Early Inspirations; Cooking as Love Poetry

My life as a cook commenced at the age of twenty-one, on a curb in Florence. It was a warm afternoon in early April and I had just discovered an open-air creperie on one of the hidden streets around the San Lorenzo market. Poking my head under the blue awning, I ordered a crepe with Belgian chocolate. A greasy, good-looking woman with a full mouth poured the batter onto a cooking stone, spread the batter thin with her spatula, and flipped the crepe onto another stone. Fluid in her movements, she barely paid attention as she spread the chocolate on the crepe, as the butter sizzled and melted on the stone.

I paid for the crepe and sat on the curb where a line of students were laughing and waiting. I took a bite. Suddenly, powerfully, I was stirred. I took another bite, a wide mouthed chomp of pure boldness. Chocolate oozed onto my lips. The crepe was delicious, perhaps the most delicious crepe in Florence—no, in the world! I looked at the greasy crepe lady. She certainly was good-looking. Suddenly, I felt an inexplicable urge: I wanted to make my own crepe. And I knew only this: it must be the most delicious crepe in the world.

I'm still working on it. Ten years later, I have yet to reproduce the most delicious crepe in the world. But the pursuit has inspired me. I just can't shake the indomitable bug that bit me that afternoon: the desire to create food.

That afternoon, I walked back to my pensioni, burdened with flour, fresh eggs, and a handful of chocolate chips. I spent several hours in the kitchen, trying to create, or rather re-create, the perfect crepe. Of course, I failed. And yet I did not suffer the sorrow of my failure. Later, lying in my bed, stuffed with batter and chocolate, I felt absolutely happy: I had spent the afternoon immersed in a creative venture, and the experience had vivified me.

This is the joy of cooking: the creative venture. I'm a writer. I'm also a cook. Both are forms of creative expression. Often, to me, cooking is the most powerful form of creative expression—an expression of love for those you cook for. When you mix the batter for a crepe, you are really writing a love poem.

***

You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone

and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.

~Pablo Neruda, on onions

***

Naturally, I spent the rest of my days in Florence exploring my new passion. In the morning, I walked to the Mercato Centrale, bought fresh produce from the Tuscan countryside. Later, I made my back to the pensioni, stopping at the local market for flour, olive oil, eggs. I was learning to make fresh pasta and other Tuscan specialties: minestrone di fagioli, ribollita, fresh pasta. I shared the food with the people at the pensioni, mostly students from Europe and South America. Everyone seemed to love the food, but more than once someone asked: What is this?

The question was valid. I was making traditional Tuscan recipes, but I was not making them traditionally. In place of semolina flour in the pasta dough I was using whole wheat; and yes, that was tempeh in the marinara sauce, not beef.

It’s a habit from my early childhood days that’s still with me. I’m staunch health-food enthusiast. By the time I had gone to Italy I had already experienced a lifetime of brown rice, of Moosewood recipes, of organic broccoli and honey-flavored sweets. My mother raised me with a special attention to my diet; she also sent me to a school that favored whole food cooking, the Waldorf School. I lost touch with this impulse throughout my teenage years. But when I was twenty, in college, and in the midst a dismal semester eating in the student cafeteria, I came across a surprising fact in the cafeteria kitchen: a box of hamburger patties stamped with the following label, Grade F, But Edible.

I soon discovered a desire for healthy cooking.

And so when I cooked in Italy they asked: What is this?

And yes, the question has followed me, from Florence to Philadelphia, from Philadelphia to Paris, from Paris to Barcelona, from Barcelona back to Philadelphia: What is this?

Variously, I answer: chickpea flour; spelt berries; risotto with lima beans; brown rice paella; tempeh Rueben sandwiches. The names spill out of my mouth like a foreign language, and yet the food always receives raves reviews. And this is what I have learned: people love good-tasting food, period—no matter what the ingredients. My philosophy then is simple. Why not make the ingredients as fresh, as uncomplicated and as healthy as possible?

This philosophy dominates my cooking style to this very day. What I have learned traveling across Europe, cooking abroad and at home, is that almost all traditional cuisines share this fundamental goal: to nurture the body and soul, simply.

