Greetings from Périgueux

Greetings from Périgueux, France, where I've been working for the past week as a French teacher and assistant for a summer opera program. The work has been intense. Too intense. And, to be honest, I'm more than a bit grumpy about the situation. Today was the first time I had enough time to take longer than a half-hour break in the day to explore the town. I took advantage of the rare chunk of free time to check out the medieval city where there is a gorgeous Saturday market full of delicious regional specialties. The Périgord region is known for truffles, duck, goose, foie gras, and all kind of other potted meats, as well as Bergerac wine (not my favorite, I must admit). But I can't complain about the wine in a city where you can get a platter with foie gras toast, rillette toast, jambon de pays, and salad, along with a decent glass of local wine, for only 14 Euros total!

I'm too busy and exhausted to write more but I do have some photos from my wanderings this afternoon that I'd like to share.

Enjoy and look forward to a post about potted meats.

Spice meme

I just had to share this mashup meme of Dune and Pfizer-style-stock-photography-drug-ads. Her expression is just perfect.

Bright, Fragrant, Dreamy

It has been a while, little blog. I've missed you. So much has happened since my last post: I hosted some fantastic but sadly undocumented dinner parties for visiting scholars; I finally finished my book manuscript after a three year struggle; I landed a gig teaching French to opera singers in Périgueux, Dordogne region (yay, France!), this summer –– so expect to see some French food posts in July; I made a huge batch of loquat jam from the tree in our yard; Chris and I will be moving, menagerie in tow, from East to North Austin in three weeks' time; my mother gave me some fantastic cookbooks for Christmas, including dreamy Mourad Lahlou's New Moroccan and the classic Spanish cookbook, 1080 Recipes, by Simone and Inés Ortega, described by some as Spain's Joy of Cooking.

The bright-fragrant-dreamy triptych represents my newest food obsessions, although of course all of my abiding fixations (curries, chutnies, salsas, sweet/savory pairings) continue to inform my cooking.

Bright

Fragrant

Dreamy

Doesn't Mourad Lahlou look just cuddly? He's so cuddly he can't help but cuddle himself in this photo.

To Cut The Risk Of A High-Fat Meal, Add Spice

Check out this recent NPR feature on Penn Sate researcher Sheila West's study of the effects of spices on triglyceride levels, a known factor linked to heart disease, and remember, let the spice flow and the blood will flow more freely:

To me, the biggest advantage [found in the study] is the lowering of triglycerides and the insulin levels [which dropped about 20 percent]," explains cardiologist Ravi Dave of he University of California, Los Angeles who has reviewed West's spice research study. He explains that keeping these levels low can lower the risk of metabolic syndrome — as well as diabetes and heart disease.

Happy Thanksgiving. May it flow with spice!

Apple pie with mounds of fresh ground cinnamon and grandma's classic lard-vinegar crust. Pumpkin pie with fresh grated ginger and intense Jamaican allspice.

Avocado leaf salsa & creamy jalapeño garlic salsa

As promised, I have continued to experiment with the avocado leaves bought at Fiesta Mart last week. Pictured on the left is the avocado leaf salsa from Bajío I mentioned in my previous post. I found a recipe on Inside Mexico, which is full of problems, but gave me a good starting point for integrating the wonderfully anise-y notes of avocado leaf into a salsa. To begin with, the recipe calls for blending tomatillos, garlic, and a roasted avocado leaf without cooking the tomatillos beforehand. Pretty much impossible given the almost styrofoam-like texture of uncooked tomatillos. So I boiled them until soft, figuring that this is supposed to be a delicate salsa that might be ruined by the charred flavor of comal roasted ingredients. Two other problems: the scale of the recipe seems unnecessarily small to my mind and the flavor of the avocado leaf did not come through, so I fixed it. The final product was wonderful, fruity and lightly perfumed, with the subtle heat of the serrano chiles in the background. Recipe below. It's a good salsa for chips, but I think it would also be delicious with most white fish and with chicken, and probably with a good pork tenderloin as well.

On other fronts, the infused vodka experimentation has not been terribly successful. Avocado leaf infused vodka, on its own, lacks body. I tried it with carrot, thinking the sweetness of the carrot would add an interesting base note, but it tasted slightly wrong. My friend Neville suggested infusing it with figs, which I think is probably the solution. I will report the results as soon as I get my hands on some good figs. My other experiment, avocado-fruit infused vodka, was more successful. An absolutely unmistakable avocado flavor with a lightly creamy texture from the avocado fat. But I need to work on finding a way to prevent it from browning without denaturing the avocado flavor too much. I thought of adding a little bit of agave nectar and lime juice, which should cancel each other out acidity-wise, and hopefully enhance (not distract from) the avocado flavor. More on that soon!

Serrano chile and avocado leaf salsa

2 avocado leaves
4 serrano chiles, with seeds and veins removed
2 cloves garlic
15–20 tomatillos
2 Tbs vegetable oil
1/2 cup of finely chopped onion

Salt to taste

Boil the tomatillos in a pot of salted boiling water for three to five minutes. Blend one of the avocado leaves (roasted lightly on a comal for just a few seconds) along with the serranos, garlic and tomatillos in a blender until completely homogenous. Heat the vegetable oil in a sauce pan and add the second avocado leaf to the oil, followed quickly with the tomatillo mixture. Fry for 10 minutes. Remove the salsa from the stove, add the chopped onions and salt to taste. Cool and make sure to remove the avocado leaf as you would a bay leaf before serving.

If you don't have access to Fiesta Mart, you can buy avocado leaves online here and here. Don't try to pluck them from your garden. This is a variety of avocado only grown in Central America. Apparently the leaves from the California-grown varieties are (ever so) slightly toxic.

Creamy jalapeño salsa (pictured on the right)
This recipe represents a first attempt to duplicate the Doña salsa from Taco Deli, a local Austin favorite. Fairly successful on the whole but not as spicy as Taco Deli's version.

15+ jalapeños
1 bulb of garlic
1 T lime juice (or vinegar) + 1 T water
1 cup (or more) corn oil
salt to taste

Roast the jalapeños and all the cloves from one bulb of garlic on the comal. "Sweat" the jalapeños in a closed paper bag or ziplock baggie for ten minutes or so. Peel and remove the seeds and veins from the roasted jalapeños. Peel the garlic once it's cooled down enough to do so. Place all ingredients, except for the oil and salt, into a blender and blend until perfectly homogenous. Add more water if necessary to ensure a homogenous mixture. Then, as though you were making a mayonnaise or vinaigrette, add the oil very slowly while the blender is still running. Continue adding the oil until the mixture becomes creamy and thick to your liking. If the emulsion seems unstable you can cheat by adding a teaspoon (or less) of mayonnaise to stabilize it. Salt to taste.

Today's lunch featured both salsas: papas con chorizo, grilled Elgin sausage, migas, and homemade flour tortillas. About as Texan as it gets.

Avocado leaves / hojas de aguacate

Ok, not the best photo in the world but I must share. The pictured leaves, which look like they might be giant bay leaves, are actually avocado leaves. It's the first of hopefully many experiments with this exciting––and completely new to me––ingredient. Because the Day of the Dead was yesterday, an occasion during which people here prepare (among other things) tamales, mole, atole, coffee, tequila, and pan de muertos, Fiesta Mart started selling some of the harder-to-acquire ingredients that go into central Mexican moles and tamales, avocado leaves being one of them. They have a sharp anise-like aroma, somewhat like hoja santa, with a slightly bitter bay leaf-like substratum. I have read that Oaxacans oven roast lamb on a bed of avocado leaves, which, now that I've tasted this intense ingredient, I am certain is an exquisite lamb preparation. The above photo is a basic pot roast prepared with avocado leaves, cloves, and Tellicherry pepper as seasoning. Not pretty but a resounding success in the flavor department. Next, I'd like to try to duplicate a salsa from the menu of El Bajío, one of my favorite brunch spots in Mexico City, made with roasted avocado leaves, serrano chiles, and tomatillo. I'm also thinking I'll do a carrot and avocado leaf infused vodka, and perhaps an avocado fruit and avocado leaf infused vodka as well. The possibilities are endless. Happy Day of the Dead, y'all!

The Dog's Breakfast

What better way to get your spice fix than through infused spirits? Especially during the holiday season. I still haven't figured out what to make this year but perhaps I will steal a recipe from my new favorite food blog, The Dog's Breakfast. These two Montrealers write and design beautifully. I burn with envy at their gorgeous page layouts and crisp appetizing photography. Better yet, their posts often feature spices from my favorite spice purveyor in the world, the Montreal-based Épices de Cru. Their infused vodka includes a blend of bird's eye chiles (a close relative of the Peri Peri), red Kampot pepper, red Szechuan pepper, and dried orange peel. The kind of vodka you could drink straight [chilled] to appreciate the intermingling of flavors. What are some of your favorite ways to infuse spirits?

Also, while I'm gushing about The Dog's Breakfast, check out this fantastic interview they did with Ethné and Philippe de Vienne.

