano tomatoes, cut up, with their juice
12 ounces imported Italian tuna packed in olive oil
Salt
Black pepper ground fresh from the mill
1 tbs butter
1 1 1/2 pounds pasta
3 tbs chopped parsley

In a saucepan heat the olive oil, add the garlic and cook until it becomes colored a pale yellow. Add the cut up tomatoes with their juice, stir to coat them well, and cook at a gentle but steady simmer for 25 minutes, or until the tomatoes float free of their juices.

Drain the tuna and crumble it thoroughly with a fork. Turn off the heat under the tomatoes, add the tuna, and mix well. Taste, and if necessary, correct for salt. Add a few grindings of pepper, the 1 tbs of butter, and mix well again. Toss with drained cooked pasta with a few more drops of olive oil. Add the chopped parsley, toss again, and serve immediately.

This is great so far as it goes, and it absolutely requires the best ingredients. But what if you don’t have those around – you just have Chicken of the Sea, your olive oil is a few months old, or you feel like you need something with a bit more kick?

The following changes retain the spirit of the recipe but make it more complex and, to my mind, more satisfying:

- Chop 1 jalapeno finely along with 8 sage leaves, and sauté these along with the garlic
- Discard the tomato juice in the can, and using your hands, squeeze most of the juice out of each of the tomatoes

The result is highly concentrated. I recommend spaghetti for this dish.

By the way, don’t forget the butter at the end. It’s essential for knitting the flavors together. I use Lurpak or President.

Fucked Up‘s frontman, Pink Eyes/Damian Abraham is taking advantage of a brief break from tour to participate in two community-based events.

Tonight (April 8), at the Toronto Reference Library, as part of Keep Toronto Reading Festival 2010: Book Exchange. Damian will speak on a panel with Pasha Malla author of The Withdrawal Method and Zoe Wittall author of Holding Still for as Long as Possible , wherein each panelist will bring his or her favorite books to discuss and exchange with audience members in an effort to promote literacy as well as what’s bound to be some pretty great reading.

April 8,

Doors at 6:00; event ends around 8:30
Appel Salon, 2nd floor
Toronto Reference Library
789 Yonge St, Toronto
MORE INFORMATION

***

Meanwhile, Damian is involved in a program called Do The Math, run by a food program called The Stop — an initiative seeking to demonstrate the limits of social assistance. Damian will be subsisting solely off a standard food hamper provided by a local food bank for as long as possible.

In the program’s words:

On April 6, 2010, ten high-profile Torontonians (and their families, if they’re joining them) will pick up a standard food bank hamper at The Stop. These hampers—which include an array of non-perishable food, as well as a little bit of fresh produce—typically last a person three or four days, though many folks stretch this to a week or ten days. Our participants will live exclusively off the contents of the hamper for as long as they can. They will not eat out or accept free food or drink (though they are encouraged to eat at least two meals at a drop-in). They will be allowed to use up to five standard pantry ingredients—oil, flour, salt, coffee, etc.—but are asked to keep track of the quantity of these items used.

You can follow Damian’s experience and progress and find plenty of detailed information over at Looking For Gold , his twitter and Do The Math’s website.

Right on, Damian!

photo lifted from johnnyriggsisdead‘s flickr

All my life I’ve wanted to make fried chicken, and I have been accumulating recipes and tools for it for years. Finally I ran into a recipe that made me want to take the plunge. It is from Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking, a book very much in the style of John Thorne’s discursive essays on unpretentious food. She absolutely lays down the law, which I like. I realize that there are many other ways to make great fried chicken, but this one works.

Colwin’s rules are:

- Use a chicken fryer, a cast-iron pot with steep sides and a domed lid

- Chicken must be at room temperature before you start cooking

- Dredge with seasoned flour only – no shaking in bag, no breadcrumbs, no crushed cornflakes

- Pan-fry, do not deep-fry (though see below) in a COVERED chicken fryer

- Serve WARM, not hot (or cold): “It should never be eaten straight from the fryer – it needs time to cool down and set”

OK, so far so good. Totally into the hardcore rules. Rather than the version above, though I got the 3-quart chicken fryer from Lodge, which may have led to some complications.

Colwin recommends using vegetable oil (or more specifically Wesson oil with a little light sesame), but this is a hardcore unhealthy household, so we used Crisco topped up with some safflower oil. There was a debate about whether to use leftover Mexican lard (manteca), but it was felt that might add an unwelcome porkiness to the chicken.