In America, this lesson seems to have been lost. And yet, it only takes one tasty, nourishing meal to remind us that food is integral to our existence, in the most profound ways. A knowledge and respect of healthful ingredients seems essential for the modern cook. Since leaving Florence, nearly seven years ago my cooking style and diet has often veered into disparate territories—macrobiotics, veganism, an entire summer devoted to fish, a winter devoted to goat cheese—in pursuit of the perfect way to eat. But I have learned that there is no perfect way to eat, just as there is no perfect crepe. What is important is the joy of eating, the love of good food.

Red Lentil and Sweet Potato Hummus

This is a typical, What is this? sort of dish. I originally developed it for Whole Foods Market. If you make it, you can rate the recipe here.

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion chopped
1 medium sweet potato, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon paprika
3 ½ cups water
1 ½ cup lentils
¼ cup white miso
¼ cup lemon juice
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

For garnish:

Extra virgin olive oil
Freshly chopped cilantro

In a large saucepan over medium-high heat warm the oil. Add the onion and sauté, stirring occasionally, until onion softens 5-7 minutes.

Add the garlic, sweet potato, cumin and paprika and sauté 1-2 minutes. Add water and lentils, bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer until lentils and sweet potatoes are soft, 16-18 minutes. Let cool.

In a blender or food processor, puree red lentil-sweet potato mixture with white miso, lemon juice and 1 teaspoon salt. Season to taste with additional salt and freshly ground pepper.

Serve, in a bowl, with Pita bread, for dipping, drizzled with additional olive oil and, if desired, chopped cilantro.

A Winter Menu

Winter, I think, is the best time to cook. Outside, it’s cold and dark. But inside, the kitchen is warm and full of light. I look out the window and think: What monster is out there, hiding? An owl hoots. I might mistake it for a freaky creature, wavering in the shadows. But inside, there's only my wife drinking wine, warmed, illumined.

I look at her. I smile. Clearly, she's no monster.

In winter, food navigates the evening; a good meal lights the way--to good conversation and laughter. I cook, I eat, and I feel somehow brightened.

Funny, though, winter food leads you elsewhere too: into dark, wild realms.

I'm thinking of the moment I step into the kitchen to steal more wine. I've just shared a soul-satisfying meal with my wife--a roasted chicken, perhaps. I come back and the dining room's suddenly dark. There's my wife, waiting, suddenly naked. Clearly, she's feeling inspired. It's the food, the wine. Clearly, she's a monster.

Winter food does this too--it inspires the uncomplicated urge to make love.

In his novel, A Debt to Pleasure, John Lanchester writes:

"It is a common fallacy to assume that winter food should partake of the obvious associations evoked by winter: large viscid stews, unspillably thick soups, colossal puddings. One wants to be warmed, true, but one also wants to be reminded of better times; to feel the onset of dawn in the darkest hour that immediately precedes it."

This winter menu is intended to give a sense of warmth and light, even as it hints elsewhere, to secret, dark places.

I suggest serving the meal with a lightly cooked green vegetable (check out my recipe for Pan-Seared Summer Squash…)

Sweet Potato and Fennel Soup with Saffron

I've adapted this recipe from The Artful Vegan, a mostly inaccessible cookbook with a few stellar recipes. This is a model soup for Valentine's Day. It includes a few heady aphrodisiacs: smoky, sweat inspiring chipotle; expensive, potent saffron; virile, pungent garlic; and two alcohols, dry white wine and Pernod...

12 whole garlic cloves
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 yellow onion, diced
Sea salt
1 teaspoon ground chipotle chile
1 teaspoon sugar
1/3 teaspoon saffron threads, soaked in 1 tablespoons warm water
1 cup dry white wine (Sauvignon Blanc is a good choice)
1 large sweet potato, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch dice
2 fennel bulbs, cut into 1/2 inch dice
1/4 Arborio rice
1 tablespoon tomato paste
7 cups fresh vegetable stock
1 tablespoon Balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoon Pernod
Fresh ground pepper

Place the garlic cloves in a dry sauté pan over high heat. Dry-toast until each clove is charred, about 3-4 minutes. Remove from the heat.

In a soup pot, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and a pinch of salt, and sauté until translucent, 5-7 minutes. Add the chipotle chile, sugar, and charred garlic. Sauté for 2 minutes. Add the saffron and its soaking liquid. Add the white wine and stir to scrape up the browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Add the sweet potato, fennel, rice, 1 teaspoon salt, tomato paste, and stock. Decrease the heat to medium-low. Cover and simmer for 40 minutes, or until the fennel is soft.

Puree in a blender.

Add the Balsamic and Pernod. Add salt and fresh ground pepper to taste.

Serves 6-8

It takes more than four thousand manually harvested stigmas to provide a single ounce of saffron--the world's most expensive spice

Rack of Lamb

Rack of lamb is emblematic of the perfect winter dish: it is intensely warming, deep and satisfying, but it also hints towards a lighter time, to the Paschal lamb of spring. Rack of lamb is also wildly inspiring. I for one cannot eat rack of lamb without feeling charged, full of demonic lust. Lamb is often served with a dipping sauce. I prefer a small bowl of olive oil, mixed with a few aromatics.

2 (8 or 9 rib) racks of lamb, rib bones French trimmed
Salt and fresh ground black pepper
2 teaspoons olive oil

Dipping Oil:

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons fresh lemon zest
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
4 teaspoons fresh parsley, chopped
Sea Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Season the lamb generously with salt and pepper to taste. Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed 12-inch skillet over high heat until shimmering. Place the racks of lamb in the skillet, meat-side down in the center of the pan, with the ribs facing outward. Cook until well browned, about 4 minutes. Using tongs, stand the racks up in the skillet, leaning them up against each other to brown the bottoms; cook until the bottoms have browned, about 2 minutes longer.

Transfer the pan to the oven.

Roast until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center of each rack registers about 120 degrees for medium-rare or 130 degrees for medium, 12 to 15 minutes, depending on the size of the rack.

Remove the racks from the oven, cover the meat loosely with foil, and let rest about 10 minutes.

Make the dipping oil. In a small bowl combine olive oil, lemon zest, balsamic vinegar, parsley, and a pinch of salt and fresh ground pepper.

Carve the rack, slicing between the ribs into individual chops.

Serves 2 awesome people, or 4 wimps.


Roasted Red Potatoes with Olive Oil & Fresh Herbs

Like the lamb this dish too points towards a better time. Fresh herbs and lemon zest brighten the potatoes, even as they intensify the flavor of the olive oil...

1 ½ lb small red creamer potatoes
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided
2 tablespoons fresh herbs—basil, thyme, and/or marjoram
1 teaspoon lemon zest
Sea Salt, fresh ground pepper

Preheat oven to 425°F.

Cover potatoes with salted cold water by 1 inch in a 6-quart pot, then simmer, uncovered, until just tender, 6-8 minutes.

Slice potatoes in half. Toss potatoes with 1 tablespoon olive oil and a few pinches salt in a bowl. Spread potatoes in 1 layer in a large roasting pan, skin side up, and roast in middle of oven, turning once, until golden, about 20-25 minutes. Toss with remaining tablespoon olive oil, herbs, sea salt, lemon zest, and fresh pepper to taste.

A spring in autumn

Last week I was ill. It was the flu. I spent four days in bed, rising only in the late afternoon to go to work, which I probably shouldn’t have done. I wear my great sense of responsibility around my neck like a anchor. Though sometimes I have the feeling that I am still not sure to what or to whom.

Andrés was in Valencia and I was on my own. I stared at the pillowcase. I sipped broth. I blew my nose. I drank juice. I cried. I felt alone. I sweated. I had the chills. I slept and slept.

On Friday I woke up after a 12-hour sleep. I felt better than I had in days. I leapt from my bed. I put on I’m walking on sunshine by Katrina and the Waves. I threw open the bedroom window, stripped the bed of its sickly sheets and let the autumn sunshine do the rest. I danced and made soup. After a couple of hours of prancing about I felt weak. I went back to bed. I had the chills. I cursed viruses everywhere. I wondered: Why me?

Being sick makes me feel the opposite of alive. It makes me feel sad. Sad is the opposite of alive.

I was depressed; I always am when I’m sick. There is nothing as depressing as flu. The flu is our deepest weaknesses incarnate.

Yet there in my feverish reverie I made a startling discovery. I felt something stir within me. Then there was an image, a vivid one, and its message was clear: it’s time to carve pumpkins.

My Friday morning rise and fall represented only a minor setback. By Saturday I was still weak. And about 4 pounds thinner. But I was determined. Not wanting to overdo it, I avoided over stimulation. I put on the Cure and gently bopped. I cleaned the bathroom. This routine act filled me with life and purpose. After so many days shut up in bed I was finally doing something that felt worthwhile. I have never felt so fulfilled. At least that’s what I felt at the time.