Spice cake three times sweet with bourbon soaked raisins

You may have noticed. One of my favorite ways to eat spice is in sweets and baked goods. When it became fashionable to add chile to chocolate à la mode aztèque (and, soon thereafter, to all kinds of chocolate desserts), I jumped right on that bandwagon, and have remained on it ever since. Three of my very favorite desserts on this planet are spice cake, mince pie, and triple ginger cookies with white chocolate chips. Years ago, when I worked as a line cook for the B&O Bakery in Seattle, one of the bakers there made a garam masala spice cake with caramelized pears and chocolate ganache. I could have gone without the ganache, but the earthy perfume-y notes of the garam masala in contrast with the caramelized pears was a revelation I could not turn back from. I like my candy spicy too. Just a few months before creating this blog I made a pumpkin seed brittle with sea salt and pequin chile powder that became a quick household addiction. [I will reduplicate it for another seasonally-appropriate entry, soon].

This cake was the product of last-minute improvisation. Last night was the annual, obligatory, French and Italian department party, an occasion I always dread and always end up enjoying despite myself. I only read the invitation a few hours before the party and realized it was a potluck-style event. It seemed a nice occasion for a cake. I love showing up to parties with a cake. I mean, who makes cakes these days, anyhow? So it was decided. The only problem was, I only had 1/3 cup of sugar left in my pantry, not nearly enough to make a whole cake. Right next to it, though, I had a bottle of strong blackstrap molasses and a container of raw local honey my mom sent from Seattle. So it was decided; I would make the cake with sugar, molasses, and honey. Those three sweeteners together, with the inclusion of freshly ground cinnamon, Tellicherry black pepper, and clove––and brought just over the top with a layer of bourbon soaked raisins––filled my house with the most intoxicating smell that has ever emanated from my oven. The flavor and texture were great as well, and I received a ton of compliments at the party, but my memory of the cake is fixated almost exclusively on that smell. It smelled like everything I love: butter, caramel, spices, and bourbon. Taste-wise, the cake is not too sweet, pleasantly moist, and has just enough of a kick from the black pepper to make you wonder, "what spice is this?", but not so much that it tastes like a pepper mill. If you want to make a sweeter version, I might warm some honey, poke the cake with toothpick holes after it's been out of the oven for 10 minutes or so, and glaze it (no, soak it!) with the warm honey. 

A week of meat

After a summer of semi-vegetarianism (which, in my household, means eating mostly veggies at home and meat at restaurants and dinner parties), and after eating a delicious stuffed pork tenderloin prepared by my friend Neville, and after learning that HEB now sells ground lamb in their regular meat section, I have declared this not-yet-autumnal last week of September, the week of meat! Allow me to share some photos.

The original inspiration for the week of meet. Neville's pork tenderloin stuffed with kale and pork sausage, wrapped in prosciutto and braised in a mixture of arak and apple cider, rosemary and fall apples. Phenomenal!

Curry saves lives

Perhaps you've read the headlines?

Scientists have begun to study the properties of turmeric and have found it has anti-inflammatory properties that may offer new treatment possibilities for tendinitis (see the article here) and, even better, turmeric activates a cancer-killing mechanism in human saliva (see the article here) and may help boost treatments for people suffering head and neck malignancies. Marilene Wang, from UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, the senior author of the study, explains:

"This study shows that curcumin can work in the mouths of patients with head and neck malignancies and reduce activities that promote cancer growth," Wang said. "And it not only affected the cancer by inhibiting a critical cell signaling pathway, it also affected the saliva itself by reducing pro-inflammatory cytokines within the saliva."

Ok, so my headline is perhaps a bit hyperbolic. But I'll take any excuse to let the spice flow.

On the culinary side of things, I'm already wondering how I might use fresh turmeric root in a curry rather than the powder. Microplane it into a paste, same as ginger? Juice it? Dice it?

Thanks, Erin Goss, for bringing these articles to my attention. Now tell me, what other spices have curative properties? Should we start with chile peppers?

In lieu of a substantial post, photos...

I haven't posted in a few weeks; classes have started and suddenly there's no time. But I will not let this blog die. It has been a source of pleasure, consolation, and a great deal of narcissistic supplies.
I have been photographing my food, expecting to be able to find time to draft detailed posts. And my geographic inspiration has shifted a bit, from South Asia to Southeast Asia. There's lots to share. Failed and successful experiments. New and abiding spice obsessions. Reflections on budget cooking. Lots. For now, let me share some photos from the past few weeks. Don't look for narrative threads or underlying unity. And please understand that soup is difficult to photograph.

I went through a dosa making phase. Developed a taste for unfilled ghee-crisped dosas sprinkled with dosa masala powder.

