The Martes Chronicles: Moves Like Nikujaga

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Headchef

I’m busy and it’s cold, cold, cold outside. Let’s cook up some meat and potatoes, Japanese style. Nikujaga (pronounced like Mick-oo Jagga) is Japan’s answer to the pot roasts and beef stews of the western world. In fact, it was developed by Japanese naval chefs in imitation of the beef stew the British navy served to its sailors. I’m sure you’re at a loss to come up with a finer culinary pedigree than “British Military Cuisine“, but bear with me for a moment. In order to understand why the Japanese would adopt something so seemingly mundane with, as it turns out, a great deal of enthusiasm, we must step into the WABAC Machine for a moment. For the better part of three centuries, Japan experienced a period of self-imposed isolation from external cultural influence. From 1603 to 1853 Japan experienced minimal contact with foreigners beyond their archipelago; limited mostly to Dutch trading ships allowed in once a year and private Chinese vessels. This isolation was in direct resistance to European (particularly Portuguese) attempts at colonization. By avoiding the economic and religious domination from foreign powers experienced by so many of the neighboring countries in East Asia, Japan underwent a cultural refinement almost unprecedented in world history. Despite (or possibly because of) near-constant civil warfare; the Japanese took a culture and cuisine largely borrowed from China and Korea and created something wholly unique. In the 1850′s; American gunboats forced the Japanese to open their harbors to foreign trade. The rapid mixing of modern industrial society with that of a country sequestered within an idiosyncratic feudal culture had longstanding historical and cultural ramifications ranging from World War II to tentacle rape. Free trade brought in new dishes which the Japanese began to develop a taste for like curry, spaghetti and tomato sauce and breaded pork cutlets. These days Japanese cuisine is loaded with borrowed dishes that, while only about a century and a half old, are intrinsic comfort food to the Japanese.

Nikujaga is one of the most accessible examples of this kind of proto-fusion cuisine. Literally meaning “meat and potatoes”; nikujaga is simple to make, delicious on a cold day and easily adaptable to whatever variations you feel like making.

Here’s what you need to serve about 8 people:

1 1/2 LBS Short Ribs, Bones removed (Sliced or Ground Beef will suffice)
2 large White Onions (sliced into rings)
4 large Baking Potatoes (Peeled and cut into large chunks)
1/2 LB Carrots (scrubbed and sliced into 1″ lengths)
1 oz Dried Shitake Mushrooms (rinsed)
1 1/2 Cups Sugar
1 Cup Mirin*
3/4 Cup Tamari or Light Soy Sauce
1/2 Cup Dark Soy Sauce
Short Grain Japanese Rice
Sliced Scallions
Shichimi Togarashi (optional)

*If you don’t have any Mirin sub 3/4 cup of Rice Wine (can be found at most asian markets) and 1/2 cup honey.

Steep dried mushrooms in 2 cups boiling water for ten minutes. Strain and reserve the broth. Once mushrooms cool; remove and discard the stems and slice the caps in half.

In a large pot; brown your meat in batches so that it looks good and you have a decent amount of rendered beef fat in your pot.

Add a little extra vegetable oil to the pot if need be and throw your Mushrooms, Onions and Carrots into the medium-hot (but not smoking) beef fat. Saute them until the onions and carrots begin to soften, about ten minutes.

Deglaze the pot with your reserved mushroom stock. Add the beef, sugar, soy sauces and mirin to the pot along with enough water to comfortably cover everything and bring to a boil. Skim the fat from the top using a ladle or the “traditional Japanese method” I learned from the person who taught me how to cook nikujaga; using a paper towel. Once skimmed, simmer on low with a lid on for about an hour. Add the potatoes and simmer with the lid on for another hour.

Check and see how the broth tastes. Too salty? Add more sugar. Too sweet? Add some salt. Too bland? More soy sauce. Meanwhile, drink some sake.
You should be all set. Is your rice cooked? The short-grain sushi rice?
You better get on that.

Ladle the stew into bowls. Top with a big scoop of rice. Garnish with the scallions and if you want some spice; the Shichimi Togarashi.

Enjoy the benefits of cultural apropriation.

