Month: November 2007

Swedish Simplicity

In flawless English the waiter announced that Cafe Nova’s daily lunch special consisted of spinach-and-feta quiche, mixed greens, a multigrain roll and glass of lingonberry juice.  Were it not for that tart, red fruit juice, unique to Scandinavian cuisine, I could have been dining in any Western country.  I was, though, seated at an outdoor cafe in the Swedish capital of Stockholm.    Although home to such industries as Volvo, Saab, and IKEA and such entertainment icons as Ingrid Bergman, Ingmar Bergman and ABBA, Sweden offers intrepid travelers far more than cars, home furnishings and ‘dancing queens.’  This beautiful, ecologically-minded nation possesses a delightful cuisine reflective of its simple, natural approach to living.   While in Sweden, my husband Sean and I had the luxury of staying and dining with a Stockholm resident.  A friend from Columbia University’s J-school, Christina Anderson works as a press secretary for the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).   During our stay she also served as a personal chef, translator and tour guide.  After years of struggling with different languages and dialects, of fumbling through menus, and overlooking so many cultural aspects, I was delighted to have an insider’s perspective and assistance.  It goes …

Further Confessions of a CIA Junkie

Ever wonder how to add some excitement to a bowl of bland carrots?  Oddly enough, I have.  In fact, that very quandary landed me in Chef David Kamen’s flavor dynamics class at the Culinary Institute of America last weekend.  Through lectures, tastings, and hands-on cooking sessions I learned the “physiology of taste and development of flavor.”  I also found out how frying, grilling, roasting, sauteing and poaching can alter a food’s flavor and change my humdrum carrots into a sexy side dish.  This was neither my first food enthusiast’s class nor my first encounter with Chef Kamen.  Last spring I had taken Chef Kamen’s day-long “Food Affinities” session.   There the students delved into what foods and flavors complimented and paired well with one another.   We also got clued into a fantastic resource, Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page’s “Culinary Artistry.”  My secret weapon when conjuring up recipes, it devotes hundreds of pages to what foods work well together.    After a 2-hour classroom lecture, complete with tastings and discussions, our 15-member class had broken up into teams of three.  Each group was assigned a food basket filled with ingredients from which it …

Mushroom Maven

Unwittingly I have become a maven of mushrooms.   In less than 18 months I have raised my own oyster and shiitake mushrooms, hosted a “feast of fungus” dinner party, penned four articles and signed up for a foraging club.  All this from the person who grew up eating button mushrooms from a jar.  Hardly the origins of a connoisseur. Although my mavenhood has been a recent development, I first learned of “better” cultivated mushrooms from my father.  While home on Christmas break in the early ’90s, I joined him and my uncle for a pre-holiday dinner at Boardman, Ohio’s Springfield Grille.  Always an experimental eater, my father ordered an appetizer of Portobello mushrooms.  My initial reaction to his daring was “Yuck!  I’m not touching that weird stuff.” A persuasive man, he eventually convinced me to take a small bite.  I still recall my astonishment over how rich and delicious edible fungus could be. Sliced then sauteed in olive oil, salt and pepper, they possessed an earthy, meaty yet wholesome taste.     Years passed.  My food choices changed.  Almost overnight mushrooms switched their role as a pre-dinner snack to a fundamental part of my menus.   Wild mushrooms …

Hanging out in Morocco’s "Wind City," Essaouira

Until recently, whenever someone mentioned Morocco, three images would spring to mind:  Tall, lanky camels plodding across the scorching Sahara; dusty, crowded souks teeming with loud, aggressive peddlers; palm tree-lined oases springing up in an otherwise barren land.  Beige would be the predominant color of the landscape.  Sizzling would be the climate year-round.    Shaped by films and books such as “Casablanca” and The Sheltering Sky, my notions of the North African country were completely blown by a trip to the Moroccan port of Essaouira.    Situated on the Atlantic Coast, roughly five hours south of Casablanca by car, Essaouira resembled a Mediterranean resort town.  Along with its whitewashed, blue shuttered buildings and expansive, windswept beach the city possessed a relaxed, uncomplicated atmosphere.  On Place Prince Moulay el Hassan locals and tourists alike lounged at outdoor cafes, sipped hot mint tea and tossed scraps to the town’s stray dogs and cats.  At the beach football was perpetually played and onlookers were encouraged to join the games.  Those who preferred to observe sat beneath beach umbrellas and watched …

Crepes, Fast Food the French Way

I fell in love with crepes on a cold, late December evening in Paris.  Famished as well as jet-lagged, I roamed the 1st arrondissement in search of something warm, filling and quick to eat.  On a sex shop-lined street near our rented apartment on Rue Saint Denise Impasse I spotted a stout, middle-aged man standing on a street corner, cooking paper thin pancakes on an oversized, portable hot plate.  After flipping them once, he filled his crepes with fresh, sliced bananas, the chocolate-hazelnut spread Nutella, strawberry preserves or a combination of the three.  He then rolled up the griddle cakes, sprinkled them with granulated sugar, wrapped them in sheets of waxed paper and handed them out to the hungry. Mesmerized by the honeyed fragrance and simple artfulness of his creations, I slid into line and awaited my turn for a confiture d’fraise, or strawberry jam, crepe.  In less than five minutes I had in my hand a warm, otherworldly meal.  Tender to the tooth and with a delicate sweet touch, they were like nothing I …

Bold Band of Recipe Testers

  Meatballs.  Vodka.  Pickled herring.  Lox.  Not the best of Sweden’s cuisine but what came to my friends’ minds when invited for ”a night of Swedish delights. ”  Quirky and authentic were what they had learned to expect when dining with me.     In recent years this daring group has endured countless recipe testing sessions, including “Dessert Night Number One” with its soupy lime-and-mint granita and “An Evening of Three Tajines.”  On that cold winter night my tajine-testing friends were transported to sunny, sandy Morocco. Zeye Mayel’s “Nass Marrakech” blared from the stereo.  Hot mint tea spilled out of tall, silver teapots and into painted, filigreed glasses.  A red, silk blanket, purchased at a souk in the seaside town of Essaouira, covered the dining room table. Lined up on the green Formica kitchen counter were tagines of chicken, preserved lemons and olives, charmoula-covered cod and chickpeas and root vegetables.   Prior to setting foot in my house, not one person had seen, much less heard of, these clay, conical-lidded pots.  Yet, this bold quintet — Connie, Sharon, Mike, John …

The Best of Britain

When planning a global cuisine-themed party, I can think of no better land to honor than Great Britain.   No doubt some will assume that I am joking, displaying a wicked sense of humor.  British cuisine?  Does the United Kingdom even have culinary customs beyond dry tea sandwiches, the ubiquitous fish, peas and chips and standard “meat and two veg” dinners which the previous meal so aptly represents?  After five trips through the UK and more than a few meals consumed in this region, I can attest that British fine dining is alive, well and worth celebrating.  Have doubts?  Recall Fergus Henderson, founder of London’s St. John restaurant and author of the seminal “Nose to Tail Eating.”  An advocate of using the whole animal when cooking, the bespectacled Henderson has made consuming offal cool.  Then there are the celebrated British food writers and chefs.  Elizabeth David.  Delia Smith.  Jamie Oliver.  Nigella Lawson.  Their consumer-friendly cookery books have sold millions in the UK as well as the U.S. Let’s not forget Gordon Ramsey.  Along with his riotous reality shows “Hell’s Kitchen,” “Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares,” and “The F-Word,” Ramsey has 3 Michelin stars to his name.   Last year he took Manhattan …

Confessions of a CIA Junkie

Long before I wrote about food, I cooked it.  Not in a pull-down-a-weekly-paycheck sense but as in stand-over-a-cutting-board-covered-with-minced-shallots-feeling-remarkably-at-peace-with-the-world way.  For years cooking has served as an escape from the trials of everyday life.  Consumed by the tribulations of ill family member?  Stressed out over a looming deadline?   Worried about upcoming exams?   Pick up an onion and start chopping. I am both calmed and rewarded by the strike of the knife blade as it bears down on my wood cutting board, the sizzle of white onions as they carmelize in a hot, olive oil-coated saute pan.   Nothing — not yoga, walking, hiking, biking, reading, stroking a beloved pet or “drinking like a mad eejit” — can surpass the tranquility derived from working in a kitchen. My fondness for cooking is not intuitive.  My mother had been a serviceable but unenthusiastic cook.  Her standard repertoire included many delightful dishes — beef stroganoff, braciola, chicken cacciatore, French onion soup –none of which she relished making or eating.  To her, cooking was a chore, an onus taken on at marriage and borne until death.      Her lack of culinary ardor extended to my education.  When asked to teach me how to poach an egg or bake …

Turkish Delights

My interest in Turkey began, oddly enough, on a trek through Wales.  While staying in Chepstow, at the First Hurdle Bed and Breakfast, I spent hours chatting with proprietors and world travelers Yvonne and Bob Westwood.  Yvonne’s tales and photos of Turkey’s white-clad, whirling dervishes, mosaic-filled mosques and spiraling minarets left me wide-eyed and breathless.  Photo books and essays about the Eurasian country further fueled my fascination with this exotic land.   Forget Tintern Abbey, Snowdon and Cardigan Bay.  I wanted to head home and start planning my own journey to Turkey.   Since that fateful stay in Chepstow, I’ve made two trips to Turkey.  In spite of its refusal to own up to the Armenian genocide and its periodically feudal attitudes toward women, I remain as enthralled as I was a decade ago on that rainy afternoon in Wales. What initially captivated me were the breathtaking sites.  Istanbul’s chaotic Grand Bazaar, Topkapi Palace, Blue Mosque and Hagia Sofia.  The eerie, chimney-topped landscape of Cappadocia.  The terraced, outdoor mineral pools and chalk white stalactites of Pamukkale.   The mountainside Lycian sarcophogi or “rock tombs” and underwater city near Fethiye.   The chimera — or flaming earth — of Olympos.  Gallipoli.  Antalya.  Ankara.  Amazing places that heretofore I had only encountered in books I now experienced firsthand.     Driving …

The Toasted Cheese Sandwiches of Iceland

A wanderlust, I am happiest with my feet firmly planted in someone else’s land.  Dump me off on a cracked tarmac, slap a stamp in my passport, shuffle me through customs and feel my pulse race.  Travel clears my head, opens my eyes and enlivens my life in countless ways.   One of the biggest impacts that roaming the globe has had is in terms of cuisine.  Where once I limited myself to the basic foods of my childhood, I now dabble in delicacies from Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America.  Anything that I taste and enjoy overseas I later attempt to replicate in my kitchen.    When my husband Sean and I first discussed visiting Iceland in the spring of 2000, I assumed that I would sample such local delicacies as shark, herring and turnips.  I imagined the Icelandic-themed dinner party that I would later host, one featuring the culinary highlights of the country.    Seven years later “Icelandic Night” has yet to take place.   The delay is not due to snobbery, laziness or distate.  Rather it has to do with our limited experiences with the native foods of this highly productive and prosperous country. Our trip began on the western …