I have been making Thai curries lately and serving them with Italian pastas. Here's a minted Thai green curry with chicken breast and penne.

I learned from reading a Thai food blog that you can bruise the lemongrass with a hammer and then tie it into knots so you can fish the lemongrass out of the soup more easily. Stringy mess otherwise.

Sweet potato spice muffins. Made with a pungent homemade spice mix of mace, cardamom, fenugrek, clove, cinnamon and tellicherry black pepper. Intense and a resounding success. I'll post the recipe soon.

Sweet potato spice muffins. My friend, Philip, who tried these right out of the oven said they taste like Christmas.

Shrimp tom yum soup. I learned that I prefer to make this soup with chicken or fish stock, even though most Thai people make it with water.

Strawberry rhubarb trifle. Made with leftover birthday cake, Mexican vanilla custard, Texas strawberry sauce, and rhubarb sauce made with rhubarb from my mom's yard in Seattle.

Jackfruit curry

Jackfruit curry à la Bhavya

Last week I got to enjoy one of the first tangible results of this blog in the form of a wonderful food gift. Bhavya Tiwari, a brilliant graduate student in Comparative Literature here at UT and reader of Let the Spice Flow, brought me a container of homemade Jackfruit curry from her kitchen. She tells me it's a delicacy in India, and after trying it I believe her. What fantastic textures and flavors! Texturally, it reminds me of the softest best part of an artichoke heart (what the French call the fond d'artichaut). Flavor-wise, it tastes starchy and fruity (like a green plantain, sort of) and neutral enough to be able to absorb any number of flavors. Bhavya prepared it with a delicate curry, blending notes of cinnamon and and turmeric over a base of mustard seeds, onions and tomatoes, and maybe just maybe a bit of jaggery. It was stupendous and now I am thrilled to have a new food project: investigate all the uses of this weird and beautiful starchy fruit and start experimenting with it. Does anyone have any Jackfruit stories to share?

Uthappams (South Indian lentil pancakes)

I just learned that my all-time favorite vegetarian South Indian restaurant, Madras Saravana Bhavan, is a chain. A chain with locations in Singapore, London, Paris, Chennai, Dubai, Delhi, Kuala Lumpur, Atlanta, and New York, among other super-cosmopolitan locales. But a chain all the same. How to react? I've had amazing Sri Lankan cuisine in Paris. I've had lick-your-fingers-and-squeal-in-delight delicious Bhojpuri cuisine in London. But, seriously, the very best South Indian I've ever had was in Atlanta at Madras Saravana Bhavan. If they're opening restaurants worldwide I guess they must be doing something right. Right? Truth be told, I don't usually trust that logic. But I've not had better vegetarian South Indian anywhere, so perhaps this is a logic that works if you're part of the vegetarian Indian transnational jet set? I don't know. In any case, I have been missing Atlanta and dreaming about those dosas and uthappams for years. Also, my mom has been on a soak-your-grains-before-you-cook-them kick for a little while now, so I've been interested in recipes that involve soaking and fermentation, which happens to be a staple in South Indian (and more specifically, Tamil) cuisine. The soaking and fermentation process makes grains and pulses more digestible and somehow produces a greater variety of amino acids (vegetarians and gluten-haters, pay attention!). It also creates a much more complex, interesting, flavor. Think sourdough vs.Wonder bread.

More ways to use eggplant: lasagna

Eggplant spinach lasagna

Homemade pasta made with fresh duck eggs from the yard; eggplant from the garden; spicy bolognese made with the addition of fragrant sweet fennel, red pepper flakes, and extra bold Tellicherry black pepper; white and green layers of cheese mixture made with ricotta, mozzarella, "Italian cheese mix," spinach, duck eggs, and a subtle hint of nutmeg.

 

South Indian style eggplant curry

YouTube is a great source of information for cooks wishing to learn techniques from other culinary traditions. After Camellia Panjabi's eminently user-friendly curry primer, I learned a great majority of the Indian/South Asian techniques I know by watching Indian and Indian-American home cooks and professionals demonstrate their methods on video. Among other things, I learned how to make naan bread, homemade paneer, flaky paratha, and (my favorite) Idlis, all on YouTube. Some of the videos are poorly edited, cheesy, or just plain weird, while others are quite polished. But as long as you get a good visual sense for each step involved and the textures you're supposed to aim for at each stage of the process, as well as any special hand or tool techniques involved, a video is still more valuable, in my opinion, than any cookbook. For one, videos tend to demystify cooking techniques while cookbooks tend to do the opposite (an unintentional byproduct of the linguistic encoding, in precise terms, of techniques that are traditionally transmitted in the kitchen, mother to daughter, cook to cook, etc., where language only has an ancillary function). This is especially true with any recipe involving a yeast dough, where it is critical to observe textural factors such as wetness, gluten-level-stickyness, oiliness, etc.