The recipe – really a method, not a recipe, is straightforward. Mix flour with seasoning of your choice. I used salt, pepper and paprika. Dip chicken pieces in buttermilk, then roll them in flour, really packing them in there “as if you were a child making sand pies.” There should be thick layers of flour between the pieces.

Fill your fryer to halfway with oil. Heat until a piece of bread fries instantly when it hits the oil. I attached a deep frying thermometer and found this to be about 375 degrees – HOT.

Gently slip into the hot oil as many pieces will fit. “The rule is to crowd a little.” Turn the heat down at once and cover. (Italics are Colwin’s.) You then cook until just done – “juicy and crisp” – about 5-6 minutes a side. Then remove cover, turn heat back up, and quickly fry to the “color of Colonial pine stain – a dark honey color.” Remove the pieces and let them sit in a barely warm oven – be warned that this will be difficult for you and your guests to do. When the pieces are warm, no longer hot, dig in.

So here’s the complication I experienced – the oil was maybe slightly over halfway, and what Colwin doesn’t mention is that when you slip in those pieces into 375-degree oil, it goes crazy. Insane angry sizzling and spattering. And then I put the top on and turned the heat down. Result was the Towering Inferno. It sounded like Battle of the Marne was taking place under the lid. Then the oil actually managed to lift up the heavy cast-iron cover and spatter down onto the burner resulting in foot-high flames.

Much putting out of fire and fussing with the temperature resulted, and I think the lesson is that you absolutely must not go more than halfway on the oil, especially with the little 3-quart chicken fryer. I was essentially deep-frying rather than pan-frying – I think the distinction becomes academic when you have chicken pieces in more than 2 inches of oil. The second batch resulted in no fire. I will say… that first batch was tastier, though I’m not sure I want to go through that experience again.

Apologies for the crappy photo. The chicken was amazing – juicy and flavorful within, crispy and nutty on the outside.

(above: chili about 90 minutes in)

Devotees of the Matablog will remember our previous discussions of chili. Here at the ‘dor we prefer real texas red – no beans, not much tomato, and the beef in big meaty chunks rather than ground. We also make our own chili powder using an assortment of different whole dried chiles. All this contributes to what John Thorne calls real chili’s distinctive rasp. But it also makes for a certain austerity. I’m reminded of Thorne’s description of artisanal grits: “Their taste may hold a narrow place on the flavor spectrum, but that doesn’t mean it’s limited.” What if you have a craving for a real chili with a more sumptuous flavor?

It was while I was having these midwinter musings that I ran across this post from Serious Eats food science writer J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, “How To Make The Best Chili Ever.” Kenji’s recipe contained some real insights and I decided to give it a try – with a couple of alterations, of course.

(above, from left to right, mildest to hottest: anaheim, pasilla, ancho, guajillo, cascabel, pequin)

The main thing that interested me was his treatment of the whole chiles: toast them, cook them down in stock, puree them, and then fry the puree. This rids the chili of the grittiness that powder can sometimes provide. It smooths Thorne’s rasp, perhaps a bit too much, but the aim here is a more luscious, comfortable chili. This method certainly achieves it.

Another idea that really rang true for me was his treatment of the beef. I had been finding it very difficult to get a true browned flavor from my chuck, even cut into 1/8″ or 1/4″ cubes (by hand) – the amount of water released from the small pieces of meat during the long browninng necessary to cover that surface area necessarily interferes with developing a caramelized crust. Kenji’s solution: brown the whole pieces of meat, let them cool, and then cut them up. He also borrows an idea from Heston Blumenthal and adds a small amount of toasted star anise, which adds no perceptible liquorice notes but does mysteriously bring out the browned meat flavor.

Most of the rest of his ideas also meet no opposition from me: umami bombs (soy sauce, anchovies and Marmite, all added to the puree of chiles), unsweetened chocolate (we’re already a long way from Thorne’s purism), a slug of hard liquor at the end to release all the complex aromas.

