C’est Mardi Gras!

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C’est Mardi Gras! Laissez les bons temps rouler! (Ou en anglais, it’s Fat Tuesday! Let the good times roll!) The “fat” descriptor signals the last chance to consume indulgent, rich, high-calorie foods before the spartan Lenten season begins on Ash Wednesday. Needless to say, New Orleans pulls out all the stops for its annual celebration with a virtual parade of Creole and Cajun culinary delights on display.

This is homemade Jambalaya, a rice dish that typically features spicy andouille sausage along with other meats or seafood. I’ve used chicken as the supporting player here, but in the past I’ve made it more traditionally with shrimp – that was back when you didn’t have to take out a mortgage to buy it. The Creole version contains tomatoes, the Cajun style that I’ve prepared here does not, but both incorporate a significant measure of spice. I start with a base of diced onions, celery, and bell peppers known as “the trinity” in Cajun cooking; it’s akin to mirepoix in French cuisine which consists of onions, celery, and carrots, or sofrito in other cultures where ingredients vary by geography – but whatever the provenance, it’s all about that base.


On the side, I made another popular Louisiana specialty, maque choux, a mélange of fresh corn, bell peppers, onions, celery, and tomatoes cooked up in bacon fat with more Cajun spices and a little cream at the end to ensure the proper degree of decadence.

Tomorrow’s Ash Wednesday post will feature a Lenten delicacy (sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it?) that’s bloody delicious! Stay tuned….
 
 

Open Heart Sugary – or, the Anatomy of a Valentine Cookie

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These are Red Currant Raspberry Linzer Cookies, first cousins of Austria’s Linzer Tart – traditionally, I do stars for Christmas and hearts for Valentine’s Day. This particular batch began months earlier with the acquisition of red currants and raspberries when they were in season followed by a little time spent prepping and cooking them up. It’s a lot easier than you’d expect and the filling keeps for quite a while in the fridge while you’re procrastinating doing the fussy part. If you’re not a fanatic, however, I can recommend Hero Red Currant Premium Fruit Spread; I’ve had pretty good luck with it – it just needs a bit of finessing via the addition of some red raspberry jam to achieve the degree of sweetness you’re after plus some straining.


The dough calls for flour, sugar, and butter, of course, plus finely ground blanched almonds, almond extract, and lemon zest. Start by baking equal numbers of fronts and backs.

Occasionally a front or back will fracture which then perforce spells doom for its perfectly intact intended mate, but sadly, I’ve never found an effective way to repair a broken heart. Sometimes, you just have to eat your losses. This is an example of how culinary art reflects life. But hey, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.


Look closely at the finished cookies in the first photo and you’ll see that the powdered sugar blankets only the outer section of the heart while the inner red lifeblood of this classic treat shines through unobstructed. Now, examine the above photo and follow along to see how I do it:

Bottom rows:
Starting with solid backs, use a plastic squeeze bottle to add preserves around the perimeter but not in the center. (Neatness doesn’t count.) Match tops to bottoms.

Top rows:
Let it snow, let it snow, etc. Note the unfilled but sugary centers. Next, squirt a blob of preserves into the cutout thereby hiding the powdered sugar.

Now, here’s the painstakingly obsessive step (why do I do these things?): then and only then, for each cookie, carefully use a toothpick to smooth out any less than perfect curves of the inner heart, et voilà! Your cookies will look like those in the first photo. Maybe better. (Why can’t they make Photoshop for food?)
 
 
When the cookies are complete and have been packed away, your workspace will look like this one, post-sugaring and pre-cleanup, an exercise in negative space.

And the beat goes on.
 
 

Hua Yi Jia

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I love a Chinese restaurant menu where the English names of the dishes are so obscure that I want to try them all. Now, I’m not referring to misspellings like balck for black or drued for dried. If I could write in Chinese a fraction as well as they write in English, I’d be thrilled. Respect.

I’m talking about dishes with names like Pot Edge or Meter Hour or Old Wine and Old Man. And when I scanned the Chinese characters on the menu in the first example (謝謝, Google Translate), it returned “Side of Pot” – not particularly enlightening. But that’s precisely why I need to go back.