Anyhow, YouTube cooking manifesto aside, I wanted to share a recipe from one of my favorite online Indian chefs, Sanjay Thumma. First, read this nice feature on Thumma that appeared in The Hindu two years ago, and which explains why YouTube is particularly useful for Indian cooking. Then, check out his video recipe for eggplant tomato curry. I looked specifically to Thumma when my garden started producing more eggplants and tomatoes than I knew what to do with, and was pleased with what I found. The inclusion of freshly roasted and crushed peanuts and sesame seeds in this particular recipe is what sold me.

Spice Hunters source nutmeg in Grenada

Unfortunately, it turns out, I can't view the online episodes of Chasseurs d'épices because ARTV viewership is restricted to Canada. Does anyone know of a backdoor way to access Canadian TV online from an American computer? In the meantime, I will have to make do with YouTube clips.

Three locales have been featured so far, all of them places I'm dying to visit: Grenada, Oaxaca, Trinidad. The clip on Grenada is particularly moving, as we see the first nutmeg harvest in seven years after Hurricane Ivan destroyed nearly all of the spice plantations on the island. 

Smoky red salsa

I think the main reason I have always loved tortas with devotion I don't usually reserve for lunch fare is the smoky red chile sauce traditionally used as a condiment. Thanks to my genius foodie friend Igor, I have found wonderful Veracruz-style tortas right here in my own neighborhood. And their red chile salsa might be the best I've ever had in either country! So now I set out to reduplicate that salsa. Here is my first attempt: a complete failure as reduplications go, but a definite success, as delicious variations within a genre go. But first, an appetizing photo of a Veracruz-style torta. Notice the multiple meats, a symphony of pork products. 

Smoky red salsa
Add all destemmed chiles, except for 10 or so pequins, to boiling water and boil for 5 minutes or so. Meanwhile roast the unpeeled cloves of garlic and the tomato(es) on the comal. Peel the tomato(es) and garlic cloves once cool enough to do so. Strain the chiles, saving about a cup of water, and place in a blender along with the garlic, peeled tomato(es), and the rest of the piquin chiles. Blend until homogenous, adding just enough water to make a thick liquid, and fry in a sauce pan for a few good minutes. Then return the sauce to the blender, adding one or two Tbs of oil and blend until emulsified. This last step gives the sauce a creamier consistency. Salt to taste.

6 guajillo chiles
15 árbol chiles
25 piquin chiles
7 cloves of garlic
1 large tomato or 2 roma tomatoes
oil
salt to taste

Bottled in La Norteñita crema mexicana jars.

Notes: The pequin chiles give the sauce its smoky taste, so I used a considerable amount. Boiling the chiles in water diminished their smokiness, so I added 10 or so uncooked pequins to the blender and that made a noticeable difference. Next time I won't boil any of the pequins at all and see what effect that has. The guajillos give the salsa a wonderful sweet tobacco-y body while the pequins add smoky, citrusy, nutty, notes. I love this combination of flavors but think it could be more subtle. Next time I might add a less distinct tasting chile –– cascabels or catarinas –– to give the salsa a solid neutral base with which to make the guajillo/pequin combination sing.

Sourdough molasses waffles

My mother's birthday gift, one of these, arrived in the mail yesterday and it works better than any home waffle maker I've ever used. Thanks, Mom! My first experiment was to make a batch of waffles using the yeast starter I keep in my fridge and haven't used much lately on account of the unspeakable heat. I didn't take precise measurements but did roughly the following: make a sponge using the starter (let sit 3-4 hours), add 2 eggs, 3 Tbs oil, 1 Tbs molasses, salt, 1 tsp baking powder, a dash of nutmeg, 1 tsp vanilla, 1/2 cup goat milk, and enough whole wheat flour to make an extremely wet dough somewhere between a batter and a brioche-type dough. Let the dough rise in the fridge overnight and then allow it to sit at room temperature for about an hour before making the waffles. Stir in 1/4 cup turbinado sugar immediately before you begin for a Belgian-style caramelization. Texturally, these came out like Belgian waffles, crispy and almost glossy on the outside, moist and dense on the inside. Their flavor was heartier with the inclusion of blackstrap molasses and whole wheat flour, how I imagine 19th century American baked goods might have tasted.

More salsa. This time, with photos.

As promised, here are some photos of my salsa-making process, a visual aid to the approximate recipe posted here.

I always gather the ingredients beforehand to get a visual sense of the proportions: