Last Chance Foods from WNYC

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CLASSES & RESOURCES IN NYC GrowNYC’s Farm Beginnings — a comprehensive agricultural training program developed for new farmers by the people who run the Greenmarket. Designed for a people looking to start farm enterprises, including urban farmers looking to scale-up and second career farm entrepreneurs.

Brooklyn Grange hosts a whole range of workshops and classes for rooftop farmers. If a full roof installation process is more than you want to take on, their Design and Installation arm will build you your very own backyard or terrace garden, rooftop farm, or green wall.

Just Food’s Farm School NYC — urban agriculture training through a certificate program and a wide range of individual courses from social justice to urban farming to grassroots community organizing. Mission: to build self-reliant communities and inspire positive local action around food access and social, economic, and racial justice issues.

Green Roofs for Healthy Cities — training towards certification in green roof and wall installation.

Eagle Street Farm — Greenpoint. This rooftop farm welcomes visitors from second graders to graduate students to learn about sky-high agriculture.

Cornell Cooperative Extension — free gardening and farming support run by NYS with offices in every single county – including Manhattan. Offering everything from soil testing to 20c processing licenses.

HUDSON VALLEY INTERNSHIPS AND INCUBATORS Stone Barns’ Growing Farmers Initiative — Westchester. Comprehensive program to help beginning farmers get the training, resources and guidance to create economically and ecologically resilient farm enterprises. Offers apprenticeships, a virtual grange, workshops on everything from beekeeping to seed saving, and an annual Young Farmers Conference which draws hundreds of beginning farmers from across the country and beyond.

Glynwood’s Farm Incubator — Cold Spring. Provides the tools and resources aspiring agricultural entrepreneurs need to develop and manage viable farm enterprises in the Hudson Valley. Provides access to land, housing, shared equipment, infrastructure, low-interest capital, business mentoring and training in sustainable farming practices.

RESOURCES & NON-PROFITS SUPPORTING NEW FARMERS Cornell’s Beginning Farmers Program — a comprehensive clearing house of resources, internships, job postings and land opportunities.

Northeast Organic Farming Association — This seven-state non-profit teaches, certifies and supports organic farms. Their semi-annual conferences offer sessions on everything from raw milk to fermentation to homesteading, complete with contra dancing and camping.

The Greenhorns — A unique resource helping young people make the transition into a career of farming. Provides information about everything from where to find an apprenticeship to how to repair a tractor. Complete with mentor matchmaker.

National Young Farmers Coalition — represents, mobilizes, and engages young farmers. Supports practices and policies to sustain young, independent and prosperous farmers now and in the future. Co-founded by an ex-Manhattanite who now grows organic vegetables in the Hudson.

Richard Wiswall’s The Organic Farmer’s Business Handbook — widely-prized bible on the business end of running a farm. Expert advice on how to make your vegetable production more efficient and how to better manage your employees and finances.

The USDA’s (great) new website for new farmers — Yes, even the USDA is focusing on new farmers. This site offers in-depth information on how to increase access to land and capital, build new market opportunities, participate in conservation opportunities, select and use risk management tools, and access USDA education and technical-support

American Farmland Trust: Transitioning Farmland to a New Generation — This longtime, stalwart non-profit is bringing its forces to bear for new farmers, offering everything from training to land links as well as targeted offerings for women landowners and conservation.

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New Yorkers' interest in where their food comes from and how it is raised has led to a robust farmers' market system, a growing interest in communty gardens and backyard enterprises like raising chickens and keeping bees, and a surprising number of urbanites who are ditching their pots of basil on their fire escape to become farmers.

While there’s not what you’d call a mass exodus from New York City, there is a perceptible upward trend in the number of people wanting to learn more about agriculture. With the number of farmers nationwide in decline, support programs are cropping up to help in that transition: Just Food runs Farm School NYC, the Stone Barns Center in Westchester County runs farmer training programs and hosts an annual sold-out Young Farmers Conference, and a growing number of other non-profits help new farmers find everything they need to take root — from land to capital to customers.

Closer to home, Chris Wayne runs FARMroots, the new farmer development program at GrowNYC, the non-profit that manages New York City's Greenmarkets program. In their offices on Chambers Street in Lower Manhattan, they offer a USDA-funded, 10-week training class that Wayne said begins with a reality check:

“Can you spend 16 hours in 95 degree heat, working your tail off, for very little money? That's the first question.”

The question is intended to knock the stars out of people's eyes and get them to start thinking more realistically about farming. But Wayne said dreaming is still necessary, and is encouraged.

"One of the first things we have [students] do," said Wayne, "is look deep into their own values: Why are they interested in starting a farm business, and what's going to be that core, central piece that they can look back on at Hour 15 on their farm, and say 'This is why I'm doing this, this is why this is important to me.'"

Once you figure the why, Wayne said it's time to consider the what, the produce or product sector that you want to get into.

What are you interested in growing, or raising? Wayne said people often come to the class already inspired by a vegetable or fruit that they had success with in their community or backyard gardens.
What skills do you already have that you could utilize? Wayne explained that farming requires "an incredibly wide range of skills," from welding to marketing plans to graphic design work for that perfect label that's going to sell your pickled green beans. "You may not be coming to agriculture with a production skill, but there's probably a lot of other things that you don't realize, other skills and experiences that you already have, that are going to play into a successful farm business."
Is there a niche you can fill with your farm product? Wayne said beginning farmers can do their own market research. "What do you see when you walk through a farmer's market? Are there some products there that are lacking? What's one of the things that you can't seem to find?"

This Farm Beginnings course takes beginning farmers from mission statement to financial plan to marketing plan. But it’s not all Excel spreadsheets. Wayne said it's also important for aspiring farmers to get out of the classroom and into the field. He said farmers in the Northeast are increasingly accepting interns and apprentices who can earn a small stipend and learn on the job. He said he believes that kind of experience, under the tutelage of an experience farmer, is essential in learning the "true art of agriculture."

"I always say, if I decided tomorrow that i wanted to be an electrician, would I walk into a house the next day, after reading a couple books, and try to set up a house with electricity? Of course not. The same is true with agriculture."

Wayne said that at the end of the course, if participants decide they want to keep their office day job after all, he considers that as much of a success as helping to launch a Future Farmer. "We really want folks who are devoted to this to get out into farms," he said.

Check out our Farm School Resources Page for more farming classes, literature about starting a farm and organizations that connect aspiring farmers with internship opportunities.

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It’s the high season for cool, slushy drinks. Nina Planck, author of several Real Food cookbooks, says her fermented watermelon basil cooler illustrates one of her key principles: when she processes food, she does it in ways that enhance nutrition, flavor, and shelf life.

Nina Planck / photo by Katherine Wolkoff

Nina's recipe for fermented watermelon basil cooler (Makes two quarts)

Ingredients

8–10 lb watermelon
8–10 Meyer lemons
small bunch of Genovese basil
1/4 c organic whole cane sugar
1/4 c fresh whey
1 T unrefined sea salt
3 c water
Make 3 cups of watermelon juice in a blender or food processor. Don’t strain the pulp.
Squeeze 1 cup of lemon juice.
Take 1/2 cup of basil leaves and gently bruise them using a mortar and pestle to release the oil.
Put all the ingredients in a 2-quart glass jar, cover with water, and close the lid tightly.
Stir and leave out at room temperature for 3 days. Allow a little carbonation to escape when necessary and replace the cap firmly. Chill and serve. Keeps up to 2 weeks in the fridge.

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SMOKED PICKLED POTATOES WITH ANCHOVY AIOLI RECIPE
by David Leite, Leite's Culinaria

Serves 4 to 6

INGREDIENTS
For the anchovy aioli

3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon Kosher salt
6 anchovy fillets, minced
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
2 large egg yolks, room temperature
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil, or 1/2 cup olive oil and 1/2 cup grapeseed oil

For the smoked pickled potatoes

2 pounds small red new potatoes, 1 to 1 1/2 in diameter, scrubbed and rinsed
Sea salt
4 cups malt vinegar
Peanut oil, for frying
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

DIRECTIONS
1. Dust the garlic with a bit of salt and, using the flat side of your knife’s blade, rub the salt back and forth into the garlic to make a paste.

Add the garlic, anchovies, lemon juice, and egg yolks to a medium bowl. Whisk to combine.
Slowly drizzle a few drops of the oil into the bowl while whisking vigorously until the mixture is smooth. Add the rest of the oil in a thin stream, all the while whisking until smooth and light yellow. Season with salt.
Add the potatoes to a large pot and add enough cold water to cover by 2 inches. Add the salt, cover, and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to medium and cook gently until tender, 10 to 12 minutes.
Meanwhile, fill a large bowl with ice and water. When the potatoes are cooked, drain them and then add them the the ice water. Let them sit until cooled completely.
Drain the potatoes and prick each potato deeply with a toothpick or thin metal skewer numerous times all over. Pour the vinegar into a medium bowl and add in the potatoes. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Let the potatoes hang out on the counter in their pickling bath overnight or for at least 8 hours.
Following manufacturer’s instructions, set up your smoker, smoker box, charcoal grill, or gas grill for cold smoking using sawdust, chips, chunks, or Bradley bisquettes. You make a makeshift smoker by heating a cast iron skillet until very hot, placing it on your turned-off grill, adding wood chips, and closing the cover.
Smoke the potatoes, making sure to keep the temperature under 100°F (38°C), for 1 hour. Remove the potatoes from the smoker. You can refrigerate the potatoes for several hours or you can immediately fry them.
Pour enough peanut oil into a heavy pot so that it reaches a depth of 2 inches. Heat the oil to 375°F, using a deep-fry or candy thermometer to monitor the temperature. While the oil is heating, place the potatoes on a flat work surface and smash them with the palm of your hand just until they crack and split.
Fry the potatoes in batches, making sure the heat never goes below 350°F, until the potatoes are golden brown, 7 to 9 minutes. Transfer the potatoes to paper towels to drain and season with sea salt and pepper. Serve immediately with plenty of the aioli on the side.

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Cilantro could very well be the world’s most polarizing herb. Those who vehemently hate it may have the aversion coded in their genes, while others happily add it to everything from salsas to soups. But maybe there’s a middle ground to be found in the cilantro wars. Perhaps cilantro’s cousin culantro is the herb diplomat to please both parties.

Culantro, with its long, narrow, slightly serrated leaves, is popularly used in Latin and Caribbean cuisine. “Culantro has kind of the base flavor of cilantro but it’s much earthier,” journalist and food writer Von Diaz explained. “It’s much more tame. It almost tastes like a hybrid of cilantro and parsley."

She described culantro as the cornerstone herb of Puerto Rican food. “We use it extensively in making what’s called ‘racaito,’ which is a component of sofrito, which I’m sure a lot of people have heard of,” Diaz said. “It’s basically a spice paste blend that’s garlic, onions, culantro, and peppers, which you then turn into a paste. You cook it down and it becomes really the base of whatever dish you’re making.”

Von Diaz

Culantro, which can be grown in containers, has the added benefit of holding up better than cilantro in longer cooking methods. Diaz recommends adding a few leaves to beans and stewed meats, for instance. “It goes really well with things that you can cook for a while,” she said.

Diaz also offered a recipe for culantro pesto, which can be used to season chicken salad. Both recipes are below.

Any cilantrophobes out there who can report back on their reaction to culantro? Tell us your take on whether culantro is an acceptable substitute.

Culantro Pesto
by Von Diaz

1 cup culantro leaves, stems removed (packed)
2 T pine nuts
2 cloves garlic
1/3 cup grated parmesan and/or pecorino romano
2 T olive oil
salt and pepper

Grind garlic, salt, and pine nuts in a food processor. Add olive oil and culantro, and process until smooth. Add cheese and pulse to incorporate.

Chicken Salad with Culantro Pesto
by Von Diaz

4 cups poached chicken (2 large breasts)
4-6 cups chicken broth or water
2-4 T mayonnaise
Juice from 1 small lime
Salt and pepper
6-8 T culantro pesto

Put chicken breasts in a saucepan and cover with broth or water. Bring pot to a boil, then remove from the burner. Cover and let sit for 17 minutes. Remove from liquid and let cool, then shred with two forks or by hand.

Mix in mayonnaise, lime juice, and culantro pesto. Add salt and pepper to taste.

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The Bronx has a weight problem, and part of that stems from parents who simply don’t know how to cook. Chef and educator Tania Lopez knows about that situation firsthand. She grew up in the South Bronx and in Puerto Rico, and says that her parents rarely cooked for her as a child.

“They were constantly working all the time and they didn’t have time to cook for me,” Lopez explained. “So I didn’t have a chance to really taste food from all over the world. And I always felt like I was left out of something.” She was determined to change that after she had children and moved back to Puerto Rico. Step one: Lopez turned to the community of women around her and started asking questions.

“I was very lucky to have moms that love to cook for their children and share their ideas,” she said. Having discovered the passion for home cooking and healthy eating, Lopez started Coqui the Chef, an initiative based in the South Bronx that promotes healthier alternatives to traditional Latino food. A big part of the organization’s mission is to introduce kids to fresh fruits and vegetables.

Lopez says that there’s one fruit that is often big hit with the kids she teaches: avocados. (Photo: Tania Lopez/Courtesy of Tania Lopez)

“It’s amazing—many of them haven’t tasted avocados,” Lopez said, adding that the fruit grows in abundance in Puerto Rico. “So we decided to add some tomato, cilantro, a little bit of onions, and some whole wheat chips, and they were like ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ They loved it... They love mashing. Who doesn’t doesn’t love mashing?”

More to the point: Who doesn’t love guacamole?

A crucial part of making delicious guacamole is picking out perfectly ripe avocadoes. Lopez first makes sure the fruit isn’t too bruised and soft. Then she examines the area where the avocado was cut from the tree.

“The stem, I flip it off. If I see that it’s... light greenish, then I said this right,” she explained. “But I’m kind of picky with it so I wait for it [to be] light green almost brown. But when it’s very green, I still think it needs half a day.”

One way to get the fruit to ripen faster is to put it in a paper bag and store it in a turned-off oven. A day later, she said, the avocado will be ripe.

While there are more than 30 different variety of avocados — including the smooth-skinned, light green variety known as “West Indian avocados" — Lopez recommend using the rough-skinned, dark green Hass variety for guacamole. Her kid-friendly recipe is below.

Recipe for Kid-Friendly Guacamole

Ingredients

2 ripe Hass avocados, peeled and pitted
6 cherry tomatoes, halved
juice of ¼ of lime
¼ cup chopped cilantro
sea salt and fresh cracked black pepper to taste
1 clove of garlic, peeled and minced (optional)
¼ cup diced red onion (optional)
¼ cup diced jalapeno (optional)

Preparation

Combine all ingredients in pilon (mortar and pestle) and mash until desired consistency is achieved. Serve immediately or chilled if preferred.

Avocado benefits: Avocados are a good source of fiber, potassium, and vitamins C, K, folate, and B6. Half an avocado has 160 calories, 15 grams of heart-healthy unsaturated fat, and only 2 grams saturated fat. One globe contains more than one-third daily value of vitamin C, and more than half the day’s requirements of vitamin K.

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Here’s a fun project for kids and apartment dwellers: Plant a radish seed in a pot, care for it, and then 25 to 30 days later, you should be able to harvest a fully grown vegetable.

When it comes to farming, a month’s time is as close to instant gratification as you can get, said Edible Manhattan editor Gabrielle Langholtz. She’s the author of The New Greenmarket Cookbook, which includes recipes from New York chefs and profiles of area farmers.

“[Radishes in the spring] are much milder and very quick to grow and prepare,” Langholtz explained. “So that’s one of the reasons they’re… one of the very first things we see.”

The bright red Cherry Belle and French breakfast radishes in season right now are an ideal complement to the bounty of leafy greens also available at the farmers market. They are crisp and tend to be milder than their fall counterparts.

“The varieties that you will buy at the greenmarket in the fall and going into winter are different varieties that have been bred for centuries for different qualities: long growing, cooler growing, better keeping,” said Langholtz. (Photo: Gabrielle Langholtz, Craig Haney, and their daughter/Anita Briggs)

The spring radishes add color and crunch to salads and make for a great quick pickle. Langholtz recommends using them in the recipe below for Sugar Snap Pea and Whipped-Ricotta Tartines. “It’s an open-faced sandwich that’s wonderfully light and fresh and delicious,” she said. “And talk about fast food. I mean, you can make it in a few minutes.”

Sugar Snap Pea and Whipped-Ricotta Tartines
by Dana Cowin, Editor in Chief, Food & Wine

Spring brings three kinds of peas—shell, snow, and snap. The first, as the name implies, must be shelled, but the other two have sweet, crunchy pods which the French call mange tout, meaning “eat it all.”

But “eat it all” can have an even broader pea meaning: The plant’s tender shoots are also perfectly edible, raw or cooked, and carry the true flavor of peas.

Here the pods and plants are served together, along with radishes, atop a tartine—or French open-faced sandwich—that’s at once creamy and light, rustic and elegant.

1 cup fresh ricotta cheese
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil, divided, plus more for brushing
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Four ½-inch-thick slices of peasant bread
1 peeled garlic clove
½ pound sugar snap peas, ends trimmed and strings discarded
2 ½ tablespoons Champagne vinegar
1 tablespoon minced shallot
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
½ cup snipped pea shoots
3 large radishes, cut into thin matchsticks
About ⅓ cup crushed red pepper, for garnish

In a medium bowl, using a whisk, whip the ricotta with 2 tablespoons of olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

Preheat a grill pan. Brush the bread on both sides with olive oil. Grill over moderate heat, turning once, until toasted but still chewy in the middle, about 2 minutes. Rub the toasts with the garlic clove and season with salt and pepper.

Prepare an ice water bath. In a large saucepan of salted boiling water, blanch the snap peas until bright green, about 1 minute. Transfer the snap peas to the ice bath to cool. Drain and pat dry, then thinly slice lengthwise.

In a medium bowl, whisk the vinegar with the shallot, mustard, and the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Add the snap peas, pea shoots, and radishes; season with salt and pepper; and toss to coat. Spread the whipped ricotta on the toasts and top with the snap pea slaw. Garnish with crushed red pepper and serve.

MAKES 4 TARTINES

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This week, cookbook authors Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell, known as the reality television duo “The Fabulous Beekman Boys,” charmingly flaunted two long-standing tenants of Last Chance Foods: Don’t sound like "Delicious Dish," and don’t antagonize the farmers.

“If people haven’t had a sweet pea before, freshly picked, then they haven’t experienced the true power of the pea,” said Kilmer-Purcell, who admitted after the taping that Last Chance Foods’ listeners could have heard a double entendre in that statement.

Ridge quickly followed up with this controversial statement: “A frozen pea is often better than a farmers market pea,” he said. Ridge went on to explain that various studies have report that between 20 percent and 80 percent of the sugar in peas and sweetcorn convert to starch within 24 hours. That’s why blanching them right after being picked and freezing them is the best way to preserve freshness. (It’s necessary to blanch the peas in order to kill an enzyme that would continue to break down the vegetable.)

“A pea that’s picked and frozen right away is going to be infinitely better than fresh pea that’s sat around for a day before shelling,” explained Ridge. “Farmers are not going to like me for that, but it’s true.” Of course, the caveat is that a fresh pea picked from a kitchen garden and eaten immediately is best of all.

That may not be possible at all this year, said Ridge and Kilmer-Purcell, authors of The Beekman 1802 Heirloom Vegetable Cookbook. They grow vegetables at their farm in Sharon Spring, N.Y., and said that everything has come in late this season, given the cool temperatures.

(Photo: Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell/Alec Hemer)

“The real danger with peas is that they have such a short growing window,” said Kilmer-Purcell. “Because once the... daytime average temperatures get above 70 degrees, they stop growing. They’re done. They stop producing. So if they don’t start growing soon and start flowering, we may not get any.”

Even if their pea plants fail to yield any sweet little green gems this season, the leaves will be edible, and the plants will help enrich the soil.

“Peas, like beans, they are nitrogen fixers, so they pull nitrogen from the air,” said Kilmer-Purcell. “They have a beneficial bacteria in their roots that grow nitrogen nodules in them.” That means pea plants serve as good companion plants for nitrogen-needing greens like spinach.

“If you ever do grow peas, don’t pull them out at the end of the season,” he added. “Just cut them off and leave the roots in the ground, because that’s where all the nitrogen is.”

An important part of the garden, peas weren’t always appreciated in their fresh form. They were traditionally dried and used throughout the winter.

“In fact fresh peas were kind of a fad in the time of Louis XIV,” Kilmer-Purcell said. “Nobody had eaten fresh peas before that. There’s a famous French diary where [it was written that] women would go home from these huge feasts, and — at the risk of great indigestion — they would eat peas before bedtime.” Shocking!

Below is a recipe for spring pea soup, which is a great way to enjoy fresh peas without risking indigestion.

Spring Pea Soup
From The Beekman 1802 Heirloom Vegetable Cookbook by Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell

(Photo: Sugar snap peas at Beekman 1802/Paulette Tavormina)

There's still a little chill in the air when the first peas are ready for picking. This soup is perfect in the spring when young lettuces are around.

SERVES 4

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 leeks, thinly sliced and well washed
6 cups tender green lettuce leaves, well washed and dried
1/3 cup fresh mint leaves
2 cups shelled fresh green peas (see Tidbit)
3/4 teaspoon coarse (kosher) salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1/3 cup heavy cream
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

In a large saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Add the leeks and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes, or until tender.

Add the lettuce and mint and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the lettuce is very tender.

Stir in the peas, salt, and pepper and stir to combine. Add the broth and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, cover, and cook for 5 minutes, or until the peas are tender and the flavors have blended.

Working in 2 batches, transfer the soup to a blender and puree until smooth. Add the cream and lemon juice and blend. Serve hot.

TIDBIT: To get 2 cups of shelled peas, you'll need to start with about 2 pounds of peas in the pod, so feel free to use frozen peas here (we'll never tell).

Reprinted from “The Beekman 1802 Heirloom Vegetable Cookbook” by Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell. Copyright (c) 2014 by Beekman 1802, LLC. By permission of Rodale Books. Available wherever books are sold.

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The cool weather this spring means that farmers markets may be looking surprisingly bare for late May. Parks and forests, however, are already bursting with life — and tasty, nutritious finds for knowledgeable foragers.

One commonly foraged favorite is lambsquarters. The leafy green grows in sunny meadows, college campuses, and even between the sidewalk cracks in Brooklyn. Forager Ava Chin might ogle the hearty specimens shooting up along city streets, but she admitted that she stays away from eating plants growing in high-traffic areas.

Lambsquarters leaves taste like spinach, and Chin likes to sauté them with garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper. In her new memoir Eating Wildly: Foraging for Life, Love and the Perfect Meal, she describes feeling like Popeye upon trying it for the first time.

“Lambsquarters has the distinction of being one of the most nutritious plants in the world,” Chin said. “It is a member of the chenopodium family, which means that it’s related to quinoa, spinach, and beets. It’s high in vitamins A and C. It’s also high in things like riboflavin, niacin, potassium, calcium, and manganese.”

The leafy, stalky plant is a sustainable choice for foragers since it is highly adaptable to various climates. “It’s actually not native to the United States,” said Chin. “It’s native to the Mediterranean and Asia, where, by the way, it’s a revered vegetable in Greek, Persian, and Bangladeshi cuisine.”

(Photo: Ava Chin/Owen Brunette)

Another important advantage of lambsquarters is that there are no poisonous look-alikes. The leaves on the tall stalky plant are triangular and give it the common name of “white goosefoot.” It’s also known as “pigweed,” and those in the U.K. might recognize it from the name “fat hen.”

“Another characteristic besides the leaves is that it has this white, powdery coating on the new growth, up at the top of the plant, and also at the bottom of the top leaves,” explained Chin. That coating is naturally produced by lambsquarters and has no effect on its edibility.

So the next time you see a tall stalk with triangular leaves and a white powdery coating on the new growth, give it a second look, positively identify it, and then give it a try in the kitchen.

“One of the great things about foraging and being in touch with nature in the city is you start to realize that there’s a great abundance of natural things that are growing all around us on every block, on every street, in every borough,” says Chin. “Nature really likes to rub its elbows against the city and, for me, that’s the interesting thing about foraging.”

Lambsquarters Ricotta Pie
Adapted from the "Wild Greens Pie" recipe in Eating Wildly: Foraging for Life, Love and the Perfect Meal

Ingredients

Pie pastry, enough for base and latticework topping

Filling

2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
1 clove of garlic, crushed
1 medium onion, diced
3 cups of lambsquarters
1 cup of spinach, Swiss chard, or store-bought dandelions, roughly chopped
1 cup mustard greens, roughly chopped
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
15-ounce container ricotta cheese
½ cup grated Pecorino Romano (can substitute Parmesan)
½ grated fontina cheese (or any other good melting cheese you prefer)
½ cup grated mozzarella cheese
3 large eggs, beaten
1 egg white, optional
1 teaspoon water, optional
Preheat oven to 350°F. Press pastry into a 10-inch diameter springform pan. Build pastry up wall of pan at least 1½ inches tall.
In a pan over medium flame, heat 1 teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil. Add the garlic until lightly browned (3 minutes), and sauté the onions about another 3 minutes. Heat the remaining teaspoon of oil, then mix in the wild and store-bought greens, salt, and pepper. Sauté until all liquid from the greens evaporates, about 3 minutes.
Combine the ricotta, romano, fontina, mozzarella, and eggs in a large bowl. Add the wild greens mixture, blending well.
Spoon the filling into the pastry-covered pan. Cut the remaining pastry into thin strips and weave into a latticework topping; place over pie, trimming edges. Mix the egg white with water and brush over pastry, if using. Bake until the filling is set in center and browning on top, approximately 40 minutes.

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For Rose Wang, it all started with a scorpion street snack in China. She bit into the insect on a dare and was surprised.

“[It was] not what I expected,” says Wang, who went on to co-found the insect-based food company Six Foods with her Harvard classmates Laura D’Asaro and Meryl Natow. “It tasted really great and really made me think, ‘Okay, is there another way to eat protein that’s more sustainable?’”

In particular, the entrepreneurs see crickets as a more sustainable source of protein. For one thing, the little chirpers are far less energy-intensive to raise. Here’s how the math breaks down: One pound of beef requires 2,000 gallons of water and 25 bags of feed. By comparison, one pound of cricket protein can be produced with 1 gallon of water and 2 bags of feed.

“What’s so great about crickets is that it’s an animal protein, so it’s all nine essential amino acids,” Wang adds. “It’s also really high in calcium and a lot of other vitamins and minerals.”

She says the taste might even be vaguely familiar. “The way I describe it is [that] it tastes like shrimp without a fishy taste, so it is somewhat similar to a lot of the crustaceans that we’re used to eating,” Wang explained. “There is a difference in flavor profile, but it’s not bad.”

(Photo: "Chirp" cricket chips/Courtesy of Rose Wang)

While most everyone can agree that insects are the more environmentally friendly version of protein, there’s still the inescapable ick factor. The founders of Six Foods found that crickets presented people with the lowest barrier to entry. “When we presented people with different foods at the very beginning… we had mealworms, wax worms, hornworms, and then crickets… crickets were always the least scary,” Wang says.

Daniella Martin, the author of Edible: An Adventure Into the World of Eating Insects and the Last Great Hope to Save the Planet, agrees. “Crickets are familiar, they have a reasonably good public image because of characters like Jiminy Cricket,” she says. “People are a lot less grossed out by something like a cricket versus something like a meal worm.”

Six Foods has gone one step further to make crickets into a non-scary, recognizable form: chips. The cricket chips, called “Chirps,” are made from cricket flour.

(Photo: Rose Wang and Laura D'Asaro)

Cute names and novelty aside, crickets could also be the most viable form of edible insects. “Crickets are also the only insect that’s produced at scale within the U.S.,” says Wang. “To us, if we can ease our supply chain and make sure we know where we’re getting our crickets from and we can go visit those farms and know exactly their process, that makes us feel better about the food that we’re using.”

What do you think? Have you ever eaten a bug and liked it? Could crickets and other insects be the protein source to save the planet?

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The days are getting longer, and that’s welcome news for humans and chickens alike. More daylight means hens have more time to eat bugs. That additional protein makes for richer eggs with deeply orange yolks. Here’s a suggestion on what to do what all that springtime bounty of eggs: Make a frittata.

The egg dish is a favorite, fast weeknight meal in Martha Rose Shulman’s household.

“[Frittatas] are very forgiving, and they’re a great vehicle for vegetables,” said Shulman, the author of The Simple Art of Vegetarian Cooking and the "Recipes for Health" columnist for The New York Times.

She recommends frittatas as a great way to highlight seasonal vegetables or whatever is wilting in your crisper drawer. Even leftover risotto can take a starring role. Shulman does advise blanching greens before adding them into the egg mixture. Otherwise they’ll release water while being cooked and make the dish a watery mess.

The template recipe below sketches out the basics and is easily adaptable to whatever ingredients are on hand. Mix together eggs, vegetables, a little milk, and seasoning, and then pour the whole mixture in a hot oiled pan.

“You shake it a little bit so that it’s a little bit fluffy,” explained Shulman. “But what you want to be doing is cooking layers — just for the first minute or two. And then you’ve got a couple of layers of egg cooked. And then what I do is I turn the heat down very, very low, and I put a cover over the pan for 10 minutes and just let that cook through.”

At that point, she fires up the broiler. Once the frittata is mostly set and there’s still a little runny egg on top, Shulman runs it under the broiler to finish it off. “Usually it doesn’t take more than a minute to set that top layer,” she added.

Those who prefer runny eggs can even skip the broiler step. A fully set frittata has the advantage of being portable, though.

“Ideally, you will let it sit for at least 10 or 15 minutes before you either slide it out of the pan onto a platter or just cut it into wedges,” explained Shulman, who often slices the frittatas into diamond shapes to serve as appetizers.

Frittatas serve as a particularly versatile party food. Not only are they portable and pretty, they’re also best enjoyed at room temperature.

“It was a dish that farm workers would take out to the fields and have as their sort of late morning meal in the fields because it’s so portable,” Shulman said. “I do frittatas for entertaining all the time.”

Basic Frittata
by Martha Rose Shulman from The Simple Art of Vegetarian Cooking

MAKES ONE 2- TO 8-EGG FRITTATA

This template gives you instructions for making a range of serving sizes, from the 2-egg frittata for one to an 8-egg frittata for six--or for a crowd if you serve it as an appetizer. The technique for a frittata containing more than 4 eggs is a little different for a 2- or 4-egg frittata, because the smaller frittatas cook more quickly and don't require any slow, covered cooking. I finish larger frittatas under the broiler.

2 to 8 eggs
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 to 2 tablespoons milk (2 percent or whole; I use 1 tablespoon for every 4 eggs)
The filling of your choice (see variation recipes, pages 73-77)
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
Beat the eggs in a large bowl. Stir in salt and pepper to taste, the milk, and filling.
Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in a heavy 8-inch nonstick skillet. Hold your hand above it; it should feel hot. Drop a bit of egg into the pan and if it sizzles and seizes at once, the pan is ready. Pour in the egg mixture. Swirl the pan to distribute the eggs and filling evenly over the surface. During the first few minutes of cooking, shake the pan gently and tilt it slightly with one hand while lifting up the edges of the frittata with a wooden or heatproof silicone spatula in your other hand, letting the eggs run underneath.

2- OR 4-EGG FRITTATA:
Use an 8-inch skillet. A 2-egg frittata will be done quickly, with just the tilting of the pan and letting the eggs run underneath until it is no longer or only slightly moist on the top (the way the French like them). Once it is set, slide it out of the pan onto a plate. If you do want to brown it on the other side you can flip it over, either with a spatula or by pushing the pan away from you, then with a quick jerk of the wrist quickly pulling it toward you and jerking the pan upward at the same time. Cook for only a few seconds on the other side, then reverse out of the pan. You will probably want to flip a 4-egg frittata and cook it on the other side. (Or you can run it under the broiler briefly, see Step 3). To flip it: Use a wide spatula or the jerking motion I just described. Or, slide it onto a dinner plate or a saucepan lid with a handle (this is handy; in Spain they have a special implement that looks like a lid, just for flipping tortillas), then place the pan--upside down--over the plate or lid. Being careful not to touch the pan, hold the plate (or lid) and pan together, flip the pan back to its upright position, and place on the stove. (I can do this with an 8-inch pan, but not with a larger one.) Cook on the top of the stove for another minute or two to set the eggs. Slide out of the pan onto a plate or platter. Continue with Step 4.

6- OR 8-EGG FRITTATA:
For larger frittatas, after the bottom has set, you will cover and cook the frittata over low heat before finishing under the broiler. Use a heavy 10-inch nonstick skillet. Begin cooking as directed in Step 2. Once a few layers of egg have cooked during the first couple of minutes on the stove, turn the heat down to low, cover (use a pizza pan if you don't have a lid that will fit your skillet), and cook for 10 minutes, shaking the pan gently every once in a while. From time to time, remove the lid and loosen the bottom of the frittata by sliding your spatula between the bottom of the frittata and the pan, tilting the pan and allowing egg on the top to run underneath, so that the bottom doesn't burn. It will, however, turn golden. The eggs should be just about set, with a thin wet layer on top; cook a few minutes longer if they're not.

Meanwhile, heat the broiler. Uncover the pan and place the frittata under the broiler, not too close to the heat, for 1 to 3 minutes, watching very carefully to make sure the top doesn't burn (it can brown in spots and puff under the broiler, but burnt eggs taste bitter). Remove from the heat, shake the pan to make sure the frittata isn't sticking, and allow it to cool for at least 5 minutes or up to 15. Loosen the edges with your spatula and carefully slide from the pan onto a large round platter.
Allow to cool completely if desired. Cut into wedges or into smaller bite-size diamonds. Serve hot, warm, at room temperature, or cold.

ADVANCE PREPARATION: In Mediterranean countries, frittatas are served at room temperature, which makes them perfect do-ahead dishes. They'll keep in the refrigerator for 2 to 3 days. They do not reheat well but they're good cold or at room temperature.

8-Egg Frittata with Asparagus, Fresh Peas, Tarragon, and Chives
by Martha Rose Shulman from The Simple Art of Vegetarian Cooking

MAKES ONE 10-INCH FRITTATA, SERVING 4 TO 6

You can get asparagus pretty much year-round in natural foods markets and supermarkets, and in California it's almost always available at farmers' markets. But it's a spring and early summer vegetable in temperate climates, as are peas.

Make the Basic Frittata template (above) with the following filling ingredients and specifications:

3/4 pound asparagus, trimmed
3/4 cup shelled fresh peas (1 pound in the pod)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives
2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan (optional)
Steam the asparagus until tender, about 5 minutes. Refresh with cold water, drain, and pat dry. Cut into 1/2-inch slices. Steam the peas for 5 minutes, until tender.
In Step 1, use 8 eggs, 2 tablespoons milk, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Stir in the chives, tarragon, asparagus, peas, and Parmesan (if using).
Proceed with Step 2, using a 10-inch skillet, then follow the recipe instructions for a 6- to 8-egg frittata.

ADVANCE PREPARATION: The asparagus can be prepared a day ahead and kept in the refrigerator. The frittata can be prepared several hours or even a day ahead, covered, and refrigerated until shortly before serving. It does not reheat well but it's good cold or at room temperature.

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Some people like a shot of espresso to get the morning started. How about a quick slug of cactus slime instead? That’s the drink of choice at some juice stands in Mexico.

“A lot of people think that the slime is really nutritious,” said Lesley Téllez, a food writer who runs the culinary tourism company Eat Mexico. “I’ve seen some places where… they just sell the slime, you know, on it’s own. You can take it to go, and... have it for a quick morning pick-me-up.”

Known as “baba,” or the Spanish word for “drool,” that clear ooze comes from nopales, or prickly pear cactus paddles. That type of cactus is a popular in Mexican cuisine, and tastes slightly acidic, with a raw texture that’s slightly crunchier than green beans.

Nopales are available throughout the city in grocery stores and bodegas catering to Mexican communities. Téllez likes to get her nopales and other Mexican staples from Corona’s Farm in Queens. She admits that she prefers to get the ones that have already been cleaned, since getting rid of the cactus spines can be a tricky operation.

That’s not to say it can’t be done at home. It just takes a fair degree of caution and patience.

First, Téllez wraps her non-dominant hand in dish towels. Then she hangs on to the nopales at the narrow end. “You definitely need to hold onto it, for sure,” Téllez added. “You don’t want to be whacking away at it with a knife while it’s sitting there on the cutting board. That’s a recipe for disaster.”

Then with a very sharp knife in her dominant hand, she gingerly begins shaving off the nopales spines. “You want to slice away at the spines as easy as you can without having thorns sort of flying around, so I go very slowly,” Téllez said. Do that until it’s prickle-free — or just buy the nopales that have already been cleaned and save yourself the trouble.

(Photo: Lesley Téllez/Courtesy of Lesley Téllez)

Once relieved of its spines, there are a number of ways to prepare the cactus. Boil it lightly and put it in taco. “Another really simple way you can cook them is to grill them,” Téllez said. “So you just take a cleaned paddle, and you score it. And you sprinkle it with some salt and pepper and some olive oil, and you grill it in on a really high heat.”

If you’re wary of the slimy texture, Téllez has an entertaining, if messy, method of de-oozing the nopales. It involves cutting up the cleaned cactus and rubbing salt into the flesh.

“It’s actually really fun to do if you have, like, 10 minutes in your kitchen,” she said. “So you rub the salt into the flesh and what it does is it unleashes all of this slime from the cactus so your hands get really slimy — which is fun, for me.”

The result of that salt scrub is a raw vegetable that can be added to salads or as a garnish. “You’re left with this really crunchy, raw, bright green, beautiful vegetable,” Téllez said.

For those who enjoy the texture of cooked nopales, check out Téllez’s recipe below for Stuffed Nopales with Black Beans, Cheese, and Roasted Red Pepper.

Also, if you’re interested in a drink to serve for Cinco de Mayo on Monday, check out this recipe from Saveur for Prickly Pear Margaritas. Get started now, since you need to find prickly pears (the fruit of the same cactus that produces nopales) and soak them in tequila for two days.

Stuffed Nopales with Black Beans, Cheese, and Roasted Red Pepper Recipe
By Lesley Téllez, The Mija Chronicles
(Photo: Stuffed nopales/Lesley Téllez)

Makes: 4 servings

Note: When buying cactus, make sure the paddles are bright green and not brown in spots. Many grocery stores sell them already cleaned, but sometimes upon further inspection, they’ve got a few spines. You’ll want to remove those with a sharp knife — the LA Times has a good tutorial on how to clean nopales. It’s best to use the cactus as soon as you can, and don’t store it in a plastic bag in your refrigerator as that will create moisture and make the paddles go bad. The cactus can be boiled a day ahead of time and stored in an airtight container. If you don’t have bean broth, you can use water or chicken/vegetable broth.