(mmm… now that’s a beautiful piece of chuck)

My main changes: I browned my meat in rendered suet, which is not only more true to chili’s past but also tastier. Instead of just shortribs, I used a combination of shortribs and chuck, all from the great Florence Meat Market in the Village. I abstained from adding coffee, since one eater has a reaction to it. I put in about half the tomatoes that Kenji recommends (you don’t want to go too far), and of course I omitted the beans. I didn’t put in 1/4 cup of Frank’s Red Hot Sauce – I’ve always found this to be a hot sauce of limited depth or interest – and ultimately this chili was not spicy enough. Next time I would add back some of Thorne’s recipe by crumbling in pequins as the chili cooks to adjust the spice balance. That said, I did actually use more chilis that Kenji calls for – I believe that chili should taste primarily of chile and beef, and his formulation would only pair a tablespoon or two of chili powder equivalent with 4-5 pounds of meat – definitely not sufficient. Finally, I used sherry vinegar instead of the cider vinegar he calls for, just because that’s what I had around.

All this said, this chili was astounding, bursting with intense, deep, rich soulful flavor. It was a bit sweeter and more accommodating than I would like – as I wrote above, it needs more kick, but that will be easy to achieve next time with careful administration of pequins or chiles de arbol during the simmering process. Other than that, this chili was just about perfect – and all the eaters concurred.

If you’d like to try this, here is the link to Kenji’s recipe (be sure to read the preparation notes here as well). Below are my changes.

- omit beans
- dried chiles used: 2 anaheim, 2 ancho, 2 pasilla, 1 guajillo, 1 cascabel, 3 pequin (and I wish I’d used more of the hot ones)
- meat used: 2 whole bone-in shortribs (see picture for size), 3 lbs well marbled chuck
- fat used: 2″ X 2″ X 2″ piece of suet, cut into small pieces and fully rendered (olive oil added when necessary to get the correct amounts)
- omit coffee beans
- fresh chiles used: 1 jalapeno PLUS 1 Thai bird chile (and I wish I’d used more)
- half the amount of tomatoes (i.e. about 14 ounces)
- sherry vinegar substituted for cider vinegar
- Frank’s Red Hot Sauce – omitted
- garnish – omitted in its entirety except the Saltines

This chili is truly stunning. I urge you try it.

Been spending a lot of time making echt-Italian recipes (Mario Battali: “the sauce is a CONDIMENT!!!”), but there’s nothing I enjoy more than real Italian-American spaghetti and meatballs, aka “gravy” if you come from around here. I was extremely fortunate that our sales and marketing dude Mike Venutolo-Mantovani shared his mom’s gravy recipe recipe with me. I don’t have permission to actually post it, nor could I, because it’s as much a way of life as a “recipe” per se. The writing was overflowing with personality and family vibes. It takes two full days to make it properly, and involves beef neck bones, babyback ribs, meatballs, four different types of tomato and long, long, slow cooking. As you can see, the result was a dense, deep brown-red sauce bursting with chunks of meaty flavor. It was unbelievably delicious and soul-calming in this wet and snowy winter.

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.

[Sorry! Just noticed that the chicken and the dough are full recipe below, while everything else is 1/2. I have brought it all up to the full recipe now.]

I boiled a 3 1/2 pound chicken with its giblets for 30 minutes, then shredded the meat. Meanwhile, I soaked 15 30 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 1 1/2 pounds of tomatoes, 1 large garlic clove roughly chopped, 1/8 1/4 teaspoon crushed cumin seeds crushed, 2 4 crushed whole cloves, 3 6 crushed peppercorns. Thinly slice 1/2 a whole white onion, and saute it in a couple 4 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 6 fresh jalapenos and slice into 15 30 strips.

Remove the corn husks from the water and shake vigorously. Divide the tamale dough into 15 30 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.

It’s Dutch nieuwe haring season, raw fillets of herring from the first catches of the season. I guess you’re supposed to drag it through the raw onions and then dip it into your mouth holding it by the tail, but I preferred it the way I got it at various shacks around Amsterdam: on bread and butter with the raw onions on top. It’s meltingly delicious, and does not shy away from being raw fish. This is not sushi. It’s very robust. Fantastic with beer, probably even better with vodka or champagne. For those of you in New York, Russ & Daughters still has it, flown in fresh from Holland. Get it now – it won’t last long.

Nils informed me, several years ago, that it was incredibly easy to make homemade ricotta. I filed that information away and did nothing with it until, after a visit to Buon Italia in Chelsea Market, I ended up with a bag of Setaro lumaconi, the large snail-shell pasta that is meant to be stuffed. With ricotta.

