Party Dishes

Easter Confetti Eggs (Cascarones) Courtesy My Friends at Parent Earth

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Last week was a blur. I missed Mardi Gras (I had hoped to have a guest post along the lines of the New Year's Black Eyed Peas entry by Abe de la Houssaye, but I was overwhelmed by the move and by sickness), and if I hadn't seen ashes on people's foreheads while commuting on Wednedsay, I wouldn't have known that Lent is upon us. This, of course, means that Easter is coming.

When my sister heard about my new apartment, she looked at me with a twinkle in her eye, and said "I'm thinking that you might want to host the extended family for Easter this year." I looked at her, and said, "Try Thanksgiving." I don't think there's anyway I'll be unpacked in time to roast a lamb this spring, but who knows.

In the meantime, I just learned about a fascinating South American tradition called Cascarones, or Confetti Eggs. In Mexico and countries to the south, Easter is often celebrated by hollowing out egg shells, filling them with confetti, and smashing them over family members' heads. I can remember many family gatherings in which I wanted to smash something over someone's head. And now I know it can be okay to do so. I love this idea.

The very helpful website Parent Earth has a new post about the tradition. It includes instructions on how to make the eggs, and the following video, which shows how much fun the whole thing is. Enjoy.

Getting Ready To Move: A Green-Olive Beef Tagine Recipe

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I’m packing to move, which means that in addition to sorting through books and clothes, selling a couple of filing cabinets, and practically giving away my beloved drafting table, I’ve been eating my way through the freezer. This has resulted in my getting reacquainted with an old favorite of mine, a green olive beef tagine.

We used to eat this tagine frequently, but it’s been a long time since I last made it. Nina used to love it, but I don’t think Pinta has ever tasted it. It’s been that long. I had in the freezer two Ziploc bags full of stew beef that I had cut into one-inch cubes expressly for use in this dish. Rather than cart the Ziploc bags with me to the new place, I took them out to make the tagine.

I had enough meat for a double recipe, so I made one version in the traditional tagine, and I made the second version in my Le Creuset Dutch oven. A tagine is basically a braise, so I figured if I increased the liquid in the Dutch oven I’d get the same result as using a tagine itself.

The tagine looks exotic and is very interesting object. Traditionally, the Moroccan cookware was made entirely of clay, and it has a low flat base and a cone-shaped top with a knob on it. The tagine was designed for the dessert. With a very low flame (using only a moderate amount of firewood) and with very little added liquid (the cone-shaped top condenses and collects all the vapors that get cooked out of any vegetable or meat in the dish; it makes its own sauce), a very cheap cut of meat could be made tender and delicious. The only thing absolutely necessary is time—it takes a good two or three hours for the whole effect to come together.

My tagine, which was made by Le Creuset, has a cast-iron base and can be used on the stove top. They are easy to buy on line and fun to have around the house.

I took the meat out of the freezer a few weeks ago on a Sunday, with the foolish idea that I could defrost it and start cooking the next morning. Santa Maria is usually home on Mondays, so it could simmer while I went off to work. Well, one thing led to another, and it wasn’t until Thursday that I got around to marinating the meat. I wasn’t sure that the beef would still be okay to eat, then I remembered that steakhouses will age beef for weeks before cooking it.

Also, I figured, I was going to cook it for three hours, so it certainly be safe to eat. I marinated it for the next two days, then cooked the tagine on Saturday. I let it sit for a night before serving it at an impromptu little dinner party. The double recipe was more than enough for six. Two old friends and their son came over for dinner, and we toasted what we expect to be one of their last meals at our old apartment. The beef was particularly tender.

Green Olive Beef Tagine

  • 1 1/2 lbs braising beef
  • 1 teaspoon paprika
  • 1 teaspoon cayenne (or less; to taste)
  • 1 teaspoon turmeric
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • ½ teaspoon ground ginger
  • 2 cloves garlic, crushed
  •  4 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons tomato puree
  •  4 shallots (or more), quartered
  • 1 large potato cut into small cubes
  • 2 large carrots, cut into small cubes
  • 1 28oz. can peeled plum tomatoes, chopped
  • 2 tablespoons fresh chopped parsley
  • A pinch of salt
  • 1/2 cup pitted green olives, sliced in half

Trim the beef and cut into 1-inch pieces. Mix together the five spices with the garlic, two tablespoons of olive oil and the tomato puree. Turn the beef in this mixture and leave, covered, in the refrigerator overnight (or longer).

