Plant-Based

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Tender spring vegetables dress up the delightful masa triangles known as tetelas

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By Leslie Brenner

Are you familar with the Mexican masa shape known as a tetela? It’s a triangular masa pocket filled with beans and/or cheese, and sometimes other ingredients. A popular treat in Oaxaca, tetelas have been showing up in Norteamericano restaurants and on cooking sites in recent years.

READ: “How to make tetelas — the tasty, triangular treats from Oaxaca that are about to become super-trendy”

Our friend (and Cooks Without Borders’ Mexican cuisine expert) Olivia Lopez offered us a dreamy tetela recipe for spring a while back, and now seems like the perfect moment to spotlight it — as the markets are filled with asparagus, fresh favas, spring onions and peas. I even picked up some green garbanzos last week at my favorite local Lebanese grocery.

Olivia’s recipe is in the seasonal-produce-forward, masa-centric style she features at her Dallas-based Molino Oloyo, and it’s a terrific recipe to create at home. Basically, bean-filled tetelas are topped with a quick sauté of those beautiful spring vegetables, then finished with dabs of requesón — fresh cheese you can find in Mexican markets; ricotta makes a fine substitute. Finish it with drizzles of salsa macha.

To make the tetelas, you’ll need first to simmer up a pot of bayo or mayocoba beans, and then fashion those into quick, vegan refried beans. You’ll also need to get your hands on some heirloom masa harina, if you don’t already have some. (We use Masienda’s masa harina, available through its website, and at many Whole Foods Markets. You can also buy it at Amazon.) Do you have a tortilla press? You’ll need that, too.

New to the world of heirloom maíz and masa harina? CHECK OUT: The Masa Movement Project

Try a simpler tetela RECIPE: Tetelas with Beans, Cheese and Salsa Verde

Because the tetelas can be held in a warm oven and the vegetables can be prepped (and salsa macha made) ahead of time, this is a lovely dish to make for a Mother’s Day brunch or other gathering — just throw the veg in the sauté pan right before serving.

Here’s the recipe:

RECIPE: Olivia Lopez’s Tetelas with Spring Vegetables

Meanwhile, if you happen live in North Texas, or you’ll be visiting Dallas later this month, you can taste Olivia’s extraordinary food: Molino Oloyo will hold one of its locally famous pop-ups from Tuesday, April 30 through Sunday, el Cinco del Mayo. Hopefully, I’ll see you there — I’ll be enjoying Olivia’s incomparable offerings at least one of the evenings, maybe more.

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How to make your own Tunisian-syle harissa — and why you'll be thrilled you did

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By Leslie Brenner

Sure, the stuff in the tube is pretty darn good. But there’s nothing like homemade harissa — North Africa’s signature brick-red, aromatic chile paste.

Just ask UNESCO, which granted harissa from Tunisia a place on its “intangible cultural heritage” list last December.

Tunisian-style harissa is incredibly vibrant, velvety and alive, and though only a few ingredients comprise it, it has remarkable depth of flavor.

Given its worldwide popularity, you’d think there’d be recipes for it all over the internet. You’d be wrong: While there are a gazillion recipes using it as an ingredient, there are shockingly few recipes out there — at least on Anglophile and Francophile sites — for making something like the real Tunisian deal at home.

It’s quite simple to make; there are only four basic ingredients: dried chiles, caraway seeds, coriander seeds and garlic. Plus salt, of course, and olive oil to preserve it. All the formulas you might turn up that include things like tomato, cumin, cilantro or lemon juice? Maybe they’re good, maybe they’re not; hard to imagine that they improve upon the Tunisian classic.

It starts with dried chiles. In Tunisia they come from Cap Bon, Kairouan, Sidi Bouzid and Gabes, according to a film that was part of Tunisia’s submission for the UNESCO listing. Other sources mention Nabeul. In the Americas, the closest chiles to those are said to be guajillos and California chiles.

Snip them open with kitchen shears or scissors, shaking out the seeds and removing the stems. Seed removal is important for the best flavor in texture. Leave the seeds in, and you have a harissa that’s punishingly hot. Remove them, and you get incredible chile flavor, minus the fire. Instead of a tiny dab, you can swipe a piece of bread through harissa and relish it. Note that in the video, the woman making harissa from dried chiles shakes out the seeds before grinding them.

Rinse them, then soak them in boiling water for about 30 minutes, so they become soft and pliable. In Tunisia, a manual grinder — like a meat grinder — is traditionally used to grind the chiles. A food processor or blender does the job nicely.

For the spices — caraway and coriander seeds — grind them yourself for the best flavor. Sure, you could use pre-ground spices, but as long as you’re going to the trouble to make harissa, why cut corners?

Throw the spices, the rehydrated chiles, a few garlic cloves, salt and a little olive oil in the processor, and blitz away, until you have a smooth paste. That’s it. You have harissa. Maybe you’ll need to add a little water along the way.

Taste it, and swoon. Use it in a favorite recipe — go ahead, use more than you might if you were squeezing a tube. Stir it into a soup. Slather it on a roasted sweet potato. Or serve it with a tagine or couscous. Ready to store it? Put it in a jar, cover it with olive oil, and your supply will last in the fridge for months.

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Five dishes we can’t wait to dive into this fall

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By Leslie Brenner

Finally, a return to cooking! Earthy, warm flavors, a little roasting, a touch of char: so many things are enticing us back into the kitchen. Here are five dishes we’re excited to revisit this month.

Green Olive, Walnut and Pomegranate Salad

 This Turkish salad, from ‘Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean,’ stole our hearts in early summer, when pomegranates’ season was still three months away — it looked so good, we couldn’t review the book without giving it a try. Now that it’s pomegranate time, we can’t wait to get it back on the table.

Hooni Kim’s Japchae

Stretchy dangmyeon — clear noodles made from sweet potato starch — are the star japchae, a beloved staple of Korean home cooking. We love this version from Hooni Kim’s My Korea. (Kim, chef-owner of Meju and Danji in New York, has been making a huge splash with his year-old Little Banshan Shop.)

The japchae’s springy noodles get tangled in this recipe with spinach, red and green bell peppers, fresh shiitakes and onions in an umamiful sauce scented with sesame. It’s easy to make it vegan and/or gluten-free: Use water or vegan dashi in place of seafood-based dashi to make it vegan, and swap gluten-free tamari for soy sauce to make it gluten-free.

Chicken Musakhan

The national dish of Palestine — chicken roasted with lots of onion, olive oil and spices —  is traditionally made during the olive-pressing season in October. It’s served on flatbread, to soak up all those wonderful juices and olive oil. Sami Tamimi’s rendition, from his outstanding cookbook Falastin, is nothing short of spectacular.

Charred Okra with a Little Spice

 To celebrate okra at the height of their season, toss them in a little olive oil and salt, char them on a stovetop grill or griddle and finish with a drizzle of sambal oelek — Indonesian chile sauce. The result: cocktail snack extraordinaire.

Charred Baby Eggplants from Anjali Pathak’s ‘The Indian Family Kitchen’

Anjali Pathak’s Charred Baby Eggplants

Baby eggplants halved and scored, then roasted or grilled, get a crunchy topping of coconut, mustard seeds, curry leaves and ginger – plus zingy red chiles and dabs of tangy yogurt. From Anjali Pathak’s The Indian Family Kitchen, it’s a winner.

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12 great dishes to invite to a vegan picnic

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Herb-Happy Potato Salad

By Leslie Brenner

Why eat inside when you can eat outside? That’s my philosophy anytime the weather’s fine. And whether you’re vegan, or you like to eat plant-based sometimes or much of the time, it just feels nice to keep things light and clean when you’re being outdoorsy and maybe a hike or nature walk is in the picture.

To that end, here are a dozen vegan treats to pack in a basket. They’re mostly simple to put together, and many can be made the night before and kept chilled till you’re ready to roll.

Classic Tabbouleh

Minty, fragrant and portable, classic tabbouleh is a perfect picnic food that satisfies summer tomato cravings. Our recipe, adapted from Anissa Helou’s Feast: Food of the Islamic World, calls for romaine leaves for scooping it up; lately we’ve been loving it with organic little gems.

Giant White Beans with Lemon Zest and Olive Oil

This dish came to us through a cookbook we love — La Buvette: Recipes and Wine Notes from Paris, by Camille Fourmont and Kate Leahy. The book is about Fourmont’s Paris wine bar, and this super simple prep was one of the first things she started serving there. No formal recipe required: Open a can of gigante beans or butter beans, rinse and drain them well, drizzle with great olive oil and finish with citrus zest and flaky salt, such as Maldon. Fourmont changes up her zest choice according to the season (mandarin! bergamot!), but we find it irresistible with lemon. If you want to be really fancy, you can bring the zest and Maldon salt separately, and finish it after you’ve given the beans a quick toss to recoat them in olive oil at the picnic.

Fragrant Dressed Tofu

We fell for this dish recently as we tested recipes from Hannah Che’s inspiring The Vegan Chinese Kitchen for a review. Meant to be eaten room-temp or chilled, it’s ideal picnic fare.

Spinach with Sesame Dressing

This classic Japanese starter or side — served at room temp — will be vegan if you make it with vegan dashi. To make vegan dashi, soak a piece of kombu (about 4 inches square) in filtered water at room temperature for 3 to 10 hours, then drain.

Charred Summer Salad

Designed to be served warm, this beautiful toss is also great at room-temp. Leave off the optional cheese for the vegan version.

Quinoa, Pea and Mint Tabbouleh

This spin on classic tabbouleh — swapping quinoa for bulghur wheat and peas for chick peas and doing without tomatoes — is one of our all-time favorite picnic foods. We always make a double batch, it’s so good.

Sweet Home Café’s Spicy Pickled Okra

Quite simply the best pickled okra we’ve ever tasted, these are adapted from a recipe in Sweet Home Cafe Cookbook. (Sweet Home Cafe is the restaurant in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.) The pickles are crispy and tangy — with just a touch of sugar.

RECIPE: Sweet Home Café’s Spicy Pickled Okra

Herb-Happy Potato Salad

Shown in the photo at the top of this story, this is riffable potato salad is elegant, pretty and delicious. For a picnic, bring the herbs along in a separate container and scatter them on top at the picnic table.

Baba Ganoush

We love this classic baba ganoush with homemade pita bread, but for a picnic, we’ll pick up pita at the supermarket or a Lebanese bakery.

Hummus, dressed as you like

Preternaturally smooth hummus can be yours, whether you want to start from dried chick peas or open a can of garbanzos. Either way, it’s always at home at a picnic — especially if you picked up that pita bread. Dress it with olive oil and sumac, or make it fancy by dropping a handful of fresh herbs and sliced radishes on top.

Smashed Cucumber Salad

Here’s another eminently riffable dish that travels well. This version is adapted from The Vegan Chinese Kitchen.

Minted Fruit Salad

This fruit dessert is so basic, you don’t need a recipe — just toss whatever cut-up fruit you like with mint and a little Grand Marnier or other orange liqueur (or orange juice). In case you’d like a roadmap (or want to learn how to cut orange supremes), here’s a recipe:

RECIPE: Minted Fruit Salad

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Got gorgeous spring vegetables? These three recipes spotlight them deliciously

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Olivia Lopez’s Tetelas with Spring Vegetables

By Leslie Brenner

There’s nothing like the season’s first asparagus, favas, green garbanzos and English peas to excite produce-worshiping cooks. And when treasures like ramps, morels or fiddlehead ferns turn up on a forest walk or a swing through the farmer’s market, the urge to create something special inevitably swells into can’t-wait-to-get-these-in-a-pan.

It’s not always easy to find recipes starring the more fleeting of these vegetables; improvising is great route, if you’ve got some skills and a bit of flair. Happily, all these springtime treats go beautifully together, whether on a savory tart, a quick sauté or a salad. Or you could resurrect that old 70’s-and-80’s standby, pasta primavera.

Don’t forget that you can round out a combo with more commonplace springy veg — slender young carrots, French green beans, sugar snap peas and radishes. And no one will arrest you if you toss in something frozen, like peas, shelled favas or artichoke hearts.

Harmony in a soup plate

Two years ago, I was smitten by a beautiful spring vegetable soup Ellie Krieger had created for The Washington Post, and took it a step farther by broadening the palette of vegetables and making it vegan. (It’s based on leek broth rather than chicken broth; you could also use store-bought vegetable broth.) Besides asparagus, carrots, French green beans, turnips and baby spinach leaves, it also calls for English peas or frozen peas. You could substitute sugar snaps, and add or subtract whatever — quartered radishes, favas, morels, green garbanzos and garlic scapes would all be fabulous additions (toss them in when you cook the diced turnips).

Garden-fresh modern Mexican

Or take a tip from Cooks Without Borders’ Mexican cuisine expert Olivia Lopez and give her Tetelas with Spring Vegetables a whirl. The triangular tetelas are made from heirloom masa harina that you press into tortilla rounds, fill with vegan refried beans and cook on a griddle or comal. Top them with beautiful tumble of sautéd spring veg enlivened with lime and cilantro, plus charred scallion and blips of requesón (fresh Mexican cheese) or ricotta. If you happen to have some salsa macha, it’s wonderful drizzled on as a final florish. (Or not!)

RECIPE: Olivia Lopez’s Tetelas with Spring Vegetables

The dish has a similar vibe to a dish Olivia has created for a Molino Olōyō pop-up dinner in Dallas on April 17. Leading off a tasting menu of eight courses, her Sopecito con Alcachofa will feature baby artichokes, garden peas, green onions and requesón. “Spring ingredients were the inspiration for both,” she says. (There are still a few seats available — more info here.)

Luxurious springtime stew inspired by Spain

Finally, though this dish was inspired by a soup — minestra de primavera, traditional in the Navarre and Rioja regions of Spain — in the hands of superstar cookbook author Claudia Roden, it’s more like a spring stew.

A little cured pork in the form of prosciutto, serrano ham or bacon gives it depth and umami; cooking the vegetables long enough so they’re meltingly tender makes it deeply delicious. It’s definitely for folks won’t don’t want their vegetables crunchy. I highly recommended it.

RECIPE: Claudia Roden’s Medley of Spring Vegetables

Let yourself riff on any of the three recipes, and the possibilities are endless.

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The flavor-packed, vegan, zero-waste lentil-and-greens soup that earned a hundred encores and endless spins

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By Leslie Brenner

Feel like eating vegan today? Treat yourself to a pot of an easy, surprisingly quick-to-make lentil soup. It’s deliciously multi-dimensional: underlined with warm spices, brightened with tomato, umamified with dried mushrooms, enlivened with tender greens. It’s packed with phytochemicals and health-enhancing super-foods. It’s a colorful, health-enhancing heavy-lifter for your zero-waste aspirations that will fill your kitchen with gorgeous aromas.

It cooks in about an hour. Make a pot in the morning, and if you’re working at home, you have a week’s worth of magnificent lunches. Work somewhere away? It’s quick enough to pull together when you get home.

If you keep lentils and a can of tomatoes on hand, and tend to have greens in the fridge (including that half-bag of tired arugula, or a some frozen spinach), you can put the soup together whenever you feel like it without shopping.

This is not the first time I’ve written about this soup; I dreamt it up 7 years ago and have been sustained by it and spinning on it ever since.

Start with aromatic vegetables: onion, carrot, celery and friends. Add herbs and garlic, then spices — turmeric and coriander. The base can be French green lentils or black Umbrian lentils, or both. A can of diced tomatoes plus water, and simmer for 45 or 50 minutes. Toss in greens — half a bag of baby kale, spinach or arugula, maybe some cayenne or harissa. That’s it.

Make it once, and then you can spin endlessly. Stare into your fridge before you start and see what vegetables need to be used up — raw in the drawer, or cooked leftovers. Is a turnip or a piece of daikon lurking therein? Dice it and throw it in with the carrots. Raw cauliflower or broccoli? Dice ‘em up and in they go with the tomatoes. Cooked spinach, carrots, cauliflower or what have you? Toss them in halfway through, or near the end. You are not sacrificing the soup’s integrity by cleaning out your fridge into the pot: You’re making something even more delicious.

You can play with the spices, too, depending on your mood. Sometimes I feel like pushing the soup in an Asian direction, and add ginger — fresh or ground. When I do that, I frequently throw in some red lentils for added dal-like creaminess. Maybe I’ll triple the turmeric and swap dried shiitakes for the porcini.

Anyway, you get the idea. If you’re the follow-a-recipe type, here are two — the original, and the gingery, turmeric-happy spin.

RECIPE: Gingery Lentil and Greens Soup

Are you more the let-me-loose-to-improvise kind of cook? Here’s a master recipe with endless opportunities to spin. I love to do this on Sunday, for the fridge-clean win.

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Sweet potatoes are here! Don't wait till Thanksgiving to celebrate one of earth's perfect foods

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By Leslie Brenner

There’s nothing like a sweet potato, hot from the oven, simply roasted till it’s super tender and caramelized syrup oozes out of its orangey-purple skin. Slice it open, push the ends together to reveal the gorgeous, meltingly soft flesh, and send in your spoon. What a treat, that custardy bite: It’s luscious and rich, autumnal sweet chased by an earthy, mineral tang.

How many other plant-foods can you think of that are delicious and satisfying enough to be an entire meal with no added ingredients? Beans and lentils could almost be that, but impossible to enjoy them without salt. A perfectly roasted sweet potato needs no such seasoning.

Naturally, sweet potatoes are also spectacular dressed up — as in the gratin with sage-butter and thyme I love to serve for Thanksgiving.

But I’m not waiting till the holiday to indulge in sweet potatoes: This weekend I’ll roast a few of them, dress them up (or not). and swoon. From now till my favorite food holiday, there are all kinds of ways to enjoy them.

Slather with miso butter and layer on sliced scallions and furikake (Japanese seasoning mix), for something transportingly delicious. One of my very favorite autumn dishes, it makes a dreamy (meatless) dinner, either on its own, preceded by a salad or followed by a soup, or some braised lentils, creamy white beans or soupy mayocoba beans.

Miso butter, if you’re not familiar with it, is a brilliant invention: Just combine softened unsalted butter and miso in equal amounts. (White miso is ideal, but any kind will be good.) Slit open the sweet potato, and slather it on. It’s delicious just like that, or you could grind on some black pepper. Or dress it up as in this photo (and recipe).

A sparkling autumn salad

Sweet potatoes are also marvelous in a fall salad, playing off another favorite autumn ingredient: pomegranate. The gem-like, tangy juicy seeds commune gorgeously with the creamy richness of the sweet potato; baby kale provides the perfect deep-flavored, earthy base and and toasted pecans add crunch. Again, great with just a soup to precede or follow it. (Roasted black bean!)

Slice and layer in a gratin

When Thanksgiving rolls around, I always make one of two sweet-potato gratins. The first was dreamed up by food writer Regina Schrambling, a frequent collaborator when I was Food Editor at The Los Angeles Times many years ago. Unlike those candied gratins so popular at holiday time, this one is savory — enriched with cream and butter and heightened with lots of fresh thyme.

The second savory gratin turns Regina’s version on its side — stacking the slices upright in the baking dish — and adds the classic Italian combination of brown butter and sage. It’s kind of outrageous.

RECIPE: Sweet Potato Gratin with Sage-Butter

Choose your sweet potato

Wondering what type of sweet potato to start with?

For any of these dishes (and any other I might think of), I always choose the garnet variety: Garnet sweet potatoes are exceedingly moist and sweet, not as starchy as some other varieties, and their flesh stays a saturated orange color when cooked. You’ll recognize them by their dark, purply skins. In fact, I love this variety so much I never buy any other.

Can’t commit to one of these iterations? Just go ahead and roast one plain. No recipe necessary — scrub the skin (you’ll definitely want to eat it), poke the tines of a fork in it in seven or eight places to create vents, so it doesn’t steam inside, lay it on a small baking dish or quarter-sheet pan lined with parchment and roast at 400 degrees till it’s very soft and oozing dark syrup. How long depends on the thickness of the sweet potato; a medium-sized one that’s more long and slim than fat and squat might take 45 or 50 minutes; thicker ones can take more than an hour.

Eat it piping hot, with nothing on it. Incredible how good it is, right?

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Taste my Ukraine in a bowl of cold beet borscht

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 By Leslie Brenner

There is only one thing in the world that my adventurous, handsome husband does not eat: beets. And so it happens that one of my favorite foods from my childhood — cold beet borscht — has never once graced our family table.

Until last week. Borscht, you see, is the national dish of Ukraine.

Recently, I have had a devastating personal loss. My brother David, who was two years my junior, died last month quite unexpectedly. It was our younger brother Johnny who called and delivered the irreparable, impossible news.

There is a thing that ties us together in my family: Our souls reside in our kitchens. They lurk in the bottom of a Dutch oven, to be scraped up and deglazed with a gurgle of wine; they flutter within a bowl of heavy cream, about to be whipped into lightness and loft. They waft about, now in the fridge, next in the pantry, whether we’re still of this world, or whether we’ve left long ago.

The love of cooking shared by my brothers and me came from our mom, Joan. She didn’t exactly teach us to cook; she taught us to love cooking. We watched her in the kitchen; we learned by osmosis. The methodical chop of the onion. The quiet sizzle in the pan. The aroma. 

Joan was hilarious. She was so funny and so sharp that you almost didn’t consider why she should be sad. The three of us, David and Johnny and I, would remember her, since we lost her six years ago, by texting each other about what we were cooking, or eating, or about our childhood food memories, or how funny Joan was.

Dave was also hilarious. As a teenager, one night — as we sat around the dinner table — he took a large handful of mashed potatoes and smeared it onto his face, a solid white beard. He then proceeded to shave it off, onto his plate, with his butter knife.  

The last thing David texted to Johnny and me, two days before he died, was about something he had just cooked for his family. It involved chuck roast, which made him remember Joan and the way she made beef stew. 

What’s happening in Ukraine — what has happened in the last month, since we lost Dave — would have torn my brother apart.

And not because Ukraine is our ancestral homeland. Our paternal grandfather was born in Zobolotov (now Zablotiv) in Western Ukraine, near the border with Moldova. But because of what Ukraine is now.

And so, I’ve been thinking about borscht — of which there are many kinds.  From what I’ve read, the borscht that is the national dish of Ukraine is the hot-and-hearty style, the beef-based borscht, rooty and earthy and deep.

But if you say “borscht” to just about any American of a certain age who was raised in a Jewish household, something cold and refreshing and pink is what springs to mind. Something light and vegetarian, with a touch of sweetness, a touch of tang. This is the borscht of Ashkenazi Jews a hundred and fifty years ago, who were chased out, or escaped the pogrom. Or who escaped or were exterminated a few decades later. Perhaps it is also the borscht of the Ashkenazi Jews who somehow have remained. The Volodymyr Zelenskys.  

Pink borscht — cool, refreshing, and hopeful — is what ties me to president Zelensky, and to the people, brave and bold and besieged, of Ukraine.

It means the world to me to share my mom’s recipe, passed down from her family, from who-knows-where in Eastern Europe, with you.

Help feed the people of Ukraine by donating to World Central Kitchen. Its Chefs for Ukraine initiative is feeding people across the region, at border crossings into Poland, Romania, Moldova, and Hungary.

Now through Sunday, March 18, 100% of our proceeds from our $5 e-cookbook, 21 Favorite Recipes Cooks Without Borders, will be donated to World Central Kitchen.

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Recipe for today: Beat the heat with zingy, cool and refreshing Gazpacho Sevillano

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Gazpacho Sevillano: cool summertime happiness in a bowl

By Leslie Brenner

Yipes! The mercury reached 112 degrees in Portland, Oregon yesterday! Let’s hope for quick relief for our friends in the Pacific Northwest.

Until the outdoor thermometer cooperates, delicious relief can be a cool bowl of Gazpacho Sevillano. Down here in hot-as-blazes Texas, it feels like this week opens gazpacho season, as our friends with gardens and farms have been gifting us with gorgeous heirloom tomatoes bursting with flavor. When a windfall like that happens faster than you can gobble up the treasures (or when finally start seeing tasty-looking tomatoes in the markets), it’s the moment to grab some cukes as well, pull out your sherry vinegar and plug in the blender.

Our recipe for the classic Spanish summer refresher is a smooth-as-silk, elegant, purist version; the headnote offers a couple of short-cuts for a quickie version that gratifies instantly and deliciously.

Pro-tip: You don’t even have to wait for it to chill in the fridge — just drop a couple of ice cubes in each bowl and enjoy right away!

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Potato salad season opens today! Here are 5 you'll love

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Best Potato Salad Lede.JPG

By Leslie Brenner

Today is the official unofficial season opener for summer’s most craveable side dish — the underdog show-stealer of every picnic or potluck. We can all pretend we can do without it, and then boom! A great potato salad blindsides us with deliciousness.

Here are five — three American, and two Japanese-style — that will round out your celebrations from now through Labor Day. (And probably beyond!)

Why Japanese-style? Because potato salad is a delicious example of yoshoku — Western dishes that migrated to Japan in the late 19th century and became truly Japanese. There’s something truly fabulous about this particular yoshuku fusion; Japanese flavors really make potatoes sing.

1. Herb-Happy Potato Salad

Herb-happy potato salad

Red potatoes, red wine vinaigrette and either shallots or scallions come together under a flurry of fresh, soft herbs with this light, quick potato salad that’s a snap to make.

2. Salaryman Potato Salad

Salaryman Potato Salad: Each portion of the Japanese potato salad gets topped with half an ajitama marinated egg

Salaryman Potato Salad: Each portion of the Japanese potato salad gets topped with half an ajitama marinated egg

Mayonnaise-based and built on russets, this cucumber-laced Japanese potato salad gets umami from HonDashi (instant dashi powder — a secret weapon of many a Japanese chef). Each portion is topped with half an ajitama, the delicious (and easy-to-make) marinated egg that often garnishes ramen. We fell in love with the salad at Salaryman, Justin Holt’s erstwhile ramen house in Dallas, and chef Holt was kind enough to share the recipe.

3. Jubilee Country-Style Potato Salad

Old-fashioned American potato salad, prepared from a recipe adapted from ‘Jubilee’ by Toni Tipton-Martin

When I came upon this recipe in Toni Tipton-Martin’s award-winning book, Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking, it was so luscious it sent me into a potato-salad binge that went on for weeks. Eggy, mayonnaise-y and old-fashioned (in a good way!), it reminds me of the potato salad my mom used to make. Try not to eat the whole bowl.

4. Sonoko Sakai’s Potato Salada

Potato Salada (Japanese potato salad), prepared from a recipe in ‘Japanese Home Cooking,’ by Sonoko Sakai

For a different style of Japanese potato salad, try Sonoko Sakai’s “Potato Salada” from her award-winning book, Japanese Home Cooking. It’s dressed with homemade Japanese mayo and nerigoma (Japanese-style tahini), but sometimes we cheat and use Kewpie mayo (our favorite brand of commercial Japanese mayonnaise) and store-bought tahini. We love the carrots, green beans and cukes in this one!

5. Best Potato Salad Ever

Best Potato Salad Ever is made with a new-wave gribiche.

I cringe a little every time I see the moniker of this bad boy, which I named before discovering Toni Tipton-Martin’s, Justin Holt’s or Sonoko Sakai’s. Still, I do think Best Potato Salad Ever is worthy of at least tying for the title. The secret to its wonderfulness is New Wave Sauce Gribiche — soft-boiled eggs tossed with chopped herbs, capers, cornichons and shallots, plus Champagne vinegar, lemon juice and Dijon mustard. How could you go wrong, right?

Have an excellent, potato-salad-filled Memorial Day weekend!

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Beautiful, light, and herbal: This easy-to-customize vegan soup gracefully celebrates spring

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Cooks Without Borders’ Spring Vegan Soup

By Leslie Brenner

A couple weeks ago — shortly after spring had sprung — a recipe in the Washington Post captured my fancy. Its lede photo depicted a brothy bowl with peas and spinach, leeks and dill in varying shades of green, set off gorgeously with pink-skinned, white-fleshed potatoes. The story’s author and the recipe’s creator, Ellie Krieger, offered it up as “Proof spring is soup season, too.”

Had to have it! I made the soup that very evening, and absolutely loved it. No question I’ll make it again and again.

Still, in my mind’s test kitchen, I couldn’t help but riff. Wouldn’t it be lovely with some asparagus tips? English or snap peas still clinging to their pods? Fresh favas or field peas, if I happened upon them? Wouldn’t turnips be just as nice as potatoes — or even nicer, if it’s optimal healthy one is after, or if you could find those beautiful tiny Tokyo turnips? Sure, I’d lose that pretty pink flourish, but I could add slices of slender springtime carrots instead.

And hey, couldn’t this soup be made vegan — if I created a broth out of the castaway tops of leeks I’m forever gathering in the crisper (the WaPo recipe added to my stash), would that have sufficient flavor?

Well, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes! The very next night, that riffing went live — and the result was grand.

I call it Vegan Spring Beaty Soup partly because it’s beautiful to look at, and partly because of its healthful purity: I imagine that the more frequently you eat it, the more beautiful you become.

Even after I created our vegan version, the test kitchen lobe of my brain continued to riff. You could use just about any kind of soft herbs: chervil, tarragon, cilantro, mint. If the vegan part’s not important to you, you could swap dashi for leek broth, and maybe add a dash of white soy sauce, and lots of sliced scallions in place of the herbs.

Of course, if you want to keep it super-easy, you can use the store-bought chicken broth, as Krieger’s recipe does — do that, and it comes together in 25 minutes or less.

Ain’t that beautiful?

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Quinoa, Pea and Mint Tabbouleh is one of our favorite salads, springtime through the summer

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Quinoa, Pea and Mint Tabbouleh, prepared from a recipe in ‘Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking’ by Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook

By Leslie Brenner

Every spring, as the sun comes out, the earth warms up, and thoughts of picnics, patios and pool parties pervade, this deliciously optimistic Quinoa, Pea and Mint Tabbouleh finds its way to my table lickety-split.

From Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook’s superb 2015 book Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking, it’s one of my favorite things to eat all the way through summer’s end.

Easy to make, and from ingredients that are not hard to find (frozen peas!), it’s super-versatile. Serve it as a starter, part of a creative mezze spread, maybe, or a simple spring dinner. Or as a side dish with lamb, chicken or fish —or even as a vegan main course. It travels well and eats great at room temp, so it’s a dreamy dish to bring to a potluck or picnic. I love it on its own for lunch — especially when it’s leftover from the night before — either on its own, or stuffed into a whole-wheat pita pocket.

Because I’m so fond it it, I make sure to keep a bag or two of those petite peas in the freezer and quinoa in the pantry all spring and summer long. That way when I see fresh mint (or my potted one is in a giving mood), I can chop it all together.

Oh, just one thing: If you’re more than one or two people, consider doubling the batch. The few times I made just a single dose, I’ve kicked myself for not making more.

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Cooks Without Borders to host Tara Wigley — Ottolenghi and Tamimi's co-author — for a special live video event

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Tara Wigley is co-author of ‘Falastin,’ ‘Ottolenghi Simple’ and other cookbooks. / Photo by Jenny Zarins

Tara Wigley is co-author of ‘Falastin,’ ‘Ottolenghi Simple’ and other cookbooks. / Photo by Jenny Zarins

By Leslie Brenner

If you are a fan of Yotam Ottlenghi and his books (is there anyone who isn’t?), you’ll want to join Cooks Without Borders when we host Tara Wigley for a special Live Video Q & A on Thursday, Feb. 25. The one-hour event will begin at noon CST (10 a.m. PST / 11 a.m. MST / 1 p.m. EST). For participants in Britain, where Wigley lives, it begins at 6 p.m. GMT.

Wigley has collaborated with Ottolenghi since 2010, when she assisted him, working out of his flat in Notting Hill, London, on his cooking column for The Guardian. She has since become an important part of the Ottolenghi family, having worked on many of the cookbooks it has produced, including Plenty More, Nopi and Sweet — and co-authored several with the chef, including Flavor (the most recent) and Ottolenghi Simple — which is probably our favorite of them all.

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[Read our review of Ottolenghi Simple.]

Wigley also co-authored, with chef Sami Tamimi (Ottolenghi’s business partner), Falastin — another Cooks Without Borders all-time favorite. You can see her in this video preparing a dish we absolutely adore — Chicken Musakhan — and other Palestinian treats with Tamimi.

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[Read our review of Falastin.]

Wigley’s involvement with the Ottolenghi-sphere began when she was just out of Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland, having left behind a career in publishing. After a brief stint working at Nopi, she was trying to figure out her life when she got an out-of-the-blue phone call from chef Ottolenghi, who was her “complete hero” — and she thought it was her husband playing a practical joke on her. She tells about it, including how things played out in this wonderful video.

About the Live Q & A with Wigley

Cooks Without Borders Premium Members will have exclusive access to participate in the live event on the 25th, which I’ll be hosting. If you’re not yet a Premium Member, don’t worry — you can try out Premium Membership for one month for free! Or take advantage of our special Charter Annual Membership opportunity.

YES! I’d like a Free Trial Premium Membership. SIGN ME UP!

I have so many questions I’m excited to ask Wigley, and I’m sure you do, too! Hope to see you there.

Live Q & A with Tara Wigley, Thursday, Feb. 25, noon CST (10 a.m. PST, 11 a.m. MST, 1 p.m. EST, 6 p.m. GMT). Sign up from the premium members’ home page.

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Rich, luscious and packed with umami, miso-butter sweet potatoes are a spectacular autumn treat

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Roasted garnet sweet potatoes, slathered with miso butter and dressed with scallions and furikake

Roasted garnet sweet potatoes, slathered with miso butter and dressed with scallions and furikake

Miso butter is one of those magical ingredients. Creamy and luscious, rich with umami, it puts richness and incredible flavor anywhere you want it, turning the simplest foods into incredible luxuries.

It’s stunningly easy to make: Combine equal amounts of miso with softened unsalted butter. That’s it.

You can use it in a hundred different ways. Plop it on plastic film, roll in a log and chill it (as you would any compound butter), then use slices as needed to melt atop steaks or chops or steamed, braised or roasted vegetables. (Braised kale! Roasted eggplant! Roasted Brussels sprouts!) Stir it into boiled soba noodles or brown rice. Spread it on salmon fillets or chicken breasts before roasting or broiling. 

Roasted sweet potato with miso-butter, scallions and furikake.

The most delicious way to use it, as far as we’re concerned, is slathering it on a hot-from-the-oven sweet potato that’s been roasted till creamy-soft, luscious and caramelized. Three ingredients: butter, miso, sweet potato. Infinite autumnal pleasure, essential winter joy. Sure, it’s a bit indulgent, with all that butter, but it’s so good. And it’s a meal in itself. Sometimes I grind black pepper on top.

Last night, I got a little fancier, skipping the black pepper and adding sliced scallions and a sprinkle of furikake — the Japanese condiment of sesame seeds and nori flakes that has become one of my pandemic pantry essentials. A dash of shichimi togarashi (Japanese red pepper flakes in a tiny shaker bottle) added a happy high note. I didn’t realize it while it was happening, but the furikake-togarashi play was inspired by a José Andrés recipe for Miso-Butter Corn.

You don’t really need a recipe for this, but maybe you’d like one. The pleasure’s all mine. And now yours.

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Pickle-y, spicy giardiniera is the perfect prelude to pasta, pizza and other carb-loaded indulgences

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Three French canning jars filled with giardiniera, the lightly spicy Italian vegetable snack. The jars are sitting in a windowsill.

Everyone knows that if you precede something fattening with something purely vegetable, fat-free, gluten-free and crunchy, the fattening thing you eat after that doesn’t count.

Taquería carrots before chicken enchiladas, rice and beans? A zero-calorie equation.

OK, maybe in our dreams.

Still, I’m always looking for something light and refreshing to nibble before an extravagant plate of pappardelle with ragù bolognese, rich and creamy mac-and-cheese or a pizza.

Jars of giardiniera

Since I was a kid, I always loved giardiniera — the crunchy, tangy, lightly spicy pickled vegetable condiment that would make cameo appearances in neighborhood Italian restaurants, where small dishes of it would appear on red-and-white checked tableclothes as we waited for our spaghetti and meatballs or pepperoni pizza. That was my favorite way of eating cauliflower back then, and we loved the crunchy corrugated-cut carrots and celery.

In any case, I’ve been on the lookout for jars of good giardiniera at my local Italian grocery lately, and haven’t been delighted by what I’ve found. That’s why I was excited to see a recipe for it in Alex Guarnaschelli’s new book, Cook With Me.

In fact, I’ve now made five recipes from the book, and the giardinera is by far my favorite.

It starts by soaking cut-up vegetables and garlic overnight in salt water, so you need to plan that for the day before you want to start serving it. Then you simmer up a batch of brine — white wine vinegar combined with salt and spices — let it cool slightly and pour it over the soaked-and-drained vegetables.

Vegetables for giardiniera mixed with pickling brine

Vegetables for giardiniera mixed with pickling brine

A couple hours later, you have giardiniera.

Guarnaschelli’s original recipe made about 6 pints, which is great if you either give most of it away or sterilize jars for long-term storage.

I like to keep things simple, so I halved her recipe. No need to sterilize; the recipe makes 3 pint-sized jars of pickled veg. For us, that’s perfect for keeping two and giving one away.

And then I’ll make it again very soon — maybe upping the serrano chile or chile flakes a bit, or adding some pepperoncini and bay leaf to the mix.

Till then, you’ll find me happily crunching away.

RECIPE: Alex Guarnaschelli’s Giardiniera

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Fridge-clearing and fabulously flavorful, Sunday Souper Soup will set you up deliciously for the week

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Sunday Souper Soup with lentils, carrots, celery, onions and greens in a white bowl on a green Tiffany basket-weave plate. In the back ground is harissa from a tube.

When a nation of restaurant-goers turns (almost overnight!) into a society of captive home cooks, the stresses caused by fridge management can be monumental.

Keeping everyone in comfort food is easy: There’s pasta and cheese for that. Rice concoctions galore. Potatoes are a no-brainer in any form. Pizza is a track-pad click away.

Still, you diligently keep the fridge stocked with healthy fresh things: broccoli and kale, carrots and cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, salad greens and herbs.

So that by Sunday, the crisper drawer is stuffed with stuff that’s not so crisp, and you’re left beating yourself up about waste. Meanwhile, what are you going to put on the dinner table in the coming week?

If besides all that stuff you can rustle up a few basic staples, I’ve got great news for you: You can turn those hapless refrigerator victims into a Sunday super-soup that’s so incredibly flavorful that no one would ever suspect you of anything so nefarious as using up tired greens. It’ll solve the coming week’s lunch question and provide a dinner or two — all while saving money and helping you dodge a food-waste bullet.

It gets even better: You can pack the soup with an arsenal of life-affirming, enchantingly aromatic spices and herbs that turn the whole project into an anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, flavonoid-rich powerhouse. It is vegan and gluten-free, and therefore sends you into the coming week feeling vital and positive. That gigantic pan of bacon-enriched mac-and-cheese you devoured on Thursday, washed down with three glasses of wine? It is vitamin water under the comfort-food bridge. Today is a new day.

The essential staples you’ll need: onions, carrots and celery (diced together they make what the French call mirepoix); lentils; a can of tomatoes; olive or other oil; salt and pepper. These, plus water, form the base of the soup. And if you follow our master recipe, that’s all you really need for a delicious one. The basic outline is sweat the mirepoix in oil, add lentils, tomatoes, water, salt and pepper, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer till it’s soup — under an hour.

Our master recipe — which we first wrote about pre-Covid, in a story back in January — explains how to incorporate all those vegetables crying for rescue from the fridge: everything from root vegetables (turnips, parsnips, celery root, beets) to Brassicaceae (broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and whatnot) to fresh legumes (string beans, peas and such) to leafy greens. The veg can be raw or cooked, so that small dish of roasted cauliflower with Punjabi spices left over from Friday dinner can find a new life in a lush (and zero waste!) soup, and the lonely cupful of sautéed greens from four days ago may gain delicious new purpose.

And you’ll want to spice it up: turmeric, coriander seed and cumin seeds are great places to start; ginger and garlic are your aromatic allies; fresh and dried chiles are always welcome; nigella seeds and flax seeds add nutritional heft; so do mushrooms, dried or fresh. Herbs — fresh and dried — are superb additions.

Again, our January story gives a lot of the health background and zero-waste benefits. Give it a read first if you’re interested in making the soup as powerfully healthful as possible. Otherwise, I invite you to explore the recipe.

And then take a deep dive into that crisper drawer and make soup!

MASTER RECIPE: Sunday Souper Soup

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Tomato love fest: our favorite ways to celebrate ripe beauties at the late-summer height of their season

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Easy heirloom tomato tart with goat cheese and thyme, made using all-butter frozen puff pastry.

By Leslie Brenner

Summer Produce Special Part III: Tomatoes

Ripe and bursting with flavor, tomatoes do not want to be fussed with. That’s why some of the most delicious things you can do with them don’t require a recipe.

• Slice them, arrange them on a plate, strew Maldon salt on them, grind black pepper generously, drizzle your best olive oil and serve with crusty bread.

• Want to get fancier? Add dollops of fresh ricotta, or slices of mozzarella, or pull apart a ball or two of burrata and arrange it on top. From there you can add torn basil, a flurry of mixed fresh herbs, or a big handful of baby arugula. If you go the arugula route, a drizzle of really good balsamic wouldn’t be a bad idea.

• Peel, seed and dice ripe tomatoes, put them in a bowl with a good dollop of great olive oil, salt, pepper and lots of torn basil, let it sit an hour or so, then use to toss with pasta. Grated parm or cubed mozzarella optional.

• BLT. This is the best time all year to eat the iconic sandwich. That slab of gorgeous red tomato with all its juices mingles meaningfully with the mayo on perfect toast, hopefully one of those sourdoughs your friend or partner has been perfecting, or good whole-wheat. Cool crunch of iceberg, chewy-crisp, salty-smoky warm bacon: This is sandwich nirvana. To get one made with the proper care and love, you’ll probably have to make it yourself. Eat it alone and enjoy every bite.

• Make a simple, beautiful, easy tomato tart: Roll out thawed frozen puff pastry, poke holes in it with a fork, cover with slices of tomato (lay them first on paper towels, salt them and let them sit a few minutes to get rid of moisture), salt, pepper, thyme leaves and crumbled goat cheese. Bake 25 minutes at 400. Slice and eat. This one gets a recipe.

• I’m not saying you should do this, but one of my mom’s favorite things to eat was juicy slices of tomato on white bread slathered with mayo. Call it a poor man’s BLT. Other times she would hold a large ripe tomato in her hand, take a bite, sprinkle the rest of it with salt and eat it like that, out of hand. This, she told me, was how she liked to eat tomatoes when she was a kid and she picked them, warm and ripe and bursting with flavor, from her victory garden at home in New Jersey during World War II.

Tomatoes à la Provençale, from a Julia Child recipe

Tomatoes à la Provençale, from a Julia Child recipe

• Invite them to the South of France — by way of Tomatoes à la Provençale. Make a filling of bread crumbs, herbs, chopped shallots, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper and stuff that into half-tomatoes you’ve emptied of seeds and juice. Roast 10 or 15 minutes at 400 and eat. Here’s Julia Child’s recipe, which I’ve been making my whole life.

• Blitz up a batch of Gazpacho Sevillano. Maybe you tried this in May, hoping to usher in summer, but the tomatoes weren’t quite in the mood yet. Now they are. Three pounds of tomatoes, a cuke, a red bell pepper, torn-up day old bread, Sherry vinegar, a couple or three garlic cloves put through a press, a pinch of red pepper, more salt than you think: Into the blender they go, and whirr away. Drizzle in some olive oil while the motor’s running. Some people let it chill in the fridge so the “flavors meld”; I usually can’t wait and just eat it like that, garnished with another drizzle of olive plus diced veg, especially avocado.

Classic Gazpacho Sevillano

• Try a less common cold Spanish soup, Salmorejo, which is Córdoba’s version of gazpacho, garnished traditionally with chopped hard-boiled egg and Serrano ham. Our recipe is adapted from one by superchef José Andrés.

Palestinian Chopped Salad (Salata Arabieh), from ‘Falastin’ by Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley

Palestinian Chopped Salad (Salata Arabieh), from ‘Falastin’ by Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley

• When the tomatoes get ripe, the smart go chopping. Ripe tomatoes are fabulous in the chopped salad that’s ubiquitous on Levantine tables, including Palestinian ones. Cucumbers, bell peppers (red in this case), scallions, parsley, mint and serrano or jalapeño chiles, garlic and lemon join the fun. Our recipe is adapted from Falastin, by Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley.

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Zucchini coming out of your ears? These 8 stupendous dishes will make you wish you had 5 more pounds

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Stuffed zucchini (courgettes) with pine-nut salsa from Ottolenghi Simple

Summer Produce Special, Part II: Zucchini

We feel your zucchini abundance-state here at Cooks Without Borders, where we’ve been grating, shaving, slicing, dicing, salting, draining, sautéing, roasting, steaming and sashimi-ing zucchini round the clock to help you make the most of the season’s inevitable bumper crop.

• One dish — Stuffed Zucchini with Pine Nut Salsa — is so outstanding it shook the two courgette-fatigued fellows with whom I shelter out of their summer-squash stupor.

“Amazing,” said the older one. “I would eat this again tomorrow!” (We did.)

“Wow,” said the younger. “Whose recipe is this?” Ottolenghi’s, I replied — from his 2018 cookbook Ottolenghi Simple. “He is a genius,” proclaimed the younger zucchini critic.

I had been skating on thin ice with the vegetable when this show-stopper saved us. It was maybe only day 3 of zucchini trials, but junior and elder had already hit the zucchini wall. They are weak, after all, and lack summer squash stamina.

I had set my sights, this particular evening, on two possible Ottolenghi recipes. The exhausted eating panel chose the Stuffed Zucchini, pictured above. Excellent call: Its filling is rich with Parmesan and egg, bright with height-of-season heirloom cherry tomatoes, plumped with bread crumbs and set with a golden-brown crust inside a perfectly roasted shell that maintained integrity but melted at fork’s touch. On top of that, a deeply herbal salsa — at once dusky (oregano) and bright (thanks to lemon) — made meaty and crunchy with toasted pine nuts.

Do try it; I think you’ll love it. It’s so delicious, you can let it stand proudly as centerpiece main dish, even probably for dyed-in-the-wool carnivores. (But oh, yes, it would also be great with lamb. Or chicken.)

Once your swooning subsides, consider the possibilities for your next zucchini triumph. For you know there will be more zucchini!

Here are other faves:

• Raw Zucchini Salad with Green Olives, Mint and Pecorino. I first learned the joys of raw zucchini in the early 00’s from Russ Parsons, the L.A. Times’ longtime columnist (“The California Cook”), who taught us that salting thin-sliced or shaved raw zucchini and letting it sit a few minutes turns it delightfully silky and slippery, seeming almost to cook the flesh while keeping it firm.

For years I had a Parsons salad in my arsenal and pulled it out often. Slice zucchinis in half vertically, then cut them into thin half-moons. Toss with salt in a colander and let sit for 15 or 20 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and dress with minced garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, freshly ground black pepper or red pepper flakes and fresh herbs — mint is especially nice, but you can do any combo of mint, dill, parsley or basil. The Ottolenghi recipe makes me think oregano would be smashing as well.

Raw Zucchini Salad with Green Olives, Mint and Pecorino from A16 Food + Wine

Raw Zucchini Salad with Green Olives, Mint and Pecorino from A16 Food + Wine

Nate Appleman and Shelly Lindgren took the salting-raw-zucchini technique to delicious heights in a recipe published in their 2008 cookbook, A16 Food + Wine, named for their beloved Southern Italian spot in San Francisco. Their salad marries ribbons of zucchini carpaccio with a brilliant trio of complementary flavors. I’d never have thought of green olives and mint together, but the combination sings — especially with the bright, pure flavor of Castelvetrano olives (green Cerignolas would be great, too). Earthy pecorino smooths it out and pulls it together.

• We’ve been thinking about Barry’s Insanely Delicious Zucchini Fritters since test-driving the recipes in José Andrés’ Vegetables Unleashed led us to a zucchini fritter recipe that didn’t quite do it for us (the batter was thin and the fritters ran all over the pan). Barry’s Insanely Delicious are little flavor-bombs, soft and packed with herbs (dill, mint and parsley) on the inside, crisp on the outside and warm, served with a cool and tangy yogurt sauce. Pop one in your mouth and it’s hard to stop there. They’re brilliant bites for your next Zoom Happy Hour, if that’s still a thing.

Barry’s Insanely Delicious Zucchini Fritters

Barry’s Insanely Delicious Zucchini Fritters

• Speaking of José Andrés, another zucchini recipe in that cookbook turned out to be one of our favorites ever: Grilled Zucchini with Lots of Herbs. It’s as simple and wonderful as it sounds and looks, with a sprinkle of za’atar — the Levantine herb and spice mix — to keep things zippy.

Grilled Zucchini with Lots of Herbs from José Andrés’ ‘Vegetables Unleashed’

Grilled Zucchini with Lots of Herbs from José Andrés’ ‘Vegetables Unleashed’

Camarón con Fideos de Calabacita (Shrimp with Zucchini Ribbons) from Anán Medrano’s ‘Count the Tortillas’

Camarón con Fideos de Calabacita (Shrimp with Zucchini Ribbons) from Anán Medrano’s ‘Count the Tortillas’

• Another dish that probably has roots in the Texas Mexican cooking known as comida casera, Rosa de la Garza’s Texas Chicken is an easy, delicious pseudo-braise that makes luscious use of abundant zucchini (and any other summer squash that needs a home), along with corn, tomatoes, onions, cilantro and serrano chile. It has been one of my favorite late-summer dishes since I was a kid growing up far from Texas, in Southern California. (It’s a pseudo-braise because you don’t actually add liquid; the juices that end up braising all come from the vegetables.)

Rosa de la Garza’s Texas Chicken (the chicken formerly known as The Chicken that Killed Grandpa)

Rosa de la Garza’s Texas Chicken (the chicken formerly known as The Chicken that Killed Grandpa)

• A super-flexible dish we call Warm Summer Salad Without Borders is another late summer stunner — and a great way to feature as much zucchini as you want to throw at it, along with grilled corn, tomatoes and — if you like — grilled okra. It makes a lovely light dinner when it’s still blazing hot, or a warm pick-me-up for when you’re a little sad the season is on the way out.

And hey — I sometimes toss some grilled okra on top of Rosa de la Garza’s Texas Chicken, too. The Warm Summer Salad is kind of like a vegetarian salad version of that dish.

Warm Summer Salad Without Borders

Warm Summer Salad Without Borders

• Last but certainly not least — as it’s one of my favorite things in the world to cook and to eat — a Chicken and Lamb Couscous will usher summer into fall, pulling a pound or two of zucchinis in its wake. As the season changes, keep it in mind. We offer an easy version that uses canned garbanzos and five-minute couscous grains and slower OG version that has you soak dried chickpeas overnight and steam and fluff the couscous grains two or three times. Both are tucked into the same recipe, as you might want to combine them (dried chickpeas + quick couscous grains, for instance). On our to-do list: Creating or turning up a stellar harissa recipe.

Chicken and Lamb Couscous (with . . . zucchini!)

Chicken and Lamb Couscous (with . . . zucchini!)

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Celebrate tomato season with salmorejo (a cousin of gazpacho) or tomato-burrata salad

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Heirloom Tomatoes.jpg

We like to eat pretty simply and lightly at home during summer — that is, when it’s just Thierry and me. When Wylie’s here, he’s happiest making something complicated and involved, with as many ingredients as possible, especially well marbled proteins — and bonus points for flambéing, searing in cast-iron on maximum heat so the smoke alarm goes off or finishing a sauce with a fat knob of butter.