I found the recipe on eggs on sunday. I already had the ingredients, as you probably do: whole milk, heavy cream, coarse salt and lemon juice. You may or may not have cheesecloth – I had tons left over from my ventures into Thai food. The whole thing takes 15 minutes max, and voila, you have made cheese! I felt incredibly competent afterwards.

We stuffed the ricotta into lumaconi with chopped ham and baked it.

This recipe is from Marcella Hazan, who in turn got it from a celebrated 1970s Bologna restaurant with the unlikely name of Al Cantunzein. The classic recipe uses homemade pappardelle. I used factory-made rigatoni. It’s lovely, a perfect summer pasta, with the often elusive flavors of the bell peppers, sweet and bitter, laced through the dish.

Stir and fry two tablespoons of chopped onions in 4 tablespoons of olive oil at medium-high heat. When the onions turn a pale gold, add 4 sweet Italian pork sausage (no fennel or other spices mixed in, please), chopped into half-inch rounds. Cook for another 2 minutes, stirring, then add 1 red and 2 yellow bell peppers, seeded, peeled and chopped into 1-inch squares, and saute for another 7-8 minutes. Add sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, stir well, and then pour in one can of drained, chopped San Marzano tomatoes (no basil or other spices added), and cook at a lively simmer for 15-20 minutes or until the tomatoes float free of the oil. Combine with pasta, toss thoroughly, add 2 tablespoons of butter and 2/3 cup of grated reggiano, and toss thoroughly again. Serve immediately with plenty more reggiano to grate on top.

Easy recipe – the only pain is peeling the damn peppers! I hate that.

Wine was a lively 2007 Saint-Véran from Jean Manciat

Sometimes after a multi-course decadent Asian feast you want something simple. This ribeye came from Baczynski Brothers Meat Market in the East Village. Better known for their hams and sausages, they are also a full-service butcher. The first ribeye I got from there made me think I’d found an East Side competitor to Ottomanelli. This is the third and now I think that first one might have been flukily excellent. It had a perfect, Lugerish musty, nutty quality. This one was just very good, well marbled and about 2 inches thick, salted and seared to a caramelized crisp on the outside, rosy rare in the center, served with white rice and lemon and baby peas. And yes Fiona, the wine was a 2002 Givry from Choffelet-Valdenaire. Meals like this put the wine front and center, in this case deservedly so. $28, seek it out.

Another recipe from Madhur Jaffrey’s An Invitation To Indian Cooking, and a daunting one with a huge list of ingredients. However, it’s really no more complicated than making a chicken dish and one of her stepped-up rice dishes. It’s incredibly delicious, on the sweeter, more aromatic Mughal/northern/Afghani/Persian tip.

The chicken is marinated for at least two hours in a mixture of about 10 spices blended with onions, garlic, ginger and yogurt. Oh, and fried onions. They are extremely important in this dish. For some time now, I’ve noticed that Jaffrey and her main competition, Julie Sahni, estimate different lengths of time for “brown-frying” onions (something you frequently need to do in Northern Indian cuisine). Jaffrey tends to think you need 10 minutes; Sahni thinks 35. Sahni is correct. You get your ghee very hot, then add the sliced onions, and then stir, constantly for the next half-hour plus. You cannot allow them to stick or burn. Sahni describes several “states” the onions pass through during this time. It’s fascinating from a molecular point of view, and you will need something to occupy your brain. First they sizzle, then they eject their water, then get shrink rapidly, and finally, at the very end, they brown.

Having squeezed them dry, decant two-thirds of the browned onions into the marinade. The other third goes on paper towels. You reserve the onion-flavored oil.

Now the rice. The recipe specifies “long grain,” but having been burned once by a rice recipe in this book, I knew that it probably required basmati. The basmati needs to be washed and soaked as usual, and then cooked for only 5 minutes so that it is not cooked through.

Once the marinated chicken comes out of the fridge, you boil the mixture, simmer for 15 minutes, remove the chicken pieces, and reduce the marinade to paste. Chicken goes into the pot (I used a heavy enamel Le Creuset) with the reduced marinade on top, and the parboiled rice on top of that. You decorate the rice with stripes of saffron that has been soaking in warm milk for an hour, producing lovely orangey-red striations. On top of this, you pour the reserved onion oil, and the whole spices that flavored that oil – bay leaves and black cardamom. This is covered and baked for an hour at 300 degrees.

When it comes out, you decorate with garnishes: the remainder of the fried onions, hard-boiled egg slices, golden raisins (sultanas) that have been fried in oil, and blanched slivered almonds. It is divine.

I accompanied this dish with masoor dal prepared to the recipe I used for moong dal. I don’t know much about dals, but moong is yellow and masoor is orange-red, and my masoor had more flavor. It might be because the pulses were fresher.

In addition, I prepared an aloo chat from Julie Sahni’s Classic Indian Cooking. Sahni is nice to have as a counterpart to Jaffrey, and not just because she admits how long it takes to brown-fry onions. She is altogether more sober, if more boring, and gives more reasons why you should do the things you do. Some of her recipes are just not that exciting compared to Jaffrey’s, but this is still an essential reference work.

Aloo chat is potato salad – this one uses fresh mint. I was able to grab some from the garden as a final garnish to supplement the thick bunch I bought at the supermarket. My main interest in making this dish was because it uses BLACK SALT. I bought some a year ago, and have been looking for a way to use it. Be warned: it is extremely sulfurous! I didn’t read the package thoroughly and was amazed when I broke it open. I didn’t quite add the full half-teaspoonful. Fortunately, when combined with the other spices in the dish (roasted cumin seeds, chili pepper, black pepper, salt, mint, lemon juice, not to mention cucumber) and after marinating in the fridge, the sulfurousness had diminished to a slight, unidentifiable tang that definitely adds to the dish. This compares well to the aloo chat at my local taxicab favorite Curry & Curry, if not quite scaling the heights of the one at Lahore Deli near the old office in SoHo.

Finally, I whipped up a yogurt with peas as a cooling refreshment to all the spiciness. Not that this lacks spice – it’s an adaptation of yogurt with spinach from the Jaffrey book. The key is good yogurt. The presence of Arabic, Greek or Turkish on the label, or the words “home style” or “from the home country” is a good start. This one was Turkish. You mix in roasted ground cumin seeds, cayenne and black pepper, and then about a half-cup of cooked green peas per 8 oz of yogurt. The sourness of the yogurt is offset nicely by the sweetness of the peas.

I also served Jaffrey’s excellent tomato chutney.

… otherwise known as ketchup. OK, not quite, but I didn’t put two and two together and realize that this is where ketchup comes from.

This is another recipe from Madhur Jaffrey’s Invitation To Indian Cooking, and is extremely easy and delicious. Just don’t lose faith while making it, since the aromas are extremely strong.

Blend an entire head of garlic (peeled and coarsely chopped), a fresh piece of ginger (2 inches long, 1 inch by inch wide, peeled and coarsely chopped) and 1/2 cup of red wine vinegar in a blender until smooth. In a large, heavy-bottomed pot, bring to a boil the entire contents of a 12-ounce can of tomatoes, 1 cup of red wine vinegar, 1 1/2 cups white sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, and 1/2 teaspoon hot chili powder (cayenne pepper). Add the puree from the blender. Lower heat and simmer gently for 1 1/2 – 2 hours or until the chutney becomes thick. Stir occasionally during this time. Finally, add two tablespoons golden raisins and two tablespoons blanched, slivered almonds. Simmer, stirring, for 5 more minutes. Allow to cool, decant into glass jars, and refrigerate. Once chilled, the chutney should have the consistency of honey. It will keep for months.

This chutney goes with almost anything. It’s delicious just with plain basmati rice. I’ve served it with kheema, and more recently with Jaffrey’s recipe for chicken in light sauce (from the book above). Excellent, toothsome chicken, but even after reducing the sauce by half, it was still thin. I have a suspicion that it’s supposed to be thick like the khorma you get in a UK restaurant. However, decanted into a bowl and sipped with a spoon, it was really good – reminiscent of the curry chicken noodle soup at Bo Ky.

I also served moong dal. I had never made dal successfully before (aside from a terrible recipe from the absolutely to be avoided Lord Krishna’s Cuisine, a cult-y Vedic book by an American ashram transplant)… as always, Jaffrey’s recipe was eye-opening. “Since people like to squeeze lime or lemon wedges on their dal, serve some wedges separately.” Who knew? Not me, going to Indian restaurants all my life and not knowing what the point of the dal was. It also seems unlikely that those restaurants rapidly fried asafoetida and cumin seeds in ghee and poured them over the dal just prior to serving, but who knows.