Ingredients

For the cactus:

Kosher salt
Half a red onion, peeled and cut into large chunks
1 garlic clove, peeled and smashed
8 medium cactus paddles

For the beans:

2 cups cooked black beans (or a 14 ounce can), with about ¾ cup bean broth
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
About 1 tablespoon canola, grapeseed, or peanut oil
1/4 red onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
2 teaspoons finely chopped canned chipotle pepper in adobo
For the toppings:
1 1/4 cups (about 3 ounces) grated mild white cheese, such as Monterey Jack
1 red, yellow, or orange pepper, roasted, peeled and sliced into thin strips
Chopped fresh cilantro, for garnish (optional)

Instructions

For the cactus:

Fill a large bowl halfway with ice water and set aside. Fill a large saucepan about halfway with well salted water and add the onion and garlic. Bring water to a boil over high heat, then add the cactus paddles. (The water should just about cover the cactus.) Cook until the paddles turn a khaki-green color and are slightly soft, about 3 minutes.

Remove cactus from boiling water and immediately place in the ice water bath to halt the cooking. While the cactus paddles cool, heat the oven to 425°F (or to broil) and arrange a rack at least 6-inches from the heat source. When cactus is cool, remove from ice water, pat dry, and discard water.

For the beans:

Stir beans together with cumin, Mexican oregano, salt, and ground black pepper. Heat a medium frying pan over medium heat and add the oil. When oil is shimmering, add the onion and cook, stirring a few times, until translucent, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and chopped chipotle, stirring until the oil turns a lovely reddish color and you start to smell a chili-garlic aroma.

In one quick pour, add the beans and about half of the broth to the pan. Using a bean masher — in Mexico this is called an aplastador (I use a wooden one just like these Rancho Gordo bean mashers) — or the bottom of a cup, mash the beans into a paste. Add more broth if the beans look too dry and take care not to overheat the beans or they’ll dry out too quickly. Once you have your desired consistency, cook the beans for about 5 minutes, stirring often so they don’t stick, until flavors combine.

To assemble nopales, line up cactus paddles on a rimmed baking sheet. Add a thin layer of beans to each cactus paddle and sprinkle evenly with cheese. Bake until cheese is golden-brown and bubbly and cactus is knife tender, about 10 to 15 minutes. Add roasted red peppers in a pretty little mound in the middle to garnish, and top with a sprinkle of chopped cilantro.

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We're a little late to the game on this, but it still sounds tasty, so we're calling this a "Past Chance Foods" recipe. It comes from copy editor Francine Almash's mother, Victoria.

Easter Wheat Pie
by Victoria Almash

Makes filling for two pies

1 can soaked wheat (one brand is Asti) or use the recipe* below for cooked wheat berries
1.4 cup hot (scalded) milk
¼ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. sugar
1 ½ lbs ricotta
1 cup sugar
6 egg yolks (beaten)
1 tbs. orange water
¼ cup diced citron
¼ cup diced orange peel
4 egg whites (beaten stiff)
1 tsp. vanilla
Pie crust enough for two pie shells and lattice work

In the scalded milk, mix can of wheat, ¼ tsp salt and ¼ tsp sugar. Remove from heat, add citron and orange peel. Set aside.

Meanwhile prepare filling: Beat ricotta and cup of sugar. Then add 6 egg yolks, vanilla and orange water. Blend well. Stir in prepared wheat. Then fold in beaten egg whites.

Pour into pie shell. Arrange strips crisscross over filling to the edge. Roll bottom overhand up over the strips at the edge and flute heavily.

Bake in preheated oven (350 degrees) for 1 hour or until firm in the center.

Let cool with oven door open. Serve sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar.

*Cooking with Wheat Berries
by Amber Waves Farm

Ingredients

1 cup wheat berries (makes approximately 3 cups)
1 tbs salt

Cooking: Add 1 cup wheat berries, 3 cups of water and a tablespoon of salt to a medium saucepan, and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat and bring to a simmer, then cook for 50 minutes or until wheat berries are soft and chewy. (For faster cook time and softer wheat berries, soak wheat berries in water overnight prior to cooking). Drain any excess water and transfer to a bowl to cool. Toss with a splash of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Storage: If not using immediately, store the cooked wheat berries in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator for up to a week. To reheat, put wheat berries in frying pan with splash of water, stirring over low heat until hot.

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The image of rolling wheat fields calls to mind sprawling Midwestern farms, but that may be changing. Just look at Amber Waves Farm in Amagansett, Long Island, where farmers Katie Baldwin and Amanda Merrow are growing wheat on 16 acres.

They started their farm in 2009, bucking the then-emerging, now-rampant, gluten-free trend. “For every customer that we sell wheat berries or our whole wheat flour to, there is a customer that is really excited that we’re working to close the gap in the foodshed in the Northeast by bringing grains back from the Midwest,” said Baldwin.

In addition, Merrow said, there’s a growing interest in the nutritional benefits of whole grains like wheat berries. “Wheat berries are wheat seeds,” she explained. They are what farmers plant in the fall, and the young sprouted seeds quickly grow into wheat grass. Put wheat berries through a mill and the result is flour. In their complete form, they can be cooked for use in numerous applications — as a breakfast food or in salads and soups.

Baldwin and Merrow use an electric table-top stone mill that they’ve named “Milton” to grind wheat berries into flour. Their customers have also used Vitamixes and food processors to tackle the job. There’s a notable benefit to locally grown wheat and freshly milled flour.

“You can imagine a tomato being a fresh tomato, an heirloom tomato picked from your garden, and the burst of flavor that that has and its freshness,” said Baldwin. “Grains also have a terroir. We’re by the beach, so it picks up traces of flavor in the soil and elements there. And bread should have a lot of flavor characteristics.” She adds that the wheat grown at Amber Waves Farm has a nutty flavor with hints of cinnamon and nutmeg.

(Photo: Katie Baldwin and Amanda Merrow/Courtesy of Amber Waves Farm)

New York City farmers markets have been key in creating the demand for locally grown wheat. Bakers who sell at the greenmarkets use as much as 65,000 pounds of local flour each month.

Turns out that New Yorkers aren’t the only ones appreciating the local wheat. “Really our primary challenge on the East End, in addition to expensive land, is that there are a lot of deer on the East End who also love wheat berries,” said Merrow. “And so that’s really our greatest challenge, is trying to keep the deer away from the wheat.”

What the deer don’t realize is that cooking wheat berries make them even more delicious. Below, check out instructions from Amber Waves Farm on how to cook wheat berries. Then you can use those prepared wheat berries in the spring salad recipe below or in this Easter Wheat Pie recipe.

Cooking with Wheat Berries

Ingredients

1 cup wheat berries (makes approximately 3 cups)
1 tbs salt

Simple Spring Wheat Berry Salad
by Amber Waves Farm

1 cup cooked wheat berries
5 sliced radishes
1 cup chopped arugula or spinach
1 tbs of chopped chives
1/4 cup of chopped parsley
3 tbs extra virgin olive oil
3 tbs lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation: Add vegetables and herbs to the wheat berries and mix in the olive oil and lemon juice. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve at room temperature.

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Ignore the recent chilly blast of weather, spring is here and so are the blooms. Some of those cheerful flowers aren’t just a treat for the eye—they’re tasty, too. Violas are one edible variety. They’re part of the pansy family, and you can find them at farmers markets now.

“Fresh flowers are one of the few things that you’ll be hard pressed to find packaged in a store,” says Annie Novak, a rooftop farmer and co-founder of Eagle Street Rooftop Farm. “So really the pleasure of eating a flower garnish is you can almost guarantee it’s coming right out of a garden nearby.”

Novak is also the manager of the New York Botanical Garden’s Edible Academy, where she works to teach children about the connection between gardening and healthy eating. She points out that, as a children’s educator, edible flowers like violas are an easy way to get kids interested in food. Even simple tricks like floral ice cubes (directions below) can be an incentive for them to stay hydrated.

For the adults, the appeal of eating violas is also simple. “They’re one of the easiest ways to make a very simple dish appear quite fancy,” says Novak.

Naturally, not all flowers are edible, so do your research before chomping away. (The New York Botanical Garden has this list for reference.) Novak advises the sensible step of planting only nontoxic flowers if you’re introducing your kids to edible blooms. She recommends avoiding things like angel's trumpet, which reportedly causes hallucinations. Sound advice, that.

(Photo: Annie Novak with Julia and Janine Gayenelo at the New York Botanical Garden/Victor Chu)

As for the rest of us worried about ingesting unexpected chemicals or pesticides, Novak recommends starting the flowers from seed or asking your plant purveyor if they were treated in any way with chemicals. “And if it was, you can wash it or pick off the flowers before you start to eat them,” Novak adds. “Picking off the flowers will actually encourage more blooms and more growth so it will work out the best.”

Violas should be a hit with kids and adults alike, since they’re sweet and have a mild floral taste. “The texture is a really important part of the taste of flowers because the petals themselves are very soft,” adds Novak. “It’s a weird combination but [they have] like a crystalline, velvety, melt-in-your-mouth kind of texture.

If you're looking to keep your little ones entertained this weekend, The New York Botanical Garden's Culinary Kids Food Festival has a variety of food and plant focused activities going on through Monday, April 21.

Floral Ice Cubes

Ice cube tray: larger sizes work better because the ice will melt less quickly
Boiled, distilled water: This makes for the clearest-looking ice cubes
Edible flowers (such as violas), enough for each ice cube

Fill the trays ⅓ of the way with the boiled, distilled water.

Place the flowers face down in the water and freeze.

Fill ⅔ of the way with more of the water, freeze.

Fill to the top and freeze.

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Day One:

Mix together

50g whole rye or wheat flour
50g whole wheat flour
100g cool water (either tap water that has been sitting for several hours or bottled water. Water straight from the tap can have a high chlorine content that will kill off the tiny number of organisms present in the flour.)

Total: 200g starter

It’s good to start with whole rye flour because it has higher trace levels of the desired microorganisms in it, but just whole wheat will also work fine.

Let sit for 48 hours at 60-65F. If you don’t have a suitable spot, you can leave it in the fridge for the first 12 hours and then put it in the coolest spot in the house. The window sill at night is great for this step. The important thing here is to prevent undesirable organisms from invading your starter. Once the colony is established it will be too acidic for anything but the yeast and bacteria you desire. Clean hands and tools are essential.

It will do NOTHING for the first 24 hours, but it should double in size by the end of 48. Seemingly, from nothing, you have begun something. Should smell slightly alcoholic, but not necessarily sour. If it gets fuzzy with mold, pitch it and start over; and wash your hands next time.

Day Three, etc:

Discard half (or build a second starter for a friend) and feed with:

50g rye, whole wheat or white flour
50g water around 75F

Total: 200g starter

Let sit for 24 hours at room temperature (75F).

It should double in size by the end of the 24 hours.

After a few days of regular feeding, it will begin to ripen more quickly. Once it reaches a point where it doubles in size in 8-12 hours, you can begin to think about baking with it, but your first loaves will be noticeably lacking in sourdough flavor. While you have built up a healthy colony of bread-raising yeasts, the bacterial colony that gives sourdough bread its distinctive flavor takes more time to develop. Now is a good time to work on patience, one of the most important characteristics of a good baker. With regular care and feeding the little guys will flourish.

You can skip all this nonsense if you know a baker who keeps a starter... just ask, they always have extra and you only need a little.

Ripeness: Your starter is ripe when it is bubbly and aromatic. There will be tiny soap-like bubbles. It will smell slightly alcoholic and taste noticeably sour. A pinch off the top will float in water. It should have some structure, like a thick batter. If it is watery and thin, with a layer of precipitated gluten on the bottom of the container, it is over fermented. Discard half and double the remainder before baking with it.

Care and Feeding: I keep my sourdough starter at 125% hydration (that is, for every 100g of flour there are 125g water). This recipe gives you a starter at 100% hydration. You don’t have to convert it, but I like it better at 125%. I think it’s easier to manage, because it’s too loose to double in size like a 100% leaven does. The balance of acids produced is also slightly different and to my palate more pleasant.

The starter shouldn't spend all its life in the fridge. It’s best not to refrigerate starter that’s super ripe, since the bacteria will continue to work even at refrigerator temperatures and will continue to acidify the culture. As the pH drops the culture will become less habitable for the yeast and bacteria. For periods up to 36 hours, it's not a big deal, but it is not suitable for long term storage.

It is also not good to refrigerate a starter that has just been fed. In this case, the yeast and bacteria make up an exceedingly small portion of the overall volume and the culture is not acidic enough at this point to prevent other, undesirable microorganisms such as mold from infecting your culture.

If you want to take a break from baking you can convert your starter into a stiff starter (60g of water for every 100g flour) and let it ferment for a few hours before refrigerating. The lower hydration will keep the fermentation in check and it should keep for up to 3 weeks in this state. It will need refreshing before you bake with it again, but your colony should survive.

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If you’re an apartment-bound urbanite with nary a backyard to plant, here’s a micro-farming solution acceptable for even the smallest spaces: Grow yourself a sourdough starter, also known as a levain.

“It’s a little like farming,” said Austin Hall, the head baker at She Wolf Bakery. “You’re trying to grow this organism that is going to help you raise the bread.”

So if you’re not cleaning out your kitchen this weekend in preparation for Passover, consider combining some good flour with water, and then letting it sit in a cool spot for a two days. There’s yeast naturally present on the flour, and it just needs nurturing.

“What you’re trying to do is cultivate a colony of yeast and bacteria,” Hall said. “It doesn’t sound very appetizing but, trust me [it is].”

Since there are only two ingredients that go into making a starter, pay attention to each. First of all, don’t use white flour. Instead, choose a whole wheat or whole rye flour. She Wolf Bakery, which supplies restaurants including Roman’s and Marlow and Sons, gets some of its flour from local purveyors at the Union Square Farmers Market.

“All those nutritious things that are good for humans are also good for tiny bacteria,” Hall said. “In about two days, you can get the very beginning of a culture. If you’re starting from nothing, it takes probably a week before… you’ll have a strong enough culture that you can actually bake a loaf of bread from it.”

(Photo: Austin Hall/Courtesy of She Wolf Bakery)

Ingredient number two for a sourdough starter is water. Hall explained that New York City’s tap water is chlorinated, so it’ll kill microorganisms unless the chlorine is allowed to evaporate.

“It’s most important when you’re very first starting out to use either distilled, bottled water,” he explained, “or you can take regular tap water and let it sit on the counter for 8 to 12 hours, and all that chlorine will off gas and you can mix dough with it.”

Finally, add a healthy dash of patience. Nothing will happen to the flour and water mixture in the first 24 hours. Even after it begins to double in size, there’s still a few more weeks of tending to do.

“Don’t get discouraged in the beginning if it doesn’t taste like sourdough,” Hall said. “It’s far easier to cultivate the yeast colony than it is to cultivate the bacterial colony. It takes probably three weeks of regular of feeding before you’ll get enough of a bacterial colony for it to really taste like sourdough bread.”

If all this sounds more like the unnecessary hassle of tending a Tamagotchi pet, rather than watching the fascinating activities of an ant farm, there’s another option. Cozy up to a baker and ask for a piece of starter. Keep it alive by regular feedings, and, boom, you’re ready to go.

On the other hand, if you’re ready to get yeast farming, check out Hall’s directions for creating a sourdough starter.

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When it comes to vegetables, it must be hard to be a rutabaga. As a cross between a cabbage and a turnip, the humongous, humble-looking root vegetable can easily be overlooked when compared to the delicate fiddlehead ferns available in the early spring.

But here at Last Chance Foods, we like the underdog vegetables. That’s one reason WNYC’s Amy Eddings recently bought a huge rutabaga from Conuco Farm’s Hector Tejada at the Fort Greene farmers market. Despite all her good intentions, the poor rutabaga languished in her refrigerator for three weeks, slowly drying out and becoming slightly squishy.

A rescue mission was called. The root vegetable was hauled back to the farmers market for a professional consult with Tejada, whose farm is located in New Paltz, N.Y. He explained that the rutabaga was fine to eat, though perhaps better for a cooked application since it was getting a little soft.

“You want it crisp and crunchy when they’re raw,” Tejada said, adding that he usually eats the vegetable raw.

Eddings’ rutabaga and those at the market now were harvested last year, around Thanksgiving, he added. They take about 120 days to reach their gargantuan size, and usually experience several frosts before being harvested. The cold weather helps make them sweeter.

“They can be sitting in the field and they can be in the morning… completely icy and basically frozen,” Tejada said. “And later when the day gets warmer and the sun shines, they just defrost and the same happens with the greens.”

(Photo: Rutabagas from Conuco Farm at the Fort Greene farmers market.)

The greens are edible, too, and taste like slightly spicier turnip greens. At this point in the year, though, the greens were cut off months ago. For optimal long-term storage, Tejada keeps the rutabagas, still covered in dirt, in closed rubber bins that have holes punched in them for air circulation.

The vegetables are washed before arriving at the market, and Tejada said to keep them in the refrigerator at home. “You don’t want to leave it exposed to the air,” he explained. “You want to keep in either a plastic bag or a sealed container.”

Tejada, who hails from the Dominican Republic, explained that rutabagas are easy to prepare.

He roasts them with butter, olive oil, salt and pepper. He also said that many of his customers like to steam them and mash them with potatoes.

“It was not something that I grew up eating at all,” Tejada admitted. “I love them. I have them even, like, caramelized with maple syrup, like a candy.”

For that, he mixes chunks of rutabaga with maple syrup or honey and seasons it before covering the dish with aluminum foil and roasting it in the oven. He then broils it uncovered until the rutabaga is crispy.

If you want the details of that, you’ll have to visit Tejada at the farmers market. Eddings ended up slicing her rutabaga into strips and using Food52’s recipe for Rutabaga “Cacio e Pepe.”

Rutabaga “Cacio e Pepe”
by savorthis

Ingredients

1 rather large rutabaga (sliced yielded about 4 cups)
4 tablespoons butter
black pepper
¾ cups parmegiano reggiano, grated
¼ cup ricotta salata

Get the full recipe at Food52.

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Heads up to Mallomars fans out there: The season for the chocolate-covered, marshmallow-and-graham-cracker cookie is nearly over. Yes, this packaged and processed cookie has a season.

Mallomars are only made by Nabisco from September through March. The reason for that began when the cookies were invented 100 years ago, at a time that predated refrigeration. The cookies have a thin chocolate shell that would melt during the warmer months. The cool-month schedule continued on track — due to a combination of tradition and, likely, savvy marketing — even after refrigeration came into existence.

“I suppose it also creates a cult-like demand for it,” said Wall Street Journal columnist Ralph Gardner Jr., who has an admitted obsession for the confection.

Even sticking to the cold-weather delivery does not ensure a perfect cookie every time, apparently. “You’d assume that if it has all these preservatives or whatever that… any box should be pristine or perfect, but that’s not the case,” Gardner said. And that is the key to this oddly seasonal, weirdly delicate cookie.

“The difference between a fresh Mallomar and a stale Mallomar is the difference between bliss and despair,” wrote Gardner his “Urban Gardner” column.

(Photo: Ralph Gardner Jr.in action/Courtesy of Ralph Gardner Jr.)

The chocolate on a “fresh” specimen should snap when being bitten into. On a stale one, it can be chalky or cracked. “If it becomes cracked and air is allowed to enter through the chocolate, then the marshmallow is sort of tough and stale,” he said. The same staleness even permeates the cookie.

He explained that, while the boxes emerging from Nabisco are likely uniformly perfect in the way of processed foods, supermarkets may be far less sensitive to the optimal condition under which the cookies need to remain perfectly fresh.

In one case, Gardner noticed that a display of the cookies were located under one grocery store’s heat lamp. So, despite digging through boxes to find the one with the most recent sell-by date, the cookies he brought home were less than perfect. So subtle is Gardner’s Mallomar palate, that though the cookies were in the same box, he noted some of them differed from their brethren in freshness.

“It sort of introduces connoisseurship to a cookie that really has no right to be open to that,” he admitted. And while NPR reported that some fans hoard Mallomars in their freezers for year-round availability, Gardner is staunchly opposed to doing so. For him, it’s all about enjoying the perfect cookie while its in season.

“I just can’t believe that a frozen Mallomar tastes as good as one fresh out of the box,” Gardner said.

Gardner’s clearly not the only super-fan out there. Bouchon Bakery has created a $3.95, made-from-scratch version called the “Mallowmore.” By some accounts, it lives up to the original. It’s certain that Gardner is on yet another cookie-related mission to find out.

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Consider the onion: It forms the backbone of so many dishes, but rarely serves as a main ingredient. Is it because we’re worried about the stink of onion breath? Dirt Candy chef Amanda Cohen says to grab some toothpaste and just get over it.

“That’s why [toothpaste] was invented, right?” she said. “You can’t be afraid of a vegetable. The vegetable’s way more afraid of you.”

There are plenty of ways beyond traditional French onion soup to make the humble allium a star ingredient. At Dirt Candy, Cohen began serving a grilled onion salad with red onions and shallots. The side became so popular that it won a spot on the menu as a main salad.

Red onions are particularly good in salad and stir-fries because they’re sweeter than white or yellow onions. They also add a welcome pop of color.

Vidalia onions are so sweet that Cohen is incorporating them into a dessert. “We’re just actually caramelizing them and mixing them right now into a... fudge kind of chocolate,” she said. “And it’s almost like a chocolate prune tart. That’s what it tastes like, and it’s sort of blowing all of our minds how delicious it is.”

(Photo: Amanda Cohen/Courtesy of Dirt Candy)

Chefs at Dirt Candy have also made tiny fried onion blossoms with pearl onions. Cohen explained that she uses Spanish onions and white onions interchangeably.

“Spanish onions you can always use for soups stocks, flavoring oils, that kind of thing,” she said. “[Use them] when you really want a cooked onion that’s going to disappear.”

Unfortunately, those onions are the most tear-inducing to prep, according to the chef. She knows people who chew on the unburnt end of a used match, or a toothpick, to prevent tearing up. “I’m not sure if that really works,” Cohen said. “I like the idea of sunglasses, goggles. You could do that, too, I suppose if you’re chopping copious amounts.” For her, wearing contacts has been a foolproof solution.

Try out Dirt Candy's recipe for grilled onion salad with fermented black bean dressing and scallion oil. That’s below.

Grilled Onion Salad

This salad is really, really easy on purpose. I wanted to make a rustic salad that let the real flavor of onions shine through. The dressing is the tricky part, but it’s worth the effort because of all the layers of taste it adds. Not enough people use fermented black beans, but they add an amazing, deep, complex flavor to everything.

2 cups sliced red onions
2 tablespoons finely diced red onion
3 bunches of scallions
1 cup picked cilantro leaves
1 cup picked parlsey
1 cup picked thai basil leaves
1/2 cup Fermented Black Bean Dressing (see below)
Salt to taste
Heat a grill until it’s super-hot, almost smoking. In a bowl, toss the whole scallions with olive oil then lay them flat on the grill. Cook until grill marks form, and they’re nice and soft. Remove from the grill and chop them up.
Do the exact same thing for the sliced red onions. Toss with oil, put on grill until char marks form, then pull off.
Mix everything together in a bowl, and season to taste.

Fermented Black Bean Dressing

3 1/2 tablespoons fermented black beans
7 cloves garlic
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons lime juice
1 cup shoyu
1 cup Scallion Oil (see below)
salt to taste
Soak the black beans in cold water for about 1 hour. Drain. Reserve 1 1/2 tablespoons of the water.

2.In a blender or a Vitamix, blend everything together until smooth. Add the bean water to keep it moving.

Scallion Oil

1 cup chopped scallions
1 cup sliced ginger
1 1/2 cup untoasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon salt
Mix everything except the oil together in a heat resistant bowl (metal or glass).
Heat oil on the stove until almost smoking.
Gently pour the oil over the mixture in the bowl.
Wait until cool, at least 1 hour, and blend in a VitaMix or blender until smooth.

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Cooking live lobster at home is not a task for the faint of heart. But here’s one thing seafood eaters don’t have to worry about.

“Lobsters don’t have vocal cords, alright? They do not exist in a lobster. They don’t scream,” said Susan Povich, who owns Red Hook Lobster Pound with her husband Ralph Gorham. “What you’re hearing is steam escaping from the carapace — from the hard shell of the body — if you hear anything. You might be hearing your child scream when you put the lobster in the water.”

If you’re feeling up for the task, lobster is in season year round. During the winter months, lobster have hard shells and a fuller, more briny, flavor, Povich explained. That’s because adult lobsters generally molt once or twice a year, and molting usually occurs in conjunction with the spring or fall change in water temperatures.

“After the lobster molts and the shells form up, I believe, is when you get that sort of sweet, summery, Maine lobster taste that everyone associates with lobster,” she added. So expect that to be in about a month, after the weather starts warming up.

At the Red Hook Lobster Pound, she serves two versions of lobster rolls: one with mayonnaise and another with butter. Povich, whose family hails from Bar Harbor, Maine, said that mayonnaise is how it’s traditionally served (with the exception of the famous Red’s Eats in Wiscasett, Maine). She coined the term “Connecticut lobster roll” to describe the butter version after reading about a salesman who requested the variation at a Connecticut restaurant.

When choosing a lobster to cook at home, Povich advised looking for one that’s lively. That means it should curve its tail and arch its torso like Superman when picked up.

(Photo: Susan Povich/Courtesy of Red Hook Lobster Pound)

For those feeling squeamish about cooking the lobster live but determined to press forward, Povich offered this tip. “If you want to kind of put the lobsters to sleep, you can put the lobsters in the freezer in a bag for 20 minutes before you put them in the water,” she said. “They do tend to go a bit dormant.”

At home, Povich combines boiling and steaming methods. She starts with a few inches of water in the bottom of the pot — about four fingers of water for four lobsters. She adds a varying combination of fennel, onion, carrots, bay leaf, beer, and peppercorns.

“I bring that to a … rolling boil,” Povich said. “I let those ingredients... season the water a little bit and then I put my lobsters in head first and put the lid on.” She said that method is faster than just steaming the lobsters, and recommends leaving hard-shell lobsters in for 15 to 20 minutes after the water returns to a rolling boil. A soft-shell lobster is done in about 12 minutes.

Here recipe for that method of cooking lobster is below.

Lobster in a Pot
by Red Hook Lobster Pound

4 lobsters (1.5 lbs each)
1 cup white wine or beer
1 onion, peeled and quartered
4 stalks celery — cut in thirds
¼ cup sea salt
4 bay leaves
fennel tops (if you have some)
1 Tbs. Old Bay seasoning (optional)

Place all ingredients (except lobsters) in a tall pot. Fill with water so that water is 4 fingers tall (around 2.5 inches). Cover tightly and bring to a rolling boil. Turn heat down and simmer for 5 minutes. Place each lobster, head down, tail curled under, in the pot. Cover, and bring back to a rolling boil. After 5 minutes, uncover and rotate lobsters (bottom to top, top to bottom). Cover again, raise heat to high and steam/boil an additional 3-4 minutes for soft-shell lobsters or 6-7 minutes for hard-shell lobsters. Remove and let lobsters sit and drain for 5 minutes. (Add 2 minutes additional cooking time per additional lobster, though we don’t recommend cooking more than 4 at a time).

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We’ve all seen that iconic image of a straw sticking out of a picture-perfect orange. Turns out, making mass marketed orange juice is not nearly so simple or even natural.

“Not from concentrate” juice actually goes through extensive processing. “It’s really in the storage that a lot of the processing goes on,” said Alissa Hamilton, the author of Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice. “They strip the juice of oxygen so that the juice doesn’t go bad in these tanks where they keep it. And the juice can actually sit in the tanks for upwards of a year.” That’s all before it even arrives on your grocery store shelves.

Eliminating oxygen from the juice also gets rid of essential flavor-providing chemicals. The solution to fix that? “They actually hire flavor and fragrance companies to manufacture flavor packs to add back to the juice to make it taste fresh,” Hamilton explained.

The flavorists use the chemicals naturally found in oranges and tweak them to consumer preferences. She cited ethyl butyrate as one example. “It’s one of the chemicals… that North Americans associate most with the flavor of a fresh squeezed juice,” Hamilton said. “So they emphasize that chemical. They’re up to maybe 600 chemicals that make up the flavor of an orange.” In Europe or Asia, food engineers might amp up other chemicals depending on flavor trends.

This is the process used in creating “not from concentrate” juice that’s advertised as “fresh” and “all natural.” That branding helps justify juice that’s more expensive than its “from concentrate” counterparts. As a result, and based on research from Squeezed, eight people have banded together to file a class action lawsuit charging orange juice manufacturers with deceptive marketing practices.

(Photo: Alissa Hamilton/Courtesy of the author)

That lawsuit is only one of the challenges currently facing the orange juice industry. Orange juice consumption in the U.S. is at a 15-year low owing to a combination of economic factors and health trends.

On the economic side, orange prices have skyrocketed because much of Florida’s crop is being threatened by greening, a fast-spreading disease that ruins fruit. So far there’s no cure for the problem.

Consumers are also becoming more health-conscious about sugar intake. “A small glass of orange juice contains 20 grams of sugar, that’s five teaspoons in one glass,” Hamilton said. In contrast, an orange contains 13 grams of sugar, as well as fiber.

There’s even cause to call into question orange juice’s reputation as a high-in-vitamin-C cold buster. Orange juice loses vitamins and nutrients the longer it's stored. Hamilton explained that the quantity of each vitamin listed on orange juice cartons indicates how much was present when it was packaged. For every day it sits in your refrigerator, that amount goes down. Fresh squeezed is the better choice if you're looking for vitamins.

All this news appears to be in direct contrast to the early boom days of the orange juice industry, when Bing Crosby crooned about the convenience of frozen juice and touted its health benefits. At this rate, it might take far more than a catchy song, or even an adorable animated bird, to reignite American’s love for OJ.

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If you’ve ever flipped over packaged food and checked for high fructose corn syrup in the ingredient list, there’s something you should know: “Experts… say that when it comes to calories and nutrition, sugar is sugar is sugar,” says Michael Moss, author of Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us. “And it even gets worse, because they’ll throw in fruit juice, as well."

That’s right: While evaporated cane juice may sound like a more healthful alternative to high fructose corn syrup, it’s not. “Basically, it’s that neither is worse for you than the other,” he explains. “That’s the way nutritionists would look at it.”

The reason high fructose corn syrup has become notorious in recent years could be a result of competing forces from sugar lobbies, as well as a stroke of bad luck in marketing

“[There] has been this behind-the-scenes battle between table sugar... from cane and beets, versus high fructose corn syrup from corn,” Moss says. “You can almost feel sorry for [the corn industry] because they’re the ones who came up with the words ‘high fructose corn syrup’ way back when it started to get popular.” In reality, the amount of fructose in the corn product is about the same as in table sugar.

The topic is notoriously sticky, though, and it's often hard to distinguish good science from bad. That's in part because various lobbies have reportedly funded various scientists and groups arguing for their products or against competing products.

To complicate matters, food nutrition labels do not include a recommended daily amount of sugar. “The reason for that? Lobbying by the industry,” Moss says, “and the really startling fact is that most of us are getting way more sugar than health advocates urge us to be eating."

In his book, he notes that many foods that traditionally did not require added sugar have been engineered to include it. That’s because food scientists discovered a “bliss point,” or an optimum amount of sweetness that appeals to the average palate. In order to achieve that bliss point, packaged foods like bread and tomato sauce now sometimes include surprising amounts of sugar. Some flavored yogurts even have as much sugar in them as ice cream, Moss says. (Nutrition labels currently don’t distinguish between added and natural sugar, but that’s set to change soon.)

“The American Heart Association says look, we’re eating on average 22 teaspoons of added sugar a day per person,” Moss says. “We should be getting as little as six teaspoons, depending on your gender and your age and you can work forward from that.” Eating too much sugar on a regular basis could lead to fatal heart disease.

Health concerns aside, though, there are plenty of other issues to consider when it comes to high fructose corn syrup.

“You can look at high fructose corn syrup from other vantage points,” says Moss. “You can ask the question: Do we really want American agriculture devoting so many acres — almost a hundred million acres — to growing field-type corn that goes to ethanol and also high fructose corn syrup?”

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Millet is a gluten-free whole grain that tastes sort of like a cross between vanilla and corn. It certainly has a flavor that birds enjoy — much of the millet in this country is used for bird seed. But what’s good for Tweety has long been considered tasty by humans, too.

“If you’ve ever seen those yellow, tiny, mustard-seedy grains in birdseed and parrot food, that’s millet,” said Mark Scarbrough, co-author of the book Grain Mains: 101 Surprising and Satisfying Whole Grain Recipes for Every Meal of the Day. “That [association with bird food] gives it a bad rep, which is really unfortunate because it is probably the oldest harvested grain on the planet.”

While he pointed out that archaeological research indicates millet was grown in China even before rice, Last Chance Foods host Amy Eddings offered a word of caution on eating too much of the grain, which has been linked in some reports to thyroid problems.

Consumed in moderation, however, millet is a healthy, gluten-free alternative to wheat. “It’s also an incredibly high source of calcium, of zinc, of potassium, and B vitamins,” added Scarbrough. “It’s probably got the highest profile of B vitamins of any whole grain.”

(Photo: Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough/Jon Fisher)

The grain can also make for a savory, satisfying vegetarian burger. Scarbrough and Grain Mains co-author Bruce Weinstein developed a recipe for a millet burger that incorporates olives, sun-dried tomatoes, capers, and pecorino cheese. “We give it an Italian antipasto bar flavor profile,” Scarbrough said.

The first step in enjoying millet, though, is proper selection and storage. He advised smelling millet before buying it — even if it’s in a plastic bag. “Any whole grain you buy, even millet, you should always try to take a whiff, a smell, at the grocery store,” Scarbrough said. “You’re smelling the grains in the grocery store because you don’t want that... rancid, musky, mushroomy, earthy, wangy smell.”

Once home, maintain freshness by keeping it in your freezer. “That is the best place to keep millet and teff and some of the ones that go rancid really fast,” he added.

Try and Weinstein and Scarbrough’s recipe for Millet Burgers with Olives, Sun-Dried Tomatoes, and Pecorino. That’s below.

A millet field in Germany (Armin Vogel/flickr)

Millet Burgers with Olives, Sun-Dried Tomatoes, and Pecorino
Serves 6
Active time: 15 minutes
Total time: 55 minutes

3 cups water
1 cup millet
10 chopped dry-pack sun-dried tomatoes
1 garlic clove
1/4 cup pine nuts
1/3 cup pitted green olives, chopped
1/4 cup packed grated Pecorino Romano or Parmigiano-Reggiano
4 large jarred caper berries, minced
2 teaspoons minced fresh oregano leaves or 1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons minced fresh marjoram leaves or 1 teaspoon dried marjoram
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
Combine the 3 cups water and the millet in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat. Cover, reduce the heat to low, and simmer slowly until it's like a thick, coarse, hot breakfast cereal, about 30 minutes. Uncover and stir well to incorporate any last bits of water. Scrape the millet into a large bowl and cool for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, put the sun-dried tomatoes and garlic in a small heatproof bowl. Cover with boiling water and steep for 10 minutes.
Place the pine nuts in a dry medium skillet set over medium-low heat. Toast until lightly browned and fragrant, about 5 minutes, stirring often. Pour them into the bowl with the millet.
Drain the sun-dried tomatoes and garlic in a fine-mesh sieve and add them to the bowl with the millet. Add the olives, cheese, caper berries, oregano, and marjoram. Stir well, mashing the ingredients together. You want texture here, bits of this and that scattered throughout the burgers, not a baby-food puree. Use dampened hands to form the mixture into 6 round, even patties.
Melt the butter in the olive oil over medium heat in a large skillet, preferably nonstick. Slip the patties into the skillet and cook until mottled brown and somewhat crisp, about 4 minutes. Flip them and continue cooking until set throughout, mottled brown on the other side, and now nicely crisp, about 4 more minutes. If your skillet isn't large enough to hold all 6 patties at once, work in two batches, using 1 tablespoon olive oil and 1 tablespoon unsalted butter for each batch.

TESTERS' NOTES

• Here, we've used an Italian palette to balance the aromatic millet. Note that the recipe calls for the larger, oblong caper berries, not capers.

• The timing for cooked millet is a bit dodgy since the grains are notorious for picking up and holding ambient humidity--as well as releasing it in a dry environment. Don't stand on ceremony: Lift the lid and check the millet as it cooks, adding more water as necessary. You're looking for a crunchy texture that's nonetheless tender to the bite.

• These patties would be a treat on whole wheat buns with a little purchased caponata as well as thinly sliced red onion and crunchy lettuce. You could also slice the cooked patties into bite-sized bits and toss them in a large, Italian-style, chopped salad, dressed with a creamy vinaigrette.

• These patties don't reheat as well as some of the others, although they do make great late-night snacks right from the fridge, cut into small pieces and dipped in deli mustard.

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Today is Valentine’s Day, so we’re going to talk about chocolate. That’s the easy explanation. The more complicated version of how Last Chance Foods choose to approach the topic of such a beloved confection involves a former aerospace engineer turned farmer, a vertically integrated beans-to-bar company, and a three-year-old factory in Red Hook, Brooklyn

Those are the bones of the story behind Cacao Prieto. Founder and CEO Daniel Prieto Preston started his career as an aerospace engineer, and after selling his defense company and signing a strict five-year non-compete agreement, he decided to turn his attention to his family farm in the Dominican Republic.

The farm had been growing organic cacao for more than 100 years. (Preston said most farming on the island is organic because of strict regulations to prevent deforestation like that seen in neighboring Haiti.)

The cacao pods that are harvested twice a year bear little resemblance to chocolate. “You have these strange football-shaped pods in all different colors that grow anywhere on the tree, not just at the end of the branches,” Preston explained. “They can come right out of the trunk. It looks like something that would be in a children’s coloring book.”

The fruit has a gooey white pulp with about 40 seeds inside each pod. “It’s not a bean,” Preston said. “That’s just another misnomer. You’re actually eating the seeds of the cocoa fruit.”

Even the word “cocoa” is a misnomer. “Cocoa is actually a misprint in an English dictionary from the mid-1850s, which became just sort of universally used,” he said. “So you can use it synonymously with cacao. Generally speaking, you’ll refer to cocoa as something that’s been processed, but people use it for everything.”

(Photo: Amy Eddings and Daniel Prieto Preston at Cacao Prieto in Red Hook, Brooklyn/Joy Y. Wang)

In most chocolate production processes, the cacao pods are hacked off the tree and then left to rot in 5-feet-high piles in tropical weather. “Most people don’t realize that chocolate is a fermented food,” Preston said. “The average fermentation pile probably has 400 different microorganisms and a least a dozen pathogens. That’s one of the reasons why it’s actually not good to eat raw chocolate. It needs to be sterilized first.”

Preston, who is also an inventor, felt like he could do better than that. Cacao Prieto created a controlled fermentation process that keeps out contaminants, and they inoculate the cacao seeds with lab-grown strains of yeast. He also created and patented a vortex winnower that uses a vacuum and centrifugal force to separate cacao nibs from the shells.

“There’s a saying in chocolate that every step of the process is the most important step,” he said, adding that the controlling fermentation helps Cacao Prieto control the flavor and bitterness of the finished chocolate.