So when we visited Hua Yi Jia (aka Huayijia) at 5616 7th Avenue in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, we selected three items that were intriguing in either name or content.

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Fried Eel with Lees

We’re assuming Fujianese cuisine is the order of the day because of the neighborhood and the presence of red wine lees in this dish. Wine lees are the sediment from fermenting and aging rice and red rice bran to make red glutinous wine, sort of the dregs. (But they’re not bitter dregs, Mr. Spock; they’re actually in-your-face umami brokers.) Look closely past that crispy coating on the pieces of fried eel and you’ll see the characteristic red color. Definitely tasty, but beware of tiny bones – it was worth taking a moment to establish an anatomically informed strategy for each piece.


Dried Mutton with Razor Clam

Served in a Japanese bowl, this soup was flavored with an abundance of rehydrated mutton and a paucity of razor clam. No matter, I’m sure it was the luck of the ladle and it was worth trying once.


Pot Edge

Of course we did. Turns out to be another Fujianese soup, so called because it’s made by pouring rice flour batter around the side of a wok to form a thin noodle which is then scraped into simmering broth enhanced with shredded greens.

Looking forward to my next visit!
 
 

Zheng Jin Ji

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Sometimes only an elaborate production with an extensive cast of dishes can appease your appetite – think dim sum. But there’s a lot to be said for a simple dialog on an uncluttered stage as well, if the players are exceptional.

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In the window of Zheng Jin Ji at 4915 8th Ave, Sunset Park, Brooklyn, I spotted a photo starring these two sesame seed studded buns that was sufficiently compelling for me to venture inside. It’s a modest venue where Fuzhou snacks and soups are in the spotlight; I’m guessing they do more take-out business than sit-down.

On the left, a Pickled Pork Sesame Bun with Preserved Vegetables, a Guhuai Sesame Bamboo Shoot Bun on the right. They’re prepared in advance, deep fried to order, and they were an undisputed hit: spot-on seasoning, a study in contrasting textures, and definitely worth more than the price of admission ($5.50 for the pair).

So Bravo to the folks at Zheng Jin Ji for an enlightening performance that day. Take a bao!

(I know. I went a long way for that one.)
 
 

Banh Bot Loc

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These eye-catching tidbits are Vietnamese Bánh Bột Lọc Gói Lá Chuôi; like most Asian dumplings, they’re at home as an appetizer or a snack.

Filled with shrimp and pork belly, they’re prepared by steaming or boiling and they come in two variants: the filling for Bánh Bột Lọc Gói Lá Chuôi is covered in a translucent tapioca starch batter and wrapped in a banana leaf prior to steaming; Bánh Bột Lọc Tran calls for a firmer dough and doesn’t require a shrouding leaf. (Sort of like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before they sampled the forbidden fruit. But I digress.)

Their texture is noteworthy: they’re chewy from the tapioca and crispy because the shrimp are still dressed in their shells – but don’t be put off by that: the shrimp are small so the shells are thin.


Revealing closeup.

This batch came from Bánh Mì Cô Út at 83 Elizabeth St in Manhattan’s Chinatown.
 
 

Ekmek Kataifi

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You’ll see it as Εκμέκ Καταΐφι in Greek circles and Ekmek Kadayıfı in Turkish.

The Greek version (shown here) starts with a layer of crispy baked shredded dough that’s saturated in sweet syrup then topped with rich, dense custard and crowned with kaymak (clotted cream) or whipped cream and a scattering of chopped nuts.

In Turkey, the base is bread pudding (ekmek means bread in Turkish) soaked in syrup and finished off with kaimak.

This irresistible indulgence came from Greek Bakaliko, 7615 5th Ave, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and yes, it’s one of the stops on my Flavors of Little Levant and Little Yemen ethnojunket.

You know you wanna.
 
 

Chinese New Year 4721 (2023)

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(Click on any image to view it in high resolution.)The two-week long Chinese celebration of the Lunar New Year begins on Sunday – it’s 4721, the Year of the Rabbit. The Rabbit is known for a myriad of characteristics depending upon where you do your research: it symbolizes elegance, beauty, gentleness, alertness, kindness, patience, longevity, positivity, cautiousness, cleverness, and speed to name but a few, but when I read that the rabbit is known to be the luckiest of the twelve animals in the Chinese zodiac I decided to stop there because if we need anything right now, it’s got to be luck.

One of the traditions that make this holiday so extraordinary is the way in which wordplay and homophones factor into the selection of traditional foods specially prepared to mark the occasion. For example, at festive gatherings a whole fish will be served, because the word for fish (yu) is a homophone for surpluses.

Since I haven’t made this year’s celebratory feast yet, here’s photo of last year’s whole steamed fish stuffed with ginger and scallions and bedecked with even more julienned fresh ginger, scallions, chives, and cilantro for the centerpiece. Accompanying the star of the show were snow peas and black mushrooms in black bean sauce, and char siu fried rice (homemade char siu, to be sure) all featuring a host of traditional ingredients.

And speaking of being lucky, there was a time a few zodiac signs ago that it looked like my Lunar New Year luck had run out in terms of another one of its traditional foods. It was a mystery involving a particular nian gao (the traditional sweet rice cake and a homophone for high year) that resonates to this day.

Want to know what happened? Please read my tradition-packed short story, “The Case of the Uncrackable Case!”

🧧🧧🧧🧧🧧🧧🧧🧧
新年快乐! Xīnnián kuàilè!
恭喜发财! Gong hei fat choy!
🧧🧧🧧🧧🧧🧧🧧🧧
 
 

Christmas 2022

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(Or, Better Late Than Never)

Served on time, posted after the fact. (That’s why it’s called “post”. Work with me here.)

Christmas usually rocks a classical Italian accent in my digs, so here are a duo of traditions, homemade of course, that graced this year’s table.

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Insalata di Frutti di Mare (aka Insalata di Mare): The quartet of shrimp, calamari (squid), polipetti (baby octopus), and scungilli (conch) – which tally four fishes for those of you who keep score – plus various veggies for crunch and zest is augmented by a harmonizing dressing of EVOO, lemon juice, and herbs.


An improvisation the first time I made it, it’s now an evergreen at our holiday table. I composed it as a means of gathering some of my favorite umami bombs in concert. The three-part invention features a trio of pasta filata (stretched curd) cheeses: smoked mozzarella, scamorza, and provolone, accompanied by sun dried tomatoes, agrodolce red peppers, fresh basil and mini tomatoes; it’s marinated in EVOO, balsamic vinegar, garlic, oregano, red pepper flakes, and fennel pollen and has become one of the key players in our Yuletide repertoire.

And the name of this Christmas homage to fromage? Praise Cheeses! (Of course. 😉)
 
 

Kutia

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Christmas is right around the corner. Eastern Orthodox Christmas, that is.

I was introduced to kutya (кутя) over 10 years ago in a Russian food market in Brooklyn’s Little Odessa where I now offer food tours; it’s a sweet story and you can read it here.

These days, there are few fully Russian markets to be found in that neighborhood, having been superseded by Ukrainian, Uzbek, Uyghur, generally Eastern European and even Turkish establishments. The aforementioned market is long gone and the availability of grab-and-go kutya has vanished along with it.

Needless to say, a little thing like that doesn’t stop me; now I make my own at home. I researched a bunch of Ukrainian recipes for kutia (the more accepted Ukrainian transliteration) and came up with my own spin on the dish. Best described as a porridge, it’s sweet from honey and raisins, chewy from wheat berries, crunchy from nuts, and distinctive and delectable from the poppy seeds; the wheat berries symbolize immortality and hope, the honey and poppy seeds represent happiness, tranquility, and success. It’s an indispensable dish for the family’s feast on Eastern Orthodox Christmas Eve throughout Russia and Eastern Europe.

In addition to wheat berries, poppy seeds, raisins and honey, my rendition includes toasted almonds (although walnuts are customary) and dried apricots. Kutia can be eaten warm or at room temperature and is now one of my must-haves for the holiday season. All that’s lacking is a proper beautiful Ukrainian serving dish, but this one (Federal green Depression glass) was my grandmother’s and it will do.

And as always, heartfelt prayers for safety and peace go out to my friend Olya in Ukraine, my inspiration for creating this recipe.