Last Saturday morning, in anticipation of a forecasted sunny day ahead, I made a batch of A’ja (bread fritters) from Jerusalem: A Cookbook. These fritters, along with several other recipes from the book, can be served either warm or room temperature, making them an excellent choice for picnicking.
Once the fritters were fried, the requisite tahini sauce made, the sliced tomatoes and cucumbers prepped, and the rosé wine chilled, we
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Is there such a thing as being “good” at social media? If so, I’m the opposite. Yet, in spite of my minimal activity on Facebook and Twitter, etc., I sometimes get to experience the benefits of social media first-hand. It happened just recently when Karen Deyle Miller, new to Vermont, contacted me about joining DCCC. She is a facebook friend with Crescent Dragonwagon, a friend of mine who had “liked” my posting about the club’s wok portrait session. And now Karen is a member. Nice, huh?
Not missing a beat, Karen has jumped right into Jerusalem, our current pick. She quickly discovered that some of the key spices and spice blends used in the book are sold at Healthy Living Market in Burlington, including ras el hanout. Karen offered to pick up some ras el hanout and deliver it to me at a mid-way meet-up spot. Since this spice blend is used just once in the book, I hadn’t considered driving out of my way to track it down, but who can refuse an opportunity to try something new, something you’ve never heard of, when it’s delivered practically to your doorstep.
Ras el Hanout
I’m glad I took Karen up on her offer. Its single use in the book—Watercress & Chickpea Soup with Rose Water & Ras el Hanout—is alone worth seeking out the spice blend. Though “pigging out on” or “indulging in” soup, let alone vegetarian soup, might sound improbable, it is exactly what this dish will have you doing. It is that good.
This green soup is constructed in two parts: a pureed base made of sautéed onions and grated ginger (and plenty of it, too), watercress, spinach, chickpeas, vegetable stock, and rosewater; and a spiced and roasted carrot and chickpea topping, which is where the ras el hanout comes into play. The soup is optionally finished with a small dollop of Greek yogurt.
Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, authors of Jerusalem, describe ras el hanout as a “sweet-and-heady” mix that consists of sweet and hot spices that are toasted and ground. To my olfactories, the smell of the batch I got is reminiscent of curry, but sweeter. There is no set recipe, but clearly Ottolenghi and Tamimi believe cinnamon should be included. (If the blend you find does not contain cinnamon, they say to make sure to add some.)
Besides serving as an excellent introduction to ras el hanout, this soup has gotten me over my fear of rose water—an unfounded fear that it will take over and dominate everything it touches. Here it counters the spicy heat of the large amount of fresh ginger, making the soup more elegant and balanced than it would be without it, and contributes to its heady aroma. I have to admit I wimped out a bit and used just half the amount called for. I should have trusted the authors’ palates. The more recipes I and other club members try, it’s clear that the flavors in this book are faultless.
“I want to take Jerusalem food outside,” I’d said excitedly to Mike and Otto (boyfriend and cat, respectively) about ten days ago when we finally got our first glimpse of spring in Vermont.
This simple idea hit me like sudden blinding ray of light. I would start on the front porch and then, like the movable gnomes in the movie Amélie, I would take the food of Jerusalem on the road to various picnic spots around the state, or at least around town, to show you my environs. It would get me out of the house—it’s been a LONG winter—and challenge my photography skills.
I need things to get a little bit messy. When you
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THE BREATH OF A WOK
Unlocking the Spirit of Chinese Wok Cooking Through Recipes and Lore
by Grace Young and Alan Richardson
Simon & Schuster
240 pp. $35.00
One wok runs to the sky’s edge
—Traditional saying
These are the first words you will come to in the book The Breath of a Wok by Grace Young. I like this saying, though I’m not sure what it means. I do know, however, that the word one seems important to understanding its meaning. Not in the sense that there is one wok in particular that has the ability to run to the sky’s edge (as in the Tolkien saying “one ring to rule them all”), but that all that is needed to do the job is one wok. In a wok, just one wok, you can do it all: stir-fry, pan-fry, deep-fry, steam, poach, boil, braise, smoke . . . run to the sky’s edge.
An appreciation for the amazing versatility of the wok is one of several
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Above (from top left, clockwise): Judy, with her Teflon-coated wok (Judy ordered a flat-bottomed, carbon-steel wok, but was unhappy with the construction and returned it); Melanie, with her beautifully seasoned carbon-steel wok (she’s had it for years); Bhakti, with her 2-month-old carbon-steel wok (that looks as if she’s had it for years); Me, with my 2-month-old-plus wok, looking not nearly as nice as Bhakti’s; Marianne with her skilletful of Spicy Garlic Eggplant—notice the handmade label (she does not own a wok); Judy, again
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Most recipes in The Breath of a Wok are intended to be stir-fried rapidly over furiously hot heat and dispatched to diners will equal speed. If a finished stir-fry loiters on a kitchen counter even for a few moments, eaters may miss their chance of experiencing its wok hay. Make a dish ahead and reheat—the common MO of potlucks—and you can forget about wok hay or enjoying those just tender but still perky snow peas.
How then to host a potluck of recipes from The Breath of a Wok, or for that matter any
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One day, wanting to make use of some tofu and scallions in the fridge, I came up with this very simple stir-fry. Having just spent several weeks cooking from Grace Young’s cookbook The Breath of a Wok, I felt emboldened to improvise with what I had on hand.
Once you do some wok time with the recipes in The Breath of a Wok you begin to get into a wok rhythm, and to gain a
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When I came across this Chinatown scene with Lightning Louie (Vic Perry) and Candy (Jean Peters) in the film noir thriller Pickup on South Street (1953), I felt the giddy excitement of an explorer who has come across a hidden treasure by dumb luck. That was more than a year ago.
Since picking up The Breath of a Wok by Grace Young, the current DCCC pick, I’ve been thinking about the scene again. How impressive (and extensively employed) Lightning Louie’s chopstick wielding skills are. How at home he is in his adopted milieu. And how focused on eating he is. Lightning Louie is not about to miss out wok hay to just to do business with Candy. For these reasons, Lightning Louie is my culinary hero.
If you’ve got some rice, some water, and a saucepan you can cook rice. There’s no need for measuring cups and no need to measure the rice or water. All you need is your index finger.
I learned this freewheeling finger-in-the-pot method from Grace Young’s cookbook The Breath of a Wok, the current DCCC pick. To be honest, I’d come across the method previously in other Asian cookbooks, but it’s only now, after building my kitchen skills to their current level (due in part to this cookbook club) and with Young’s well-written and assuring book at my side, that I felt confident enough to leave my measuring cups in the cupboard. Once I took the leap of faith and made my first pot of rice this way, I felt liberated.
Besides being freeing, the method is also
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Up until recently, I was using a cleaver all wrong. Not for chopping, but when attempting to cut through something hard and dense.
As though splitting firewood, I would hold the cleaver with both hands out in front of me and, with legs slightly spread for stability, whale down on my intended target, such as the middle of a large butternut squash.
My feeble attempts were seldom effective (about as effective as my wood splitting efforts), and what was worse is that the cleaver would usually get stuck in the squash. At those moments I would solicit the aid of the man of the house who could finish the job, sometimes with half a squash flying off the counter.
There had to be a better way, a less perilous way, but I had no idea what it could be. The way, it turns out, lies in
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