“Sophisticated palates, I think, prefer bitter flavors to begin with,” said Preston. “I like a little bit of sugar, so my preference is something around 72 percent. Never milk. Milk chocolate’s not real chocolate to me.”

To see more about how cacao is processed at Cacao Prieto, check out this video.

Amy Eddings and Daniel Prieto Preston in front of his vortex winnower at Cacao Prieto in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Cacao nibs at the Cacao Prieto factory in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

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From 2012 to 2013, Americans consumed an estimated 294,000 metric tons of olive oil, most of which was imported from Italy. But how do you know if Italian olive oil is really Italian? A New York Times report recently claimed that a lot of Italian olive oil actually comes from countries including Spain, Morocco and Tunisia. What’s a home cook to do when looking for an authentic Italian olive oil?

Restaurateur Lidia Bastianich offered some characteristically sensible advice for choosing an olive oil: Trust your sense of taste.

“We have an apparatus, which is our mouth, which is quite telling,” said the Emmy-winning television host. “To each of us, it tells a different story because we have a different story. So I think it’s pretty safe to say that everybody should sit down, and taste the olive oil, and look for the aroma, the intensity in the mouth, the viscosity in the mouth, and what they love."

While Bastianich admitted to having a veritable apothecary of Italian olive oils in her own pantry, she said that the average home cook only needs about three types — one from each region of Italy.

“I would take one from the north of Italy — from Liguria, the lake regions, Friuli, where I come from — and because of the climate, the olive oil tends to be buttery and lighter in that area,” she explained.

Central Italy, around Tuscany, is known for producing olive oils with robust, peppery flavors. “Unless it burns the back of their throat, those Tuscans don’t like it,” she said. “And what that oil is really good for is for tomatoes, grilled stuff — kind of on the grill, off the grill steak, chicken.”

(Photo: Lidia Bastianich/Diane DeLucia)

Then in Southern Italy, near Sicily, olive oils tend to be grassy, herbal, and intense. Bastianich, the author of Lidia’s Commonsense Italian Cooking, recommends those for soups.

In addition to region, the grade of olive oil also matters. She explained that extra virgin olive oil has the lowest amount of oleic acidity, making it more aromatic and smooth. “It means the tannins are less, there’s less residue, the acidity is less because of the tannins, and it just tastes better,” Bastianich said.

And because heat breaks down the flavonoids that give extra virgin olive oil its delicate, balanced flavor, “you should alter it as little as possible,” she said. “You should really use it as raw.” That’s also why cold-pressed olive oils are always better.

If you’re purchasing lower grades of olive oil, which are marked “virgin” or “regular,” save those for high-heat applications like braising. Bastianich said that she sometimes uses lower-grade olive oils to sear or saute meat initially. Then she removes the food from the used olive oil and finishes the dish with extra virgin oil. That’s also a more judicious application of the more expensive, high-grade oil.

Once you’ve selected the olive oils that you like the best, be sure to store it in a way to maximize freshness. “Olive oil is molecularly unstable so therefore it oxidizes very quickly," Bastianich explained. "That’s why it’s good for us — because it has a hydrogen that looks for oxygen." That quality also means that it will also go rancid if stored improperly.

“Even if you buy [olive oil] in a big bottle, put it in smaller bottles, where the bottles are full,” she advised. “[Put it] in a green bottle or dark bottle or keep it in a dark place... and in a cool place.”

Once you’ve selected the flavor of olive oil that you like the best, try it out in Bastianich’s recipe for olive oil and rosemary spaghettini, which is below.

OLIVE OIL AND ROSEMARY SPAGHETTINI
Spaghettini all’Olio e Rosmarino

This is a perfect example of a minimal- ingredient recipe that is delicious and easy. It’s based on one of the primary flavors in Italian cuisine: rosemary. You will often see rosemary used in flavoring meats and roasts, because it has such an intense and rich fl avor. But in this recipe, cooked in some butter to release its aroma, it makes a perfect sauce for spaghetti. Be sure to top it with some grated cheese. This is a great dish!

Serves 6

Kosher salt
1 pound spaghettini
2 tablespoons extra- virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 bushy rosemary sprigs, needles stripped from the stems (about 3 tablespoons)
6 tablespoons chopped fresh Italian parsley
1 cup grated Grana Padano or Parmigiano- Reggiano

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. When you begin preparing the sauce, begin cooking the pasta. In a large skillet, over medium- high heat, melt the butter in the olive oil. When the butter is melted, add the rosemary, and cook until the needles are sizzling and the rosemary is fragrant.

Ladle in 1 cup of pasta water, and simmer to reduce by half. Stir in the parsley. When the pasta is al dente, remove with tongs directly to the skillet. Toss to coat the pasta with the sauce. Remove the skillet from the heat, toss with the grated cheese, and serve.

Excerpted from LIDIA’S COMMONSENSE ITALIAN COOKING by Lidia Bastianich. Copyright © 2013 by Tutti a Tavola, LLC. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Americans now eat 150 percent more hot sauce today than they did in 2000. WNYC host Amy Eddings thinks that’s because our palates are bored and jaded.

“We call ourselves foodies by just sprinkling some hot sauce over pancakes and saying, ‘I invented something new,’” she said. “What we’re doing is just blazing a hole through our tongue, and we’re not really settling in and increasing our knowledge about the complexity of taste.”

That’s likely not a popular opinion to espouse two days before the Super Bowl, an event famous for hot sauce-garnished foods like buffalo wings and nachos. The Sporkful podcast host Dan Pashman countered Eddings’ point by saying we should use hot sauce more often, but less of it when we do.

Pashman’s favorite hot sauce is sriracha, the California-made, Asian-inspired chili sauce. He explained that, rather than just being spicy, it has flavors of garlic, salt, and sugar.

“I think that food is supposed to be about pleasure and not feats of strength,” said Pashman, who's also the host of the new Cooking Channel web series "You're Eating It Wrong." Nonetheless, he did recently sample “death wings” for a recent episode of The Sporkful. He was with Matt Reynolds, the director of the new documentary comedy The Great Chicken Wing Hunt.

Reynolds explained why he’s against pain-inducing hot sauce. “You’re not getting the flavors of the peppers, all you’re getting is the heat,” he said. “And you know you create these wings where, you know, you have to sign a waver to eat them, and you have a contest and if you eat six they’re free. And I mean, I think all that is pretty silly. You know, it’s like, why not just have a contest where you let someone punch you in the face.”

(Photo: Dan Pashman)

Eating super spicy hot sauce and getting punched in the face do have one thing in common: Both cause pain that then triggers the body to release endorphins. That’s why hot sauce sometimes produces a feeling of being high.

“Hillary Clinton attributes her high levels of energy to the fact that she eats hot peppers,” said Pashman. If you’re looking to get amped for the Super Bowl, he suggested strategically dosing snacks with hot sauce.

To achieve maximum heat plus flavor, Pashman recommends taking a lesson from buffalo wings, the hugely successful bar food that celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

“Everyone puts so much focus on the heat and the spice and the hot sauce of buffalo wings,” he said, “but I think it’s important to recognize that the genius of the buffalo wing recipe is that it combines the hot sauce with a dairy, a base ingredient that cuts the heat and complements the flavor.”

To that end, Pashman recommended splashing a bit of hot sauce into your mayonnaise-based dips. “Just a little squirt of hot sauce in there — just a little kick — will make a huge difference in your dips,” he said.

Give that tip a try this weekend, or find your own heat-butter balance with Reynolds’ award-winning buffalo wings recipe. That’s below.

In the meantime, tell us what you think. What's the best hot sauce on the market? What's the most unexpected food that you've improved with the addition of hot sauce? Is Dan Pashman insane for claiming hot sauce is not good on eggs?

Director’s Recipeas seen in The Great Chicken Wing Huntby Matt Reynolds

23 oz bottle of Frank’s Red Hot (don’t use generics)
1-2 sticks butter
1/2 bell pepper
4-8 hot peppers (habaneros, serrano, jalapeno, etc. — grab an assortment of what’s available at your local supermarket)
1/2-2 tablespoon honey-mustard
10-20 cloves of fresh garlic, pressed or chopped
Celery salt
Assorted hot sauces (Tabasco, Cholula, etc)

SAUTE garlic in one stick of butter for 1-2 minutes on low/medium heat, being careful not to burn it. Add HALF of the peppers, both bell and hot, finely chopped. Saute mixture 1-2 minutes. Pour in Frank’s.

Simmer and stir for 5-10 minutes, adding mustard and dashes of celery salt and assorted hot sauces to taste. If sauce tastes bitter (caused by some peppers) add honey-mustard (or just plain honey) until bitterness disappears.

Keep simmering. For a milder sauce, add more butter; for hotter sauce, add more peppers.

Let simmer for another 5-15 min, until sauce thickens and reduces by 5-10 pct; Adjust ingredients to taste.

FRYING is a world unto itself. Know your deep frier. ALWAYS use fresh wings (never frozen). Always naked (never breaded). Take wings out of refrigerator at least an hour before frying and let sit at room temperature. If using frozen wings, thaw completely before frying. 375 is a good temperature for more friers, but test yours because each frier is different. Frying should take 8-12 minutes. Aim to hit the sweet spot where the wings come out crispy on the outside but still tender and juicy (but not undercooked) on the inside.

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Chicken coops may be sprouting up on rooftops and backyards around the city, but don’t expect domesticated geese to be taking up urban residence anytime soon. “The biggest reason I don’t think you’ll ever see geese in an urban setting, or even a suburban setting, is they’re very loud,” said Hank Shaw, the author of Duck, Duck, Goose. “They honk at everything.”

Their vociferousness even saved ancient Rome from invasion, according to legend. A flock of sacred geese dedicated to the goddess Juno* woke up Roman guards when Gallic enemies tried to invade.

“If you’ve ever been to a goose farm, and you walk up to the geese and they don’t know you, they’ll all stand at the edge of the fence and yell at you,” explained Shaw, whose website Hunter Angler Gardener Cook won a James Beard award last year.

Another characteristic of geese is that they don’t survive well when penned up. That means keeping them in battery cages, which are often used in a factory-farm settings, is out of the question.

“Geese are one of oldest domesticated animals that we know of, but they have thus far resisted our ability to mess with them, which I think is kind of cool,” added Shaw.

That means that the goose you find at farmers markets and even in supermarkets has probably had the ability to run around in a normal, goose-like manner. The need for space is tied to their diet, which is comprised largely of grasses. Shaw compares geese to grass-fed beef.

“You can’t really do a good goose farm unless you have access to pasture and grass,” he said. “So it’s sort of a natural feedback system that works really well, and it creates a really nice product.”

So for those of us who are looking for a sustainable, responsible source of meat, goose is a good choice. It’s also in season right now, and fresh geese will likely only be available for a few more weeks.

“When you can start seeing spring in your mind’s eye, the goose season is pretty much over,” said Shaw. That’s because geese typically lay eggs around April, then spend most of the year growing to maturity. The market season for geese traditionally starts on September 29, or Michaelmas.

The birds generally only lay eggs once a year, and the goslings are more delicate than chicks or ducklings. Those factors, combined with the need for space, mean goose is expensive compared to other types of meat. In order to make the most of that pricey bird, Shaw recommends breaking it down into pieces. He cautions against roasting the bird whole, since different parts cook at very different temperatures.

Instead, for the goose breast, he said to score the skin, pan sear it, and then finish it in the oven. And don’t be scared of the layer of fat you find under the skin.

“That goose fat is one of the big benefits of getting a goose,” said Shaw. “Goose fat has the lowest level of saturated fat of any animal fat, and that includes duck fat. It’s the closest thing you can get to an oil in animal fat. I mean, it is totally liquid at room temperature.”

Try a recipe from Shaw’s Duck, Duck, Goose for Pan-Seared Goose Breast With Orange and Ouzo.

*Whoops, not Minerva as Hank guessed.

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Difficulty: **
Serves 4 to 6
Prep Time: 45 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes

Author note:

This is another combination of duck and citrus, only with a Greek twist: ouzo, an anise-flavored liqueur. Ouzo is available at most liquor stores, and you can substitute any similar liquor, such as Pernod, pastis, raki, tsipouro, sambuca, anisette, and so on. If you don’t drink alcohol, double the amount of chopped fennel and add some fennel seeds or aniseeds.

I designed this recipe for specklebelly geese, which run five to seven pounds and are often pretty fatty. They are very similar to a Rouen or Moulard duck, the breasts of which can be used in place of the goose breasts here. Domesticated and Canada geese will work here, too.

I prefer to serve this dish with something simple that will sop up the sauce, such as mashed potatoes or celery root or a mound of polenta. Serve with a light red wine or arich white, such as an oaky Chardonnay or a Viognier.

2 pounds goose or duck breasts
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
1 teaspoon duck fat, unsalted butter, or olive oil
½ cup finely chopped fennel (bulb only)
1 shallot, minced (about 2 tablespoons)
1 small hot fresh chile (such as Thai or serrano), halved lengthwise
½ cup ouzo or other anise-flavored liqueur
1 cup goose or duck stock (page 222) or chicken stock
Juice of 1 orange (about ½ cup)
Mashed potatoes or celery root or cooked polenta, for serving
Small bunch of fennel fronds, for garnish

Remove the goose breasts from the refrigerator, salt well, and set aside at room temperature for 20 to 40 minutes. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Pat the breasts dry with paper towels. If you are working with a domesticated goose or a very fat duck, use a sharp knife to score the skin (but not the meat) in a crosshatch pattern, making the slashes about 1 inch across. This helps the fat render and will give you a crispier skin. Do not score the skin of a wild goose unless it is very fatty.

Set the breasts, skin side down, in a cold ovenproof sauté pan with the duck fat and place on the stove top. Turn on the heat to high and let the sizzling rise to a comfortable level, the way it sounds when you cook bacon. Turn the heat down to medium-low, or even low, and let the breasts cook for 10 to 12 minutes at a gentle sizzle, until the skin has browned a bit.

Move the pan into the hot oven. Do not flip the meat. After 5 minutes, check for doneness using the finger test (see below). A very large domestic or Canada goose breast might take as long as 15 minutes to get warm at its center. If you prefer to use a thermometer, you will want it to read 125°F, which will yield rare meat after the breast rests a bit. Because the breast is larger, the carryover heat will increase the internal temperature more than for a typical duck breast.

When the meat is at the target temperature (remember, it will gain 5 to 10 degrees during the resting period), transfer the breasts, skin side up, to a cutting board and tent loosely with aluminum foil. Let rest a full 10 minutes before carving.

While the breasts are resting, start making the sauce. Remove an ice cube from the freezer and run it along the handle of your pan, which just came out of the oven. This should cool the handle enough for you to grasp it. I find that while I can remember to use an oven mitt to get the pan out of the oven, I always seem to slip up while I am making the sauce. I have the scars to prove it.

Pour off all but 2 to 3 tablespoons of the fat from the pan. Without turning on the burner, put the pan on the stove top, add the chopped fennel, shallot, and chile to the pan, and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring often. The vegetables should sizzle moderately. Do not let them burn.

Add the ouzo and use a wooden spoon to scrape up any browned bits on the bottom of the pan. Put the pan on the burner that heats the hottest and turn the heat to high. Let the ouzo boil down by half. Add the stock and orange juice and a little salt, bring to a boil, and boil furiously until a spoon passed through the sauce leaves a trail. Remove from the heat. If you want to a more refined sauce, pour it through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl. Slice the goose breasts on the diagonal. To serve, pour a little sauce on each plate and spoon the mashed potatoes on the sauce. The sauce will pool around the edges. Arrange the goose slices, skin side up, on the potatoes. Garnish with fennel fronds and pepper. Serve at once.

The Finger Test for Doneness

The fastest and most effective way to test for doneness is the finger test.

Open your right hand loosely. Take the tip of the index finger of your left hand and press down on the fleshy area of your right hand where your thumb connects with the rest of your palm, making sure your right hand is relaxed. That’s what raw meat feels like.

Now touch the tip of the index finger of your right hand to the end of your thumb. With your left hand, press that fleshy part at the base of the thumb: it should feel a little less squishy. That’s how medium rare meat feels.

Move back one finger on your right hand, so you are now touching the tip of your middle finger to your thumb. With your left hand, touch the fleshy part of your thumb again: this is medium.

One more finger back (to the ring finger on your left hand) and you get to medium-well. Not so good for any red meat, and terrible for duck. Finally, touch your pinky to your thumb and feel the base. Rock hard, right? That’s well-done, which means you just made cat food from your duck breast.

Remember, once the duck or goose breast is resting, carryover heat will continue to cook it. So I always take the breasts off the heat a little before they are where I want them, which is on the rare side of medium. Once they have finished resting, the breasts are perfectly cooked.

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Ginger adds zing to hot Indian tea, provides a warming holiday flavor to crisp cookies, and serves as a palate-cleansing pickle next to sushi. Considering its versatility, ginger could be considered a culinary ninja — it sneaks into various foods and makes them way tastier.

“It’s probably the most untrendy spice, considering almost everybody on earth’s used it,” said Bruce Cost, the founder of Bruce Cost Ginger Ale and the author of Ginger East to West.

People around the world have long valued ginger for its stomach-settling properties. Drinking ginger ale on the plane or chewing a ginger candy on a long car ride can help combat nausea. It’s also a digestive aid, and, like shiso leaf, it has antiseptic properties. That’s why it became a common accompaniment to sushi.

Pickled sushi is usually made from young ginger, which is a less mature form of regular ginger root. “[That type of ginger] actually has a narrow range of uses,” said Cost, whose ginger ale is made with fresh mature ginger. “For people cooking Asian food, they wouldn’t necessarily go buy [young] ginger… anybody that cooks Chinese food would need a more mature ginger because of its spiciness.”

Cost works with a farm in China to source larger ginger for a better peel-to-flesh ratio for making ginger ale, but he explained that many cooks prefer to use smaller knobs of ginger, because they find it to be more flavorful.

(Photo: Young ginger/shanta/flickr)

While Cost prefers to use fresh ginger, he said that powdered ginger used to be the go-to form in certain part of the world. It even graced tabletops, right next to pepper shakers, up until World War II. “[Powdered] ginger was on the bars in pubs in England until the ‘40s and ‘50s,” he said.

Fortunately, we now have ready access to fresh ginger imported from China and specialty ginger grown in Hawaii. If you’re looking for an East Asian application of the popular root, try Cost’s recipe for hot and sour Napa cabbage, below.

Hot and Sour Napa Cabbage
with fresh chilies and ginger
by Bruce Cost

½ head of Napa cabbage (about 1 ¾ lbs)
1 tablespoon + ½ teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon julienne of fresh ginger
1 tablespoon fine julienne fresh red chili pepper (preferably not jalapeño)
1/3 cup vinegar (mixture of half unseasoned Japanese rice vinegar and half red wine vinegar)
6 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons peanut oil
4 small dried chili peppers
½ teaspoon Sichuan peppercorns
1 teaspoon sesame oil

Remove core from cabbage and cut across the leaves into a thin julienne. Toss with the tablespoon of salt and let sit for at least 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat and combine the vinegars, sugar and remaining half teaspoon of salt in a small saucepan. Turn off the heat and let sit.

Heat another saucepan over medium-high heat and add the peanut oil, dried chilies and Sichuan peppercorns. When the peppercorns begin to blacken and smoke, turn off the heat and stir in the fresh ginger and chilies.

After a few minutes of cooling, add the vinegar/sugar mixture to the pan with the oil/peppercorn. Stir briefly to combine all.

Drain cabbage and wring all possible moisture from the leaves using your hands or putting in a clean cloth and writing out. Place the cabbage in a mixing bowl and add about ¼ cup of the sauce. Then add the sesame oil, mix and serve. (This may sit for awhile before serving.)

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Paul Cézanne once said, “The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.” It was in that spirit that I created this dish after I’d worked at Gramercy for only three months. What’s beautiful about the salad is while it’s relatively easy to make, it has complex textures and flavors.

I like to let the vegetable be the star and the calamari the supporting actor. It’s amazing that it has taken us so long to begin to shift the focus of a dish from the protein to the vegetable. We are so used to giving meat, fish, or poultry the spotlight because we usually think about food from a European point of view. Other cultures, mainly Asian, consider vegetables first.

In the restaurant we use a combination of citrus flavors, including lemon oil, lemon vinaigrette, and cured Meyer lemons, because we always have them on hand. I love the lemon vinaigrette, but feel free to season with a good squeeze or two of lemon juice and your favorite olive oil instead.

Serves 4

Lemon Vinaigrette

1⁄3 cup fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Onion Puree (recipe follows)
1⁄2 tablespoon honey
1⁄2 cup Lemon Oil (recipe follows)
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper
1 tablespoon wasabi tobiko (wasabi-infused flying-fish roe)
2 tablespoons olive oil
3⁄4 pound cleaned calamari
Salt and pepper
5 carrots, julienned
1⁄8 cup pine nuts, toasted
1⁄4 Cured Meyer Lemon (recipe follows; optional), rinsed, pulp removed and discarded, peel minced
2 tablespoons finely chopped chives
A small handful of flat-leaf parsley leaves

Make the lemon vinaigrette. Combine the lemon juice, vinegar, onion puree, and honey in a blender.

With the blender running, drizzle in the lemon oil, followed by the olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Mix a few tablespoons of the vinaigrette with the tobiko. Set the rest of the vinaigrette aside. In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over high heat. Season the calamari with salt and pepper and cook until just opaque, 1 to 2 minutes per side. Transfer the calamari to a cutting board. Cut the bodies and tentacles into strips about the same size as the carrots.

In a large bowl, combine the calamari, carrots, and pine nuts. Toss with some of the reserved vinaigrette. Stir in the cured lemon, if using, and chives and season with salt and pepper. Mound the salad onto plates, drizzle with the tobiko vinaigrette, and scatter the parsley on top.

Lemon Oil

Makes 1 cup

Making lemon oil requires a small investment of time to infuse the flavors, but this can happen overnight. It is such a flavorful addition to a salad dressing, sautéed vegetables, or a pan sauce for fish.

1 cup grapeseed or other neutral vegetable oil
Peel of 1 lemon
Peel of 1 lime
1 lemongrass stalk, bruised with the side of a chef’s knife and roughly chopped
One 1⁄2-inch piece of ginger, peeled, smashed, and roughly chopped
1 sprig lemon thyme or thyme

In a jar or other container, combine the oil, lemon and lime peel, lemongrass, ginger, and thyme.

Cover and refrigerate overnight; strain. The lemon oil will keep, covered, in the refrigerator for up to a week.

Cured Meyer Lemons

Makes 4

When Meyer lemons are in season, we make batches of cured lemons to use all year round. They show up unexpectedly to accentuate the fresh ingredients in a salad or to brighten the rich flavors of a meat braise.

1 star anise
1 cardamom pod
1⁄4 teaspoon black peppercorns
1⁄4 teaspoon fennel seeds
1⁄4 teaspoon cumin seeds
1⁄4 teaspoon coriander seeds
4 Meyer lemons
1⁄2 cup kosher salt
1⁄8 cup sugar
Pinch of red pepper flakes
Fresh lemon juice to cover

In a small skillet, combine the star anise, cardamom, peppercorns, and fennel, cumin, and coriander seeds and toast over medium heat, stirring often, until fragrant, about 3 minutes. Let the spices cool completely.

Meanwhile, deeply score the lemons from top to bottom, leaving about ½ inch of the base of each one intact so the fruit stays in one piece. Put in a large bowl, add the salt, and pack the salt into the lemons. Add the sugar, pepper flakes, and toasted spices to the lemons and toss until thoroughly combined.

Transfer the contents of the bowl to a pint jar, evenly distributing the salt mixture and pushing down on the lemons to fit them in. Add enough lemon juice to cover the lemons, leaving a little room at the top of the jar. Seal the jar and refrigerate for a month, shaking it frequently to distribute the salt mixture and juices. The cured lemons will keep, tightly covered, in the refrigerator for many months. Rinse thoroughly before using.

Onion Puree

Makes about ½ cup

There is a reason to make this subtle and delicious puree for the cauliflower recipe and other dishes: like butter, the puree binds the ingredients together and coats the cauliflower, quinoa, prunes, and peanuts.

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, very thinly sliced
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
Salt and pepper

In a medium saucepan, heat the oil over medium-low heat. Add the onions and cook, stirring often, until they are completely soft but have not taken on any color, 15 to 20 minutes. A bit of water helps here.

Add the vinegar and cook for 5 more minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Transfer to a blender and process until satiny-smooth.

The puree can be cooled, covered, and stored in the refrigerator for up to 2 days.

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For the saffron aioli:

2 large egg yolks
1 garlic clove, minced
Pinch of saffron threads
Salt
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons mild olive oil
A squeeze of fresh lemon juice

To make the aioli: In a mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, combine the egg yolks, garlic clove, saffron and a pinch of salt. Whisk at high speed while adding the oil drop by drop. As the mixture thickens, increase the oil to a very thin trickle until it is used up and the aioli is thick and wobbly. Adjust the seasoning with a squeeze of lemon juice and more salt, if needed. You’ll end up with more sauce than you need.

For the Romesco Sauce:

4 medium-size ripe tomatoes (1-3/4 lb. total), cored
1 head garlic, sliced in half crosswise
2 Tbs. plus 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 Cups Day-Old Bread Diced
½ cup Slivered Almonds (toasted)
2 Canned Piquillo Peppers (seeded and drained)
1 tsp. kosher salt; more to taste
1 tsp. chile flakes
2 to 3 Tbs. Sherry Vinegar

Heat the oven to 375°F. Put the tomatoes and one half of the garlic head in a baking pan. Drizzle about 1 Tbs. of the olive oil into the cored tomato wells and on top of the garlic half. Roast until the tomatoes and garlic are well caramelized but not burnt, about 90 minutes. Toss the bread with 1 Tbs. of oil. Toast it in the oven for a couple minutes till until golden brown. From the remaining half head of garlic, coarsely chop 1 Tbs. garlic and put it in a food processor.

When the tomatoes and garlic are caramelized, let them cool. Pinch off the tomato skins (discard them) and squeeze out the garlic pulp. Put the tomatoes and garlic pulp in the processor. Add the salt, the remaining 1/3 cup olive oil, the bread, the vinegar, the piquillos, the almonds, and the chile flakes. Pulse to incorporate. Add salt to taste. Process the romesco until it comes together as a sauce but not so much as to lose its coarse, nutty texture. If it seems too thick, add 1 or 2 Tbs. red wine. If it's too thin, add bread, pulsing a few more times. You’ll end up with more sauce than you need.

For the Chickpeas:

1 Can Chickpeas (drained)
1 Tbs. Olive Oil
1 Tbs. Ground Cumin
1 Tsp. salt
Toss all ingredients and spread on a cookie sheet. Toast in a preheated 375 oven for five minutes.
For the Squid:
2# Fresh Squid Cleaned and Rinsed
1 Bunch Basil (rough chopped, stems and all)
1 Tbs. Olive Oil
Toss ingredients together and stored wrapped and chilled until ready to cook.
For the Sea Beans:
½ # Sea Beans (blanched and shocked)
1 tbs. olive oil
½ tsp. chile flakes
Cooking and Assembly:
½ Avocado Diced

Heat a large heavy bottomed pan(preferably cast iron) till it smokes. Meanwhile, put about 2 or 3 tbs of the romesco and 1 tbs of saffron aioli on 4 dinner plates. Put the squid in the hot pan and cook on high heat till it caramelizes. Don’t shake the pan, as this will inhibit the process. Remove the squid and allow it to cool slightly. In the meantime, quickly stir fry the sea beans with olive oil in the same pan. Add the chile flakes at the very end. Scatter the sea beans on the four plates. Now slice the squid as pictured and lay it on top of the sea beans. Now garnish with the chickpeas and diced avocado.

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From the Hooter’s in Anaheim, California, to the Le Bernardin in Midtown — squid in the form of calamari can be found on menus across America. That’s good news since squid from the Atlantic is some of the most sustainable seafood out there.

“I like to think of squid as the kale of the sea,” said Brian Halweil, the editor of Edible East End and the publisher of Edible Brooklyn and Edible Manhattan. “It’s hardy, it’s economical, it’s versatile, it’s sustainable. It’s what all good eaters... should be seeking out.”

And it shouldn’t be hard to find for New Yorkers, in particular. The waters around the northeast are home to some of the best squid in the world.

“Big schools of squid have always existed off the coast of New York and part of the Eastern seaboard,” said Halweil, “but American fishers were never interested in it because there was no domestic market for squid. So up until the 1970s, fleets from Japan, and Portugal, and Italy would come and scoop up our fish.”

In 1976, the Magnuson-Stevens Act established American territorial waters and made it illegal for foreign vessels to fish in our seas. Suddenly, Long Island fishmongers were hauling up squid, which they would sometimes immediately sell to foreign ships. Soon enough, restaurateurs realized that squid was inexpensive, easy to freeze and fry, and held mass appeal.

With the rise in concerns about sustainable eating, squid comes out on top again. Halweil explained that there are two reasons squid ranks as a “best choice” according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium seafood watch chart.

While trawling for squid does involve using a net that’s as long as a city block, it doesn’t require scraping the bottom of the ocean floor. Squid live a few feet off the seafloor so the net skims, rather than drags. Also, squid “swims in these massive, dense schools, which means there’s not a lot of other fish in those schools with the squid,” added Halweil. “So when they scoop up a big school of squid, they might get a few big lobsters and they might get some butterfish, but they’re mostly getting squid."

(Photo: Calamari salad served at Almond restaurant/Lindsay Morris)

There’s a lot to love about this strange, bug-eyed creature.

“When I talk to chefs and fishers about why squid is so great, they say, one it’s sustainable,” Halweil said. “Two, it’s local. We have one of the largest squid fisheries in the world off the coast of New York. Three, [it’s] intensely economical. I mean, really inexpensive — $6 to $8 a pound if you’re willing to clean your own squid. And it’s very flexible in the kitchen.”

It can top a food as humble as pizza or be elevated to grace the menu of Esca.

“Squid is nice because you can cook it just a little bit or you can cook it a lot,” he said. “Everywhere in between it does get rubbery and that’s where squid and calamari gets a bad reputation.” In particular, Halweil likes to quickly sear it on a super hot grill. Once it chars on one side, he flips it, does the other side, and it’s done in a matter of minutes and ready to be served. Halweil also like to use it in soups and stews for long, slow preparations.

Here’s a bonus: While squid is ubiquitous as a food stuff, it is also a creature of the sea that maintains the power to fascinate and delight. I mean, just look at this international team of grown adult scientists freak out over this giant squid sighting. And, yes, we are cautiously ignoring that recent, horrifying episode of This American Life. Take it away, Ira.

Wait, before you listen to that, here are some recipes for your eating pleasure.

Carrot and Calamari Salad by Chef Michael Anthony from The Gramercy Tavern Cookbook
Squid a la Plancha with Romesco and Sea Beans by Chef Jason Weiner of Almond

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A snowy winter storm is a daunting way to start off a new year — particularly if your resolutions for 2014 include eating better, saving money, and being healthier. One way to help meet all three of those lofty goals is to make sure you have a pantry that’s well-stocked. Late nights at the office won’t have to end in take-out, and unexpected snow days won’t lead to miserable treks to the grocery store.

“One of my favorite staples is couscous,” said Gabrielle Langholtz, the editor of Edible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn. “It’s a granular pasta from North Africa that is so fast. This is my version of fast food. It is literally as fast as making tea.”

Couscous can serve as a complement to meat or vegetables, and it can be quickly jazzed up with other pantry staples to be a main course. Langholtz also enjoys having whole grains like emmer, barley, wheat berries, and freekeh on hand, but she notes that those can take 45 minutes to an hour to cook.

“[That] is fantastic on a day like today when you just want to stay in and cook and not go out and brave the slushy sidewalk,” she said. “But couscous is something that I like to have on hand for when you get home, you’re starving, you want to eat in, like, 2 minutes.”

Langholtz keeps bags of dried beans from inexpensive brands like Goya in her cupboards, but she said that, for those who are able, it’s worthwhile to spend more on quality ingredients, as well.

“I used to stand there in the aisle at Whole Foods and say, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m not going to spend $8 on this bag of imported French lentils,’” she admitted. “But then, I’d find myself spending $12 or $14 on a salad or a cocktail out… Obviously, if you’re on a fixed income, you’re not going to buy and $8 little bag of lentils, but if you do the math, it’s really 15 cents a serving.”

In particular, Langholtz splurges on lentils du puy, which are less starchy than other types of lentils so they don’t get mushy when cooked.

“They are like that little black dress when something unexpected comes up and you just need something great,” she said. “Lentils du puy grow in this volcanic soil. They have this incredible nutty flavor, they cook in 20 or 25 minutes.”

When it comes to flavor boosters, Langholtz relies on shelf-stable ingredients like anchovies and dijon mustard.

“I find most people think they don’t like anchovies and then they love the result when you cook with anchovies,” she said. “They’re like a stealth ingredient… If you mince it up, you can deploy this umami bomb in everything from Cesar salad or kale salad to pasta puttanesca.”

Langholtz also points out that mustard can be used on more than sandwiches. She emulsifies it in vinaigrettes or uses it to top celery root or salmon.

Here’s a list of pantry-ingredient combinations that we like. Fresh herbs are always preferable, but dried herbs can do in a pinch. We’re listing only shelf-stable ingredients, but if you have vegetables or proteins on hand, even better.

Couscous + almonds + dried apricots (chopped)
Couscous + toasted pine nuts + craisins
Lentils du puy + vinaigrette
Lentils du puy + parsley + thyme + lemon juice
Anchovies + garlic + olives + canned tomatoes + red pepper flakes = pasta sauce
Soy sauce + lemon juice = sauce for dried Asian noodles
Peanut butter + soy sauce + sugar + water = peanut sauce for dried Asian noodles

What do you always have in your cabinet? What did you whip up during the snowstorm? Tell us in the comments below.

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Adding alcohol to the searing hot pan of the Stir Fry was bound to cause trouble. I should have had a fire extinguisher on hand for my lightning round with New York Times Magazine "Drinks" columnist Rosie Schaap.

The flame-out occurred just 48 seconds into the stir-fry, and it wasn't Schaap who got burned. It was me. Forty-eight seconds in, my iPhone stopped recording. Move over, Miss Rosie, for Beyoncé Schaap's lightning round went lights out because of my recent download of Queen B's new album. Fifteen songs and 15 music videos. HuffPo called it a "mammoth investment" on Beyoncé's part, but it was a mammoth battery-draining, storage-busting investment on mine.

Well, even 48 seconds of searing heat from the Stir Fry appeared to be enough to wilt Schaap. She couldn't think of her favorite song of 2013 — couldn't even think of a song of 2013. Not even "Blurred Lines," the omnipresent Robin Thicke song of the summer, and certainly nothing from "Beyoncé."

Schaap said her musical tastes lie in a different century (19th, not 20th). She recently appeared on WNYC's Soundcheck, where she paired three of her favorite songs, all old folk tunes, with drinks.

Music, booze, and now, food, with her appearance on "Last Chance Foods."

"I'm working toward the public radio trifecta," she said.

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Christmas is over and the presents are put away, but for many of us, the holiday season isn’t quite finished yet. There’s still New Year’s and a spate of winter parties to attend. If you happen to be hosting a celebration, we’ve got a time-tested, easy mid-winter fix for your bar: Hot, mulled, alcoholic drinks.

Not only do beverages like gløgg, glühwein, and wassail warm you up, they also make your entire home smell wonderful, said Rosie Schaap, the “Drink” columnist for The New York Times Magazine and the author of Drinking With Men.

She added that hot drinks can’t be quaffed as quickly as cool cocktails. “So it kind of, you know, keeps people a little steadier, takes a little longer,” she said. “You can luxuriate over your glass of wassail or gløgg or gluhwein.”

These traditional beverages are so popular that they can also be the source of contention. “I’ve heard many a bar argument between a Norwegian American and a Swedish American over [the origins of gløgg],” Scaap said. “Like most of these kinds of warm winter beverages, it’s essentially a folk tradition, so anyone who claims to have the authoritative gløgg recipe is loaded with hubris, I would say.”

Whether your family recipe insists on dried bitter orange peel over the addition of fresh orange, there are three constants when it comes to gløgg — red wine, orange, and cardamom.

“To me, it’s that spice that really distinguishes gløgg from other mulled drinks,” Schaap said. “And then there are countless variables. You can make it stronger with vodka or aquavit or brandy. You could add cloves, cinnamon, allspice, other kinds of spices. You could garnish with raisins and almonds.”

The recipe Schaap received from her Swedish friend Annika originated with a handful of this or a small handful of that. (Find it here in a more precise form.) She cautions to start small and then add more as needed.

Gluhwein — which could easily be called German or Austrian — does not generally include cardamom. Schaap also noted that she’d once seen glühwein made with white wine, which is never the case with gløgg. Otherwise, both follow the same principles of mulled wine: heat wine and add spices.

The application of heat may lead some of the alcohol to evaporate, but not much. Slow cookers make handy, safe vessels for keeping drinks hot. After all, an open flame at a raucous party could equal trouble.

English wassail is a hot, boozy beverage of a different nature. Instead of wine, it uses cider — either hard cider or the nonalcoholic variety. Again, spices and heat lend it a holiday flair.

Schaap explained that its likely wassail originated in the Southwest of England, around Dorset or Somerset, in orchard country. Villagers would go “wassailing” to the orchards to try and invoke a good harvest.

Schaap said the first time she tried wassail was at The Drink in Williamsburg, and she recommend this recipe from Jenn Dowds of The Churchill. Also, here’s her recipes for gløgg and glühwein.

Annika’s gløgg
Glühwein by chef Kurt Gutenbrunner of Blaue Gans and Café Sabarsky

Wassail
From Jenn Dowds, The Churchill
By Rosie Schaap

Yield: About 12 servings

5 to 6 small to medium honey crisp (or Fuji or McIntosh) apples, cored
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
2 cups Madeira
2 bottles (22.4 ounces) London Pride Ale
4 bottles (48 ounces) Strongbow English Cider
1 cup apple cider
12 whole cloves
12 whole allspice berries
2 cinnamon sticks, 2 inches long
2 strips orange peel, 2 inches long
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Place apples in a 9-by-9-inch glass baking dish. Spoon light and dark brown sugar into center of each apple, dividing sugar evenly among them. Pour 1 cup water into bottom of dish and bake until tender, about 1 hour.
Meanwhile, pour Madeira, ale and English and apple ciders into a large slow cooker or heavy pot. Place cloves, allspice, cinnamon and orange peel into cheesecloth, tie shut with kitchen twine and add to slow cooker or pot along with ginger and nutmeg. Set slow cooker to medium, or place pot over low heat. Gently simmer for about 1 hour, while apples bake, or longer if desired.
Add liquid from the baking dish and stir to combine. Using tongs, transfer apples into slow cooker or pot to garnish. Reduce heat. Ladle hot wassail into heatproof cups to serve.