For Indian cooking, my main source has always been Madhur Jaffrey’s rather esoteric, regional book A Taste Of India. However Nils recently gifted me with An Invitation To Indian Cooking, noting that no recipe he’s ever tried from it has ever been less than stellar (epic?) so I decided to give it a try. The book is devoted to the sophisticated Delhi cooking with which Jaffrey grew up.

My dad used to make a Middle Eastern kheema, and ground meat always appeals, so I decided to try that. I didn’t have enough onions, so the fried onions of the title ended up being shallots. The standard onions-ginger-garlic mix gets fried in oil that’s been infused by a quick saute of cinnamon stick, bay leaves and cloves. When the onions are done, you add freshly ground coriander, cumin and turmeric, then yogurt and finally a small amount of tomato sauce. You fry the meat in this soffrito, add nutmeg, mace and salt, bring to a boil with some water and then simmer for AN HOUR. At the end you stir in the fried onions (shallots in my case). It’s divine. And it goes divinely with…

… rice with spinach. Like many Indian dishes, the name implies something simple, but the actual recipe is hard work. I think in this early book Jaffrey was trying to get Americans to make the leap so she recommends Carolina rice, which is what I used, but basmati would definitely have been better. Apparently basmati was hard to find and expensive back then, in the years of the license raj. Anyway, you clean the spinach, have a big pot of boiling water, and wilt the leaves quickly in small batches, remove them to a colander with a stream of cold water, then press the spinach between your hands to remove the moisture. Then chop it very fine. Chop an onion and saute it in oil for 5 minutes, then add the spinach and some garam masala, and saute for 30 minutes. This produces an intoxicating mix reminiscent of those sag dishes in restaurants that you always thought were drenched in butter. Wrong. Now you add the rice (which has been washed and soaking for two hours in salted water), mix it together, and put it all in a casserole with tin foil that has a half-inch hole cut in the top for steam to escape, which goes in an 300 degree F oven for 30 minutes. The combination of the fresh-smelling spinached rice with the rich, aromatic kheema is just right.

Jeez, not another Ruth Rogers pasta recipe. This one is absurdly simple and relies on the quality of the ingredients and your instincts in combining them at the right time and at the right temperature.

Slowly stir the zest and juice of two lemons into 1/2 lb freshly grated reggiano until you have a thick sauce. Add enough olive oil to make a thick, creamy consistency. Add salt and pepper and keep tasting, adding more oil if the sauce is too astringent. Cook 2/3 lb spaghetti in salted boiling water until al dente, and then drain, reserving 2 tbs of the cooking water (very important). Return to the warm pan, stir in the sauce making sure to coat every strand, and then add the reserved cooking water, loosening the mixture and completing the marriage of sauce and pasta. Add 4 tbs roughly chopped basil, and serve immediately with extra reggiano.

Good, real reggiano and excellent, completely fresh olive oil and basil are essential.

Admittedly not a great photo. But it was quite tasty.

I love risotto and have been meaning to make it for years, but had somehow never gotten around to it. This past weekend I made risotto with portobello mushrooms (John Thorne) and then risotto alla milanese (Marcella Hazan). The Thorne recipe turned out too mushroomy for my taste… I like my risotto to be about the rice. So I turned to the milanese, which doesn’t have much added besides butter, saffron, onion, reggiano and broth.

I used lamb broth because that’s what I had that was homemade and unadulterated. The rice was carnaroli, which is a hybrid of arborio with a Japanese breed and dates only from 1975. It is considered the finest risotto rice, known for a slightly chewy texture. It comes vacuum packed so seems disconcertingly hard until you cut open the bag, at which point air comes out in a puff and the grains become free and loose.

The milanese was great… but there was something missing. Of course I usually have it at restaurants with osso buco, so that unctuous marrow-infused veal sauce was missing. But Hazan also recommended putting in some pancetta or prosciutto. I had neither, but I did have city ham. Even though it had been thoroughly rubbed in very non-Italian maple syrup and brown sugar, and was smoked to boot, I decided to add it. It worked! Unlike the portobellos in the Thorne recipe, the chunks of salty, smokey, partly sweetened city ham blended perfectly with the unctuous saffrony-ness of the risotto. I recommend this combination.

The third main food group, after chocolate-covered raisins, and chicken pot pie, as many of you will remember. This ham came from Baczynsky Brothers Meat Market on Second Avenue in the East Village. It’s called a “city ham” and is boneless and sold whole, for about $20. This place is well worth visiting even if you’re not planning to buy ham – it was packed on the Saturday before Easter Sunday. There was an entertaining colloquy going on between some old duffer who had been sent to pick up his half leg of lamb and the butcher who claimed to have no record of it. We got a long long skinny sausage to nibble on, as well as an extremely, extremely tasty ribeye… worldbeating, if not as mustily aged as some.

But back to the ham. We covered it with a mix of melted brown sugar and maple syrup and put in the oven for an hour at 350 degrees. It came out meltingly (duh) delicious, but still a bit too salty-hammy for my taste. So the next day (today) we melted more brown sugar into maple syrup and did a second glaze. Victory. Absolutely kingly, served with Mestermacher rye bread and butter, plus brussels sprouts and a bottle of Morgon which valiantly held the course against all this ridiculousness.

And there’s still plenty of the ham in the fridge for snacking.

(Thanks to southerner Reuben Cox for the recommendation: “what do y’all need a country ham for, when you can get a city ham?”)

Last weekend in a fit of madness I decided to attempt a “simple autumn menu” from Richard Olney’s French Menu Cookbook. This being Olney the meal was not simple, though it looked it at first. I suppose if you’re familiar with French cooking then much of this would be second nature, but the logic of the recipe is not obvious the novice. It came out just right – possibly out of luck, and possibly from following the recipe to the letter.

The other dishes were relatively simple – a salad of grilled, peeled and cooled green, yellow and red peppers (“the taste of raw peppers contains no hint of the subtle flavor brought out through grilling”) and a method of pilaffing rice that effectively transforms it from a healthy and necessary grain into a potent and lip-smacking carrier for huge amounts of butter.

The lamb is shoulder, boned and trimmed, and then browned in the oil in which onions have cooked, in a pan “precisely the right size to hold the pieces of meat placed side by side but barely touching; if it is too large, its surfaces not contacted by the meat will burn while the meat browns; if it is so small that thepieces of meat have to be packed in, they will boil in their juices rather than brown.” So much attention to a very basic process. In any event, you brown the salted meat, caramelize sugar in it, pour off the fat, sprinkle with flour, brown the flour, return the onions to the pan, add herbs, garlic and bay leaf and cook some more. You then turn the heat up, pour in a cup of white wine, and deglaze scraping up all the bits stuck to the bottom of the pan. Tomatoes are then added, and continuing rounds of heating, skimming, skinning (two different processes, as Olney carefully explains), removing bits, returning bits – the artichokes go in only at the end.

After cooking Indian and Thai dishes with their focus on many different ingredients and pungency of flavor, or Italian dishes where the key is combining ingredients in a certain way at a certain time, I have to say that the list of ingredients looked boring and the complexity of the recipe appeared ridiculous. How could it make much difference in the taste of the lamb what size the pan was, or exactly when I skimmed or skinned?

Predictably, the answer is: a huge difference. Partly because, this being Olney, I hadn’t been keeping in mind a crucial component of the meal: the wine. His meals never stand apart from wine. We drank two wines from Maison Champy in the Côte-Chalonnaise: a white 1997 Rully “Les St.-Jacques” (the wine in the ragout) and a red 1998 Volnay “Fremiets,” both obtained cheaply as bin-ends at Burgundy Wine Company. The lamb was comforting, rich and tender on its own, but when the wine came into the equation, especially the Volnay, both took on an added dimension of voluptuousness and layered flavor.

I’ll be making this one again, when I have a lot of time to spare.

A bit belated, but here is the goose I ate for Christmas. This is the James Beard recipe. The stuffing is hand-torn bread, two sweet Italian sausages, and Granny Smith apples.

The sausage meat is decanted from its casing, broken up, fried in butter until it’s dark brown and crispy. Finely chopped onions and apples are added, along with fresh thyme and nutmeg. Stuff the bird, cut its wingtips off, close the openings with toothpicks (as shown above) and roast on a rack in a deep pan at 400 degrees F for 1 hours, then down to 350 for 1 hours, and then at 325 for a final hour or whatever – details are in Beard On Food. That works for a 12-pound goose anyway.

Goose might be one of the most delicious things there is. It’s impossible to find fresh without preordering from a butcher. This one came from Ottomanelli on Bleecker Street. It delivers an enormous quantity of fat which can then be used to make incredible french fries or just about anything else. It stores well in the fridge for months. The final roast is not fatty in the slightest (unlike duck), if you care about such things.

Click on the image for a more detailed view.