Heat the remaining oil in the tagine base. Fry the shallots, potatoes and carrots until they begin to colour, lift out.

Fry the marinated beef until sealed on all sides. Return the vegetables with the chopped tomatoes any remaining marinade, the parsley and a little salt.

Cover and cook over a low heat for 3-4 hours, or until the beef is tender.

Stir the olives into the dish and allow 15 minutes to heat through.

Serve with couscous.

Note: The recipe can be doubled. To make it in the Dutch oven, I added some wine. I figured it couldn't hurt things.

Super Bowl Special Follow Up: Another Bittman Rib Recipe

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Over the past few days, Pinta has been calling out at dark and odd hours, “My tummy hurts, my tummy hurts.” To any parent, but especially to an urban one, the cry of a sick child is like the car alarm from hell. It cuts right to the heart, and pulls you out of the deepest sleep. Immediately.

Santa Maria has been taking the bulk of the night shifts dealing with Pinta’s malady. She also took her to the doctor (thankfully, it’s not appendicitis), and stayed home yesterday to take care of her. I left my office early to relieve Santa Maria, and as a result I had a lot of work to catch up on last night, and I didn’t have time to write a proper post for today.

Fortunately, Mark Bittman has given me a nice follow up to yesterday’s item about his disappearing “Oven Grilled” ribs recipe. It may not be in the revised edition of  his culinary bible, “ How to Cook Everything,” but two years ago he published an improved short-rib recipe in his Minimalist column.

Bittman recently ceased writing that column, and as a part of his outgoing salvo, he had a video producer named Gabe Johnson, who shot all the videos that ran with the column, talk about his favorite dish. Johnson chose the short ribs, which are cooked in a strange but apparently irresistible combination of wine, coffee, and chipotles.

“I was a little incredulous about the concoction in which they were to be braised,” Johnson wrote, “but Mark just kept saying how good they were going to be. I knew enough to take his word.”

To which, based on my experience with Bittman’s recipes, I would have to say, “I second that.” Click on the image below for his video and a link to the recipe.

Bittman_Ribs_video

Sweet Talking: A Lentil Bulgur Soup Recipe

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Long before I was married, I had a dream of what my domestic life would eventually look like. I saw a place where a large pot of something—a stew, a soup, a sauce—was always simmering on the stove. I’ve started to realize that vision, slowly.

When Pinta was very young, she had the charming habit of waking at about 5:00, and not going back to sleep. I would let Santa Maria stay in bed, and I would get up to take care of her. There was much I didn’t enjoy about this period of my life, but rising at that early hour gave me time to cook, which I liked.

These days, I’m better rested (we’re all better rested), but I have to scramble to get my cooking done. Lately, I’ve been making that big magical pot of food on the weekends.

One Saturday earlier this month, I made my dhal. Last Saturday, I made another old favorite, a Turkish lentil soup from the “Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant” cookbook. This lentil soup is different from any other that I’ve ever tasted. It is made with bulgur wheat, which releases a sweet and divine aroma when it is browned in the pan. Adding bulgur to the lentils makes for a complete protein, so the soup is very filling. It is seasoned with rosemary, and I just love it. Finished with fresh spinach, it really is a complete meal.

My girls, on the other hand, don’t care for it. They prefer Progresso’s canned lentil soup. They haven’t been reacting well to what I’ve been serving lately, but it won’t stop me from making good food for them. I tried using an immersion blender to puree the soup and its onions, but I wouldn’t suggest that. It made the soup look ugly and taste a bit weird. Pinta wasn’t fooled, and she chose not to eat any. She went hungry. Nina ate a bit (the blended version didn’t taste that bad), but she wasn’t really keen on it.

Earlier, when the soup was simmering, I took down a can of the Progresso soup and read the label to Nina. It’s a very healthy soup (aside from any BPA concerns), but I was surprised to read that sugar is among its ingredients. I shouldn’t have been. Many commercial foods cheat with a bit of sugar to hook the consumer. When I gave Nina my Turkish lentil soup, she tasted it and said, “It needs sugar, dad.” Believe, me, it doesn’t.

Turkish Lentil Bulgur Soup

  • 1 cup lentils
  • 5 cups water (or chicken or vegetable stock)
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • Olive Oil
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 3 cloves garlic, chopped
  • A dash cayenne
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1/2 cup raw bulgur
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
  • 1 28-ounce can peeled plum tomatoes
  • 1/4 cup tomato paste
  • Pinch of dried rosemary
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  • 2 cups washed baby spinach

 

Rinse the lentils and bring them to a boil in the salted water or stock. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook, covered, for about forty minutes.

While the lentils are cooking, heat the olive oil in a heavy soup pot and saute the onions until they are translucent.

Add the garlic, cayenne, bay leaves, and bulgur. Stir, until the onions and bulgur are lightly browned.

Mix in the tomatoes and parsley.

Pour the cooked lentils into the pot.

Add the tomato paste and rosemary.

Simmer for another 15 minutes or so; until the lentils are tender. If the soup looks too dry, add some boiling water or hot stock.

Remove the bay leaves and serve, stirring the fresh spinach into the soup (I do this in each serving bowl) until it wilts. Garnish with more parsley, if you would like.

 

 

 

The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself: A Wild Boar and Lentil Stew Recipe

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I was thinking of Julia Child recently, and a quote of hers came to mind after my weekly shopping trip last Saturday. I had set out to buy a cut of pork to roast (I like to make it with sage and slices of apple), but the Park Slope Food Coop didn’t have any meat in stock that would work. The closest thing I could find was a D'Artagnan “Wild Boar Mini Roast.”

The label said “Meat from Feral Swine,” which gave me pause, but the cut looked and felt like something I could roast my favorite way. When I got home and opened the package, I discovered that I was mistaken. I was faced with a sinewy mass of dark flesh that made me think of the quote by Child, “The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a 'What the hell?' attitude.”

I dashed to the computer to learn more about what I had purchased. Santa Maria was in the other room, completely unaware that my plans for dinner had just fallen off a cliff. I had no idea what to do with the hunk of meat, and I didn’t want her to know. The eye-roll she gave me in the coop when I put in our cart was more than enough for me.

The first place I looked was the D’Artagnan website. It should have been able to tell me how to cook it, but the website was down. Server error is all it said. I continued to Google “wild boar” and “recipe” at a furious pace, but the more I read, the more concerned I became. “Tough,” “dry,” and “failure” were words that kept coming up.

I took a break from the computer and looked in Marcella Hazan’s “Essentials of  Classic Italian Cooking.” It had a recipe for pork braised in wine, which sounded intriguing. Braising the meat was a good idea. Cook anything long enough, and it will become tender.

But braising the meat in wine sounded boring, so I returned to the wilds of the Internet. Somewhere during my panicked searching I picked up the idea that I could cook it like a lamb shank. I found a promising recipe, “Molly Stevens' Lamb Shanks Braised with Lentils & Curry,” and decided to improvise.

I came up with a mouthwatering and delicious meal. The meat was so tender it melted in my mouth. The rich taste of the boar was balanced by the earthy flavor of the lentils. Santa Maria improved it vastly by suggesting a bit of lemon zest at the end.

My girls didn’t enjoy it as much as we did. In fact they didn’t eat it at all. Only the promise of dessert—an organic-vanilla-bean flan that they had made with their mother earlier in the day—induced Nina to try it. More on what happened with them at the table, and how that flan turned out next week. In the meantime, here’s my experimental recipe. Don’t be afraid.

Wild Boar and Lentil Stew

  • 1 cup lentils
  • 1 cup brown rice
  • 1-2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 piece of wild boar, about 1.5 lbs.
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 1 carrot, diced
  • 1 stalk celery, diced
  • 2 cloves garlic, diced
  • 2 tablespoons garam masala
  • 1-2 teaspoons thyme
  • One 28 ounce can peeled plum tomatoes, chopped
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 2 cups chicken stock
  • ¼ to ½ cup of red wine
  • A bit, about a teaspoon, lemon zest

Rinse the lentils and cook them in 2 cups or so of water, until they are tender; about twenty minutes.

Cook the rice.

In a Le Creuset or other heavy-bottomed casserole, using one tablespoon or so of the olive oil, brown the boar (which I sliced into three large chunks; consider that you want the meat to eventually be entirely submerged in the braising liquid, and that the more surface area you have for browning, the richer the flavor will be).

Once the meat is browned, remove it and set it aside in a bowl. Pour off all but a bit of the boar fat (there may be nothing to pour off; my cut was very lean), and use the rest of the olive oil to sauté the onions, carrots, and celery until the onions are soft; at least 15 minutes.

Add the garlic and cook for another minute or so.

Add the garam masala and cook one more minute.

Add the tomatoes, stock, thyme, and bay leaf and bring to a boil. Scrape the bottom of the pot, to make sure nothing is sticking.

Return the meat to the pot, add the wine, reduce to the barest of simmers, cover the pan with foil and its lid, and simmer for at least two hours. Check it occasionally and turn the meat over.