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Okay, so a hundred-plus years after Japan discovered loose, soupy British-style curry and thickened and adapted it for a rice-eating culture, guess what? Soup curry makes a comeback! This second coming, as it were, began in 1971 when a restaurant in cold, snowy Sapporo, on the northern main island of Hokkaido, whipped up a comforting, soupy “medicine curry,” loaded with spices and herbs. Twenty years later, another Sapporo joint, named Magic Spice, picked up this curry, but minus the medicinals. They dubbed it, simply, “soup curry” and the effect was indeed magical—before long this tasty curry spread and specialized soup curry restaurants began popping up all over the city. Lucky for us: this lighter curry, loaded with veggies and chicken, is an absolute delight. But soupy or not, you still eat it with rice.

Serves 4

6 ounces Japanese or Chinese eggplant (about 2 small eggplants)
8 ounces zucchini (about 1 large zucchini)
8 ounces red pepper (about 1 large red pepper), cored
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium Spanish onion (about 12 ounces), peeled and cut into small dice
1 1⁄4 medium carrots (about 5 ounces), peeled and cut into small dice
1 teaspoon finely chopped garlic
1 teaspoon finely chopped ginger
4 chicken legs, boned and cut into 1-inch-wide slices (about 1 3⁄4 pounds chicken after boning)
4 tablespoons curry powder
6 cups torigara stock (page 25), or 6 cups water mixed with 2 tablespoons torigara base
2 teaspoons salt
2 bay leaves
2 whole dried Japanese chilies (takano tsume)
3 tablespoons olive oil
Steamed rice, for serving

Cut the eggplant and zucchini in half lengthwise, and slice the halves on an angle into about 3-inch-long pieces. Cut the red pepper in half lengthwise, and cut into 1-inch-thick lengthwise strips. Set the vegetables aside.

Heat the vegetable oil in a large saucepan over high heat. Add the onion, carrot, garlic, and ginger and cook, stirring constantly, for about 3 minutes, until the onion turns translucent. Add the chicken and cook, stirring constantly, until the meat turns white. Add the curry powder and cook, stirring constantly, for 1 minute. Add the torigara stock, salt, bay leaves, and Japanese chilies and stir to combine. When the liquid comes to a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer. Cook the curry for about 7 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove any scum that appears on the surface.

While the curry is simmering, heat the olive oil in a large skillet over high heat. Add the eggplant, zucchini, and red pepper, and cook, stirring constantly, for about 2 minutes, until the vegetables soften. Remove from the heat.

Once the curry has cooked for 7 minutes, add the sautéed eggplant, zucchini, and red pepper, and stir to combine. Cook for about 5 minutes more, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are cooked through. As the curry cooks, remove any scum or excess oil that appears on the surface. Serve in soup bowls, with steamed white rice on the side.

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Let’s dial it back to where it all began: old-school Japanese curry. Sweet-savory, fragrant, rich—and irresistible—this dish calls for the classic Japanese curry ingredients, that is, root vegetables, apple, and beef. And you thicken it using an old-fashioned roux, a French-style thickening agent for sauces made by cooking together butter and flour (a testament to this particular curry’s Western roots). We use S&B curry powder, a Japanese brand founded in the 1920s and widely available in Asian markets here, but you can also substitute with Madras curry (usually sold in cans in supermarkets) or any curry powder you like. You can riff on this basic recipe in endless ways. Use chicken, pork, or seafood instead of beef. Add other vegetables: celery, eggplant, green pepper, daikon, broccoli, spinach, or tomato wedges (add the tomato 10 minutes before finishing so it doesn’t break down). Use honey or even mango to sweeten the curry. Or throw the onions in at the beginning, with the beef, and totally brown them (like Tadashi does in his lamb curry, page 52), which will both help thicken the dish and add more intensely caramel flavors. Experiment and have fun.

Serves 4, with leftovers

1 pound stew beef (or any cut of beef you desire), cut into bite-size cubes
2 teaspoons salt
1⁄2 teaspoon pepper
6 tablespoons butter
1 pound medium onions (about 3), peeled and coarsely chopped
8 ounces carrots (about 2 medium carrots), cut rangiri style (see page 48)
1 tablespoon grated ginger (about 1⁄3 ounce)
1 teaspoon grated garlic (about 2 cloves, peeled and grated)
1 large apple (about 8 ounces), peeled and grated
5 cups beef stock
3 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons curry powder
2 tablespoons garam masala, an aromatic Indian spice mixture (or substitute with curry powder)
3⁄4 pound potatoes, peeled and cut into bite-size pieces
Steamed rice, for serving

Season the beef with 1 teaspoon of the salt and the pepper. Melt 2 tablespoons of the butter in a large pot over medium heat. Add the beef and cook, stirring frequently, for about 2 minutes, until the meat browns (to lock in the flavor). Add the onion, and cook, stirring constantly, for about 5 minutes, until the onion begins to turn translucent. Add the carrots, ginger, and garlic, and cook and stir for 2 more minutes. Add the apple, stock, and remaining 1 teaspoon of the salt. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 1 hour.

While the ingredients are simmering, prepare the roux. Melt the remaining 4 tablespoons butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Add the flour, stirring constantly for about 3 minutes. The flour will first bind to the butter, then the mixture will break apart, and look like large blonde crumbs. At this point, add the curry powder and garam masala and stir for 2 more minutes, until the roux releases a heady, toasted curry fragrance. Remove the saucepan from the heat and set aside.

Once the ingredients have simmered for 1 hour, add the potatoes. (Add 1/2 cup of water at this point if the curry seems too dry; it should have the consistency of gravy.) Scoop a ladleful of liquid from the pot and add it to the roux, mixing together to create a paste. Add the roux paste to the large pot and mix well. Simmer for 20 more minutes, or until the potatoes are tender. Mix frequently, scraping the curry from the bottom of the pot, being careful not to burn. When the curry is ready, serve with steamed white rice.

*How to Cut Rangiri Style

Rangiri is a handy Japanese cutting technique to create uniform pieces from unevenly sized roots like carrots, lotus, or burdock. This method also creates a lot of surface area on cut pieces, so they cook faster and absorb flavors better. The key to this technique is rolling the ingredient while you cut. Here’s how you do it: Cut a root on an angle, roll a quarter turn, cut on an angle. Repeat until you’ve cut up the entire root.

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At Last Chance Foods, our cup runneth over with cookbooks. It’s a large cup, admittedly. And with Christmas less than a week away, these beautiful tomes come in handy as last minute gifts. Here are our picks for some of our favorite cookbooks of the year. We even snagged a few recipes from them for your cooking pleasure.

The A.O.C. Cookbook
by Suzanne Goin

“The recipes are organized by different course — salads, fish, meat, and vegetables — and by season, so it appeals to my producerly sense of order. And while I’m not vegetarian, I like that it has a strong focus on vegetables.” —JYW

Recipe: Spiced "Pumpkin" Fritters with Chocolate Sauce and Candied Pepitas

The Grilling Book: The Definitive Guide from Bon Appétitby Adam Rapoport

“It made me want to buy a grill. And I haven’t done it yet. I’m going to — I got as close as buying a spatula for the grill… I love the design of this book. There’s a lot of little how-to sidebars, and Rapoport offers the pros and cons of different methods, like the case for charcoal grilling versus gas grilling… There are a lot of It’s so instructive without being condescending.” —AE

Recipe: Hickory Rib-Eye Steaks with Bacon-Molasses Butter
Recipe: Grilled Avocados and Chiles

Japanese Soul Cooking: Ramen, Tonkatsu, Tempura, and More from the Streets and Kitchens of Tokyo and Beyond
by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat

“So much of Japanese cooking tends to be very precise and pristine. But you know regular families probably aren’t eating these elaborate sushi or sashimi presentations at home every night. I feel like Japanese Soul Cooking shows a different side of that culture’s cuisine, and has chapters devoted to food like gyoza dumplings and tonkatsu, which is a panko-breaded fried pork cutlets.” —JYW

Recipe: Retro Curry
Recipe: Sapporo Soup Curry
Recipe: Classic Tonkatsu

Ivan Ramen: Love, Obsession, and Recipes From Tokyo’s Most Unlikely Noodle Joint
by Ivan Orkin and Chris Ying

“It’s the memoir portion of the book I enjoy. His writing is like Ivan was in our interview: Fast and sharp and bracing and irreverent. Here’s how he writes about realizing that he wanted to move back to Japan and stay there. He was living with a woman in Maine at the time.

Then I had an epiphany. I looked up and said, ‘You know what? I don’t like Maine and I love Japan. I don’t know what the f* you’re talking about, but that’s the place I want to be.’ No offense to Maine, but it took being there for me to realize how much I wanted to be somewhere else.

It’s a great story, one that inspires you to throw all your self-imposed caution to the wind.” —AE

Recipe: Toasted Rye Noodles

Honorable mentions:

The Art of French Pastry by Jacquy Pfeiffer and Martha Rose Schulman

Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook by Sharon Kramis and Julie Kramis Hearne

Cherry Bombe, a new biannual magazine celebrating women and food

Keepers: Two Home Cooks Share Their Tried-and-True Weeknight Recipes and the Secrets to Happiness in the Kitchen by Kathy Brennan and Caroline Campion

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The interplay of charred poblano chile, bell pepper, and onion—combined with sautéed garlic and basil—make for a rich, flavorful accompaniment to Chicken Under a Brick. And for the record, you haven’t lived until you’ve eaten a grilled avocado.

6 to 8 servings

3 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil, divided, plus more for brushing
1 large poblano chile, quartered, seeded
1 large red bell pepper, quartered, seeded
1 red onion, cut into ½-inch slices
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup red wine vinegar, more as needed
2 garlic cloves, sliced
1 cup fresh basil leaves
4 avocados, halved and pitted
¼ tsp. chili powder

Ingredient Info: Poblano chiles are available at specialty foods stores, farmers’ markets, Latin markets, and some supermarkets.

Build a medium fire in a charcoal grill, or heat a gas grill to medium-high. Brush grill grate with oil. Season chile, bell pepper, and onion with salt and pepper. Grill, turning occasionally, until softened and charred in spots, about 12 minutes. Transfer onion to a medium bowl. Transfer chiles and peppers to a work surface and cut lengthwise into 1-inch slices. Add to bowl with onion. Add ¼ cup vinegar and toss to coat.

Heat 2 Tbsp. oil in a small skillet over medium-low heat. Add garlic and cook until soft but not browned, about 4 minutes. Add basil and stir to wilt. Transfer basil mixture to bowl with onion. Season vegetables to taste with salt and more vinegar, if desired.

Rub cut side of avocados with remaining 1 Tbsp. oil, season with salt, and sprinkle with chili powder. Grill, cut side down, until avocado is gently warmed and flesh is golden brown, about 3 minutes. Serve with chicken and vegetables.

From The Grilling Book: The Definitive Guide from Bon Appétit Edited by Adam Rapoport/Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC

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If you can resist eating the molasses-coated bacon long enough to mix it into the butter, you’ll discover that these few simple ingredients create something delicious. The hickory wood chips are one of the other crucial “ingredients”: They give the steaks a wonderful smoky flavor.

Makes 6 servings

6 slices thick-cut bacon
⅓ cup mild-flavored (light) molasses
Freshly ground black pepper
6 Tbsp. (¾ stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
Kosher salt
Vegetable oil, for brushing
6 rib-eye steaks (each about 1 inch thick)

Special Equipment:

2 cups hickory or other wood chips, soaked in water for
1 hour, drained; a foil broiler pan (for wood chips if using gas grill)
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing
⅓ cup fresh lemon juice
⅓ cup coarsely chopped fresh rosemary or 1½ Tbsp. dried
Freshly ground black pepper
6 12- to 14-oz. T-bone steaks (each about 1 inch thick)
Kosher salt

Position rack in top third of oven and preheat to 375°F. Line a small baking sheet with foil. Arrange bacon slices on foil; brush bacon with molasses, then season with pepper. Bake until bacon is cooked through but not crisp, about 15 minutes. Transfer bacon to a work surface; let cool. Chop bacon; transfer to a small bowl. Add butter and stir to blend. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Do Ahead: Bacon-molasses butter can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and chill. Bring to room temperature before using.

Season steaks with salt and pepper; let stand at room temperature for 1 hour. Build a medium-hot fire in a charcoal grill, or heat a gas grill to high. Scatter drained wood chips over charcoal if using charcoal grill; or place wood chips in foil broiler pan and set directly on flame if using gas grill. Brush grill grate with oil. When chips are smoking, place steaks on grill grate. Cover grill and cook steaks until an instant-read thermometer registers 120°F for rare (steaks will carry over to 125°F, or medium-rare, as they rest), about 3 minutes per side. Transfer steaks to plates. Spoon bacon-molasses butter atop each.

From The Grilling Book: The Definitive Guide from Bon Appétit Edited by Adam Rapoport/Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC

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Think of these as pumpkin-pie doughnuts. Do I need to say more? Oh, with chocolate sauce and candied, spiced pepitas. I actually find fried desserts to be great for dinner parties. You can do the prep ahead and still get that wow factor at the table—I mean, who doesn’t like pumpkin pie and doughnuts?! You will notice that these “pumpkin” fritters are actually made using winter squash. I find real pumpkin to often be very watery and lacking in flavor so I prefer the richness and sweetness of squash such as kabocha or butternut.

MAKES ABOUT 20 FRITTERS

NOTE While the fritter batter rises, prepare the chocolate sauce and fried pepitas.

½ kabocha or butternut squash, about 1 pound
1/4 cup whole milk
2 teaspoons dry yeast
3 cups all- purpose fl our
1 teaspoon kosher salt
11/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground cardamom
⅛ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
⅛ teaspoon ground cloves
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted, plus a little for the bowl
1 extra- large egg
⅔ cup dark- brown sugar
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup granulated sugar
2 to 3 quarts vegetable oil, for frying
1 recipe Chocolate Sauce (recipe follows)
1 recipe Candied Pepitas (recipe follows)

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Cut the squash in half lengthwise, and place on a baking sheet cut- side up. (Don’t remove the seeds yet; they give extra flavor.) Cover with foil, and roast for about 1 hour, until very tender. Let cool for 10 minutes, and then scoop out the seeds and discard them. Purée the warm squash through a ricer or food mill, and measure out ½ cup. (You can reheat any leftover purée, season it with salt, pepper, and butter, and eat it for dinner!) In a large bowl, heat ¼ cup water and the milk to body temperature. Sprinkle yeast evenly across the surface, and allow the yeast to bloom for 10 to 15 minutes.

Whisk the flour, salt, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, and the other spices together, and then sprinkle across bloomed yeast. Make a well in the center, and set aside.

Combine the squash purée, butter, egg, brown sugar, and vanilla, and pour into the well of the dry ingredients. Fold together with a rubber spatula until incorporated; be careful not to overmix the batter, or the fritters will be tough. (Some specks of fl our are OK.) Lightly brush a large bowl with melted butter. Scrape batter into the bowl, and flip the batter upside down, so that all sides are covered with a little of

the melted butter. Cover with plastic, and allow the batter to rise in a warm, draft- free place for about 1 hour, until doubled in size. Let the batter rest for at least 1 hour in the refrigerator, and then bring it to room temperature when you are ready to fry. (Chilling the batter in the fridge develops the flavor and creates more tender fritters.) Combine 1 cup granulated sugar with the remaining 1 teaspoon cinnamon in a large bowl, and set aside. Heat the oil to 350°F on a deep- frying thermometer, over medium heat, in a heavy, wide- bottomed pan.

Scoop heaping tablespoons of batter, and use a second spoon to push rounded spoonfuls into the hot oil. Don’t overcrowd the pan; the fritters shouldn’t be touching. Fry for 2 to 3 minutes, until deep golden brown on all sides.

Drain the fritters on paper towels, and pat to remove any excess oil. While they’re still hot, toss fritters in the bowl with cinnamon- sugar mixture. Pile the fritters up on a platter, or divide among six dessert plates. Drizzle with ¾ cup chocolate sauce, sprinkle with candied pepitas, and serve remaining chocolate sauce on the side for dipping.

Excerpted from The A.O.C. Cookbook by Suzanne Goin. Copyright © 2013 by Suzanne Goin. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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In the past few years, ramen shops seem to be popping up everywhere from Harlem to Flushing. Chef Ivan Orkin, who just opened Ivan Ramen Slurp Shop at Gotham West Market and published the memoir/cookbook Ivan Ramen, says that the reason ramen has gotten so popular is because it’s the ultimate comfort food.

“It’s all in one bowl — it all gets eaten together,” he says. “There’s a lot of different flavors. There’s fat and salt. And I think it just hits all those different points we need to make us feel good. And it’s simple.”

Orkin opened his first ramen shop in 2007 in Tokyo, and went on to launch his own instant ramen brand. Not bad — for a Jew from Long Island.

Orkin says being an outsider in Japan had its advantages. “You have.. the obvious hook,” he said. “You slide open my little aluminum doors and there’s a white guy standing behind the counter, which certainly didn’t hurt. I won’t lie.”

One of his specialties, noodles made with rye flour, had less to do with all the rye bread he ate growing up and more with the simple stuff that inspires him.

“The flour is very different in the United States than in Japan,” Orkin explained. “It’s milled a lot more finely there. And here, you know, I ended up using rye. I do use rye in Japan but not in every one of my noodles. In some of my noodles I use toasted corn, in some I use whole wheat.”

(Photo: Ivan Orkin and Amy Eddings at WNYC/Ivan Orkin)

He only uses a small percentage of rye flour, though, because it doesn’t bind well. “It’s just enough to give a little bit of an aromatic punch,” he said.

Orkin, a self-described geek who makes up noodle recipes in his head, confessed that he doesn’t remember his own cooking instructions line for line. So when it came time to take photos for the cookbook, he had to go about it like any home cook.

“I opened up the book, and I read the recipe,” Orkin said. “I didn’t have any kansui on hand [so] I made it with Harold McGee’s recipe. And the [noodle] recipe really, really works. I mean, it’s dauntingly long and yet if you read it slowly and carefully, you can do each component one at a time.” Some parts can be made ahead of time and refrigerated.

As for where to source the various Japanese ingredients, Orkin recommended heading out to the Japanese supermarket Mitsuwa in Edgewater, New Jersey. There’s a food court there with ramen and rice bowls to make the trip particularly worthwhile. Mitsuwa also holds seasonal ramen events with guest chefs flown in from Japan.

Orkin may just be distracting the hungry masses by sending them to Mitsuwa for the moment. In addition to the 20-seat Slurp Shop, his storefront restaurant at 25 Clinton Street is set to open early next year, though he wouldn't specify a date.

“I’ve given up giving dates because I’ve been getting chastised,” he said. “Apparently, one person Tweeted that I’ve redefined the word ‘soon’... Touche, touche.”

If you’re not willing to wait, try your hand at reproducing Orkin’s ramen noodles at home. Here’s the recipe.

Ivan Ramen: Love, Obsession, and Recipes from Tokyo's Most Unlikely Noodle Joint

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Our noodle recipe has changed over the years. The noodle we serve now isn’t the same as the one we opened with. This recipe is my play on soba; these can be served hot or cold. Most ramen shops would frown upon using soba-style noodles because they’re so mild compared to a salty, porky ramen broth. But my soup is lighter than most, and works well with these more ethereal noodles.

I’m personally obsessed with the kaori, or aroma, of the noodles. Most shops use one type of flour that is specifically designed for ramen, with a protein level of 10 to 11 percent. These flours are inexpensive, but they don’t have the deep, fresh aroma that I’m looking for. At my shop, we combine soft udon flour (7 to 8 percent protein), with high-protein bread flour (14 to 15 percent protein) and a small percentage of rye or other whole grain flour, for a noodle with an irresistible aroma of fresh wheat. It’s a circuitous route to get to the 10 to 11 percent protein content that works for noodles, but we get much more interesting textures and complex flavors, and even a deeper color, with pretty little speckles of whole grain. Toasting the flour brings out more aromatic nuances, while removing some of the liquid in the flour and making for an even chewier noodle.]

Powdered kansui adds the alkaline component of these noodles. As noted in numerous places by Harold McGee, the oracle of culinary science, a simple substitute for kansui powder is baked baking soda. Spread baking soda in a thin layer on a foil-lined sheet tray and bake for one hour at 275°F (135°C). Store in a container with a tight-fitting lid for up to a couple of months.

In Tokyo, we work with an excellent and very expensive noodle machine. You won’t have one. But neither did I when I first started developing these recipes. Believe me, you can make great ramen noodles at home with a manual pasta machine. But it will take you more than one try to iron out the kinks. Try the recipe, curse me out if you must, and try again. Your kitchen will produce different results than mine—that’s just the reality of cooking, Repeat and tinker with the proportions until you have your ideal bowl of toothsome, fragrant noodles. This recipe yields enough noodles for ten bowls of ramen.

Makes about 1.3 kilos (2 3/4 pounds)

75 grams (1⁄2 cup) rye flour
620 grams (4 cups) high-gluten (14 to 15 percent protein) bread flour
300 grams (2 cups) cake flour
10 grams (11⁄2 teaspoons) kansui powder
430 milliliters (13⁄4 cups) cool water
13 grams (1 tablespoon) salt
Cornstarch

Toast the rye flour in a nonstick pan over medium-high heat. Stir the flour until a few wisps of fragrance reach your nose, about 4 minutes. Don’t give it any color! Weigh the flour again after it’s been toasted: you only want 70 grams of toasted flour for this recipe—the extra 5 grams are to account for any loss while toasting.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the flours and set aside. Ramen noodle dough can be quite stiff and difficult to work with. If you don’t have a stand mixer, good old-fashioned elbow grease will have to do.

In a separate bowl, slowly stir the kansui into the water until it’s fully dissolved (this takes a little time). Then stir in the salt to dissolve.

Outfit your mixer with the dough hook attachment. With the mixer running on low speed, add the water in thirds to the flour mixture. After a few minutes, the dough should begin to come together. It will be a bit shaggy—more so than Italian pasta dough. If it isn’t coming together at all, add a spoonful of water. Once it comes together, increase the speed to medium-low and let the machine run for 10 minutes, until the dough forms a ball. Turn off the mixer and cover the dough with plastic wrap. Let stand for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, the dough should be significantly softer in texture and smoother in appearance. Set the dough ball on a cutting board, flatten it with the palm of your hand, then cut it into four 5-centimeter (2-inch) strips. Cover the dough strips with a damp kitchen towel.

Set up your pasta machine and adjust it for the largest size. Pass one piece of dough through the machine, then fold it over on itself so that you have a double sheet. Turn the machine to the second largest size, and run the doubled sheet through. Double the sheet over again, and run it through the third largest setting.

Don’t double the sheet over again. Run it through the fourth largest setting, then once through the smallest setting. Set aside and repeat with the remaining pieces of dough. Once the sheets are all rolled, pass them through the thinnest cutter you have, or cut them by hand so that they are as thin as possible. As you work, toss the noodles with a little cornstarch to keep them from sticking together, and shake off the excess before cooking. Store the noodles in a container wrapped tightly with plastic (or individual portions in ziplock bags) for up to a day.

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Gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, nut-free, vegan and vegetarian — has your Thanksgiving menu being undermined by food allergies and ethical objections? Tell us about what you don’t eat in the comments below. Or share the extraordinary lengths you’ve gone to in catering to the dietary restrictions of your friends and family.

Here’s what three chefs and one caterer had to say about the subject.

“I grew up in Maryland and on our way to the beach every year, we would see the poultry farms, or some of them, and they just really disgusted me,” confessed Jacques Gautier, the chef and owner of the Brooklyn restaurants Palo Santo and Fort Reno. “That was the one thing that led me as a teenager to become a vegetarian.”

He’s no longer a vegetarian, but he still makes it a point to stay away from brands like Perdue or Tyson — all because of that childhood memory. This year, he’s hosting Thanksgiving at his restaurants, where he’ll serve heritage turkeys raised on small farms.

When it comes to the sweet stuff, Chef Peter Berley, the author of The Flexitarian Table, draws the line at refined sugar.

“I avoid white sugar because it has disastrous effects on the body,” he said. “Really — it’s something that I’m pretty adamant about. And so I replace it with natural sweeteners that are loaded with minerals and also are whole foods, such as maple syrup. I like maple syrup a lot and one of the reasons I why love it is because of the Maillard reaction, which creates a synergized form of umami, which is the fifth taste, which is the experience of something yummy.”

Berley added that sweet potatoes are one of the few vegetables that have naturally occurring umami, so adding maple syrup to your sweet potato casserole will make it doubly delicious.

For those who avoid dairy, Aliya Leekong, a chef at the restaurant Junoon and author of the cookbook Exotic Table, has several suggestions on how to replace the flavor of butter with other vegan ingredients.

“I think you could easily replace flavors like butter in your cooking using just great market vegetables, aromatics like shallots and garlic,” she said. “Nuts add depth of flavor and fat to a dish. And just bright herbs like parsley and mint and cilantro can really sort of round out a dish, and you don’t really need a butter.” Leekong says the only thing she tries to avoid are processed foods.

Liz Neumark, the CEO of the catering company Great Performances, has a longer list of foods she doesn’t eat. Neumark stays away from dairy, meat, and octopus. She took the octopus off of all of the menus at Great Performances after reading articles about how smart and sentient they are. This Thanksgiving, Neumark will be in Israel, where she’ll celebrate Hanukkah, too. The rare overlap of the two holidays won’t happen again until 2070. But there’s one vegan and vegetarian Hanukkah food that Neumark would like to see every Thanksgiving.

“There’s no reason to think that latke couldn’t be a part of Thanksgiving tradition in general because it’s a great seasonal vegetable that really complements everything else that you’re eating,’ she said. “And you can really have fun with them because you can make them out of potatoes, you can make them out of sweet potatoes, you can make them with carrots, zucchini. You can do them so many different ways.”

So sometimes it just takes a little creativity and merging of cultures to find foods that everyone can enjoy this Thanksgiving. And remember, if you have dietary restrictions, one great way to work around that is to bring a dish that everyone can eat. Who knows? You might just make a dairy-free, nut-free, gluten-free convert out of your friends.

If you’re still scouting for a side dish for Thanksgiving, try chef Einat Admony’s award-winning latke recipe below. Or check out chef Peter Berley’s recipe for Roasted Pumpkin with Quinoa Stuffing.

Potato, Yam & Carrot Latke with Honey, Preserved Lemons & Yogurt Sauce
by Einat Admony, chef and owner of Balaboosta and Taïm

1 cup grated potato
1 cup grated yams
1 cup grated carrot
1 1/2 cup grated onion (after having the liquid squeezed out)
1/2 cup grated peeled granny smith apple
1 egg
1 tbs chopped thyme
4 tbs AP flour
1 tbs salt
Pinch black pepper
Pinch sugar
Canola oil

Method:

Mix all in a mixing bowl.

Heat up sauté pan with 1/2" oil.

When the oil is hot, around 370 degrees, create a 2-inch patties and fried them on both sides until they are golden brown.

For the yogurt sauce:

Simply mix chopped preserved lemons with enough honey to balance out the bitterness. Gently fold in plain yogurt until you have a homogeneous mixture. You can add turmeric for color if you wish. Season with salt and pepper. Dollop on your lovely little latkes and let the holiday feasting begin!

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Master pastry chef Jacques Torres has a word of advice for anyone making pies for Thanksgiving. He says to keep it simple.

“When you start to put too many [flavors together], you don’t know what you eat anymore,” he said. Instead, pick one main flavor and then use another ingredient or two to complement it.

“If you eat chocolate, add a tiny bit of salt. That salt [is] going to enhance the flavor of the chocolate,” Torres said. “If you put pear, pear and chocolate, or orange and chocolate, marry very well together. But make one of the two the star.”

Torres, who recently stopped by to judge the annual WNYC employee pie contest, also said to be sure to make test pies before the big day. That gives you a chance to get reactions and suggestions from friends and family, and allows for an opportunity to perfect a crust or filling.

Speaking to us from the site of a new Jacques Torres Chocolate factory in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, the chocolatier said that he particularly loves the American tradition of holiday cookie swaps. “What a beautiful gift when someone spends time in the kitchen for you, and puts all his love, attention, time into a box of cookies,” he said.

Torres told WNYC’s Amy Eddings that he plans on hosting Thanksgiving. He’ll make a turkey, which he always makes sure to soak in brine the night before. He said that the brine helps keep the turkey moist. Hear what French and American sides he’ll be making in the clip below.

And as for dessert, Torres says he has two plans in mind, one of which is a upside down apple tart. He describes how he makes the dessert, which is also known as a “tarte tatin,” in the clip below.

Here are two recipes for tarte tatin.

Smitten Kitchen: Molly's Apple Tarte Tatin

Los Angeles Times' Recipe: Tarte Tatin (upside-down caramelized apple tart)

If you’re looking to bring dessert to a Thanksgiving feast, try out the recipe for Jacques Torres’ Chocolate Chip Cookies. They have the advantage of being particularly portable.

Chocolate Chip Cookies from Jacques Torres
Time: 45 minutes (for 1 6-cookie batch), plus at least 24 hours’ chilling
Yield: 1 ½ dozen 5-inch cookies.

2 cups minus 2 tablespoons (8 ½ ounces) cake flour
1 2/3 cups (8 ½ ounces) bread flour
1 ¼ teaspoons baking soda
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons coarse salt
2 ½ sticks (1 ¼ cups) unsalted butter
1 ¼ cups (10 ounces) light brown sugar
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (8 ounces) granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract
1 ¼ pounds bittersweet chocolate disks or fèves, at least 60 percent cacao content (see note)
Sea salt
Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.
Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Drop chocolate pieces in and incorporate them without breaking them. Press plastic wrap against dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.
When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Set aside.
Scoop 6 3 ½ -ounce mounds of dough (the size of generous golf balls) onto baking sheet, making sure to turn horizontally any chocolate pieces that are poking up; it will make for a more attractive cookie. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt and bake until golden brown but still soft, 18 to 20 minutes. Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more. Repeat with remaining dough, or reserve dough, refrigerated, for baking remaining batches the next day. Eat warm, with a big napkin.

Note: Disks are sold at Jacques Torres Chocolate; Valrhona fèves, oval-shaped chocolate pieces, are at Whole Foods.

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Out magazine editor Aaron Hicklin has nerves of steel, at least when it comes to the high heat of the Stir Fry's lightening round of questions. He brought a typically British stiff upper lip to probing, deeply personal questions such as "a food you hated to eat as a kid but now love."

It was his ringing cell phone that rattled him, not my intellectually rigorous questions.

Hicklin was immune to public shaming. Asked if he ever got tipsy on one of his booze-soaked Christmas cakes, which he spoke about at length in this week's Last Chance Foods, he said, "I wish!"

My wish is that more Americans try his Christmas cake, which goes by the term "fruit cake" on this side of the pond. It might just subvert our national aversion to it.

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Mid-November may feel too early to be bopping along to Christmas tunes, but there’s one Christmas tradition that requires a long head start. English Christmas cake, according to Out magazine editor Aaron Hicklin, needs at least five weeks to mature, a process that calls for the cake being regularly soaked in booze. (If only human maturity was developed the same way.)

Hicklin, who moved to New York from the U.K. in 1998, explained that Christmas cake is primarily made up of dried fruit such as raisins, cherries, orange and lemon peel, as well as almonds. After being baked at a low temperature for several hours, the cake is kept in an air-tight metal cannister. Then every few days, holes are poked in it and brandy, rum, or port is added in spoonfuls.

Since the dried fruit already has a long shelf life, keeping it in a cake for weeks on end has no effect on the quality. Instead, the regular addition of liquor or wine allows the fruit to really soak in the liquid. “That makes that cake rich and really kind of gives it depth and kind of almost a chocolaty, velvety quality,” Hicklin said. He also recently started adding dried blueberries as a nod to American traditions.

Hicklin also stressed the importance of using quality dried fruit, since that is the cake’s main component. “People who dislike fruitcake may not have had homemade fruit cake,” said Hicklin, who adds that store-bought versions can be off-putting. “And homemade fruitcake is… on a whole other level.”

Hicklin, who is the partner of WNYC’s Ilya Marritz, said that the traditional dessert has a long history in the U.K., where it originated as a means of preserving fruit through the winter. Thanks to Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria and a man credited with popularizing Christmas trees and cards, there’s even a day dedicated to making the cake.

(Photo: Aaron Hicklin)

“He instituted Stir-Up Sunday, which is actually a Protestant day,” Hicklin said. “It’s the last Sunday before Advent, which typically falls in late November… it’s really a day when the whole family gets together, and they stir up the fruit for the Christmas pudding and the Christmas cake... I never knew any family that celebrated Stir-Up Sunday, but I kind of want to institute it.”

This year, Stir-Up Sunday falls on November 24. While that may still be several weeks before Christmas, Hicklin explained that the cake has the advantage of lasting several weeks past the holiday, as well.

“In the nuclear winter, the only thing left standing would be… scorpions and Christmas cake,” he joked. “Typically, you would eat it… from Christmas day through to the 12th day of Christmas. And I mean, I defy anyone to still have any cake left after 12 days. It’s delicious.”

If you’re interested in starting a Stir-Up Sunday tradition in your house, Hicklin recommends this Christmas cake recipe from the English cook Delia Smith.

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If you’re out wandering the woods this weekend, you might want to keep an eye out for a ruffled mass of mushrooms stuck to the bottom of a hardwood tree. It could well be a maitake, or hen of the wood, mushroom. The fungi is delicious and has a meatier, more assertive flavor than average button mushrooms.

“Their English name ‘hen of the woods’ is as such because they look a little like a slightly ruffled mother hen sitting at the base of a tree with her feathers all fluffed out,” explained Marie Viljoen, the author of the new book 66 Square Feet: A Delicious Life, One Woman, One Terrace, 92 Recipes. “So those ‘feathers’ are the part that you eat. Those are the caps of the mushroom.”

Plucking the mushroom off of the base of an oak or beech is helpful for the tree, since the fungi is parasitic. For those interested in foraging for maitake, a few necessary words of caution: Never eat a mushroom you can’t identify with 100 percent certainty, and always thoroughly cook wild mushrooms. (In fact, you should probably always cook all mushrooms, regardless of the source. That’s because they’re not very digestible raw, explained Mycophilia author Eugenia Bone in a past Last Chance Foods episode.)

One advantage of maitake is that you can also find them in gourmet grocery stores or at farmers markets. Viljoen pointed out that the commercially grown specimens require less work to clean.

“If you buy them, they really come pretty clean because they were grown in very sterile conditions,” she said. “The store-bought mushroom is also slightly more delicate than the enormous, slightly tougher foraged version.”

(Photo: Marie Viljoen/Vincent Mounier)

Viljoen also quickly debunked two mushroom myths: First, you don’t have to carefully wipe mushrooms. Go ahead and wash them. “I find that if you wash them well, submerge them in slightly salty water, and then take them out and pat them super dry between really clean kitchen towels, your mushroom is just fine,” she said.

Second, contrary to rumors, mushrooms are nutritious. “Maitake are quite high in potassium,” Viljoen said. “They contain niacin. They’re full of folates. They’re filled with antioxidants, so this is a mushroom you want to be eating. They’re good for you.”

To break down maitake, she recommended snapping off the caps and using them as you would a regular button variety. The base, which is woodier, can be saved for low-heat drying over the course of many hours. “I tend to use the base cut up, sliced and dried,” she added. “The dried mushroom is delicious to make the base for a broth or a risotto.”

Another way to use the entire mushroom is to make it into a soup, which Viljoen did and then brought into the WNYC studio to share. “The soup is very simple,” she said. “You start off with an onion base, sauté that, add the hen of the woods…. When they’re caramelized and brown, add whatever broth you prefer… and then puree the soup, and then that’s it.”

Tune into the full audio above for her quick explanations for making maitake paté, as well as maitake butter.

Also, check out a recipe from Viljoen’s new book for wild mushroom pizza.

(Photo: Wild hen of the woods/Marie Viljoen)

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Pizza cures nothing and delivers no one from evil, but eaten alone or with friends for company, it can help keep the boat afloat.

For a wild mushroom pizza I use a white, béchamel sauce base—I find tomato sauce too strong for their woodsy mushroom aroma. You can use many kinds of mushrooms for this; in October I use maitake, in December, oyster mushrooms, but even store-bought button mushrooms will taste good, given this treatment.

All the elements of this recipe can be prepared ahead of time, to assemble 25 minutes before you intend to eat the pie.

Pizza cures nothing and delivers no one from evil, but eaten alone or with friends for company, it can help keep the boat afloat. For a wild mushroom pizza I use a white, béchamel sauce base—I find tomato sauce too strong for their woodsy mushroom aroma. You can use many kinds of mushrooms for this; in October I use maitake, in December, oyster mushrooms, but even store-bought button mushrooms will taste good, given this treatment. All the elements of this recipe can be prepared ahead of time, to assemble 25 minutes before you intend to eat the pi For the Pizza Dough (see note)

1 cup (240 ml) warm water
1 tablespoon (1 package) instant yeast
¼ teaspoon sugar
2¼ cups (315 g) flour
Salt, large pinch

For the Mushrooms

3 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
6 cups (420 g) cleaned and sliced maitake
3 tablespoons lemon juice
Salt
Pepper
Leaves from 6 sprigs thyme

For the Cheese Sauce

2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
1½ cups (360 ml) milk
1 cup (100 g) finely grated Parmesan
Pepper
Nutmeg
2 medium balls fresh mozzarella

Note: This is a basic bread dough, and makes a Pullman-size loaf. I have also used it to wrap around sausage meat filling to carry to a picnic, and for bread rolls. It is a perfect pizza base, yielding a large, thick-crusted base. You may divide it in half if you want a thinner crust, but for these meaty mushrooms I like a hearty base to give the mushrooms’ flavor somewhere to go.

Make the pizza dough: Mix the water, yeast, sugar, and half a cup (TK g) of flour in a large bowl and stir very well until mixed. Cover and allow to proof for ten minutes. Add the rest of the flour gradually, with a large pinch of salt. When the dough is stiff, turn it onto a floured board and knead until it feels smooth and silky, at least 10 minutes. Clean the bowl and lightly oil it, then return the dough to the bowl, cover, and allow to rise until doubled in size.

Punch the dough back down.

If you are using a metal tray for baking, grease it. Place the dough in the middle of the tray and start pressing it outward toward the edges—I used the bunched middle joints of my right hand—always working from the middle of the dough and turning the tray as you go. If you are a skilled pizza maker you may be able to stretch the dough in your hands, but I find that the pressing method works pretty well. Keep at it until the dough has reached the edges of the tray, and leave a little collar around the lip, to catch any bubbling juices.

The dough may rest in the pan for 20 minutes to an hour.