The Martes Chronicles: Cholent Eruption

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Headchef

Jewish law requires that I eat a hot meal for lunch on Shabbat, but also that I not do any cooking. This has been the case for my people for roughly 3,000 years and in that time there has been very little advancement in how that meal is prepared.

Sure, there are regional variations from around the world that seem to originate with the slow-simmered sabbath soups of the Jews. Cholent and Hamin, the two most well known, seem to have inpspired the French cassoulet, Spanish Fabada and the Portuguese Feijoada. All of them have the following in common: Beans, meat and slow cooking. All other differences are a matter of what ingredients are available on hand.

The other week I had some beans, pearl barley and some beef soup bones that, despite their meager origins, turned into an unctuous and satisfying dish after a long, slow cook in the crock pot. Here’s what I did:

I browned a bunch of soup bones in a heavy dutch oven until much of the fat had rendered out. I set the bones aside, keeping the fat in the pan so that I could…

Sweat some onions and garlic in the beef fat. Never ever, ever, ever put uncooked onions into a slow cooker unless you want your food to be inedible and your kitchen overwhelmed with noxious onion gasses. Science!

Once your onions are nice and golden, de-glaze the pan with a couple cups water and use a wooden spoon to scrape up all that nice beefy fond you’ve built up in the pan.

Put your washed and sorted beans in the bottom of the cooker.

Follow that with the onion/garlic/pan-drippings and a half cup of pearl barley.
Throw in maybe a tablespoon of salt. DO NOT OVER SALT THIS!
You can always salt it to taste when you serve it.

Add some potatoes and carrots, a squirt of ketchup (seriously) and cover the whole thing with water.

Set it on Low and don’t touch it for about 12 to 16 hours. That’s it.

I don’t have a picture of the finished product because I don’t take photos on shabbos, but even so, it’s not the most visually appealing dish. This is where having some chopped parsley on hand can really dress things up.

Those are the basics, but the possibilities are limitless. The following week I used just pinto beans, various chili seasonings, browned some chuck roast instead of soup bones and used canned, drained hominy in place of pearl barley for a sort of Tex-Mex cholent (garnished with sliced radishes and avocado).

Guess what? It was AMAZING.

Pretty much any meat or bean combo is a good one, all you need is time, patience and a judicious hand with the salting (nothing is worse than over-salted cholent). By no means should you limit this dish to Jewish holidays you don’t celebrate. You could easily use the outline of this recipie to make a duck and white bean cassoulet for a dinner party, or make something resembling chili (because chili has no beans) for a football game or potluck.

Go nuts. It’s practically idiot-proof.

The Martes Chronicles: Challah! Challah!

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Headchef

Challah is the cornerstone of almost every festive Jewish meal. Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, in particular has a great deal of symbolism related to the forming, baking and serving of this bread. Outside of Jewish practice, challah is beginning to be embraced by chefs from all over the world as a unique alternative to other enriched breads like brioche or pão doce.

I spend the bulk of my Fridays preparing for Shabbat. Cleaning the house, setting up food for the evening (and the next day), making sure the DVR records Saturday’s Longhorns game and most importantly- baking bread.

Depending on what kind of food I’m making for Shabbat; I’ll either hand-make some tortillas or bake a pair of challot for the weekend. I used to just buy my challah from a kosher baker, but distance and money often conspire so that baking it myself is the cheaper/easier option. In truth, home-made challah just plain tastes better, and can be modified to suit the taste of the baker.

That’s what I ended up doing with my grandmother’s recipe (passed to me from my mother). It was just fine how it is, but because I have to tinker with every recipe I use, I ended up creating a recipe that’s a little fluffier and sweeter than the original.
Also I knew I’d be posting it here, and it struck me as kind of wrong to give a family recipe away without charging anything for it.

The recipe as it stands is basically fool-proof. I don’t consider myself a terrific baker, but I have yet to produce a loaf using this formula that wasn’t delicious and beautiful to look at. I’m not sure what more you could ask for.

You will need:

6 cups All-Purpose Flour (Plus extra for dusting)
2 packages Dry Yeast
2 cups Warm Water
4 Eggs
1/4 cup Sugar
1/4 cup Vegetable Oil
Teaspoon of Salt
(Don’t use Kosher Salt or the bread won’t rise as well!)