I went to the market. The walk and crisp fall air invigorated me and awoke my slumbering muscles.

Pumpkins aren’t a big thing in Barcelona. But I remembered having seen some at one of the stalls in Sant Antoni market. I bought two. A big one and a little one. I brought them home.

I had never carved a pumpkin before. I had so many questions. How do I keep the lid from falling in? How much pulp needs to be scraped out? Will the candle show? How many seeds can I expect? Are they as orange inside as I imagine? Is it hard to make the teeth? The BBC has a great website on jack-o-lantern making that cleared it all right up. I recommend checking it out the first time you carve a pumpkin.

I carved the pumpkins. The big one turned out to be a loveable brute. The small one’s mean. Why is it that the small ones are so often mean?

my pumpkins

From the pumpkins I got seeds. Toasted ones. I like leaving a bit of the pulp with the seeds. I sprinkled some with cumin and they went fast. I also made a loaf of pumpkin bread with a recipe I found on Internet. I had to make some minor adjustments. We had it for breakfast three days in a row.

My pumpkining filled me with great satisfaction. Despite my faltering immune system, I felt strong. Despite my sniffles and runny nose, I felt vibrant. Despite my lingering depression, I felt alive.

On Monday afternoon, I was heading to work. I still looked like shit, like I had the flu. I saw my neighbors. I sometimes see them in their kitchen window when I look through my kitchen window. Or I see them hanging the wash when I’m hanging the wash. On Monday I saw them downstairs. They looked as though they were going away on a trip of some kind. They had two overnight bags, a big basket, two large potted plants and three big bouquets of flowers.

Are you going away on some kind of trip, I asked.

We’re going to visit my parents, she answered. Pobretes. They’re buried in my hometown.

Of course, I said. November 1st. The Day of the Dead. It’s a nice tradition. (I meant this. I do think it’s a nice tradition. People picnic by the graves of their loved ones.)

No sirve de mucho, but we do it anyway.

Ya, I answered.

But I didn’t mean this. I didn’t agree that there was not much point in having a picnic on the graves of their loved ones. But I said Ya anyway because it seemed like the polite thing to do. I could have asked why they were doing it if they thought there was no point. I could have defended their tradition of picnicking with the dead as a beautiful commemoration. I could have shouted But you’re alive! I could have pointed out that she didn't have the flu.

Autumn is my favorite season. That is why I decided to carve pumpkins. Not for fall’s sake, but for mine. In celebration of my waning flu. I plan on doing it every year. It brought me back.

On November 1st, the Day of the Dead, I stayed home in my pjs. Still not fully recovered, I rested. I padded around the flat in my slippers, flopping on the sofa to read, organizing pictures, admiring my pumpkins, even though you could see the candle in the little one. I made a pumpkin risotto in honor of the season. And I made panellets for all those visiting their loved ones in cemeteries. On the 31st of October, All Hallow’s Eve, Catalan families come together for the castanyada. They roast chestnuts and sweet potatoes. They eat panellets and drink moscatel. They often take the leftovers to the cemetery the next day.

I plan on making panellets every year as well in commemoration of this spring.

Panellets

als meus panellets

180 g sweet potato

300 g ground almond
240 g sugar
grated lemon rind (about 1/2 a lemon)
egg

80 g pine nuts

100 g almond, crushed

Boil or bake sweet potato with the skin still on. Once they are soft, drain, peel and mash while they are still warm. Let mashed sweet potato cool completely.

Add the sugar, crushed almond and lemon rind. Mix with a fork.

Roll the mixture into small balls. Dip the balls in egg white and cover them in pine nuts or crushed almond.

The recipe yields about a dozen or so of each. Place panellets on a butter baking sheet. Cook at a high temperature for 8-10 minutes.

Risky Behavior

My home kitchen is tight. There's barely enough room for me, let another another cook. Still, I love cooking with others in my tight kitchen. At my best, I groove around others, slinking my way to the sink and back to the stove in a swift, graceful dance. On the actual dance floor, I'm a disaster. In the kitchen, I'm an evil Baryshnikov.

This is how Anthony Bourdain describes the kitchen dance: "If you're a saute man, your grill man is your dance partner, and chances are, you're spending the majority of your time working in a hot, uncomfortable confined, submarine-like space with him. You're both working around open-flame, boiling liquids, and plenty of blunt objects at close hand--and you both carry knives, lots of knives. So you had better get along."

I've pretty much loved every bastard I've worked with in the kitchen. I'd better, because I'm no fighter. I don't stab. A lot of guys I've worked with in professional kitchens were stabbers. I'm talking about the kind of guys who actually like to stab things and people. I remember John, a saute man, who stabbed his own pinkie clean off in the middle of a busy, Friday afternoon lunch shift. He bled profusely. He was pale, clearly freaked. I scooped up the bit of pinkie and rushed him to the hospital. On the way into the hospital, he stopped.

Do you think I have time to bust a smoke? he said.

So we stood there as John, losing blood, smoked.

I love that guy. I love the sense of chaos and criminality he brought to the kitchen. He was back at work that night, his pinkie bandaged, working the line.

The home kitchen, of course, is more calm. That's why I do everything I can to increase the sense of chaos. Perhaps this is why I don't get along with my wife in the kitchen. She's a measured cook, precise and willing. She creates beautiful, loving dishes, full of tenderness. When I'm not involved at all, she creates transcendent risotto, immaculate roast chicken, the best beef burgundy. I, however, mess with her mojo. If I'm around, things fall apart. I'm her terror.

I'm the type of cook who likes to fuck with people and food. Sure, I put love into my cooking; it's just that my love expresses itself in risk. I like smoke. I love fire. Blood turns me on. I love cranking the music up really high, darting back and forth, sweating, cursing, spitting, and getting naked, if it's hot enough. Mostly, I love when I take a piece of food, compare it to a body part, and then do offensive things with it.

And still, it all ends up tasty.

This past Friday, my kitchen buddy Mikey came over.

Mikey also revels in chaos. Mikey brought over Rodrigo y Gabriela: we pumped it up and danced. We were cooking for my wife and my buddy, JJ. It was a festive night. The celebration was simple: we celebrated food and each other. Mikey made quinoa chowder, slow-cooked baked beans, and Cajun cat-fish. I made an epic sweeta potato mash and BBQ chicken on the grill (with homemade BBQ sauce.)

The entire night I was evilly waiting to cook the catfish. I knew the catfish would destroy us. And it did. Mikey threw it in a cast-iron pan and the kitchen, the apartment, hell, the entire town, filled with noxious smoke. We coughed and sneezed and complained. Mikey just stood right over the pan, as if his own dying demanded his full attention.

Within minutes, he was utterly destroyed.

The meal was outstanding. Everyone loved everything, except the chicken. I willfully undercooked it. The others refused to eat the chicken, but I ate it, with absolute braggadocio, as if I were tempting the gods to obliterate me.

I ate two chicken legs--the center of both, a bit pale, teasing opulent rawness. To me, chicken legs tastes best just at 160 degrees--the center might be a bit undercooked, but the rest is a sort of divine specialty. It's the best chicken will ever taste. Also, it does strange things to you. I ate it and felt virile, alive, vampiric.

Epic Sweeta Potato Mash with Coconut Milk

Mikey uses the word "epic" a lot. If something defies expectation it is epic. He also uses the word "ridick" (as in ridiculous.) These sweet potatoes could also be considered ridick.

And oh, by the way, "Sweeta" is how my acupuncturist refers to sweet potatoes. She's a brilliant, caring lady from China. She tells me, "No more sweeta potato!" I'm not sure why.


4 medium sweeta potatoes, washed
1/4 cup coconut milk (full fat is best)
1 teaspoon sea salt
Fresh ground black pepper

Adjust an oven rack to the center position. Preheat oven to 4oo degrees. Arrange sweet potatoes on a foil-lined baking sheet.

Bake until a knife tip slides easily into the flesh, 60-70 minutes. (Sometimes, sweet potatoes can take up to 90 minutes or more to cook, depending on the size.)

Meanwhile, warm the coconut milk in a medium saucepan over low heat. Season the coconut milk with sea salt and black pepper to taste.

When sweet potatoes are cool, slip the skins off and place into saucepan with coconut milk. Mash the sweet potatoes in the saucepan. Season with extra salt and pepper.

Alternately, for an exquisitely creamy texture, pass the sweet potatoes through the holes of a food mill directly into the coconut milk and mash.

Serves 4-6