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Recipe of the Day: Claudia Roden's Green Olive, Walnut and Pomegranate Salad

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By Leslie Brenner

Gorgeous and festive, this salad — adapted from Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean — is ideal for this time of year, when pomegranates are still looking great in the markets. With green olives, walnuts and scallions and a lot of parsley, it’s tossed with a tangy dressing based on pomegranate molasses and finished with pomegranate seeds.

It’s a specialty of Gaziantep, Turkey.

If you’re like me and you keep packages of walnuts in your freezer, toast them for four or five minutes in a 350-degree F / 175-degree C oven to bring them back to life before roughly chopping them.

It’s a perfect starter to precede the Palestinian dish Chicken Musakhan, saucy Lamb Meatballs, Chickpeas and Swiss Chard with Yogurt or Moussaka. You can also serve it as part of a vegan mezze, or bring it to a potluck or Friendsgiving.

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Want to channel star chef Kwame Onwuachi in your kitchen? Make his jambalaya

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By Leslie Brenner

There may be no more exciting chef on the American cooking scene these days than Kwame Onwuachi. The creator of highly acclaimed New York City hot spot Tatiana and author of two books seems to be everywhere.

In September he opened a new restaurant in Washington, D.C, Dōgon, and then last month added a 4-seat tasting counter within it, called Sirius.

Pete Wells profiled Onwuachi in the New York Times [read the story without a paywall through Dec. 3, 2024].

Last February, I wrote about Onwuachi’s jambalaya. The dish carries deep meaning for the chef, whose Baton Rouge-born mother made it for him when he was growing up.

READ: “Kwame Onwuachi’s jambalaya is a thrilling expression of a Creole classic”

The jambalaya Onwuachi included in My America: Recipes from a Young Black Chef is hands-down the best I’ve ever had. Our adaptation streamlines his version for home cooks.

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Ten iconic soups from around the world

By Leslie Brenner

The calendar and the thermometer may disagree about whether it’s soup season yet, but many of us could probably benefit from some comfort in a pot. Here are 10 iconic soups (none of them cold!) from around the world.

Ashkenazi Chicken Soup (a.k.a. Jewish Penicillin)

Because I grew up with it, I’m leading off with Ashkenazi Chicken Soup, also known as “Jewish Penicillin.” My mom’s recipe is traditional, passed down through grandmas and aunts. It always tastes like love and hits the spot.

Miso Soup

Japan’s most world-famous soup is easier to conjure than you might think. Once you prepare dashi (which comes together in about 15 minutes), you just stir in miso and add tofu and garnishes. Keep the dashi on hand for more rounds of super-quick miso soup.

RECIPE: Miso Soup

Ash-e-Reshteh ~ Persian New Year’s Bean Soup

Traditionally served for Norooz, Persian New Year, ash-e-reshte is also terrific whenever it’s chilly out and you want a lift. It calls for mixed dried beans, so it’s perfect for using up bean odds and ends. It’s also packed with parsley, spinach and scallions, making it highly restorative. Our version is adapted from Naomi Duguid’s gorgeous book, Taste of Persia.

Ye Ocholoni Ina Doro Shorba ~ Ethiopian Peanut-Chicken Soup

Peanut soups are popular throughout East and West Africa, as Jenn Louis explained in her wonderful 2020 book The Chicken Soup Manifesto. This one — from Ethiopia — is rich, soothing and warmly spiced.

Tom Kha Kai

Thailand’s tangy coconut-galangal chicken soup is not only one of the world’s greatest soups; it’s also one of the world’s greatest dishes. You may be surprised that this make-at-home version — from Leela Punyaratabandhu’s Simple Thai Food — can be easily as good as what you get at your favorite Thai restaurant. Maybe even better!

RECIPE: Tom Kha Kai

Minestrone

There are plenty of mediocre minstrones sloshing around American soup pots, but a minestrone can be so good it can make you cry. Ours, made with turnips and Tuscan kale, may require a handkerchief.

Classic Split Pea Soup

Ridiculously easy to make (time does all the work), classic split pea soup is one of those formulas that needs no embellishment. It’s simple and perfect.

Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup

Frankie Gaw, the talented blogger behind Little Fat Boy, describes Beef Noodle Soup as “the national dish of Taiwan” — can’t get more iconic than that! His Uncle Jerry’s recipe comes by way of Gaw’s delightful cookbook, First Generation.

Canja de Galinha ~ Brazilian Chicken and Rice Soup

“For us, it’s our chicken noodle soup.” That’s how Brazilian-born Junior Borges describes canja de galinha. We were thrilled when the James Beard Award-nominated chef shared his updated version of his grandmother’s recipe with us.

Pozole Rojo

We have two recipes for Mexico’s iconic hominy soup: one relatively easy and good, the other elaborate and worth the extra effort if you’re ambitious.

The ambitious one begins with dried corn kernels — our recipe shows you how to nixtamalize them. (Nixtamalization is the same process used to make dried corn suitable for grinding into masa for tortillas.) It’s a big production, for sure, but well worth doing at least once if you love Mexican cooking. If you’re going to go to all this trouble, you’ll want to use heirloom corn.

The easier one — from Mely Martínez’s The Mexican Home Kitchen — uses hominy from a can.

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The south of France shimmers and delights in the engaging cookbook ‘Niçoise’ — until it doesn’t

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By Leslie Brenner

A cookbook starring the delights of France’s “sunniest city” — Nice? Count me in!

That was my thought last summer when I learned that Rosa Jackson, who has run a well known cooking school in Nice for the last 20 years, had published a cookbook. On the cover: a pan bagnat, the juicy sandwich layered with tuna, tomato slices, crunchy vegetables, basil, egg and anchovy that’s a signature in the south of France. Jackson includes a recipe for the roll that gets soaked (pan bagnat means “bathed bread”), so I was even more excited.

On top of it, the inside cover features glowing blurbs from food-world luminaries including Alain Ducasse, David Lebovitz, Molly Stevens and Susan Hermann Loomis.

I dove right in and was instantly charmed — first by Jackson’s delightful introductory essay. Did you know that Niçoise cuisine developed in part by putting its own twists on dishes from Piedmont and Liguria? I didn’t. “Somehow, apart from salade Niçoise and ratatouille,” writes Jackson, “Niçoise cooking has remained a bit of a secret, even in France.” Jan Hendrik van der Westhuizen’s inviting photography helped make the case, irresistibly.

Next I was smitten by a summery Salade de Couscous, couscous salad. You find these all over France, and Jackson gives hers a ratatouille-inspired spin, adding small-diced zucchini, bell peppers and onions to the grains. Raisins, cinnamon and cumin pay respect to North Africa; fresh mint and parsley and lots of lemon add lift. This is so good! I’ve made it several times since. Next time I’ll double the recipe, as it’s terrific just-out of the fridge.

Tian de Courgettes et de Chèvre (zucchini baked with eggs and goat cheese) is somewhere between a frittata and a crustless quiche. The zucchini blossoms topping it are optional.

Jackson’s Tian de Courgettes et de Chevre — zucchini baked with eggs and goat cheese — also got an encore. It’s especially nice when you can find zucchini blossoms, which I couldn’t the first time around.

A recipe for Choux Farcis (stuffed cabbage) in a brilliantly simple tomato sauce was wonderful, too, as was a thick, luscious Flan Pâtissier — vanilla custard tart.

After that, it’s complicated

There are so many good ideas in this book; for instance, I’ll be using that quick-to-make tomato sauce with all kinds of things. Jackson’s aesthetic is utterly appealing and she has a great palate.

But a number of recipes I tested were flops — or would have been, had I not made radical adjustments.

Carré d’Agneau, Croûte aux Herbes (rack of lamb with mustard-herb crust), which we saved from over-roasting

You don’t have to be an expert to know that racks of lamb you first sear and then roast for 35 to 40 minutes will be way past the desired medium-rare. And goodness, no — an internal temperature between 150 and 160 degrees F (60 and 70 C) — does not result in medium-rare meat! (See the chart in J. Kenji López-Alt’s The Food Lab, which says 150 is medium-well and 160 is well-done.) After spending something like $75 for those ingredients, I’m glad I didn’t follow that recipe to the letter.

However, the bright green, super herbal and garlicky Provençal Breadcrumbs Jackson concocted to coat the lamb were so good on their own that I tried them, as directed, on her Tomates Provençales. Jackson describes the finished tomatoes in her headnote as “meltingly soft but crunchy.” After 2 minutes searing on a frying pan and 20 minutes in the oven, mine were soft enough to eat without teeth. The recipe had called for baking them a whole hour.

Saddest of all, the thing I was most excited to make — that juicy sandwich known as Pan Bagnat, Nice’s iconic treat, the sandwich that graces the cover of the book — was an unmitigated flop. The rolls I was instructed to bake for them turned out beautiful-looking, but terribly, inedibly dry, and there wasn’t a tomato in the world whose slices were juicy enough to revive them. They sure looked pretty, but I had to reclaim their fillings and turn them into a salad.

How can a cookbook with so much that’s wonderful include such egregious mistakes? Has the world of cookbook publishing changed so much since I last published a title that no one tests recipes nor copy edits, nor holds authors accountable for the workability of their recipes anymore? Do editors and publishers stop to think about the small fortunes readers are forking over at the supermarket to excitedly recreate the dishes so lovingly styled and photographed in the books that, by the way, the reader also spent a pretty penny to procure? Or is the assumption that no one actually cooks these things?

If Niçoise were an anomaly, I’d probably have let it go, and simply skipped reviewing it. But these are the kinds of errors I’m finding in so many new cookbooks these days, especially cookbooks by well known authors published by top publishing houses.

In a world that’s small, where cookbook authors probably have no more than one or two degrees of separation from the writer publishing a review, it’s not easy to be so critical. My hope, though, is that Niçoise — which again, has so much going for it — sells well enough in its first run that it gets reprinted, that the first edition’s errors will be corrected in the second printing, and that it goes on to become a fabulously successful backlist title. (That’s the publishing term for a book that stays in print for years or even decades.)

I’ll keep my copy, mistakes and all, on a prominent shelf, there for when I want to be inspired and transported to the South of France.

Niçoise: Market-Inspired Cooking from France’s Sunniest City, by Rosa Jackson; photography by Jan Hendrik van der Westhuizen; W.W. Norton & Company, $39.00

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Kamala Harris' favorite foods (gumbo! lamb meatballs! roast chicken!) are ideal for debate night dinners

By Leslie Brenner

What’s better than dinner and a show? Dinner and a show when the show is a presidential debate!

In preparation for the match-up between President Biden and former president Trump back in June, we chased down the favorite foods of presidents and former presidents for inspiration.

This time around, we have a very different situation: Vice President Kamala Harris, a dedicated home cook and true food lover with wide-ranging tastes, will be pitted against the former president, a fan of fast food and overcooked steak.

This blows the what-to-cook on debate night issue wide open, with some exciting possibilities. In my household it definitely won’t be overcooked steak. Instead it will be one of the Vice President’s favorite foods.

Shrimp, Andouille Sausage and Okra Gumbo

We’ll be serving up bowls of gumbo as the debaters get underway.

In an interview posted to her YouTube channel, Harris talked about why the Louisiana specialty is one of her favorite foods:

“I love gumbo. I was raised by my by mother, and then my second mother, Ms. Shelton, who was from Louisiana, and she made the best gumbo — and I  have been  a lifelong gumbo apprentice learning how to make gumbo my whole life. I’ve never mastered it like she did, but that’s one of my favorite foods probably.” — Vice President Kamala Harris

Bowls of it (served with Louisiana hot sauce, which Harris also loves) will be easy to manage TV-side, and we’re in high okra season. A fine situation all around.

Perfect Easy Roast Chicken

Roast chicken, another Harris favorite (she shared her method with Glamour magazine four years ago), would also be a terrific choice — great with potato salad and greens (yet another Harris favorite).

Chicken Salad Tostadas

Or serve assemble-your-own chicken tostadas. Simmer up a pot of beans, set out salad greens and shredded roast chicken (either leftover or pick up a supermarket rotisserie bird) and let the layering begin. Harris mentioned in her Glamour interview that chicken tostadas are one of the many ways she repurposes leftover roast chicken.

Did you know that lamb meatballs are part of Vice President Harris’ repertoire? In 2018 she told The Cut about some that she made “with mint and parsley and a little cilantro.” Sounds a lot like our lamb meatballs with parsley, mint, garlic and pine nuts — which would make an outstanding debate night treat. You could serve them with rice (a Harris family favorite) or couscous.

RECIPE: Lamb Meatballs

Yangzhou Fried Rice

And speaking of rice, fried rice is also highly appreciated in Harris’ household. “We actually love fried rice,” the Vice President told chef Tom Colicchio four years ago. “We’ve been doing a lot of fried rice.”

Hard to imagine a dreamier debate dinner.

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Got zucchini blossoms? Bake them into a gorgeous tian de courgettes

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By Leslie Brenner

Next time you see a pile of beautiful squash blossoms in your farmers market, or happen upon them in your summer garden, consider this: You don’t have to fry them uniess you want to.

If you’d rather not stand over that hot oil, make this Tian de Courgettes et de Chèvre, from Rosa Jackson’s new book Niçoise: Market-Inspired Cooking from France’s Sunniest Region. A tian, if you’re unfamiliar, is a baked vegetable dish from Provence, named for the earthenware dish it’s baked in. Jackson gives hers half a dozen eggs, some cream and crumbled goat cheese; she describes it as “like a baked frittata or crustless quiche.”

I love it because the eggs, cream and cheese round out the flavor of the zucchini, with basil as a lovely accent. The zucchini blossoms get halved, brushed with olive oil and laid on top of the tian in a sunburst pattern, and the result is gorgeous.

I first made the dish during a part of the summer that was so hot here in Dallas that we weren’t getting zucchini blossom in the market. Jackson calls the blossoms “optional,” so I went ahead and made it without. Pretty damn good!

Now that it has cooled a bit, the blossoms are there for the snagging, so I was excited to make It again with the sunburst final flourish.

Even better. Do try it, should those blossoms beckon.

If you enjoyed this story, we think you’ll like:

READ: “Zucchini and friends: late summer’s greatest plate-mates”

EXPLORE: All the French recipes at Cooks Without Borders

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Zucchini and friends: late summer’s greatest plate-mates

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By Leslie Brenner

Nature has a remarkable ability to create harmony on a plate. That’s why if you stick with what’s emphatically in season, it’s hard to go wrong.

This time of year, zucchini, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, okra and corn are bountiful in American markets and gardens, and they’re incredibly easygoing. Throw them together in nearly any combination in pan or on grill, their flavors start singing, and everybody wins.

You might think of zucchini as their bandleader. Cartoonishly prolific in late summer, the affable summer squash plays well with everyone. So do tomato, its umami-packed pal, and peppers, whether sweet or hot. They’re all Meso-American in origin, as is corn. Zucchini is a cultivar of Cucurbito pepo, which gardeners have been growing in parts of what’s now Texas and all over Mexico for 8,000 to 10,000 years.

Okra is in peak season as well. Not a native to the Americas, its appearance here was diasporic; it was grown by in the Carolinas by enslaved African people. Today, stateside, it’s mostly grown in Florida and Texas.

Eggplant is also an immigrant to America, having traveled here — and to the Mediterranean — from Asia. Botanically it’s a cousin to tomatoes and peppers, all being nightshades.

So, how to throw them together deliciously?

Try a shrimp sauté with zucchini, tomato and corn, like the one shown above. It shows best with wild shrimp from the Gulf, which the Meso-Americans would also have enjoyed. Our recipe includes serrano chiles, crisply grilled okra and lots of cilantro, but it’s endlessly riffable. Recently I skipped the okra, swapped the serranos for sweet, mild red bell pepper, and used fresh basil in place of cilantro — giving it a Cal-Italian vibe.

Shrimp sauté with zucchini, corn, red bell pepper and basil

RECIPE: Shrimp Sauté with Texas Veg

Whether you’re doing a shrimp sauté (chicken works great too) with this group of veg, or just throwing the vegetable pals together in a pan, herbs and spices can add pizzazz and depth. Besides cilantro and basil, thyme, parsley, marjoram, oregano work great with these guys.

Oregano is front-and-center in one of my all-time favorite dishes by Yotam Ottolenghi, Stuffed Zucchini with Pine Nut Salsa. Cherry tomatoes and lemon zest add bright exclamation points. Enriched with egg and rounded out with breadcrumbs, it makes a fine main course, as well as a spectacular accompaniment to grilled lamb or chicken. The dish may have been born across the pond, but it’s very much at home on either side of it.

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

Zucchini and friends, Mediterranean-style

What if eggplant is one of the friends? Think Mediterranean, and reach for a roasted ratatouille.

Why roasted? Disenchanted with watery, soggy renditions of the French favorite, I thought maybe sending the eggplant, peppers, zucchini and garlic into the oven for a spell would deepen their flavors and keep them more distinct.

It did indeed, and now I’d never make ratatouille any other way.

It’s a delightful dish for summer-into-fall.

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A gorgeous salade niçoise may be the perfect Olympics-watching platter

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By Leslie Brenner

[Editor’s note: This is one in a series of articles about dishes suited to watching and celebrating the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.]

It’s cool, it’s French, it’s healthful, it’s grazeable and it’s a meal on one plate: That’s why the composed salad known as salade niçoise is the ideal offering for Paris Olympics-watching.

Our version of salad niçoise is not the original real-deal: Citizens of Nice, France (from where the salad gets its name) might kick you out of their town for including potatoes and green beans, rather than fava beans and raw artichokes, the OG ingredients.

That’s OK: Dishes evolve, and sometimes it’s for the better. It’s hard to argue that what much of the world, and even France outside of Nice, calls a salad niçoise isn’t terrific. Slices of ripe tomato, cooled cooked potato, hard-boiled eggs, haricots verts, flaked tuna, radishes, anchovies and niçoise olives set on greens and dressed with vinaigrette is a marvelous thing. (The OG version used only olive oil, no vinegar, and didn’t always include tuna!)

How to elevate your evolved salade niçoise game? Use the best jarred or canned tuna (preferably olive-oil-packed) and anchovies you can find, Cook the eggs carefully so their yolks are more jammy than powdery. Use deliciously ripe heirloom tomatoes, and finish the salad with radishes and basil leaves — both of which the OG version often included.

Finally, use real niçoise olives if you can find them — it’s getting harder and harder in my neck of the woods. If you can’t, kalamatas will do.

For Olympics-watching, you might want to put out the salad un-dressed, with a pitcher of vinaigrette on the side, and let everyone drizzle their own. A sliced baguette, maybe a French cheese or two for après-salade, and you’ve got a dinner worthy of a podium finish.

RECIPE: Salade Niçoise

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When heirloom tomatoes meet nuoc cham, outrageously good salads happen

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By Leslie Brenner

Kitchen memory from when I was a wee thing: My mom biting into a large, ripe farm-stand tomato she held in her hand. She sprinkled a little salt on its exposed flesh before taking the next bite, then the next, and the next. Tomato gone. Bliss on my mom’s face. That was the most important lesson I’d ever learn about seasonal produce.

This was in the mid-1960s, in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. Farmers markets hadn’t yet taken hold of Southern California, but there were occasional farm stands scattered throughout the big valley. Ours, which we called “the corn stand,” was a couple miles away from our house. The way I remember it it was kind of a summer pop-up, bursting with stone fruits, corn. zucchini and yes, glorious tomatoes.

In those days, most Americans didn’t know how to zhuzzh ingredients just enough to make them sing and set them confidently on the table. The only basil in our houses was dried, probably ancient, and lived in a jar on the spice rack.

For my mom, that kind of simple, intuitive “cooking” only took place in the kitchen, around noon. Her favorite summer lunch was a tomato sandwich: slice of Wonder bread spread with mayo, slices of ripe tomato on top, sprinkle of salt, topped with another mayo-ed Wonder slice. When she cut it in half, you could see the juices of the tomato running pink into the mayo and white bread. It was not sophisticated, but it made the most of the tomato in a way that moved her. Both the sandwich and the tomato eaten out-of-hand dated back for her to the days when she was a kid in New Jersey during World War II, and her family had a victory garden. I can almost smell those Jersey tomatoes on their vines.

Only last year did I learn — from a New York Times Magazine story by Eric Kim — that a similar sandwich is classic in the American South. Kim had the brilliant idea to amp up the savoriness of the sandwich by sprinkling a little furikake (Japanese seasoning) on its mayo. Of course: As Kim explained in his accompanying recipe, the umami-rich furikake helps the tomatoes “taste even more of themselves.”

Wow — tomatoes are already high in umami (the fifth taste, often described as “savory”). Amping that up is such an interesting idea.

Inspiration in a bowl

That got me thinking about a salad I’d recently fallen in love with at Loro, a restaurant near my home in Dallas, Texas: cantaloupe, tomatoes, arugula and cucumber dressed with a tangy, lightly sweet, chile-inflected lime vinaigrette that sung with umami — maybe from fish sauce?

I had to figure out how to achieve something like this at home, and on a regular basis.

A dressing assist came from cookbook author Andrea Nguyen, who had put out a call for ideas for her to tackle in her Substack newsletter, Pass the Fish Sauce. Andrea conjured a wonderful Nước Chấm Vinaigrette — which I tweaked a little to get a dressing that works brilliantly in tomato salads.

Tomato, Cantaloupe and Cucumber Salad with Nước Chấm

A jar of it in hand, and lucky enough to be in possession of a beautifully ripe cantaloupe and some gorgeous heirloom tomatoes, I pulled together a salad: chunks of the melon and tomato, plus avocado, smashed cucumber, a few mint leaves plucked from a pot on my patio and a happy dose of that dressing. And yes, Vietnamese fish sauce. Easy-to-find Red Boat, especially its less-easy-to-find Phamily Reserve, is probably my fave.

It was as captivating as I’d hoped.

Next day, I made another — no melon this time; this was tomatoes, cukes and avocado, with cilantro instead of mint and that same Nước Chấm Vinaigrette. Also wonderful! (That’s the one pictured at the top of this story.) The basic recipe lends itself to endless variations.

Now that tomatoes are back in season, I know what I need to do: Mix up a jar of the Nước Chấm Vinaigrette. That way when gorgeous tomatoes come my way, I’ll be ready to pounce.

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Paris Summer Food Games: An artichoke vinaigrette puts France at your fingertips

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By Leslie Brenner

[Editor’s note: This is one in a series of articles about dishes suited to watching and celebrating the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.]

The French aren’t famous for eating with their fingers, but their approach to artichokes is a notable exception. Pull a leave off, dip the base in sauce (if the sauce is served on the side), scrape the base with your teeth and eat — that’s as French as it is American.

And because artichauts à la vinaigrette can be made ahead, chilled and then eaten cold (with your fingers!), they’re perfect for so many summer endeavors, from picnics and potlucks to having friends for drinks and apps, to snacking in front of the TV during the Paris Summer Olympics.

Our recipe has you pour the vinaigrette over the artichokes while they’re warm, but you could just as easily chill the boiled artichokes unadorned, and serve the vinaigrette separately, for dipping.

Need a quick primer on how to trim them for cooking? Find it in this article. And here’s the recipe:

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Paris Summer Food Games: Your Favorite Chocolate Mousse

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By Leslie Brenner

[Editor’s note: This is one in a series of articles about dishes suited to watching and celebrating the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.]

We’re less than three weeks away from the opening ceremony of the Paris Summer Olympics. The two weeks of sports-watching that follows will certainly be even more fun with French snacks.

What could feel more French than keeping glasses or jars of chocolate mousse stashed in the fridge? Whip ‘em out to celebrate gold medals — or console yourself for a lackluster performance.

Our recipe makes a fabulous mousse — one thats easy and infinitely customizable. Flavor it with orange liqueur, coffee, amaretto, peppermint extract, Cognac or cardamom. Top it with whipped cream, cacao nibs, shaved chocolate, colorful sprinkles or whatever suits your fancy.

Sound like a plan? Here’s the recipe:

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Flavor on ice: cold soups for a hot summer

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By Leslie Brenner

When the going gets hot, cold soup is the answer.

My four favorite chilled soups — cacik, gazpacho sevillano, green gazpacho and cold beet borscht — are all wonderful in very different ways. In fact, they each have such distinct personality that you can keep them in rotation all season long and they’re always a thrill and a chill.

The first three can be made without even turning on the stove; the fourth — my mom’s borscht — requires simmering, but just half an hour’s worth.

Cacik: electricity not required

The traditional Turkish cold cucumber-and-yogurt soup known as cacik, which gets lovely herbal character from fresh mint and dill, requires no more elaborate equipment than a box grater and a whisk; I love how low-tech it makes me feel. Just grate some cukes, chop some herbs, whisk it all into yogurt with a little olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, and you’ve got cold comfort in a bowl. Not cold enough? Add a few ice cubes.

RECIPE: Cacik

Garnishes for Gazpacho Sevillano

Gazpacho Sevillano: a cold soup with rich history

Probably the most famous cold soup in the world, Gazpacho Sevillano is the tomato-happy classic born in Spain and loved all over the world. You may be surprised to learn that the original gazpacho Sevillano was made with bread, garlic, salt, olive oil and vinegar — no tomatoes (or cucumbers or peppers); its creation pre-dated the arrival of tomatoes in Europe. That’s why cooks who want to respect the soup’s origin story always include bread.

In Spain, the ideal is the smoothest gazpacho possible, and cooks love to have fun with the garnishes. The riper and more flavorful the tomatoes you use, the better your gazpacho will be — which is why I only make this soup in the summertime.

The Greenest Gazpacho: Tangy, vegan, gluten-free and nutty-rich

To make Gazpacho Sevillano’s beautiful green cousin, just throw everything in the blender or food processor and whir it up. But the flavors and vibe couldn’t be more different: This one tastes deliciously green. Cucumber, green bell pepper, celery and parsley are the purée’s vegetable players. Garlic and sherry vinegar add pizzazz, and raw almonds or cashews add body and richness. Lots of assorted fresh herbs on top make it a show-stopper.

Joan’s Cold Beet Borscht: Ashkenazi favorite

This is the cold soup I grew up with; it was one of my mom’s specialties — passed down from generations in her family. It’s one of my favorite summer foods.

Truth is, though, it’s similar to the cold beet borscht enjoyed by the Eastern European Jewish diaspora around the world. It’s very simple: Grate beets, then boil them with a handful of their leaves, plus salt. Add lemon juice and sugar, then chill and garnish with sour cream, chopped radishes and cukes, and whole boiled potatoes (if you feel like it).

It’s insanely good — way better than its humble ingedients would suggest.

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Debating what to cook for the debates? Make it presidential

By Leslie Brenner

Depending on where in the United States you’ll be watching, the first presidential debate of the 2024 election season will be broadcast right around dinnertime. Why not munch, as you watch, on some presidential favorite foods?

We’ve got you covered with recipes and ideas that would appeal to the current candidates, as well as past nominees.

Biden v Trump

Trump reportedly enjoys overcooked steaks — along with all manner of fast food, especially Big Macs. Not our jam at Cooks Without Borders! But potato chips, which he also loves (who doesn’t?), definitely are. Biden, on the other hand, adores chocolate chip ice cream, and likes to keep bunches of red grapes on hand.

Potato chips certainly make great TV munchies; so do red grapes, though they’re not in season (if you’re seeing them now, they’re probably from South America).

If you want a salty snack from the Democratic side, go with nuts: Peanuts were Jimmy Carter’s trademark, and Barack Obama was teased for snacking on exactly “seven lightly salted almonds” every evening.

More substantial fare

Presidents, and presidential candidates, have tended to have rather simple tastes — with a few notable exceptions. (We’re looking at you, Thomas Jefferson and John Kerry.) Even JFK, who famously brought in a French chef, René Verdon, to head the White House kitchen, liked simple things, according to the John F. Kennedy President Museum and Library, such as “lamb chops, steak, baked chicken, turkey (white meat) and mashed potatoes. He also was fond of seafood and baked beans.”

John Kerry — who was the Democratic nominee in 2004 (and later served as Secretary of State under President Obama) — was a closet gourmand. On the campaign trail he acted like a burger guy, but apparently it was all for show. “After the Kerry party chewed their burgers and slurped their Diet Cokes and Frosties,” reported the New York Times Magazine, “they retreated to their bus, where they were greeted with a meal smuggled in from the Newburgh Yacht Club: shrimp vindaloo, grilled diver sea scallops and prosciutto-wrapped stuffed chicken.” His opponent George Bush père, for his part, was known more for what he hated (broccoli!) than what he loved.

Chilled Pea Soup with Mint: a favorite of W

The second Bush president was actually fond of something that would make an outstanding debate-night TV dinner: Fresh pea soup with mint. This is according to Foodtimeline.org, which cites the late Walter Scheib, who was W’s White House chef.

We happen to have a fantastic recipe for it — though ours uses frozen peas (a state secret!).

Served chilled, Ridiculously Easy Minted Pea Soup makes a fine debate-night TV dinner.

RECIPE: Chilled Minted Pea Soup

From enchiladas to quinoa to salmon: Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton was partial to chicken enchiladas when he was president, and our Chicken Enchiladas Verdes would make a delightful debate-nite treat — especially as it can be made ahead and re-heated just before showtime.

Pre-plant-based Bill Clinton would probably have loved these chicken enchiladas.

You can serve the enchiladas on their own, or with Mexican Rice or Frijoles de Olla — or both!

RECIPE: Chicken Enchiladas Verdes

Later, for health reasons (a quadruple bypass!), Clinton adopted a strict vegan diet, and was said to eat a lot of quinoa. That makes me think he would love a spin on tabbouleh that comes from the Zahav cookbook: It swaps quinoa for bulghur and includes peas, parsley, red onion and mint.

Also great for debate night.

RECIPE: Zahav’s Quinoa, Pea and Mint Tabbouleh

Clinton wound up adding fish into his plant-based diet at the behest of his doctor, who wanted to steer him toward “good, quality protein” and not as much starch.

Poached salmon! What could be more perfect for a summertime TV dinner? Again, it’s entirely make-ahead, and it has the advantage of being served cold.

Cold Poached Salmon: Great for Clinton, but don’t offer this to Biden.

RECIPE: Cold Poached Salmon with Dill Sauce

Do not, however, offer poached salmon to President Biden, should he stop by your place for dinner while he’s on the campaign trail. According to his sister, Val, he is not a fan.

Reagan loved mac and cheese

According to Foodtimeline.org, Ronald Reagan stuck with the “plain foods of his early days” once he landed in the White House. “These include such homey dishes as Macaroni and Cheese, Meat Loaf, and Hamburger Soup.” Hamburger soup! Mac and cheese sounds better, and even it’s a bit wintry, it’s also super comforting — which we may appreciate on a night that’s bound to be divisive.

Chocolate chip ice cream — and then some

Whatever you choose on the savory side, President Biden’s favorite treat will be a great way to finish. Or maybe you’ll be watching from the East Coast, where the debate starts at 9 p.m., the perfect hour for ice cream.

You could go buy a pint or two of garden-variety chocolate chip, or you could whip up something really special: homemade Gianduja-Stracciatella Gelato.

The Italians, you see, invented chocolate chip ice cream — with a method known as stracciatella. To achieve it, you add melted chocolate to your ice cream when it’s done being churned, but still in the ice-cream machine: When it hits the ice cream, it hardens into “chips.”

Gianduja is a Piedmontese confection combining hazelnut paste and dark chocolate; it’s the inspiration for Nutella. Streaked with stracciatella, it’s outrageously good. Our recipe’s adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz.

RECIPE: Gianduja-Stracciatella Gelato

Don’t forget to tune in Thursday evening!

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Cookbooks We Love: David Lebovitz's 'The Perfect Scoop' is the only ice cream book you'll ever need

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Our photo of ‘The Perfect Scoop’ shows the 2007 first-edition paperback, but our review refers to the 2018 updated and revised edition.

Our photo of ‘The Perfect Scoop’ shows the 2007 first-edition paperback, but our review refers to the 2018 updated and revised edition.

By Leslie Brenner

[This article updates one that was originally published on July 18, 2021.]

The Perfect Scoop: 200 Recipes for Ice Creams, Sorbets, Gelatos, Granitas and Sweet Accompaniments (revised and updated), by David Lebovitz, photographs by Ed Anderson, 2018, Ten Speed Press, $24.99

Backgrounder: David Lebovitz, who launched his career as pastry chef at Chez Panisse back in the 1980s, has an outstanding Substack newsletter chronicling his food-life in Paris; there’s also a lot of wonderful material (including recipes) on his blog and website. He is the author of many excellent books, including Drinking French, Ready for Dessert, My Sweet Life in Paris and others (he has published nine in total), and The Perfect Scoop is our favorite of them all. Originally published in 2007, Lebovitz revised and updated it in 2018, adding a dozen new recipes, and it is that edition that’s the basis of this review and the recipes we’ve adapted.

Why We Love it: Lebovitz is the undisputed king of ice cream, and we’ve been making his frozen desserts since way back when the book was first published. The recipes always work perfectly as written, but they’re eminently riffable, and even provide such a strong foundation that if you’re a confident cook, you can probably start creating your own recipes. Besides chapters on the frozen desserts themselves, there are also chapters on Sauces and Toppings (Classic Hot Fudge, Cajeta, Candied Red Beans), Mix-Ins (Butter Pecans, Peppermint Patties) and “Vessels” (Ice Cream Cones, Crêpes, Profiteroles, Brownies).

We’ve made or tasted probably at least a dozen frozen desserts in the book, which besides ice cream, also includes gelatos, sorbets, sherbets and sorbettos, frozen yogurts, ices, granitas and ice pops. Recently, we made up a batch of Lebovitz’s Watermelon Sorbetto, pouring into ice-pop molds and turning it into not-too-sweet watermelon paletas (so good!). His Lavender-Honey Ice Cream is one of our favorites ever; Peach Ice Cream is a Philadelphia-style (no eggs) classic you’ll love all summer long; Cinnamon Ice Cream is classic as well. At Christmastime, Egg Nog Ice Cream is killer, and any time of year, Lemon Sorbet is a terrific version of classic lemon Italian ice. (You’ll have to buy the book to get those recipes, but believe me, you won’t be sorry.)

Gianduja Gelato with Straciatella from ‘The Perfect Scoop’

Gianduja Gelato with Straciatella from ‘The Perfect Scoop’

A few years ago we fell in love with (and wrote about) the Gianduja (hazelnut-chocolate) Gelato swirled with the Stracciatella (Italian-style chocolate chips) found in the Mix-Ins chapter.

Matcha Ice Cream from ‘The Perfect Scoop’

Matcha Ice Cream from ‘The Perfect Scoop’

Lovers of Japanese sweets will adore Lebovitz’s green tea ice cream. Made with matcha and rich with egg yolks, it is quite simply the best we’ve ever tasted.

Tangerine sorb edit.jpg

You’ll have to save for the winter, when mandarins (also known as tangerines) are in season and at their most flavorful, to fully appreciate Lebovitz’s Tangerine Sorbet. But do keep it in mind — with an incredible purity of flavor, it’s one of our all-time favorite winter desserts.

Nectarine Sorbet from ‘The Perfect Scoop’

Nectarine Sorbet from ‘The Perfect Scoop’

You’ve Gotta Try This: In Southwest France, where I’ve spent a lot of time over the last three decades, my French in-laws have a delightful custom of slicing a ripe peach into their red wine glasses at the end of dinner. The peaches get macerated, turning them into a glorious, light dessert, so fab with the red wine. Years ago, I tried to develop a peach ice cream recipe that would replicate those flavors, but never succeeded. Lo and behold Lebovitz’s recipe for Nectarine Sorbet, which he suggests scooping into wine glasses and letting everyone pour in red wine to their taste. Dare I say it’s even better than the real thing!? The sorbet on its own is pretty magnificent — and easy to make, especially as nectarines don’t require peeling.

Nectarine Sorbet is marvelous in a glass of red wine.

Nectarine Sorbet is marvelous in a glass of red wine.

Still Wanna Make: Oh, man — where do I start?! Chartreuse Ice Cream is high on the list (will do that soon!), and so are Toasted Almond & Candied Cherry; Aztec Chocolate; Toasted Coconut; Dried-Apricot-Pistachio; and Prune-Armagnac (all ice creams). Among the dairy-free recipes, I feel a batch of Pineapple Sorbet coming on soon. And doesn’t Cucumber-Gin Sorbet sound like fun?

I’m guessing you’re half-way out of your seat and ready to churn; make sure your ice-cream-maker insert is in the freezer.

If You Don’t Yet Have an Ice-cream Maker: Do spring for one — it’s well worth it if you love ice creams and sorbets as much as we do. Our 15+ year-old Cuisinart finally died a month ago, and I bought a new one with a larger capacity — the Cuisinart ICE-70. It’s not inexpensive, at about $139 (at the moment), but I appreciate that it can churn up to 1 1/2 quarts of ice cream. (Note that it is not the 2 quarts its specs suggest; a full review is coming soon!) The New York Times Wirecutter highly recommends the much less pricey Cuisinart ICE-21 (my purchase was also based on a positive Wirecutter review, among others), but at three-quarters capacity, I believe that would cause overflow problems with many recipes, including some of Lebovitz’s.

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Paris Summer Food Games: A Quintessential Quiche Lorraine always grabs the gold

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By Leslie Brenner

[Editor’s note: This is one in a series of articles about dishes suited to watching and celebrating the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.]

Whether you’re scheming a weeknight dinner, having friends over for Sunday brunch or watching the Olympics in front of the TV, a terrific quiche will serve you well.

Our recipe is for a Quintessential Quiche Lorraine — the classic, with bacon and caramelized onions, in a beautiful batter based on eggs, with lots of cream.

Would you like cheese in your quiche? Grate up some Gruyère, Comté or Emmenthaler and layer it in. (Our recipe includes a cheese variation.) You can also make it vegetarian, swapping some sautéed mushrooms or spinach (or both!) for the bacon, or just about any cooked veg that strikes your fancy.

However you design that quiche, a slice of it will want to share the plate with a simple green salad. You can’t get more French than that!

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Leeks Ravigote, trending in France, belongs on your TV table this Olympic summer

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By Leslie Brenner

[Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of articles about dishes suited to watching and celebrating the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.]

Before we know it, all eyes will be on Paris for the start of the Olympic games, and likely as not that will put many of us in the mood for a French TV dinner or lunch.

One dish I know will be on my Olympic team is poireaux ravigote — poached leeks dressed in an herb-packed, caper-happy, shallot-y vinaigrette with boiled egg. The snazzy salad-like starter has been showing up on fashionable tables all around France. It’ll shine on your table, too, whether it happens to be the one in your dining room or the coffee table in front of your TV.

Here’s a little background. The French love leeks, and a similar dish, poireaux vinaigrette, has long been one of the country’s most popular bistro dishes.

A few years back, restaurants started giving their poireaux vinaigrette (and their asparagus vinaigrette, and their artichokes vinaigrette) a lovely flourish of chopped hard-boiled egg: Mimosa is what that’s called. Before long, poireaux mimosa, asperges mimosa and artichaut mimosa were everywhere.

Then, last fall, a new leek prep started popping up here and there: poireaux ravigote. The effect is tangier and much more herbal than a straight-ahead vinaigrette, with lots of punch from those capers and shallots; the tang and punch are balanced by the soft richness of egg. Somehow, leeks, with their gentle allium lusciousness, are the perfect vehicle.

Will ravigote be the new mimosa? Who knows?! But I couldn’t wait to replicate it when I came home.

Origin of the dish

As it turns out, sauce ravigote goes way back — at least as far back as Auguste Escoffier’s 1903 bible Le Guide Culinaire, in which Escoffier describes the sauce as “suitable for calf’s head or foot, mutton foot, etc.” Escoffier’s ravigote is a type of vinaigrette that includes capers, parsley, chervil, tarragon, chives and minced onion, along with olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. Egg doesn’t appear; otherwise its very similar to what we’re seeing these days on leeks.

As for that calf’s head, in France that’s known as tête de veau. It’s a boiled dish with a long and treasured tradition — in fact, there are still tête de veau festivals all over France. And where there are tête de veau festivals, the boiled calves head inevitably is served with, you got it, sauce ravigote. Tête de veaux with sauce ravigote is also sometimes served in very casual restaurants known as bouchons. A restaurant in Paris, La Ravigote, reinvigorates the tradition.

Tête de veaux is so rich it wants a tangy sauce to balance it; look at it that way, and it’s easy to understand why the original version didn’t include something like egg. And why you might want it with something lean, like leeks.

I don’t know when or why chopped egg made it into ravigote, but I do know that Daniel Boulud included it in a recipe for sauce ravigote he published eight years ago in Saveur magazine. He mentioned in the headnote to that recipe that the sauce may be prepared hot or cold.

The Wikipedia entry for Sauce ravigote echos the idea that it could be hot or cold, adding that the hot version is “classically based on a vegetable or meat broth, or a velouté,” and that the cold sauce is based on a vinaigrette.

Boulud’s version — a cold one — incorporates both ideas: It’s based on stock, but then vinegar and seasonings get blitzed in, followed by sunflower oil. A vinaigrette built on a stock base. He suggests serving it with fish, grilled meat or — “if you’re feeling gutsy,” tête de veau. No mention of leeks.

There are recipes for leeks ravigote all over the French reaches of the internet, though many — such as those published by the magazine Marie Claire and Femme Actuelle — are undated, so who knows how long they’ve been floating around. Dating back to 2010, there’s a recipe from a site called Marmiton for a terrine of skate with leeks and sauce ravigote; interestingly, it’s rated as “très facile” (very easy). Following the eight steps to make the terrine, it tells us to serve the terrine chilled with a sauce ravigote — the only guidance for the sauce offered parenthetically, as “vinaigrette + échalotes ciselées + câpres.” (Translation: vinaigrette + minced shallots + capers.) No mention of herbs, and definitely no eggs.

The earliest recipe for poireaux sauce ravigote I have found is from 2013, by chef Jean-Pierre Vigato, posted on his personal website. His post comes with the title “Une façon amusante de préparer les poireaux vinaigrette!” — an amusing way to prepare leeks vinaigrette. It’s all there, with a vinaigrette that includes herbs, shallots and capers, along with a few cornichons — and egg. For the egg, he has us coddle four eggs, and whisk the coddled yolk of one of them into the sauce, before roughly chopping the other eggs and adding them in as well.

Choose slender leeks, if you find them, with long pale parts. Fatter ones can be halved vertically. Be sure to keep part of the root intact so they don’t fall apart.

Our version of sauce ravigote

When I started playing with the dish, I found I preferred adding the chopped egg last, finishing the dish with it rather than incorporating it into the sauce, so the bits of it stay more distinct.

But let’s back up and talk about leeks; you’ll want to choose them carefully. In France, where people are accustomed to cooking with them, it’s easy to find nice ones, but in the United States, depending on where you live, it can be challenging.

Choose slender ones, if possible, and definitely those that halve long whitish parts — it’s the light part that simmers up nice and tender. If all you find are leeks that are mostly dark green, with maybe only an inch or two that’s whitish, just skip it: Those leeks are better suited for flavoring a stock. (And if you’ll notice, those dark green parts are often very thick — they’ll be tough.)

Last time I made leeks ravigote, I found a few lovely slender leeks, and a few that had nice white parts but were much thicker. I bought them all and cut the thicker ones in half vertically.

Start by trimming them: Slice off the bottoms, but be sure to leave a small part of the root. That keeps them attached so they don’t fall apart when you cook them. For the slender one’s you’re leaving whole, slice those vertically almost all the way through — again, leave them attached at the bottom — and then rinse them carefully, separating the layers gently with your fingers so you can rinse out any soil. Cut them off at the top where the pale part ends; hopefully you’ll have leeks that are at least 7 inches / 18 cm or so, and maybe as long as 12 inches / 30 cm. (which is even better). Use kitchen shears to snip off any dark green parts that creep down on some of the layers (as shown in the photo above).

After that, it’s smooth sailing. Simmer them in salted water till they’re tender. While they’re cooking, boil an egg for exactly 9 minutes, and make the vinaigrette — with Champagne vinegar (or white wine vinegar), Dijon mustard, olive oil, shallot, capers and herbs (parsley, chives, dill and tarragon). Chop the egg, drain the leeks, dress them with the vinaigrette and finish with the chopped egg.

Ready? Set? Ravigote!

RECIPE: Leeks Ravigote

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Tangy, umami-ful and infinitely riffable, this cabbage salad (vegan or not!) hits all the right notes

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By Leslie Brenner

Cabbage, as the New York Times proclaimed in a story in March, has become the “darling of the culinary world.” At restaurants around the country, you can find it charred, sauced, braised, stuffed with ’nduja, set on taleggio fondue, drizzled with tahini, basted with kelp butter, filled with smoked fish.

To me, a head of cabbage in the fridge — whether Napa, or red or standard green — is a cruciferous insurance policy that’s particularly valuable in the summer. Unlike ephemeral lettuce, which wilts if you look at it sideways, cabbage is always there for you, cooking not required.

Cabbage salads are wonderful for so many reasons. To begin with, they’re substantial enough to be a standalone lunch. They also take well to getting dressed up — and they hold their dressing really well without sogging out.

Of course you could make a perfectly serviceable cole slaw, but why not live a little, and really take that cabbage to town?

Recently my family has flipped over a cabbage salad dreamt up by my son Wylie. The idea at the heart of it is a tangy dressing based on lime juice and miso, with sesame oil, a little heat from gochujang and plenty of shredded fresh ginger. Toss that with a lot of shredded cabbage — of any kind (Napa, green cabbage, red cabbage), along with with sliced celery, red bell pepper and fresh herbs, whether cilantro or Italian parsley, plus scallions or red onion.

We usually include some kind of protein — usually tuna, tofu or chicken — and enjoy it as lunch-in-a-bowl. Or skip the protein, and call it a side dish.

It’s infinitely adaptable! Feel like finishing it with sesame seeds? That adds pizzazz. Or maybe you want a little more crunch: Go for chopped toasted cashews. You can’t go wrong.

Looking for something fresh to bring to a picnic or potluck? This travels well, and its gorgeous colors make it the life of the party.

Red Napa cabbage

Designing the salad

Your choice of cabbage determines the texture, look and crunch. If you’d like it green with lovely texture, use Napa cabbage. Regular green cabbage, a little sturdier, offers more crunch. You might use a combo of Napa and red cabbage. Or entirely red cabbage — that works, too. One day I found some gorgeous organic red Napa cabbage — it was brilliant in this.

Wylie’s Convertible Salad, made with Napa cabbage, red cabbage and tuna, finished with nigella seeds and toasted sesame seeds

Protein-wise, there are many ways to go. The first time Wylie made the salad, he included a can of flaked tuna. Salmon would work too — whether it’s leftover from dinner, or you open a can. Or sardines!

As its inspiration was California-style Chinese chicken salad, it’s particularly appealing with shredded chicken. Harbor a head of cabbage in your crisper, and whenever you find yourself with leftover rotisserie chicken — or any leftover cooked chicken — you’ve got a great match.

Lately I’m loving it with tofu, as I often want a satisfying vegan lunch. Pressed tofu — also a great thing to keep in the fridge — is super nice in it, cut into strips. For a different mood, extra-firm tofu adds nice softness, and those little pillows pick up the dressing so nicely.

The salad, made with extra-firm tofu, red cabbage and scallions, and finished with cashews

Ready, set, slice

Yes, there’s quite a bit of slicing involved. Look at it as a great opportunity to practice your knife skills. Or maybe you have a mandoline? Grab that cabbage and slice away — you’ll be through it in a flash (watch your fingers!).

RECIPE: Wylie’s Convertible Cabbage Salad

May many of your salad days be cabbage days.

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

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By Leslie Brenner

[Editor’s note: This story was originally published, in slightly different form, on May 28, 2021.]

This weekend marks 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 vegan 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

Is it really the best ever? You’ll need to try it to see what you think, but I think if I had to commit to only one for the rest of my life, it would be this one. 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. Stir that into sliced boiled potatoes, and you get something rich, tangy and absolutely delicious — a potato salad that’s actually main-course-worthy, but also makes a dreamy side dish.

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

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Cinco de Mayo, long on the rocks, is now straight up — an appropriation-free cause for celebrating with chicken tostadas

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By Leslie Brenner

[Editor’s note: A different version of this story was originally published last year at Cooks Without Border’s Substack newsletter. The newsletter won the People’s Voice Webby Award last month; this article, which was a post for paid subscribers, was included in its entry submission. Find a link to subscribe at the end of this story.]

If you know a little about Cinco de Mayo, but not a lot, you might feel conflicted about commemorating it. The holiday reeks of cultural appropriation, and for good reason: the Margarita-powered drunken revelry many Americans associate with the date isn’t exactly a celebration of anything truly Mexican.

But dive into the fascinating history, and celebrating the holiday with California-Mexican chicken tostadas and margaritas on the rocks suddenly makes a world of sense.

The history of El Cinco de Mayo

Perhaps you know that the holiday does not pay tribute to Mexican Independence Day. That’s Sept. 16. You might know that Cinco de Mayo is not widely observed in Mexico (where it’s not a national holiday). And that it’s more an American thing than a Mexican one. Maybe you even know what it does commemorate: Mexico’s surprising victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla in 1862. The French ultimately prevailed, which might be why El Día de la Batalla de Puebla is not generally celebrated in Mexico outside of Puebla.

But if it’s minor there, how did the holiday get so big in the United States?

Well, it may surprise you (it did me!) to learn that the celebration of el Cinco de Mayo actually began in California — by Mexican Americans who supported democracy and opposed white supremacy — in the year following the Battle of Puebla. Truly!

The context was the Second Franco-Mexican War, in which the French, backed by Mexican monarchists, had been attempting to overthrow the Mexican government led by democratically elected Benito Juárez. Their against-all-odds victory in Puebla was a powerful source of pride for Mexicans. Alas, as mentioned, the French eventually did succeed in their democracy-quashing exploits, installing Maximilian I as emperor — a reign that lasted five years. (Ever wondered how things like crepas — crepes — got to Mexico? That’s how.) The Mexican republic was ultimately restored, in 1867.

But during that year following the Battle of Puebla — 1862 — the victory captured the imagination of Latinos in California, who commemorated it with the first Cinco de Mayo celebration on May 5, 1863.

A fascinating story by Yvonne Condes published on KCET’s website explains how and why. At the time of the Battle of Puebla, Civil War was raging north of the border, and southern politicians wanted to extend the Mason-Dixon line all the way into California, making it into a state where enslaving people would be legal. Most Latinos in the state were against the Confederacy and for the Union, and saw the French-Mexican War and the Civil War as analogous.

According to Cynthia L. Chamberlin, a historian at UCLA Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture (CESLAC) who was quoted in the article, "Latinos in California said these two wars are really the same war, in a sense.” Both, explained Chamberlin, were “about a democracy fighting against elite rule and white supremacy.”

And so Cinco de Mayo, said David Hayes-Bautista, CESLAC’s director, was “basically a civil rights commemoration, Latinos telling the world where they stood on the issues of the Civil War and the French intervention.”

That’s why, looking back to my Southern California upbringing — and feeling lucky to have grown up steeped in Mexican American culture — I’m suddenly feeling great about celebrating el Cinco de Mayo. In its purest form, it’s a celebration of Mexican culture, not a drunken revelry with sombreros and other offensive stereotypes.

What to cook?

You could key your celebration back to the historic Mexican victory in Puebla, and prepare one of Puebla’s greatest culinary contributions, such as mole poblano, made with chocolate and a wide array of dried chiles. It’s an amazing dish, though extremely labor-intensive, a bit challenging to put together for a laid-back Sunday celebration this evening. Ditto crepas a la huitlacoche, whose star ingredient (huitlacoche, or corn fungus, a prized delicacy) is not easy to come by.

Instead, why not celebrate those politically engaged California Latinos of yesteryear with tostadas and classic margaritas? One of the tostada components, traditional pico de gallo, includes the colors of the Mexican flag — red, green and white.

Classic Margaritas

The drink most closely associated with El Cinco de Mayo — the Margarita — had a major appropriation as well. For decades there was a story out there — perhaps conceived and perpetrated by one of the liquor companies — there that the Margarita had been invented in the early 1950s in my home town, Los Angeles, at a long-running “Restaurant Row” (La Cienega Blvd.) establishment, Tail o’ the Cock.

But according to a 1974 article published in Texas Monthly, Pancho Morales, a bartender in Juarez, Mexico, invited the drink in at a Juarez bar called Toommy’s in 1942. It’s a much more credible story — and the one we’ll toast to. Here’s our recipe.

RECIPE: Classic Margarita on the Rocks

California-style chicken tostadas

To me, nothing speaks of California Mexican culinary culture like a crunchy, sloppy, juicy, tangy chicken tostada. In other words, a crisp tostada (a corn tortilla that’s been dried, toasted or baked to crispness) slathered with warm frijoles de olla, piled with salad, generously strewn with shredded chicken and topped with a ridiculous amount of pico de gallo. Probably there are avocados involved, either diced in the salad or in the form of a scoop of guacamole on top. It’s my take on the big, salady chicken tostadas that were served in Mexican restaurants all over L.A. when I was growing up (just a hundred years or so after that first Cinco de Mayo, in the 60s and 70s!). You can also easily make these tostadas vegan, by leaving off the chicken and playing up the avocados or guacamole.

The tostadas come together really easily, once you have the key components prepared: beans, tostada bases, pico de gallo and roast or grilled chicken.

To make things simplest, you can pick up a rotisserie chicken at the supermarket or grilled chicken at a Pollo Loco-type take-out spot. Or make your own (see below.)

The game plan

Once you make your chicken decision, get a big pot of beans going — I favor mayocobas because they’re delicious and they cook pretty quickly. Bayo beans work great, as well.

RECIPE: Frijoles de Olla

Then make tostada shells. I use Masienda heirloom masa harina and crisp them in the oven rather than fry them. Of course you can also take a short-cut and purchase these.

RECIPE: Tostada Shells (Crispy Tortillas)

Making the chicken at home

If you’re roasting your own chicken, you can do that after or before crisping the tostadas. For a super-simple method, scroll to the bottom of this enchilada recipe.

Up to an hour or two before you want to serve the tostadas, make some pico de gallo — just diced tomato and white onion, plus cilantro, salt and finely chopped serrano chiles (I seed them first, but not everyone does).

RECIPE: Pico de Gallo

Now you’re ready to put the tostadas together.

Spoon a generous portion of beans onto each crisped tostada base, including some bean liquid, so part of the tostada will stay crisp, and part will get a little juicy-chewy. Add a heaping handful of salad greens on top of the beans. Next chunks of avocado that you’ve squeezed a lime over and sprinkled with salt, and some shredded chicken. Or skip that, and finish with a spoonful of guacamole.

Crumble a little queso fresco over all, if you’re feeling expansive, or squeeze on a little crema. (If you’re vegan, leave chicken and cheese or crema off, and up the avocado ante). Finally, spoon an outlandish amount of pico de gallo on top. Serve with a wedge of lime.

The pico is what makes the whole thing: Together with the saucy beans and that lime that you’ll squeeze over all, it turns into a dressing for all that lettuce. That’s why you can’t be stingy with the pico. It’ll get more and more delicious as we move into tomato season, but even with sad Roma tomatoes it’ll be pretty good. And of course, it represents the colors of the Mexican flag, so it’s ideal for this holiday.

RECIPE: Chicken Salad Tostadas

Having these components around — delicious beans, tostadas, chicken and pico — can set you up to feed a crowd, or to delight one or two for many days in various iterations and combinations. (The tostada bases keep surprisingly well and long, sealed in a zipper bag, unrefrigerated.)

With warmer weather on the way, it’s dreamy to know a salady tostada is always there for the assembling.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

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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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