Make the mushrooms: In a wide saucepan over medium heat, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil. Add the mushrooms and cook until they exude liquid, about 6 minutes. Turn the heat up and allow the liquid to cook off. Continue to cook until the mushrooms begin to turn golden-brown. Lower the heat to medium. Add 1 tablespoon of oil and the garlic and cook gently until it is translucent. Add the lemon juice, stir the mushrooms well, and allow it cook off. Taste, and season with salt and pepper. Add the thyme leaves. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

Make the cheese sauce: In a saucepan over medium-low heat, melt the butter until foaming. Add the flour, stirring constantly. Lower the heat. Cook this roux for as long as you can stand, but not for less than 3 minutes. Now add a splash of warm milk, and stir briskly as the mixture seizes up and thickens. Add additional splashes of milk, stirring all the time to prevent lumps. Add the rest of the milk once you are certain that your mixture is smooth, and increase the heat. Stir from time to time as the sauce thickens. Turn off the heat and add the Parmesan, stirring well. Taste, and add pepper. (Salt may be unnecessary because of the cheese.) I like to add a whisper of nutmeg at this point.

Dot flecks of butter across the sauce’s surface to help prevent a skin from forming. When the butter melts, tilt the pan slightly to allow it to spread thinly across the surface.

Assemble the pizza: Preheat the oven to 550°F (240°C) or as high as it can go. Hide the smoke alarm (remember to put it back later!).

Spread the cheese sauce thinly over the pizza dough. Cut the mozzarella into medium slices and halve each slice, distributing them evenly on the surface. Strew the mushrooms across the top.

Slide the tray into the blazing oven and cook until the crust is browning and crisp, about 20-25 minutes.

Add fresh black pepper just before serving.

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Whenever gardener, writer, forager and cook Marie Viljoen visits WNYC's studios, she comes bearing gifts. Delicious gifts, pulled out slowly, one by one, from her bag of delights.

I know not to bite the hand that feeds me. I went easy on Marie. I ditched putting her through a grueling lightning round of questions and just captured her and my producer, Joy Y. Wang, enjoying her three different takes on maitaki mushrooms, our topic this week on Last Chance Foods.

There was mushroom paté on homemade brown bread. There was a buttery spread made of maitaki that had been sauteéd in butter, then dehydrated. Joy delighted in its crunchiness. And there was mushroom soup, served from a tall green thermos Viljoen brought in. Does Marie Viljoen ever sleep?

She also provided paper plates, napkins and little glasses for the soup. The mushroom-butter spread was in little blue and yellow dishes. "They were a buck at Pearl River," she said, when we protested her offer to take the spread home with us.

"I want her life," Joy confided to me.

Well, we don't get that, but we did get her yummy kitchen productions. Note to self: Have Marie in to the studio more often.

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For the past few weeks here at WNYC, The Leonard Lopate Show and Last Chance Foods have combined to bring you the latest breaking news in the worlds of seasonal vegetables, new cookbooks, and pickling. Today, Leonard Lopate launched the 3-ingredient challenge with the help of chef Rozanne Gold.

In recognition of that contest and to present a united Food Fridays front, Last Chance Foods host Amy Eddings put a series of questions to Lopate for a change.

Lopate gently dodged the question of what he would submit as his 3-ingredient recipe by claiming host privileges. He pointed out that this year’s challenge differs from a previous James Beard award-winning iteration in which listeners challenged Gold to devise recipes based on certain ingredients.

“In this case, we’re asking our listeners to come up with the recipes, and then we’re going to decide which one works best,” Lopate said. “We’re also inviting celebrity chefs to take part in the challenge.”

The primary ingredient of this year’s 3-ingredient challenge is chicken, which could be a limiting proposition for vegetarians. The second ingredient can be allium like onions, leeks, or garlic. Then the listener chooses the third ingredient and preparation method. Seasonings, spices, herbs, oil, and butter can be used in any quantities.

When asked which food segments have proved the most controversial, Lopate pointing to hunting and meat as a consistent source of contention.

(Photo: Leonard Lopate/Casey De Pont)

“I think that anytime you talk about game, people get upset,” he said. “ And then there are vegetarians who just get upset that you ever say anything nice about meat, which seems to me to be a little shortsighted because a lot of people still eat meat. But I do try to address the issues of vegetarians, because we all should be eating a lot of vegetables and we should probably all be eating a lot less meat.”

Lopate’s favorite kitchen tool is one that can brook little argument, except possibly from those trying to go gluten-free. “I have a bagel slicer,” he said with a chuckle, “and it works great.”

See Amy Eddings grill Leonard Lopate in the 60-Second Stir-Fry lightning round of questions.

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These past few weeks, Leonard Lopate has been putting the "loco" in "locavore."He's been talking about eating, drinking and the politics of food during his show on the Food Fridays series by day, hosting "Lopate and Locavores" events in the Jerome L. Greene Performance Spaceat night and is launching another "3-ingredient challenge" with chef Rozanne Gold.

Good. Leonard's hectic schedule would have him in a scatterbrained fog, I thought, a perfect time to spring a Stir-Fry challenge on him.

I was richly rewarded. The radio host known for grilling the likes of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on the Nixon Administration's bombing of Cambodia was sporting some grill marks himself by the time I was through!

That "pretty good" restaurant in his old neighborhood of Chinatown that he couldn't remember? He recalled it later, when he was no longer in the hot seat. The "place on Elizabeth Street, the one with the live fish in the front," is Oriental Garden, 14 Elizabeth Street.

But Lopate clearly thinks Chinese food has seen better days in Manhattan's Chinatown. Foodies, you'd be wise to check out Sunset Park, Brooklyn or Flushing, Queens, instead.

Pantry necessities? Leonard recommended a "wide range" of spices, but then acknowledged that too many will end up unused and stale.

He was displaying his talk show host chops: the ability to see an issue from many sides, to see the unintended consequences in every decision or action.

Even his food travel fantasy had a bittersweet edge to it, a missed opportunity to dine at Ferran Adria's now-closed epic eatery in Spain, elBulli.

Slightly singed from the Stir-Fry, Lopate was in no mood to pretend he doesn't eat junk food or have a secret food shame, like some Stir-Fry guests. No cajoling necessary. He spilled the beans... or the potato chips, in this instance... readily. My day is complete. I got to interview Leonard Lopate and make him sweat. Sweet.

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Step into any of the city’s nouveau Southern restaurants, and you’ll likely see a menu full of regional staples like biscuits, fried green tomatoes, and cheesy grits. While foods like boiled peanuts grow increasingly popular, a few Southern staples still remain a bit of a mystery.

Take chow-chow, for instance. Even the name sounds fictitious.

But Kevin West, the author of Saving the Season, explains that chow-chow is a relish traditionally made from end-of-season produce.

“I call it a catchall relish because, although somebody might tell you that your grandmother made the one and only ‘right’ kind of chow-chow there is, in fact, there is no such thing as an objective standard,” West said. “You basically take whatever’s in the garden right before the last frost, and you grind it up.”

Then salt, vinegar, and spices like mustard seed, mustard powder, celery seed are added for flavor. The concoction is then sealed up in a jar and left to age.

“Chow-chow is one of those preserved products that is somewhere between a condiment and a side dish,” he explained. “If you think about a regular relish... you might put a little dab of that on your hot dog. With chow-chow, you can make yourself a big plate of pinto beans and cornbread, and then you get a big spoonful of chow-chow to go on the plate.”

West has also seen very sweet versions of the relish served on cheese boards, but he’s quick to add that the presentation is decidedly nontraditional.

“I would say the basic [ingredients] are the things you would find in a fall garden, so cabbage, probably green tomatoes, perhaps cauliflower,” West said. “Those are the three fundamentals.” His recipe also calls for mustard powder, which helps thicken the final product, and apples, which cuts down on the amount of added sugar.

(Photo: Kevin West/Josh Norris)

At home, West uses an old fashioned sausage grinder to process the vegetables, but he admits that a food processor would work, too. It would also make the process much faster. He cautions in his book not to over-process and liquify the vegetables, though.

As for the origins of the term “chow-chow,” West said the nonsensical sounding name likely hails from more distant origins. “According to pickling guru Linda Ziedrich, the name probably derives from the Hindi word for pickle, which is achar,” he explained.

When it comes to “putting food up,” as his grandmother referred to the canning process, West says that you don’t need a high degree of skill or specialized equipment. “Home canning is really just home cooking by another name,” he said. “If you can make a cake, or make brownies, or even make cookies — if you can undertake a little homemade project like that —then you’ve got all the kitchen skill that you need to can.”

Below, try West’s recipe for chow-chow from Saving the Season. If the quantity of vegetables seems daunting, he said to go ahead and just reduce everything by half.

The song played at the end of today’s Last Chance Foods episode is “Don’t It Make You Wanna Go Home” as performed by the acappella group The Persuasions. Hear it used in the promotional video for Saving the Season.

Chow-Chow

Yields: 8 pints

1 head cabbage, 2½ pounds (6 cups ground)
1 head cauliflower, 2 pounds (6 cups ground)
2 pounds green tomatoes (3 cups ground)
1 pound onions (1½ cups ground)
1 pound red or green peppers, roasted, seeded, and peeled (1 cup ground)
1 pound apples (1 cup ground)
2 jalapeño or Serrano chilies, seeded, or to taste
1⁄3 cup kosher salt
4 cups apple-cider vinegar
3 cups water
¾ cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons celery seeds
2 teaspoons mustard seeds
3 tablespoons mustard powder
3 tablespoons all- purpose flour
Grind all the vegetables and fruit, and toss them with the salt. Pour into a colander, and set aside to drain for 4 hours.
Working with one handful at a time, squeeze the liquids from the vegetable mixture. You should have 16 cups of vegetables. In a large pot, combine the vinegar, water, sugar, celery seeds, and mustard seeds. Mix a few tablespoons of the vinegar syrup with the mustard powder and flour to make a paste, then stir the paste into the pot. Bring the liquids to a boil, and add the vegetables. Bring everything back to a boil, and cook for 5 minutes longer.
Using a slotted spoon, pack the vegetables into eight prepared pint jars, leaving a generous 1 inch headspace. Ladle the liquids into the jars, leaving ½ inch headspace. Run a skewer or other thin implement around the inside edge of the jars to release any air pockets, then seal. Process the jars in a boiling- water bath for 10 minutes. To reduce venting, leave the jars in the water for 5 minutes before removing. Allow to cure for 2 weeks before opening.

Excerpted from Saving the Season by Kevin West. Copyright © 2013 by Kevin West. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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The sizzle of onions, the clicking of toasted rice, the whoosh of wine added to a hot pan, and the viscous burble rice cooking in stock — these are the sounds of making risotto. Cookbook author Lidia Bastianich listens for these audial cues when making the creamy rice dish, and lets her five senses guide her through each step.

“Cooking is about the ingredients and responding, but risotto specifically is about the technique,” said Bastianich, whose most recent cookbook, Lidia’s Commonsense Italian Cooking, is out this week. Instead of being intimidated by a long list of instructions or ingredients, the Emmy-award winning television host said that the key to mastering risotto is understanding and perfecting the basics.

First, be sure to use a wide, heavy-bottomed pan to ensure even distribution of heat. Then begin building a flavor base by sauteing onions, scallions, or leeks, softening them with a little stock. Once the liquid is evaporated, toast the short-grain rice so that the kernels form a protective casing. This prevents the short-chained starches found in risotto rice (Arboria, Carneroli, and Vialone Nano) from leaking out too quickly and becoming mush.

“It doesn’t get toasted like toast, that color… you just hear that clickity sound,” Bastianich said. “You’re stirring it almost like a dry stir-fry with onions and the oil.”

Then splash in good white wine — the rule of thumb is to never cook with something you wouldn’t drink. “You let that sort of fizz and dehydrate and then you begin the… periodical addition of this flavored stock,” she added.

The stock (or even water) should be hot so that it doesn’t impede the cooking of the rice. Risotto has a reputation for being notoriously time- and labor-intensive because the stock must be added a few cups at a time. Added all at once, the rice breaks down too quickly and becomes mush. Lidia estimated that the addition and cooking-down process should take between 8 to 10 minutes.

(Photo: Lidia Bastianich/Diana DeLucia)

“When the rice is done to your [liking], taste it,” advised Bastianich. “You take it off the heat and you — mantecare is the process — you whip in some room temperature butter. Whisk it in vigorously. Then you add the grated grana padano and then you whisk it again and you serve it immediately.”

The heat from cooking breaks down the flavinoids in the butter and cheese, so adding those fats at the beginning of the cooking process is less effective. It may flavor the rice a little and create a delicious aroma, but the rich taste will be mostly lost. Instead, as a finishing step, mantecare maximizes the flavor, possibly even allowing you to use less butter and cheese.

Once you get the hang of those steps, adding ingredients to star in your risotto is simple. Just incorporate them in depending on how long they take to cook.

“Shrimp take two minutes to cook,” said Bastianich. “You add them toward the end… You like a venison risotto? You need to cook that about an hour before, make a good venison sauce, and then add it into risotto as it is cooking.”

Feel free to use whatever happens to be in your pantry or refrigerator. Bastianich said the only rule might be to stay away from sweet concoctions. Otherwise, go for it.

“That’s the beauty of risotto,” she said. “You can make it any flavor you want. It’s a great carrier.”

Below, try a recipe for Lettuce Risotto from Lidia’s Commonsense Italian Cooking, which Bastianich wrote with her daughter, Tanya Bastianich Manuali.

LETTUCE RISOTTO
Risotto alla Lattuga

Risotto is always a delicious option for dinner, but for those times when you have nothing to flavor your risotto with, look in the salad bin of your refrigerator and make a great risotto with your salad greens. Lettuce is recommended in this recipe, but another great, economical version is with the tougher outer leaves of any salad green you have in the refrigerator. Use the tender, heart part of the greens to toss a green salad that you can serve alongside the risotto. You will have a balanced and delicious meal, and you will have found a use for everything, wasting nothing. I feel a great sense of accomplishment when I use every morsel of food. I hate waste.

Serves 6

7 cups or more hot Chicken Stock, preferably homemade (page 55)
Kosher salt
¼ cup extra- virgin olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped leek, white and light- green parts only
2 cups Arborio rice
1 cup white wine
8 ounces outer lettuce leaves (romaine, Bibb, etc.), shredded
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
½ cup grated Grana Padano or Parmigiano- Reggiano

Bring the chicken stock to a simmer in a medium saucepan, and season with salt.

Heat the olive oil in a large, shallow, straight- sided pot over medium heat. Once the oil is hot, add the onion and leek, sauté for 1 minute, then ladle in ½ cup hot stock to soften the vegetables. Cook until the vegetables are tender and stock has evaporated, about 5 minutes. Raise the heat to medium- high. Add the rice all at once, and stir continuously until the grains are toasted but not colored, about 2 minutes. Add the wine, and cook until the liquid is almost absorbed. Add the shredded lettuce, and cook until wilted, about 2 to 3 minutes.

Ladle in about 2 cups of the stock, stir, and cook until almost absorbed, about 5 minutes. Ladle in 1 more cup of the stock, and again simmer until the liquid is almost absorbed. Continue cooking and adding stock in this manner until the rice is cooked al dente but still with texture, about 15 to 20 minutes in all. When the risotto is creamy, turn off the heat. Beat in the butter, stir in the cheese, season with salt if necessary, and serve.

Excerpted from LIDIA’S COMMONSENSE ITALIAN COOKING by Lidia Bastianich. Copyright © 2013 by Tutti a Tavola, LLC. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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For the rest of the year, we’ll be revisiting previous episodes of Last Chance Foods.

When Great Performances CEO Liz Neumark started a farm seven years ago, she asked her farmer not to grow kale. Even back then, she’d grown tired of the all-reigning queen of superfoods. While farmer Bob Walker ignored her request and planted kale anyway, Neumark notes that there are plenty of other greens in the fields that are both fascinating and worthy of the spotlight — tatsoi and mizuna are two prime examples.

Tatsoi is a deep green color with shiny round or oval-shaped leaves.The stems are long and tender, with a snap similar to bok choy. Mizuna, which is related to mustard greens, has leaves that are lighter green with jagged edges. They’re both in season right now and serve as a perfect transition from the tender lettuces of early fall to the hearty brassicas of winter.

Neumark, who recently published the cookbook Sylvia’s Table: Fresh, Seasonal Recipes from Our Farm to Your Family, said there’s plenty of ways to eat tatsoi and mizuna. They’re primarily used in salads, but can also be stir-fried quickly. “[You can add them] in a great vegetable soup at the end,” she said. “You don’t have to cook them as long as everything else. If you cut them into strips and mix them in, they give great color, great texture, and a wonderful fresh flavor.”

The greens also pair well with other fruit and vegetables currently in season. “The tatsoi is a great foil to other flavors such as a citrus, combining it with orange segments or roasted butternut squash,” Neumark said.

As for getting kids to eat the unusual-sounding greens, she joked that the most effective way might be to just dip them in chocolate. Barring that, Neumark reflected that getting children involved in harvesting or cooking with vegetables seems to be effective, as well.

“The first thing we do is have them do the harvesting, and while they’re there picking, they’re nibbling,” she said. “The second thing is if they cook it. Whether they’re slicing it, chopping it for salad, or cooking it up in an omelet or a pasta dish, whatever it is that they’re doing, they’re more likely to eat it. So the tip is: get them involved.”

Try recipes from Sylvia’s Table for Great Greens and Farmers’ Market Salad. Both are below.

Neumark wondered whether a tatsoi pesto would make for a tasty sauce. Have you tried it? If so, how’d it turn out? Let us know in the comments.

Sylvia’s Table Great Greens

1 large bunch tatsoi
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small garlic clove
Pinch of red chile flakes
1 teaspoon butter
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1. Rinse the leaves thoroughly. Remove the tough bottom third or so of the stalk and discard or reserve it for soup or broth.
Roughly chop the leaves into 1-inch-wide strips. Heat a medium saucepan over medium heat and pour in the olive oil. Smash the garlic with the red chile flakes, add to the pan, and sauté for about a minute. Scatter in the chopped leaves and cover the pan.
Check after about 5 minutes to see if the pot seems dry and add a couple tablespoons of water if needed. With tongs or a spatula, flip the leaves over and cook, uncovered, until they are just tender. Stir in the butter, season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve.

Sylvia’s Table Farmers’ Market Salad

2 large or 3 medium cucumbers
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice or red or white wine vinegar
6 tablespoons olive oil
salt and freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons roughly chopped assorted herbs, such as chervil, basil, cilantro
2 cups assorted heirloom cherry tomatoes, cut into halves or quarters
½ cup thinly sliced scallions, green and white parts
¼ cup diced red onion
½ cup diced radishes
½ cup sliced snap peas
½ cup fresh peas
2 cups mizuna

Scrub the cucumbers, but do not peel them unless their skins are waxed, or peel them in strips. Cut the cucumbers in half lengthwise and scoop out the seeds. Slice the cucumbers crosswise about ¼ inch thick, into half moons. Whisk together the lemon juice and olive oil in a salad bowl. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add the cucumbers and the remaining ingredients, and toss gently; taste and adjust the seasoning.

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Look, let’s be honest: Some of us are not ready to get into canning. We might live in Brooklyn, obsess about pickles, and splurge on artisanal cheese, but the prospect of mason jars and hot water baths is just too much, okay? Great. Now that’s out of the way, let’s talk about a method of preserving that’s easier than canning.

Garden writer Margaret Roach suggests making tomato junk. Basically, tomato junk involves sauteing up a base of tomatoes with onions and garlic, and then adding any other vegetables that are on their way out. Stick the end result into your freezer, and it’s ready to go as a base for soups, stews, and more.

“It’s very, very easy,” said Roach, author of the book Backyard Parables and the website A Way to Garden. “You take from one teaspoon to one ton of anything edible left in your garden… including herbs.”

Unlike the vegetables used in canning, tomato junk can be comprised of any “last chance” produce that’s weathered, soft in spots, battered or bruised.

“It’s literally the last ditch effort to harvest the garden — even some things that maybe are a little not perfect, maybe you have to cut out a little bit here and there,” Roach said. “[You can make] these wonderful, colorful blocks of frozen goodness that you’re going to be so happy to have in February and March… to pull down and make a minestrone or use to be the base for your vegetarian chili, or you name it.”

(Photo: Margaret Roach/Erica Berger)

Roach hosts a gardening show, which airs Monday and Saturday mornings at 8:30, on the nation’s smallest NPR affiliate, Robin Hood Radio, in Sharon, Conn. She explained that she likes to save the best of her garden for canning purposes, since anything not perfect may deteriorate faster in a self-stable situation.

For tomato junk, Roach just cuts vegetables up into roughly equal sizes and adds them in depending on how long they take to cook. Carrots go in before zucchini or greens, for instance. Almost anything goes. She just advises to take it easy on things like chard, beet greens, or strongly flavored root vegetables like turnips. “Those can have strong flavors that can not work well in certain kinds of recipes, but if you stick to the basics, you’re okay,” Roach said.

Stack blocks of frozen tomato junk in the freezer and use within about three months. “I like to have a batch [of tomato junk] every year that’s sort of the base for minestrone,” Roach said. “So into that, I want to make sure that I have some green beans, plenty of onion and garlic, some summer squash… and some other greens. I love some of the leaf broccolis and kales and so forth.” She also has batches that include chili peppers that she uses to make chili. The trick, of course, is to label them clearly.

Below, find her directions for assembling tomato junk. And, if that seems too involved, here’s some last-minute, end-of-season advice from Roach: “Is even this informal recipe too much to manage, and the last tomatoes coming at you much too fast? Simply freeze whole ones in tightly sealed freezer bags with the air expressed for later use.”

Tomato Junk
by Margaret Roach

Transform the mad-stash last haul from garden or farmer’s market into colorful bricks of frozen goodness. Use them in the off-season as a base for soups (such as minestrone); chili; stews, or in any other recipe that calls for the usual can of tomatoes, assorted vegetables and water. I’ve even made curries and an improvised tikka masala-style dish with Tomato Junk as the starter.

olive oil
garlic
onion
1 teaspoon to 1 ton anything edible left in your garden or at the farmer’s market, including herbs such as parsley and basil
tomatoes, equal to at least one-third the total volume of ingredients
water
salt and pepper to taste
Especially good vegetable choices include: summer squash such as zucchini; green beans; brassicas such as kale or broccoli; chard.
Celery and carrots work well in batches that will become soup. Include spicier peppers in one batch and label its container with a Sharpie as such, for use in Mexican or Indian recipes later.
Trickier choices: cabbage, or beet or mustard greens, and other distinctive-tasting vegetables, including roots such as turnip; hot peppers; or eggplant, that might overtake the flavor or texture of the Junk.

Note: As with wine, each vintage is a little different.

In a soup pot, sauté plenty of chopped garlic and onion in olive oil.

When the pieces are soft and the onions clear, dump in cut-up tomatoes, either halved (for average plum types) or in wedges.

Start chopping again while those simmer, covered.

When you have cut everything else you’ve scavenged into bite-sized pieces, and the tomatoes have begun to go moist and bubbly, start adding the vegetables in the order of their cooking requirements — so leafy greens would go last, for instance. Cover. Juice released from the tomatoes should provide moisture to get other things softening.

Add water, between one-third the total volume and just enough to cover the mix. (Remember: If freezer space is at a premium, you can always dilute more later, when defrosting for use, plus some recipes are better with a more concentrated Junk.)

Cool and freeze in containers that are roughly the size of large cans of tomatoes, or about a quart.

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For those of us unaccustomed to cooking with tomatillos, they can be a bit of a mystery. The obvious facts are these: They kind of look like tomatoes, but are not, and they’re a key ingredient in salsa verde.

Riverpark chef Sisha Ortúzar grew up in Santiago, Chile, and admits that he only had passing familiarity with tomatillos until farmer Zach Pickens starting growing them for the restaurant.

Pickens chose to plant purple tomatillos from seeds he’d saved with his farmer friends at Brooklyn Grange. “I don’t see them too much elsewhere at the market," he said. “You’ll see maybe a couple people at Union Square that will have them, but they’re pretty rare and they’re hard to find, so that’s why we were growing them at the farm.”

Ortúzar explained that the purple tomatillos also have an advantage over the more common green variety. “[Purple tomatillos] are kind of sweet,” he said. “It reminds me a lot of a plum, so something between a tomato and a plum. And because the acidity level is a lot lower, you can eat them raw and they work really well.”

Purple tomatillos taste a little more like sweet and nutty ground cherries, which are small, yellow, similarly husked relatives. “They’re actually in the same genus and species so I guess you could call them cousins,” Pickens explained. “Both grow the same way: You get the husk first and the fruit will fill it out as it matures. Ground cherries just happen to grow faster and, like, more abundantly.”

(Photo: Zach Pickens and Sisha Ortúzar/Courtesy Becca PR)

Both purple tomatillos and ground cherries are sweet enough to be eaten raw. Ortúzar even pairs the two in seasonal twist on the classic tomato, basil and mozzarella combo. The recipe for his version, Purple Tomatillos and Ground Cherries with Burrata, is below.

He added that tomatillos do have a tendency to get a little slimy when subject to heat, but that quality also makes them ideal for salsa verde. “They’re really good for that application because of the really high pectin content,” Ortúzar explained. “So when you cook them and you make a salsa, it kind of thickens itself a little bit.”

Tomatillos, tomatoes, and ground cherries are all considered nightshade plants. And while Ortúzar said he has served cooked tomato leaves, it bears warning: they might be poisonous raw or in great quantities.

Public service warning aside, tomatillo plants are fairly hardy, and the pair said that Riverpark’s tomatillos fared even better than their tomatoes.

“I think that [purple tomatillos] are rare just because people don’t know [about] them, and there’s not that demand for them,” Ortúzar mused. “They’re not any harder to grow than anything else. Actually, I think they grow really well.”

Purple Tomatillos and Ground Cherries with Burrata
by Riverpark

Towards the end of summer, after the peak of the heat and humidity, we start harvesting purple tomatillos. Unlike the green ones (which are delicious, but tart when raw) purple ones are sweet, so we use them raw, along with ground cherries and lemon verbena that are still in season. This dish is a unique and delicious alternative to tomatoes and burrata—and just as simple to prepare.

Serves 4 as an appetizer

¼ cup grapeseed oil
¼ cup lemon verbena (loosely packed), thinly sliced into a chiffonade
1 teaspoon finely diced shallot
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Lemon and lime zest
9 small-medium purple tomatillos (about 15 oz), removed from their husks and cleaned
1 pint ground cherries (about 5 oz), removed from their husks and cleaned
2 burrata (about 8 oz)
Kosher salt
Coarsely ground black pepper

At least 15 minutes before serving, make the vinaigrette by combining the oil, lemon verbena, shallot, lemon juice, and citrus zests and kosher salt to taste.

Slice the tomatillos into quarters, and arrange the pieces onto a serving platter. Slice the ground cherries in half and scatter them onto the same platter. Slice the burrata into quarters and place the cheese on top. Spoon over the vinaigrette, and finish with coarsely ground black pepper.

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There are a few straightforward rules to follow when hanging out with celebrity chefs, according to the fictional character Ruth Bourdain. For instance, “Do: Rub Tom Colicchio’s head with the finest extra virgin olive oil. Don’t: Put barrettes in his soul patch.”

Such sage advice comes from the Twitter-born parody mash-up of former Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl and frequently profane television host Anthony Bourdain. The result is a brash, drug- and sex-fueled voice that sharply parodies the most ludicrous of food trends.

For three years, the person behind the voice was a mystery. Then earlier this year, The New York Times revealed that she was actually a he — Josh Friedland, a food and travel writer and creator of the site The Food Section. He recently published the book Comfort Me with Offal under the Ruth Bourdain byline.

“I was starting to get a little burnout with the whole food discourse and [things were] maybe getting a little ridiculous in terms of some of the pretentiousness and the language about food,” said Friedland. “And then, it’s just gotten so complicated, and I think there was a need for satire.”

The idea for Ruth Bourdain came from a combination of real events: Ruth Riechl was tweeting sensitive musing about her breakfast (“Spectacular late summer morning. Sun shining. Birds singing. The last of the peaches baked into cobbler. Warm. Cold splash of cream. Coffee.) and Anthony Bourdain was reading them on his Sirius radio show.

Friedland admits that the instantaneousness of the social media age contributed to the creation of the character, which now has more than 230,000 followers on Twitter. “I don’t think you could have done it without Twitter,” he said. “Because on the one hand, there was no barrier for me just to say, ‘Ok, I had this idea, I’m going to go and, within five minutes, create the character and start doing it.’ You know, I didn’t have to… pitch it to WNYC.”

More than three years and 3,000 tweets later, Ruth Bourdain is a James Beard Award–winning author. In 2011, the revered food organization awarded the character a prize in the then newly created category of humor.

The real Bourdain’s reaction to the parody was that he was “flattered and disturbed in equal measure.” Along with chef Eric Ripert, Bourdain and Reichl speculate hilariously about the identity or Ruth Bourdain in this clip from Bourdain’s radio show.

With the recognition piling up, Friedland decided that, after three years, it was time to ‘fess up to being the author. “That’s the underlying theme in, obviously, Anthony Bourdain, but also in Ruth [that food is] very sexual,” he said. “You know, [Bourdain’s] whole thing is as if you’re experiencing something narcotic.”

Now, in Comfort Me with Offal, Ruth Bourdain runs amok on recent food trends and doles out advice like “how to survive a vegan apocalypse.” (Ruth’s rule for that: “Never look a vegan in the eyes. They will trick you with their immortality and take your soul.”) When it comes to “the art of getting gastrostoned,” the author instructs: “When serving cocaine at a formal dinner, always place the coke spoon to the outside of the soupspoon.”

Friedland says that the book also offers useful advice, but, as expected, he doesn’t take it too seriously. “I expect people to have fun with it,” he said. “It’s bathroom reading.”

— Ruth Bourdain (@RuthBourdain) June 6, 2013

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The next time you see a leaf of shiso sitting under your sashimi, wrap it around the fish, and put it in your mouth. It’s not there just for aesthetics. “Shiso has an antiseptic property so it is safe to eat with raw fish,” said Hiroko Shimbo, the author of Hiroko’s American Kitchen and a well-known expert on Japanese cuisine.

She explained that shiso has been cultivated in Japan since the 8th century, and it has long been paired with raw fish. “Most of the times I find here, in America, when the shiso is served with fish, they are just left untouched,” Shimbo said. “I advise that you will eat it and enjoy the very refreshing flavor after the fish.”

The spade-shaped leaf is currently in season. Also known as perilla leaf or ooba, it’s related to mint, though Shimbo said it tastes nothing like that herb or basil. She added that green shiso has a stronger, fresh herbal flavor, than the purple variety, which is used to make pickled and dried plums known as umeboshi.

“[It’s] always used fresh, as a whole leaf... or chopped fine, or julienned, and then [used to] garnish the dish,” Shimbo said, adding that Japanese cuisine also uses tiny shiso flowers for both aesthetics and flavor.

She recommends getting shiso at farmers markets when possible, rather than Japanese grocery stores, where the shiso sometimes seems more industrially produced and less flavorful as a result. “I get amazing, fantastic quality of shiso [at farmers markets],” Shimbo said. “And there are several vendors [that] carry the shiso in Union Square and the one that I love the most is… Two Guys From Woodbridge.”

(Photo: Hiroko Shimbo/Courtesy of Hiroko Shimbo)

Tomorrow, Saturday, September 14, Shimbo will be at the Union Square farmers market for a book signing from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. She will also be sharing samples of shiso juice, which she explained is currently popular in Japan.

Don’t be shocked if the color of the shiso juice reminds you of the pink slime that took over New York City in Ghostbusters II. The color is a caused by anthocyanin, a water-soluble pigment in shiso that reacts with acid. So, not evil at all.

“I first… infused water with the shiso, then add lime juice,” Shimbo said. “The acid just quickly turns crystal clear–colored juice to this color.” Try making it yourself as a fun home science experiment. Shimbo’s recipe is below, and the resulting juice tastes like lemonade with a slight herbal kick.

Shiso Juice

1 bunch shiso from the Green Market, pick all of the leaves
3 cups water
6-8 tablespoons lime juice
1 to 1 1/2 cups simple syrup (You can use citric acid, as well.)

Rinse the shiso leaves under running water.

Bring the water in a pot to a boil. Turn the heat to low-medium, add the shiso leaves to the pot and infuse the water for about 5 to 8 minutes.

Strain the shiso-infused water into a clean jar, discarding or preserving the leaves.

Add the lime juice to the jar. The shiso leaves infused water turns to beautiful purple color.

Add the simple syrup to the jar to your taste and keep the jar in the refrigerator, or freeze it if you are not consuming it within 3 days.

When serving add 1/5 of the sweetened shiso juice to a glass cup. Fill the glass with flat or carbonated ice cold water.

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Put away those pink, blue, and yellow packets of artificial sweeteners. You can now get a sugar substitute that wasn’t born in a lab: stevia. It is a leafy green plant, and it’s 20 times sweeter than sugar, says farmer Ron Binaghi III, who grows it at Stokes Farm in Old Tappan, N.J.

Bingahi, a sixth-generation farmer, said that the appeal of using stevia is simple. “One of the great things about stevia is it is all natural,” he said. “It is a living plant that we grow on our farm in Old Tappan. It’s not something that comes in a packet.”

Binaghi started growing stevia a few years ago, at the request of a pastry chef who wanted to make sweet, sugar-free cakes. “It’s not a perennial around here. It’s only an annual, so in the wintertime it does die,” he said. It's easy to grow, though, and it might be possible to overwinter the plant in a greenhouse.

The best bet for having a homemade source of stevia year-round would be to dry it or make an extract. Bingahi explained that the pastry chef who initially asked him to grow stevia used the first method.

“She actually laid it out on baking sheets, and she just put it in her oven at a really low temperature to dry it rather quickly,” he said. “[Then she] chopped it up really fine, almost crumbled it just with her hands into a jar, and then it was easier for her to measure and get more exact amounts for her batter.”

While stevia does tend to have a slightly bitter aftertaste, Binaghi said combining it with other flavors can mask that quality. In particular, he recommends making an herbal tea with lemon verbena and mint. “When you brew the tea, you actually don’t get the aftertaste… because there [are] so many other flavors involved with the tea,” Bingahi said.

(Photo: Ron Bingahi III/Stokes Farm)

He added that the recipe (below) is also particularly popular with his customers who have families. Kids like the sweetness and parents feel comfortable because it’s caffeine- and sugar-free.

Binaghi just had one word of caution when it comes to using the leafy green: “Stevia is really sweet… so when you make a tea with it, you only need to use a very small amount.” He explained that too much stevia can ruin a tea or a recipe.

In the ingredients list below for the Stokes Farm tea, for instance, there’s only one sprig of stevia but four times as much spearmint and lemon verbena.

The Stokes Farm Summer Special
(Farmer Ron’s secret drink recipe!)

4 sprigs spearmint
4 sprigs lemon verbena
1 sprig stevia (alter amounts to taste)
6 cups water

Wash your herbs. Strip all leaves off the herbs and put leaves into a medium sized saucepan. Discard herb stems. Add water to the pot, heat, and bring to a low simmer for about 20 minutes. Remove pot from heat and allow to cool for 20 minutes. Strain the liquid through a coffee filter and into a glass pitcher. Allow the drink to cool in the refrigerator. Serve over a glass of ice for a stronger herb flavor. Enjoy!

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Clear skies, full bellies, can’t lose — maybe that should be the Friday Night Lights–inspired motto for panther edamame, a variety of soybean that’s currently growing at the Hudson Valley Seed Library in Ulster County, N.Y.

The plant isn't named after the fictional high school football mascot of Dillon, Texas, sadly. “The soybean, when it’s actually fully mature to harvest for seed, is black,” explained Seed Library founder Ken Greene. (So much for wishing for a hard-hitting Riggins runner bean.)

Panther-like in color when mature, the soybean in its fresh, edible stage is a more typical pale green color, added Greene. That stage comes earlier. Only later, when it’s dried on the plant and ready for seed, or for use in making tofu or soy milk, does it turn pitch black.

Greene remembers the first time he tasted it in that early appetizer-green stage. “We were kind of amazed, because we thought, it’s edamame, it’s just going to taste like all other edamame,” he said. “But the richness and the nuttiness of this particular variety — it’s a more intense flavor, and it has a little more diversity within the flavor.”

In addition to being tasty, the soybeans also fit with the Hudson Valley Seed Library’s mission to popularize and preserve heirloom and open-pollinated seeds from this region. The panther edamame seeds were originally donated to the library from farmer Jack Algiere of Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, N.Y.

“He’d been growing them for 10 or 12 years before he told us about them and donated some seeds to us,” Greene said.

Photo: Panther edamame seed pack with artwork by Jessica Pollak/Hudson Valley Seed Library

Knowing the provenance of the seed is particularly important to the Seed Library. Greene explained that panther edamame in not quite an heirloom variety because he can’t trace its history back 60 to 100 years, even though it may have been around for that long.

“We do know that it’s open pollinated, which means that it hasn’t been hybridized and that it’s not genetically engineered seed,” Greene said. “And, of course, soy is one of the most genetically engineered crops in the world, and we think that makes it even more important for us to preserving this variety and making sure that we can pass this on to other gardeners and other farmers.”

The good news for those on the receiving end of panther edamame seeds is that they are very easy to grow. The seeds (mature beans in this case) are also easy to save for the next season and pass on to a friend or family member.

“You can direct sow it,” Greene said. “You don’t have to start it early. It’s not fussy. And they’re also really easy to harvest because [with] bush beans, unlike pole or runner beans, the pods ripen all around the same time.

The means the plants will have fresh, edible edamame ready for harvest about 100 days after being planted. Greene explained that the harvest window, which is right now for this year’s crop, is about two weeks.

He advised steaming and serving them with salt, the way many restaurants do, or freezing them for later use. Greene, who is a no-recipes type of cook, likes to make a concoction he calls “edamamus.” It’s a riff off of hummus, and the approximate recipe is below.

Edamamus
by Ken Greene, Hudson Valley Seed Library

1 1/2 cups shelled edamame (still green and tender)
1/4 cup tahini
1 lemon (about 3 tablespoons), juiced
3/4 teaspooon salt
5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley and/or cilantro or papalo
2 carrots in chunks
Boil the beans in salted water for 4 to 5 minutes.
In a food processor, puree the edamame, tahini, lemon juice, carrot, salt, until smooth while drizzling in 4 tablespoons oil. If this it thicker than you want it drizzle in water slowly until you reach the consistency you like.
In a mixing bowl stir in the parsley and add remaining oil.

Note: If you're using edamame that you froze, steam for 5 minutes, then shell the beans.

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The phrase “miracle food” smacks of low-budget internet ads that promise easy solutions to diabetes and belly fat. Recently, though, it’s been used to describe moringa oleifera, a tropical plant that native to the Himalayas.

While individual definitions of “miracle” may vary, one thing is for certain: Moringa is now available at the Fort Greene farmers market thanks to farmer Hector Tejada of Conuco Farm in New Paltz, N.Y. The reason Tejada and many other hold moringa in such high esteem is because it is nutrient-dense and easy to grow.

Moringa is high in vitamin A, C, and B, says Christopher Wayne, the beginning farmer coordinator for GrowNYC’s FARMroots program. It has a sharp earthy flavor reminiscent of radishes or arugula. He added that doctors throughout the world are recommending the iron-rich plant for patients suffering from anemia and investigating its benefits for nursing mothers.

“It has a higher nutrient value in certain cases than things like spinach and carrots, and has incredible usage as a potential poverty aversion nutrient piece,” Wayne said. “It grows in marginal soils, in very arid, dry, sandy soils. So in places like Africa and other developing countries, it’s really valuable and important to… anti-poverty and nutrition-based exercises going on there.”

The moringa growing in upstate New York is notably different than the stuff that grows wild in places like the Dominican Republic. Since the growing season for the plant is much shorter here, it must be replanted every year and only produces small leaves. Tejada says he’s going to try and move some plants indoors this year during the colder months, but isn’t sure whether they will survive.

“[In New York,] it’ll never produce the kind of large seed pod that it’s most famous for,” Wayne explained. “[It’s] a long spindly kind of horror movie finger-looking seed pod that’s really popular in soups.” Instead, he said that Tejada decided to adapt and just grow the leaves. It’s been well-received among Fort Greene residents, and Tejada often sells out fairly early in the day.

The leaves can be used fresh or dried. The dried leaves are used in tea or ground up and put in capsules. “The fresh leaf itself, which you guys still have a chance to go out and get right now... is really nice,” Wayne said. “It’s confetti-sized, so it can kind of be sprinkled on top of a salad. It can be added to a fresh soup as a garnish. We mix it up in a raw fava bean recipe and mixed in some… cilantro with it.”

Tejada says he adds some of the leaves to his morning smoothies. Another idea he shared is to use the leaves with sauteed corn. Get the recipe for that below.

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A wilted sprig of curly parsley often feels like the worst insult to a plate of food. Instead of being treated like a sad garnish, parsley at its best has the ability to enhance a wide variety of dishes.

“I think it adds this wonderful, sort of bright, kind of like pleasantly grassy flavor,” said L.V. Anderson, who edits Slate’s food and drink sections. “It also plays well with other herbs. You can mix it with basil or mint, or with stronger herbs like oregano or thyme. And you can use so much of it.”

Anderson explain that, unlike many other fresh herbs, a bunch of parsley used in its entirety won’t overpower the flavor of a dish. She also shared her preferred method for cleaning and preparing a large amount of parsley all at once.

“If you have a salad spinner, I think that’s a really good way of doing it,” Anderson said. If not, grab the stems of the bunch of parsley and plunge the leaves into a bowl of water. Repeat, changing the water a few times, and you’re ready to go. See Anderson’s method and her recommendation on how to chop parsley in this video.

“If you’re in a hurry, I think that this is the best way to deal with parsley,” she said.

In the video, Anderson uses with flat-leaf, Italian parsley, and she admitted a distinct preference for that variety, rather than curly leaf parsley. When chopped up, curly leaf tends to have an airy quality that she finds unpleasant.

Anderson discussed her opinions about parsley and more in her Slate column called, “You’re Doing It Wrong.” She notes that many readers take umbrage with the inflammatory title.

“It’s just a place where people can write about their very strong opinions about the right way to do a dish, even though, obviously, food is a matter of taste and everyone has different opinions about it,” Anderson explained. Surprisingly, one of the most comment-generating topics was chili. She provided a vegetarian chili recipe and was so inundated with readers’ objections that she felt compelled to offer a non-vegetarian recipe, as well.

As for parsley, Anderson offered an herb-heavy tabbouleh recipe. “I feel that it should be a lot of parsley, and just the tiniest amount of bulgar for a little bit of textural contrast,” she said. “But I also think that tabbouleh should have a lot of lemon juice in it, which makes it really refreshing and I feel like kind of offsets the parsley flavor pretty nicely.”

If you agree with Anderson’s take, try out her recipe for tabbouleh. That’s below.

Tabbouleh
by L.V. Anderson

Yield: 4 to 6 servings
Time: About 1¼ hours, partially unattended

⅓ cup bulgur
Salt
1½ pounds tomatoes (about 3 medium)
2 bunches fresh parsley, thick stems discarded
1 small bunch fresh mint, thick stems discarded
4 scallions, green parts discarded
Juice of 2 lemons
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
Black pepper
Bring a kettle of water to a boil. Put the bulgur and a pinch of salt in a small bowl, then add ⅔ cup boiling water. Cover the bowl and steep until the bulgur is tender, about 1 hour.
Meanwhile, roughly chop the tomatoes, parsley, mint, and scallions, and combine them in a salad bowl. Drain the bulgur and add it to the salad bowl along with the lemon juice and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper and toss. Taste and adjust the seasoning, and serve immediately.

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Step into any hot sauce emporium, and you’ll likely be surrounded by labels bearing words like “pain,” “death,” and any number of expletives. But the world of hot sauce goes far beyond mere Scoville units, and plenty of hot sauces focus instead on flavor, rather than pure capsaicin.

Take Sonya Samuel’s Bacchanal Sauce, for instance. Inspired by the pepper sauces of the Caribbean, it includes tropical ingredients like papaya, pineapple, and tamarind. Samuel is based in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and her family hails from Antigua, where pepper sauce is ubiquitous.

“Across the Caribbean, it’s used in everything,” she said. “Locally... families make their own pepper sauce so if you go to someone’s home, if you have a meal with them, they’re going to offer you some pepper sauce. That’s just sort of the way it is.”

Spicy and aromatic Scotch bonnet peppers make up the primary ingredient in most Caribbean-style hot sauces, said Samuel, who also uses habanero peppers. “If you’re looking for flavor, it’s good to look for hot sauces or pepper sauces that have something besides pepper in it, she added. “ If you have some wonderful fruits and herbs and sometimes people even put vegetables in their pepper sauce.”

Samuel pointed out pepper sauces from the Caribbean also tend to differ from more popular American-style hot sauces in both taste and texture. “You don’t get that really vinegary taste right up front,” she said. “The more Americanized hot sauce is, I would say, watery. The Caribbean hot sauce has some texture to it, has some body in it. Usually, the peppers are in there.”

(Photo: Sonya Samuel)

Those peppers can be dangerous in large quantities, though. Samuel advised only making small batches at home, wearing gloves, and being careful to keep your fingers away from your face. For larger batches, she recommends going all out and donning protective eyewear, too.

Pepper sauces usually also include a good amount of vinegar, which means the condiment will keep for several months in the refrigerator. The long shelf life is a good thing for pepper sauce devotees.

“All those wonderful Caribbean flavors really sort of give you that flavor that you might be looking for, so that you’re not just getting heat,” said Samuel, who has garnished everything, including waffles, with Bacchanal Sauce. “ It really enhances your food. It’s really something that you can use to complement whatever meal that you’re having.”

Below, try Samuel’s easy recipe for Bacchanal Pepper Sauce Spiked Guacamole.

Bacchanal Pepper Sauce Spiked Guacamole

5 small, ripe avocados
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice
Bacchanal Pepper Sauce (12 drops or to your own taste)
½ cup diced white onion
1 large garlic clove, chopped finely
1 teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 medium tomato, seeded and diced

Cut the avocados in half, remove the seed, and scoop the flesh out of the shells into a large bowl. Quickly add the lemon juice, Bacchanal Pepper Sauce, onion, garlic, salt and pepper, and mix well. Using a mortar, or rounded spoon, smash through the avocados in the bowl until they are to your liking. (I like it a little chunky.) Add the tomatoes and mix all the ingredients together. Enjoy!

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It’s known as roquette, salad rocket, or, more scientifically, eruca sativa, but whatever you call it, arugula is a flavorful green beloved all over the world.

Arugula was so important to musician Nick Palumbo’s grandfather, that he brought the seeds with him to America from his hometown of Manfredonia in Italy’s Puglia region. Fast forward several decades, and that arugula is the source of the greens growing in chef Paul Gerard’s backyard at Exchange Alley, a New Orleans–inspired restaurant in the East Village.

“It just seems kind of strange that, you know, when you’re a 16-year-old kid and you’re going to a new country that that would be one of the things you would say I need to take with me... like your lucky rabbit’s foot and your arugula seeds,” Gerard said with a laugh.

The seventh-generation Brooklynite admitted that he initially had doubts about his ability to keep the plant alive—or whether it was alive at all. “[Nick] showed up one day with a small pot and it had some dried sticks coming out it,” Gerard recalls. “And he said, ‘Here you go, put it in the ground.’ And I said, ‘What is this? It’s like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. You know, it’s dead.’ He said, ‘Put it in the ground.’”

After watering it for about three weeks, the arugula started growing and hasn’t stopped. Gerard said it even made it through the heat wave a few weeks ago, and he has a regular supply to use in his restaurant.

“The arugula that I use, I always tell my cooks not to pepper it, because it’s already got enough,” he added. “It’s all about balance and texture and depth, you know, so I’ll go for things that are a little more vinegary, a little more salty.”

Gerard, who spent 15 years living in New Orleans, said that his misses a lot about his old stomping grounds, including the hot weather. While he often forgets to eat during the hotter days of the year, Gerard did offer some advice on combating the heat: Stay hydrated—preferably with water, as opposed to his old go-to, bourbon.

As for fighting hunger on warmer days, try Gerard’s arugula salad recipe below.

Garden Greens, “Bread & butter” Pickled Rhubarb & Cows Milk Cheese
by Paul Gerard, Exchange Alley

For 4

1 pound of your favorite local market greens. Here at Exchange Alley, we use a mix of arugula, spicy micro’s, and a touch of fresh herbs from our garden.
3-4 tsps of a big, fruity extra virgin olive oil
Salt and fresh pepper
4 ounces (1 oz per salad, or generous shavings with a vegetable peeler) of your favorite local cheese. At Exchange Alley, we use “Rupert” from Consider Bardwell farm in Vermont. An aged, raw Jersey cow milk cheese inspired by great European Alpine cheeses like Gruyère and Comté
around 12 pieces of pickled rhubarb (recipe below)
2-3 tsp pickling juice

Put greens and rhubarb in a large mixing bowl, add a touch of the pickling liquid and a touch of olive oil.

Greens should never be weighed down by the dressing. It should be just enough “to shine” the leaves. You don’t want a wet salad, so always add half of what the recipe may call for, toss season, taste, and add more if necessary.

Crucial cooking tip: You can always add more, you can never take away.

Divide the salad into 4 chilled plates or bowls, and top with shaved cheese.

Rhubarb Bread and Butter Pickles

Rhubarb- peeled and sliced on bias approx 2” long
onions sliced
4 cups sugar
3 cups vinegar
1 cup water
1/3 cup plain salt
1 1/2 tsp each turmeric, mustard seed and celery seed

Combine sugar and vinegar in small saucepan over low heat to dissolve sugar.

Add spices.

Pack sliced rhubarb and onions in quart container very tight, add liquid and spices, seal and refrigerate. It’s very important to make [these pickles] in mason jars. Rhubarb should not be floating in vinegar.

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If you happen to pass by a pile of apricots at a farmers market in the New York area, take a little time to appreciate the combination of skill and luck that brought them to harvest. While California produces a bounty of the fuzzy little stone fruit, locally grown apricots are a comparative rarity and the season is short. Red Jacket Orchards senior orchard operations manager Mike Biltonen expects that this year’s local apricot season will wrap up around the second week of August.

“There’s some very good, sound horticultural reasons why apricots are not grown more widely, basically, north of the mid-Atlantic area,” he said. The fruit, which originated in Middle Eastern climates, struggles with the long winters and variable temperatures of the region. Just a few warm days in January or February can trigger the budding process.

“That leaves them vulnerable both in the winter and early spring for both cold damage and early spring cold frost like we had last year,” Biltonen said. “If you’re a fruit farmer and you’re willing to take a few risks and you want to try and grow some apricots, [harvesting a crop] about four out of 10 years would be considered a success.”

That’s a ratio that carries a high degree of uncertainty, but Biltonen said that Red Jacket Orchards produces the most apricots in the region in part because of its location. The farm is in Geneva, N.Y., on the shores of Senaca Lake. He explained that the microclimate around the lake keeps temperatures moderate so that the trees don’t freeze as easily or warm up too quickly. But even that doesn't guarantee a yield of apricots every year.

“We have a successful apricot [harvest] every 6, 7, 8 years, and there will always be a year like 2012 where we get hit [and lose the crop],” Biltonen said. Fortunately, this year’s apricots are coming in strong, which increases the chances of getting a perfect specimen.

Biltonen explained that speed is key to avoiding a mealy apricot. They fruit doesn’t ship well and has a short shelf life. “Even a local apricot that’s been around too long is going to be mealy at some point in its life,” he said. “So, the closer you can get them to local, the better off they’re going to be, and the sooner you can get to when they were picked, the better off they’re going to be.”

Feel and color provide important clues as to the ripeness of the fruit. “If you’re out shopping for apricots, the best way to find one that’s not mealy is to actually pick it up and give it a little bit of a squeeze,” Biltonen said. “You want one that has a little bit of a give to it, and that’ll tell you there’s probably about 48 to 72 hours before it will get to that mealy stage.”

While apricots aren’t uniform in color — some varieties have a reddish blush while others don’t, for instance — he said to look for fruit that has rich yellow, orange, or red colors. Avoid anything that has hints of green or brown.

Once you get them home, Biltonen said to keep them on the counter and eat them within a day or two. Below, cookbook author Domenica Marchetti provided a fast, easy way to enjoy apricots.

From NPR: Broiled Apricots With Honey Mascarpone
By Domenica Marchetti, Domenica Cooks

This is the dish to trot out when you have no time to make dessert but still want to serve one. It takes less than 10 minutes to assemble from start to finish but I can assure you no one will be disappointed. Broiling the apricots concentrates their sweet-tart flavor. A dollop of honey mascarpone on top adds just a touch of richness. If restraint is your thing, use non-fat Greek yogurt in place of the mascarpone.

Makes 4 servings

8 tablespoons mascarpone cheese
2 tablespoons honey
6 ripe apricots
2 tablespoons butter, cut into 12 pieces
2 tablespoons sugar
Dash of cinnamon

Position an oven rack 4 inches from the broiler and turn the broiler on.

In a small bowl, whisk together the mascarpone and honey until well-blended. Set aside.

Gently pry the apricots in half or use a paring knife to split them open. Remove and discard the pits.

Set the apricot halves, cut side up, on a small, rimmed baking sheet or shallow broiler pan. Place a piece of butter in each of the apricot cavities. Sprinkle the sugar on the apricot halves and sprinkle a little cinnamon over each half.

Broil the apricot halves for 3 minutes, or until the sugar begins to caramelize and the apricots are just beginning to char around the edges. Remove from the oven.

Spoon the apricots, three halves per person, into dessert bowls and top each serving with a dollop of honey mascarpone. Serve while still warm.

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In the 1920s, New Yorkers grew 2,700 acres of gooseberries. These days, they are a fairly rare sight, even at farmers markets. In part, that’s because growing gooseberries used to be illegal in New York State. The law was enacted in the early 1900s to prevent the spread of white pine blister rust. The federal version of the law was rescinded in 1966, and New York eventually followed suit in 2003.

Dr. Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell of the Cooking Channel show “The Fabulous Beekman Boys” are on a mission to help gooseberries make a comeback. “I think gradually it’s catching on,” said Ridge. “We’re going to make gooseberry cronuts or something. It needs a trend, and we’re going to start it.”

Ridge and Kilmer-Purcell grow gooseberries on their farm, Beekman 1802, in Sharon Springs, N.Y. “They’re like a tart green grape crossed with a plum,” said Ridge. “When they’re ripe off the vine, they’re edible raw but, most times, they’re cooked.”

Gooseberries are just becoming ripe in upstate New York right now. The plants yield fruit for about two weeks, and the berries soften as they ripen on the bush.

While gooseberries may seem like a relatively obscure fruit these days, Kilmer-Purcell explained how that wasn’t always the case. “Gooseberries became very, very popular in the 19th century, so much so they were almost a food fad,” he said. “And they spawned gooseberry clubs in England, and there were actually a couple in America.”

(Photo: Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell/Tate Tullier)

Gardeners would compete to see who could grow the largest gooseberry. The fruit, normally the size of a grape or smaller, could grow to the size of a small plum. Judges would use individual grains of sand portioned out with a feature to get exact measurements of the entries.

“In the middle of this craze, England began trading their gooseberries with America and America began trading them back,” said Kilmer-Purcell. “And then... all heck broke loose. We got the blister rust; they got a mildew from our gooseberries.” That signalled the end of the fruit’s popularity but, now, gooseberries are back.

Ridge said that they’re are often used in baked goods like gooseberry pies because sugar offsets the fruit’s tartness. Kilmer-Purcell put a modern spin on a classic English dessert with his recipe for goat cheese gooseberry fool. (The recipe is below.)

“A fool is actually one of the oldest desserts on record,” he said, adding that it dates back to the Elizabethan era. “It’s basically a whipped cream that is made with stewed fruit... That sweetness of the fruit with the tangy sourness of the goat cheese and whipped cream is really delicious together.”

Beekman 1802 Goat Cheese Gooseberry Fool

2 pints fresh or frozen gooseberries
1/2 C honey
1 C soft, fresh goat cheese
3 C heavy whipping cream

In a heavy skillet, heat the gooseberries and 1/4C of the honey over medium heat until the berries have burst and softened. (Approx 4 minutes.) Either mash mixture with fork, or puree. Let cool, and chill in refrigerator.

In stand mixer bowl, beat goat cheese with remaining 1/4C honey on medium speed until whipped and softened. Spoon mixture into separate medium mixing bowl. Pour heavy cream to the empty stand mixer bowl, and whip until barely thickened. (Don’t whip until stiff, as one would traditional whipped cream.) Gently fold the whipped cream into the goat cheese honey mixture, and allow to chill thoroughly.

To serve, spoon gooseberry mixture into decorative stemmed glasses until about 1/3 full. Top with cream, honey and goat cheese mixture. Garnish with raw gooseberry, or its cousin — red or black currants.

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They descend like locusts and can decimate an entire cherry crop in just one weekend, said Gekee Wickham of Wickham’s Fruit Farm in Cutchogue, Long Island. She wasn’t referring to insects, though, but the hordes of cherry fans that come for the pick-your-own season.

Cherries at Wickham’s farm on the North Fork of Long Island were still growing just a week ago, but by July 4, the cherry season was closed. “We can have one strong weekend, and [the crop] can disappear in the blink of an eye,” said Wickham.

For those looking for one last chance to pick cherries, this weekend will likely be the end of the season for upstate farms. In Hudson, N.Y., the crop at Fix Brothers Fruit Farm will last until Saturday, though no guarantees were made about Sunday. Cherry Ridge Farm, also in Hudson, begins its pick-your-own cherry season on Saturday. There are also cherries still available this weekend at Lawrence Farm Orchards in Newburgh, N.Y.

“There’s some niche [fans] for niche cherries,” said Thomas Wickham of the customers at Wickham’s Fruit Farm. “A lot of people from Central Asia—like Afghanis, Persians, Iranians—are very attracted to the tart cherry. In fact, they’ll come out and virtually picnic under the trees.”

Sweet cherries, which are more commonly eaten out of hand, are larger, firmer, and, of course, sweeter.

“The tart cherries actually have more flavor,” said Wickham. “They’re a little softer, they’re usually not as big. They’re used for all kinds of confections and cooking and baking and all of that.” Some of his customers eat the tart cherries with just a sprinkling of salt.

While the popularity of the fruit can make it hard to find, cherries in the Northeast also have a particularly short season. “Most of the varieties that do well here tend to be the early- and mid-season varieties, so that tends to abbreviate the season,” said Wickham.

Added to the short season, Wickham said about once every three years, he’ll lose the crop entirely due to one of two weather conditions. The first hurdle to cross is pollination during the late spring.

“If you have rain and wind during [pollination] time, there [is] no bee activity and there’s essentially, no crop,” he said. “You have a beautiful tree, lots of flowers, and leaves later, but hardly any cherries. That’s a real bummer, and there’s nothing you can do about it afterward.”

(Photo: Cherries from Wickham's Fruit Farm/Thomas Wickham)

The second challenge comes during the cherries’ ripening time. “All you need is a heavy rain, and the cherries will just grow so fast, with a soft skin, they’ll split,” he said. “They’ll just explode. And as a result, they’re all just trash. You just can’t sell them. And one year in three, we get those kinds of rains and have virtually no salable product.”

Fortunately, this year’s crop avoided both fates, and the swarms of customers at Wickham’s could get their fill of the fruit. For any latecomers to the cherry season, this weekend will likely be the last for local cherries, so now’s the time to head upstate and enjoy one of the season’s most fleeting treats.

Below, try a recipe for cherry clafouti and sweet cherry sauce, recommended by Wickham’s Fruit Farm. Also, get a recipe for pickled cherries here.

Cherry Clafouti

4 cups sweet cherries, pitted
½ cup flour, sifted
¼ cup super-fine sugar
3 eggs
1 ¼ cups milk
¼ teaspoon vanilla

Place cherries in a single layer in a 9-inch pie plate.

Place flour and sugar in a mixing bowl and make a well in the middle. Add the eggs and half of the milk. Beat together, gradually incorporating all the flour.

Add the remaining milk and vanilla, then pour over the cherries.

Bake until puffed up and golden brown. Serve warm and, if desired, garnish with crème fraîche or sour cream.

Sweet Cherry Sauce

1 pint sweet cherries, pitted
1 cup water
¾ cup sugar, or to taste
¼ cup kirsch liqueur
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Combine cherries and ¾ cup water in saucepan. Quickly bring to a boil and remove from heat. Drain cherries into a bowl or jar.

Add sugar to liquid in pan and boil until reduced to about ½ cup. Add kirsch and vanilla and boil 2 minutes. Pour over cherries and mix well. Serve over ice cream, as one option.

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Like rides on the Coney Island Cyclone or picnics in Prospect Park, iced coffee is a simple summer pleasure. When it comes to coffee, though, there are a multitude of opinions on the best methods for creating the caffeinated beverage. It’s not as simple as pouring leftover Joe on ice, according to coffee expert Liz Clayton.

“Basically because it doesn’t taste good when you do that,” she said. “Pretty much all the methods of iced coffee that there are involve preparing something that’s stronger that, when you add ice to it will be complimentary and will actually, as the coffee melts the ice, produce a more delicious and balanced tasting drink.”

Clayton, whose book Nice Coffee Time was just released in the U.S, explained that “there’s basically two ways to make coffee grounds and water into coffee, and one of them is time and the other one is heat.”

Cold brew coffee relies on time and involves a 10-12 hour soak of coffee grounds in room-temperature water. Clayton uses this method at home and makes sure to set a timer so she doesn’t lose track of how long the mixture steeps. She then filters it twice.

“When you’re using coarse grounds you’re not supposed to have too much small sediment coming through, but you always do have finer particles,” said Clayton, adding that the second filter will eliminate the grit. She noted that brewer’s cloth, sieves, and French press strainers all work as filters. Clayton has been using an almond milk strainer and says it’s fairly easy to clean. Paper filters are also an option but the coffee may take longer to filter through, and the process may require more than one filter.

“[The cold brew method] results in a concentrated liquid that you can pour over ice and a little bit of water to cut it,” she said. “And it’s a very low acid, very sort of mellow flavored style of coffee... A lot of people really prefer that, especially if they have problems digesting coffee. They find that it’s much less harsh on their stomach.”

The method is commonly used by cafes to produce bulk amounts of iced coffee. “If you go to a cafe and they use something called a toddy, that’s what they’ve made you,” Clayton said.

A second method of making iced coffee relies on heat, which brings out the more acidic notes found in coffee. Known as the Japanese method, hot coffee is brewed at a more concentrated strength directly onto ice.

Clayton said that more acidic tasting coffee doesn’t necessarily mean that your coffee will “taste like lemon zest or some craziness that some people find quite disagreeable in their coffee, but what it does mean is there is a lot of nuance. You can get a lot of fruit juice. You can get a lot of what we call sparkle.”

The Japanese method incorporates the amount of ice into the ratio of water to coffee. For any type of iced coffee, Clayton added that it’s important to use clean, fresh ice that’s free of any errant smells.

Below, Clayton provides recipes for both methods to use at home. “There are countless ways to make coffee cold, but here are two of the best,” Clayton wrote about the recipes below. “Note that the measurement systems are different: besides this being an annoyingly common thing in coffee, the fact of the matter is that it's more precise to measure pour-over coffee in weight (and many prefer to brew on a scale), while measuring coffee and water for cold brew overnight is easier to describe in volumes. As for metric versus imperial, I'm half-Canadian.”

Overnight Cold Brew

8oz coarsely ground coffee
32oz filtered water
Two ~32oz pitchers, or one ~32oz pitcher and another vessel or bowl of equivalent volume
A very fine-mesh metal sieve, strainer, or straining cloth such as a brewer's cloth or nut-milk sack
Clock or timer

Grind your coffee right before the brewing process and put all 8oz of coffee grounds--this is a lot--in the bottom of your pitcher. Fill the pitcher with 32oz of quality, filtered water (not distilled). Make sure all the grounds are saturated (you can stir with the handle of a wooden spoon), cover pitcher, and set a timer for 12 hours. A concentrated coffee brew will be ready after this time.

After the 12 hours have elapsed, pour your coffee concentrate through your sieve or straining cloth, into your secondary vessel. Wash the strainer thoroughly and pour the coffee concentrate back through the strainer and into the first pitcher. Note the fine sediment you've removed the second time around--the second strain is worth it! You now have a concentrated brew base that can be used to make iced coffee for up to two weeks. Serve over ice, and diluted with 1/3 to 1/2 parts water (and/or cream, milk, soy milk, or whatever you prefer) to taste.

Japanese Cold Brew

Pourover coffee cone such as Melitta, Hario V60, Kalita Wave, etc., and appropriate filters
Carafe or small serving pitcher that your pourover cone fits onto nicely
Water kettle
30g coffee
200g filtered water
200g of ice cubes, made from filtered water

Grind 30g of coffee to a slightly finer than medium/filter grind.

Bring your water to a boil, and place ice cubes in the serving pitcher.

With pourover cone on top of ice-filled carafe, place the filter and the ground coffee in the cone and begin pouring your 200g of hot water slowly over the grounds, making sure to saturate.

Begin by pouring in a little less than 1/3 of your water, and wait for the coffee grounds to expand and "bloom" in the cone. Then slowly pour in the remainder of your hot water.

You've made Japanese cold brew! Serve over more ice, as the ice you've already used has melted and become part of the brew concentrate. Enjoy!

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Bibimbap is a Korean dish of rice and vegetables familiar to many. But what’s in that delicious melange? Two important ingredients, according to Christine Colligan, are kosari, also known in English as fernbrake, and doraji, which is bellflower root.

Colligan works as a parent coordinator in the New York City school systems and promotes Korean food culture in her free time. She noted with a laugh that, as a Korean woman with an Irish last name, people tend to remember her. The outgoing former shoe designer recently teamed up with journalist Anne Noyes Saini for the first edition of The Mother-in-Law Cooking Chronicles, a podcast about food from different cultures debuting on Narratively in July.

Colligan noted kosari is an ingredient that was used even before refrigeration became common. “What they did was they cut all the fernbrake and dried it in a nice sunny [patch] and keep it all year round,” she said. These days, kosari comes dried in packages.

Kosari doesn’t have a very strong flavor, but the texture is firm and slightly chewy. “This is called meat from the mountain,” said Colligan. When using the dried version, she advised soaking it overnight, seeing the water out of it, and then sauteing it with garlic and minced onion. Colligan said to season it with soy sauce and a little sugar, and cautioned to only add the soy sauce toward the end of the cooking process so that the vegetable doesn’t become too salty.

Doraji, the white root of bellflower, has a more distinctive taste. “It’s kind of fibrous,” says Noyes Saini. “It’s kind of an interesting alternative vegetable to use. It soaks up the flavor but it has kind of its own... maybe slightly bitter flavor.”

She’d purchased packages of kosari and doraji at a Korean grocery store in midtown, and added that she was excited to return home and make good use of both. Noyes Saini grew up in North Dakota and was relatively unfamiliar with Korean cooking. Colligan has helped make both Noyes Saini and her in-laws fans of Korean food.

(Photo: Christine Colligan/Mark Rinaldi)

“My Italian in-laws, whenever they came [over], when I first got married, I cooked Korean food,” she said. “Then about five years later, I feel like, am I so selfish? I always cook [Korean food] without even ask them. So one day I just cook all Italian that I learned from my mother-in-law. Then everybody was upset! They said, Christine, what are you doing? I said, Uncle Michael, what are you talking about?”

Colligan’s family explained that they ate Italian food all the time. What they wanted to eat at her house was kimchi and bulgogi.

Noyes Saini explained that her husband also hails from a different culture and getting to know his mother helped inspire the Mother-in-Law Cooking Chronicles.

“I learned almost from day one how to cook Indian food with my mother-in-law,” she said. “It sort of made me wonder how awesome it would be to have a mother-in-law from Korean, or Serbia, or any country... and learn... real family recipes, authentic recipes. So we’re trying to capture those recipes but at the same time also tell stories about immigration, how food changes when you come to a new place, how you preserve your traditions, or how you change them."

Below, try Colligan’s recipe for a traditional Korean side dish that uses both kosari and doraji.

Samsek Namul (Three-Colored Vegetables)
serves 4

Ingredients:

½ lb. soaked or pickled kosari, rinsed and sliced lengthwise into 2-inch pieces
1 bunch spinach, washed and drained
½ cup dried doraji (rehydrating instructions), sliced lengthwise into thin strips
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tsp. soy sauce
2 tsp. sesame oil
½ tbsp. white sugar
1 tsp. vegetable oil
Salt (to taste)

Put a small pot of water over high heat to boil. When boiling, add spinach and cook for 1 minute.

Drain and rinse in cold water. Allow spinach to drain again, then squeeze gently to remove excess water.

Place in a bowl and combine with 1 tsp. soy sauce, 1 tsp. sesame oil, minced garlic and a pinch of salt. Set aside.

Heat vegetable oil in a sauté pan and add the sliced kosari and doraji.

Add sugar and 1 tsp. soy sauce and cook for 2 minutes, stirring often.

Remove from heat, add 1 tsp. sesame oil and stir to combine.

Serve as accompaniment to main dishes or rice.

Glossary of Korean ingredients:
Kosari: fernbrake: Bracken fiddlehead, which has a chewy texture and vegetal flavor
Doraji: Bellflower root, known for its firm, fibrous texture and distinctive bitter taste

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Summer is right around the corner, which means many of us will head out to Long Island for clams bakes and time on the beach. But there’s a problem lurking in the waters around the Great South Bay. According to studies from The Nature Conservancy, excessive nitrogen is polluting the waterways.

“We have these symptoms in many places, either harmful algal blooms, some of which are actually toxic to fish and wildlife, some of which are toxic to people,” said Carl LoBue, The Nature Conservancy’s senior marine scientist on Long Island. “So that actually has a big impact on which fish enter our bays, which fish are healthy to eat. And then in some places, like Western Long Island Sound where the water is deep, we get hypoxic dead zones, like you might hear about in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Scientists at The Nature Conservancy became particularly focused on this problem in the Great South Bay through a shellfish restoration project that began 10 years ago. At that time, the organization came into possession of 21 square miles of bay bottom. Previously owned by an oyster company and then a bank, the underwater land had been strip-mined of shellfish, so scientists decided to repopulate the area with clams.

“Half the clams eaten in this country came from Great South Bay at one point,” said Nancy Kelley, Long Island chapter director of The Nature Conservancy. “Annual harvests in the 1970s were upwards of 700,000 bushels a year. That’s [a] 99 percent decline, down to about 10,000 bushels [now].”

After a few years, though, evidence showed that the reintroduced clams weren’t doing as well as they’d expected. “Some years, when we tested how many clams were actually growing, we saw some positive results, other years, not so much,” said Kelley. “And clearly there was a problem with our water quality because these systems just weren’t sustaining healthy populations of shellfish.”

Scientists knew nitrogen pollution was a problem in many places throughout the world, but 65 percent of nitrogen leaking into the Great South Bay came from a particularly local source. “The big surprise was that the main culprit, the main source of this excessive nitrogen was from residential home septic systems,” said Kelley, pictured right.

Now the organization is working on getting residents in problem areas to replace old septic systems with new ones that are designed to prevent excessive nitrogen leakage. That’s not a small feat given the individual investment required by homeowners.

“Recent polling indicates that 85 percent of Long Island voters strongly support tougher water quality standards if it means that less nitrogen will enter our waters,” said Kelley. “So they’re willing to be a part of the solution. They’re also willing and understand that it’s going to cost some money.”

According to Kelley, the problem is one that simply can’t be ignored any longer. “Last year, 13,000 acres of shellfishing grounds were closed because of these toxic algal blooms,” she says, adding that there were 1,100 beach closures last year, and that number is growing. “We realize that the solution lies in the folks who live on Long Island.”

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Hot, sunny weather seems to finally be here to stay. That means zucchini and tomatoes should be here, too, right? Well, not quite. This spring has been long and cool, particularly compared to last year, according to area farmers.

“Edible, right now? Today? Nothing yet,” said Long Island farmer Joe Barszczewski. “We didn’t have a spring. It looks like we’ve gone from winter now leaning toward summer. And everything is a little bit behind, probably two weeks.”

Barszczewski grows 20 acres of vegetables on the East End. That’s just enough to supply his farm stand on Albertson Lane in Greenport. Right now, the stand is mostly stocked with seedlings. That’ll change soon.

“With this warm weather, you can catch up quick,” he said. While New York City residents seemed to get rain nearly every other day this spring, Barszczewski said his fields got just enough to avoid having to irrigate.

Barszczewski said the cooler weather helps prevent farmers planting too soon. Gail Hepworth of Hepworth Farms in Milton, New York, agreed. She grows 182 varieties of vegetables and supplies the Park Slope Food Co-Op. She said cooler weather helps enforce the guideline of only planting after May 15 in this growing zone.

“A lot of times when it’s warm weather like last year, we were biting at the bit to get out there because it just seemed like everything was ready for us,” Hepworth said. “And that’s very dangerous because before May 15 there can be a frost.” An unexpected frost can have farmers starting all over.

One way to help ensure crops are available regardless of weather conditions is to rely on greenhouses, which is what Sang Lee Farms in Peconic, Long Island, have been doing. Will Lee said that they’re currently harvesting raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries, as well as asparagus, lettuces, sugar snap peas, and radishes. Soon, they’ll start planting in the fields.

Nevia No of Bodhitree Farm is harvesting strawberries from her fields at Bodhitree Farm in the Pemberton Township of New Jersey. She says her strawberry season is nearly over, but that farmers further north will take over where her stock leaves off.

Unlike the Eastern End of Long Island, No said that the southern part of New Jersey got just enough rain. “We did get a sufficient amount of water,” she said. “We didn’t really have a very long dry spell... which was a good benefit for all the greens.”

No brings her produce to the Union Square farmers market on Wednesdays and Fridays. On Saturdays, Bodhitree Farm has stands at the Abingdon and Greenpoint McCarren Park markets. Right now, she is harvesting English shell peas, leafy greens, and summer radishes. The Italian leafy green spigarello, which tastes like broccoli, did particularly well this year, and No said to look forward to fava beans showing up in the next few weeks, too.

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Seeing heaps of ramps at farmers markets can be a little alarming for anyone who has read about the possibility that the tender spring onion is being over-harvested in the woods. The New York Times took up the issue two years ago. Nonetheless, the desire for ramps continues to gain momentum.

“Ramps right now, in most locations, are not in peril, but they are in decline,” said Dr. Robert Naczi, the Arthur J. Cronquist Curator of North American Botany at the New York Botanical Garden.

A expert studying North American plants, he explained that many native plants have very slow reproductive cycles. “They live in an environment that is very stable and they don’t need to replace themselves very often, so they generate few seeds,” Naczi said. “So be careful about things like ramps, like dwarf ginseng, like American ginseng.”

The over-harvesting of medicinal herbs like native ginseng, as well as goldenseal, serve as cautionary tales. “Those have been in serious decline and their numbers have not recovered from over-harvesting during the past... century,” he said.

That’s not to say that Naczi is anti-foraging. He just recommends foragers keep both the environment and others in mind. That means practicing sustainable and responsible gathering techniques.

“First of all, when foraging make sure that the population is large enough to support that,” he said. “So what I mean by that is make sure there are a lot of the plants out there. My rule [of] thumb is that, when foraging, gather less than 10 percent of what is present.”

As a botanist, Naczi follows similar rules when gathering specimens. He will take one sample if there are 12 individual plants, or two if he sees 25.

There are some exceptions, though. Garlic mustard, for instance, is an invasive that Naczi says can be gathered without restriction. He said it can be used in salads and serves as a “wonderful spring tonic.”

Dandelions, with their copious and easily dispersed seeds, are also plentiful and edible.

“If [foragers] are going after weeds, especially invasive plants, actually it would help,” Naczi said. “But if they’re going after certain native plants whose populations are already in relatively low supply, it could actually imperil those plants.”

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Before açaí and goji berries became the “it” health foods, there was flax. The whole grain has been cultivated since 3000 B.C., when even the ancient Babylonians had an inkling that flax was nutritious, according to registered dietitian Samantha Heller.

Thanks to modern science, we now know that flax possesses healthy omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants. In particular, Heller explains that flax has alpha-linolenic acid, “a kind of omega-3 fatty acid that’s really healthy.” She adds that research has show that “it reduces internal inflammation, and it may help lower cholesterol. It’s good for your body, it’s heart healthy.”

While all forms of flax — oil, seeds and ground flax meal — have the omega-3 fat, only the seeds have lignans, which are powerful antioxidents that researchers are finding may actually help reduce the risk of certain cancers. “[It’s] certainly good for digestive health, high in fiber, as well,” said Heller.

Not all omega-3 fatty acids are created equal, though, and she said that the ones found in fish have gotten a bit more attention from researchers.

“It’s like you have motorcycles and there’s all different kinds of motorcycles—you’ve got Kawasakis, and you’ve got BMWs, and you have Harleys,” Heller said. “It’s the same thing with omega-3 fats, there’s many different kinds. And in fish, there’s two kinds, EPA and DHA, and these are the ones we really look at in terms of lowering triglycerides, and we’ve done a lot of research on those.”

The different forms of flax also vary slightly in digestibility. Heller, the clinical nutrition coordinator for the Center for Cancer Care at Griffin Hospital in Connecticut, particularly recommends ground flax seeds, or flax meal, because it’s easier for the body to digest. “It [tastes] sort of wheat germ-like,” she said. “I put those in smoothies, in salads, in yogurt.”

Flax oil also boasts healthful properties, but can’t be substituted for cooking oil because its a highly unsaturated fat. That means, it can turn rancid and should be kept in the refrigerator. “You can drizzle it on salads, you can even drizzle it on foods that are already cooked, you just won’t cook it in the pan like you would olive oil,” Heller noted.

As for being on trend, flax does has the added benefit of being gluten-free. “Perhaps since people tend to be shying some of the wheat products, maybe that’s one of the reasons flax is becoming more popular,” she said.

Below, try a recipe Heller recommends for muffins with flaxseed.

Zucchini, Banana, and Flaxseed MuffinsAdapted from Martha Stewart, Everyday Food, September 2011

Yield:  Makes 12

Nonstick cooking spray
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
1/2 cup ground flaxseed
1/2 cup lightly packed light-brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 1/2 cups coarsely grated zucchini (from 1 large zucchini)
1/3 cup mashed ripe banana (from 1 large banana)
3/4 cup 1% milk or unsweetened soy milk
1 large egg, lightly beaten or flax*
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly coat 12 standard muffin cups with cooking spray. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, flaxseed, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Add zucchini and banana and stir to combine. In a small bowl, whisk together milk, egg, and vanilla. Add milk mixture to flour mixture and stir until combined (do not overmix).
Divide batter among muffin cups. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. Let muffins cool completely in pan on a wire rack, about 30 minutes. Egg Substitution Instructions: For every egg being replaced, mix 1 tablespoon milled flax with 3 tablespoons water in a small bowl and let sit for one or two minutes. The mixture will become gel-like. Add to your recipe as you would an egg. 1 tablespoon milled flax + 3 tablespoons water = 1 egg from Flax Council of Canada

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Stephanie Villani and Alex Villani of Blue Moon Fish are a little like the fish they bring to the city’s greenmarkets. They spend the winter season in warmer climates (in their case, the Florida Keys), before returning to the northeast in the spring. They’re back this year—and so are fluke, porgies and other fish.

“This fish are migrating and moving around, and we’re starting to get some of the spring fish, like weakfish, porgies and fluke,” Stephanie Villani said. Fluke, a type of flounder, is a springtime catch, she says. Alex, who fishes off Long Island, will continue to catch more of it as the weather gets warmer.

Villani likes to recommend fluke to customers who are less familiar with fish because of its mild, sweet taste.

“Kids like it,” she said. “The fluke is very thick and firm. It will hold together well, and it’s mild.” For those reasons, some people also eat the fluke raw, as sashimi.

Another fish that Blue Moon is currently bringing into market are porgies, a good choice for anyone concerned about sustainability issues. “There are lots of porgies, it’s very plentiful,” Villani said.

Porgies are relatively small at 1 to 2 pounds each. Villani says they’re sweet, but there’s one downside. “They are very boney. A lot of people don’t like them because of that reason,” she admitted.

(Photo: Fluke from Blue Moon Fish/Sally Mara Sturman)

While Villani says there’s no way to avoid eating around all those bones, she did offer one shortcut in preparing porgy: a salt crust. “That way you don’t have to scale the fish. It makes it very tender and it’s also fun,” she explained. “You mix some salt and flour into a paste and cover the fish.”

While some can tell if a fish is done cooking by touch, Villani concedes she hasn’t yet acquired that skill. Instead, she goes by conventional wisdom. “The basic rule is 10 minutes per inch of thickness of the filet,” Villani said. And when in doubt, “I just under do it.... Sometimes I have to check it a few times, but I think that’s better than overcooking it.”

Below, try Villani’s quick and easy recipe for preparing porgy fillets.

Basic Porgy Recipe
by Blue Moon Fish

1 lb. porgy fillets
1 cup flour
1 tsp cajun spice
1/4 cup olive oil
salt to taste
half a lemon, cut in quarters

Cut out the thin line of bones that runs down each porgy fillet, leaving you with two small strips of meat.

Combine the flour and the cajun spice on a plate or a shallow dish and mix with a fork. Dip the fillets in the flour mixture and shake off the excess.

Heat the olive oil in a nonstick pan over medium to medium-high heat. When the oil is hot place the fillets in the pan. Cook 2-3 minutes per side.

Remove from pan and drain on paper towels. Season with salt and a squeeze of lemon.

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Few foods can seem as “last chance” as a piece of moldy cheese. While some of us contemplate the age-old question of whether to cut off the fuzzy bits and eat the rest, Brian Ralph is carefully cultivating mold at Murray’s Cheese Shop in Greenwich Village. He’s the cave master at the store and oversees the ripening of various cheeses in Murray’s five cheese caves.

Ralph currently works in consultation with Dr. Benjamin Wolfe, a microbiologist researching mold at Harvard University. He calls Wolfe up with questions about how to cultivate and maintain various cheese molds, each of which serves an important purpose.

“Depending on the species or subspecies of that mold, it’ll create different flavor profiles,” Ralph explained. “Like this one tastes grassy or this one tastes yeasty. But does it taste like beer yeast or champagne yeast?”

This week’s Last Chance Foods segment took place in Murray’s cheese cave number four. It’s a vaulted, air-conditioned room, permeated with a strong, sharp smell. Wooden and metal shelves lined the walls and were filled with neat rows of domestic and imported natural-rind cheeses.

“We’re putting [cheeses] in here so they can breathe,” Ralph said. “And what you’re smelling is the cheeses breathing and they’re letting off ammonia, they’re letting off other by products as they’re ripening the cheeses. Essentially, we’re letting them express themselves so that it doesn’t go back into the cheese and create off flavors.”

Located in the basement of Murray’s, cheese cave number four is the most nose-tingling and pungent. Walking inside, Wolfe admitted he loves the smell.

“These are molds that we’ve grown on cheese, we’ve grown to make miso, we’ve grown to make a lot of different products over thousands of years,” he said. “We’ve essentially domesticated these molds.” Wolfe works with Dr. Rachel Dutton at Harvard’s FAS Center for Systems Biology in educating food makers and other scientists about helpful, harmless molds.

In particular, Ralph works with Wolfe on sporendonema casei, a bright orange mold specific to Hudson Flower, the cave master’s signature cheese. On a recent visit from Cambridge, Mass., Wolfe brought petri dishes of lab-grown mold to use as comparison against what was growing on Murray’s cheese.

“We like to think of [the cheese cave] as a frat house or something where you get like all these different people coming and expressing themselves in different ways,” Ralph said with a chuckle. “And we kind of treat it like a day spa where we come in, we pat them, we flip them over. If there’s cheese mites, we brush them off or suck them up with vacuum and make sure they’re not burrowing too far into the product itself.”

That’s right: some varieties of cheese host microscopic mites that are invisible to the human eye. Ralph can tell they’re present by the dust the mites create on and around the cheeses.

There’s no cause to be alarmed by the tiny creatures, though, says Wolfe.

“I like to think of cheese mites as the gophers of cheese rinds or the groundhogs of cheese rinds,” he explained. “So they’re running around this moldy landscape, which could be like a lawn, and they’re eating the grass, but in this case the grass is mold. So they’re munching on various parts of the rind.”

Wolfe pointed to a brown spot visible under a portable microscope. It was a mold called scopulariopsis. “We think of scopulariopsis as the cheese mite bar,” he said. “They love this particular mold. It’s one of the most delicious molds for them. So anytime you have scopulariopsis on a cheese like this, you have a mite party.”

Wolfe was careful to add that, like mold, the mites were simply a natural part of the cheese’s ecosystem. “They’re not doing anything bad, necessarily, to the cheese unless they go out of control,” he said. “So that’s where Brian comes in and makes sure their numbers don’t go too crazy high.”

Photo: Brian Ralph, Amy Eddings, and Benjamin Wolfe outside a cheese cave at Murray's Cheese Shop/Jennifer Hsu (WNYC)

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Eggs traditionally symbolize spring and rebirth. There’s a reason for that: As the days get longer, hens tend to produce more eggs. Annemarie Gero, a farmer with Queens County Farm Museum in Floral Park, said that each hen can produce as much as one egg a day during peak season.

Gero cares for nearly 250 hens at the historic farm, which has been around since 1697. The seven different breeds she oversees includes Rhode Island Reds, which are the farm’s most productive egg layers, and Araucanas, which lay blue-green hued eggs.

The colorful eggs are a novelty, but Gero said the color doesn’t affect the taste of the egg at all. “What changes the taste is more what they’re eating,” she explained. “So the chickens that get first to the greens or get first to... the healthy stuff, you’ll have the most nutritious eggs from them.” Gero also notes that while the hens eat garden scraps, as well as munch on grasses and bugs, the hens are not fed strong-tasting greens, like garlic or onion grass, because that can affect the taste of the egg.

Since the hens do scavenge, though, it’s wise to test the area where they roam for lead, which can be a particular problem for backyard hens in New York City. “You don’t want the chance of that transferring to your eggs,” said Gero.

Certain breeds are tamer and more suited for backyards “because they’re not as frisky,” she said. ”One thing is to look for a less adventurous bird. For example, we have blue Andalusians on the farm, which are the first ones to jump the fence. They’re real mischievous.”

Buff Orpingtons are her favorite because they are calm and happy to just walk around.

(Photo: Annemarie Gero/Sarah Meyer)

Just as each breed has a different personality, Gero added, chickens also vary from individual to individual.

“They talk all the time,” she said. “If you go into a chicken coop, you’re hearing probably about 20 conversations going on.... I don’t know how to speak chicken that well, but some people, I think, they say they do.”

As for the eggs themselves, fresh eggs don’t need to be refrigerated because they possess a protective membrane. “Once you wash the egg and remove a type of membrane that’s around it, you do want to refrigerate it,” Gero explained. “Hopefully, the eggs you get in the store are washed.” That’s because the “some of the stuff on the eggs, you wouldn’t want to buy,” she added.

The eggs sold by the museum at the farmers market are washed. Washed eggs will stay good in the refrigerator for as long as two months.

“Oftentimes, the ones you buy in the grocery store are already a few weeks old,” Gero noted. “One test is to drop them into a glass of water and, if it floats, the egg is bad.”

Gero shared an egg recipe for one of her favorite comfort foods: her grandmother’s rakott krumpli, which is a Hungarian casserole of eggs and potatoes.

Rakott Krumpli (Hungarian Layered Potatoes & Eggs)
By Margaret Magyar Meisels

Serves: 4

1kg (2.2 lb.) potatoes, boiled unpeeled
6 hard-boiled eggs; sliced
8 tablespoons butter (100g, 3 oz.)
2 cups sour cream
1 teaspoon salt

Butter a casserole dish using half of the butter (approximately 4 tablespoons).

Peel the potatoes and slice them thinly to medium. Peel and slice the hard-boiled eggs.

Put a layer of sliced potatoes in the dish and sprinkle a little salt over it. Add a layer of sliced eggs, followed by a layer of sour cream. Then cover the sour cream with another layer of sliced potatoes, followed by a layer of eggs and a layer of sour cream.

Continue alternating layers of potatoes, eggs and sour cream until you run out of potatoes and eggs. Pour whatever sour cream is left over the last layer of eggs and then spread the remaining butter over the top.

Put the dish in a moderate 180°C (350°F) oven and bake until golden brown (approximately 1 hour).

Poster's Notes:

Butter can definitely be substituted with margarine.

The sour cream can also be replaced by leben (Israeli buttermilk with 3% fat) and/or eshel (Israeli buttermilk, unsour, with 4% fat).

The original non-kosher Hungarian dish also has sausages. Those of you in the U.S. who have access to (and can digest) pareve smoked "meats" can try adding them.

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Harvesting time for maple syrup is drawing to an end, and you can be sure New York producers are out tapping their trees when the weather’s right. Helen Thomas, executive director of the New York State Maple Producer’s Association, said this season ran slightly longer than usual, due to a cold March.

“We need to have days that are above freezing, but an optimum temperature is around 40 degrees during the daytime,” Thomas explains. “The tree recognizes that it’s warm enough and time to get going when those daytime temperatures reach 40 degrees. At night the tree will keep running if it’s above freezing.” She said 25 degrees is optimal temperature at night, to stop the flowing overnight.

Once the sap’s collected, its sugar content is boosted. “Sap is about 2 percent sugar concentration, as it comes out of the tree,” Thomas said. “We have to take out enough water to turn it to 67 percent sugar concentration.” That’s done through a process called reverse osmosis, and by evaporating the water.

You may be surprised to learn Thomas doesn’t use syrup for pancakes or waffles all that much. She more commonly uses it as a glaze for her vegetables. She also has a handy converter that allows her to substitute maple syrup for other sweeteners, like sugar, in most recipes.

Try out Thomas’ converter, and some of her recipes, below.

(Photo Courtesy New York State Maple Producer's Association)

Maple Conversion Guidelines
Courtesy New York State Maple Producer's Association

Pure Maple Syrup is a natural sugar made by the evaporation of the sap of several species of maple trees. The combination of sugar, black, soft or red maples and a climate unique to eastern North American allows for the early spring harvest of this all-natural delicious sweetener.

For 1 cup white granulated sugar, use 1 cup maple granulated sugar or use 1 cup maple syrup and reduce other liquids by 3.7 ounces (just under 1/2 cup)
For 1 cup packed brown sugar, use 1 cup plus 1 tablespoon maple syrup and reduce other liquids by 1/2 cup
100 grams of maple syrup equal 67 grams granulated sugar plus 23 grams of water

The influence of the maple flavor on the recipe is most closely related to the color of the syrup used. The maple flavor is more pronounced and robust in darker syrups. The flavor of granulated maple sugar is influenced greatly by the grade (light through extra dark) of syrup used it its production.

Maple Fruit Dip
By Helen Thomas

8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
½ cup sour cream
¼ cup granulated maple sugar
2 tablespoons extra dark maple syrup

Directions: Soften cream cheese at room temperature. Fold in other ingredients. Enjoy on fruit slices, graham cracker pieces, etc.

Maple Soy Glaze
Courtesy New York State Maple Producer’s Association

For chicken, pork tenderloin or chops, scallops, salmon

2 cups pure New York State Maple Syrup
¼ cup light soy sauce
1 cup water
2 inch piece fresh ginger, sliced
3 whole cloves garlic
4 stars star anise
2 tablespoons whole coriander

Directions: Add all ingredients to sauce pan and simmer 20 minutes. Strain through a fine mesh sieve. In the meantime, pan sear the meat. Transfer the meat to an uncovered roasting pan, drizzle with glaze, and roast at appropriate temperature until done, glazing every 5 minutes or so.

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Dale Talde latched onto raw bar seafood culture like a barnacle to a pier when he came to New York City in 2005. He likes them raw, but I prefer them fried, like my guests in the lightning round of questions that is the Stir Fry.

Talde put on a game face as the questions came his way, but I detected some flinching when I asked him about his vacation plans this year.

He had to repeat the question. "Vacation plans?"

This is clearly someone for whom a vacation is a foreign concept, like weekends are to the landed gentry in the hit PBS series, "Downton Abbey." The Dowager Countess can't imagine working Monday through Friday. Talde, whose own empire includes Talde, Pork Slope and Thistle Hill Tavern, can't imagine leisure time.

With the Stir Fry timer ticking, Talde finally said Italy was his vacation destination this year, but somehow, I don't believe he'll get past Coney Island this summer.

I do believe him when he says his favorite kitchen chore is ordering someone else to do it. How Downton of him.

What's your vacation destination this summer? And will it include adventure eating? Post your comments below.

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There’s a warehouse space near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn where pallets of wheatgrass are carefully grown in a temperature controlled environment and gently misted every three hours. Sounds like a pretty sweet life, right?

Stewart Borowsky, also known as the Union Square Grassman, has been growing wheatgrass and selling it at the Union Square farmers market since 1994. He said that spring is when his wheatgrass thrives.

“Wheatgrass is really a young wheat plant [that] is grown for about seven days until it’s in initial grass stage,” Borowsky said. Wheatgrass, which is from the same plant that produces wheat for bread, has a reputation for being a super health food favored by hippies, and he says that hasn’t really changed much in the last two decades.

There’s some science behind that reputation. “[Wheatgrass] is a microgreen and microgreens generally will have the nutrients that are associated with green vegetables, as well as some of the original nutrition that comes from the seed itself,” Borowsky explained.

The difference between wheatgrass and something you’d put in your salad is primarily taste and texture. “The truth is that the wheatgrass has a lot of fiber,” Borowsky said. “I always try and compare it to sugarcane in that you would chew the sugar cane or you would juice it but you wouldn’t really chop it up and put it in fruit salad. And that would be kind of the same example I would give for wheatgrass.”

Human teeth would have to put in an onerous amount of work to break down those fibers. “If you’ve ever seen a cow having a good time, that’s what’s going on,” Borowsky said.

(Photo: Stewart Borowsky/Courtesy of Union Square Grassman)

That’s also why a traditional juicer or blender won’t do the trick in liquefying wheatgrass. Instead, it needs to be processed with machines that are better designed to crush and press the greens.

The bright green color helps attract New Yorkers and tourists alike to his stand, said Borowsky. He notes that many people find the sharp and, at times, startling flavor of wheatgrass to be familiar. “I think a lot of people, when they drink the wheatgrass, no matter where they’re from, they will recall having had it in their youth,” he said, adding that a lot of older generations from the Caribbean, Asia, and Eastern Europe also consume wheatgrass.

Of course, animals are also drawn to the greenery, which is why wheatgrass is also known as “cat grass.” The greens helps animals’ digestive systems. Even domesticated pets who have little access to the outdoors have a natural inclination to graze on it, according to Borowsky.

The added bonus is that, even if you don’t have the infrastructure in place to gently mist wheatgrass every three hours, it’s still makes for a lively house plant. “The truth is that wheatgrass is one of the easiest things for people to grow at home,” said Borowsky. “It really requires only a clean, well-lit area that’s not too hot.”

Below, try Borowsky’s suggestions for juices that use wheatgrass.

Fruit Mix

1 or 2 oz. of wheatgrass juice per 12 oz. of fruit juice or coconut water

Vegetable Mix

1/4 lb (two handfuls) clipped wheatgrass
3 large carrots
1/2 medium beet
1/2 oz (1" cube) of ginger

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He's known as "The Grassman" at the Union Square Greenmarket in Manhattan, but don't get any crazy ideas about the type of plant he's pushing.

Stewart Borowsky grows wheatgrass in a building in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn, right across Third Avenue from a low-slung brick building that used to be the manufacturing hub of the South Brooklyn Casket Company.

Come to think of it, that in itself is a crazy idea. But the sight of all those caskets, ready for shipping, was not Borowsky's answer to my Stir-Fry lightning round question, "best thing about living near the Gowanus Canal." He said it's his very-much-among-the-living neighbors.

Borowsky could have used a jolt of wheatgrass prior to sitting on the Stir Fry's hot seat. I almost stumped him on his pantry must-have and thoroughly fried his brain circuits with "a food trend he'd like to see run its course." How about wheatgrass? Or juicing?

Do you do shots of wheatgrass? How'd you learn to appreciate its stringent taste?

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They might not be the most glamorous vegetable rolling around in the vegetable drawer, but potatoes are the stuff of life. “If there was any vegetable you could survive on totally, it would be potatoes,” said Barbara Damrosch, an organic farmer and author with Eliot Coleman of The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook. “Of all of the great world survival crops like rice or wheat or potatoes, this is the one that a home gardener can grow easily without an enormous amount of space.”

Early spring is also an interesting transition period when storage potatoes begin to give way to new spring tubers. At the moment, Damrosch is starting the season off by chitting, which is letting her seed potatoes sprout in a warm, dry, dim spot. Once the potatoes sprout, she’ll plant the potato and sprout in the garden to get an earlier harvest.

Eventually, the potatoes will form a hearty, leafy plant that produces pink, white or lavender flowers (depending on the variety of potato). “When you see those flowers, that is the signal that there actually potatoes underground,” Damrosch said. “You can cheat, even if it’s just your one crop, you can get baby new potatoes when you start to see your flowers.”

She says the process of harvesting new potatoes is called grabbling. “It means that you take your hand and you just sort of claw away at the outside of the plant and get closer and closer until you feel a few little potatoes,” Damrosch explained. “Those potatoes taste so fresh in comparison to the maybe storage potatoes that you’ve been eating all winter that it’s like a completely different vegetable.”

While potatoes are inexpensive and easy to find, growing the vegetable is also comparatively easy and can be done in a deep bucket or barrel. The deeper the soil, the greater quantity of potatoes. Damrosch notes that she once even accidentally planted potatoes in her compost pile.

(Photo: Barbara Damrosch/Courtesy of Workman Publishing)

“I just threw my kitchen waste on my compost pile with some potatoes, potato peelings, potato discards along with it,” she said. “I was turning my compost pile one day and I kept finding potatoes, and I thought, I must have throw out a lot of potatoes. Then I realized that, no, these are ones that grew.” She ended up with about a bushel of potatoes from the happy accident.

For more discerning gardening, Damrosch recommends varieties like red bliss for new potatoes. At Four Season Farm in Maine, she grows rose gold as an early variety but notes that she wasn’t able to to find those for seed this year and had to rely on the seed potatoes she saved instead. As for larger, storage potatoes, Damrosch recommends the Charlotte variety.

The term “new potato” is not limited to just one variety, though. “It just refers to freshly harvested young potatoes, although there are certain varieties that are particularly good for that purpose,” she explained, adding that size alone isn’t enough of an indicator for new potatoes. “Now there’s some cheating that goes on in supermarkets. Sometimes you’ll see a little bag of new potatoes and by tasting them you realize that you’ve been duped because these are last year’s potatoes. They’re just the little ones.”

In order to be sure new potatoes are on offer, Damrosch recommends a straightforward approach: Just ask a farmer at the greenmarket.

Below, Damrosch shared her recipe for Peruvian Potatoes, which is one that she’s particularly looking forward to making with the soon to be had new crop of tubers.

Peruvian Potatoes
from The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook by Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman
Serves 4 to 6

4 small yellow-fleshed potatoes such as Yukon Gold (about 1 pound total), scrubbed but not peeled, cut in half or in 2-inch chunks 2 large eggs, at room temperature
¼ cup heavy (whipping) cream
1 teaspoon mildly hot pepper flakes, such as Aleppo (or a hotter type if desired)
1 teaspoon ground turmeric (for color; optional)
6 ounces mild, slightly tangy cheese such as queso fresco or Monterey Jack, cut into ½-inch cubes
Salt
½ head butterhead lettuce
1 small onion, peeled and thinly sliced
10 strongly flavored black olives, such as Alfonso or Kalamata, pitted
2 tablespoons finely minced fresh pepper, either a red, yellow, or orange bell type or a mildly hot type such as ancho

Even in Peru there are many ways to make papa a la huancaina, a traditional dish named for the city of Huancayo, high in the Andes. I make a somewhat Americanized version. It is very colorful to look at, and can be enjoyed at room temperature. Make it mild or spicy, according to your taste. Because it requires some artful arrangement, this is a not for a picnic far afield, but it is still good to eat outdoors, matched with barbecued chicken.

Bring a large saucepan of salted water to a boil. Add the potatoes, reduce the heat, and simmer, uncovered, until they are fork-tender but still hold their shape well, about 15 minutes. Remove the potatoes with a slotted spoon, keeping the water at a simmer, and set them aside in a bowl.
Drop the eggs into the simmering water and cook for 10 minutes. Remove them with a large spoon and hold them under cold running water for a minute until they are cool enough to handle. Then peel the eggs and cut them lengthwise into quarters. The yolks should be slightly soft and well colored. Carefully set the egg quarters on a plate, keeping them yolk side up.
Bring water to a simmer in the bottom of a double boiler. Combine the cream, pepper flakes, and turmeric in the top of the double boiler, and heat the mixture until you see steam rising. Then gradually drop in the cheese cubes and stir them as they melt, 10 to 15 minutes. (This can also be done in a saucepan directly on the burner, but keep the heat very low and stir constantly with a wooden spoon.) Taste, and add a dash of salt unless the cheese is very salty.
Rinse and dry the lettuce leaves, and arrange them around the edge of a platter or on individual salad plates.
Cut the potatoes into 1/2-inch-thick slices and arrange them in the center of the platter or plates. Pour the cheese sauce over them. Distribute the onion slices, egg quarters, and olives around the edge, on top of the lettuce. Sprinkle the minced fresh pepper over everything, and serve.

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Barbara Damrosch of Four Season Farm grows food in Maine, where she's got to be prepared foraverage minimum temperatures between -10 and -15 degrees Fahrenheit. Imagine my surprise, then, when the cookbook and gardening author proved she was equally ready for the searing heat of the Stir-Fry.

She was not unnerved by the prospect of a lightning round at all, staring right into the unblinking lens of my trusty iPhone. Bring it, WNYC.

Damrosch paid no attention to the countdown clock, elaborating at length about the qualities of her favorite type of potato, our topic this week on Last Chance Foods. Her detailed description of her favorite way to prepare potatoes got me hungry.

Her response to the question, "favorite kitchen tool," has me thinking of getting a fish spatula. She's the second Stir Fry guest to mention it. I've got to see what all the fuss is about.

I'll also have to do some, um, research into Wise's® Cheez Waffies. They're the source of Barbara's food shame.

"They're very hard to find, fortunately," she confided. "It's the only junk food I like, and I'm powerless before it!"

She'd better stay away from the computer, because the crunchy little temptress is just a mouse click away. The current snack has roots in a treat from the 1970s that Old London® used to make. The Vermont Country Store carries a version.

Perhaps I can write off a case as a "business expense." I love my job....

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When Eberhard Müller and Paulette Satur first bought a farm on Long Island in 1997, the idea was for Satur Farms to be a place where the couple could grow vegetables for Lutèce. Müller was the chef of the famed restaurant at the time, and they thought the farm would simply be a weekend destination.

Now, three decades later, Müller and Satur are full-time farmers with two farms — one on the North Fork and a second in South Florida. During the winter months, when fields in the Northeast are barren, specialty salad greens like frisée are still in season in Florida. Müller explained that having the location in the South allows the farm to supply restaurants and retailers with greens year-round, but there’s also a second and, possibly more important, reason for the bifurcation.

“Our crew, the people who work for us, are really very well trained because it is specialty produce that we grow,” he said. “They also need to make a living. You know, it’s not that easy to be off for six months, and there [are] no jobs out on the North Fork in the wintertime so we decided we need to do something and we founded that farm in Florida.”

Currently, the cool but temperate weather in Florida is ideal for growing the frizzy-looking lettuce frisée. Müller grew up eating frisée in Germany, but he had trouble finding the green when he moved to New York City three decades ago. It was one of the items he was most excited to start growing at Satur Farms.

“It’s an endive and there [are] different variations of endives,” said Müller, who also used to be the chef of Le Bernardin. “There’s the flat-leaf endives that we typically call escarole, and then there is... the curly endive that’s a coarser grained frisée and then there’s a fine leaf frisée, which is the one that we’re particularly fond of growing. It’s the most challenging.”

Müller describes the fine-leaf frisée as tasting sweet with a subtle hint of bitterness and said that balance of flavors is particularly appealing for chefs. Growing techniques can have a major impact on that taste, he added.

At Satur Farms, they place blanching caps on the heads of frisée four or five days before harvesting. That goes back to the traditional way the lettuce was overwintered in Europe.

(Photo: Paulette Satur and Eberhard Müller/Shonna Valeska)

“In olden times, they used to pack [the frisée heads] in straw,” Müller explained. “As you needed the frisée or the endives, you take the straw out and what happens, because you had this all covered up, you have no sunlight going to it. And so all the leaves turn yellow and tender.”

Now, instead of straw, Satur Farms uses the caps particularly created for this purpose. “They look like Kaiser Wilhem’s hat,” he said. This process is important because the lighter colored parts of the leaves are the sweetest, most tender sections.

The freshness of the frisée also affects sweetness. “Like with everything else, sugar is the culprit for sweetness, obviously, in plants,” Müller said. “As soon as you start harvesting it, sugar converts into starch and that happens in the frisée, as well.”

That’s why, during this time of the year, Satur Farms harvests, trucks, and delivers produce on a tight schedule. Müller estimates it takes 36 to 42 hours to get frisée from the fields in Florida to the kitchens of New York City. “It takes 22 hours to drive from our location in Florida,” he said. “[Then] it takes us four to six hours to process everything and put it back on our trucks and send it back into New York City or to the restaurants on Long Island.”

On the return trip, the trucks carry seedlings, plants and equipment needed at the farm in Florida. The two locations also means that Müller and Satur fly back and forth several times during the winter. That leaves little time for the chef to spend in the kitchen, but when he does cook, here’s one recipe for frisée that he often uses.

Frisée salad with apples and blue cheese, walnut-cider vinaigrette
by Satur Farms

Serves 4 people

2 heads of large frisée or 3-4 smaller ones
2 apples such as Granny Smith, Mutsu, Fuji or Braeburn, depending on time of year
¾ cup crumbled blue cheese (Maytag or similar)
½ cup walnut halves toasted and coarsely chopped
3 tbs. cider vinegar
1 lemon
½ tbs. Dijon mustard
1 ½ tbs. walnut oil
2 tbs. vegetable oil
3-4 tbs. water
2 tsp. sugar or honey
Salt and pepper to taste

Clean and trim the outer green leafs of the frisée and discard. Cut the inner yellow, creamy part into 1” pieces. You should obtain 3-4 cups of cleaned frisée. Thoroughly wash and spin dry several times and reserve.

On a food mandolin, slice the apples into 1/8 inch julienne. Sprinkle with the juice of half of the lemon to prevent them from oxidizing. Reserve, as well.

To prepare the vinaigrette dressing squeeze the remaining half of the lemon into a mixing bowl, add the cider vinegar, Dijon mustard, sugar or honey, water, salt and pepper and mix well to dissolve the ingredients. Slowly whisk in the vegetable and walnut oil. When you have obtained a homogenous dressing, add the crumbled blue-cheese and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper. Dress the reserved frisée with this vinaigrette-dressing, add the apple julienne. Sprinkle with the toasted walnuts and serve immediately.

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Eberhard Müller no longer cooks, but he was sizzling in this week's 60-Second Stir-Fry.

The former chef of the classic French restaurants Le Bernardin, Lutèce, and Bayard long ago set aside his toque for a pair of overalls, overseeing Satur Farms' North Fork and Florida operations with his wife, Paulette Satur.

So, I forgive him for not answering a question about food trends he'd like to see end. "I don't know of any anymore!" he exclaimed.

He made quick work of the other Stir-Fry questions I tossed onto the cutting board, slicing through them with ease. He didn't even flinch when I asked him to name his favorite restaurant, a question that got last week's hot seat guest, Dovetail chef John Fraser, squirming.

I won't list them here. You'll have to watch!

What's your favorite Long Island restaurant? Drop us a line.

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Chef John Fraser admits that cardoons look like “celery with armor.” Beneath that bristly exterior, though, there hides a delicious spring vegetable. Just be sure to snap on a pair of gloves before you start preparing them.

“You have to be careful of the thorns because they are pretty... sticky,” says Fraser, who heads the award-winning restaurant Dovetail on West 77th Street. “The only way to cook cardoons without peeling them first is to make soup out of them. They must be washed first. But otherwise you need to get those thorns off.”

Cardoons also need to be introduced to an acid soon after being prepared or, like artichokes or other basic vegetables, they will turn brown when exposed to air. “It doesn’t necessarily change the flavor, but it’s not as pretty,” Fraser said. When shopping for them at the farmers market, go with stalks that are still firm and seem crunchy, he added.

Cardoons, which are invasive in some parts of California, are now in season there, and Fraser receives regular supplies from the Santa Monica farmers market. “I would put them somewhere between celery and artichoke,” he says of their flavor.

Fraser previously trained with Thomas Keller at The French Laundry in California, and started working with cardoons while living on the West Coast. He realized that many people might not be familiar with the thistle-like plant so his first step was to create an informal marketing strategy for explaining its appeal. “You know, a lot of people believe that sort of ramps are the first sign of spring,” Fraser said. “I actually would make the argument that cardoons are.”

(Photo: John Fraser/Nathan Rawlinson)

Currently, he serves poached cardoons with lamb in a homage to the coming season. “They are the sort of ‘here comes spring’ ingredient,” he says. “If you’ve ever seen a plant, I mean, they look like weeds. They have this... overgrown celery look. If you didn’t know any better, you’d say someone should have cut that, you know, last year.”

Because of that relatively toughness, Fraser recommends long and slow cooking methods like braising. At Dovetail, he uses vegetable stock with salt, lemon juice, white wine, thyme, garlic and bay leaf as a poaching liquid.

“They really have this sort of Mediterranean feel,” Fraser said. “Anything that goes with an artichoke goes with a cardoon.”

Below, try Fraser’s recipe for cardoon gratin, which is a classic Mediterranean method of preparing the vegetable.

Cardoon Gratin with Pine Nuts, Parmesan, Winter Truffle
by John Fraser, Dovetail
(Photo: Cardoons at the Union Square Farmers Market/Howard Walfish)

For cardoons: roughly 2 bunches
Acidulated water to prevent oxidization
1 lemon per quart of cold water (about 3 qts total)

Peeling the cardoons:
Peel the cardoons and place immediately into acidulated bath. After peeling, cut the cardoons into 2 inch lengths.

Parmesan Mornay

1 qt milk
2 oz butter
2 oz flour
4 oz grated Parmesan
1 tbs winter truffle oil
salt, pepper, nutmeg, cayenne to taste

Prepare a roux by melting the butter on the stovetop and mixing in the flour. Cook on medium heat stirring constantly with a wooden spoon for 2 minutes total. Cool. Bring the milk to a simmer. Whisk in roux and cook at a light simmer for 15 minutes. Whisk in seasoning, cheese, and truffle oil.

Pine Nut Breadcrumb

2 cups stale, day old breadcrumbs
1 cup pine nuts
1 cup grated parmesan
1 tbs fresh thyme leaves
Toss ingredients together.

To prepare gratin:

Mix cardoons with the mornay and pour into a large buttered casserole dish. Top with Pine Nut Breadcrumb, cover with foil, and bake for 40 minutes at 350 degrees. Remove foil and bake for an additional 15 minutes or until top is evenly browned.

Finish with Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Shaved Winter Truffle

Optional additions: caramelized onion, raisins, sage, etc.

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John Fraser, creative kitchen mastermind behind the Upper West Side restaurant, Dovetail, sizzled and sputtered right off the mark in his time under the heat lamp of Stir-Fry scrutiny.

"Oh, don't do that!" he pleaded, when I asked him what restaurant he eats at when he's not at his own.

"Too many friends in the business," he told me later.

Even though he's 3,000 miles away from California, where he got his culinary training, he skirted the Dreaded Question. He says his "mom's house" is his favorite place to eat while on the West Coast. This chicken is turning rubbery in the wok, the Stir Fry heat is so high, I thought.

Biggest surprise? Fraser doesn't have an iPhone, and the most recent meal he whipped up for himself was a humble grilled cheese sandwich.

What's the last meal you made for yourself? Better yet... what's the last one you'd make for your final meal on Earth? Leave a comment below.

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Cookbook author Claudia Roden made a grim prediction in her 1996 tome The Book of Jewish Food. She wrote that kubbeh, a traditional Jewish-Iraqi dish of semolina dumplings in soup, might soon disappear because restaurants and home cooks were abandoning the time and labor-intensive recipe.

“I hope Jerusalem keeps up her reputation as the capital and that some food producer will decide to make them commercially, so that this whole little world of our culinary culture does not disappear,” wrote Roden.

When culinary curator Naama Shefi read those words, she considered it a call to arms and created The Kubbeh Project, a three-week pop-up restaurant that opens at Zucker Bakery in the East Village today. She partnered with chef Itamar Lewensohn to help preserve the culinary traditions surrounding kubbeh.

Shefi said that she found it difficult to even track down accurate recipes for making kubbeh. Oftentimes the home cooks and grandmothers most adept at making the dish merely rely on experience and feel, rather than exact measurements.

For The Kubbeh Project, which will be open until March 21, Lewensohn and Shefi will make large pots of kubbeh and serve customers until they run out. In the process of opening the restaurant, Shefi has become comparatively expert at making the dumplings. She explained that the shell is made from a combination of semolina, water, oil, and bulgar wheat.

“You have this dough — it’s not really a dough, but this mixture,” Shefi said. “You let it sit, and then you take, like, [a] pingpong ball shape and with your hands, you do like a little circle. Then you put the meat mixture into it and close it very, very carefully and quick[ly].”

The dumplings need to be sealed quickly so they don’t fall apart, and the shell should not be very thick. Instead, the wrapper has to balance and blend with the filling of seasoned meat or vegetables.

(Photo: Naama Shefi/Katherine Needles)

The hurdles don’t stop there. Another important component of the dish is the soup in which the dumplings are simmered. The soup and fillings vary, and beet and pumpkin are just two traditional flavors.

“You really need to have an amazing soup,” said Shefi. “What makes it so interesting, I think, is that the shell absorbs the flavors of the soup. It’s like really [about] the relationship between the kubbeh and the soup.” The dumplings also derive their color from the liquid.

While many other cultures in the Middle East have versions of kubbeh, Shefi says that this variation stands out because of how labor intensive it is to make and because it’s simmered in soup.

“I don’t think [this type of kubbeh] is particularly Jewish, but because it’s super time- and labor-intensive, Jews used to make it for Shabbat and other special occasions,” she said. Shefi added that since it can be cooked in soup for a long time, kubbeh can be served without breaking Shabbat.

In this video, chef Yotam Ottolenghi visited a restaurant in Jerusalem to learn how to make kubbeh. Even he admitted having difficulty reproducing the dish at home. Fortunately for New Yorkers, The Kubbeh Project will be serving up ready made dishes of the Jewish-Iraqi comfort food for a few more weeks.

While The Kubbeh Project is keeping their kubbeh recipes under wraps for the moment, they did share a less intimidating recipe for chef Lewensohn’s savory hand-pies. (See below.)

Also, here’s a recipe from Food52 for Marak Kubbeh Adom.

Sambusakby Chef Itamar Lewensohn
(Photo: Katherine Needles)

Makes about 10 sambusak

For the dough:

3.5 cups white flour
4 oz butter
1 tb salt
1 cup+ 3 tb of water

For the filling:

2 tb canola oil
2 tb olive oil
1.5 cup fine diced white onion
1 cup fine diced celery
1.5 cup fine diced Swiss chard stems
3 fine diced garlic cloves
4 cups roughly chopped Swiss chard leaves
Salt/pepper Feta 8 oz
8 oz feta
4 oz soft goat cheese
3 tb of ricotta cheese Soft goat cheese 4 oz 3 TB of ricotta cheese
In an attachable mixing bowl, incorporate the flour and butter by hand.
Using the paddle of a stand mixer to start mixing the flour and butter mixture ,and add the salt and the water in increments.

Let the mixture mix for a few minutes until you get a soft dough. Put a towel on the dough and let it rest for an hour. In the meanwhile, make the filling.

For the filling:

Add 2 kinds of oil to a pot, and put on low heat.

2 . Add the onion,celery and Swiss chard stems and cook for 7 minutes until they are soft but not browned.

Bring the heat to medium and add the garlic and Swiss chard for 3 minutes. Add some salt and pepper and mix. (Make sure not to add too much salt because the feta cheese is salty)
Transfer the mixture to a bowl, and let it cool.
When the mixture is cold, mix in cheeses and taste for seasoning.

Make the sambusak:

Roll the dough to a quarter of an inch thick and cut to a 6 inch circle.
Brush an egg wash on each circle and put a tablespoon of the cheese mixture in the middle.
Fold the circle in half. Using your fingers, take out all the air and seal the edges.
Brush egg wash on th top of each sambusak and bake in a pre-heated oven of 350 degrees for 30 min.

Tip: if you like spicy flavors, you can just add some chili into the cheese mixture in step 3.

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February 22, 2013 —

Maybe it's because I'm tired of living in 50 shades of gray February weather, but I decided to stage native South Carolinian and cookbook author Ted Lee's Stir Fry in front of the bright backdrop of WNYC's lobby.

Not only did I luck out with a background that harmonized with Ted's luscious creamsicle-orange V-neck sweater, I also got a soundtrack courtesy of sister station WQXR.

Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" seemed synced with the tension Ted felt in the Stir Fry's hot seat... or, to be precise, hot bench.

Lee says oysters are the best reason to be from the South. Roasting them on the beach is considered a rite of passage. It sure beats my rite of passage in the sleepy suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, where we spent idle summer evenings tossing rolls of toilet paper into the trees of people's front yards. I blame this juvenile delinquency on not having oyster roasts on the sour, industrial beaches of Lake Erie.

I asked Lee where the South starts. To me, the South has more of a metaphysical boundary, one that begins with the first time somebody addresses me as "ma'am." Ted Lee gives it a hard, geographical boundary, and places the South alluringly close to New York City. Under Stir Fry duress, he says it starts south of Atlantic City, New Jersey. Why, that's less than a three hour drive away from the Holland Tunnel! (Okay, longer if you get stuck in weekend tunnel traffic and Parkway volume.)

I'll head there this weekend, and start looking for a beachside oyster roast to crash.

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Matt Lee and Ted Lee exhibit a Southern politeness that speaks to their background growing up in genteel Charleston, South Carolina. Ask the brothers about instant grits, though, and they pull no punches. The pair once described the supermarket variety as “cream-wheat bland, a cultural embarrassment” and recently declared that the white stuff is better suited for spackling walls than for consumption.

The Lee brothers, who have a new cookbook, The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen, out on Tuesday, have built their careers as food writers thanks in part to grits. When they first moved to the northeast for college years ago, they missed the food of their childhood so much they started The Lee Bros. Boiled Peanuts Catalogue, which specializes in Southern pantry staples. In addition to boil peanuts, one of the first products they offered was stone-ground grits.

Now, more than a decade later, stone-ground grits are commonplace in many New York City restaurants, said Ted Lee, who lives in Brooklyn.

“What’s been so exciting in the last 15 years is to see mills that had been out of production — you know, stone-driven, water-powered mills — being brought back into production,” he said. “It’s similar, when I think about it, to... the coffee culture that’s grown up so much in the last 15 years with people really appreciating what kind of corn, where it’s milled, how it’s milled.”

Ted Lee added that he uses a Mexican-style hand-crank table-clamp mill and grinds grits with the same ease as he would grind fresh coffee.

Matt Lee lives in Charleston. He notes that grist mills, like Tuthill House in upstate New York, have found a second life as part of the grits resurgence. At mills like Tuthill, dried corn is subject to an age-old process of being ground between millstones.

“Grits are simply corn,” Matt Lee said. “For the most part, it’s not that variety of corn designed for fresh eating. It’s another one, flintier, a little more like field corn.”

Traditionally, the corn is cracked and then the hull and flour are filtered out.

The flour is “ideal for your corn bread and less so for your grits,” he added. “[Then] what you’re left with is mostly the protein, sort of rice-like granules ideally the size of a large grain of sand that are softened up in milk or water to be delicious corn-flavored grits.”

(Photo: Ted Lee and Matt Lee/The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen)

As for the cooking liquid, the Lee brothers use a combination of water and whole milk, but preferences can run the spectrum from all water to all dairy.

“Usually, if you go to a restaurant, they’re boiling it up with, like, full-on heavy cream,” said Ted Lee. “They’re basically making a cheese out of it. You can add a lot of dairy product.”

While instant grits have a near-immortal shelf life, stone-ground grits maintain that oily germ, so they’re best stored in refrigerator or freezer. “Since they’re so powdery and absorptive to be sure to double bag them before you put them in there, or otherwise they’ll acquire whatever flavors are going on in your freezer,” cautioned Matt Lee.

As for how that contrasts with coffee storage, which baristas say not to put in the freezer, Matt Lee is a little less circumspect. “I guess grits connoisseurship hasn’t reached that über level just yet,” he said with a laugh. “We’re happy to have fresh grits, we’ll leave it at that.”

Below, try a recipe for Shrimp and Grits from The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen.

Shrimp and Grits
from The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen

Serves: 4

Time: 1 hour

1¼ pounds headless large (21 to 25 count) shell-on shrimp
1 bay leaf
Kosher salt
¾ teaspoon sugar
1 pinch of cayenne
1 pound vine-ripened tomatoes, cored and quartered
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar, plus more to taste
4 ounces slab bacon, cut into large dice
1 lemon, halved
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
2 garlic cloves, minced
Freshly ground black pepper
Charleston Hominy (recipe follows)
Peel and devein the shrimp, reserving the shrimp in a bowl and the shells in a small saucepan. Add 2 cups of water, the bay leaf, ½ teaspoon kosher salt, ¼ teaspoon of the sugar, and the cayenne to the saucepan with the shells. With a spoon, tamp the shells down beneath the surface of the water, cover, and bring to a simmer over high heat. Uncover, turn the heat to medium low, and let the shrimp stock simmer until reduced by half, about 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, with a sharp knife, slice the shrimp in half lengthwise.
Put the tomatoes in a blender or food processor and add the vinegar, ½ teaspoon salt, and the remaining ½ teaspoon sugar. Process to a smooth purée, then strain through a fine sieve, pressing the skin and seeds to extract as much juice as possible. Discard the skin and seeds. You should have 1½ cups of tomato purée.
Scatter the bacon in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat and cook, stirring occasionally, until the bacon is alluringly browned and has rendered its fat, about 8 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the bacon to a small paper-towel-lined plate and cook the shrimp in the bacon fat in batches, taking care not to crowd the pan, and stirring occasionally, just until they’ve curled into corkscrews and turned pink, about 2 minutes; reserve on a plate. Squeeze half the lemon over the shrimp and sprinkle with 2 pinches of salt.
Strain the shrimp stock into the sauté pan, discarding the solids, and stir with a wooden spoon to pick up the tasty browned bits from the bottom of the pan. When the stock simmers, spoon off 2 tablespoons and then whisk them into the flour with a fork in a small bowl to make a paste. Add the tomato purée and the garlic to the pan, stir to combine, and then whisk the flour paste into the sauce. Cook until the mixture thickly coats the back of a spoon.
Cut the heat, and fold the shrimp in just to warm through. Season to taste with salt, black pepper, and red wine vinegar. Cut the remaining lemon half into 4 wedges. Serve the shrimp over hot Charleston Hominy, and garnish with the reserved bacon and the lemon wedges.

Charleston HominyMakes: 3 cups
Time: 45 minutes

Charlestonians of a certain age tend to call cooked grits “hominy.” This causes confusion, because hominy everyplace else means nixtamalized—hulled by soaking in a lye solution corn, which is delicious, but a different food and flavor altogether, more evocative of Chihuahua than Charleston. Whether or not you call cooked grits “hominy,” everyone seems to agree that the uncooked raw material is “grits.” After several decades of post-WWII decline, real stoneground grits (dried corn cracked in a mill and cooked with water to a silky softness) have come back in the South—and well beyond, thanks to the valiant efforts of hard-working millers, along with the crusading flavor-centrism of restaurant chefs in Charleston and beyond, who have encouraged neophytes to experience good grits. What everyone enjoys about corn grits is their mildly earthy grain flavor and their texture, which resembles sticky rice and performs the same task of grounding a plate with a bright, malleable, and still toothsome starch. “Hominy” is employed almost interchangeably with rice, and is near-essential in Charleston with savory breakfasts of fried fish, eggs, and smokehouse bacon, but also appears at lunch and dinner, especially beneath a buttery slab of fish, or with shrimp.

Charleston breakfast hominy, like Charleston Rice (page 133), is an exercise in simplicity; the dish isn’t intended to dazzle, but to be honed to a fine polish by years of intensive use—hominy grits, as some call it, is as familiar as water and salt, but rarely taken for granted.

2 cups whole milk
1 cup stone-ground coarse grits
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Pour the milk and 2 cups of water into a 2-quart saucepan, cover, and turn the heat to medium high. When the liquid simmers, add the grits, butter, and ½ teaspoon salt, and reduce the heat to medium. Stir every couple of minutes until the grits have become fragrant, and are the consistency of thick soup, about 8 minutes.
Reduce the heat to low and simmer, stirring often and ever more frequently, for about 20 minutes, by which time the bubbles will emerge infrequently as the grits have stiffened and fall lazily from the end of a spoon. Add ½ teaspoon black pepper and cook for about 10 minutes more, stirring constantly to prevent the thickened grits from scorching on the bottom of the pan (appoint someone to the stirring task if you have to step away—a scorched pot of grits is bitter and a total loss). If your grits thicken too quickly, or if they are too gritty for your taste, add water by the half cup, stirring to incorporate, and continue cooking until tender.
When the grits are stiff and stick well to the spoon, turn off the heat and stir. Season with salt and black pepper to taste and serve immediately.

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Making cheese at home may seem like an endeavor for hardcore homesteaders, but chef Peter Berley said that making ricotta is simple. It only takes a few basic ingredients and fairly little time.

“It’s quicker than going to the store to get it — let’s put it that way,” said Berley, author of Fresh Food Fast and a private chef who teaches cooking classes at his home on the North Fork of Long Island. “Fresh ricotta is one of those foods that pays to make yourself because it’s so quick and the results are so rewarding.”

The creamy, fluffy cheese provides a fresh addition to midwinter cooking and only requires four basic ingredients: milk, cream, vinegar and salt.

While traditional Italian ricotta is made with whey, which is a byproduct left over making cheese, Berley recommends making using whole milk for the homemade version. “It’s much easier, you’ll get a much greater yield,” said Berley. “It’ll be creamier. It’s very similar to paneer.”

Be careful when purchasing whole milk for the ricotta making, however. “You want to get a milk that isn’t ultra-pasteurized,” said Berley.

Ultra-pasteurized milk has been heated at a higher temperature for longer shelf-life. It doesn’t produce enough curd when used for cheesemaking, though. “Best off to make it from pasteurized, or if you’re really lucky like I happen to be, there’s a farm two miles from me that has nine cows. It’s called Ty Llwyd, and they milk twice a day and I get fresh raw milk from them,” explained Berley, who added that it’s legal to purchase raw milk on the farm.

From there, it’s just a matter of combining everything in a big, clean pot and heating it up slowly over medium heat. For half a gallon of milk, that can take about 15 minutes.

(Photo: Straining ricotta curd from whey/Peter Berley)

Berley has two points of caution. First, “you don’t want to bring it to a boil,” he says. “You want to bring to where it just begins to sputter... as soon as it heaves, it’s done. And the curd will form by that time.”

Another important tip is to leave the milk alone while it heats. “You don’t want to stir the milk while it’s heating,” he said. “You’ll break up the curd. You’ll end up with a very low yield.”

So heat the milk, leave it alone, and you’re nearly done. “Strain off the milk and you have whey and you have curd,” said Berley. “And let the curd drain but for maybe three or four minutes — that’s it, because you want it to be pretty wet. Transfer the curd to a bowl and refrigerate it. It’s going to firm up quite a bit in the cooling process.”

Berley also likes to skim the cream off of the whey and stir it back into the ricotta for maximum creaminess.

As for the whey that’s left over, he says to let it cool and save it. It’s full of nutrients and can be used as soup stock or for watering plants.

The ricotta, of course, has an even happier destination: Spread it on bread and garnish with olive oil, drizzle it with honey, fold it into a crepe, or mix it with roast vegetables. “I love it with stewed dried fruits right now,” says Berley. “With crushed, toasted hazelnuts. It’s fabulous. There’s a million uses.”

Get Berley’s no-fuss recipe for ricotta below.

Ricotta Cheese
by Peter Berley

Makes 2-3 cups curd

½ gallon whole milk
1 cup cream
7 tablespoons lemon juice or white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon salt

Combine all ingredients in a large pot. Cook over medium heat stirring occasionally until the mixture begins to simmer and curds form. Simmer very gently for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat and let rest for 15 minutes.

Strain the curds and refrigerate. Refrigerate the whey. When both are well chilled, stir the cream that has risen to the top of the whey back into the curds.

The whey can be used in soups or fed to your plants or pet.

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February 15, 2013 —

I almost get into a meditative state watching chef, cooking instructor and cookbook author Peter Berley undergo his time in the Stir Fry hot seat.

Unlike last week's garrulous guests, Berley is quiet, serious and brief. He'd be a great newscaster.

Then there was the spartan, Zen temple-like background. We were in WNYC's Studio 2 for a change. Leonard Lopate, who uses Studio 2 for his daily show from noon until 2:00, isn't a nester like The Takeaway's John Hockenberry, the resident of our usual Studio 4 stomping grounds. There were no boxes of tea, no piles of books, no Japanese tea accessories scattered among the microphones and computers. No skulls, mechanical cats or plastic Army soldiers decorating the control room, either.

The soothing beige walls and lack of clutter make me want to pull out the meditation cushion and chant.

Before you join me, though, learn about Berley's sweet tooth and his favorite kitchen tool, which has a special place in his Long Island home. Namaste.

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As a snowstorm comes barreling down on the Northeast, many New Yorkers will be spending some quality time indoors this weekend. For those with a can or bag of chickpeas languishing in the pantry, here’s a good task to while away some time: Peel those chickpeas and make hummus.

That’s what New York Times writer Melissa Clark and The Smitten Kitchen’s Deb Perelman recommend for making the creamiest hummus.

“My quibble with most of the homemade hummus I was making was the texture — it just was not creamy and fluffy enough,” said Perelman, author of The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. “For me, the transformation didn’t come until I started peeling my chickpeas.”

Perelman noted that it took her a mere 9 minutes to peel one 15-ounce can of chickpeas. Melissa Clark took issue with the last part of that statement and insists that using dried and home-soaked chickpeas is the way to go for the best hummus.

“I mean, the canned ones are fine and I’ll use them when I add a ton of garlic, and a ton of lemon, and a ton of tahini, so the chickpeas are kind of just pulling everything together,” said Clark, author of Cook This Now. “For me, if I really want to taste the chickpeas, I stand by the homemade ones.”

While both agreed that peeling the beans made a noticeable difference, they diverged whether on whether soaking or the shucking made the most difference. “I’d rather not peel [them] and use dried chickpeas that I cook myself than peel the canned,” asserted Clark.

Perelman, on the other hand, said that she doesn’t mind using canned beans as long as she can find good ones.

(Photo: Melissa Clark's Small-Batch Hummus/Melissa Clark)

“So I love soaking my own beans, I think that there is a flavor improvement,” she said. “However I also feel that if you’ve got a source of canned beans that are really great... So many times I buy what I think is going to be a good brand and it’s mealy and falling apart and really gross. I have found actually one of the least expensive brands, Goya, to have one of the most reliable beans. And so it’s really about what you’re buying. And I find them to be quite close to home-soaked.”

Both agree that the actual task of peeling the chickpeas is not particularly arduous, and can even be a little meditative. “It feels good. It’s like a little sauna bath for your hands,” said Clark, who says the process is easier if the beans are warm.

Perelman also noted that it was worthwhile to her to spend the time peeling. “I find it therapeutic, too,” she said. “I mean, I spend 9 minutes on Facebook probably more than once a day, so the idea of spending 9 minutes, like, popping [isn’t so bad].”

Ultimately, though, peeling one pound of dried chickpeas that have been soaked will take a significantly longer time. Clark said the process took her and a friend about 30 minutes.

Having companionship is key to making the task less tedious. “Traditional societies have been peeling chickpeas for millennia,” she said. “I mean, this is a traditional method of preparation because it’s done in a group.”

And in the realm of tedious kitchen tasks, peeling chickpeas is comparatively manageable.

“I knew a chef who only served peeled peas,” Clark said. “He would peel each green pea, and he even said to me once, ‘People are not nice people if they don’t peel peas.’ And I’m thinking I’m never peeling a green pea.”

What’s the most tedious culinary prep work you’ve undertaken? What will you never do again? Tell us in the comments below. Also, try Melissa Clark and Deb Perelman’s recipes for hummus, both of which are below.

Small-Batch Hummus
by Melissa Clark

Makes about 2 cups

1 cup dry chickpeas, soaked overnight
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon kosher salt, more as needed
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil, more as needed
3 tablespoons tahini
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1/8 teaspoon ground cumin, more as needed
Coarse sea salt, as needed
Cayenne, optional
Radishes, fennel, cucumbers, crisp pita bread, for dipping
Drain the chickpeas. Combine chickpeas, 6 cups water, bay leaf, and a very large pinch of salt. Simmer chickpeas, skimming off any foam from the surface, until they are very tender, about 1 hour. Drain, reserving cooking liquid. If you feel like peeling the chickpeas while they are still warm and feel good pressed in between your fingers, go ahead. Or skip it and don't bother. It's great either way.
In a food processor, combine chickpeas (try to do this while they are still warm, they will be grind into a smoother hummus if you do, or reheat before pureeing), 1/2 cup cooking liquid (also warm is good here), 1/3 cup oil, tahini, lemon juice, salt, garlic, and cumin until smooth. Add more cooking liquid if you like a thinner hummus.
Spread hummus on a plate. Drizzle liberally with oil and season with coarse salt, cumin, and cayenne, if desired. Serve with veggies or pita bread.

Ethereally Smooth Hummus
by Deb Perelman

Recipe adapted from Ottolenghi’s stunning new dream of a book; technique is my own madness

This is probably where you expect me to give you a soapbox speech about why it is so important that you soak your own chickpeas. And you know, think they taste wonderful, especially if you treat yourself to some of the best. But, I also make it with canned chickpeas quite often (Goya is my favorite, for perfectly cooked, intact canned beans, each time) and it’s perfectly excellent. Below, I’ve included instructions for both.

Makes 1 3/4 cups hummus

1 3/4 cups cooked, drained chickpeas (from a 15-ounce can) or a little shy of 2/3 cup dried chickpeas (for same yield)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda (for dried chickpeas only)
1/2 cup tahini paste
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice, or more to taste
2 small cloves garlic, roughly chopped
3/4 teaspoon table salt, or more to taste
Approximately 1/4 cup water or reserved chickpea cooking water
Olive oil, paprika or sumac, pita wedges (brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with za’atar, or a combination of sesame seeds and sea salt), and/or carrot sticks [optional] to serve

If using dried chickpeas: There are multiple methods to cooking them, and you can use whichever is your favorite, or Ottolenghi’s, or mine. Ottolenghi’s is to put the chickpeas in a large bowl and cover them with at least twice their volume of cold water, leaving them to soak overnight. The next day, drain them, and saute them in a medium saucepan with the baking soda (which many find reduces the gassy effects of fresh beans) for about three minutes. Add 3 1/4 cups water and bring it to a boil. Skim any foam that floats to the surface. They’ll need to cook for 20 to 40 minutes, sometimes even longer, depending on freshness, to become tender. When tender, one will break up easily between your thumb and forefinger. My method is similar, but I often put mine in a slow-cooker on high with the baking soda for approximately three hours, so I don’t have to monitor them as much.

Drain the chickpeas (saving the chickpea broth for soups or to thin the hummus, if desired) and cool enough that you can pick one up without burning your fingers.

Whether fresh or canned chickpeas: Peel your chickpeas. I find this is easiest when you take a chickpea between your thumb and next two fingers, arranging the pointy end in towards your palm, and “pop!” the naked chickpea out. Discard the skin. I get into a rhythm and rather enjoy this, but it’s also already established that I’m a weirdo.

In a food processor, blend the chickpeas until powdery clumps form, a full minute, scraping down the sides. Add the tahini, lemon juice, garlic and salt and blend until pureed. With the machine running, drizzle in water or reserved chickpea cooking water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until you get very smooth, light and creamy mixture. I find I need about 4 tablespoons for this volume, but you may need slightly more or less.

Taste and adjust seasonings, adding more salt or lemon if needed. I do recommend that you hold off on adding more garlic just yet, however. I find that it “blooms” as it settles in the fridge overnight, becoming much more garlicky after a rest, so that even if it doesn’t seem like enough at first, it likely will be in the long run.

Transfer the hummus to a bowl and rest it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, longer if you can. To serve, drizzle it with a little olive oil, and sprinkle it with paprika. Serve it with pita wedges or carrot sticks.

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Two essential keys for storm-prep: A stocked pantry and a wealth of activities. In fact, a little mandatory confinement might be just the opportunity to try out some of those recipes that came across our radar in the past year.

Here are a few recipes from past Last Chance Foods that will help keep us warm, entertained and well fed. Consider this a pre-storm shopping list of sorts.

TO DRINK

Seasonal Cocktails to Ring in a New Year

For adults who partake, there's nothing like a carefully crafted cocktail to while away the hours. While January 1 may be fading fast in the review mirror, the ingredients for these cocktails should still be easy to procure. Anyway, Chinese New Year is this weekend, so that counts, right?

Coffee Klatsch

Perhaps now is the time to start perfecting that cup of Joe. Nationally recognized, award-winning barista Katie Carguilo muses on what goes into a brewing an ideal cup of coffee. Part of the secret? Make sure that water is hot enough. That'll not only distill the maximum flavor from the beans, it'll also ensure your drink is piping hot.

TO EAT

The Health History of Granola

Turning on the oven and making granola has benefits on multiple fronts: it provides an alternate source of heat, the resulting toasty smell acts as a room freshener, and you get a homemade snack that keeps well. Win, win, and win.

Keep Your Eye on the Pie

Same reasoning for making granola applies for making a pie. Take some time and make the crust even. The real point of all this lies in these four words: Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Pie. Enough said.

A Whole Latke Love

No snow-day snack list would be complete without a savory entry. Hanukkah might be past, but a blizzard named Nemo is as good of a reason as any to indulge in some fried potato pancakes. Come on, historic snowstorms count as a special occasion.

ALSO, Lucky Foods for Chinese New Year

Sunday is Chinese New Year, so start celebrating the year of the snack. Er, snake. Year of the snake. Here's a previous breakdown of lucky foods to ensure an auspicious new year.

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It’s now, around January and February, that daikon radishes begin to really sell, said Tamarack Hollow Farm’s farmer Amanda Andrews. She drives down from Burlington, Vermont, every week to sell produce at the Union Square Farmers Market on Wednesdays, and says that only diehard daikon fans really buy them when they’re first harvested in September. At that point in the year, the long, white radishes are often overshadowed by spotlight-stealing fall produce like tomatoes, squash and berries.

Food writer Cathy Erway is one of Tamarack Hollow Farm’s customers, and she’s a fan of daikon because of its versatility. “It has a very mild taste, and it’s very pleasant because it takes on any broth or flavoring that you want to give it, and it just really absorbs it all,” she said. “It doesn’t lend too much of a funky or spicy... radish taste that we associate with the vegetable. So, in a way, it’s kind of a blank slate.”

Erway, who is the author of the book The Art of Eating In and the blog Not Eating Out in New York, says that daikon can even replace some of those fall vegetables that are no longer available locally. “You can saute it, slice it up, and stir-fry it maybe with garlic, just like you would with a zucchini or summer squash,” she said. She suggested cooking it until it’s just crisp-tender, when “the inside is just a little bit whitish and the rest of it is softer and more translucent.”

Daikon is also an ideal winter vegetable because it holds up well when braised or slowly cooked in stews and soups. “It has an amazing ability to stay in big chunks,” Erway explained.

Farmers are also have a special use for the easily grown vegetable: Some use it as a cover crop. Andrews said that a farmer friend got a new field ready for planting by first seeding it with daikon. Once the vegetable was mature, the farmer set the cows into the field to munch. The resulting fertilizer from the cows, decomposing daikon remnants, and divots left by the long vegetable meant the farmer didn’t have till the now-fertilized field. Not only was it labor saved, Andrews explains it was also better for the soil.

“There’s a living strata in your soil and different bacteria thrive in different areas of the soil, different oxygen levels, different moisture levels, and if you turn all of that over, it means that it’s upending that whole life cycle,” she said. “You certainly do sometimes need to turn a field over, but if you can do it not too frequently, it’s better for the soil.”

Part of the reason daikon serves as such a good cover crop is because of its sometimes gigantic proportions. Erway said that’s fine for culinary purposes because the vegetables saves well in the crisper drawer. “Look for ones that are firm and not too blemished on the surface,” she advised. “You usually peel it anyway.”

It’s a bonus if there are still greens attached to the radish. “Radish greens are really healthy for you and you can just saute them like you would most any other greens,” Erway said, adding that the greens can also be added to soup or stew. Or, if you’re feeling particularly inspired, Erway suggested using the greens to make a spinach-like fresh pasta. Her recipe for that, along with seared daikon with chilies, garlic, and lemon, is below.

Daikon Radish Greens Pasta with Seared Daikon Radishes
by Cathy Erway
(makes 4 servings)

2 medium-sized daikon radishes with their leafy greens still attached
1 large egg
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 cloves garlic, minced
pinch of red pepper flakes
juice of about half of a lemon
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Separate the radishes from their tops and strip the leaves from the stems. Bring a small pot of water to a boil and submerge the leaves. Remove after 30-45 seconds and transfer immediately to an ice bath to cool. Squeeze the leaves out and transfer to a food processor or blender. (Alternately, you can just chop them finely with a knife instead.) Add an egg to the food processor/blender to puree, stopping to scrape down the sides as necessary.

Place the flour in a bowl and make a well in the center. Pour the greens/egg mixture into the center and begin stirring it to let the flour gradually fall in from the sides. Continue doing this until all the flour has been incorporated. Dust a surface with flour and knead the dough for 8 minutes, until smooth. Cover with plastic and let sit for 15 minutes.

Peel the daikon radishes and halve lengthwise. Cut into about 1″ long pieces on a bias along the length of the radishes. Heat a large, wide pan with the olive oil and add the garlic and chile flakes over medium-high. Once hot, add the daikon pieces and don’t stir for the first minute or so to let them sear a little. Season with a pinch of salt and pepper. Reduce heat to medium (so garlic doesn’t burn) and cook, stirring occasionally, for another 2 minutes, or until pieces are more translucent but still crisp. Turn heat off until pasta is ready to add (see below).

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Crank the pasta into thin sheets (I used the 6 level for thickness on my pasta crank) and then into pasta noodles of your choice (I chose fettuccine). When water is boiling, drop in the pasta at once and stir. Fresh pasta noodles need only cook about 2 minutes. Transfer the noodles immediately to the pan with radishes. Add the butter and lemon juice and toss to coat evenly. Taste for seasoning, adding salt and pepper as desired, and serve immediately.

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Remember when smoking in restaurants was allowed, and a cigarette with your coffee seemed like a perfect way to end a meal?

That trend flicked its last ash into the ashtray of history, as the dangers of second-hand smoke became more apparent and places like New York City and San Francisco instituted bans on smoking in restaurants and bars.

The smartphone-enabled trend of photographing your food and posting it to Yelp, Twitter or Facebook may be following suit. But instead of a fine, you may be in danger of being publicly humiliated by a restaurant owner or an annoyed diner.

The New York Times reported this week that there's a growing backlash against amateur food photography. Some restaurants, including Momofuku Ko, Per Se, Le Bernardin, Fat Duck and Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare, discourage it. They think it's rude, especially when enthusiastic photographers stand on dining room chairs to get their shot.

The article revealed that, at some level, food gawkers understand their mid-meal actions to be in bad taste. They've got personal bottom lines: only in casual joints, only without a flash, only if the dish is famous and you want to show the world you're actually about to eat something epic.

After taking such photos myself, I’ve got a new bottom line: Don't do it. Enjoy the meal, don't document it.

I was thinking of food spotting last week, when I came up with a 60-Second Stir Fry question for The Sporkful's Dan Pashman on the "most odious food trend." (He thought I asked him about oats). Pashman thinks "the war on lard" is worse. He's enough of a food Tweeter-eater to remember his latest post: "Pulled pork on a potato latke that I called 'The Heretic.'"

That's his picture at the top of your screen.

Unlike me, he has developed no qualms about food spotting. But, like other unrepentant practitioners, he has rules.

"If your photo may help to transmit some information that will make the world a more delicious place, then by all means, snap away and share," he e-mailed me. But the impulse has to come from a pure and humble heart. That rules out gloating over the famous shaved foie gras by star chef David Chang, or my pizza post from the Bedford-Stuyvesant hotspot, Speedy Romeo. ("I've been there two times, and the place was packed," I wrote. Aren't I the coolest?)

"If you're taking a picture of something amazing you're eating just so you can rub it in your friends' faces, I recommend you keep it to yourself," said Pashman. "The key is that there must be some benefit for the viewer of the photo. And jealousy is not a benefit."

This issue is shaping up to be a question for "The Ethicist."

When is it okay to take a picture of your food? Is it ever okay, or is it inconsiderate, like texting or talking on your cell phone while dining with friends? Do you have rules for when you whip out the iPhone for that snapshot of a memorable meal? Share you thoughts below.

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Making horseradish runs in Carolyn Sherman’s family. Her father, Lawrence, started tinkering with the recipe more than three decades ago.

“My dad couldn't find a horseradish that he was satisfied with,” she said. “He thought [store-bought prepared horseradish] was bitter. The texture was like sawdust; it was pulpy.”

The goal was to make a prepared horseradish that would do justice to his mother-in-law’s gefilte fish. And for a man devoted to the family vegetable garden, farm stands, and Chicago’s Randolph Street Market (the equivalent to New York City’s Hunts Point market), there was only one solution: Go straight to the source.

“He knew that when you start with a fresh fruit or vegetable, it tastes so much better,” Sherman said.

He eventually built up such a following that he was delivering 200 jars of horseradish to friends and family. When daughter couldn’t convince dad to start a business selling the stuff, she took it upon herself to do so.

Part of that process was getting to the root of the horseradish, so to speak. Sherman says her dad tried to grow his own horseradish root in said garden. “It’s very pervasive, though, so after a year or two of that, he realized this is not good, I don’t need to grow my own,” Sherman explained. Fortunately, for the Chicago-based Shermans, Collinsville, Illinois, also known as the horseradish capital of the world, was close by. Now, she sources fresh horseradish root for her product, ISH Premium Horseradish, from Collinsville, as well as from Tulelake, California. Both locations have soil that is naturally high in potassium, the best growing environment for horseradish.

(Photo: Larry and Carolyn Sherman/Courtesy of Carolyn Sherman)

ISH comes in four flavors — beet, citrus, ginger, and garlic — that are derived from the original recipe Sherman’s father created for beet horseradish.

Sherman knew that working with fresh horseradish root wouldn’t be an easy task, though.

“The minute you break the skin on horseradish, it emits just crazy heat, much worse to me than jalapenos or onions,” she said. “It just goes straight to your eyes. And it’s also... somewhat toxic. When I’m working with it for a while, my hands are red, my skin turns red for a day or two. I have to cover my eyes, and I wear ski goggles. My dad used to wear a gas mask. I kid you not.”

That bite from fresh horseradish mellows when it’s used in cooking, though, says Sherman. She created the different flavors to encourage people to use it as an ingredient, instead of only as a topping. The added bonus is that horseradish contains more Vitamin C than oranges.

“I always tell people... if you’re afraid of the heat, then mix it into different things and cook with it because when you cook with it, the heat goes away but the flavor is infused,” explained Sherman. “So for instance, when I make my ISH mashed potatoes, it’s wonderful with the citrus. The citrus flavor is infused in there, and it’s so nice and kind of delicate, but you don’t get that heat.”

She also advocates trying it with cheese and crackers, mixing it into tuna salad, or even using it as a topping for vanilla ice cream.

“It’s so easy,” Sherman said. “I want people to understand that when you’re working with something that’s good and fresh and healthy, that you can add it just about anything.”

Below, try her recipe for Sauteed Whitefish With Citrus or Ginger ISH.

Sauteed Whitefish With Citrus or Ginger ISH

Another delicious way to prepare fish.This will have you wISHing for more… Sautee 1 tablespoon butter, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, and 1 scallion (diced) in a pan until scallion is soft. Dust pan with kosher salt and place 2 fish filets (basa/swai) in pan; sautee on medium heat, sprinkle with kosher salt and black pepper; cook for 7 minutes and then add 1-2 teaspoons of Citrus or Ginger ISH on the top of each filet; spread evenly. Cook 5 minutes longer and then gently flip; spoon the butter/scallion mixture (and any extra ISH) over the fish. Cook for another 5-7 minutes and remove from pan. Spoon the remaining butter-scallion-ISH mixture onto the filet and serve.

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Granola is an “invalid food” that is “thoroughly cooked and partially digested,” according to a 1893 ad for the trademarked product. That ad language may not hold up well as the slogans of today, but the winter-storage friendly ingredients of rolled oats, nuts and dried fruit still packs a hefty dose of what the 19th century ad labeled as “nutriment.”

More than a century after the ad was first published, granola continues to grow in popularity. It no longer holds much sway as a health food, however.

“There is a lot of sugar [in granola now], although it was not always that way,” said Dan Pashman, the creator and host of The Sporkful. “In fact, the sort of precursor to granola sounds like it was something to the effect of graham cracker crumbs that were re-baked until crunchy.”

Pashman explained that granola got its start with some of the 19th century’s most well-known pioneers in health food.

“Throughout its evolution, it’s sort of like the Forrest Gump of the 19th century—wherever great food inventions were taking place, it seems granola was nearby,” he explained. “It started with Sylvester Graham, inventor of the graham cracker, and later continued with John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of Corn Flakes and co-founder of Kellogg’s. But Kellogg served granola at his sanitarium, which is what we would today call a spa, where it helped inspire C.W. Post to create Grape Nuts. So, it’s been around for a long time.”

Unlike the products created by Graham, Kellogg and Post, granola is easily made at home and customizable. Popularized in the 1960s by hippies, it is an easy do-it-yourself project, but Pashman cautions it may not be much cheaper than buying it at the store.

“In terms of the ingredients, I think it will be less expensive, but not substantially so because nuts are expensive even in the store,” he said. “But I think that it’s fun because you can make it exactly the way you want and it does offer opportunities for experimentation.”

For him, the defining characteristic of granola is that it features clusters, unlike, say trail mix, which is a conglomeration of different ingredients. “Muesli is roughly described as granola without a binding agent. Once you add the oil, and usually honey and/or maple syrup, to bind the ingredients together, it forms a cohesive whole that I would call granola,” he continued.

The baking process for granola is fairly simple, but Pashman says the real challenge sometimes lies in the decision making process for what ingredients to include and what to leave out. Last year, he judged the Slate Culture Gabfest granola competition and had the chance to mull over what makes up an award-winning granola recipe.

“What I learned from that experience is that you can put almost anything into granola, but that does not mean that you should,” Pashman said. As an aid to that decision-making process, he suggested using a flow-chart approach to choosing ingredients. The primary considerations should be what ingredients will deliver the crunch and what will provide sweetness.

Check out a roughly rendered version of his chart to the right.

Slate assistant editor L.V. Anderson won the competition, and you can try out her award-winning recipe below.

Maple Granola
by L.V. Anderson

Makes: About 12 cups

Time: 1 hour, largely unattended

One 16- to 18-ounce container rolled oats
1½ cups shredded unsweetened coconut
1½ cups whole or chopped cashews
1½ cups whole or sliced almonds
1 cup walnut pieces or halves
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup maple syrup
¾ cup extra-virgin olive oil or peanut oil
½ cup raisins (optional)
½ cup sweetened dried cranberries (optional)
Milk or yogurt for serving (optional)
Heat the oven to 350°. Put the oats, coconut, cashews, almonds, walnuts, cinnamon, and salt in a large bowl and stir to combine. Drizzle with the maple syrup and oil and stir until they’re evenly incorporated. Transfer the mixture to a 13- by 18-inch rimmed baking sheet and spread into a relatively even layer.
Bake, stirring every 15 minutes or so, until the granola has begun to turn crisp and brown, about 45 minutes. (It will continue to crisp up as it cools.) Let cool for at least 15 minutes, then stir in the raisins and cranberries, if you’re using them. Serve with milk or yogurt if you like. (Store unused granola in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a month.)

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The first time farmers Jeff Bialas and Adina Bialas tried salsify, it was wrapped in prosciutto, dipped in sesame seeds, and deep fried. Adina explained that they could still taste the “earthy but mild” flavor of the root vegetable, and the two became such immediate fans of salsify that they decided then and there to try and grow it.

“We’d never had it before,” admitted Adina. “It was just very unique and different and delicious. And we thought, oh, let’s try that.” She added that the ability to experiment is one of their favorite aspects of farming.

The inspiration paid off and, this year, the Bialases harvested a small but substantial crop of salsify at J&A Farm in Goshen, New York, where they grow 12 acres of mixed vegetables. (The farm even has its own theme song, which was created by a singer-songwriter Allyson Johnson and pianist Lafayetter Harris, Jr.)

Jeff described salsify as “parsnip’s ugly cousin,” but said that it adds an important element of variety to his later-fall offerings at the farmers market. The root vegetable tastes like an artichoke or sunchoke, which is an easy selling point for some of J&A Farm’s customers. Jeff said that he made small bunches of the roots, so more people would be willing to try cooking with it. Once they had, many quickly became converts.

“We ended up selling out of the entire crop by a little after Thanksgiving...which was unexpected,” said Jeff, who planted two 500-feet long rows of the vegetables this past year. He planted the salsify with carrots and parsnips since they are all long-season crops. “We plant it end of April, early May, and we don’t harvest ‘til after Labor Day, ‘til around the first frost, almost October,” he added.

(Photo: Adina and Jeff Bialas in warmer times/J&A Farm)

All that growing time pays off, though. The vegetable is easy to prepare and Jeff said that the skin can just be scrapped off with the back of a knife. After being cut, it does need to be dropped into acidified water to keep it from oxidizing and darkening.

The Bialases generally prefer simple preparation methods for the homely-looking root. “We tend to prefer a moist preparation, so…the first time we made it we boiled it in salted water,” Adina said. “I think it took about 10 minutes, cut it up and just tossed it with a little bit of butter and it was delicious like that.”

Below, try J&A Farm’s simple recipe for salsify with pasta and lemon parsley sauce.

Simple Salsify with Pasta and Lemon Parsley Sauce
courtesy of J&A Farm, Goshen NY

1 pound salsify
1/4 cup chopped shallots
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp butter
Juice and zest of 1 large lemon
1/4 - 1/2 cup chopped parsley (depending on your taste)
1 pound bow tie pasta (or any type you prefer)
Salt and pepper to taste

Peel and thinly slice salsify. Simmer salsify in water or stock until barely tender. Drain salsify and add to hot saute pan with butter and shallots. Saute over medium/high heat until shallots and salsify are fully tender. Wisk together olive oil, lemon juice and zest, parsley, salt and pepper. Cook pasta to al dente, drain when done, reserving approximately 1 cup pasta water. Toss dressing and salsify mixture with hot pasta, and some of the reserved hot pasta cooking water to finish the dish. Serve warm, enjoy.

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