an open cupboard

beurre d’isigny sainte-mère

I recently bought a tub of fancy French butter from the local high-falutin’ shop. It was on sale for three dollars, so I picked it up (kind of a bargain for fancy butter, and I couldn’t resist the cute wooden basket in which it was packaged). I hadn’t realized that butter can have its own AOC, but apparently it can in France. I took it home, intending to have a little schmear on a slice of sourdough. I ended up eating several schmears, and even tasting it plain. It’s that good. Naturally, the butter disappeared pretty quickly, as I used it on bread as well as in every meal I cooked until it was gone. There’s nothing quite so heavenly as spinach, chicken, anything at all cooked in really good butter.

where to get it: your local gourmet food shop, Todaro Bros., Wally’s, Amazon, Sainsbury’s (U.K.)

wine grapes

While shopping at Berkeley Bowl one day, I happened upon some pinot noir and cabernet grapes. These grapes are smaller, darker, and much more intensely flavored than ordinary table grapes. They also have seeds, which you may not mind eating as they have a slightly acidic taste that complements the natural sweetness of the fruit. Wine grapes have tremendous culinary potential. You could stuff a chicken with grapes and garlic cloves for a roast. You could use them with lamb in a tagine. You could dry them outdoors or in the oven for some really flavorful homemade raisins. Or you could just snack on them along with some almonds.

where to get it: If you live near an area featuring vineyards, you can look for wine grapes at the local farmer’s market or perhaps at the vintner’s.

broccoli with butter and grapes

This is more of a non-recipe, as it’s so easy to prepare. The butter and grapes really make the dish (and the garlic doesn’t hurt). You could substitute spinach, asparagus, or even artichoke hearts for the broccoli. Remember, the grapes do have seeds. You can discard them while eating or just eat them along with the fruit.

1-2 heads fresh broccoli or broccolini, chopped into longish florets
very good butter, copious amounts
wine grapes or ordinary grapes
1 clove garlic
salt and pepper to taste

• Steam the broccoli until it’s nearly ready. It should almost turn bright green, but not quite.
• Melt the butter in a heavy skillet on a medium to low flame. Toss the broccoli in the butter, allowing it to cook a little and absorb the butter.
• Throw in as many grapes as you like.
• Press the garlic clove over the broccoli and stir. Cook to slightly soften the grapes and mellow the garlic, about a minute or two.
• Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve right away.

Here’s a little snack I put together the other day:

1 ginger biscuit or ginger snap
a shmear of almond butter
2 little squares of dark chocolate with ginger bits

• Shmear almond butter on cookie, top with chocolate. Eat with a glass of milk or tea.
• Optionally, toast (if you can wait that long), and spread the melted chocolate over the almond butter.

It’s like an open-faced s’more, but not quite. This little number combines the best features of the dessert genre—it’s richly chocolatey, creamy, nutty, and crunchy. Sweet, but not too sweet, with a sharp bite of ginger that awakens the palate. In a word, delightful. You could use regular chocolate, particularly if you don’t like your chocolate to wear sexy footwear.

Autumn has arrived, sort of. One day it’s rainy, the next sunny. It’s too cold for t-shirts, but not cold enough for sweaters. Such is the schizophrenic nature of the weather in California. If it were honestly cold in these parts, a hot bowl of fresh beans would be the perfect vehicle for taking the bite off the chill. But alas, a dish such as Boston baked beans is simply overkill. What to do?

Cook the last of the summer tomatoes with the first of the autumn beans. Throw in some sharp goat cheese to spike the sweetness of the tomatoes, and a handful of greens for color and contrasting texture. The result is a warming, yet light stew, alive with both delicate and strong flavors.

