Grown-up Spaghetti-Os

My husband writes music reviews, which means I have the opportunity to hear a lot of good music...and a lot of, well, music that I don’t love. I also get to stare at Mark in awe as he confidently describes albums as “angular artrock” or “Japanese instru-metal.” Angular WHAT? Japanese HOW? It is strange to hear someone you know so well put together phrases that you completely and utterly don’t understand.

Food imagery is rarely as impenetrably obtuse, but the craft of describing food and describing music are not that dissimilar. Both involve allusions and metaphors, evoke your senses, and, in the end, reflect just as much about the describer as the described. Although I usually lack the vocabulary and reference points to express more than a gut-level like or dislike of music, I occasionally try to impress my husband by, for example, telling him that a singer-songwriter sounds like what would happen if Iron & Wine shouted instead of whispered. Could fool you into thinking I know what I am talking about, now couldn’t I?

Mark, in return, shares his insights about food. Like when, after tasting this soup from Morocco, he quickly exclaimed – “It’s like grown-up Spaghetti-Os!” Sweetened by squash, freshened with lemon, and sustained by dainty pasta strands instead of Os – why yes, yes chorba bil matisha does taste a bit like grown-up Spaghetti-Os. Although this easy-to-prepare Kitty Morse recipe may not be as thought-provoking as angular artrock or Japanese instru-metal, it deftly transcends the seeming average-ness of pureed tomatoes and squash through the inspired addition of cilantro, celery leaves and cloves. Like new music from The Old Ceremony, Roman Candle, Sara Bareilles, Bobby Bare Jr., The Be Good Tanyas, and The Crooked Jades, it will join our regular playlist.

Chorba Bil Matisha
Adapted from The Vegetarian Table: North Africa
Serves 4 generously

1 onion
4 whole cloves
6 cups / 1.5 liters vegetable broth
2 pounds / 1.2 kilograms butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into small chunks
4 celery stalks, including leaves, coarsely chopped
5 tomatoes, quartered
12 fresh cilantro (a.k.a. coriander) sprigs
¼ teaspoon / 1.25 milliliters ground turmeric
½ cup / 50 grams angel hair pasta, broken into 2-inch / 5-centimeter pieces
½ cup / 125 milliliters milk
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Lemon wedges

Stud the onion with the cloves. In a large saucepan, combine the onion, broth, squash, celery, tomatoes, cilantro and turmeric. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and cook until the vegetables are tender, 30-40 minutes. Take the pot off of the heat and discard the onion with its cloves.

Use an immersion blender to puree the vegetables and broth until smooth. Return to heat and add the pasta. Simmer until the pasta is tender, about 6-8 minutes. Turn off the heat, stir in the milk, and season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately, with lemon wedges.

Cooking Stew, Reminiscing Too

You cannot read Colette Rossant’s Apricots on the Nile: A Memoir with Recipes without envying the stunning array of Egyptian and French food – from simple street food to elaborate wedding-day specialties – that she enjoyed as a child. Nor can you help admiring Rossant’s vivid memories of how these favorite dishes wove themselves in and out of her daily life. You also can’t avoid pondering what recipes might form the culinary unpinning of your own memoir.

Today, as I prepared Soeur Leila’s Red Lentil Stew – one of the book’s 43 recipes – I reflected on just this question: what recipes might help me tell the story of my childhood? Surely, this was too big a question to fully answer on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Even so, a rush of scents and flavors and recollections flooded into my head. In fact, I’m lucky Rossant’s lentil stew recipe is so effortless – anything more complicated would have been too much for my distracted brain to handle.

So what recipes did I think of? To describe an everyday weeknight in my home, the memoir would have to include pepperoni pie – a dense quiche studded with spicy nibs of pepperoni. I don’t eat meat anymore, but if you put a slice of this beloved childhood dish in front of me, I’d find it hard to resist. Another weeknight favorite was a salad made solely from lightly-dressed chicory – a frilly, bitter-tasting green that, I suspect, no other sibling team in history has loved as much. Armed with think slabs of Italian bread, my brother and I would dive right in, elbowing each other over who got to soak up the leftover vinaigrette at the bottom of the bowl. (My dad calls soaking up sauce or dressing with bread “mojuring” – I have no idea if this is an English word, and Italian word, or a made-up word. But that is the word we use.). And, of course, I’d feature my grandmother’s molasses cookies, mature versions of the brown sugar spoonfuls she gave me when I had the hiccups, and tell the story of how, later in her life, her cookies tasted different every time depending on which ingredient she had forgotten to add.

Growing up, I remember contributing to the preparation of many dishes, although my parents might have different perspective on whether I was helping or hindering their efforts. On long weekends, my dad would labor over Italian specialties passed down through his ancestors’ kitchens. Lasagna made with a layer of sliced braciole was a favorite, and it was my job to help him tie strings around the rolls of breaded meat. When my mom prepared her meatloaf, she would beckon me from my homework spot at the dining room table so that I could squish the ingredients together with my hands. I also liked to make an appearance during the most exciting part of chicken cutlet preparation – the assembly line production of dipping each piece of meat in egg, then breadcrumbs.

Other food memories are inexorably linked to holidays. When I was in school, the weeks approaching Christmastime were a time for accumulating huge quantities of candy canes from friends and teachers. Taking advantage of this bounty, my family and I would crush the canes and make peppermint stick ice cream. And, to this day, Christmas parties feature my mom’s minestrone soup, a dish that, amazingly, she has never tasted because she doesn’t like beans, but which has gained acclaim from even the most vociferous vegetable-haters. If my mom doesn’t make minestrone soup at Christmastime, she risks an insurrection.

Another soup recipe would also have to make the memoir – pasta fagiole. I love this soup so much that, during my sophomore year in college, my parents made the valiant (and slightly nutty) attempt to send me a few servings in a care package. At my university (and, I would assume, all universities), whenever care packages arrived, you would accumulate an ever-growing troop of observers (a.k.a. aspiring package-sharers) as you carried your box from the post office, into your dorm, and up to your room. How disappointed my bystanders were to discover that my package contained no candy, no cookies – only spoiled soup that had leaked out of its Tupperware container.

Although my food memories are quite different from Rossant’s, they, too, are blessed with the warming combination of family, celebrations and the daily bread of everyday life. The red lentil stew recipe Rossant shares is a hearty, wholesome dish she was served on Fridays at her convent school. Like many a favorite childhood food, it is, she says, a recipe she continues to make today.

Soeur Leila’s Red Lentil Stew
Slightly adapted from Apricots on the Nile
Serves 4 as a main course

500 milliliters / 2 cups split red lentils, picked over and rinsed
1 liter/ 4 cups vegetable broth
2 large onions, chopped (divided)
1 large tomato, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
2 small zucchini, chopped
1 teaspoon ground cumin
150 grams / 1/3 pound angel hair or vermicelli pasta, broken into small pieces
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
30 milliliters / 2 tablespoons olive oil
30 milliliters / 2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped

Place the lentils, broth, 1 onion, tomato, carrot and zucchini in a medium saucepan, and bring to a boil. Skim off any foam that bubbles up. Then lower the heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Purée the mixture using a hand blender. Stir in the ground cumin, pasta, salt and pepper. Simmer, uncovered for ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Add additional vegetable broth if you would like a slightly thinner stew.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a small fry pan over medium heat. Add the remaining one onion and sauté for 8-10 minutes, or until golden. Add the onion and any remaining drops of oil to the lentils and simmer for five minutes. Serve in bowls with a sprinkling of parsley. Rossant recommends garnishing with croutons made from pita bread.

Tags: recipe, Egypt, lentils, lentil stew, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

Soup for a Rainy Season

It is easy to overlook the wonder of rain. Beyond the fact that it emerges from moving, ominous grey things called CLOUDS and falls from the SKY (two awe-inspiring features, if you ask me), there is also the breath of cool air that foreshadows its first drops, the sound rain makes on different objects (a tin roof, a pool, a window pane), and the moist, earthy smell that land somehow conceals until rain comes, just like bread hides the smell of toast.

I’ve always enjoyed rain. After all, if the weather was beautiful everyday, when would I play cards, watch two movies in a row, bake cookies, organize photos, paint my fingernails, or write long e-mails? Rain gives you permission to be cooped up and sedentary, and to ponder, over a bowl of soup, how to make the best out of the situation.

Living in Zimbabwe has deepened my rain-appreciation. Here, rain only falls between November and April. Those first dust-dampening storms literally transform the landscape from shades of brown to a bright, new green. Rain is also critical to the country’s lifeblood – agriculture. This year, the rainy season got off to a sluggish start. There were a few storms in mid-November, but then the sun and heat returned, and by the time I visited a few rural communities in early December…well, people had begun whispering the dreaded D-word (drought). With farmers facing many challenges beyond the weather (such as the inavailability and high cost of seed and fertilizer), a good rainy season is critical to averting hunger. So, I am especially happy to see today’s rain, and a steady, soaking rain it is.

We had invited two friends over for tennis and a light lunch, but the rain nixed the tennis, as well as my enthusiasm for the green salad I had planned on serving alongside a chard and saffron tart. Soup was in order, and Tunisian Tomato Soup is the prefect choice for a cool, drizzly day, combining all the comforts of tomato soup with the heartiness of lentils and chickpeas, a sunray of lemon, and classic Tunisian accents of cinnamon, turmeric, cayenne and raisins.

Let it rain!

Tunisian Tomato Soup
Adapted from Mollie Katzen’s Vegetable Heaven
Serves at least 8 as a starter

1 cup brown lentils, rinsed and picked over
1 cinnamon stick
6 cups / 1½ liters water
2 tablespoons / 30 milliliters olive oil
4 medium onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons / 10 milliliters salt
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters ground turmeric
1½ teaspoons / 7½ milliliters cumin seeds
2 teaspoons / 10 milliliters ground cumin
3 bay leaves
1 28-ounce / 800-gram can crushed tomatoes
1 14-ounce / 400-gram can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
3-4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Cayenne pepper, to taste
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
½ cup raisins, soaked in warm water and drained

Put the lentils, cinnamon stick and water in a medium saucepan, and bring it to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 30 minutes, or until the lentils are tender but not mushy. Remove the cinnamon stick and drain the lentils, saving the water.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Toss in the onions and garlic and sauté for 5-8 minutes until the onions are soft. Add the tomatoes and six cups of water (including the reserved cooking water from the lentils). Bring the pot to a boil, and then lower the heat so that the soup is simmering. Partially cover, and cook for 15 minutes. Remove the bay leaves.

Add the cooked lentils and chickpeas and stir. Simmer for five minutes, until the chickpeas are heated through. Stir in the lemon juice, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper. Serve hot, topped with a sprinkling of raisins. (I like to soak the raisins in warm water beforehand so that they are nice and plump, but you don’t have to.)

Tags: recipe, Tunisia, tomato, soup, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

African Peanut Stew, Organized

I used to be organized. I really was.

Every Saturday morning I would sit cross-legged on the sofa, coffee on the side table, cookbooks piled beside me, scrap paper on my lap and pen in hand. From this happy perch I would flip through my cookbooks, while writing, scratching out, tweaking and, ultimately, jotting down exactly what meals I would cook the next week and precisely which ingredients I required. Mark and I would then collect our shopping bags and head off for Brisbane’s Green Flea Market.

Sure, I occasionally varied from my set schedule. Spontaneously inviting friends over might require a quick ingredient top-up at the Vietnamese grocery downstairs. Or, while trudging between the ferry stop and our flat after a late day at school, the oompah music and sidewalk-table conviviality of Lefkas Greek Taverna (and the adjacent bottle shop) might draw me in. Passing that siren call, the cocoanut-curry smells of Thai Dream would sometimes entice me to walk just a few steps past my stairs for takeaway. And, even if I made it safely to the apartment, laziness could always trump my menu plan and encourage me to boil the spinach and cheese ravioli made across town by Italians and sold at the Greek store down the street, which was always fabulous with an easily-concocted sauce of good-quality tomato paste, toasted pinenuts, parsley, basil, parmesan, and olive oil.

But, usually, I stuck to my plan. Ah, those were the days.

Now, I live in Zimbabwe and my shopping and my cooking have no rhyme, reason or semblance of organization. When we first arrived, I tried, fruitlessly, to make a comprehensive weekly shopping list. Inevitably, I would tear it up in frustration after our trip to a third grocery store. Overall, I must say, the grocery stores here have many, many items. But, they have no specialty ingredients (oh, how my heart pangs when I see stunning recipes that hinge on mascarpone cheese) and their stock is very unpredictable. The minute you NEED an eggplant and only an eggplant, it will be nowhere to found. Out of flour? There is sure to be a shortage. Desperate for milk? The long-life milk has disappeared from the shelves and the fresh milk is spoiled. Vital kitchen implements often meet a similar fate: I once forced my husband on a futile, city-wide search for a bundt pan.

Eventually, I developed a new menu-planning scheme. I go to the stores with the best fruit and veg, buy whatever looks fresh and beautiful, and figure out what to do with my cornucopia when I get home. The result? I love recipes that can adapt to the whims of my fridge’s most recent arrivals.

And, so, I love African Peanut Stew. You could probably throw any vegetable in here and it would taste just fine. Eggplant, corn, green beans, squash, peas, tomatoes – bring it on. Even tofu would be a welcome addition. I made this recipe last night with what I had in my fridge. This included some dried shrimp that a friend brought us back all the way from Brazil. (Shhh, don’t let Customs know.) Yum. I highly recommend the pineapple if you have it, the chilies add a vital bite, and, of course, the peanut butter is a must-have. Otherwise, may your crisper dictate your dinner.

African Peanut Stew
Serves 4

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 large leek, white part only, well-cleaned and thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 medium sweet potatoes, diced
1 carrot, diced
2 green chilies, deseeded (if you wish) and minced
1½ teaspoons salt
2 cups vegetable broth
1 medium pineapple, peeled, cored and cut into chunks
1 green pepper, diced
¼ cup dried shrimp/prawns (optional)
½ cup smooth, natural peanut butter
½ cup crushed peanuts, toasted

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion, leek, garlic and ginger and cook for five minutes. Stir in the ground cumin and ground coriander and cook for one minute. Add the sweet potatoes, carrot and chilies and cook, stirring occasionally, for another 5 minutes.

Add the salt, vegetable broth, pineapple, green pepper and optional dried shrimp. Bring the stew to a boil, then cover and reduce to a simmer. Cook for 8-10 minutes, or until the sweet potato and carrot are soft. Mix in the peanut butter and cook for a final five minutes. If you want a thinner or thicker stew, you can add more peanut butter or, alternatively, more broth.

Serve the stew hot, with the toasted peanuts either sprinkled on top or stirred through. Fresh coriander/cilantro also makes an excellent garnish, if you have it.

This post in an entry in the inaugural Waiter, There’s Something in My…, a monthly food blog event organized by Cook Sister!, Passionate Cook and Spittoon Extra. Janaury's theme is stews.

Tags: recipe, peanut butter, stew, food blog event, Waiter There's Something in My, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

Ful Medames, the Holiday Antidote

Eggnog, cheese balls, shrimp dip, trifle, fruit cake – there is no doubt about it, the closer we get to the holidays, the richer and heavier our food and drink becomes. Following a festive evening, what I really want to eat is an antidote to all that gluttony. Something nutritious, comforting and uncomplicated that resets my body’s balance and allows me to face another Christmas party buffet, plate in hand.

Ful medames is just such a meal. I’ve found three references to this rustic fava bean stew over the last few months, all of which highlight its role as a daily staple in Egypt (where some consider it a national dish) and Sudan.

First, I spotted an October 3 New York Times article entitled “A Hand on the Ladle, and a Eye Out for the Law,” which told the story of the popular – but unlicensed, and therefore illegal – street vendors who ply Cairo’s poorest neighborhoods selling ful from their carts for the equivalent of 20 cents. Then, in Emma’s War: a True Story, I read journalist Deborah Scroggins’ descriptions of her attempts, during a 1988 visit to Khartoum, Sudan, to meet with government officials in order to gain permission for a trip to a refugee camp. Her task was complicated by the fact that the officials arrived to work at 8, took a break at 10 to eat a breakfast of ful, left for lunch and a nap at 1, and rarely returned to the office. Finally, just this weekend, I was devouring Apricots on the Nile: A Memoir with Recipes when I came across Colette Rossant’s reminiscences on ful medames, a dish she discovered as a child during World War II when she lived in Cairo with her Egyptian grandparents. Their cook made ful medames everyday for the household staff, while concocting much more glamorous dishes for Colette and her family. Nevertheless, young Colette loved ful medames. Per her grandmother’s instructions, she was supposed to eat a baguette with butter and jam as an after-school snack, but Colette and the cook conspired to ensure she could eat ful medames instead.

Although ful medames is more typically eaten for breakfast or as a snack, I like to have a bowl for lunch or as a light supper. It is an especially appealing meal when I crave something wholesome and nourishing after a lazy holiday afternoon spent grazing over cheese platters and cramming my plate with every dessert on offer. Meet ful medames, my un-holiday holiday dish.

Ful Medames (Fava Bean Stew)
Serves 4 as a light main course

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 bay leaves
1 large tomato, peeled and chopped
4 cups vegetable stock
2 15-ounce cans fava beans, rinsed and drained
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons tahini
¼ cup fresh parsley, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
4 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
3 scallions, sliced
Cilantro leaves, for garnish

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat, and sauté the onions and garlic until the onions are translucent. Add the ground coriander, ground cumin, cayenne pepper and bay leaves, and cook for 3 minutes, stirring frequently. Stir in the chopped tomato and vegetable stock, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, mash together the fava beans, lemon juice, tahini, parsley and salt in a separate bowl. Stir this mixture into the soup, making sure to break up any clumps of the mash. Simmer for another 8 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste, and remove the bay leaves. Ladle into serving bowls, scooping up from the bottom of the pot. Top with the eggs, scallions and cilantro leaves. Serve with warmed pita bread. If you want to eat ful as the Egyptians and Sudanese do, try using the pita bread to scoop up the stew, sans spoon.

This post is an entry in the Super Souper Challenge, a food blog event hosted by running with tweezers.

Tags: recipe, ful, ful medames, beans, soup, Sudan, Egypt, food blog event, Super Souper Challenge, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

From Nigeria: A Fish Stew

Last December I spent 10 days eating (and working) in Abuja, Nigeria. I discovered that Nigerian food can be quite spicy, and that fish of one kind or another seems to sneak its way into most meals, even a serving a greens. I ate many things I didn’t like and a few I did.

By the end of the trip, I had identified several favorite dishes. First, there was moin-moin – a steamed cake of ground legumes studded with tiny fish and hard-boiled egg, and dyed a lovely rose color from the use of palm oil. I’d usually order moin-moin with a side of dodo, which are fried plantains similar to the ones you’d eat at a Cuban restaurant. I also enjoyed a wide variety of fish stews and soups.

The recipe below creates a fish stew that is rich and comforting – a simple, flavorful dinner on a chilly night. You should use a firm white fish for this dish. We used bream (a.k.a. tilapia), a fish found in Lake Kariba on the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia.

Nigerian Fish Stew
Adapted from Food by Country and Motherland Nigeria
Serves 4

1.2 pounds / 500 grams fish fillets
2 teaspoons salt, or more, to taste
1 tablespoon dried thyme, or more, to taste
1 small red bell pepper, chopped
1 small green chili, minced
1 small onion, chopped
½ cup tomato paste
2 cups vegetable broth
3 tablespoons vegetable oil (palm oil, if you have it)
Salt and black pepper, to taste

Season the fish fillets with salt and thyme, and set aside. Place the red pepper, chili, onion, tomato paste and broth in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer, and cook for 10 minutes. Add the oil and turn the heat down to low. Cook for 15 minutes. Slice the fish into ¾ -inch strips, and add them to the pot. Simmer for 10 minutes more. Add salt and pepper to taste, and serve the stew over rice.

Tags: recipe, Nigeria, fish, stew, fish stew, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

Faves on Fridays #1: Curried Tomato Soup

Mark, my husband, tucking into a plate of sweet tomato and baked ricotta pasta: “You should really post on your blog about some of our favorite recipes. You know, like this pasta.”

Mark, a week later, dipping his spoon into a cream-topped serve of fruit crumble: “See, here’s another one – another of our favorite recipes that we make all the time. I’m sure people would like this – you should post the recipe on your blog.”

Mark, just the next day, ladling spicy mushroom and cilantro curry onto a plate of cardamom-scented basmati rice: “Come on, Carolyn! Mushroom and cilantro curry. You’ve got to write about mushroom and cilantro curry!”

Okay, okay. I get the point. And, instead of changing the sub-title of Field to Feast to “Almost-always African-inspired writing, cooking and eating, and with an occasional post inspired by the dog-eared pages of my cookbooks” I have decided to introduce a new, occasional blog feature – Faves on Fridays.

My one reservation in posting this inaugural Fave on Friday is that you might think I am on a liquid diet given the number of drink, soup, stew and chowder recipes I have recently written about. Fear not, I have all my teeth and do eat solid food. However, my first recipe is, indeed, a recipe for soup. A tomato soup in fact. But, once again, fear not: this is not Campbell’s (or your middle-school cafeteria’s) tomato soup. This is curried tomato soup and it is simple to make and simply yummy to eat.

The recipe comes from Madhur Jaffrey, one of my favorite authors, who says it is inspired by an old Anglo-Indian cookbook. This soup also has many features my husband admires – you can be flexible with the veggie proportions, your chopping can be haphazard, and you just throw everything together, go for a jog (do yoga, watch TV, call your Mom, whatever), re-enter the kitchen, blend the now-tender mixture, and eat. Plus, you have leftovers for lunch the next day. Yes, this is truly a Fave.

Curried Tomato Soup
Adapted from World Vegetarian
Serves 6

2 tablespoons peanut or canola oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 tablespoon mild curry powder
1 tablespoon hot curry powder
2 cups (1 pound) chopped tomatoes
2 medium carrots, chopped
2 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped
1 cup fresh (or frozen and defrosted) peas
4 cups water
2¼ teaspoons salt
½ cup heavy cream

Heat the oil into a large saucepan, using medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add the onion and sauté for 5 minutes or so, until the onion is translucent. Stir in the curry powders, and then add the tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, peas, salt and water. Bring to a boil. Cover, turn the heat down to low, and keep at a gentle simmer for 45 minutes.

Remove the pot from the heat and blend the soup using an immersion blender. Stir in the cream, and serve.

Note that you can use the curry powder judiciously to make the soup as mild or spicy as you would like – we tend to like a lot of heat.

Tags: recipe, curry, soup, tomatoes, Faves on Fridays, India, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

From Mozambique: A Simple Soup

Several people have described reading Field to Feast as a form of “armchair traveling” to a faraway continent. While I am quite happy for my blog to virtually whisk you away, I have to be honest – I live in only one of the 53 countries in Africa, which means that sometimes I have to do some armchair traveling, too.

Consider Mozambique. From Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highland town of Bvumba I have gazed into this coastal country, a place steadily rebuilding itself after years of civil war. But I have yet to cross the border. Yep, that’s right, Vilankulo, Ilha de Mocambique and Maputo, all still waiting to be explored. So, this past weekend I did a little armchair (okay, couch) traveling myself, and discovered some excellent traditional recipes from Mozambique.

The recipe that caught my eye was for a dish called sopa de feijao verde, or string bean soup. It attracted my attention because 1) I had all the ingredients on hand and 2) I have made soup with practically every vegetable I know of, except string beans. I was intrigued.

Sopa de feijao verde is a simple, elegant soup, with a peppery kick. It is certainly not the type of soup that can substitute as a one-pot meal, but it would make a lovely starter for a Sunday lunch in autumn or spring. There is something inherently graceful about long, slender green beans, and they take center stage in this recipe. However, there is nothing (slurp! splash!) graceful about trying to eat long, slender green beans with a soup spoon. In the recipe below, I have recommended cutting most of the string-bean pieces down to bite-size, while leaving a few long ones to artfully arrange on the top of your serving bowls or cups. You could also steam or blanch these longer beans separately, if you choose.

Be advised that the colors in this dish become distinctly less appealing in leftover form, as the beans’ green color seems to simply seep away into the soup, turning it the color of dirty water. (Sorry to be graphic, but it’s true!) I recommend you make just the amount of soup you think you and your lunch-mates will eat at one sitting – preferably in an armchair, well-suited for traveling.

String Bean Soup (Sopa de Feijao Verde)
Adapted from The African Cookbook
Serves 4-6 as a starter

4 cups of water
2 medium potatoes, cut into ¾-inch chunks
1 medium tomato, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
¼ teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
½ pound string beans

In a large saucepan, bring the water to a boil and add the potatoes, tomatoes, onion, black pepper and salt. Turn the heat down to medium and simmer for 20-25 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender.

Meanwhile, cut your string beans in half lengthwise. Reserve a handful of these long, skinny slices, and cut the remaining beans so that they are each about 2-inches long.

Puree the contents of the pot using an immersion blender (or do that messy schlep to the blender and back routine). If any foam has formed on the top of the soup, just scoop it off and discard. Add all of the string beans and simmer for an additional 8 minutes, or until the beans are tender but still have their bright green color. This might require some close monitoring beginning around the seven-minute mark. Check the salt and pepper, and ladle the soup into small bowls or cups. Fish out some of those long string beans and arrange them on the top. Serve.

Tags: recipe, soup, Mozambique, string beans, green beans, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

Ethiopian Lentil Stew and an Analogy

If you went to college in the States, you are sure to shudder at the memory of analogies. Analogies are the word pair bane of your existence that, until 2005, dominated the verbal section of the SAT – the entrance exam required by most colleges in the country. For some reason, the exam writers believed that students’ ability to understand the relationship between two words was an effective way of predicting future academic success. The test would provide a word pair, such as “chef : food,” and you needed to review a list of other word pairs and ascertain which of these pairs shared a similar relationship to the given pair. In this case, “carpenter : wood” would do, for example. Chef is to food as carpenter is to wood. Clear as mud, yes?

Not surprisingly, I have spent nary a second thinking about analogies since I took the dreaded SAT. That is, until I embarked on a search for a recipe for yemiser w'et, an Ethiopian lentil stew. Every recipe reminded me of Russian nesting dolls because in order to make the main recipe, you first had to make at least two other, smaller recipes. Ergo:

“Russian nesting dolls : Ethiopian lentil stew” as “Recipe : Dish.”

The yemiser w'et recipes I found all required berbere (a spice mixture) and niter kebbeh (spiced ghee). Now, I don’t know about you, but berbere and nitar kebbah aren’t usually on the shelf at my local supermarket. After consulting with Recipe Zaar and Food and Home Entertaining, I combined recipes for these two ingredients with several recipes for the main dish to develop the one consolidated yemiser w'et recipe below. It looks more complicated than it actually is – many of the ingredients are spices that you simply measure and add. Once finished, you’ll have a delicious, spice-infused tomato, lentil and green pea stew. One recipe, one dish. No Russian nesting dolls.

Ethiopian Lentil Stew (Yemiser W'et)
Serves 8

SPICED GHEE
½ cup ghee (use vegetable oil as a substitute)
2 tablespoons chopped onion
1 garlic clove, minced
½ teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
¼ teaspoon turmeric
2 cardamom pods, crushed
1 small cinnamon stick
1/8 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
3 leaves fresh basil

LENTILS
2 cups dried brown lentils, picked over
4½ cups water

BERBERE
3 teaspoons cumin seeds
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
¼ teaspoon whole allspice
1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
8 cloves
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
15 dried red chilies, crushed
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
3 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1 teaspoon salt

STEW
2 cups onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
4 cups tomatoes, chopped
1 cup tomato paste
2 cups vegetable stock
2 cups fresh green peas (or frozen peas, defrosted)
Salt and pepper, to taste

Put the ghee in a small fry pan over medium heat. Add all the ingredients listed and turn the heat to low. Simmer for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, rinse the lentils and put them in a pot with the water. Bring to a boil, lower heat to a very gentle simmer, and cook, partially covered, for 25 minutes or until tender. (If the lentils are tender and there is still water remaining in the pot, simply drain.) Set the lentils aside.

Next, prepare the berbere. The spice mixture is very strong, so it is a good idea to open all the windows in the kitchen; otherwise, you may have a coughing and sneezing fit. Put a fry pan over medium-high heat and add all the spices listed (except the salt). Cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the salt, and grind all the spices in a spice grinder, or with a mortar and pestle.

At this point, your ghee should be almost ready. Strain the mixture using a cheesecloth and discard the solids. Return the newly-spiced ghee to medium heat in a large saucepan, and begin to make your stew. Add the onions and garlic to the spiced ghee and sauté until the onions are just translucent, about 5 minutes. Add 3 teaspoons of the berbere (saving the rest for the next time you make this dish!) and sauté for a few minutes more, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.

Mix in the chopped tomatoes and tomato paste and simmer for another 8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the vegetable stock and the cooked lentils, and continue simmering and stirring for 10 minutes. Add the green peas and cook for an additional 5 minutes. Season with salt and black pepper, and you are finished!

Yemiser w'et is typically served with injera bread – the Ethiopian mealtime staple made with teff, the smallest grain in the world. This bread always reminds me of an undercooked pancake, which is not a good thing. So, as an alternative, I served the lentil stew with some Indian rotis we had on hand. Pita bread or tortillas would also work well. Since the stew is often accompanied with yogurt or cottage cheese, I spread smooth cream cheese on the rotis, and we used them to scoop up the stew.

“Chili : Spicy” as “Yemiser w'et : Yum.”

Tags: recipe, Ethiopia, lentils, soup, stew, lentil stew, main dish, yemiser w'et, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

Botswana Chow-da

New England is well-known for its clam chowder (or chow-da, as the locals famously pronounce it). The ultimate way to eat this hallowed dish is at a weather-beaten restaurant by the sea, with a dusting of salt on your skin, sand between your toes, and a packet of oyster crackers at your disposal. Walking through downtown Boston? Tourists and Beantown natives alike enjoy the clam chowder at Union Oyster House – the oldest restaurant in the U.S. – where Daniel Webster once dined (and drank) regularly at the bar. Growing up, I also ate my fair share of corn chowder – one of my mom’s specialties. (Just for the record, we are talking about chowder made with a cream and broth base – none of that tomato-laced Manhattan stuff. New Yorkers and Bostonites don’t only argue over baseball, you know.)

Blessed with these New England roots, I was predisposed to try a recipe for Botswana chowder that I found in a vegetarian cookbook published by The Buddhist Institute of South Africa. Sweet and spicy, smooth and creamy, Botswana chowder has become one of our preferred weeknight dinners and a favorite recipe to share with friends. One acquaintance was so enamored with Botswana chowder that she e-mailed the recipe to a relative in the States, who reportedly wrote back, “I never knew I wanted to eat warm, spicy peanut butter and yogurt. But I do.” You will, too.

Botswana Chowder
Adapted from Quiet Food: A Recipe for Sanity
Serves 4

3 fresh ears of corn or 1 can of corn kernels, drained
1 cup vegetable stock
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
6 curry leaves (optional)
2 centimeters / ¾-inch fresh ginger, grated
2 cloves garlic, pressed or minced
1 stalk of lemongrass, lightly crushed
2 green chilies, cut in half lengthwise, with seeds removed
2 cups plain yogurt
4 tablespoons smooth peanut butter, smooth
1 teaspoon honey
3 teaspoons corn flour, mixed into 4 tablespoons of water
Salt and pepper, to taste
Fresh, chopped cilantro (a.k.a. coriander), for garnish

Slice the kernels off the corncobs (or use canned kernels, if you wish), and cook in the stock for 15 minutes or until soft. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the mustard seeds and curry leaves. Cook until the seeds begin to pop, and then add the ginger, garlic, lemongrass and chilies. Fry over gentle heat for a few minutes, stirring frequently to prevent browning. Add the yogurt, peanut butter, honey and corn flour mixture, and simmer gently for 10 minutes. Add the corn kernels and stock mixture to the saucepan and warm through. Check the seasoning, adding salt and pepper if necessary. Serve topped with fresh, chopped cilantro.

Tags: recipe, Botswana, chowder, soup, dinner, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa