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Duck season? Rabbit season? Maybe — but dessert-wise, it's . . . Pavlova season!

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By Leslie Brenner

One evening fifteeen years ago, when I was living in Los Angeles, my friend Jenni wowed me at dinner with a magnificent dessert: a cloud-like pouf of meringue, crunchy on the outside and soft-chewy in the center, topped with a glorious mess of berries snuggled on a cushion of whipped cream and scattered with toasted chopped pistachios.

My spring and summer desserts would never be the same.

The dessert, called a Pavlova, has a down-under pedigree, invented about a hundred years ago, either in Australia or New Zealand (it’s unclear which), where it first showed up laden with strawberries, kiwis and passion fruit. It was named for the Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlovna Pavlova, who visited both countries in the 1920s. My friend Jenni, born and raised in South Africa, had fallen in love with the dessert there as a young girl.

When Jenni feted us with one back in 2007, Pavlovas were something you’d usually only see in restaurants (if you saw one at all) and probably mostly on the coasts, in New York, San Francisco or L.A. But those restaurant versions were small, smooth, perfect and formal-looking — nothing like that wild, craggy, irresistible mess I fell in love with at Jenni’s.

The cake that launched the Ottolenghi empire

Since then, Pavlovas’ popularity has grown — fueled in no small part by London chef Yotam Ottolenghi, whose 2017 cookbook Sweet (co-authored by Helen Goh) features on its cover a magnificent full-sized cinnamon version slathered with praline cream and covered with gorgeous slices of ripe figs and pistachios. Sweet!

In fact, spectacular lofty Pavlovas were essential in launching Ottolenghi’s restaurant and global cookbook empire. For his first professional kitchen job, as the Israeli-born chef tells us in the introduction to Sweet, he spent much of his time whipping egg whites for vanilla soufflés. And then, he writes:

“I ended up making my name on egg whites, sugar and lots and lots of air. The famously giant Ottolenghi meringues, which have adorned our windows for many years, have become our trademark.”

When it comes to busy home cooks, Pavlovas have a wealth of advantages. Surprisingly easy to make, they’re not only impressive and dramatic, but also forgiving — as their vibe is abundantly fruity and disheveled. Perfection is not required, nor even recommended.

Whipped meringue disc, ready to go into the oven

The Pavlova’s foundation is a thick disc of meringue — which you make by beating egg whites and sugar until stiff, spreading on a parchment-lined baking sheet, and baking slowly. As it cools, it becomes crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. Use that time to macerate fruit. Whip some cream, slather it on the meringue, top with fruit, add enhancements like nuts (if desired), and voilà.

The baked meringue disc: Don’t worry; it’s not supposed to be perfect! The crags and crannies will catch the whipped cream and fruit juice.

Pavlovas are adaptable — make them full-size, individual, or anything in-between, and top them with whatever fruit is available and great-looking. You can flavor the meringue with extracts, liqueurs, spices or chocolate, or play with their texture by using brown sugar (as Ottolenghi does in his cinnamon-flavored fig and pistachio Pavlova).

This time of year, as strawberries are coming into season (no doubt they’re already resplendently displayed in Southern California on the beloved Harry’s Berries stand at Santa Monica Farmer’s Market), I like to make simple small ones featuring the juicy red fruit. (Happy spring!)

For the one shown here, I macerated the berries in orange liqueur and used them to adorn individually sized meringues. Want to dress them up a little more? Sprinkle on a little citrus zest and finish with toasted sliced almonds. They’re just the thing for spring holidays, like Easter or Mother’s Day. And if you’re looking for a flour-free dessert for Passover, look no further! (Which means yes, they’re gluten-free.)

Of course a full-on assortment of berries — blackberries, raspberries, strawbs and blueberries, as shown in the photo at top on a full-size Pavlova — is wonderful, too.

In summer, once stone fruits come into play, peaches, plums and apricots dance delightfully atop meringues. Or they can even get rolled up into them, as in this inventive spin by the Pavlova master himself, Ottolenghi.

To achieve that one, you make a meringue that’s rectangular rather than round. Spread a filling of whipped cream, berries, peaches and toasted sliced almonds on top, and roll it up. Yes, it probably sounds crazy if you’ve ever made meringues, but it works. Then more fruit goes on top, with a dusting of powdered sugar. Served in slices, it’s crazy good.

One of the glorious things about Pavlova season is that it’s luxuriously long. Late summer and fall, you could make make Ottolenghi’s sliced fig number. Or mix it up with late-season plums, or persimmons, or some roasted grapes. Toasted walnuts would be lovely on that.

But for now, we have spring, with all its delicious possibility. My recommendation for making most of the season? Get all messy with meringues and fruit and treat yourself (and friends and family, of course!) to one.

RECIPE: Strawberry Pavlovas

RECIPE: Berry Pavlova with Pistachios

RECIPE: Showstopper Rolled Pavlova with Peaches and Blackberries

READ: “Make this showstopper summer dessert: Rolled Pavlova with Peaches and Blackberries, from Ottolenghi’s ‘Sweet’”

Read: “Messy, gorgeous and dramatic: The berry Pavlova is a spring-into-summer stunner”

FIND: More Cooks Without Borders desserts

Cooks Without Borders is nominated for a Webby Award!

By Leslie Brenner

We are thrilled to announce that Cooks Without Borders has been nominated for Best Personal Blog/Website in the 26th Annual Webby Awards.

In case you’re not familiar with it, the Webby — presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS) — is the “Internet’s highest honor,” as The New York Times described it. It is the second Webby nomination for CWB. Cooks Without Borders is honored to be included in a group of excellent nominees in its category: Kyrie Irving; Esoteric.Codes; Just Curious; and Anywhere We Roam.

The judges will name a winner on Tuesday, April 26, 2022 in New York City. Fueling our excitement is the knowledge that The Webby Awards received more than 14,300 entries from all 50 states and 70 countries worldwide this year, so being nominated in such an important category really bowls us over. Thank you to the judges — and to you, our readers, for keeping us inspired.

As a nominee, we are also eligible to win a Webby People’s Voice Award, which is voted online by fans across the globe. If you enjoy what we do here at Cooks Without Borders, please vote for us! You’ll need to sign up for an account to cast your ballot and support us, but it just takes a minute (and then you can vote in other categories, as well). Your support would mean the world to us. Voting will end on April 21.

Many thanks.

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Spring's dynamic duo — grilled butterflied leg of lamb and asparagus — make a marvelous (and portable!) feast

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By Leslie Brenner

In my corner of planet earth, we’ve arrived at the point in spring when the evenings are starting to stay warm enough to kindle thoughts of grilling — of sharing a glass of rosé out on the patio with friends, of nibbling dips and chips and such and taking in the intoxicating aroma of something delectable cooking over the coals.

And so yesterday, with our patio not yet exactly fit for prime time, I proposed bringing a ready-to-go grilling party to friends who had just moved into a new house. A butterflied leg of lamb and asparagus would be the base offering, along with a bottle of French rosé. Not a hard sell — you should try it some time!

It was so easy to put together — and turned to to be so delicious — that it sparked an “aha” moment: Rosy slices of flavorful grilled lamb and tender spears of lightly charred asparagus love to be the life of the spring party. The combo isn’t only great for instigating BYO-main course dinner invitations; it’s also the delightfully low-stress solution for Easter dinner or lunch, breaking a Ramadan fast, or (in a matter of weeks) setting the table for Mother's Day.

Asparagus and spring onions, cooked on the grill

Prepping for the event is shockingly quick. Procure a boneless leg of lamb: The first one I saw was 2.8 pounds, large enough to serve 6. A smaller one would be sufficient for four. Grab some fresh herbs — our marinade recipe calls for mint and cilantro, but you could swap either for parsley, rosemary, thyme, oregano or marjoram, or use a combo. You probably have everything else (red wine vinegar, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper) on hand. And grab a bunch or two of asparagus: a pound and a half is perfect for four, two pounds for six.

This time of year, you might also find spring onions — the ones that look like scallions, but with much bigger bulbs on the bottom. Yesterday I found both red and white ones. These are fantastic thrown on that grill as well — as are garlic scapes, if you’re lucky enough to find them.

Once you’re home with the booty, make a marinade: Chop the herbs, toss in a bowl with pressed garlic, vinegar, salt and pepper, whisk in olive oil. Unwrap the lamb, removing any strings holding it in shape, and flatten it as much as possible. If it doesn’t lay flat, feel free to slash with a knife here and there, keeping it all in one piece: You want a shape that will cook relatively evenly on the grill. Don’t worry, though, if it’s much thicker in places — it’ll still be great.

Place the lamb in a shallow bowl, coat it on both sides with the marinade and transfer it to a large zipper bag. (Alternatively, you can put the lamb in the bag, pour in the marinade, zip it up (pushing out the air first), then massage it a bit so it’s completely covered in marinade. Leave it like that for at least two hours (refrigerating for all but the last hour), and it’s ready to cook. Heat the grill, wipe off the marinade and cook on both sides — it’s quicker than you might think: 12 to 22 minutes total (depending on the heat of the grill) will get you lamb that’s medium-rare where thickest and medium where thinnest.

RECIPE: Grilled Butterflied Leg of Lamb

You should have enough room on the grill to throw on the asparagus — which needs nothing more than olive oil and salt before going on. (For my portable feast, I trimmed off their woody bottoms and placed them in a zipper bag with about two teaspoons of oil and about a quarter teaspoon of salt, zipped it up, rolled the spears around a bit to coat, and transported them just so.) Ditto the spring onions: Trim the tops, slice them in half, creating a flat surface on the bulbs, and give them the same oil-and-salt treatment. If you’re not transporting them, you can put the asparagus (and spring onions if using) on a sheet pan, drizzle with oil, sprinkle with salt, and let them sit till you’re ready to grill.

As for timing, you can grill the asparagus at the same time as the lamb, cooking till the spears are as tender as you like them (I like them tender, and take them off when they’re floppy with picked up with tongs). Spring onions or garlic scapes will be perfect once they’re a bit charred, and both are fine served room temp. Want them hot? Grill the veg once you’ve pulled off the lamb to rest 10 minutes.

Slice the lamb, arrange on a platter surrounded by the asparagus, pour any collected juices over the lamb, and your feast is ready.

And it’s delicious just like that. Want to make a few more things?

This Tangy Green Everything Sauce — packed with mint, parsley, dill and shallots — is pretty dreamy with the lamb.

And so is its oregano-forward cousin, chimichurri. Both can be made ahead, and they’re easy to transport in a jar.

Yesterday, prepping the lamb, asparagus and spring onions was so quick that I remembered some red potatoes I had in the pantry, I boiled them up and threw together a quick (and super portable!) French-accented potato salad. While the potatoes cooked, I whisked together red wine vinegar, a goodly dollop of whole-grain mustard, salt and olive oil, then added a spoonful of mayo, thinly sliced shallots, roughly chopped parsley and black pepper. When the potatoes were cooked, I sliced them in their jackets and tossed them with the sauce: delicious.

A bit more involved, our Best Potato Salad Ever is great with this, too. (Find more potato salad recipes here.) All potato salads are portable as can be — ideal for stress-free at-home entertaining, or we’ll-bring-it-all personal pop-up dinners.

For dessert, the arrival of strawberry season makes it easy to keep it simple: Stem the berries (halving or quartering if they’re large), sprinkle with a little sugar or toss in Grand Marnier or other orange liqueur, let macerate an hour or two and serve just like that. Or with ice cream.

Strawberry Pavlova

If it’s a fancier feast, you can make Strawberry Pavlovas: These are great for Easter, Mother’s Day or Passover celebrations (they’re flour-free!). Again, everything can be made ahead — just assemble them on the spot.

So that’s the blueprint: As simple or extended as you like.

Happy spring!

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Cookbooks We Love: In 'Treasures of the Mexican Table,’ Pati Jinich shares recipes soaked in local character

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By Leslie Brenner

Treasures of the Mexican Table: Classic Recipes, Local Secrets BY PATI JINICH; PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANGIE MOSIER, 2021, HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT, $35.

Backgrounder

This is the third book from Pati Jinich (pronounced “HEEN-ich”), host of the long-running, award-winning PBS series ‘Pati’s Mexican Table.” In the show, the Mexico City native travels around the country discovering and bringing to viewers its delicious foodways. (Its 10th season features the state of Jalisco.) Her excellent debut cookbook, Pati’s Mexican Table, published in 2013, focused on the basics of Mexican cooking. Three years later, she published Mexican Today, offering personal favorites aimed at busy cooks with families.

Why we love this one

Like a latter-day Diana Kennedy, Jinich traveled widely and deeply for Treasures of the Mexican Table, turning up outstanding, delicious, sometimes classic and often less well known dishes in people’s homes, in restaurants, in markets and on the street. If you love the anthropological and culinary richness of Kennedy’s classics The Cuisines of Mexico and Mexican Regional Cooking, but wish those volumes included visuals, this is the book for you. The food is enticingly photographed by Angie Mosier, Jinich has a winning personality and her writing is exceedingly relatable, warm and engaging.

Vuelva a la Vida is a coastal dish that’s like a cross between ceviche and a seafood coctél.

The book is indeed filled with treasures; I stuck Post-It notes on no fewer than 25 recipes as must-tries, and loved the ones I cooked.

For Instance, Vuelve a la Vida

If you’ve ever traveled on Mexico’s Pacific or Gulf coasts, you’ve probably bumped into the cool and revivifying seafood dish called Vuelve a la Vida, which means “return to life.” Tangy, bright and lively, it’s like a cross between ceviche — as it includes fish “cooked” in lime juice — and a Mexican-style seafood coctél. If you’re attracted to cocteles but sometimes find them too ketchupy, take Jinich’s Vuelve a la Vida for a spin: It does include a good dose of the red stuff, but it’s balanced with lime juice, smoothed out with olive oil infused with garlic and árbol chile and punched up with oregano.

Different versions of the dish use varying types of seafood. Jinich’s recipe calls for shrimp, lump crabmeat and firm-fleshed white fish (I used red snapper from the Gulf), but her “Cook’s Note” suggests playing around with the fin fish, and subbing cooked squid or octopus, raw oysters, clams or scallops. Thinking about the dish now is making me crave it; I can’t wait to try it again with some squid and maybe oysters in the mix.

Belly-Button Soup

Jinich learned to make Sopa de Ombligo, a pinto-bean and masa dumpling soup, from Maria Elena Machado in the tiny Sinaloa mountain town of Jinetes de Machado. Ombligo means belly-button; the word attaches itself to the soup because its dumplings each have a navel-like dimple pressed into it. It’s warming, rich and wonderful — and those dumplings are a great way to feature masa harina made from heirloom corn.

For the puréed base, you can either start with dried pintos or use canned beans. Both ways yielded great results, so don’t beat yourself up if you want to take the shortcut.

A sumptuous mole called Atápakua de Pollo con Hongos

From the indigenous Purépecha people of Michoacán, Atápakua de Pollo con Hongos has a similar color palette as Sopa de Ombligo, but completely different flavors. Not familiar with atápakua? Larousse Cocina Mexico defines it as a dish with a “very spicy sauce made with masa and guajillos or green chiles, tomato, cilantro or mint and some type of meat or vegetable” (my translation). Jinich includes both cilantro and mint, and uses charred tomatillos — which give the dish a delightful, unexpected brightness. She translates it as “Chicken Mole with Mushrooms,” and provides an excellent side-bar page about what makes a mole a mole — it’s a preparation with a mashed or ground sauce combining a number of ingredients including at least one type of chile, and characterized by “multidimensional layering of flavors.”

For this one, masa harina is stirred in, adding sumptuous body. (Naturally I used the marvelous heirloom masa harina from Masienda.) It’s very saucy, so take Jinich’s suggestion of serving it with warm corn tortillas and rice.

You’ve gotta try this

Jinich’s Pastel de Almendra y Chocolate — a flourless (and gluten-free) chocolate almond cake — may be the easiest chocolate cake in the universe. Mix eggs and condensed sweetened milk, add melted butter and chocolate, dump in dry ingredients, mix again and bake. The resulting dessert is moist, chocolatey, rich and delicious, so good I’m going to be sure to have chocolate and almond meal always on hand so I can whip one up at will.

Jinich’s original recipe calls for combining everything in the jar of blender or in the bowl of a food processor, but neither my blender nor my full-sized Cuisinart were large enough to accommodate the batter. (A large blender jar, such as that of a Vitamix, probably would be.) For that reason, I changed the method; our adaptation uses a hand-mixer instead. Which brings me to . . .

A caveat

Treasures would have benefited from more rigorous recipe testing and editing. Because the recipes are sometimes hinky or not as clear as they might be, the book is probably better suited to more experienced and confident cooks who can adjust on the fly. Eyeballing the Vuelve a la Vida recipe, I could see that three pounds of seafood might be a lot for a dish that’s meant to serve 6 to 8 as an appetizer or 4 to 6 as a light main course. I halved the ingredient amounts to test the recipe, and found the adjustment to be perfect — the recipe as printed yielded twice as much as needed. (Our adapted version uses 1 1/2 pounds of seafood total, which is ample for 6 to 8 appetizer portions. Meanwhile, over-purchasing crabmeat isn’t what anyone wants to be doing these days, as the price has skyrocketed.) The first time I made the Sopa de Ombligo, the dumplings completely dissolved into the soup — it turned out the recipe called for too much water added to the masa harina (our adapted recipe adjusts it).

Still wanna make

Sopa de Esquites con Queso (Corn Soup with Quest Fresco); Cecina (Adobo Pork); Tasajo (grilled air-dried beef); and Mole Verde con Puerco y Frijol Blanco from Oaxaca; Chicken Pozole with Pinto Beans and Carne Asada from Sonora; Sincronizadas con Rajas y Chorizo from Coahuila; Chiles Rellenos de Atún (pickled poblanos stuffed with tuna) and lamb barbacoa from central Mexico; Frijol con Puerco Yucateca and Pámpano en Salsa Verde from the Yucatán; Birria (braised goat or lamb) from Jalisco. And a dessert I won’t be able to resist making for long: Helado de Leche Quemada — Burnt Milk Ice Cream, also from Oaxaca, from the weaving village Teotitlán del Valle.

Editing and testing concerns notwithstanding, this is a book I highly recommend: Bursting with delectable inspiration, it beautifully expresses the incredible richness of a Mexican cooking. It’s one I’m sure I’ll be referring to for years to come.

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Fresh, light and hopeful: Here are 7 of our favorite starters for spring

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Sabzi Khordan, the herb platter that starts nearly every Persian meal. Here it is shown with a quickly made version of naan-e barbari (Persian flatbread) fashioned from frozen pizza dough.

By Leslie Brenner

As spring beginnings go, planet Earth has seen better. (Really — tornadoes just now??!)

Here’s to hope and renewal — and with that in mind, a few delicious ways to begin the meals of spring.

The Greenest Gazpacho

Vegan, gluten-free, easy-to-make (in a blender, no cooking) and finished with a handful of gorgeous fresh spring herbs, this is the soup I turn to when the sun warms the earth, but tomato season is still a ways off. It gets richness from raw almonds or cashews and optimistic tang from sherry vinegar.

Asparagus Gribiche

Inspired by a recipe in the Gjelina cookbook, this dish celebrates two of my favorite springtime treats: asparagus and eggs. It’s dressy enough for Easter or Passover, and a delightful treat any old time.

Pea-Ricotta Dip

Foolproof and addictive, this dip is made with frozen peas, swirled with ricotta and brightened with lemon zest. It comes together in a flash.

Ridiculously Easy Minted Pea Soup

Our spin on French potage Saint-Germain — fresh pea soup, served warm — this one’s also made from frozen peas, yet it tastes like you spent hours shelling fresh ones. Elegant and easy, it’s the perfect beginning to a spring dinner, or dreamy for lunch.

Sabzi Khordan — Persian Herb Platter

Sabzi Khordan is the platter of herbs and accouterments that appears on nearly every Iranian table. You can nibble on the herbs from the start of the meal and throughout, or wrap a small assortment in a piece of nan-e barbari, Persian flatbread. Our friend Nilou Motamed shared her super-easy recipe for the nan shown here, made from frozen pizza dough; find a link in our Sabzi Khordan recipe.

Vegan Spring Beauty Soup

Made with beautiful spring vegetables — asparagus, leeks, sugar-snap peas, young carrots, turnips and more — this plant-based soup is light and elegant.

Artichokes Vinaigrette

Spring begins artichoke season, and artichokes are a great thing to have in your repertoire from now through the end of summer. You can boil them and serve them with mayo to dip the leaves in, or open up the petals and drizzle on a shallot vinaigrette in classic French style. Our recipe links to a story that shows how to prep them.

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Taste my Ukraine in a bowl of cold beet borscht

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 By Leslie Brenner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cook for Ukraine Pop-up: Buy our $5 e-Cookbook, and we'll donate all proceeds to World Central Kitchen

By Leslie Brenner

UPDATE: July 9, 2022

Just sent in a $50 donation, representing sales of 10 copies of ‘21 Recipes’ between April 3 and today. The pop-up and special pricing continues!

UPDATE: April 3, 2022

Yesterday we sent in another $50 donation — representing our net proceeds from sale of the e-cookbook, plus a little more for a round number. The pop-up continues!

UPDATE: March 23, 2022

Pop-up extended!

Heartfelt gratitude to the many of you who have purchased a copy of ‘21 Recipes’ in support of World Central Kitchen’s efforts for Ukraine. To date, we have sold 64 copies of the e-cookbook. On Monday, March 21 we sent all our proceeds (plus a little extra) to World Central Kitchen. Because orders continue to come in, we are extending the pop-up — and will continue donating all of our proceeds (the cover price less the 45-cent fee Stripe charges us to process each order) to WCK.

We know this is a drop in the bucket, and we encourage you to make a larger donation, if you can, directly to World Central Kitchen.

ORIGINAL POST: March 12, 2022

Have you been seeking a way to help Ukraine? We have an easy answer for those who love to cook: Now through March 20, we’re offering a special pop-up sale of our e-Cookbook — 21 Favorite Recipes from Cooks Without Borders — in support of World Central Kitchen. Normally $7, it’s on sale for just $5 per copy, and we're donating 100% percent of our proceeds* to WCK.

In case you’re not familiar with it, World Central Kitchen (WCK) is the non-profit founded by chef José Andrés with the mission of providing fresh, nourishing meals to communities in need around the world. The organization has been doing incredible work with its Chefs for Ukraine campaign.

Just after Russia launched its full-scale attack on Ukraine, WCK began serving hot meals to Ukrainian refugees crossing into southern Poland through the 24-hour pedestrian border crossing. Since then, WCK has expanded its efforts, and Chefs for Ukraine is feeding people across the region — in Poland, Romania, Moldova, and Hungary. It is also partnering with restaurants within Ukraine to get hot meals to anyone in need.

CWB eCookbook Cover 3.22.png
sale
21 Favorite Recipes from Cooks Without Borders
$5.00 $7.00

Grab our e-book to support Chefs for Ukraine’s efforts

Published in January 2021, our $5 e-Cookbook includes 21 of our best original recipes. After you receive your digital copy, we’d like to encourage you to make a separate donation to WCK, if you can. Then cook something delicious, and dedicate your meal to the people of Ukraine.