I used the remainder of a local bucheron I found at the bottom of the cheese section in the fridge. Bucherons harden with age, and their flavor sharpens dramatically. As is usually the case, I just used whatever I happened to have on hand. You could use another goat cheese, good old parmigiano reggiano, or Västerbotten, if you’re so inclined.

cranberry bean stew

1 c shelled cranberry or other large, fresh beans
water to cover
4 sprigs fresh thyme
olive oil
5 small tomatoes, coarsely chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled
about 3-4 oz. of a hard goat cheese, or other strong-flavored cheese, chopped or grated
handful of fresh spinach, chopped into coarse ribbons

• Place the shelled beans in a small pot or saucepan and cover with water. Add the thyme sprigs and bring to the boil.
• When the water has boiled, adjust the flame to a low simmer and cover the pot. Simmer until beans are tender but still al dente.
• Remove thyme sprigs and drain excess water. Place pot on a low flame, and pour in some olive oil, about half a tablespoon.
• Add about half of the chopped tomatoes to the pot and stir.
• Crush the garlic into the pot, season to taste with salt and pepper, and stir.
• Add the cheese and stir.
• Cover the pot and simmer, stirring occasionally.
• When the tomatoes have melted down into a sauce, add the remaining tomatoes. Cover and simmer to soften the tomatoes slightly.
• Add the spinach ribbons and stir. Taste and correct seasonings, then turn off the flame.
• Serve with a drizzle of olive oil.

Serves 2

When I’m feeling lazy and the weather is warm, a light dinner of assorted mezze is very satisfying. Here are some ideas for small dishes, followed by a couple of recipes. Combine a few of these dishes with toasted country style or flat bread and cured meats and cheeses for a light supper or lunch.

• Halved tomatoes, fried in olive oil with sliced garlic, sprinkled over with salt & pepper and a basil leaf
• Zucchini blossoms lightly sauteed in olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice
• Steamed stinging nettles (or spinach), mixed with butter, sauteed garlic, seasoned with salt and pepper and garnished with grated parmesan

chickpea and fennel mezze

1/4 can chickpeas
1/4 large fennel, diced
1 clove garlic
juice of half a lemon
olive oil
salt and pepper

• In a bowl, lightly mash the chickpeas. Toss in the fennel.
• Press the garlic clove and squeeze the half lemon over the mixture.
• Pour olive oil on the meze and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serves 2-3 (small, mezze style portions)

cucumber, yogurt, and blueberry mezze with lemon thyme

1 large Persian or other long cucumber, finely diced
2 tsp fresh lemon thyme, pounded in a mortar and pestle or finely chopped fresh mint
about 1 c natural, unflavored, full fat yogurt
about 1 TBS fresh lemon juice
1/4 c fresh blueberries
salt and pepper to taste

• Put the diced cucumber and herbs in a medium bowl.
• Pour over some of the yogurt, then squeeze in the lemon juice and toss. You want to balance the acidity of the lemon juice with the tartness of the yogurt, but you don’t want the mixture to be too runny. Add more yogurt as needed and taste as you go.
• Add in the blueberries and toss carefully, so as not to smash the fruit.
• Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serves 2 as part of a mezze style meal

P.S. Stay tuned for more reports on NYC and Stockholm…

Here’s a recipe for a light summer supper.

spinach, ricotta, and gorgonzola not pesto with pasta
1 lb pasta, cooked and drained, 1-2 cups reserved cooking water
butter
1 bunch fresh spinach, washed, trimmed, and coarsely chopped
1/3 lb fresh ricotta cheese
3-4 TBS crumbled blue cheese (I used Point Reyes)
1 ripe tomato, roughly chopped
salt and pepper to taste
dash of nutmeg

• Melt a little butter in the pot you used to cook the pasta, and add in the spinach.
• Cover, and cook on medium heat. If the spinach gets too dry, add a little splash of pasta water.
• When the spinach has just wilted, turn off the flame. If there is visible liquid in the pot, you can drain it, save it for soup, or use it to moisten the pasta.
• Crumble in the ricotta cheese.
• Blitz the spinach and ricotta with a stick blender until it turns into a sauce. Don’t make it too liquidy, stop as soon as the spinach and cheese begin to meld. You might want to experiment a bit with the texture, leaving some spinach leaves unblitzed.
• Crumble in the blue cheese and stir. Taste. If you like a stronger blue cheese flavor, add more.
• Toss in the tomatoes and season to taste with salt and pepper. Sprinkle in a dash of nutmeg, stir, and taste to correct seasoning.
• Plate pasta and moisten with a splash of cooking water. Toss pasta with the not pesto and grate parmegiano reggiano cheese on top.

