Totally bizarre but unexpectedly outstanding Friday night improvisation....

You probably have noticed that my recipes go in phases. I try to use up my on-hand ingredients before moving on to a new set of ideas and grocery-lists, and my brain gets into a sort of culinary riff, where I try to work out all the different variations on a theme I can, until I can't stand it any more. So, this week I was determined to find a new use for tupper-wared remains of last week's Chipotle peppers in Adobo sauce.

Being a Friday night, I had seriously low energy and motivation to cook, so it took some will power and a good half hour of browsing my cookbooks and files for inspiration before I started getting excited about dinner again.

I still had a small butternut squash I picked up from the market several weeks ago, as well as some small Yukon Gold potatoes, and when I was perusing Martha Rose Shulman's taco recipes (tacos are great for low-key, tired nights) from her NY Times column, I hit upon her "Soft Tacos with Sauteed Winter Squash and Chipotles," which seemed like an ideal solution for dinner. I had to go to the store to pick up some things for tomorrow night, so I resolved to get tortillas for the tacos.

Well, lo and behold, my exhaustion level led to quite a cluster-failure: I didn't read the original recipe carefully enough, and so I didn't think to buy the requisite yogurt, and I completely spaced out the tortillas, none of which I realized till I got home.

One thing I find though, time and again, with cooking, writing, and living, is that there's a curious freedom in constraint, and I get much more creative with externally imposed limitations on my options. So, my failure at the grocery store only served to motivate me to figure out what I could create from the remnants of my plan.

First, I had to think about a replacement for the tortilla. This one was obvious: rice! I started some jasmine rice (it's all I had on hand) to cook on the stove. Even if the rest of dinner falls apart, you can salvage good quality fragrant thai rice, so at least now I was cooking with a safety net.

Rice and chipotles started me thinking in the obvious direction: rice and beans. I had a can of black beans in the cupboard, but I was resistant at first. Once I realized the original recipe called for a chipotle-yogurt mixture to dress the squash in, I started thinking about curry. Why not Mexican curry? I had some leftover chicken stock in the fridge that needed using, so I tinkered with the idea of baking the squash in a mixture of pulverized chipotle and stock. Sadly, the stock was past its prime (I really need to come up with a better solution for keeping and using stock), but a plan was starting to form.

Right about this moment, Sean was busy cleaning up the remains of last night's dishes, and getting quite vocal about the number of pots that needed washing. I took this information under advisement, and resolved to be as one-pot about this as possible, which means I ended up using three.

As the rice was cooking, I committed to the idea of baking the squash in small chunks, along with a single small diced potato, in the nice red ceramic baking dish I received for Christmas (thanks Sean, even though it just adds to your washing up!).

The path cleared as I got to work. I preheated the oven to 400 degrees, chopped and peeled the squash (fortunately a small one), cleaned and chopped the potato, and put them in the baking dish with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, ground salt and pepper, dried thyme and dried oregano, coating it all nicely, and put the whole thing in the oven while I worked out the next steps.

I finely diced an onion and crushed a couple cloves of garlic and pulled the baking dish out to add them in, again giving it all a good stir to evenly coat everything with olive oil. After returning the squash and potato to the oven, I rinsed and chopped a bunch of broccoli raab, and heated some olive oil, garlic, thyme, oregano, and finely diced cilantro stems in a medium sauce pan on medium heat. Once the garlic had just begun to crackle in the oil, after just a minute, I added the chopped, rinsed raab with a couple of tablespoons of water, and put a lid on it.

Then I started to chop up the chipotles quite finely in their sauce (about half of what was remaining, so maybe 3 chilis and a couple of spoonfulls of sauce. We like it really spicy, so you will probably want to use quite a bit less unless you are a hot chili fiend). At the 20 minute mark, the rice needed to be turned off and left to steam, which I think happened at about this point.

It was time to check the squash and potatoes again, and I decided to turn the heat up to 450 degrees. Perhaps a rookie sort of move, but that's how things go in my kitchen. I added a few tablespoon-fulls of water and the chopped chipotles with sauce to the baking dish and gave it all a good stir, and put it back in the oven.

This was a good point to check on the broccoli raab, which was just on the verge of starting to stick to the bottom of the pot, so I added another 2 tablespoons of water before stirring and covering again. Medium seemed a good temperature for the raab, as the stems can be quite tough and fibrous, and they generally need a good hot steam bath to make them pleasant to eat (they have a lovely verdant flavor, slightly bitter but not overwhelmingly so, somewhere between broccoli and spinach).

At this point, I worked on chopping my remaining cilantro, lime wedges, and avocado, and finally gave in to the idea of making this a rice and beans dish. I opened the can of black beans, gave them a good rinse, pulled the baking dish out AGAIN, and threw in the beans. I gave them another good stir to evenly mix all the elements, added a splash more water, and then returned the dish to the oven.

At this point, I set the timer to 7 minutes because I didn't want to lose track of time, at such high heat. I grated about an ounce and half (roughly, maybe it was an ounce, maybe it was three...oh I don't know, it was enough--that's all that matters) of Mexican cotija cheese. I don't see why you couldn't use parmesan, pecorino, feta, or a hard french or US American goat's cheese instead. At this point, I got Sean to set the table so all would be ready.

I pulled out the dish again, raised the heat on the oven to the broiler setting, sprinkled the cheese all over the top of the squash and the potatoes, and broiled it for about 2 minutes, just till the cheese started to brown lightly.

After 2-3 minutes, the--I guess I can call it a casserole or a gratin now, can't I?--casserole was more than ready, so I turned the oven and stove off and pulled it out.

At the dinner table, we filled our bowls with rice and sauteed broccoli raab first, and then dished up the squash, potato, black bean and chipotle casserole on top, garnished with an extra helping of cilantro, avocado, and fresh lime juice.

Holy moly you guys. This was SO GOOD. I had very low expectations of this bizarre improvisation, but it was just fantastic and I'm definitely going to make it again. This, or something very like it, may exist out there somewhere already, but I kind of feel like I invented something completely coherent and intelligible that really works. You could make it vegan, without the cheese topping, and it would still be delicious and deeply, completely satisfying. I am pretty proud of myself!

More thoughts on the politics of food and public health

National Treasure Mark Bittman's weekly Opinionator post is up on the New York Times website, and this week he offers an incisive analysis of the USDA's new food guidelines.

The gist of his argument is that the guidelines are pretty anemic, and downplay their most potent recommendations (what to eat less of) in deference to the food industry. He feels the US Department of Agriculture is debilitated by a conflict of interest, in that it is responsible for promoting the health of the national populace, as well as promoting the economic interests of the national food industry. Given the current structure of food subsidies and manufacturing practices, public health takes a back seat to economics.

The comments responding to his post are thought-provoking. I think there are two significant questions of political and moral philosophy at stake: 1) What is and what should be the state's role in protecting and promoting public and individual health? 2) What is and what should be the state's role in protecting and promoting national industry?

These are two giant, thorny issues that tend to provoke violent emotions. There is a longer tradition in the political culture of the modern nation-state of designating the state government responsible for national prosperity. For some reason though, the people who take this to be self-evident don't think the same logic should apply to the health of the nation. Suddenly the individual (and his or her family, and community) is solely responsible for their health and eating habits, despite the aggregate effects on the national economy (health care costs etc.). There is equal indifference to the effects of broader social and economic conditions on the health of individuals and communities. Why the disconnect? I think it ties in with larger ideological debates in US political life about the relationship between the individual and the state, but it seems to me that food is a way to intervene in this ancient ideological battle and perhaps write a new script and envision a new kind of society and political culture.

My ideas on this subject are still embryonic, but I'd like to think there are as yet un-envisioned political and cultural possibilities.

I attended a fascinating workshop for a professor from my department yesterday, who has an interesting book out on food and medicine. The workshop prompted me to start asking myself some more challenging questions about some of my own taken-for-granted assumptions about the relationships among food, individual health, and public health. I'm going to try to pick up her book and read it in all my (not copious) spare time. Hopefully I'll have some more thoughts on this subject and can start thinking more systematically about this question of food policy as an intervention into political culture.

On making your legumes more digestible...

I received some feedback recently on my Red Lentil, Bulgur and Chipotle stew (which I'm SO grateful for, because it is really helpful to know how things work for other people) from someone who felt the legumes were a bit hard on her system.

This made me realize I left something really important out of the recipe, and indeed had forgotten to include it in this most recent attempt at cooking. But, it's all for the best, because it gives me the opportunity to discuss two important points related to legumes.

The first point is that legumes are really high in fiber and complex sugars that can be hard to digest if you are not used to eating beans very often. The first, most simple solution, is to eat beans more often, so your internal flora can grow accustomed to processing them. Your insides need this kind of exercise. The second solution is to add one of the traditional seasonings used to aid digestion to the soaking and/or cooking process.

Different regions have different traditions of making legumes more digestible. In Mexico, Central America and South America, the spice epazote is used. Cooks in central and south Asia use the spice asafoetida. In east Asia, kombu, a variety of kelp, is used to soften the beans and make the sugars more digestible. A lot of the nicer organic canned beans include kombu in their ingredient list. I usually try to buy the cheaper kinds of canned beans, so I just take a stick or two of my own dried seaweed and crumble it to the pot as I begin the cooking process (and by crumble I mean take a knife to it and try to force it into smaller pieces, not necessarily all that successfully. Hmm. Maybe 10 seconds in the food processor would help. I'll give it a try.). It doesn't mess with the flavor in any noticeable way, except maybe to add a touch more umami and salty flavor. You certainly would not need to add salt when you cook with it.

There are a number of good reasons to eat seaweed regularly, beyond making your beans easier to digest. Kombu in particular is a good source of iodine (though you don't want to overconsume either, a little goes a long way), and sea vegetables in general are nutritional powerhouses, full of all sorts of valuable minerals and vitamins. They are also reputed to eliminate toxins from the body.

Other kinds of sea vegetables worth playing around with are arame, wakame, dulse, hiziki, and nori. They have specific benefits and strengths, but they are all good for you and something to eat regularly. I picked up a bag from the health food store in Santa Cruz, but I will take a look at my local Safeway and some of the other groceries around town to see who carries it and how much they charge for it. I think my bag was a couple of dollars, and lasts a long time, as you need only a little for whatever you're making.

I will work on gathering some recipes to experiment with soon to demonstrate the tasty things you can make with seaweed.

Personal Responsibility and Food Politics

I'm going to try hard not to let this blog devolve into simply reposting everything Mark Bittman says. But I'm busy, and I think people should read what he writes about food policy and food justice, so here's his first bit of meta-commentary on his food manifesto. You should read both and then we should discuss.

He articulates an important point that I think gets lost in the debate about structural forces vs. personal responsibility:

"To those of you who argue that it’s a matter of personal responsibility, to some extent you’re right. However, it’s not only personal responsibility about what we put in our mouths but about determining how things are produced, marketed and sold. That’s our responsibility also."

The personal responsibility thing just kills conversation, in my experience, and ignores the fact that the choices we make individually for ourselves also impacts everyone and everything around us.

I have a long way to go before I've really figured out what I can and need to do to improve the food supply chain in this country, so I'll probably be linking to Bittman's column's and reflecting on them frequently in the future. I won't always have time to get into as much depth as I'd like, but hopefully they will be conversation starters.

The recipe that changed it all....

Continuing my Monday night post-lecture decompression food meditation, I find myself missing the Minimalist videos already. But fortunately so is half of America, so the New York Times has handily provided us with a easy access to Bittman's best!

Scrolling through the slide-show in a trip down memory lane, I stumble upon the recipe that changed my life. My number one most favorite food of all time is pasta. I could eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (in college, I did). Bittman introduced me to the other great pasta pairing beyond the tomato: the bitter green. I have made a hundred variations of this recipe since 2009, using every kind of green I've ever gotten my hands on. I'm going to make this recipe this weekend, for old time's sake.

My guys....

Ok...not really my guys per se. But I'm feeling nostalgic, and it was a pretty exciting day when I first watched this video with my top two favorite foodies in all the world.

Don't they just make you want to cook something delicious right now?

Enjoy!

Red Lentil, Bulgur, and Chipotle Stew

Healthy, healthy, healthy. Yes indeed.

But actually pretty tasty too.

I got excited about legumes last year while I was doing my fieldwork in the Netherlands. The community I work with, the Syriac Orthodox, have to fast quite frequently. For them, that means basically a vegan diet, every Wednesday and Friday, and then a number of extended day fasts throughout the year. The longest fast is the 50 day Lenten fast before Easter. All in all, they are required to fast for the equivalent of almost six months a year.

It's generally good practice for anthropologists to at least TRY to participate fully in these sorts of activities, as it gives you some insight into the physical and emotional sensations of your informants' daily lives. It was a challenge for me, and I wasn't always at 100% because I get pretty weak and shaky if I go for too long without a small amount of meat, but in the end I'm really glad I experienced it. I found that eating vegan for extended periods of time did some good things for me...it made me feel very clean and clear and did wonders for my skin.

When eating vegan you do have to push a bit harder to find alternative sources of protein of course, and so I followed my informants' lead and tried to start cooking with legumes and whole grains more, as the combination of the two together provides a complete dietary protein. Eating at Syriac homes during the fasting periods was actually a treat, as I was often served one of my favorite Syriac dishes: Red Lentil Soup with Bulgur. Many of the mothers who made this for me came from south east Turkey, and I'm not quite sure what they put in it, but it was consistently delicious.