If you would like, reduce the sauce at the end.

Add the lemon zest to finish.

Salt to taste.

Serve in a bowl with a bit of lentils and rice, some of the meat, and a huge helping of the sauce.

Note: Even after the meat is gone, the leftover lentils and rice and sauce make a great lunch.

 

Cooking Dinner for Julia Child: A Steak Diane Recipe

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On Friday, the veteran journalist Steven Flax shared the first part his tale about how he came to cook, in 1976, at Harvest, the groundbreaking Cambridge restaurant. Here’s the conclusion of his story, in which a surprise guest during a pre-opening shakedown dinner shakes him up.

Over the next few weeks the head chef Henri gave me a crash course in French cuisine, and we developed the menu. It was summer so we had a lot of seasonal fruits and vegetables to feature. Then came a week or so of cooking for the owner and architect Ben Thompson, his wife, and a number of their friends. Finally, around two weeks before opening, Ben told us that we were going to host two or three dinner parties with notables from the Boston-Cambridge area. Such guests, we assumed, would include Harvard professors such as Henry Kissinger and John Kenneth Galbraith, along with the actress Faye Dunaway, who lived then in Cambridge and who was dating Peter Wolf, the lead vocalist of the J. Geils Band.

These dinners to generate buzz were like catering a wedding or bar mitzvah: everybody was going to be served the same meal. No ordering from the menu. That made it easier to plan and prepare, but also easier to cook with complacency and have the food sit around too long while the small crew of waiters and waitresses were running back and forth.

The menu we settled on was tasty but pretty traditional. We were going to serve Steak Diane, cauliflower polonaise, and oven-roasted new potatoes with rosemary. There were other courses, but those were the dishes that Henri and I were responsible for. Because I was the sous chef, and was working the sauté station, I was going to cook the steaks.

At posh restaurants, Steak Diane gets flambéed it tableside, but I was going to do the honors in the kitchen, because we were cooking so many steaks at one time. As we were involved in the flurry of preparations leading up to dinner, Henri, who had seen my pretty amateurish flambé technique, not so subtly put a fire extinguisher right next to the stove where I was working.

Soon the guests started arriving, and Ben and his wife went into full-court schmooze. The kitchen started cranking with commendable coordination, which was pretty surprising considering that this was the biggest meal we had served as a team and some of us (including—and especially—me) had little professional culinary experience.

Thankfully, the fixed menu enabled us to get things going on an assembly line. The waiters and the pretty waitresses started carrying their trays out to the dining room with a fairly convincing imitation of professional aplomb. However, the smoothly confident atmosphere didn’t last.

Around ten minutes into serving the main course, when about half of the tables had their entrees, one of the waitresses burst into the kitchen saying, “Holy shit, you’ll never guess who’s at my next table.”

“Who,” I asked? I was expecting her to say some big shot from Harvard.

“Julia Child,” she said.

At this point, we were standing side-by-side, peeking through the little diamond-shaped window in the door to the dining room.

“Where,” I asked her. I was hoping that she was mistaken.

I had envisioned the evening as a sort of trial run, a little stressful, maybe, but pretty much a shakedown cruise. Mistakes would be made. We’d learn from them. And, when opening day arrived, we’d feel like seasoned veterans and handle whatever they threw at us. Suddenly Child’s presence turned it into a whole other sort of debut, one I felt completely unprepared for.

 “There,” she said, pointing to the far wall, “sitting next to that little short guy. Is their dinner almost ready?”

“Oh fuck,” I said. “Yeah, just give me a second.”

With as much stealth as I could muster, I slid through the door and walked in a bent-down, crab-like way over to the bar, which was pretty close to the door to the kitchen. I got the attention of the bartender, and said in a whisper, “What’s the best cognac you have?”

He pointed.

“Give it to me,” I said.

He hesitated, giving me a look that said, what the hell are you doing, this is expensive stuff.

“That’s not to cook with,” he said.

I responded with one of those menacing looks and two-hand gestures you see in Italian movies, when the gangster is demonstrating what he is going to do to his intended victim, the one who deflowered his daughter who, he thought, was a virgin.

He gave me the cognac, and I sneaked it back into the kitchen.

When I was making the steaks for Julia Child’s table, I got a little carried away with the cognac. As I tilted the sauté pan to ignite the sauce, the flame went up above my head. It scorched my eyebrows, cheeks, and eyelashes. Finally I got it to simmer down, and shoved the skillet into the oven for a moment to finish cooking.