Serves 2-3

Remember that weird looking vegetable I bought at Berkeley Bowl? It’s up there on the right, looking potato-like in an anemic sort of way, and somewhat hairy. Nagaimo is its Japanese name, and the Japanese turn it into a pancake called okonomiyaki, or “pancake made of weird slimey root vegetable.” If you thought tapioca was slimey, bubble drink pearls ain’t got nothin’ on nagaimo. Aliens exploding from Sigourney Weaver’s belly are less slimey than this. Seriously.

Still, slime can be an asset when you’re trying to get pancake batter to stick together. Hence okonomiyaki: a thick pancake filled with thinly sliced cabbage, scallions, pork belly, and shrimp. Okonomiyaki is crisp on the outside and soft on the inside, and—unlike Sigourney Weaver—exploding with contrasting flavors. The pancake is topped with sweet and sour sauce and sprinkled with seaweed flakes. It is then decorated with thin lines of Japanese mayonnaise, sliced like a pizza, and served. Nagaimo is both a binder and a starchy filler for the batter, which is rounded out with some flour and eggs.

My attempt at okonomiyaki was tasty, if not entirely authentic. I didn’t have any pork belly, shrimp, or scallions on hand, nor did I have any Japanese maonnaise (or any mayonnaise at all, for that matter). But I’m the type of person who insists on baking chocolate cake when I’m fresh out of chocolate and eggs. Once I’ve got an idea in my head, well, that’s it. Equipped with the basics—nagaimo, flour, eggs, and cabbage—I came up with a pretty tasty dinner pancake in the okonomiyaki style.

Here’s what I did. Using this traditional okonomiyaki recipe as a guide, I:

• Quadrupled the recipe, producing 2 large pancakes and one small pancake, enough for about 4 servings
• Substituted natural, full fat yogurt for half the water
• Omitted one egg
• Substituted grated cheddar cheese for the meat and shrimp
• Substituted minced miniature leeks for the scallions (white part only)
• Substituted ripped, toasted nori squares for the seaweed flakes
• Cooked the pancakes in coconut oil
• Topped the pancakes with my own sweet and sour sauce made by cooking fresh, whole tomatoes with soy sauce, vinegar, and mustard, salt and pepper

The result was an interesting mix of flavors and textures, the somewhat crunchy cabbage playing against the softness of the pancake, the gooeyness of the cheese and the crispness of the pancake on the outside. The aged cheddar added tang and depth, while the leeks lent an onion flavor with a slight bite. The sweet and sour sauce and the seaweed provided a counterpoint to the strong flavors on the inside of the pancake. The beauty of okonomiyaki, it seems, is its encapsulation of (almost) all flavors—sour, sweet, salty, umami—and contradiction of textures—crisp and soft, gooey and crunchy.

The vegetarian okonomiyaki was fun to eat, but I imagine that the original is a much more adventurous exercise in flavor and texture. Removing the pork belly and shrimp is like taking the filling out of pain au chocolat. You’re left with a croissant—a treat in itself—but it isn’t pain au chocolat.

