Grains of Paradise. This, the most poetic and beguiling of the names for melegueta, a pungent spice native to West Africa, has finally found a place in my kitchen.
I learned of grains of paradise years ago in an early colonial hearth cooking class. The instructor, clad in a period-style dress, had many antique props, one of which was an ornate wooden spice box. The fineness of its craftsmanship mirrored the
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Does two of anything make a trend? If so, peanut soup is trending in Vermont, where I live. I’ve enjoyed peanut butter–pumpkin soup at the nearby South Royalton Market, and peanut curry soup at Cockadoodle Pizza Café in the neighboring town of Bethel, where it was recently the soup of the day. Both were delicious and spicy.
Peanut soup is not a trend, however, in the Southern United States, and,
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It was at 2551 Kennilworth Road in Cleveland where I had my first taste of collard greens. They were a gift from “Sir Prince,” who dated Miss Anna Szolnoky in apartment 2B, across the hall from me. A retired school teacher who still sometimes substitute taught, Anna evoked another age: She typically wore dresses, accentuating a
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Rustic Parsley & Orzo Soup (E.W.), Creamy Chocolate Pudding (C.I.), Lebanese-Style Green Beans (Saveur)
Surprising pleasures of the table revealed by preparation of foolproof recipes, but which are disguised, at first read, by a thematic focus on health and nutrition.
A behind-the-scenes look at recipe development, also known as “The Making of . . . ,” approach, that delves into the whys and hows of how food works.
Vicarious travel, through stories both personal and cultural, to home kitchens, food carts, markets, and restaurants close to home and far flung, and vicarious enjoyment of the foods produced therein, with accompanying recipes as an added benefit.
These descriptions are how I think of the three magazines that DCCC just finished reading, cooking from, and comparing: Eating Well, Cook’s Illustrated, and Saveur. Each is so different, revealing the very different ways in which food can be approached and experienced. Whereas the staff at a magazine decides a theme in order to carve out a niche in the market, most of us probably approach food in all of these ways, and more, simultaneously.
Doing a magazine comparison, particularly of magazines as different as these, stimulates a great deal of self-food-assessment, if you’re prone to
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The mission at Cook’s Illustrated is “to develop the absolute best recipes for all of your favorite foods.” Who can’t recall creamy chocolate pudding as a favorite food, if from a distant childhood past? The problem with those childhood versions, however, is that they lack the amount of dark chocolate oomph needed to appeal to our more sophisticated, adult palates.
After sourcing recipes spanning four decades,
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“Mellow, “unctuous,” and “melting away in the mouth” are some of the words Lesley Porcelli uses to describe vegetables that have been cooked using “The Soft Approach,” a form of low and slow cooking and the name of her story, part personal revere and part well-defended thesis, published in this month’s Saveur magazine.
I like the way she thinks. After all,
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Green Curry Soup (Bowl made by Anne Coneys)
I love greens of all sorts and, though I’ve prepared them in many different ways, I most often fall back on the foolproof preparation of braising them. Fine and dandy, but I was beginning to bore myself, not least my boyfriend Mike who isn’t as greens crazy as I am.
Then I saw Anna Thomas’s story “The Soup for Life” in the current issue of Eating Well, one of the food magazines DCCC is currently reading and cooking from. Thomas loves greens, too, and has found an ingenious way to use them—as the basis of wholesome and flavorful soups. On one gray, blustery day she found herself in need of dropping a few pounds but also wanting to create something comforting and delicious to eat. The result?
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GLOBAL GRILLING
Sizzling Recipes from Around the World
By Jay Solomon
The Crossing Press
116 pp. $10.95
Cookbooks with an international recipe collection are not as popular as they once were. Today Americans are ever more educated about global tastes and seem ready to delve into books devoted to a single foreign cuisine, and to go the extra mile to get authentic ingredients.
Yet unlike when Global Grilling was published, nearly two decades ago, going that “extra mile” is likely to be just that—driving one additional mile to your local Asian or Hispanic market. Reflecting the difference between then and now, some recipes in the book give the choice between more or less authentic ingredients, such as fish sauce and Worcestershire sauce, making them incredibly flexible templates,
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This month and next DCCC is doing something a little different. Instead of cooking from a single book, we are doing a comparison of three food magazines: Cook’s Illustrated, Saveur, and Eating Well. (In the magazine business a magazine is called a “book,” so maybe this club pick isn’t that far off . . .)
When DCCC club member Jennifer Megyesi, author, farmer, and local chicken expert, came up with this idea I immediately thought it was fun, and novel. I don’t think I would have thought of it myself—yet another great reason to be part of a club: To allow someone else’s interests to become yours, even if for just a couple of months.
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