Mexican Corn Stew

The following recipe is for a dish that is both vibrantly colorful and wonderfully flavorful. Don’t be intimidated by the four jalapeño peppers — if you remove the seeds and white membrane from inside the peppers, they hardly have any heat, especially when cooked a long time, so it’s a very mild dish. If you want it to be hot, however, leave the seeds in one or more of the jalapeños, or add some crushed red pepper or a dash of cayenne at the end of the cooking time.

Guacamole with tortilla chips would make a nice accompaniment to this dish.

Mexican Corn Stew
1 cup dry pinto beans
1 Tbs. olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
5 cloves garlic, minced (approx. 1 Tbs., if you buy it chopped)
4 jalapeño peppers, seeded and chopped
1/2 cup thinly sliced carrots
1/2 cup thinly sliced celery
1/2 cup diced tomato (fresh or canned)
1/4 cup minced cilantro leaves
1 48-oz can chicken broth (about 6 cups)
16-oz. package frozen corn kernels
2 tsp. ground cumin
2 tsp. ground coriander

Sort the beans.* Rinse beans, then place in large pot with four cups of water. Bring to the boil, then cover, remove from heat, and let sit for an hour. (This replaces letting them soak over night, which you can do if you prefer, and if you remember to set them out the night before.)

Drain the beans, then add the broth, cumin, and coriander. Bring to the boil, then cover, reduce heat, and simmer for 45 minutes.

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, heat the olive oil. Sauté the onion and garlic until the onion is soft, about 3 to 5 minutes. Add jalapeños, carrots, and celery and cook for 3 minutes more. Add tomato (if you’re using fresh tomato, you may want to add a pinch of salt; if you’re using canned, don’t include the juice) and cilantro leaves, and sauté an additional minute.

After the beans have cooked the initial 45 minutes, add the sautéed vegetables to the pot, as well as the frozen corn. Cover pot and simmer for an additional 45 minutes, or until beans are tender. Adjust seasoning, if necessary, and enjoy. Serves 6.

*(Sorting: This ubiquitous instruction for beans simply means shuffling through the beans to find and remove any bits of branch or rock or the odd blackened or moldy bean. You won’t find much, but it’s still always wise to check.)

Simply A-Maize-ing

Indian Corn

One thing of which we are all relatively certain here in the U.S. is that European settlers learned about corn from American Indians. Right? Well, not really. What they learned about from the indigenous peoples of the New World was maize, not corn. Sound like double talk? Well, as it turns out, the word corn may not mean what you think it does, at least not if you’re an American. The term corn actually means the most important cereal crop of a region. Hence, wheat was traditionally the corn of England, oats were the corn of Ireland and Scotland, rye was the corn of northern Germany, and in South Africa, the grain known as Bantu corn is millet. The term can also mean small, hard seed, which is why the seed from barley is often called barleycorn. When settlers reached the New World, they called the grain grown most commonly by the Native Americans “Indian corn.” Which explains why, even though no one in Europe had seen maize before they reached the Americas, you see references to corn in older literature. Only in the United States is the word corn used to denote maize alone.

(A little etymological aside here: The corn that means grain comes from Old Norse, korn, which means “grain.” The hard bump that grows on some toes, though it may feel like a hard seed, actually gets its name from the Middle English/Middle French corne, which means “horn.” So the words are unrelated.)

Zea mays, or maize, is the only cereal grain indigenous to the New World. It appears to have been domesticated around 6600 BC in the area of Mexico known today as Oaxaca, where, scholars conjecture, it was intentionally bred from a wild grass known as teosinte. (The conjecture is that it was intentionally bred, not that it came from teosinte.) Teosinte still grows in some parts of Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras. Interestingly, while teosinte does just fine on its own, maize doesn’t. Maize is, in fact, the only cereal grain that cannot disperse its seeds without human intervention. It is so domesticated it can’t get along without us.

All-Purpose Soufflé

I’ve done histories on cheese and eggs, so I thought it might be time for a recipe that combined the two —cheese soufflé. The soufflé is pretty much the pinnacle of egg-dom, the coolest possible thing to do with these versatile little protein parcels. And (here’s the surprise) it’s actually pretty easy to make a soufflé. In fact, this is an almost fool-proof recipe. Soufflés are fun, yummy, and a relatively easy way to impress the heck out of people. (The instructions may look ponderous, but don’t let that put you off—a lot of it is just technique, to help ensure your success.)

For soufflé making, in addition to the usual pots, cups, and measuring spoons, you must have a metal or ceramic bowl (never plastic), a rubber spatula, and a whisk. An electric mixer is pretty much a requirement, as well (I’ve actually beaten egg whites by hand before—so I know it works, but I also know it’s a daunting amount of work). A soufflé dish is nice, but not required; you just need an oven-proof dish of some sort, 1 quart capacity for this recipe, or double the recipe, if all you have is a 2-quart baking dish.

Cheese Soufflé
1/4 cup butter
3 Tbs. flour
1 cup milk
3 eggs, separated, plus 1 extra egg white
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
dash cayenne pepper
1 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce

The Pirates Who Will Grill Anything

Piracy itself is ancient of days. The word pirate comes from the same Greek root as “peril” (which seems appropriate)—and you don’t get Greek roots like that without having been around for a long time. It seems likely that piracy in some form dates back to the beginning of transportation by water. There have been Ancient Greek, Roman, Phoenician, and Carthaginian pirates, post-Renaissance pirates, the Vikings, Chinese pirates, Russian pirates, Indonesian pirates, and of course the famously dangerous Barbary pirates—those Muslim marauders who swept out of ports across North Africa for a few hundred years, making the Barbary Coast a byword for danger.

Of course piracy is not relegated solely to the past, as we’ve learned from recent attacks on ships along the coast of Africa. But face it, when we think of pirates we’re probably not thinking of Asia or North Africa or even the current spate of piracy on distant shores. We’re thinking of the New World, and we’re probably thinking pirates of the Caribbean (and we would more than likely have thought of these even before the appearance of those Johnny Depp movies). The era of the New World/Caribbean pirates in fact constituted a “golden age” of piracy, dotted with such legendary figures as Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, and Henry Morgan. It inspired its own genre of literature, the best-known example of which is, of course, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. The explosive growth of wealth in the New World from the 1600s through the 1800s, along with trying to ship it all back to the Old World, created unparalleled opportunities for those willing to face the downside of this lifestyle. (The average life expectancy of a pirate in those days was about two years.)

So what possible connection could there be between those Caribbean pirates and cooking? Glad you asked.

Turkish Delight

Women make traditional Turkish breads in an Istanbul restaurant.

Turkey is one of those places where there seems to be almost too much history. This is where the Trojan War and the Battle of Gallipoli took place, where the Byzantine Empire rose and fell, where the apostle Paul was born, where Hittites, Bythinians, Thracians, Greeks, Romans, Turkomans, and Ottomans built cities and empires. It was once called Asia Minor, and it has long been a crossroads for the world.

When I visited Turkey, I was on my own. A friend had recommended a great little hotel in the Sultanahmet section of town. The Hotel Tashkonak (www.tashkonak.com, if you want to see it—see particularly Rooms and Facilities) was lovely and incredibly well located—a five-minute walk from the Blue Mosque, 8 minutes from Haggia Sophia, and 15 minutes from the Topkapi Palace. It is a refurbished, 250-year-old Ottoman mansion, with Byzantine ruins in the garden and a view from the roof of the Sea of Marmara. And the reasonable room rate included breakfast (Turkish breakfast—yogurt, cheese, bread, olives, tomatoes, coffee—yum).

Killer Tomatoes

Okay—so I spent three weeks in Egypt and Jordan, being very careful to not eat anything unwashed or anything washed in tap water or anything leafy that might not be easily washed, and I managed to remain well, despite dire warnings that at least a day or two of illness were inevitable. (I also took acidophilus daily, avoided ice cubes, and drank only bottled water.) And all the precautions were worth it, because I didn’t lose a single day of my trip to the “Pharaoh’s Revenge.”

However, I looked forward to coming home and not having to be quite so careful. Ha! I return to discover that I now have to be careful with tomatoes here at home. Of course, I’m pleased I can go back to having lettuce and other leafy greens, but I was looking forward to my favorite fresh salsa, and now I have to be careful—and I’m not even on vacation.

Well, being the information addict that I am, I looked into the “rules” in effect now that we have questionable tomatoes threatening our health. Fortunately, local farmers’ markets are safe, and the Center for Disease Control (CDC)— http://www.cdc.gov —offers a list of places that have not had Salmonella outbreaks, and from which we can safely buy our tomatoes. But what do I do with that quart of fresh salsa I just bought?

Happily, Salmonella is pretty easily killed. The CDC says if I cook my fresh salsa (or raw tomatoes) at 145 degrees Fahrenheit for at least 15 seconds, it will kill the Salmonella. So this quart of Roma tomato-based salsa is going into soup.

Here are some other guidelines from the CDC to help you steer clear of Salmonella:

Koshry

Or do you prefer to spell it koshary? Because the name of this dish is transliterated from Arabic, there are variations in English spellings. But whatever way you spell it, this is a tasty dish from Egypt—and because I’m heading for Egypt tomorrow, I thought it would be an appropriate recipe to leave you with, until my return.

In Egypt, they’ve been eating lentils for almost as long as the legume has been cultivated. In fact, most of this dish’s ingredients have been available in Egypt for millennia. Cinnamon, cumin and olive oil are spoken of in the Old Testament, and the book of Numbers records this lamentation of the wandering Israelites: “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt, also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic.” Aside from noting the antiquity of a few ingredients, the verse suggests some of the things you could serve with this dish—cucumber salad on the side, melon for dessert. Enjoy.

Koshry
6 ounces (1 cup) brown lentils
1 tsp. salt
2 Tbs. olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 Tbs. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 cup long-grain white rice
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper (or to taste)
4 plum tomatoes (or 2 regular tomatoes), chopped
1/4 cup chopped celery leaves
1/2 cup plain yogurt (optional)

Soak the lentils in water to cover for 1 hour. Drain, place in a saucepan, cover with water by 1 inch, and bring to a boil. Add 1/2 tsp. salt, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes, until just about tender.

Which Came First?

A farmer in Morocco sells free-range eggs by the side of the road.

On this blog, it was the chicken, but elsewhere, the question still remains, which came first—the chicken or the egg?

That eggs are worthy of admiration has been recounted by many of the great chefs and gastronomes of the last few centuries. The sixteenth-century historian Benedetto Varchi wrote a treatise on boiled eggs, while the renowned seventeenth-century French cook Pierre François de la Varenne produced a cookbook that contained sixty different recipes for eggs. In his masterwork, Le Guide Culinaire (1903), the legendary Auguste Escoffier wrote that “Of all the products put to use by the art of cookery, not one is so fruitful of variety, so universally liked, and so complete in itself as the egg.” He then went on to detail nearly 150 recipes for eggs. So the humble hen’s egg is no culinary slouch. In fact, it is said by some that the number of pleats in the traditional chef’s toque corresponds to the repertoire of egg dishes he or she has mastered.