Author Najmieh Batmanglij is the revered ‘goddess of Iranian cooking'

By Leslie Brenner

Editor’s note: Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

The Washington Post called her “the grande dame of Iranian cooking.” Yotam Ottolenghi called her its “goddess.” Super-chef José Andrés has called her “a wonderful guide to the Persian kitchen.”

We’re talking, of course, about Najmieh Batmanglij — the author of seven books, including Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies; Joon: Persian Cooking Made Simple; Cooking in Iran: Regional Recipes and Kitchen Secrets and other titles.

I’m embarrassed to say that Batmanglij’s wisdom only came into my life last year, when I started exploring Persian cooking in earnest. Food of Life — the magnum opus that she first published in 1986, revised for a 2020 25th-anniversary edition and is once again updating — is a great place to begin, if you want to explore this magnificent cuisine.

Sabzi polow — rice with fresh herbs — prepared from Najmieh Batmanglij’s ‘Food of Life’

Some of my happiest memories of annus horribilus 2020 involved Food for Life. For my late-September birthday, a masked celebration in the backyard of dear friends, my son Wylie and his girlfriend Nathalie prepared (at my request) an elaborate, insanely delicious rice dish from the book: Sabzi Polow,* Rice with Fresh Herbs. There are a full seven cups of fresh chopped herbs in the dish: dill, chives, parsley and cilantro, and it sports a crisp tah-dig crust. (Once I prepare it myself — soon! I’ll be sure to write about it.)

A couple months later, I spent a luxurious afternoon preparing abgusht-e morgh ba kufteh-ye nokhodchi — Persian chicken soup with chickpea-and-lamb meatballs. The aromas of dried rose petals, cardamom, saffron and fresh herbs lifted my spirits and transported me to another time and place.

The book has been on my mind lately because Nowruz — Persian New Year — begins this coming Saturday, the first day of spring. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate than with Batmanglij’s Fresh Herb Kuku, which is traditional for the holiday. It’s like a Persian frittata packed with dill, parsley, cilantro and spring onions, beautifully spiced (more rose petals!) and garnished with quick-confited barberries.

[If you’re cooking with kids this weekend, consider quick-ordering Batmanglij’s Happy Nowruz: Cooking with Children to Celebrate the Persian New Year.]

Najmieh’s other six books are all on my wish-list(Joon is at the top.)

Still if I had to choose only one cookbook to cook from for the rest of my life, I would seriously consider Food of Life. The 330-recipe volume has enough delicious culture in its 640 pages to keep me delighted cooking and discovering Iran for a long time.

RECIPE: Najmieh’s Fresh Herb Kuku

RECIPE: Persian Chicken Soup with Chickpea and Lamb Meatballs

Related story: “Take a moment to honor 98 year-old Diana Kennedy, the “Queen of Mexican regional cooking”

Related story: “Outstanding cookbook author Toni Tipton-Martin puts history at the center of the American table”

Related story: “Dorie Greenspan knocks it out of the kitchen with books about baking and French cooking”

*The dish is the vegetarian variation of Sabzi Polow Ba Mahi — Rice with Fresh Herbs and Fish. We dropped the fish as the dish was meant to accompany delicious lamb kebabs my friends grilled outside on the Weber.

Take a moment to honor 98 year-old Diana Kennedy, the "Queen of Mexican regional cooking"

By Leslie Brenner

Editor’s note: Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

International Women’s Day feels like exactly the right part of Women’s History Month to celebrate Diana Kennedy. The trailblazing cookbook author — who turned 98 last week — has devoted no less than six decades of her life to studying and documenting the richness, tradition and techniques of the regional cuisines of Mexico.

If you haven’t seen Elizabeth Carroll’s 2019 documentary about her, “Nothing Fancy,” do treat yourself. The 1 hour, 8 minute film does a wonderful job at explaining why British-born Kennedy is widely regarded — even in Mexico — as the world’s foremost expert in traditional Mexican cuisine.

“I think she’s a legend,” says Gabriela Cámara, chef and owner of Contramar in Mexico City and Cala in San Francisco, in the film. “Many Mexicans are against admitting that Diana knows more than they do about their food.”

“I think Mexico as a country will be eternally indebted to her efforts,” was celebrity TV chef Pati Jinich’s take.

The author of eight books on Mexican cooking, including the seminal 1972 book The Cuisines of Mexico, Kennedy was the pioneer who evangelized to the English-speaking world about the depth, breadth and fabulousness of traditional Mexican cooking, the way it is done in cities and villages throughout Mexico. That book is out of print, but it is collected — along with The Tortilla Book and Mexican Regional Cooking — in The Essential Cuisines of Mexico. It is a must-have for anyone interested in Mexican cooking.

It was The Cuisines of Mexico that prompted me to buy an aluminum molcajete and a tortilla press 36 years ago, when I was in my 20s. I still have both, though I’ve graduated to a giant wooden tortilla press.

I’ve learned so much from Kennedy’s books over the years, starting with the proper way to make guacamole, grinding white onion, serrano chiles, cilantro and salt in the molcajete — and no garlic, as Kennedy emphatically exclaims in the documentary. Her books are always the first place I go whenever I have any question about any Mexican dish.

I had the amazing opportunity, back in the early 1990’s, not just to meet Kennedy, but to spend a long weekend cooking with her at my friend Danièle Mazet-Delpeuch’s house in Dordogne, France. As you’ll see if you watch the documentary, Kennedy is famously crotchety, which was my experience as well. But I’ll always treasure the time, which I wrote about a few years ago, in a story about making tortillas.

If it’s interesting or vexing to contemplate the idea of honoring a British-born woman as the “queen of Mexican regional cooking,” as a Los Angeles Times story by Daniel Hernandez did last year, consider the comments in the documentary of Abigail Mendoza. The chef and owner of Tlamanalli, a restaurant in Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca, had been friends for 35 years at the time the documentary was filmed. “Ella está una hija adaptiva en México — She’s an adoptive daughter of Mexico,” she said.

“She’s very Mexican in her soul and heart. I believe Diana is a Mexican, who does not have to have been born in Mexico. But she is in Mexico and lives in Mexico, is working in Mexico and is a Mexican.”

Happy International Women’s Day. I’m off now to make a batch of guacamole.

In celebration of gumbo z'herbes, a gloriously green, soul-nourishing Louisiana Lenten tradition

Chloé Landrieu-Murphy’s vegan gumbo z’herbes / Photograph by Chloé Landrieu-Murphy

By Chloé Landrieu-Murphy

Unless you’re from Southern Louisiana, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of gumbo z’herbes — an essential dish across the region, particularly for those who abstain from meat on Fridays during Lent. 

Often referred to as “the queen of all gumbos,” its name is a Creole dialect contraction for gumbo aux herbes, meaning “gumbo of greens.” (It’s also known as “green gumbo.”) Earthy, delicious and comforting, it is built like other gumbos, but it also includes an entire garden’s worth of leafy greens. 

Though traditional Lenten preparations of the dish don’t include meat, part of the appeal of gumbo z’herbes is the flexibility with which it is prepared, using any combination of greens, and optional meats. Meat versions may include ham hock, chaurice (a spicy Creole pork sausage), smoked andouille sausage, chicken, brisket and/or veal.

While the combinations of greens and meats that can be used are endless, tradition says that the number of greens included in your gumbo represents the number of friends you’ll make in that year, and that an odd number of greens should be used for good luck. Theories surrounding the symbolism of the greens vary, with some suggesting that nine varieties should be used as a representation of the nine churches visited by Catholics in New Orleans on Good Friday in remembrance of Jesus and his walk to crucifixion. 

A bowl of New Orleans’ most famous and sought-after version — the one served at legendary Dooky Chase’s Restaurant — earns the person eating it nine new friends, the late great chef Leah Chase told Southern Living magazine in 2016. “And I always hope that one of them’s rich,” she added. Chase died in 2019 at the age of 96.

Since 1941, the establishment — founded by Emily and Dooky Chase, Sr. (chef Leah Chase’s mother-in-law and father-in-law), and now run by Leah’s grandson chef Edgar “Dooky” Chase IV and her daughter Stella Chase Reese —  has served the city as a gathering place not only for Creole classics like gumbo, fried chicken and red beans and rice, but also as a vital space for everything from the arts to community organizing. Dooky Chase’s was a place where civil rights leaders, both black and white, came together for strategy sessions with luminaries including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the upstairs dining room.

Dooky Chase’s Gumbo des Herbes, prepared from a recipe in ‘The Dooky Chase Cookbook’ / Photograph by Leslie Brenner

Only once a year, on Holy Thursday (the Thursday before Easter, which falls on April 1 this year), does Dooky Chase’s serve its famous gumbo z’herbes. Featuring roughly equal parts meat (smoked andouille sausage, hot sausage, ham hock, chicken, brisket and veal brisket stew) and greens (collards, mustard greens, turnip greens, beet tops, cabbage, lettuce, watercress, spinach and carrot tops), it reflects the culinary traditions of the city’s Creoles of color.  

To achieve gumbo z’herbes greatness, chef Edgar boils the greens, then purées them. He then steams the meats, covers them with a quick roux, combines that with the puréed greens and their potlikker and simmers it all together before stirring in filé powder and serving it over rice. He generously shared the recipe with us; you can also find it Leah Chase’s The Dooky Chase Cookbook. 

Still, if you make it at home, there will be something missing. 

“You can put pretty much anything in it, if it’s green,” says Poppy Tooker, a New Orleans culinary ambassador and close friend of the late chef.  “But Leah had a secret ingredient, something you couldn’t buy in the store. Here in New Orleans, there’s a weed that grows wild in the levees and the medians called peppergrass. That was one of Leah’s secret ingredients, and there were some gentlemen who would walk the levees to gather the peppergrass for Leah to put in her gumbo every year.” 

While gumbo z’herbes is most certainly a gumbo, thanks to all those greens, it differs greatly in look and taste from more familiar gumbos. In her book Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at The New Orleans Table, Sara Roahen notes its uniqueness: 

“The only ways in which gumbo z’herbes resemble more common meat and seafood gumbos are that it’s eaten with a spoon, often crammed with sausage, and thickened with a roux —  and the latter only sometimes. In preparation, gumbo z’herbes is a multiplicity of smothered greens united in a communal pot likker. Its flavor and its origins are more mysterious: no two bites, or theories are the same.” 

So what makes gumbo z’herbes a gumbo? “You’ve still got a stock, you’ve still got a roux, you still have filé and you’re still adding all your meats and all that, so all that is the same base as a gumbo,” says chef Edgar. 

As with so many dishes in Louisiana’s culinary canon, the dish is reflective of a deep and complicated history with both West African and European influences. “All of this can be traced to the West African way with greens and to West Indian callaloo,” Toni Tipton-Martin explains in her 2019 cookbook Jubilee: Recipes From Two Centuries of African American Cooking, which also includes a wonderful version.

Toni Tipton-Martin’s gumbo z’herbes, from ‘Jubilee’ / Photograph by Leslie Brenner

In The Welcome Table: African American Heritage Cooking, culinary historian Jessica B. Harris speculates that the dish could be a cousin of the West African stew Sauce Feuille. There could be some German influence as well; in his Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cooking, author John Folse postulates that the dish came to Louisiana in the 1700’s with German Catholic settlers who traditionally ate a German seven-herb soup on Holy Thursday.

Today, while the Creoles of color in New Orleans generally reserve their meat-filled gumbo z’herbes for Holy Thursday festivities, few New Orleans restaurants besides Dooky Chase’s serve it, so it’s typically made at home. 

That said, you only have to look at two Holy Thursdays for a sense of how important the Dooky Chase’s gumbo z’herbes tradition is in the Crescent City: April 13, 2006 and April 9, 2020.  

Following the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding and closure of Dooky Chase’s, the tradition was put at risk. Restaurateur Rick Gratia opened the doors of his own establishment, Muriel’s, to chef Leah and her team, according to Tooker, who was by her friend’s side throughout. “He turned his beautiful restaurant on Jackson Square over to Leah so that the city of New Orleans wouldn’t be deprived of their Holy Thursday tradition.” 

In many ways, Holy Thursday of 2020 was even harder, Tooker explained to me. “It was the first year without Leah,” she says. On top of that, a week before Holy Thursday, Stella Chase Reese’s husband of 50 years died suddenly of Covid-19.  “But the Chase family still did Holy Thursday, and they did it as a drive-by pickup. There were police, there was traffic for a mile, and there were people lined up. It was a really big deal.”

While gumbo z’herbes is a direct reflection of the Catholic identity and traditions that are so deeply ingrained within Louisiana culture, it’s also a delicious, body- and soul-nourishing dish that can and should be enjoyed by all — which was my thought in developing my own recipe for a Vegan Gumbo Z’herbes.

“When you maintain traditions like gumbo z’herbes, it gives people a sense of hope, a sense of community and a sense of normalcy,” says chef Edgar. 

So if you can’t make it to Dooky Chase’s this year for Holy Thursday, why not bring the tradition into your own home?

🌿

Chloe Landrieu-Murphy is a recent graduate of New York University’s Masters in Food Studies program and a lover of all things food and culture related. This is her first story for Cooks Without Borders.

RECIPE: Dooky Chase’s Gumbo des Herbes

RECIPE: ‘Jubilee’ Gumbo Z’herbes

RECIPE: Chloé’s Vegan Gumbo Z’herbes

Outstanding cookbook author Toni Tipton-Martin puts history at the center of the American table

By Leslie Brenner

Editor’s note: Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

It is history itself that animates the books of Toni Tipton-Martin, a culinary historian, writer, editor and cook who has become a powerful force for amplifying, celebrating and honoring the voices of Black cooks throughout American history.

Toni Tipton-Martin / Photograph by Pableaux Johnson

In 2015, Tipton-Martin published her award-winning The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African-American Cookbooks, which she followed in 2019 with Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking.

[Read more about Toni Tipton-Martin’s Jubilee.]

Its pages are filled with delicious recognition of the contribution of African American cooks and chefs — and include some of our favorite recipes of the last year. I’m forever attached to Jubilee’s Pickled Shrimp, to Tipton-Martin’s Country-Style Potato Salad and to her Pork Chops in Lemon-Caper Sauce.

Pickled shrimp prepared from a recipe in ‘Jubilee’ by Toni Tipton-Martin

Its historical depth is just as appetizing — for instance a deep dive into green gumbo — gumbo z’herbes — that inspired an upcoming Cooks Without Borders story.

In September, Tipton-Martin — who began her career at the Los Angeles Times, and later led food coverage at the Cleveland Plain Dealer as its food editor — was named editor in chief of Cook’s Country.

Dorie Greenspan knocks it out of the kitchen with books about baking and French cooking

By Leslie Brenner

Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

[NOTE: This story was updated Feb. 16, 2022.]

Cookbook author Dorie Greenspan / Photograph by Heather Ramsdell/Food Network

It seems fitting to lead off our series with an appreciation of the woman who launched my own food-writing career: Dorie Greenspan. In the early 1990s, Dorie was the editor of a stapled-together newsletter from a cooking organization that had only been created a few years earlier: The James Beard Foundation. Dorie gave me the opportunity to write for that flier, called “News from the Beard House.”

Dorie was a wonderful editor to work with back in the day; in the decades that followed, she has proven again and again that she’s a splendid story-teller, and a great cook. Her recipes work beautifully, and they’re always delicious.

Dorie’s cookbooks include (among others):

• Around My French Table

• Baking with Dorie

• Baking Chez Moi

• Baking: From My Home to Yours

• Dorie’s Cookies

• Everyday Dorie

Around My French Table is one of my favorite French cookbooks — as is Café Boulud Cookbook, which Dorie co-wrote with chef Daniel Boulud.

An apple-Calvados cake adapted from a recipe in ‘Around My French Table’

A couple weeks ago, I thought about an apple cake I love in Around my French Table, swapped the rum in the recipe for Calvados, and we were all sweetly rewarded.

In honor of Women’s History Month, we’re celebrating our favorite female cookbook authors

By Leslie Brenner

Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors. 

When we think about our favorite cookbooks of all time, the titles that endure, the cookbooks that we reach for again and again over the years — the ones that survive the period purges of our bookshelves — far more often than not, they are written by women. 

Throughout the month, we’ll be spotlighting female cookbook authors. Sometimes we’ll be honoring an entire long, distinguished career; other times a new author with a wonderful recent title; and occasionally someone who didn’t write many books, but gave us one or two truly great ones. 

As March is also our entry into spring, it feels like a great time to edit the bookshelf; bid goodbye to cookbooks that no longer “spark joy” (to quote Marie Kondo). Of course that’ll free up space — and we’re sure you’ll discover authors among those we’ll feature to add to your collections.

The first spotlight is coming shortly. Meanwhile, you might like to browse around our new list at Bookshop: “Women Have a History of Writing the Best Cookbooks.” Note that it only includes books available at Bookshop, so it’s missing some older titles we love. We will be featuring them, along with recent releases, in coming days and weeks in our stories.

Happy browsing!

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

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.

[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.

[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.

Rose petals, saffron and tender lamb meatballs: Now that's a chicken soup!

This is the fourth story in our series, Around the World in Chicken Soup.

The Great Confinement has been for me, as much as anything, a year of cooking. My time in the kitchen — chopping, simmering, marinating, braising, baking, slicing, stirring, researching dishes, poring over recipes — has kept me sane, kept me focused, provided escape, resulted in joy and kept my family well fed. We are extremely lucky that we can afford to eat and that we have access to food — facts that have not escaped my consciousness for a single moment, and for which I’m continually grateful.

During these 11 months, if there’s one dish that took me out of myself and away from that narrow physical and mental place that the pandemic has wedged us into, it would be the Persian chicken soup with chickpea-and-lamb meatballs called abgusht-e morgh ba kufteh-ye nokhodchi.

The obvious and immediate miracle of the dish is its incredible flavor and aromas: the perfume of saffron, the gorgeousness of mint leaves and rose petals strewn on top, the tender lusciousness of the lamb meatballs, the soothing comfort of the rich and aromatic chicken broth. I still have a hard time conceiving that we ate something so delicious, so unusual, in our own home. Honestly, it’s one of the most interesting things I’ve eaten ever, anywhere.

But equally (if not even more) transporting was the experience of cooking this soup. The afternoon I spent discovering its mysteries was one of the most pleasurable I’ve spent all year long.

Consider the premise: You stuff a whole chicken with rice, spices and dried rose petals. (Rose petals!) Wrap it in cheesecloth, submerge it in a broth scented with cardamom, rosewater, saffron and more, and simmer it gently for an hour and a half. Remove the chicken and debone it. Then drop in meatballs you’ve made from ground lamb, aromatic spices, onion and chickpea flour. Chickpeas go in the broth as well, along with the chicken meat and stuffing, and all that wonderful stuff cooks some more. 

Your home now smells heavenly, and for a grand finale, here comes a whopper of a flourish: Chopped mint or cilantro, plus garlic and more dried rose petals. You’ll pass that in a bowl around the table for everyone to add on top just before eating. 

The meatballs are spectacular. The scents of rose and saffron and cardamom and cumin and herbs are intoxicating. The garnish sends it into a transcendent dimension. 

After I made the soup and recovered from my saffron-and-rose-petal high, I wanted to learn more about the recipe, so I called Najmieh Batmanglij — the Washington, D.C.-based author of Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies, in which I found it. The 1986 cookbook is widely considered to be the definitive tome of the genre; Yotam Ottolenghi called Batmanglij “The goddess of Iranian cooking.” 

She and her husband fled Iran in 1979 during the revolution, relocating to Vence, in the south of France, where she wrote her first cookbook, Ma Cuisine d’Iran. Recently Batmanglij spent three years researching her latest book, Cooking in Iran, published in 2019. “I traveled all over Iran,” she said, “and I noticed they love meatballs.” 

Persian chicken soup with chickpea-and-lamb meatballs — abgusht-e morgh ba kufteh-ye nokhodchi. The Iranian dish is served with sabzi khordan, the fresh herb platter ubiquitous on Iranian tables.

Talking with the author was nearly as much fun as making the soup. I knew from her headnote that it’s traditionally served by Jews in Kashan and Hamedan for sabbath dinner (those two cities are south and southeast respectively from Tehran), that it should be served with “saffron flavored rice, pickles and a platter of herbs,” and that it was inspired by one Professor Abbas Amanat, who had gotten the recipe from his mother. Batmanglij told me that Professor Amanat teaches history at Yale University. 

She also revealed that she brought a couple of her own thoughtful touches to the dish — among them, deboning the chicken.  “Traditionally,” she told me, “they use the whole chicken, and when they serve it, the whole thing is in the soup. Wrapping it in the cheesecloth, that’s my French background.”

Diluting the saffron in rose water rather than plain water was her innovation as well, inspired by a technique she’d seen in a medieval Persian cookbook. The two ingredients together do something truly magical.

I made a couple of slight modifications of my own, including adding an option to use canned chick peas rather than soaking overnight and pre-cooking dried ones. More significantly, I also suggest passing of the rose-petal-and-herb garnish at the table. Batmanglij’s recipe calls for stirring it all before in serving it. 

Nan-e-barbari — Persian Bread. We fashioned ours from store-bought pizza dough.

Of course the author’s way is culturally correct. A soup like this, Batmanglij told me, is usually eaten “by people from humble backgrounds. They put the garnish on top, and they put the pot in the middle of the table, with plenty of bread. Serving individual things means more labor.” 

While at our house, we skipped the saffron-flavored rice accompaniment, I did serve the soup with nan-e-barbari, Persian flatbread, and a sabzi khordan, the fresh herb platter Batmanglij suggested, and which is ubiquitous on Iranian tables. (Here’s a hack for making home-made nan-e-barbari from store-bought pizza dough, courtesy of Nilou Motamed, former editor of Food & Wine.)

The herbs of the sabzi khordan brought beautiful freshness to each bite.

Obviously, building this marvelous soup is a project, something to take slowly and enjoy, not something to be rushed through on a busy weeknight. But should you find yourself wondering how to fill a long and lazy Sunday or Saturday afternoon, I can’t think of a more delicious undertaking.

RECIPE: Persian Chicken Soup with Chickpea and Lamb Meatballs

RECIPE: Sabzi Khordan

RECIPE: Nan-e-Barbari (Persian Flatbread)

Did you enjoy this story? Read about who we are and what we do.

Around the world in chicken soup: Flavors of the Yucatán shine in Jenn Louis' Sopa de Lima

This is the fourth story in our series “Around the World in Chicken Soup.”

I really miss traveling, and especially traveling to Mexico — which in the last five years had become almost an addiction for my husband and me. Our last two trips were to the Yucatán Peninsula, where we mostly explored the beautiful towns and cities inland — Valladolid and Mérida — and coastal towns like Sisal and Campeche and Champotón. And of course the archeological sites: Chichen Itza, and Uxmal and Ek Balam.

The peninsula’s bright and sunny flavors came back to us deliciously in the form of a recipe I found in Jenn Louis’ delightful new book, The Chicken Soup Manifesto: Sopa de Lima — the region’s tangy, limey chicken soup.

As Louis writes at the start of the book, it’s always great to use homemade chicken stock in soups “because the end result is worth the time, and your home will smell amazing.” So true.

But there’s not always time to make stock. And when you jazz up a chicken soup with assertive flavors, like the exhilarating spices that went into the Tibetan Thukpa we wrote about in December, the convenience of using store-bought broth or stock as a base becomes much more attractive.

That’s definitely the case with Louis’ Sopa de Lima. The original version in her book calls for starting with either home-made chicken stock or water, but because the chicken pieces cook in the liquid less than 20 minutes, I chose store-brought broth instead of water.

In the Yucatán, the lime they use for this soup is the region’s native lima ágria. Because we can’t get it here, Louis brilliantly swaps a combination of regular (Persian) lime and grapefruit juice, and that works great. Spices and herbs — cinnamon stick, black peppercorns, cloves, garlic, oregano and bay leaves — add some depth of flavor and balance the brightness; a big handful of chopped cilantro and hot, crisp tortilla strips are the finishing touch.

You could certainly swap the tortilla strips for store-bought tortilla chips if you don’t feel like frying the strips, but just-fried, they do add a lovely flourish. (And it’s a great way to use corn tortillas that have seen better days.)

OK, now I’m craving that soup, and that crunch. Hope you like it as much as I do.

RECIPE: Jenn Louis’ Sopa de Lima
Read: “Around the world in chicken soup: First stop, Rio de Janeiro, for a comforting bowl of canja de galinha”

Read: “Jenn Louis’ new ‘Chicken Soup Manifesto’ celebrates the feel-better elixir as expressed in 64 countries”

Read: “Around the world in chicken soup: Next stop Tibet, for a fresh and fiery bowl of thukpa”

Around the world in chicken soup: Next stop Tibet, for a fresh and fiery bowl of thukpa

Think chicken soup is bland or boring? You’ll sing a different tune after one taste of Thukpa, the fiery chicken-noodle soup of Tibet.

We found this one in Chaat: Recipes from the Kitchens, Markets and Railways of India.

“The first time I tasted thukpa was after I arrived on a train in Guwahati on a cold winter’s day,” writes James Beard Award-winning chef Maneet Chauhan in the headnote. (Chauhan, who has several restaurants in Nashville, Tennessee, wrote the book with Jody Eddy.) “Seeking warmth, I followed the aroma of chicken soup to a vendor spooning golden thukpa into dented metal bowls. In that single bowl of soup I found all the reassurance that the long journey had been worth it.”

It became a favorite comfort food for her and her husband when they spent chilly winters in New York City. 

Guwahati, in case you’re a bit rusty on your Indian geography, is in the northeastern part of the subcontinent, next to Bhutan, about 200 miles from the Tibet border.

Chock full of shredded cabbage, carrot, bell peppers, green beans, chicken and rice noodles, scented with ginger and cumin, fired up with serrano chile, garnished with scallions and bean sprouts, it’s a nourishing meal in a bowl. 

And because it’s based on store-bought chicken broth, it comes together quickly (cooking time is about 30 to 35 minutes, once you’ve got everything prepped). It’s simple, too: blitz together tomatoes, ginger, garlic, chiles and cumin with a little oil, cook the paste briefly with cut-up boneless chicken thighs, add broth and vegetables and simmer till the chicken’s cooked through. Add rice noodles and a splash of lemon juice, dress up with scallions and bean sprouts and dinner is served.

I’m thinking that whether or not anyone in your crew is under the weather, it’s just the thing for an easy, light holiday-week or between-the-holidays dinner — lively, bright and spicy and filled with fresh veg. The rice noodles keep it squarely in the comfort food zone.

RECIPE: Maneet Chauhan’s Thukpa

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for a cooking project sure to enthrall kids over the holidays, consider making paneer — fresh Indian cheese — also from Chauhan’s book.

Cookbook gifts that will thrill all the cooks on your list *and* support independent bookstores

The most impactful, exciting holiday gift of 2020 might just be . . . the cookbook!

Fledgling cooks on your list will thrill over classics to kickstart their libraries and cool new titles to stoke their excitement. Experienced, passionate cooks will love the season’s great deep dives, and important evergreen volumes to fill out their collections.

Expanding cultural understanding is important to all kinds of folks this year, and there’s no more delicious way to do that than sautéing, stir-frying or baking your way through a new cookbook.

Meanwhile, Bookshop — the online bookseller that supports independent bookstores — is offering free shipping through Monday, Nov. 30. Purchasing through it is a great way to support small businesses.

Here, listed alphabetically, are 17 recently published titles that are tops for giving this season, for every kind of cook on your list:

Amá: A Modern Tex-Mex Kitchen

L.A. superstar chef Josef Centeno takes us to his hometown, San Antonio, liberating Tex-Mex on the way. Co-written with his partner, Betty Hallock, former deputy Food editor at the Los Angeles Times.

Read our review of Amà.

Buy ‘Ama’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘Ama’ at Amazon.

American Sfoglino: A Master Class in Handmade Pasta

Those who want to roll up their sleeves and totally geek out on making pasta by hand — and then settling in to simmer a 7-hour ragù bolognese — will love Los Angeles superstar chef Evan Funke’s manifesto. So will lovers of coffee-table aspirational cookbooks: Eric Wolfinger's gorgeous images won the book an IACP award this year for food photography.

Buy ‘American Sfoglino’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘American Sfloglino’ at Amazon.

Chaat: Recipes from the Kitchen, Markets, and Railways of India
Besides India's famous street snacks, Maneet Chauhan and Jody Eddy's book also has an amazing recipe for homemade paneer (Indian cheese), a splendid-looking chicken biryani that’s high on our list of dishes to try, and lots more.

Read Cooks Without Borders’ review of Chaat.

Buy ‘Chaat’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘Chaat’ at Amazon.

The Chicken Soup Manifesto: Recipes from Around the World

Portland chef Jenn Louis satisfies wanderlust and comfort craving deliciously in her new book, just published in September.

Read our recent story about The Chicken Soup Manifesto. Read about The Chicken Soup Manifesto in the Dallas Morning News.

Buy ‘The Chicken Soup Manifesto’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘The Chicken Soup Manifesto’ at Amazon.

Don’t Count the Tortillas: The Art of the Texas Mexican Cooking

Chef Adán Medrano, whom we wrote about in August, brings the foodways of the indigenous people who created the true Texas Mexican cuisine to life in his second book.

Buy ‘Don’t Count the Tortillas’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘Don’t Count the Tortillas’ at Amazon.

Falastin

Exuberantly delicious recipes that work brilliantly fill the pages of Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley's book, while illuminating the culture of Palestine. It’s on of our all-time favorite cookbooks.

Read Cooks Without Borders’ review of Falastin.

Buy ‘Falastin’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘Falastin’ at Amazon.

Feast: Food of the Islamic World

Anissa Helou's magnificent volume is a treasure trove of cultural deliciousness. Its recipes are geared toward more advanced cooks, who will find it to be a prized source of everlasting inspiration.

Read Cooks Without Borders’ review of Feast.

Buy ‘Feast’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘Feast’ at Amazon.

The Food of Sichuan

An updated version of Fuchsia Dunlop's seminal title. We have yet to cook from it, but her recipes always work, her taste is impeccable and her authority undisputed.

Buy ‘The Food of Sichuan’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘The Food of Sichuan’ at Amazon.

Japanese Home Cooking: Simple Meals, Authentic Flavors

Sonoko Sakai's book is another one of our favorite cookbooks ever — absolutely perfect for anyone (beginner or experienced cook) wanting to dive into Japanese cooking.

Read Cooks Without Borders’ review of Japanese Home Cooking.

Buy ‘Japanese Home Cooking’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘Japanese Home Cooking’ at Amazon.

Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking

Toni Tipton-Martin's incredible work is a must for everyone who knows that Black Food Matters. Recipes are very approachable. Named Book of the Year by the International Association of Culinary Professionals.

Read Cooks Without Borders’ review of Jubilee.

Buy ‘Jubilee’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘Jubilee’ at Amazon.

La Buvette: Recipes & Wine Notes from Paris
A charming little volume, Camille Fourmont's book, co-written by Kate Leahy, brings the life of wine in Paris to life. Her recipe for Rose and Cumin Sablés is one of our favorite cookie recipes ever.

Read Cooks Without Borders’ review of La Buvette.

Buy ‘La Buvette’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘La Buvette’ at Amazon.

The Mexican Home Kitchen: Traditional Home-Style Recipes that Capture the Flavors and Memories of Mexico

Popular blogger Mely Martínez's first book is filled with super-approachable recipes that reflect the way home cooks really cook all over Mexico. Excellent for beginners, as well as more advanced cooks and chefs seeking context for Mexican dishes.

Read Cooks Without Borders’ review of The Mexican Home Kitchen.

Buy ‘The Mexican Home Kitchen’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘The Mexican Home Kitchen’ at Amazon.

My Korea: Traditional Flavors, Modern Recipes

We've only had the chance to test-drive one recipe from Michelin-starred chef Hooni Kim's inviting new book — marinated spicy cucumbers, and it was wonderful. We are eager to dive in soon, as it appears to be the authoritative Korean book we've long been waiting for.

Buy ‘My Korea’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘My Korea’ at Amazon.

Ottolenghi Flavor

Just when you thought Yotam Ottolenghi must be fresh out of great ideas, he's, um, not. The recipes are vividly delicious.

We’re in process of testing recipes for an upcoming review, coming soon.

Buy ‘Ottolenghi Flavor’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘Ottolenghi Flavor’ at Amazon.

The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food

Chef Marcus Samuelsson is always awesome, and this book — honoring Black chefs and their contributions to American cooking — is fabulous. Another Black Food Matters must-have — and the flavors are out-of-this-world.

We are in process of testing recipes for a review of The Rise, which will be coming soon. In the meantime, here is a story about The Rise’s smashing recipe for shrimp and grits.

Buy ‘The Rise’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘The Rise’ at Amazon.

Vegetables Unleashed: A Cookbook

Superhero chef José Andrés unleashes his powers on the vegetable kingdom, and the results are delectable. This one's great for experienced cooks, who will appreciate Andrés' technique-driven approach and should be able to spot the recipes that might need a tweak or two.

Buy ‘Vegetables Unleashed’ at Bookshop.

Buy ‘Vegetables Unleashed’ at Amazon.

Vietnamese Food Any Day: Simple Recipes for True Fresh Flavors

Andrea Nguyen is the undisputed queen of Vietnamese home cooking in America, from experienced cooks who grew up in Vietnam to those just diving in. Her latest book is filled with dishes that can be made from ingredients you can get in any good supermarket. Highly recommend.

Read a story about a rice noodle salad bowl we love from Vietnamese Food Every Day.

Buy ‘Vietnamese Food Any Day’ from Bookshop.

Buy ‘Vietnamese Food Any Day’ from Amazon.

Would you like more suggestions? Visit our Holiday Pop-Up Bookshop or our Cookbooks We Love Shop at Bookshop.

Shrimp and grits from Marcus Samuelsson's new 'The Rise' is the best we've ever eaten. Ever.

I’ve eaten my share of shrimp and grits in my time. OK, maybe more than my share. As a longtime newspaper food editor, then a restaurant critic for 8 years, I’ve eaten more than my share of everything.

Among all those shrimp and all those many grits, the best rendition I’ve ever eaten — by far — was one I prepared in my own kitchen just last week. The credit goes to Marcus Samuelsson, in whose new cookbook — The Rise — I found the awesome recipe.

I’m in process of cooking my way through the book in order to write a review, but I wanted to share the dish with you while okra is still in season (it will likely end very soon). The recipe — which Samuelsson calls “Papa Ed’s Shrimp and Grits” — was inspired by, and serves as an homage to, Ed Brumfield, executive chef of Red Rooster, Samuelsson’s restaurant in Harlem.

Most of the shrimp and grits I’ve eaten have been a basic low-country style, the shrimp poached in a rich gravy and spooned over cheesy grits. Toni Tipton-Martin sheds valuable light on the history of the dish and its styles in her much lauded (and wonderful) book Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking:

“Shrimp and grits are everywhere on restaurant menus, but harder to find in African American cookbooks unless you know what you’re looking for: The historian Arturo Schomburg called it ‘breakfast shrimp with hominy.’ In Gullah-Geechee parlance, it’s gone by names like shrimp gravy or smuttered shrimp. Casual Louisiana Creoles might call it breakfast shrimp with tomatoes.”

It is the more tomatoey, Creole direction Samuelsson takes for the dish in The Rise; it includes a small dice of okra, as well. The lively sauce, smoky with paprika and spicy with cayenne, is bright and piquant enough to beautifully balance those cheesy, rich grits. (Are you hungry yet?) It’s much like a quick shrimp gumbo served on grits.

My favorite shrimp and grits ever is not difficult to make. It calls for fish stock (we used shrimp stock, a substitution that’s acknowledged in our adaptation of the recipe). Because we’re in the habit of buying shrimp in the shell and freezing the shells for the purpose, we were able to whip up a quick shell stock before making it; you’ll find the method toward the end of our shrimp, andouille sausage and gumbo recipe. I suspect purchased low-sodium chicken broth would also work, as would clam juice diluted in with water and chicken broth in a 2:1:1 proportion.

Though I used fresh okra, as the recipe specifies, if you can’t find fresh, I also suspect frozen would work fine. (I like to buy an extra pound of beautiful okra during the season, which I trim and freeze in a zipper bag, just to have for such moments. It freezes beautifully, so if you do see it, consider grabbing some extra.) Just let it thaw before you dice it.

If you make this dish, I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. I could even imagine, if okra is still around then, making it the centerpiece of a Black Food MattersThanksgiving dinner.

RECIPE: Papa Ed’s Shrimp and Grits

'Jubilee,' 'Japanese Home Cooking' and 'American Sfoglino' are among the 2020 IACP Cookbook Award winners

The International Association of Culinary Professionals announced the winners of its 2020 Book Awards on Saturday, including its prestigious Cookbook Awards.

Toni Tipton-Martin’s Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking (Clarkson Potter) won the top prize, Book of the Year, as well as the award for best cookbook in the American category. Francis Lam was the editor.

In our June review, we called Jubilee “deliciously inspiring,” discussing and including recipes for Tipton-Martin’s Layered Garden Salad, Sautéed Greens and Country-Style Potato Salad. In an earlier story, we raved about her recipe for Pickled Shrimp — which is one of our favorite recipes of the year to date.

Pickled Shrimp from Toni Tipton-Martin’s ‘Jubilee’ is one of our favorite recipes published in 2020.

Sonoko Sakai’s Japanese Home Cooking: Simple Meals, Authentic Flavors (Roost Books) won the prize for best new cookbook in the International category. Sara Berchholz was the editor.

“If you are looking to dive (or tip-toe) into Japanese cooking and seeking one great book to guide you, you can do no better than this delightful volume,” we wrote in our review (also in June). We offered up Sakai’s recipes for Okonomiyaki, Cucumber Sunomono and Koji-Marinated Salmon as evidence.

Okonomiyaki from ‘Japanese Home Cooking’ by Sonoko Sakai

While we haven’t gotten around to reviewing American Sfoglino yet, we do have a story about it in the works, and taking a deep dive into Funke’s pasta-making technique has forever changed the way we’ll approach making pasta by hand. The book won in the Chefs & Restaurants category. A mini-review will be coming soon.

Other titles winning IACP top honors include Pastry Love: A Baker’s Journal of Favorite Recipes by Joanne Chang (Baking category); The Complete Baking Book for Young Chefs by the Editors at America’s Test Kitchen (Children, Youth & Family category); On the Hummus Route by Ariel Rosenthal, Orly Peli-Bronshtein and Dan Alexander (Culinary Travel category) and Milk Street: The New Rules: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook by Christopher Kimball (General category). Find a complete list of winners and finalists here.

Congratulations to all the IACP winners and finalists!

Celebrate World Butter Chicken Day with the real thing — made quicker, easier and lip-smackingly delicious

Earlier this year — just before The Great Confinement — I became obsessed with butter chicken, and in April tracked down the Delhi-based chef, Monish Gujral, whose grandfather invented the dish.

Since then, I’ve normalized my relationship to the dish, which has taken its place in our home as a favorite for those times when we crave easy-to-conjure comfort that also transports.

READ: “Obsessed with butter chicken: Our recipe follows the world’s favorite Indian dish faithfully back to its origin”

Following the conversations chef Gujral and I had about the dish and its history in April, we have stayed in touch, and in September he texted to say that Moti Mahal — the restaurant where Kundan Lal Gujral invented butter chicken — would soon be celebrating its 100 year anniversary. It opened in October 1920.

I suggested he proclaim the appropriate date in October to be World Butter Chicken Day, to be celebrated every year. After all, butter chicken is no doubt the most popular Indian dish in the universe. It needs a food holiday! The exact date of Moti Mahal’s founding is unknown, so Gujral chose October 20, the birthday of his own son, who Monish says “looks like his great-grandfather,” Kundan Lal.

Monish Gujral, with tandoori chicken — which his grandfather, Kundan Lal Gujral, invented | Photo courtesy of Moti Mahal

So there you have it: this coming Tuesday, October 20 will be the first-ever World Butter Chicken Day. (A bit of research led me to understand that’s how these food holidays get created: Someone simply creates them, and they either catch on or they don’t.) 

#WorldButterChickenDay is an auspicious day, of course, to enjoy murgh makhani (butter chicken in Hindi), salute its origin — and (it struck us both) make a tax-deductible contribution to the United Nations’ World Food Programme or other nonprofit organization fighting global hunger.

With all the excitement around murgh makhani and its origins, it has also felt like the moment to revisit our Ultimate Butter Chicken recipe, my adaptation of Gujral’s original. Keeping as close as practicable to his recipe, published in his 2009 book, Moti Mahal: On the Butter Chicken Trail (later re-published in as On the Butter Chicken Trail, Ultimate Butter Chicken has been the gold-standard murgh makhani in our kitchen. However, it requires four hours of marination, leading me on occasion to reach instead for Urvashi Pitre’s excellent Instant Pot version.

That said, for all the ease and quickness of Pitre’s recipe, which gets to the table in 30 minutes, it sometimes leaves me missing the depth of flavor that marinated-then-roasted chicken — more like tandoori chicken — brings to the dish. (For the Instant Pot version, raw chicken is pressure-cooked in the sauce components.)

Back into the test kitchen I went, playing with murgh makhani, and I’m excited to debut a new, greatly simplified version: World Butter Chicken. It’s much much quicker to execute than Gujral’s excellent version, and if my extremely critical family is to be believed, it’s every bit as wonderful.

The secret of the recipe is compressing the original two-step, four-hour marination into a one-and-a-half step one-hour marination. The resulting chicken tandoori thighs are perhaps even better than the first iteration; I’d be thrilled to eat them even without the sumptuous butter chicken sauce.

Nipping three hours out of the marination time means it’s on the table in 90 minutes or less, an hour of which is unattended marinating time. That’s when you can make the cucumber raita and coriander chutney that are great to serve with it, and get basmati rice ready to cook. While the chicken thighs roast (20 to 35 minutes depending on their size), you can make the sauce and the rice. 

Congratulations to Moti Mahal on its first hundred years, and many thanks to Monish Gujral and his family for the gift of murgh makhani.

Happy World Butter Chicken Day!

RECIPE: World Butter Chicken

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

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.

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

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

What to make this weekend: Baked kofta with eggplant and tomato from Sami Tamimi's 'Falastin'

Autumn is my favorite time of year to cook. The kitchen feels cozy (even if it’s still hot outside, as it is here in North Texas), and the ingredients speak to my soul.

It feels like the perfect time — while tomatoes are still happening — to make these baked kofta from Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley’s recent book, Falastin.

Each kofta is a meltingly tender, intensely flavorful package made by stacking ingredients: a slice of roasted eggplant; a kofta patty made from lamb, beef, onion, garlic, tomato, herbs and spices; a slice of tomato, some rustic tomato sauce.

The aroma as they roast is intoxicating.

Garnished with fresh herbs and toasted pine nuts, it’s a dish that’s at once homey and sophisticated, comfortingly familiar yet gorgeously spiced.

Served with rice, couscous, roasted potatoes or a root-vegetable purée, it makes a smashing fall dinner.

If by some miracle every kofta is not gobbled up, they reheat brilliantly.

RECIPE: ‘Falastin’ Baked Kofta

Inspired by Diana Henry, this ridiculously easy autumn fruit-and-almond cake is a show-stopper

This time of year, when late-season plums are offering one last chance, and black Mission figs beckon plumply, I love to throw them together with juicy blackberries and bake them onto an absurdly easy-to-make cake.

The Autumn Fruit and Almond Cake was inspired by a summer fruit and almond cake from the 2016 cookbook Simple: Effortless Food, Big Flavors by the British author Diana Henry.

Although it bakes for quite a long time (an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes), the actual work involved is minimal. For the fruit topping, slice figs in half, slice two plums, toss with berries and a little sugar. For the cake, dump all the ingredients in a food processor and blitz them. Pour and spread the batter in a parchment-lined springform pan. Arrange the fruit on top. Bake, cool, remove pan ring, sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Not overly sweet, it’s a spectacular treat for lovers of fruit desserts. Almonds in the form of marzipan adds a wonderful toothsome texture, and the almondy flavor marries beautifully with the figs and other fruit. Sour cream keeps it super-moist.

RECIPE: Autumn Fruit and Almond Cake

Deviled Duck Legs Provençal: a rich, herbal, piquant and crunchy example of how recipes evolve

Recipe provenance is a hot topic among food writers at the moment, as efforts to avoid cultural appropriation and give creators their proper due is top-of-mind. In his “What to Cook” column last week, New York Times food editor Sam Sifton announced changes to the way that important publication will be acknowledging provenance in its recipes henceforth. 

We applaud the Times’ new focus on transparency. Here at Cooks Without Borders, we’ve always tried to be mindful of crediting creators whose recipes we’ve adapted. And now, as we are in the process of adding recipe cards to each of our recipes (yaaas!), we have been simultaneously taking stock of our own acknowledgement of provenance — fine-toothing our recipe archives to shine the spotlight a bit brighter on recipes’ originators. 

Sometimes it even results in a name-change for a dish, usually one we’ve adapted from a cookbook. Raw Zucchini Salad with Green Olives, Mint and Pecorino, for instance, is now A16’s Raw Zucchini Salad with Green Olives, Mint and Pecorino. Although we had previously acknowledged Nate Appleman and Shelly Lindgren and their 2008 cookbook, A16 Food + Wine, as the source of the recipe, we thought it would be even better to commemorate the provenance directly in the dish’s name. 

Still . . . the whole issue of who actually creates recipes is often much more complicated than who wrote them down and got them published in a book, or served them in a restaurant. The truth is that dishes generally evolve over time — getting tweaked, changed, added to, zhuzzhed and riffed on by cooks around the world, in the course of years and decades and centuries. Occasionally a brand-new dish springs fully realized from the head of a creator, but that’s the exception rather than the rule. 

Deviled Duck Leg Provençal served with saucy braised lentils

So, if we adapt a recipe for, say, moussaka from a cookbook author who learned that recipe from a home cook in Greece, how should we handle that? It’s not as simple as it might seem. Certainly we credit the cookbook author in the headnote, but probably not in the name of the recipe. It’s totally a judgement call, and we try to err on the side of too much credit rather than too little. That said, it’s the home cook back in Greece who gets the short end of the wooden spoon, which is not ideal. 

Now and then, we’re able to trace the evolution of a dish — at least somewhat — and I always find it uncommonly satisfying.

Deviled Duck Legs Provençal is a case in point. I was introduced to it by a Los Angeles Times story by Regina Schrambling back in 2003, shortly before I joined the staff of the Times. In the story, Schrambling explained that she found the basis for the dish — duck legs rubbed with Dijon mustard and coated with bread crumbs — in Madeleine Kamman’s book In Madeleine’s Kitchen. Shrambling’s own touches were adding herbes de Provence and swapping panko for regular bread crumbs. 

Now that that’s straight, consider the dish itself: slow-baked duck legs, rich and meaty, with a bright tang of Dijon, lovely herbal notes and the delightful crunch of panko. For something so easy to achieve, it’s pretty damn fabulous. 

Serve it on undressed spring mix, as Shrambling suggested lo those many years ago, or on arugula or frisée, and let the salad sop up the duck’s juices.

Or go the lentil route, and simmer up a saucy batch of French green lentils braised in red wine with mirepoix. We haven’t put together an actual recipe for those lentils yet, but they’re a snap to make. Cut a carrot, a stalk of celery and about an equal amount of onion or shallot into small dice, sweat those in a little olive oil with a branch or two of thyme, add French green lentils, coat them with the mirepoix mixture and let them cook a minute. Add some red wine to cover, bring to a boil, let the alcohol cook off, then lower the heat and simmer till the lentils are just tender, about 20 or 25 minutes depending on the lentils, stirring now and then. Add more wine as necessary to keep the lentils happy (you can also add water or chicken broth if you prefer). Keep it a little wet and saucy at the end: You’ll want that winey sauce.

Want to make it even more luxurious? Whisk in a little butter at the end.

Aw, go on — you deserve it.

RECIPE: Deviled Duck Legs Provençal

Glorious and festive, Moroccan-ish couscous with chicken, lamb, chickpeas and veg exuberantly celebrates autumn

My version of Chicken and Lamb Couscous — one of my favorite things to eat in the fall (and into the winter) — is absolutely unpedigreed; I didn’t turn it up from a Moroccan cookbook; it wasn’t taught to me by a Tunisian friend.

Rather, way back when I was 20 or 21, a friend gave me a copy of one of the awesome Time-Life The Good Cook cookbooks — the one titled Pasta, which had just been published. Tucked between sections about rolling out fresh pasta dough, stuffing and cutting ravioli and layering lasagnas was one called “Couscous: A Full Meal from One Pot.” Couscous was included because couscous grains, made from semolina flour, are technically pasta. Pictured and explicated was the process of achieving a magnificent-looking platter of couscous topped with a saffron-and-cinnamon-scented stew of lamb, chicken, vegetables and chick peas.

I was instantly captivated. My only experience with such a dish at that point was feasting on it at two then-well-known Los Angeles restaurants, Dar Mahgreb and Moun of Tunis. The book showed how to dampen the grains, rake the moisture through with your fingers, steam them in a couscoussier (real or improvised), make the stew and serve it with harissa and a tureen of broth.

As anyone who has ever used the books in that (long out-of-print) Time-Life series knows, they are technique-based, with lots of step-by-step photos, and recipes only at the end. So literally for decades, I’ve made this couscous by following that rough guide, guessing at the amounts of ingredients, tweaking and changing things over the years, without looking at an actual recipe. I followed brief and sketchy instructions in a sidebar to make harissa.

When you think about it, it’s actually the way you learn to cook at home, if you have a parent who cooks teaching you: a little of this, some of that, until it looks like this. It’s why I treasure the series, a project that was overseen by Chief Series Consultant Richard Olney.

What I love about this chicken and lamb couscous is that you can make it as simple or as complicated as you like. Make your own harissa — soaking and grinding dried chiles and spices — or buy a tube (it’s really good). Go through the extraordinary process of moistening and rubbing and steaming couscous grains two or three times, or make a box of instant couscous in five minutes flat. Soak dried chickpeas overnight and simmer them for hours with the lamb and chicken, or add a couple cans of chickpeas toward the end.

You can buy harissa — the fiery North African chile sauce — in a tube, can or jar — or make your own.

And you know what? No matter how many shortcuts you take, the dish is always glorious — even if it isn’t faithful to any particular traditional recipe.

So why would anyone go through the trouble of making the couscous the longwinded traditional steamed way? Because it’s much lighter and flufflier. (More about that in a future story.)

Our recipe is a two-fer, offering the easiest possible version and a more elaborate one. Go either route — or choose the elements from each that appeal. Most often, I use dried chickpeas, but take the quickie route with the couscous grains, using instant. Every couple of years I make a batch of homemade harissa, which I use if I have it. (We’ll feature a recipe here soon!) Otherwise, I’m happy to use store-bought, a condiment I always like to have around. My preferred brand is one that comes in a tube, Dea from France; I also like one Trader Joe’s sells in a jar, from Tunisia.

The stew itself is made by simmering lamb and chicken pieces with onion, carrot, spices (including harissa), tomatoes and cilantro, then adding turnips, more carrots, zucchini and roasted red pepper. As mentioned, the chickpeas get simmered with the meats (if they’re dried) or added with the zucchini (if they’re canned). Optional roasted winter squash is added on top, along with grilled merguez sausages (also optional).

Stick with the amounts of vegetables or meats I suggest, or adjust them up or down, depending on what you have on hand. Do you prefer white meat chicken to the legs and thighs the recipe suggests? Swap ‘em. Want to toss in some yellow crookneck squash? Do it.

One moving target for me over the years has been winter squash. I’ve never been crazy about the boiled pumpkin The Time-Life book suggested. At some point I started roasting acorn squash, adding that at the end, but lately I’ve been using delicata squash — which I love because the flavor’s beautiful and the skin is very tender. Other times I do without.

To serve the dish, pass the platter of couscous piled with meats and vegetables around the table, along with a separate pitcher of extra broth, and a dish of harissa. Diners help themselves to the grains and stew, pouring on as much extra broth as they like. Pro tip: place a small dollop of harissa in your soup spoon, stir in some broth to liquify it, and sprinkle it over the stew.

Honestly, it’s pretty dreamy. The batch is gigantic, which is great if you’re feeding a big crowd. Use less meat and water, if it sounds too big for your crew. That said, it is just as delicious the next day. Or two. Or three. I enjoy the leftovers as much as round one.

Hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

RECIPE: Chicken and Lamb Couscous

Top 10 cookbook dishes that blew me away during The Great Confinement (Part II)

Cooking — and losing myself in the pages of cookbooks that dive into cuisines from around the world — has been the closest I’ve come to traveling this year. Not only has that been a delicious consolation, but the incredible recipes I’ve found will be mine forever: to execute faithfully or to riff on endlessly, making them my own. It’s nearly as much fun reliving them in the retelling as it was to discover them the first time.

Part I of this story ran through five of my new-found faves — dishes that come from China, India, Palestine, France and Savannah, Georgia. The next five dishes criss-cross the globe, with stops in Japan, Vietnam, Mexico, the Levant and the globally expansive mind of chef José Andres.

Okonomiyaki from Sonoko Sakai’s ‘Japanese Home Cooking’

Sonoko Sakai’s wonderful Japanese Home Cooking: Simple Meals, Authentic Flavors showed us the way to turn out reliably fabulous okonomiyaki — the bespoke, bonito-flake-festooned savory pancake that’s got umami written all over it. We reviewed the book in June.

The crazy pancake begins life as a thin batter of flour, egg, milk, baking soda and salt, to which you add shredded cabbage, bell pepper and scallion. Into a hot, oiled skillet it goes. Let it brown a moment, add shrimp, flip it and finish cooking. Paint with tonkatsu sauce (the recipe supplies that too), shower with katsuobushi (bonito flakes), scatter with scallions and crumbled nori and serve.

Why we love cooking it: It’s eminently riffable; “okonomiyaki” means “as you like it.” Add bacon, swap the shrimp for crab or other seafood, add a squirt of Kewpie mayo. Watching the thick, luscious pancake cook to golden brown then flipping it is terrifically satisfying. The bonito flakes are so thin they seem to come alive on top, waving around from the heat of the pancake, so it’s a show-stopper at the table.

Carne Guisada and Homemade Flour Tortillas from Josef Centeno’s ‘Amá’

When the French person at the table declares, “This is even better than beef bourguignon” and the only other sounds in the room are groans of gustatory pleasure, you know you’ve got a keeper. We’ve got a review of chef Josef Centeno’s Amá: A Modern Tex-Mex Kitchen in the works (it’ll be published soon); this dish is a preview. If his Carne Guisada doesn’t exactly look modern, that’s because it’s not: It’s straight-ahead San Antonio soul food. Following Centeno’s lead, we wrap it in a home-made flour tortilla (recipe included), and proceed directly to heaven.

Why we love cooking it: It’s a classic braise, super easy to achieve, that slow-cooks for hours and fills the house with a gorgeous aroma. While it’s finishing, making flour tortillas by hand (including mixing the batter without a mixer) is primally satisfying, and easier than expected.

Rice Noodle Salad from Andrea Nguyen’s Vietnamese Food Every Day

Andrea Nguyen’s Rice Noodle Salad Bowl topped with grilled pork skewers

It was love at first nuoc-cham-drenched bite, and we’ve since made the Rice Noodle Salad Bowl from Andrea Nguyen’s Vietnamese Food Every Day four or five times. Partly that’s because it’s more than anything a “blueprint” dish (Nguyen’s description), a base designed to accept skewered grilled meat, chicken or shrimp, marinated grilled tofu, simple sautéed fish — whatever you like, whenever you’re craving that nuoc-cham tang and a pile of fresh herbs. A couple days ago, when we found ourselves with odds and ends of leftover sashimi and crabmeat from a roll-your-own sushi evening the previous night and a gorgeous bouquet of herbs our friends had grown, that all went on top of rice noodles, salad greens, shaved cucumber.

Why we love to cook it: Skewers or grilling aside, it’s really about assembling and arranging, so it’s a lovely chance to show off your food styling skills (which inevitably leads to an Instagram post or Snapchat peek). Dressing it with tangy, salty, chile-hot nuoc cham brings a giant flavor payoff.

Dancing Eggplant from José André’s ‘Vegetables Unleashed’

Eggplant topped with bonito flakes (katsuobushi) that seem to dance, from José Andrés’ Vegetables Unleashed

Katsuobushi (bonito flakes) strikes again — this time dancing on top of ingenious microwaved eggplant brushed with ginger-soy sauce. The effect is so delightful with a Japanese beer or glass of cold sake, it inspired us to turn a prearranged video chat with friends into Zoom Izakaya Hour. We included the recipe in an August review of Vegetables Unleashed by José Andrés.

Why we love cooking it: That sauce, which comes together in 5 minutes. We just want to paint it on everything.

Stuffed Zucchini with Pine Nut Salsa from ‘Ottolenghi Simple’

Seasonal zucchini disorder — that time of year when summer squash invades your immune system and produce bin — sent us looking for the most inspired zucchini recipes. Predictably, we fell into Yotam Ottolenghi’s clutches. Unpredictably, the captive eaters — who had already OD’d on zucchini — went mad for this. Anyone have a bumper crop? Try this.

Why we love cooking it: You get to crush the cherry tomatoes with your hands.

RECIPE: Stuffed Zucchini with Pine Nut Salsa

RECIPE: Dancing Eggplant

RECIPE: Rice Noodle Salad Bowls with XYZ Skewers

RECIPE: Carne Guisada

RECIPE: Josef Centeno’s Tía Carmen’s Flour Tortillas

RECIPE: Okonomiyaki