Start by adding the Sugar and Yeast to the warm water, let it sit for about ten minutes.

Mix 4 cups of the flour with three of the beaten eggs, the oil, salt and the water mixture until you have a uniform consistency.
Add the other 2 cups of flour and work it until you have a knead-able dough.

Knead the dough for 10 to 20 minutes until you develop strong gluten, meaning the dough stretches when you pull it instead of breaking.

Place in a large, lightly greased bowl with a dry towel to cover it.
Put it in a warm part of the kitchen for 1 to 3 hours or until it doubles in size.

Go work on your Cholent.

Once your dough has doubled, punch it down and do the following:

Do this with both halves and then pinch the little braids securely to the top of the larger braids like so:

Place these on a floured or parchment papered cookie sheet, cover and let rise for another 20 minutes while you preheat the oven to 350º.

Beat your one remaining egg and thouroughly brush the surfaces of both loaves, making sure to get in all the nooks and crannies.
You can leave the challot unadorned, or you can sprinkle them with sesame or poppy seeds.

Place them in the oven for 45 minutes, and there you have it.

If the braiding seems a little too advanced, you can always make round challah (usually served for Rosh Hashana with an extra 1/2 cup of honey and a cup of raisins in the initial dough) which just requires that you divide the risen dough in half and elongate each half to about 12″ with one end larger then the other.

Roll that up with the big end in the middle, proof and bake the same way and you’ll get this crowd-pleaser:

The Martes Chronicles: Pilaf And Go

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Headchef

Moghul Style rice Pilaf with Curried Chicken and Grilled Tomato

Few dishes span geography and history in as grand a manner as rice pilaf. Or pilau. or palov. Or palau. Or pulao. Or sopa seca, if you will. How the did rice cooked in broth become a common dish stretching from Asia to the Near East, North Africa, Europe and Central America?

It starts with the Persians (that’s what Iranians used to call themselves), and their neighbors in Central Asia, who were some of the first rice cultivators in the world. Having rice (typically of a long grain Basmati-style variety) as your staple food can get boring very fast, so the Persians developed multiple preparations for their rice, each producing a very different result based on the steaming/boiling/par-cooking methods used.

It doesn’t take much imagination to realize that cooking the rice in a seasoned broth would be considered both highly nutritious and a little luxurious, what with broth being relatively more expensive than plain water. When Alexander the Great encountered the Persian Empire; he was fed a variant of pilaf by the locals; enjoying the dish so much that he brought the recipe back to Macedonia where it was in turn spread throughout Eastern Europe.

The story of pilaf is the story of the rise and fall of empires. The Persians spread the dish through Afghanistan, Central Asia, Turkey and the Arabian peninsula. The Turks brought it with them into their conquered territories, including parts of Europe and Asia Alexander never reached. During the course of the geopolitical rise of Islam the Arabs spread it throughout their domain, from the Middle East and North Africa all the way into Spain and Southern Italy.

The Spanish dishes of Arroz con Pollo and Paella and the basic methods behind Italian Risotto all stem from that Arab/Persian legacy. More on Spain in a moment.

The dish also spread eastward. The Mughal rulers of Northern India (and modern day Bangladesh, Kashmir and Pakistan) brought Islamic culture and religion to the subcontinent, and with it a variety of pilaf variations, such as Briyani and Pilau. In the parts of Southeast Asia where ethnic Indian communities traveled to (Burma and Indonesia especially) they brought variants of pilaf with them. Visitors to Singapore and Malaysia will find the same cooking style for pilaf utilizing Southeast Asian ingredients and flavors.

Over on the Iberian peninsula; the Spaniards reconquered their country after almost 800 years of Muslim rule. In 1492 they began both a campaign of ethnically cleansing Spain and Portugal of Jews and Muslims, as well as their exploration and colonization of the New World. Rice came with them, as well as refugee communities of Sephardi Jews who brought the Middle Eastern style rice, noodle and broth preparations. The descendants of those dishes can be seen on the everyday Mexican table in the Sopa Secas (literally “dry soups”) served with all main meals.

Rice pilaf has even become a staple in the US. What did you think Rice-a-Roni was?

Sopa Seca con Fideos

The running current of all these dishes, beyond being rice cooked in broth, is that they lend themselves to being served to large groups. Pilaf isn’t something you throw together for yourself, it’s a dish representative of hospitality traditions spanning the globe. From the breaking of a Ramadan fast in Jakarta, an upscale hotel in India, a Bedouin tent or a Quinceañera in El Paso- the presence of a rice pilaf transforms a meal into a feast.

So how the hell do you make it?

At it’s most basic; all you’ll need is long grain rice and good flavorful stock. The rest is a matter of plugging in different savories, spices, meats, fruits, vegetables, nuts and noodles to customize it to whatever framework you want it to fit in. Below is the basic technique, along with a few different variations you can try. Mix and match them. Experiment. That’s how we got the wealth of pilaf recipes we have now.

Your basic ratio should be 1 part rice; 2 parts stock.
Any long grain rice will do, but Indian Basmati rice is ideal for fluffy pilafs where the grains are separate. I recommend rinsing and draining the rice three times, making sure it’s not too damp when you’re ready to cook.

The flavor of the stock is up to you. Neutral stocks like chicken and vegetable tend to be flavorful without overpowering the other components. If you’re serving lamb with your pilaf, then use lamb stock, and so on. Make a little more than you need, just in case, and have your stock just short of boiling when you’re ready to cook.

Before you heat up your cooking fat in a heavy bottomed pan with a tight fitting lid; you’re going to need to consider a few things. Namely; which of the following ingredients you care to incorporate:

Cooking Fat:
Vegetable oil, Olive oil, Grapeseed oil or Ghee (clarified butter)
Starches:
Rice (rinsed), dry toasted noodles (like fideos)
Savories
Onion, Garlic, Carrot, Chopped Peppers, Ginger, Mushrooms.
Spices
Curry or Cardamon and Fennel Seed (for Indian-style), Cinnamon and Cardamon (Turkish/Persian), Saffron, Cumin and Cardamon (Middle Eastern).
Veggies, Fruit & Nuts:
Peas, Tomatoes, Raisins, Grapes, Cashews, Slivered Almonds, Sultanas, Chopped Dates, Apples.

So you heat your fat in the pan to medium high. Throw in your onions and saute until translucent (or brown them if you prefer a stronger flavor).
Toss in your rice and stir constantly until each grain is lightly toasted.
If you’re using toasted noodles; throw them in now.
Add your spices and remaining savories and stir until lightly toasted.
Add your stock and any fruits, veggies or nuts you plan on adding. Stir well.
Bring to a boil and cover. Immediately bring to a low simmer.

That’s it! It should take about 35-45 minutes to cook.
DO NOT OPEN THE POT BEFORE THAT!

Once all the liquid is absorbed; fluff with a fork and serve immediately. If you don’t open it too many times; you can keep it warm in the oven with the lid tightly sealed.

Serve by itself or with anything that sounds good. Enjoy.

The Martes Chronicles: Tortilla Me Up, Tortilla Me Down

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Headchef

After my totally fair and in no way hyperbolic critique of the Walk-A-Taco last month, I expected more people to come to its defense. Apparently I made a pretty good case against the product, as most of the feedback I received was in agreement with my less-than-positive appraisal.

The only thing that seemed to throw people were a few throwaway comments I made disparaging flour tortillas. I’ve made no secret of my Mexican food snobbery and the various excuses I have for expecting you to tolerate it. At the same time; I don’t consider myself some kind of omnipotent expert on the subject. There are limits to my knowledge, and as much as I might like to be, I’m not the Space-Pope of Mexican food.

Rick Bayless is the Space Pope of Mexican food

That would be this guy.

It just happens to be something I was raised with; that I’m both deeply familiar with and constantly learning something new about. If Mexican food can be quantified as a single entity (which is asking a lot) it holds the strongest sense memories for me. Every Mexican dish and technique in my repertoire, simple or complex, in inextricably tied to people, places and events from my life. The smells and tastes often remind me of family and friends; parties held; romances kindled; places visited long ago.
Even the right combination of stray scents from the right restaurant or mercado, caught on a random street in a random American city, will transport me to being three years old in a Juarez market with my parents.

Often just the suggestion of Mexican food, even bad Mexican food, will make my mouth water like nothing else. This isn’t like a “reclaiming my lost childhood” kind of thing either; I’ve always been this way. Sesame Street was on right before lunch when I was a kid.
How could you not NEED tacos after watching this?

It’s easily my favorite culinary framework to operate in, being a perfect combination of challenging and familiar, with enough breath and depth to never be boring. I guess what I’m trying to say is that when I’m cooking you Mexican food, I’m showing off as much as possible.

I also happen to think, and this is merely my opinion, that when ranked against the other three major cuisines (arguably: Chinese, Italian and French. Feel free to disagree) that Mexican cuisine DESTROYS them in terms of sophistication and influence.

But I repeat.

I’ll give all due credit to the Chinese for inventing cooked food, the French for innovating technique and the Italians for showing the world how to treat ingredients- among many other obvious contributions to world cuisine. But remove the tomato, corn, beans, squash, sweet potato, peanuts, chile peppers, avocado, chocolate and vanilla (all of which either originated or were cultivated in Pre-Columbian Mexico) from those cuisines and many of their “classics” become less than awesome.

In terms of sophistication; read about how the Mayans and Aztecs figured out how to process chocolate and vanilla; both of which require precise fermentation and processing in order to transform the raw ingredients into the flavors we recognize. If they were smart enough to figure that out on their own, then they were certainly smart enough to build pyramids without extraterrestrial assistance.

http://twitpic.com/5qa0it

I’ve been cooking a lot of simple Mexican food for myself lately. About four days a week, I make my own tortillas.
Now, I don’t hate flour tortillas. Given the choice I’ll almost always choose corn over flour and I have a lot of difficulty accepting flour tortillas for items like tacos and enchiladas, but sometimes you want/need a burrito and flour is the only thing that will do.

Part of my snobbery stems from my upbringing, but it was working at the Restaurant of the Peninsular States Just Below California where I became spoiled on flour tortillas fresh off the comal. Corn tortillas have a fairly lengthy shelf life if stored properly. Flour tortillas begin to taste bad the moment they begin to cool down. Factory-made flour tortillas are particularly bad this way, as the heavy amount of shortening they use to keep the tortillas moist takes on an unappealing sour taste in no time.
Most burrito joints will warm these factory-mades on a flattop of some sort, but anyone who’s eaten a leftover burrito that they had in the fridge for a night knows that the tortilla is gonna be the worst part.

So I’ll eat flour tortillas; but I’m picky about when I do.

Making them at home is no picnic. You can buy flour tortilla mixes like White Wings at most large grocery stores (requiring only that you add water). They’re a staple in lots of homes and they make for a great product. The problem is that even the instant mixes require a lot of kneading and rolling out by hand, and failure to use a roller properly can result in tortillas that belong in the pita bread family. If you have the time and the energy; fresh flour tortillas are totally worth the effort and can elevate a meal quite a bit.

The other potential downside to flour tortillas is the lack of options for leftovers. Even homemade ones start to taste funky after a couple of days. They don’t make very good chips, or fry well for soups, so I find the best option is to make pizzas out of them.

Nothing is this world, however, can touch the fresh, soft corn tortilla.

First off; the smell of fresh masa is amazing. Whether in comes from a mix at the grocery store or it’s being ground fresh in a Mexican marketplace; it’s easily one of my favorite smells. Getting up early in the morning and making a stack of corn tortillas to last through the day improves the quality of every day I do it. They can be a lot of work for one person (like a lot of Mexican food, tortillas are a lot more fun when made in an assembly line of family or friends), but once you get the technique down, it’s no more difficult than baking bread.

Masa mix can be purchased at nearly any large grocery store, but Mexican mercados might carry fresh ground masa or other specialties like blue corn masa. I use a cast iron pan to cook mine on; and I recommend you do the same.

Because I make a lot of tortillas at home, buying a tortilla press made sense a long time ago. My wife and I went through two Mexican-made cast aluminum presses before we realized that our tortilla making was too heavy duty for these common grocery store models.

While shopping in an Indian grocery store, we stumbled on a cast iron chapati press (size 4) that seemed perfectly suited to our needs. We’ve had the same one for more than five years and it’s been nothing but reliable. The one in the picture above isn’t ours.
Ours came with a swastika on it for some reason.

I’ve posted plenty of taco-related recipes on here before, but when you’ve finished with tacos and still have plenty of leftover corn tortillas you have a whole world of other options for them.

You can fry them whole for tostadas or roll them up with cheese for flautas (or taquitos, if you will).
You can fry large strips or triangle for your own homemade tortilla chips (always better than from a bag) or for chilaquiles.

My personal favorite is migas (featured at the very top of the page). A simple combination of day-old corn tortillas torn roughly and sauteed in oil until crispy with onions and peppers, then scrambled up with eggs. Migas are a little more Tex-Mex, especially with the addition of cheese, salsa and sour cream, which even I can’t resist some times.

There are no hard and fast rules for how to make them, but the basic ratio is two 6″ tortillas to every one egg, and the order into the pan goes as follows:
Tortillas; onions; chiles; eggs; cheese; cilantro; etc…

Of course the greatest thing anyone can do with a tortilla chip; the one thing all little pieces of corn dream of being a part of someday; is the nacho.

But I think y’all already know how I feel about nachos.

The Martes Chronicles: Farkakte and Farblondzhit

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Headchef

And for the record, there were a few Jewish cowboys. Big guys, who were great shots, and spent money freely.

Full Disclosure: I’m Jewish.

Not just non-threateningly Jewish like, say for example, Natalie Portman or Drake, but severely Jewish like Larry David or Optimus Prime.

At this point in my life; that means I don’t eat pork or shellfish, I don’t shave on Saturdays and I pretty much wear a hat at all times, despite my having a luxurious head of curly hair. I wasn’t raised with any of the typical Jewish cultural milestones, my parents being deadbeat hippies, so for the most part our Jewishness was expressed through the medium of food.

Talking about food. Eating food. Complaining about food. We didn’t keep a kosher home or celebrate holidays beyond Passover and Chanukah; but we ate a lot of bagels, pickled herring, matzohbrie, blintzes, chopped liver, chicken soup, felafel and a whole lot of Chinese food (especially on the day y’all call Christmas).

For most of my life, even when I wasn’t particularly interested in being Jewish, the food of my cultural heritage was often my only lifeline to 4,000 years of tradition from Abraham to Sandy Koufax. So even when I was eating bacon and driving on Saturdays; an occasional tongue sandwich on rye with a Dr. Browns black cherry soda was a comforting link to a birthright I didn’t fully embrace or understand.

I wasn’t alone in this, either.

Plenty of assimilated and secular Jews have made food their lone connection to being Jewish, and it’s been happening for long enough that there’s been a Yiddish term for it since the 19th century: fressfroemigkeit, or “eating religion”. Recently I’ve seen the term “Culinary Jew” pop up on the internet to mean the same thing; often in a negative appraisal of the fact that most American Jews qualify more as “culinary” than anything else.

This distinction is made in contrast to those practicing Jews who keep kosher; meaning they follow scriptural commandments originating in the Hebrew Bible dictating everything from what kind of foods can be eaten to how that food should be handled and cooked. These dietary laws (collectively referred to as kashrut) include practices dealing with the ethical treatment,slaughter and butchering of stock animals, identifying kosher animals and the meticulous (often obsessive) separation of meat and dairy.

Because I fell into the “culinary Jew” category for most of my life; I didn’t recognize that the food I ate as “Jewish food” was the way it was specifically because its origins had been shaped by religious practice. I understood that certain foods were associated with certain holidays (matzoh for Passover and latkes for Chanukah being the most obvious) and I had a fleeting knowledge of the biblical laws, but with the exception of a summer job at Hebrew daycamp at the end of junior high, I really had no understanding of how a kosher kitchen functioned.

I became an old man a few years back and suddenly became very interested in getting deeper into practicing Judaism. After a lot of consideration and reflection, along with the sudden onset of a crippling shellfish allergy, I decided to start “eating kosher” as best as I could manage. It’s been a lot of trial and error since then, with only occasional arguments with my decidedly not-kosher wife.

For the most part I’m very happy with my decision. For one thing, I know it’s made me a better cook. Without crutches like pork fat, diver scallops or butter and cream sauces on meat; I’ve become a better problem solver. I’ve been forced to pull more flavor from a smaller palette of ingredients and the results have been, by far, better tasting than anything I was cooking back when I was banging out steak au poiv to impress the ladies.

I don’t mean to suggest for a moment that there’s anything inherently superior about kosher cooking or that you should run out and try it. Keep eating all the bacon you want; it’s not hurting me any.

Although I don’t eat cheeseburgers because my sky deity says so; I try not to factor any judgement into it. Sometimes my friends accidentally feed me something I “can’t” eat, and you know what happens? I don’t get struck by lightning; so no big deal. It’s my own thing at this point, and the only reason I talk about it is because of the importance that food and cooking hold in my life.

When I wasn’t a practicing Jew; the food was the only thing connecting me to it. Now that I’m more superstitious; food is something that has to be refracted through the prism of Judaism. Every meal, every snack, in and out of the house is an exercise in menu scouring and ingredient reading. My friends and family all think I’m a little crazy for it.

Is it worth it? Sure. It makes sense to me, so I keep doing it. I don’t understand vegans, but whatever; one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.

Today I’m thinking more about food and religious mandates than usual, as I’m fasting in observance of Tisha B’Av, the day everything terrible happened to the Jews. I’m cooking some fava beans for ful medames, to be eaten when I break the fast, but that’s just boiled fava beans with parsley, garlic, lemon juice and olive oil.

You don’t need a recipe for that. I’ll get back to food next week.

The Mystery of “Creole” Stew

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Headchef

French? Portuguese? Senegalese? Brazilian?

A Dark And Soupy Night…

During my last year of high school; I lived with my aunt and uncle in a second-ring suburb of Minneapolis. Through a series of bizarre events they managed to collect an assortment of teenagers from around the world that year, and among them was a girl from the West-African nation of Senegal. One night she prepared a soup for us so amazing that it has remained tattooed into my memory for the 15 years since I first tasted it.

It was a simple, nameless (as far as I knew) fish stew; golden-red stock studded with tender pieces of whitefish and peeled potatoes. Served with buttered baguettes and possibly a sprinkle of parsley, it was a revelation for me. So much flavor and depth; the way it soaked into the french bread; the notes of chili; the briny ocean-taste of the fish.

I hardly remember anything I ate as a teenager, but I have an easier time remembering that fish soup than the name of the first girl I made out with in high school. Honestly; I suspect that soup had a greater influence on me than old whatshername ever did.

Life happened, and I ended up leaving my aunt and uncle’s guardianship before I could graduate high school, let alone get the soup recipe.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the intervening 15 years reverse-engineering the soup on my own . I managed to create a couple reasonable interpretations through trial and error, but once wikipedia came along and I had the means to research the cuisine of Senegal I found myself plunging down a rabbit-hole of arcane soup knowledge that I couldn’t have fathomed before.

Let me show you how deep the soup bowl goes...

The first thing I discovered was that Senegal has a lot of fish stews.

Too many in fact.

Look up Senegalese cuisine on the internets, and about two-thirds of the published recipes seem to describe: “Fish simmered with tomatoes, peppers and spices in a broth served with rice or french bread”

It’s only the wikipedia page on the subject that gave me something resembling a clue; a mention of a bouillabaisse-like soup which is listed as Thiou. Frustratingly, when I clicked on the link it took me to a page on a river which runs through France, but nothing about the elusive stew.

Pictured: Not Soup

The Bouillabaisse thing was a good clue, to an extant. I had tasted and cooked plenty of Bouillabaisse before the onset of my shellfish allergy, and it certainly shared a couple of traits with the Senegalese soup in terms of appearance, technique and flavor. Plus- Senegal was French colony at one point, so the idea of a stew made famous by French sailors being adapted with West-African ingredients made sense.

Except for one problem: the soup could be found far outside of the former French empire.

Pictured: Not Bouillibasse

About five years ago I read a recipe for a Brazillian fish stew called Moqueca that sounded great. The common thread among the many variations was fish, tomatoes and peppers, sometimes with coconut milk added depending on the region. When I ended up making the soup I added cassava, green plantain, sweet, purple & white potato, for the starch, as well as ginger and saffron- both of which gave it a more Afro-Brazilian flavor than is found in the common recipe.

Despite the above additions and the presence of monkfish, prawns, half-cobs of sweet corn and linguiça sausage- this proto-Brazilian stew ended up tasting more like the Senegalese soup of my youth than any previous attempt.

Why was that? The connection between West-Africa and the descendants of slaves in the Brazilian state of Bahia (where my moqueca variation came from) made plenty of sense, but the tomato, onion and pepper base common between the two soups was decidedly European.

As it turns out; the French weren’t the only Europeans who attempted to stake a claim in what is now Senegal. The Portuguese had been there when they were dominating the slave trade, and while their language and culture failed to remain, a fish soup called Caldeirada seems to have left an impression.

The ingredients? Fish, tomatoes, onions, peppers and potatoes- oftentimes with saffron and ginger.

To be fair, there are other variations on this soup from other parts of the world. The Greek Kakavia, the San Franciscan Cipopino, the Catalan Suquet de Peix and the Italian Cacciucco all echo Bouillibasse, Caldeirada and Moqueca- with the differences stemming largely from what’s available to the cooks making them.

This brings me to my recipe (finally!).

It’s not Senegalese, Brazilian, Portuguese or French- and yet it’s a little bit of all of these. I call it “Creole” stew (quotes emphasized), but Meta-Creole stew is a little more accurate. The strength of this recipe is in how well it adapts to improvisation. You can follow it exactly how I write it, or you can sub out certain ingredients to make it more European, South American or African.

It’s up to you. Let me know in the comments how you make it your own.

Meta-Creole Stew

You’re going to need the following:

1/2 pound each: Sea Bass, Cod & Grouper, cut into large chunks
2 Red/2 Green Peppers (preferably Cubanelle peppers)
1 Sweet Potato, peeled and cut into large chunks
1/2 lb of Carrots, washed (not peeled!) and sliced into 2″ chunks.
2 large Baking Potatoes, peeled and cut into quarters
2 large Yellow Onions, quartered
1/2 cup Shallots, chopped
1 tablespoon Fresh Ginger, grated
1 teaspoon Hot Peppers, chopped
1 Garlic Bulb, peeled and chopped
15 Saffron threads, steeped in 1/2 cup warm water
6 oz. Tomato Paste
1/2 bottle White Wine (The other half is for you to drink. Yay!)
1 teaspoon each: Fennel Seed & Herbs de Provence
3 Bay Leaves
1/2 tablespoon each: Smoked Paprika & Cayenne Pepper
Peels from two Oranges (I used blood oranges because they’re in season, but any orange will suffice. Just wash the damn stickers off)
Olive Oil
Kosher Salt
Chopped parsley (to garnish)
Good French Bread

Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil on medium high in a large stock pot; when the olive oil becomes fragrant add your onions, shallots and a pinch of salt. Keep them moving around until they are translucent but not browned.

Add your sweet peppers to the mix and sweat them out until they get soft.

Be sure to keep them moving- you don’t want to brown a thing.

Throw in your garlic, ginger, dried herbs and a pinch of chopped parsley. Keep it moving for about 90 seconds and make sure the garlic doesn’t brown.

Add the tomato paste, paprika, cayenne and chopped hot peppers. Stir like crazy (preferably with a wooden spoon) for another 2-3 minutes, making sure tomato paste doesn’t stick or burn to the bottom of the pan.

When it looks like most of the moisture has evaporated; dump the wine in.

Add the potatoes, sweet potato, carrots, bay leaves and orange peel. Bring the heat up to high while you try to mix everything around.

There should be enough liquid to cover everything, but if there isn’t, add only enough water to just cover it. Those starches will produce a lot.

As it just comes to a boil; stir and cover it and lower the heat to medium-low. Let it simmer for about 45 minutes to an hour, or until the potatoes are tender. (The sweet potatoes might dissolve entirely. Trust me, you won’t mind)

Once your starches are tender; gently stir in your fish. Let it come back up to a simmer, then cover it and let it be for another fifteen minutes (not too much longer than that or your fish will dissolve).

While that’s simmering away; slice up your baguettes, brush them with olive oil and toast them under your broiler. When the toast is ready; pull it out and rub each piece with a garlic clove.

Did you make any compound butter? I made some with chopped shallot, parsley and saffron. You should probably do that too; well in advance of making your soup.

Holy balls! Your soup is ready!