It was only then that I realized that everybody in the kitchen was staring at me. I looked over at Henri, who was standing nearby with a Maurice Chevalier-sort of smirk, cigarette dangling from his lower lip.

“Stevie,” he said, “you just want to give them a taste, not get them drunk.”

At that point I took the steaks out of the oven and put them on the plates Henri had gotten ready with the side dishes. After I added a heaping tablespoonful of sizzling sauce from the sauté pan on each steak, they were ready to go.

“They look perfect,” the waitress said, putting them on her tray, and, just as she was walking out the door, she looked back and added, “Almost thought we lost you there.”

I was ferociously hot, although I don’t know whether it was because I had gotten a bit scorched, or I if I was just frightened and nervous.

The rest of the dinner went ahead without any mishaps. Later, when things calmed down, Henri and I were having a beer, recapping the meal, and reviewing what I could learn from the experience. He did not seem too disappointed in me. Then, just as I was allowing myself to relax, into the kitchen came Julia Child.

She was basketball-player tall, maybe six-two or six-four. And she was accompanied by the short man the waitress had pointed out—her husband Paul. Julia towered over me. I’m only around five-eight, but Paul was even shorter, maybe five-five or five-six. When Paul and Julia were standing side by side, it made this sweetly comic effect, like Mutt and Jeff.

Before Henri or I could say anything, she burst out in that warbly, fluty voice that I knew from TV. “I just wanted to tell you what a delicious dinner we had tonight chez Harvest,” she said. “Everything was just perfect. Who made the steaks?”

Henri pointed at me.

I nodded my head. I saw that she was looking at my eyebrows. I glanced down to the fire extinguisher. I looked up at her. She looked down at the fire extinguisher, then back at me.

Here was my one and only chance to get acquainted with this world-famous chef and TV personality, and all I could say was, “This is my first cooking job. When it comes to flambéing, I am sort of a loose cannon.”

“Oh, me too,” she said. “I am always setting off the sprinklers in the TV studio. But the food was great, delicious bistro cooking. I hope Harvest is very successful.”

We thanked her, and I grabbed four crystal old-fashioned glasses and poured her, Paul, Henri, and myself a hearty slug of the good cognac, which was still by the stove. As we drank a toast, Ben Thompson and his wife came in. I gave each of them a cognac, which Thompson took with a look that said, “What the hell are you doing with this bottle?” He then regaled the Childs with a speech about how Henri was such a brilliant chef and mentor, and that Steve was such a promising prodigy, blah, blah, blah.

I left that night knowing I had a job to come to the next day.

And, more important, that Julia Child had liked what I cooked for her.

Steven Flax’s Steak Diane Recipe

I learned this recipe, which is different from many other versions of Steak Diane (I once saw one in Gourmet that used pureed black bean soup), from the French chef I trained with at Harvest. He called it Steak Diane, so I do too. I don’t claim that it is in any sense authentic. It has three components: the steaks, the sauce, and what I call the "moosh."

 

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

The Sauce

Mince some fresh shallots, enough so they would make a little mound in the palm of your hand. Mince 2-3 cloves of garlic.

In a small sauté pan heat a small ladle-full of clarified butter. When it is nice and hot add the shallots and cook them for a while. Don’t let them get too brown. Add the garlic and cook for a while. Don’t let it get too brown. (When it gets too brown, it gets bitter.) When the shallots and garlic are cooked through add a couple of tablespoons (or a ladle-full) of rich beef stock. If you don’t have beef stock or demi-glace, you can add a few tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce and maybe some sweet vermouth or sweet Madeira. Cook that for a few minutes so it cooks down and gets a bit thicker. It doesn’t have to get too thick; you want loose gravy consistency. Stop cooking the sauce, but keep it warm on the side.

 The Moosh

 Take 3-4 fillets of anchovies and rinse them in 3-4 changes of water, just to get some of the salt out of them. Drain the anchovy fillets. Mince 2-3 cloves of garlic. Mince some shallots, enough to make a little mound in the palm of your hand. Put the anchovies, garlic, and shallots into a mixing bowl and add a little bit of olive oil. Mix all ingredients together thoroughly, frequently mashing with the underside of a tablespoon, in order to create a moosh. That is, sort of a loose paste. Add enough oil just so you get a thick but spreadable consistency. When it’s done, the moosh should have about the same consistency as tapenade, the black olive relish from Provence. Set aside.

 The Steaks

 The better the steaks, the better the Steak Diane. I would get four aged boneless prime rib steaks, trimmed of all fat and around ¾ inch thick. Lots of Steak Diane recipes call for pounding the steaks flat, but I don’t recommend it. You want something thick enough that you can really sink your teeth into, right? I would guess that such steaks would probably weigh 10-12 ounces each. Pat the steaks dry with a paper towel; you don’t want them to have any water on their surface.

 Cooking Instructions

Use a sauté pan or heavy, sloping-sided skillet. Heat a small ladle-full of clarified butter in the skillet until it’s nice and hot. The entire bottom surface of the pan should be coated with the butter, but not too thick a layer. If it looks like a puddle, pour a bit off. Don’t salt and pepper the meat. There is enough salt in the anchovy moosh.

When the butter is hot add the four steaks and pan sear them over medium heat. If the steaks make a hissing, sizzling sound when you put them into the butter, then the butter is hot enough. Sear the steak for only around 2-3 minutes. As they are sautéing, cover the top surface of the steaks with the moosh.

Turn the steaks over so that they are sautéing moosh side down. (Don’t worry if some of the moosh falls off.) Sear them for only another 2 minutes or so. Feel the meat by poking it with your finger. It should feel like the flesh between your thumb and first finger. Not too firm. If so, then the steaks are probably rare. Turn them over again.

Now add about a jigger (1½ ounce) of brandy, cognac, or even bourbon or Jameson’s Irish whiskey, if that’s what you like or all that you have. Let the booze heat up for just a moment and then, very gently, tilt the pan slightly (away from you) but towards the flame, so that the booze gets on fire. Voila. If you haven’t added too much booze (as I did), then the alcohol in it should burn off pretty quickly.  

Take the sizzling skillet off the burner and add a generous small ladle of sauce over each steak. Then pop the skillet into a 400-degree oven for just a couple of minutes to heat everything up. When you take the steaks out, they should be firmer to the touch but not too stiff. That would be about medium rare to medium. Put on warm plates and serve immediately.

Serves four.

 

 

 

 

How to Cook Collard Greens: A Heretical Recipe

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I have never liked collard greens, but I felt like I needed to serve them on New Year’s Day. I’m superstitious, and I didn’t want to do anything to risk the good luck that a meal of black-eyed peas and collard greens allegedly brings.

I cooked my Hoppin’ John early in the day, but I procrastinated on the greens. Shortly before the party, I did a quick Google search to learn how to cook them, and I panicked. Paula Deen’s recipe was one of the first hits—it called for cooking them two hours. So did a bunch of other recipes. I didn’t have that kind of time, and besides, what were these people thinking? Two hours? How can any vegetable cooked that long taste good?

As you may know, my Fly Sky High Kale Salad has been a huge hit lately, and I’m sure that part of the success of that recipe comes from cutting the green into a chiffonade. The leaf of the collard green appeared similar to that of the kale, so I figured that long thin strips would be a good place to start. Also, I was sure it would help them cook faster.

I’ve found that with the kale, the less it is cooked, the better it tastes, and I suspected this might be true of the collards, too. But I had never previously prepared collards, and I became concerned that there might be a reason they needed to be cooked two hours. Maybe there was a naturally occurring chemical compound that had to be sweated out (the way manioc must be soaked then cooked to make a delicious farofa to garnish feijoada). Maybe they were indigestible unless stewed for an ungodly amount of time. Maybe they were poisonous unless prepared properly, like blowfish, I thought. So I Googled “raw collard green salad,” saw a bunch of recipes, and concluded that I didn’t need to worry. A quick sauté was the answer.

In a nod to the South, though, I cooked the greens in bacon. And it was just my luck that they turned out delicious. Santa Maria called them “a revelation.”

Heretical Collard Greens

  • 1 strip of smoked bacon, diced
  • 1 head collard greens, washed and cut into a chiffonade

Heat a large frying pan and render the bacon until it is crispy.

Toss in the greens and stir around a bit on high heat until they taste good. Not long, just a few minutes.

Cooking Up Good Fortune: A Hoppin’ John Recipe

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According to Southern tradition, eating a Hoppin’ John on New Year’s Day brings good luck, so I made one on Saturday. I’ve lived enough of a charmed life to never really know an annus horrribilis (aside from, perhaps, 7th Grade), but last year comes close to qualifying.

It started in January with a “Notice of Termination,” a thirty-day legal-order to vacate our apartment, or face eviction. This was followed by months of anxiety, and a mad scramble to find a new place. Just about every weekend was taken up with house hunting. A great lawyer and the generosity of the New York City Housing Court gave us some breathing room, but we didn’t reach a settlement until the middle of the year.

Looking for a home was a nightmare. I could fill a book with stories about termites, double-dealing realtors, bidding wars, and heartbreaking legal advice. And, speaking of books, in the midst of this never-ending quest, I was keeping a frantic pace editing the manuscript for “Man with a Pan,” my forthcoming anthology about fathers who cook, featuring contributions from the likes of Mario Batali, Mark Bittman, Mark Kurlansky, and Stephen King. More than once this past spring I dashed from my full-time job (at lunch hour) to visit a prospective school for Nina and Pinta, and spent the subway trip with a red pencil and an essay. 

Finally, this summer and fall, my mother-in-law fell while visiting not once, but twice, breaking her nose on one occasion and shattering her shoulder on another. The search for a home, the constant need to work two jobs, and the health issues of my mother-in-law put an enormous strain on our family. It’s been hard.

But now the book is more-or-less finished, we’re about to move, and Santa Maria’s mother is on the mend. Things are looking up, and to help give them a boost, I made that Hoppin’ John for my mother, my sisters and their spouses and kids, and two of my maternal aunts.

I’m an ignorant suburban boy when it comes to Southern food (as my previous posts attest), but I don’t believe in living in fear. So what, if I’ve never made Southern food before? I figured I could wing it. I turned to Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” (the iPod app) and combined it with a little bit of what Abe de la Houssaye so generously shared, and used some common sense.

The Hoppin’ John was sublime. The black-eyed peas were smoother and more tender than I ever could have expected, and Bittman’s suggestion to season it with fresh rosemary gave it a nice tingle. I forgot to serve the dish with Tabasco sauce, but no one complained. My family’s of Irish descent (with the exception of my brother-in-laws, one of whom is from Texas), so they have even less experience with Southern food than I do. They all loved it. I accompanied it with slices of baked Amish ham, steamed green beans, sweet potatoes, cornbread, and collard greens.

I’ve always hated collard greens so I cooked them my way. I’m sure a Southerner would find it heretical, but my sister who is married to the Texan said they were the best she’d ever had. Y'all come back tomorrow to hear how I did those.

One Northerner's Take on the Traditional Hoppin' John

  • 4 slices smoked bacon, diced
  • 2 onions, diced
  • 3 cloves garlic, choped
  • 1 ham hock
  • 3 cups black-eyed peas
  • 1-2 cups turkey or chicken stock
  • 2-3 sprigs fresh rosemary

In a large stockpot render the bacon and saute the onions until they are translucent.

Add the garlic and cook for three or four minutes more.

Toss in the peas and the ham hock and the stock and rosemary.

Add enough water to cover the beans and ham hock.

Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer.

Cook for a couple of hours, or until the peas are tender.

Salt to taste.

Notes: I forgot to soak the peas overnight, and only soaked them for about two hours before cooking. I used turkey stock because that's what my mother had on hand. The amount is a guess. Use as much as you'd like. I don't really know how long I cooked them for because I took Nina and Pinta sledding while they were cooking. If you leave yourself enough time, you really can't go wrong with this dish.

New Year’s Day Tradition: A Cold Swim and Hot Black-Eyed Peas

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The Coney Island Polar Bear Club’s New Year’s Day plunge into the Atlantic is a great New York City tradition. The annual swim, which is open to all, raises money for Camp Sunshine, a retreat in Maine for children with life-threatening illnesses, and their families. Abe de la Houssaye, who joined the Coney Island Polar Bear Club in 2004, is a Louisiana native who brings his own traditions to the holiday. He’s the father of two grown daughters, and he took some time out of his busy schedule to talk about being a Stay at Stove Dad. 

I love cooking, although I do it professionally. If you were in New York in the eighties you might have been to one of my restaurants—La Louisiana or Texarkana or, later, the Ludlow Street Cafe and Tramps Cafe. Since then, I downsized my career. I still cook, but now I do it for a great little catering company called The Upper Crust, so I can do more of the things I want to do, such as writing, drawing (that's a self-portrait, below), and swimming.  Abe4

To become a member of the Polar Bear Club, which meets every Sunday from November through April, you need twelve swims in one season, and I think you need to make four a year to maintain active membership. This year I've been there almost every Sunday. Coney Island is changing and those of us who love it want to make sure we are around to influence the changes if possible and if not to at least savor the last days. As some Polar Bears say – no matter what happens they can't take the ocean away.

After the swim on New Year’s Day and a beer or two on Coney Island my family will follow the Cajun tradition of a late lunch of Black-Eyed Peas cooked with andouille sausage and smoked ham hock, accompanied by a mixed green sauté of collard, mustard, and kale. We'll also have corn bread with cane syrup and butter, and spicy Bloody Marys. The Bloody Marys aren't exactly Cajun but they go along nicely. And we'll be checking our stockings to see if  "Le Petit Bonhomme Janvier" left us any fruit, candy, or pecans.

I was born and raised in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, the Crawfish Capitol of the world. It is a little town in the heart of the Atchafalaya Basin, and when I was growing up many people there did not speak English—only Cajun French.

Le Petit Bonhomme Janvier is the good little man of January. I've read that the early Cajuns didn't have a Santa Claus and instead the little man brought small gifts on New Year's Eve—mostly candy and fruit. I also read that early Cajuns celebrated Christmas on February 25th (Trapper's Christmas) because the birthday of Christ fell during the busiest part of the trapping season.

When I was growing up we were told that Petit Bonhomme was Santa's poor brother, and while Santa did the heavy lifting for Christmas, Le Petit Bonhomme bought candies, fruits and pecans and, perhaps, one little present on New Year's Eve. He actually saved the day a few times in my family when one of us kids experienced the disappointment of not getting what they wanted for Christmas through some miscommunication. In such a case a special plea could be made to the little man, who although he was very poor, always seemed very resourceful.

Having my daughters—one who is a teacher and lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and the other who is getting her Masters at the University of Chicago—around for the holidays is, in a father's terms, about as good as it gets. During the early years when they were young, I didn’t spend much time thinking about what it would be like to relate to my girls as adults, and it's kind of mind blowing. First of all (fingers crossed and counting my blessings), they turned out to be fairly amazing young women and, dammit, they like their parents. Second of all, it's just plain good news for a dad (and mom) to be able to look at that long process with a feeling of accomplishment. Guess what? After all the ups and downs—the countless blessings and good fortune, including fun, successesm and friendships—these girls, along with their mother, jump to the top of the list of good things in my life.

Black-Eyed Peas are essentially the same thing as a Hopping John, though I just never heard that name in Louisiana. There is one legend that it got the name from the bastardized French pronunciation of the words "Pois a pigeon" but that one seems a stretch to me. I don't understand how you would pronounce either to make them sound alike, but don't blame me I saw it on the Internet; how could it be wrong?

Hopping John is traditionally eaten on New Year’s Day to bring good luck, and so is the Cajun version. The expansion of the beans while cooking symbolizes prosperity, and the color of the greens served with them symbolizes money (the cornbread with a touch of syrup just taste good). Here’s the recipe for you to make some Black-Eyed Peas yourself.

Abe de la Houssaye's Cajun Black-Eyed Peas for New Year's Day

 

  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 ounce of tasso (see notes; bacon can be substituted) – diced small
  • 1 cup chopped onions
  • 2 tablespoons minced garlic
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 2 smoked ham hocks, about 6 ounces each
  • 1/2 pound andouille sausage (see notes) – cut in 1/8 inch rounds
  • 1 pound dried black-eyed peas (see notes)
  • 1sprig of parsley chopped
  • 1 small bunch of chives choppes
  • 2 quarts chicken stock
  • Salt and pepper

 

In a 1-gallon stock pot, heat the olive oil.

When the oil is hot, render the tasso or bacon for 2 or 3 minutes.

Add the onions and continue sauteing for 2 minutes.

Stir in the garlic, bay leaves and ham hocks.

Season with salt and pepper.

Add the black-eyed peas and chicken stock.

Bring the liquid up to a boil, cover and reduce to a simmer.

Cook the peas for about 45 minutes then add the andouille, and continue to simmer for another 10 minutes, or until the peas are tender and plump.

Remove the hamhocks from the pot and remove the meat.

Add the meat back to the peas and re-season if necessary.

Add the parsley and chives.

Sever with rice (white is traditional but we use brown and when we have guest we offer both), with one bottle of green and one bottle of red Tabasco served on the side.

 

Notes: It is advisable (but not necessary) to soak beans over night before cooking – it shortens to cooking time which allows for less nutrients to be cooked off and will make them  more digestible. Tasso, a specialty of Cajun cuisine, is a spicy, peppery version of smoked pork made from the shoulder butt. Andouille, a spiced and heavily smoked pork sausage, is another Cajun favorite. Both are available at specialty merchants and on the Internet.