I acquired a number of legume based recipes from Martha Rose Shulman's Recipes for Health series on the New York Times website last year, when she did a special on traditional Greek Orthodox dishes meant for the Lenten fast. These provided me with a good framework for starting my own experiments with beans and grains, and I haven't gotten tired of them yet.

My favorite variation, of course, is still Red Lentils with Bulgur (cracked wheat), but I've taken it in a few different directions. Red lentils are just so quick and easy to cook compared to most dried bulk legumes, so its good for my last minute planning problems as well as my limited cooking budget. For awhile I just seasoned it very simply with chopped onion, garlic, and mixed Italian herbs, which did the job beautifully, but since I've been back in California I've been getting fancy with the Mexican spices and have come up with this rather delightful chipotle-based version. I was inspired by Shulman's Brown Lentil and Chipotle Soup recipe, but I like my version a bit better.

Sunday I went to the farmer's market and picked up a couple of bunches of Red Russian kale and a bunch of mustard greens, which I decided to shred and incorporate into the stew for some extra nutritional value and greenery. Bulgur is basically cracked whole wheat grains, and I have used different size grades for this recipe many times...you can use whatever you prefer. It comes in fine, medium, and coarse.

Here's what I did to make a big pot of soup to last two people at least four days (this makes a lot, so I used my large Dutch oven):

Before you begin the rest of your prep, it is worth measuring out your lentils and bulgar and giving them a rinse, so they are ready to go into the pot when the time comes. For this, I used 2 cups of red lentils, and about a cup of bulgur, and rinsed them separately in a fine-meshed colander.

Dice onions finely and saute in large thick-bottomed sauce pan in olive or vegetable oil, on medium-low. Give the onions a bit of salt to prevent sticking, and season with ground cumin, ground coriander, chili and/or cayenne powder, and ground pepper. Some chopped cilantro stems wouldn't go amiss either, if you have them on hand. As the onions soften, mince the garlic and throw in the pot. Keep an eye on the heat so you don't burn the garlic.

Once the onions and garlic have softened, after about 3-5 minutes (I'm never precise), dump in the lentils to the pot and promptly pour in 4 cups of water and/or veggie broth. Chicken broth would work well too if you don't care about the vegan-ness.

Raise the heat to medium-high and allow the liquid to boil. Let the lentils cook for about 10-15 minutes so they have a head start on the bulgur wheat. Add the bulgur to the pot once the lentils look like they are starting to cook down. You might need to add some liquid, you might need to let it cook off, it all depends on how thick or thin you like it. Mine usually ends up very porridge-y, which I enjoy. Just keep an eye on it and use your judgment (or find out through trial and error). Lower the heat to medium or medium-low, depending on the strength of your stove-top, and let the soup simmer gently. At this point, I open my small can of chipotle chili's in adobo sauce and take about half of its contents, putting the rest in tupperware for some culinary excitement later in the week. Spoon the adobo sauce into the stew, and chop the chipotle peppers into small chunks and incorporate into the stew. At this quantity and the usual spiciness of my chipotle's, this will make a mighty spicy soup.

While the lentils and bulgur are simmering away and getting darker under the influence of the adobo sauce, rinse and shred your greens. Red Russian kale is pretty fibrous, so I rip the leaves of the stalks and discard them, and put the kale into the soup first, followed by the mustard greens roughly chopped. You could use any hearty green vegetable...I have even put in chopped broccoli and let it cook in the soup. You can let the soup cook longer first and just put the vegetables in towards the end if you want to leave them crunchier and less cooked.

Do stir fairly often and keep an eye on the heat. The moisture can separate from the mass of lentils, which can sink to the bottom and burn if you're not careful, but semi-regular stirring will prevent this.

Technically, lentils don't need much more than 20 minutes of cooking to be ready to eat, but I like to give the flavors enough time to marry and deepen and let the liquid cook off to make a thicker stew, so I let it simmer for 45 plus minutes on low heat. Yesterday, I was cooking in the afternoon knowing we wouldn't eat for several hours, so I turned the heat off and put the lid on, which let it steam cook for longer. I reheated it for dinner and it acquired a lovely smokey round comfort-food sort of flavor that you don't generally associate with vegan foods, and it was punctuated by some aggressive chili heat. I'm looking forward to having more this evening with a dark seasonal bock beer, which will require zero labor on my Monday night, apart from twisting the bottle cap off.

Addendum: Ok, so I had to get the bottle opener out and pop it off. But still.