While tomatoes are bursting with flavor, I’d be happy eating nothing more than tomato salad with crusty bread three nights a week — especially if it can be the burrata variation of a classic Caprese, just sliced heirloom tomatoes, burrata, basil, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Tomato Burrata.jpg

I’m embarrassed to write about the salad, as it’s so obvious and doesn’t require a recipe. But it feels disingenuous to assemble a dish so frequently and never mention it once in years of publishing — especially as there are young cooks and beginning cooks who may be less familiar with it.

You probably already knew how to make it (maybe you have your own version). To me what elevates it is using great olive oil, the freshest and fruitiest you can find, and my favorite finishing salt, Maldon (love those large, fragile flakes). When burrata’s not to be had, good ricotta can be nice in its place, and of course mozzarella goes back to the classic, if you’re feeling more nostalgic.

Here’s an actual recipe for the burrata version, just for the record (or if you want to forward it to your 19-year old nephew who’s learning to cook):

Classic Gazpacho Sevillano also shows up constantly on our summertime table; it’s one of my favorite dishes of all time. But until recently, I had never made salmorejo, its close cousin from nearby Córdoba (though I mentioned it in a 2003 Los Angeles Times story that won me a James Beard Award). Both Córdoba and Sevilla are in Spain’s southern region of Andalusia, a hot region where cold soups refresh in the summer.

Salmorejo is a cold, smooth, creamy cold soup whose basic ingredients are fewer than gazpacho’s: just tomatoes, bread (quite a lot of it), garlic, oil and salt. Vinegar is commonly included, though it is not necessarily traditional. The traditional — and still ubiquitous — garnish duo is chopped hard-boiled egg and serrano ham.

At a reader’s request I pulled out my blender and my history books and began salmorejo R & D. (Yes, we love cooking to order: If there’s something you’d like us to cover, let us know!)

Claudia Roden tells us in her marvelous, encyclopedic 2011 book The Food of Spain something I hadn’t known when I wrote that long-ago gazpacho story: that Seville was the province where tomatoes were first grown in Spain, and that gazpacho was the meal that farm works made when they worked the vegetable fields. They actually carried with them a dornillo, the large wooden mortar and pestle used to pound the ingredients and made the gazpacho on the spot.

Roden describes salmorejo as “a thick, dense, creamy version of gazpacho made with more bread,” one that you find at all the flamenco festivals and other festive occasions, served with a glass of wine, as well as at “every bar and tavern in Córdoba, topped with chopped hard-boiled egg and bits of jamón serrano.”

Salmorejo landscape.jpg

In fact, there is quite a lot of bread in salmorejo. If gazpacho is like a liquid salad, salmorejo is like a liquid sandwich — though it eats like a refreshing cold soup. “Some recipes have as much bread as tomatoes,” writes Roden. Needless to say, Keto adherents need not apply.

Another Spanish cooking expert, Anya von Bremzen, calls salmorejo in her 2005 book The New Spanish Table “Andalucia’s other tomato and bread masterpiece.” She describes it as “a cream with a texture that falls somewhere between a dip and a soup,” and points out that besides being a soup, it’s also wonderful as an accompaniment for crudités or “a pile of poached shrimp.” She also likes to serve it in shot glasses as a tapa, topped with a poached or grilled shrimp on a skewer. (Note to self: do that!)

South of Córdoba in Antequera, a town about 30 miles north of the Mediterranean coast, a cousin of salmorejo called porra is garnished with bits of tuna. And of course you can garnish salmorejo with a wide variety of things — von Bremzen suggests small poached shrimp, diced cooked potatoes and/or chopped tomatoes and onions, or those small chunks of canned tuna.

Von Bremzen and Roden both offer recipes that look excellent, and that I’ll definitely get around to trying theirs. (Curiously, I didn’t find one among the 1,080 recipes in Simone and Inés Ortega’s 1080 Recipes. Originally published in 1972 by Simone Ortega, 1080 recetas de cocina, as it’s called in Spain, is known as the Bible of cooking for Spanish home cooks.)

This batch, made with a combo of yellow and red tomatoes, turned out more orange than red.

This batch, made with a combo of yellow and red tomatoes, turned out more orange than red.

Instead I went with Spanish-American chef José Andrés, who published a brilliantly simple version in Food & Wine in 2017 (it’s always safe to side with a superhero!).

For his recipe, toss tomatoes, crustless rustic white bread, sherry vinegar, garlic, salt and water in the blender, give it a good, long, thorough blitz so it’s very smooth, stream in some olive oil as the motor’s running, then serve, garnished with torn slices of serrano ham, a swirl of olive oil and chopped hard-boiled egg. I was surprised at how little vinegar Andés calls for — just a teaspoon for 2 1/2 pounds of tomatoes — but it was perfect.

Got tomatoes? Here’s the recipe:

Once you try it as is, you might want to riff on it, adding more or less bread, vinegar and salt to taste, and of course playing with garnishes.

All the recipes I found called for chilling the soup before eating, but I don’t imagine those farm workers who invented it brought coolers, and I couldn’t wait; besides, things tend to be more flavorful when they’re room temperature.

In, any case, it was deliciously refreshing straight from the blender jar.

Happy tomato season!

[RECIPE: Salmorejo]

[RECIPE: Tomato and Burrata Salad]

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Say hello to the green gazpacho of your dreams

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There are a grillion versions of green gazpacho out there — many of them likeable, some (like Yotam Ottolenghi’s in Plenty) lovable. But I’ve never found one that made me stop and say, OK, you are the green gazpacho of my dreams.

I enjoy versions with yogurt, but the green gazpacho of my dreams is vegan. And even though a gazpacho without bread is technically not a gazpacho, the green gazpacho of my dreams is gluten-free. That’s because when I crave green gazpacho, I’m craving something very clean and pure. I’m wanting something intensely chlorophyllic, and herbal — but also tangy.

The green gazpacho of my dreams is something I can throw together in a flash, as a satisfying and energizing lunch, or a refreshing prelude to a lovely summer or late spring dinner. It should be basic enough to make for myself and family on a weekday, but gorgeous enough to start off a celebratory dinner party with friends (if we are ever able to do that again!).

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It has to have body, and a little richness. I’ve seen recipes for versions involving avocado, but I’m nor looking for that kind of unctuousness. (Though I do adore diced ripe avocado as a garnish on classic Gazpacho Sevillano.)

Sometimes the way out of a culinary conundrum like this is to go back to the basics. I looked to traditional ajo blanco, the cold almond and garlic soup from Malaga, Spain that’s also known as gazpacho blanco, white gazpacho.

Yes! Raw almonds add just the right body to this soup, without the tannic bite that’s so nice with the walnuts in Ottolenghi’s Plenty version. If almonds work here, perhaps raw cashews would as well. I tried that on round two, and liked it even better — it imparted a little more roundness and depth. But either works great.

You’ll want to use your best sherry vinegar and olive oil in this soup; they are more than just supporting players.

Here is your ticket to summer-long green greatness:

As you can see in the recipe, the ingredients are basic, easy to keep on hand for when a craving comes knocking. No need for advance planning, as you don’t need to chill it; just plop two or three ice cubes in each bowl before you serve. Or make it ahead, and chill it in the fridge. For maximum delight, garnish it with a flurry of soft herbs — any combination of dill, chervil, parsley, cilantro, basil, mint, chives, tarragon, celery leaves and sliced scallion greens (OK, those last two are not technically herbs, but you get the idea). Or just add a swirl of your best olive oil on top.

RECIPE: The Greenest Gazpacho