The Mind of Dan Perlman

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Inbre(a)d

Dan P.Sunday, February 5, 20120

Buenos Aires Herald
On Sunday supplement
Food and Wine

Argentina is known far and wide for its beef, and aficionados will argue the fine points of cooking and presentation at any asado. Yet probably no other item from the country’s cuisine engenders quite so much passion as the defense of one’s favorite empanada. Arguments range from “my grandmother made criollas that your grandmother wasn’t fit to crimp” to “my favorite place has the most perfect… baked, fried, cut beef or ground, potatoes, olives, eggs, onions, or raisins, included or not… and I’ll take you there and prove it.” Culinary historians carry on about the origin of this bread enveloped pastry, tracing it back to Galicia in Spain, or perhaps to ancient Persia. To hear some of them natter about the subject, we’d need carbon dating to settle on their origin.

It should come as no surprise to find that every culture on the planet has some similar dish – from Middle Eastern fatays, to Asian pot-stickers, to the Scandinavian or Cornish pasty, to a classic savory turnover from France or an Indian samosa. Yet, there is something uniquely Latin American about the empanada. The dough is not unique in the pastry world, most often made from simple white flour, eggs, water, and lard or suet. The fillings range from beef to pork to chicken to fish to vegetables. The spices vary in accordance with local favorites throughout South and Central America and the Caribbean. The additions are too numerous to consider. Yet there’s something about them, when one picks them up, hot and juicy, that fits the Latin culture.

Argentines would argue that theirs are the best. Certainly there is a wide variety of regional styles, thankfully most of them are available here in Buenos Aires, including examples from neighboring countries, removing the need to hop on a colectivo and travel province by province to sample them. Here we can find garlicky, spicy catamarqueñas, chock-full of potatoes, green onion packed salteñas, (not to be confused with the Bolivian salteña version which is a whole different thing), white onion filled sanjuaninos, touches of tomato and various cheeses in the tucumanas, salmon and tuna from the shore or packed into Chilean styles, lamb and wild mushrooms from Patagonia, pumpkin based Venezuelans, and finely ground goat or lamb meat in the arabe styles. Cheese filled, corn filled, vegetable laden, or a wide variety of meats abound. Local shops may offer specialty versions, and it is worth seeking out something like smoky pancetta and plum, or spicy sausage and green onion, or even an Italian knock-off like a napolitana.

I’m going to guess that most people aren’t going to take the time to make and form their own shortcrust or puff pastry, and there are plenty of tapas available in any supermarket that work just fine. Here’s one of our favorite, lighter fillings that never fails to wow visiting friends.

Patagonian Style Mushroom Filling

400 grams mixed mushrooms
1 small onion, chopped
1 small chili pepper, chopped
25 ml olive oil
25 grams flour
120 ml fat free or reduced fat milk
salt, pepper
Smoke flavoring (or use smoked salt in place of the plain salt above)
oil

Put the oil and flour in saucepan over low heat, and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes. Warm the milk (a minute in the microwave is just fine) and add to the mixture, turn the heat up to medium and cook, stirring continuously, until it thickens. Set aside.. Saute mushrooms, chili and onion in oil until browned. Combine with the white sauce (bechamel). Add a couple of drops of liquid smoke flavoring and then season to taste. Let cool before using. Place a heaping tablespoon onto each empanada tapa and then fold over and crimp to seal. Bake in a 180°C oven for 15 minutes until puffed and golden brown.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

Buenos Aires Herald, Newspaper articles

Mushrooms

Revuelto

Dan P.Sunday, January 29, 20120

Buenos Aires Herald
On Sunday supplement
Food and Wine

Sometimes when a recipe is named after someone famous the story is relatively well known. Other times, it’s not, as in the case of the origins of one of Argentina’s iconic dishes, the revuelto gramajo, or “Gramajo’s scramble”. Not only does the legend of the dish have more than one version, but two different Gramajos as the possible origin. At its most basic, the dish is a plate of scrambled eggs with ham, onions, and fried potatoes.

First off, there’s Colonel Artemio Gramajo, adjutant to General Julio Roca during the late 1870s campaign to conquer the “desert”. The colonel, a roly poly sort, was a bit of a gourmand, a bit of a dandy, and, apparently, a fairly accomplished cook. There are three versions of his part of the legend. The most common is that prior to heading out into the battlefield he’d been accustomed to starting his days with a couple of fried eggs, a slab of ham, and some potato and onion hash browns. Preparing all of the items in a tent became a bit of a chore, but being unwilling to give up his beloved morning platter, he fried up the onions and potatoes in a skillet, threw in some chopped up ham, and scrambled in a couple of eggs. Not as pretty, but got the job done.

Version two of the story is similar, but asserts that he put it together for Roca’s breakfast preferences. And, version three has it that this all happened post-war in 1880, when he was ensconced at El Club del Progreso, and regularly insisted on preparing his own breakfast – one day deciding that the detail work of separate cooking of the components was just too much to take on, and, voila!

Bringing in a different Gramajo, Arturo, a socialite, a touch of playboy, later married with children and city superintendent of Buenos Aires. The story is that he was in Paris, staying at the Hotel Ritz, and one day just insisted on preparing his own breakfast, basically throwing together a scramble of whatever looked good sitting on the counter. While it’s not impossible that a 20-something Arturo would have been cavorting about in Paris in the early 1880s he wasn’t yet a particularly well known figure in Argentine society. Given that the revuelto was all the rage in the late 1880s and early 1890s, and has continued to be a staple of local cuisine since, it just seems unlikely that something a kid threw together one morning in a Paris hotel after a night of carousing would become a dining hit back home within moments. I’m not going to say it couldn’t be so, but to me it makes more sense that the influence of military leaders like Roca and Artemio G would have had that impact on their return from the campaign. As to which of the three Artemio stories is the most likely, I think we’ll never know.

As to the dish itself, the traditional deep fried potatoes, butter browned onions, cooked or cured ham and eggs, is basically a heart attack on a plate. Continuing on our quest to lighten things up a bit, here’s our Revuelto Gramajo 2.0, for two.

6 eggs, beaten
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 medium potato, peeled and cut in thick matchsticks
100 grams cooked fresh or frozen peas
200 grams roast pork loin, sliced in strips
3 tablespoons olive oil
200 ml low salt vegetable stock
6-8 stalks parsley, chopped
salt and pepper

Between the fat of the butter and ham and high levels of salt in the latter, there’s a lot to love and a lot to lighten. In a frying pan, put the stock, potatoes and onions and cook over low heat until all the liquid is absorbed and the vegetables are soft, about 30 minutes. Add the olive oil, turn up the heat, and stirring gently, lightly brown them. Add the remaining ingredients, a pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper, reduce the heat and, mixing it all together well, cook until the eggs have just barely set.

Buenos Aires Herald, Newspaper articles

Eggs

Colonial fish

Dan P.Sunday, January 22, 20120

Buenos Aires Herald
On Sunday supplement
Food and Wine

I am regularly reminded by locals, expats and visitors that there simply is no good fish here in Argentina, except maybe in Patagonia. And just as regularly I find myself arguing to the contrary. While it is true that until a few years back there were no decent supply lines bringing in good quality fish to the capitol, that has all changed over the last decade. There are now excellent seafood shops scattered around the city, ranging from the inexpensive markets of Barrio Chino to exclusive suppliers dotting the streets of Palermo, Recoleta, Retiro and San Telmo, at the very least.

The next comment that follows up the argument is always something to the effect of “I don’t know what any of these fish are, I’ve never heard of them.” To me, that’s not a reason to not try them, it’s a reason to either look in a dictionary and find out what finned creature is laid out on ice in front of you, or, just take some home and give it a try. But, I understand the “need to know” imperative.

Let’s start with the pejerrey, or South American Silverside family, genus: Odontesthes, with several species, including platensis, bonariensis and others. The most common eating fish locally is probably the bonariensis, or Argentine Silverside. These are not generally big fish – tending to be about 15 to 25 cm long, and very thin. The meat is gleaming white, with a silvery sheen or stripe on the outside. They have a fairly delicate flavor, and unfortunately these days are usually served up battered and fried and therefore indistinguishable from any other fish, or smothered in salsa roquefort, a strikingly pungent blue cheese sauce that masks any possibility of knowing what lies beneath it.

One of my favorite recipes for this fish, one that gives plenty of flavor from the preparation but still leaves the delicacy of the fish to shine through, is a dish called Pejerrey a la Colonial. It is a dish that’s rarely seen on a menu anymore, but at one time was popular in Argentina – as best I can determine, somewhere around the late 50s and early 60s. It’s a shame that it has disappeared from local restaurants because it’s a delicious preparation that hits all the right notes – essentially napping the fillets of simply sauteed fish in a rich and tangy mustard cream and butter sauce. During hot summer months it can seem a bit heavy despite being a fish dish and so we’ve lightened it up a bit, changing out the oil and butter for good olive oil and bringing in yogurt to replace the heavy cream (this also works well with lowfat versions of local sour cream substitutes like Casa ‘n Crema or Mendicrem).

Pejerrey a la Colonial, Light

4 pejerreyes, approximately 20cm in length, cleaned and filleted (8 fillets)
2 medium onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
120 ml dry white wine
200 ml lowfat, unsweetened yogurt
35 gm Dijon mustard, preferably with seeds
3-4 stalks of parsley, leaves chopped
sweet paprika (pimentón dulce) to sprinkle over
3 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper

Lightly salt and pepper both sides of the cleaned fillets (if they’re not already prepared, remove the heads, tails, fins and bones to leave clean fillets) and saute them in a pan quickly over medium heat, two minutes on a side. Remove them and set them aside (if you can, maintain them warm, in a low heat oven). In the same pan, without changing the oil, cooked the sliced garlic and chopped onions until soft and translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the wine and bring to a simmer, letting most of the liquid be absorbed into the onion mixture. Add the yogurt and mustard, stir well to smooth out the sauce and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper to taste. Serve two fillets to each diner, spoon some of the sauce over each end of the fillets, leaving the center length uncovered, and then sprinkle the whole thing lightly with the paprika and chopped parsley. Delicious accompanied with boiled potatoes.

Buenos Aires Herald, Newspaper articles

Fish

Locro, taking wing

Dan P.Sunday, January 15, 20120

Buenos Aires Herald
On Sunday supplement
Food and Wine

We’ve heard it all before. We’ve been bombarded by news and websites and tweets and posts. We’ve been China Studied and Eating-ed Animals until we’re ready to crawl into a box with a milk fed calf and join in. And the truth is, we’re really not that interested. It’s not that we don’t want to live longer and healthier lives, we’re just not going to live them out of a salad bowl filled with fair trade, hand-picked greens harvested by indigenous people living down the block, growing plants with their own family’s waste products.

Because while dining as a locavore/herbivore may be dandy for all the folk who just “eat to live” and imagine their lifespans stretching into eternity while day trading, some of us “live to eat” and prefer to imagine a significantly shorter mortal coil while indulging in mouth-watering treats. And we’re not fooled by “it has the taste and texture of” adverts, because the only people who truly believe that are ones who never had the original, and likely are the same ones who keep infomercials doing brisk business offering shoes that guarantee to take off 20 kilos within 17 minutes.

We know there needs to be some balance, and we’ve already added in the shared salad, switched from fries to mashed, and gone for the half entraZa instead of the kilo lomo. And while I’m not here to convince you I can take a traditional, artery stopping recipe, flip it around so it can get a cute little heart symbol tacked on, and have it “taste just like the original”, I am convinced we can make a delicious version of a classic dish or three that might not add another layer of plaque to our carotids. Why not start by lightening up a classic locro stew for summer?

1 cup dried white corn
2 ears of fresh yellow corn, cut the kernels off the cobs
2 medium white onions, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
2 1-cm thick slices of smoked turkey breast, cubed
4 chicken thighs
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1 teaspoon hot paprika
½ teaspoon of ground black pepper
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon liquid smoke
½ butternut (anco) squash, peeled and diced small
1 large sweet potato, peeled and diced small
1 large potato, peeled and diced small
2 plum tomatoes, cut in small wedges
salt
2 tablespoons olive oil

Soak the dried corn in water overnight. In a large pot, cook the onions and garlic in the olive oil over medium heat until they’re soft. Add in the meats, fresh corn, cumin, paprikas, bay leaves, liquid smoke, black pepper and a large pinch of smoked salt and continue cooking for ten minutes. Add the vegetables and soaked corn kernels, water and all, and add water to a level 5cm above the level of the ingredients. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to lowest setting, cover and simmer for 2 hours. Every 20 minutes or so give it all a stir. Fish out the four chicken thighs, you can leave them whole or remove the meat from the bones and shred it. Use a wooden spoon or spatula and press the vegetables against the side of the pot, working your way around until about a quarter of it is mashed up and thickens the soup. Add smoked salt to taste. Add the chicken back in if you’ve shredded it, otherwise just put one thigh in each serving bowl – ladle the soup into the bowls. Add fresh chopped chilies if you like it spicier. Serves 4 as a full dinner.

Buenos Aires Herald, Newspaper articles

Stews and soups

That’s Amore, the Pizza Story

Dan P.Sunday, January 8, 20120

Buenos Aires Herald
On Sunday supplement
Food and Wine

Let’s start with a little history. You all remember the Roman Empire, occupying the Holy Land and all that. There was a kid, started a religion… long story. Here’s the thing, there was this local flatbread, called matzoh, and while the Roman soldiers liked it, they thought it lacked a little… focus, or hearth – that is, matzoh was traditionally just baked on hot stones, and the Romans were used to things coming out of a wood-fired oven. The story is really lost in antiquity, and this is more legend, but, what the heck? Some historians claim it came from the neighboring Greek Empire, where a flatbread called plankutos was used essentially as a dinner plate. A little work on the recipe, a little charring in the fire, picea as it was described in Latin – meaning a charred crust – and soon Roman housewives, especially those from the poorer parts of Italy around Naples, were making the pre-cursor to Neapolitan pizza, generally considered to be “the classic”. The dough was made from flour and olive oil or lard, and topped with cheese and herbs just to give it flavor. Other historians claim the name comes from the Italian verb pìnsere, meaning to press something out – let’s face it, we’ll probably never know.

Tomatoes, you might remember, didn’t come along until they were brought back from Mexico and Peru – post-Columbus, in 1596 – half a millennium after the “invention” of pizza. Even then, they were only slowly accepted, as, at first, they were thought to be poisonous (originally the plant was brought back as a decorative household plant). Pizza was considered a peasant dish until Queen Maria Carolina of Naples convinced her husband, King Ferdinand IV, to serve it up – more or less as a lark – at a state dinner in the late 1700s.

While grilled pizza was introduced in the United States at the Al Forno restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island by owners Johanne Killeen and George Germon in 1980, it was inspired by a misunderstanding in translation that confused a wood-fired brick oven with a grill. Grilled pizza did exist prior to 1980, both in Italy, and in Argentina where it is known as pizza a la parrilla. It has become a popular cookout dish, and there are pizza restaurants that specialize in the style. Grilled pizza is created by taking a fairly thin irregularly-shaped sheet of a yeasted pizza dough, placing it directly over the fire of a grill, and then turning it over once the bottom has baked and placing a layer of toppings and a drizzle of olive oil on the baked side. Toppings are generally as thin as possible to ensure that they heat through, and chunkier toppings such as sausage or peppers must be precooked before placing on the pizza; it is not uncommon to add garlic, herbs, or other ingredients to the crust to maximize the flavor of the dish. Grilled pizza can also be cooked on a stove-top grill or griddle.

Grilled Pizza Dough

90 grams bread flour
4 tablespoons whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon cornmeal
¼ teaspoon sugar
1 packet dry yeast
240 ml warm water
1 tablespoon olive oil
Mix water, sugar and yeast together and let sit until the yeast proofs. Mix in remaining ingredients and knead until smooth and elastic. Cover and let rise in a warm place until double in volume. Punch down, wrap in plastic, and then ideally chill this dough for a minimum of one hour, up to 3 days.

Roll out very thinly – less than ½ cm thick and then place directly onto a very hot grill (outdoor or indoor). Cook until the bottom is browned, then flip. Brush the top with olive oil, top with toppings, and cook just until the crust is done and the toppings are warmed. This type of pizza is best with very thinly sliced, simple ingredients, often greens and some sort of cured meats (mortadella and arugula is a favorite) – not piled up. It doesn’t lend itself to cheese pizzas (although a grating of parmesan is common), though if you wish to make one, place it onto a baking sheet after briefly cooking the second side on the grill – just enough to lightly brown it – then top the pizza and then stick it under the oven to melt and brown the cheese.

Buenos Aires Herald, Newspaper articles

Pizza

Supper Club, The Book

Dan P.Tuesday, June 14, 20110

“Oh, did I tell you I have a cookbook? I have a cookbook deal.”

– Ted Allen, writer and food show host

Did I ever tell you the story of how I was almost Ted Allen? No, I know I didn’t, though once before I promised to. So here’s the story. I was living and working in NYC, as a sommelier at the time, with a small catering business on the side, plus occasionally running these Second Sunday Supper Club dinners I’ve been going on about recently. I also had this hobby. Standup comedy. I know, it’s a strange hobby, right? But there it was. And I was actually pretty good at it – performed a couple of times a month around the city, did some events, even thought about it as a possible career – well, actually more, I thought about comedy writing as a career, the lifestyle and demands of being a comic just weren’t what I was into – but, I love food and wine too much, so, back to the restaurants with me.

Anyway, I got a call from a friend who’d seen me perform, knew I worked in the food industry, and that he was with a team casting a part for a new reality TV series for Bravo where they were going to do makeovers of straight guys’ lives, did I want to audition? I thought it would be fun and showed up on the appointed day and auditioned for a group of a few folk sitting around, there were a bunch of us… and then they asked me to wait a little while while they went through some other auditions. Then they called me back up and asked me to, and I remember this vividly, do an on camera audition “as gay as you can possibly be and selling us on White Zinfandel”. Afterwards, I got a call from the guy who’d called me in the first place, who said, “Look, we like you and we really need someone who knows something about food, but it was down to you and this other guy, and you’re just not gay enough!” So Ted, if you’re ever sitting at a table in my restaurant, wherever it may be… well let’s just say, you might want to bring a food-taster with you. Maybe Carson. Not gay enough. Bah!

Supper Club by Kerstin Rodgers So Ted Allen has a cookbook too now, damnit. Oh, and so does Kerstin Rodgers. Better known to the world at large as Ms Marmite Lover through both her blog, The English Can Cook and her supper club as they’re styled in Jolly Old England, The Underground Restaurant. I knew the book was coming out – it came out at the end of April, I got my copy a couple of weeks ago when it arrived with a lovely thank you note from Kerstin – as quite awhile back she’d contacted me to tell me she was writing a book about the whole phenomenon of supper clubs and wondered if I’d contribute a typical Argentine meat recipe. Not something I cook here at Casa S, as I told her, but it was what she wanted, so my version of locro is enshrined in her pages.

So on to the book itself. First, it’s a weighty tome, coming in at an even 3 pounds in hardcover. Love the actual cover, not so keen on the dust jacket which seems to have been designed by someone else entirely (none of which was likely in her hands). It’s cutely illustrated with line drawings throughout, the few pages of photography are a little grainy, but show a glimpse into the behind the scenes of the subject matter – it’s subtitled “Recipes and Notes from The Underground Restaurant” – and, it turns out to be pretty much that – not so much about the phenomenon, but more directly her own place. There’s certainly mention of other places, she doesn’t short shrift anyone, but in the end, there is a focal point. And that doesn’t surprise me in the least, Kerstin has been a tireless promoter not only of the whole scene in the UK, but in particular of her own spot, and she’s quite good at it with ning groups, newspaper articles, radio and television interviews, speeches, council meetings, and anyplace else one might pop up. I wish I had 10% the marketing skill that she does. Sometimes I wish she did too. That’s not personal against her, it’s just usually when a visitor from across the pond is extolling her place and telling me how I should be grateful to her for the mere fact that I’m allowed to exist.

The book is a fun read, and the text portion, The Notes, that take up the first 80 pages of 300-some, are written in style that’s basically like reading her blog or having a chat with her over tea. It’s in a casual vernacular, filled with references and slang that for a non-Brit sometimes take a moment to register. She covers everything from how she got started, to bits about her childhood, to her thoughts and recommendations on how to start your own. For that alone, it’s worth a read, even if I’d have given different advice here and there – but then, it’s all a matter of opinion and location – hers is based on the view that people open supper clubs because they’re primarily anarchists or anti-establishment, which may be true in London, but isn’t necessarily so elsewhere, like here for example. The book moves on to the recipes, laid out nicely and each with a little intro. They’re easy to read, easy to follow – I haven’t tried any of them out, but reading through them, they make sense and I think would to the average home cook. And much of the food is just for that purpose, it’s food that someone with a good basic kitchen skill set could jump in and reproduce, and uses, for the most part, ingredients that are probably found in many a pantry.

Now, if Kerstin will permit me, not that she has any choice, I’m going to poke a little fun. Not negatives, just some momentary amusements on my part….

She talks here and there about the whole anarchy of the movement and sticking it to the man and that sort of stuff. Which, to me anyway, contrasts with all the public appearances with corporate media, a book publishing gig, and, the one thing that I noted in more than a fair share of recipes, the reliance on tinned and boxed ingredients. Likewise, Kerstin is a vegetarian, well, pescetarian, but has offered up a section of red meat recipes – not of her own, this is where some of the rest of us in the supper club world came into play, but I found myself wondering why – why not take that stand if that’s what you believe in? (Assuming an ethical basis for her pescetarian-ism, which of course, may not be her reason at all.)

Having spent a good portion of my life writing and editing, proofreading mistakes tend to glare at me (in other people’s writings, for some reason they never stand out in my own when I proofread, so there you have it). The two that stand out in my mind this morning are “course salt” and “chilies en adobe” – the latter striking me with a giggle when I read it and having conjured up an image of popping the lid off a can of plaster to find spicy little vegetables mucking about in the white goo. It’s “adobo”, a tomato, garlic, onion and herb sauce that chilies, more often I would assert, come in. Likely, that was a program spell checker auto-correction that just wasn’t caught.

Blackening. It’s a process of cooking that comes to us from the Cajun cooking world. And, it doesn’t involve coating fish in spices and then baking it in the oven or frying it in oil. Really. If you’ve ever seen it done or done it, you know how it gets its name – the spice rub is fine, but the process is to have a cast iron skillet heated pretty much to glowing hot (when I worked at the Sazerac House we used to put a skillet on a flame when we got in first thing in the morning and it would be “ready to use” by lunchtime) into which you place the fish (or chicken or meat) without any oil or other fat, just dry, for long enough to char the herbs and spices, i.e., blacken them, and it was hot enough to cook the meat through at the same time.

And the last note was on her nod to Latin American traditions of closed door restaurants. Despite our having had a conversation about it, she stuck with the party line that she’d come into the conversation with, that it all started in Cuba in response to government restrictions and the American embargo (more anarchist rhetoric, I guess) with the paladar movement, and that it was a response to economics, as it has been recently in the UK. Sorry, but just not the case. First, puertas cerradas (as they’re called everywhere else in Central and South America except Cuba, where the name is based on a soap opera that was popular in the mid-1980s) have existed in Latin America stretching back as far as I’ve been able to research it – they’re just part of the culture, not economic (which is not to say there aren’t economic factors, it’s just not the driving force historically). There are places here in BA that have been open 30 and 40 years and I know of some in Lima and Mexico City that have been open as long. The paladar movement in Cuba didn’t really come into being until 1988, and was not in response to either restrictions or embargo (which began 28 years earlier in 1960), but to the start of the reversal of some of that – it was when the Cuban government made, more or less, a peace offering to its struggling populace and passed a law that allowed for paladares to open as long as they met a set of rules (limited to 12 seats, no advertising, and limited to certain dishes served, among other things). There’s a really well written history here. Paladares may not be state-run restaurants, but they’re not underground either, they’re very heavily regulated.

So that’s the book. Overall worth the investment for a combination of the interest factor, and being the first onto the shelves of what will no doubt be a slew of supper club cookbooks (hey, I’ve been working on one for over two years, but after losing the publisher who initially contracted for it, it just hasn’t been my focus). The recipes look like fun, and there are plenty of them, and like ones that any good home cook could tackle with aplomb and produce good results.

Books (Reviews)

cookbooks

Some “Light” Reading?

Dan P.Tuesday, May 31, 20110

“Cooking Light is America’s recipe for healthy living, dedicated to helping readers eat better, feel better and look their best. Each issue celebrates light cuisine via more than 75 kitchen tested, beautifully photographed recipes. Our editorial focus is to provide fitness from a common sense angle as well as a reachable/user friendly exploration of delicious better-for-you food. Our mission is to be embraced by readers as a part of their daily rhythm; our goal is to help each individual reader keep a better lifestyle balance. (Eat smart. Be fit. Live well.)”

– Mission Statement from Cooking Light magazine

Through a very round-a-bout process (which took them from Alabama to New York to Oregon to California to Uruguay and then I picked them up there while visiting the friend who’d snagged them in California), I recently received a couple of cookbooks from the publishers of Cooking Light magazine with the intent on their and my part to give them a test drive and review. The two books are, I gather, collections of recipes that have been published over the years in the magazine, plus, perhaps some additional ones specifically for the books – I’m not sure, there’s no indication in either book one way or the other on the latter.

Let’s start with my “problem” with Cooking Light and just get it out of the way with, because on a practical level, it’s irrelevant. The recipes that the magazine and books offer up have always relied much more heavily than I would like on canned and jarred goods – particularly sauces – and frozen vegetables. That’s it. The reality of daily life, however, is that that’s a step up from how most people cook – which consists of mixing prepackaged ingredients together or heating up something premade and frozen, or more likely, giving it up as a bad move anyway and ordering out Chinese or picking up fast food drive-through. I realize Cooking Light is focused on the food aspects of things, but really, “cooking spray” instead of just a little rub of oil on something? Part of living healthy is keeping the environment healthy too.

While from my personal perspective, I’d much rather have a stalk of fresh broccoli sitting in my kitchen than a bag of cut, blanched and shocked florets sitting in the freezer, I have the skewed viewpoint of someone whose workplace is in the kitchen. It’s not the place I’m forced to head to after putting in an 8 hour day at the office, or running kids around to all their after school events, or whatever it is that takes up the majority of people’s lives day in and day out. I actually enjoy cutting up the broccoli and doing the whole process to get it ready. And, it doesn’t cut into my day.

Nine times out of ten I’d rather chop up tomatoes and onions and garlic and peppers and all the rest to make myself some salsa that will only keep in the refrigerator for a few days instead of a jarred one that is preservative laden and will last for months, or even, buying a fresh one made by someone else. But that’s my passion – most people just want to get dinner on the table without exhausting themselves. So in the end, on a practical level, I am content that the books and magazine push people to use some fresh ingredients and actually spend time learning how they go together.

Cooking Light: Complete Meals in Minutes I don’t use cookbooks as recipe books directly in the kitchen. By that I mean that it’s rare that I would ever have a cookbook sitting on the kitchen counter, open to a page, with, likely, something holding down each side of the book so it stayed open while I refer to it back and forth. It’s just not the way I cook, but that gets back to what I do for a living and how I approach it. So it took me a moment to realize that the design of this book as a ring binder had multiple positive things about it as opposed to just taking up extra space over a normally bound book. You can open it and the pages lay flat, you can remove a single page and just have that in the kitchen with you, you can add to it with additional pages if you want, though the last, with 700+ recipes already in the binder, might be a bit of overstuffing. It’s eminently practical.

Cooking Light: complete meals in minutes is a straightforward recipe book. There’s no text, no prose, no reasons given for any of the recipes. In the context of the magazine there would be reasons given for certain choices, here the assumption is, just trust us, we’ve done the work. And that’s fine. It’s like the laboratory workbook that accompanies the textbook – when you’re in the lab, in this case the kitchen, you don’t need all the extraneous detail. A bit is provided – at the bottom of each recipe is a nutritional analysis of the key things people on a healthy eating kick might be concerned about – calories, fat, protein and carbohydrate content, cholesterol, iron, sodium….

As to the implied purpose of the book, it’s hard to say – “complete meals” are certainly possible out of this book, it covers everything from appetizers to desserts – but what was missing for me were any kind of suggestions like “hey, if you’re making this here on page 273, it goes really well with such and such on page 419.” (Those are random numbers, I don’t necessarily think that you should pair Country Captain Chicken and Grilled Nectarines with Blue Cheese.) You still have to do the menu planning yourself and figure out what you already have around the house and what you need to buy. The recipes are well thought out, easy to follow, and each includes an estimation of how much time it will take to complete them, the “in minutes” part of the subtitle, and they’re pretty accurate – if you decide to go the route of fresh vegetables rather than frozen in some, you’ll add in the few minutes to prepare them, that’s about it.

I tried out a good handful of the recipes, more or less selected at random and all turned out tasty. None was complicated to make. Here and there I have some quibbles about the choices of ingredients – for example, Chicken Paprikash, a favorite dish, is traditionally made with sour cream – what was behind the decision to use whipping cream in the recipe which not only takes away that nice tartness, but doesn’t lower the calories, fat or cholesterol in the dish? Why not light cream, or half and half, or better yet, yogurt? No doubt there was some sort of explanation in the original magazine article, but it isn’t here in the book. And a few things are probably well-known to the average norteamericano homemaker but that I haven’t a clue what they contain – “1 16-ounce package frozen bell pepper stir-fry” – is that just bell peppers? Does that have other stuff in the mix? What is actually in a “24-ounce package refrigerated sour cream and chives mashed potatoes”? I didn’t even know they made such a thing and really wish I didn’t now – and of course, the pushing of particular brands – I assume they’re advertisers – is a little annoying, and probably irrelevant to anyone outside of the U.S.

Overall, if you’re looking for a good, solid recipe book with lots of quick (I think every dish is 30 minutes or less) and easy to make dishes that are healthier than that frozen pizza (really? you have one of those in your freezer?) or snagging takeout from some fast food joint, this is a great choice.

Cooking Light: Vegetarian The second book from the same publishers I both like more and less than the first. The book itself – Cooking Light: way to cook vegetarian is a straightforward hardcover. Now that I’m enamored of the ring binder that is the first book, this one loses points, but only in comparison. On the other hand, it’s not just a recipe book. It’s a book to sit down and read, because it’s got some good material in there – so it gets those points back.

Many of the same things could be said about the recipes that are in the book – the ease, the frozen, canned and jarred thing, the advertiser pimping (do I really want to know what “1 12-ounce package meatless fat-free crumbles” are?). The recipes here are more of a mix, some simple and some more complicated, and they don’t have that helpful “in minutes” part for the harried homemaker. Many of them require a bit more planning, but it’s all well spelled out. Visually, it’s a quite beautiful book, with not just great photos of the dishes, but also step-by-step how to sections on various topics like making ricotta, preparing certain specialty vegetables and making omelets; sidebars that explain the differences between grains, tofus, tempehs, and many of the other things that a budding vegetarian might want to read about. It’s like a really cool, well illustrated “for Dummies” book. But better.

It falls down in a couple of places. I found myself searching the index with no luck for many of our current fall vegetables – cauliflower, brussels sprouts, parsnips and cabbage, somehow or other not one of these make it into the book, or at least aren’t listed – yet at the same time, it delves into things like celeriac, lemongrass, jicama and quinoa, with gusto. Even broccoli gets short shrift with only three recipes, two of which are variations on “in cheese sauce”. The focus seems to be on grain based dishes – whether the grains themselves in one guise or another, or things like pastas, sandwiches (or other similar dishes like bruschettas and pizzas), and a whole lotta stir-fries on rice. And why tout seitan as a great protein alternative and then only offer one page and two recipes using it while tofu warrants a 25 page section and tempeh, which is probably harder to find, a 10 pager with lots of recipe options each?

Although the index parses out the vegan recipes, and they’re marked in the text as well, there’s no explanation of the differences between vegetarian eating and a vegan lifestyle, or even that the latter isn’t, generally, just a diet. And even in some of the vegan marked dishes they use honey, which for the majority of vegans is a no-no.

Overall – visually a great book, and well, well worth it for the techniques and sidebars – some of which will likely clear up all sorts of mysteries for the kitchen novice, particularly someone exploring a vegetarian alternative, or who just wants to expand their repertoire of vegetable recipes. It’s not, as the subtitle asserts, “the complete visual guide to healthy vegetarian & vegan cooking” – it’s far from complete, but it would be an excellent library addition to anyone with those goals in mind.

Books (Reviews)

cookbooks, Diets

The Mixed Grill

Dan P.Thursday, May 12, 20110

What’s Up Buenos Aires
NEWS
May 12, 2011

The Mixed Grill

Noel Coward famously said, “Sunburn is very becoming, but only when it is even – one must be careful not to look like a mixed grill.” While we can all understand not wanting to look like one, most of us would be happy to look at one, and then chow down. Here in Buenos Aires, the mixed grill, or parrillada, is everywhere. You can take yourself, your significant other, and all your friends out and dig into a platters of innards and cuts of beef, chicken, pork, and perhaps other meats at any of seemingly thousands of parrillas. We set out to find some different options, hot off the grill.

The Mixed Veg

First to come to mind were vegetables. Sometimes, we’re just starved for the things, and the typical offering of an ensalada mixto with tomato, lettuce and onion, or the steakhouse staple of chard or spinach a la crema, just won’t cut it. We want a selection, and we want it grilled. The hands-down winner we found is the still trendy, modern style Miranda, a parrilla where it’s not just about what you’re eating, but who you’re eating with. For just over 50 pesos they serve up a good sized platter with half a grilled onion, slabs of potato and sweet potato, wedges of butternut squash, slices of zucchini, eggplant and red bell peppers. If we have any objection, it was to the unnecessary fluff of lettuce leaves garnishing the center of the plate. It’s pretty to look at, but it wasn’t grilled. Miranda, corner of Fitz Roy & Costa Rica, Palermo, 4771-4255.

The Seven Seas

Sometimes we want more surf than turf, and our thoughts turn to fish and shellfish. With the recent departure of our favorite river fish grill, Jangada, we had to start searching anew. Turns out there are a slew of great parrilladas del mar sailing the high seas of Buenos Aires and we’ve only begun to call in at port and check them out. So far, our favorite is Fervor, a pricey, special meal out kind of spot in the heart of old Recoleta. Coming in at over the 200 peso mark (with a half portion reaching 185, pictured), when you consider how pricey seafood tends to be in this city, and that the full portion will easily feed four while the half will, well, feed two, it’s not as hard to swallow. And the food certainly isn’t – two options, either del mar which contains two of the chef’s selections from the fish of the day (rotating between over a dozen options), scallops, calamarette, prawns, and octopus, while the de mariscos offers up more of the same shellfish and leaves aside the fillets. Perfectly cooked, well seasoned, and served up with a trio of housemade dipping sauces and wedges of lemon. Fervor: Brasas del Campo y del Mar, Posadas 1519, 4804-4944.

Rolling in Dough

We know that pizza is nature’s most perfect food, properly encompassing the right balance of whichever set of food groups you choose to subscribe to. Though not as common as it ought to be, one of our favorite porteño contributions to the pizza world are some of the best grilled pizzas we’ve found, anywhere. Hidden away, almost like that slightly “off” aunt that every family has and only trots out at the occasional social gathering, pizza a la parrilla is a gem to behold. And eat. It’s a tough decision as to who offers up the best version, but certainly the easiest to find, and up there in the top couple, would be either branch of Morelia. Cracker thin crust, perfectly charred and delivering up that beautiful smoky grill flavor, and topped with a thin drizzle of olive oil, a whisper of sauce, and your choice of toppings (our favorite is the montecattini with prosciutto, arugula and olives), just barely warmed atop, the pizzas come in 4, 6, or 8 piece sizes (ranging, depending on size and toppings, from roughly 50 to 100 pesos). Morelia, Humboldt 2005 in Palermo, 4772-5979 and Báez 260 in Las Cañitas, 4772-0329, plus one out of town up in La Lucila at Av. Libertador 3499, 4799-7377.

American Barbecue

Particularly for those of us from the U.S., there are moments when we miss a good old-fashioned backyard barbecue. Asados just aren’t the same thing. We want meat that’s cooked “low and slow” until it’s so tender it falls off the bone – come to think of it, we want that the meat was cooked on the bone in the first place, it adds flavor! And sometimes, we want barbecue sauce. And what better place to find something of that sort than Bar BQ, where an Argentine owner who spent time in the States licking his fingers in front more wood, charcoal and gas fired grills than you can shake a stick at, brings us his version. And no disappointments were had – with multiple visits under our belts and tasters from Michigan, Colorado, Texas and New York, only the last of those had anything less than glowing reviews, and what do New Yorkers know about barbecue? Hibachis on the fire escape? Beautiful pork baby back ribs or equally shining beef short ribs are lacquered in a tangy sweet sauce with what tastes to us like a tinge of coffee, either running about 70 pesos. The smoky pulled pork sandwich brought tears to our eyes though we did have a debate about pickles on the sandwich (Texas and Michigan vote yes, Colorado and New York vote no), coming in just under 50 pesos. Home sweet home. Bar BQ, El Salvador 5800 in Palermo, 4779-9124.

Family Style

We can’t totally ignore Argentina’s meat laden famed asado, and there’s no reason we should. One of the things that many of us wish we could do is attend a few more of those backyard family versions, with all the social interactions attendant. And when friends come to visit, it’d be great to not just take them to the same old neighborhood steakhouse or tourist trap version they read about in every guidebook out there. Brand spanking new to the scene is an option to create your own family for the night at the shared table of Adentro Dinner Club. Here, hosts Gabriel and Kelly, respectively Argentine and norteamericana, welcome you to their home in one of the latest of the burgeoning puertas cerradas movement. From mom’s empanada recipe to platters of achurras, the “parts is parts” round, plump prawns, amazing vegetables, and thick, juicy, perfectly cooked slabs of meat, accompanied by wine and followed by exquisite desserts, you get to join a table of strangers, who, by the end of the night will be fast friends. Coming in at 220 pesos a person it seems a bit steep, but it’s all you can eat, and a social experience that can’t be beat. Adentro Dinner Club, in Palermo (address provided with reservation).

Special WUBA guest Dan Perlman opens his home to visitors in one of Buenos Aires’ premier puertas cerradas, Casa Saltshaker.

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