Here’s what I did with those funny little mini-cucumbers I recently bought. I fried them with spices and eggs and served them with potatoes for a Sunday breakfast. Tindoras are fun to eat, they’re crunchy like cucumbers, but with an almost okra-like flavor (without the slime). I used hawaiyij, one of my favorite middle eastern spice mixtures, instead of curry powder. I also used curry leaves, but feel free to omit them if you can’t find at your local market. Thanks to Mahanandi for the inspiration!

tindoras and eggs

1-2 TBS ghee, butter, or coconut oil, or a combination
1 tsp brown mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 curry leaves
~1/2 lb tindora, quartered lengthwise
1 tsp hawaiyij
salt and pepper to taste
3 eggs
splash of kefir or natural yogurt
3-4 sprigs of sea beans, minced

• Melt the fat in a large cast-iron pan on a medium flame.
• Fry the mustard seeds and cumin. When the spices are toasted and just barely fragrant, add the garlic and stir.
• Toss in the tindora and stir. Season with hawaiyij.
• Thoroughly whisk three eggs with a splash of kefir or natural, whole fat yogurt. Season with salt and pepper.
• Pour into the pan with the tindora. Allow the egg mixture to settle until the bottom begins to solidify, then scramble the eggs from the edge of the pan towards the center. Let the eggs sit for a minute, then scramble again.
• Repeat just until the eggs are no longer liquid and immediately turn off the flame.
• Sprinkle minced sea beans on top and serve with toast or potatoes.

Serves 2

Using the edible roses I bought at Berkeley Bowl, I made a sweet topping/compote that complements vanilla ice cream or yogurt. I’ve always been intrigued by the slightly floral taste of litchi, which is accentuated here by the rose petals and rounded out by the anise flavor of fennel. These were all combined in a base of light honey syrup. You can play around with the texture by adding less water for a heavier syrup. A and I ate this atop vanilla goat’s milk ice cream. Yum.

fennel, litchi, and rose petal topping

1 TBS honey
3 TBS water (plus 1 TBS if necessary)
1/4 small fennel, cored and diced
3 litchi nuts, peeled, stone removed, and diced
4 small edible roses, petals only
~1 tsp fine lemon zest

• In a small pot, bring the water and honey to the boil. Let the water evaporate somewhat so that you have a light syrup, and turn down the flame to medium.
• Add the fennel and simmer until the fennel softens. If the syrup doesn’t cover the fennel, add an additional tablespoon of water. Simmer uncovered to let some of the water evaporate if the syrup looks too watery.
• Add the diced litchi and stir. Turn off the heat.
• Toss in the rose petals and grate in the lemon zest.
• Toss, place in a cool, non-heat condusive container, and chill in the refrigerator.

Serves 2 over ice cream or yogurt.

This week I did my grocery shopping at Berkeley Bowl, a local supermarket specializing in high quality, local foods and produce. Parking at Berkeley Bowl is akin to scoring tickets to the Stones and travelling back in time to watch them perform before Mick Jagger had grandkids and Keith Richards started falling out of palm trees. OK, so I’m exaggerating a little, but you do need a lot of patience as Berkeley Bowl is a very popular place to shop.

Despite the maddening crowds, I like going to Berkeley Bowl every so often to peruse their enormous produce section. They tend to carry a variety of fruit and veg that you’d often find only at ethnic markets, such as Armenian cucumbers and a pretty good variety of Chinese greens. Whenever I go, I try to buy at least one vegetable or fruit that I’ve never tried before, even if I have no idea what it is or how to prepare it. Sometimes a fellow shopper or an employee will offer advice as to traditional methods of preparation.

The photo at the top of this post illustrates most of the unusual vegetables I bought this week. They include, from left to right:

• Tindora cucumbers—These are related to the ordinary cucumber, with a sort of cucumber-zucchini flavor. You’re supposed to cook them before eating. Their flesh looks like that of a tiny cucumber, sort of opaque white. If they’re red on the inside, they’re overripe and should be discarded. Tindora cucumbers are native to Indian cuisine, and are often cooked in curries.
• Edible roses—These miniature roses were just too cute not to buy. You can use them in salads, or as a garnish. I turned them into dessert. Stay tuned for the recipe later this week.
• Sea beans/sea pickle—These are thin, green plants that look like tiny cacti and taste like the sea. Good for salads.
• Yin choy—Chinese spinach. I was won over by the lovely purple-green hue of this vegetable. I’m always curious about the myriad Chinese greens I find at Berkeley Bowl and Chinese markets, but I don’t often know what to do with them. Bok choy, tatsoi, and choy sum are fairly well known items on Chinese restaurant menus, but all those other greens are rather mysterious to those who are otherwise uninitiated in the endless splendor of traditional Chinese cuisines. I often try to buy a bunch of unknown greens and figure out what to do with them later. They look so pretty and succulent on the shelf, there’s no way I couldn’t buy some.
• Nagaimo—Japanese mountain yam. A Berkeley Bowl employee told me this vegetable is eaten raw in Mexico, sliced and seasoned with a little salt and fresh lemon juice. “Like jicama,” he said. This is a peculiar looking vegetable, sort of radish-like but with rough little brown “hairs” on its skin.
• Breadfruit—In the photo below, you’ll see the breadfruit I found at the exotic fruit section. I had no idea how to choose one, so I picked one up and smelled the stem. It smelled faintly of bananas. Cutting it open at home, I realized it was underripe. A Google search informed me that this is the fruit’s ideal state. In Africa, breadfruit is roasted whole in a fire and eaten with butter and salt, like potatoes. It might also be simmered in coconut milk by itself or with pieces of smoked pork.

Here’s how I prepared the breadfruit:

I roasted the breadfruit halves in the oven at 375° F until they were lightly golden. I then separated the flesh from the skin, which I chopped into large, bite-sized pieces. The breadfruit chunks went into a small pot, were covered with coconut milk (about 3/4 of a can), and simmered until the coconut milk boiled.

Seasoned with salt and pepper, breadfruit in coconut milk is a satisfying, rich side dish. The breadfruit is starchy, like potatoes, but with a firmer flesh. Its flavor is mild and slightly sweet, and which the coconut milk complements nicely.

It’s too damn hot! The weather around here has been ridiculously hot and humid, although I hear it’s been about 110° F in some parts of the south and east bay.
When it’s hot, many cultures tend to consume hot foods, which are somehow cooling to the body. But who wants to stand over a hot stove when you’ve got two fans running and no A/C? Just the thought of it makes me sweat. So when I bought my groceries for the week, I tried to find ingredients I could combine to make cool dinners requiring little or no cooking. Melons are good, as is just about any seasonal vegetable. Yogurt and cheese round out the meal. Barbecuing aside, heavy proteins such as chicken, beef, and pork are out (although a beef carpaccio can be refreshing).

A cool melon soup is an obvious choice. The cucumber tempers the sweetness of the melon, to which a bit of salty cheese is a fine counterpoint. Yogurt or kefir adds body and depth, while almonds add crunchy texture. Freshly ground pepper and basil olive oil provide spicy, grassy, anisey notes that pull it all together. Serve the soup with some bread and cheese, and perhaps a garden salad. Just be sure to buy green-fleshed melon so that your dinner doesn’t end up resembling primordial soup.

Seriously, it tastes better than it looks!

melon cucumber soup with yogurt and basil olive oil

1 medium melon, halved and seeded (I used cantalope, but honeydew is fine too)
1 small cucumber or about a 6 inch chunk of English hothouse cucumber
1 handful basil leaves
olive oil
kefir or yogurt
aged myzithra cheese or ricotta salata
salt and pepper to taste
raw or toasted almonds

• Scoop out the melon flesh, cut the cucumber into large chunks and place in a blender.
• Pulverize the melon and cucumber until liquid. Pour into bowls.
• Using a blender, food processor, or stick blender, pulverize the basil with the olive oil.
• Pour some kefir into each bowl of soup, about a quarter cup, or more if you like. If using yogurt, whip the yogurt until smooth and then add it to the soup.
• Crumble some myzithra cheese into each bowl, and season with freshly ground pepper. Drizzle the basil oil on top.
• Taste and correct seasoning. You probably won’t need much salt since the myzithra cheese is plenty salty. Garnish with raw or toasted almonds.

Serves 3