Ready to purchase and support Ukraine? Click on the ‘21 Favorite Recipes’ image above.

And please pass on this pop-up invitation to friends who will want to cook for Ukraine!

UPDATE: March 30, 2022

Below are the donations we have made with proceeds from 21 Favorite Recipes from Cooks Without Borders to date. At the end of March, we will make another donation, and continue making proceeds donations monthly for the duration of this drive.

*45 cents of each e-book purchase will be retained by Stripe for processing. We will donate the full $4.55 we collect on each purchase to WCK.

The Personal Pop-up Family Dinner: Transportable and delicious, it's the meal of the moment

A lamb barbacoa taco meal for four, offered by Molino Olōyō last holiday season, and for Super Bowl Sunday pickup at a pop-up

By Leslie Brenner

“Hi, I know you’re busy and stressed — how about if I make dinner and bring it over to you one night this week? We can open a bottle of wine and enjoy it together.”

It’s a personal pop-in family-style dinner, inspired by the restaurant-style drop-off/pick up family meals that are suddenly everywhere. What a beautiful way to re-bond with friends you’ve missed the last couple of years.

There’s so much to be said for a big delicious something you can cook in advance, then reheat and serve later or another day. Make it during a weekend, then pop up at a friend’s later in the week and join them for dinner. Or you might drop it off for a friend or family member who is overwhelmed and needs a little nurturing. Or offer it as a gift — for a birthday or any occasion.

Alternatively, you might keep it as a delicious ace in the hole you’ll pull out during the workweek ahead — whether you’re feeding a family for one night, yourself and your partner for two dinners-for-two, or your solo self all week long.

Family dinners for four, packaged at the restaurant for pick-up or drop-off, with instructions for how to reheat at home, helped many restaurants survive the closure of their dining rooms during the pandemic. It continues to sustain them, and it’s also one way chefs — including Cooks Without Borders’ Mexican cuisine expert, Olivia Lopez — are launching their restaurants and other food businesses in advance of signing a lease on a brick-and-mortar location.

There’s plenty we can learn from the way these chefs conceive of these meals-for-four, pack them up, transport and deliver them — lessons that translate to dropping off meals to our own peeps, as well as cooking in advance for ourselves and our house-mates.

Ideal are dishes that can be completely cooked in advance and are just as good (or maybe even better) reheated. You can transport them in foil pans wrapped well in plastic wrap, with fresh garnishes in jars or zipper bags. Keep those garnishes separate to be added after reheating, and include written instructions for reheating and serving.

Many hot foods portioned for four can be reheated in a 375 degree oven for 25 minutes or so. Others — like a pot of soup — are quickly reheated on the stove.

And then there are the dishes you can cook till nearly done, and the same 25 minutes in the oven them will finish them perfectly.

Here’s a roundup of dishes from Cooks Without Borders that fit the bill this season — including notes on how to manage them for transport and reheating.

Sheet-Pan Chicken with Turnips, Carrots and Harissa

This easy and super-flavorful sheet-pan recipe for Moroccan-spiced chicken thighs reheats beautifully (cook it all the way through before packing it up) — 25 minutes in a 375-degree oven should do it. Pack chopped herb garnish in a zipper bag, with instructions to transfer the dish to a serving platter, then scatter the herbs over all.

Rapini, Cannellini and Italian Sausage Melt

Prepare almost to the end. If you don’t want to loan your Dutch oven to the recipient, transfer to a half-size (about 8 by 6 inches) foil roasting pan. Either way, lay the mozzarella slices over all then cover or wrap in plastic film. Reheat 25 minutes at 375 degrees, then turn oven to broil and broil for a minute or two, until the cheese starts to turn golden in spots.

Send by itself, or with a simple green salad — with vinaigrette in a jar or bottle.

RECIPE: Rapini, Cannellini and Italian Sausage Melt

Quintessential Quiche Lorraine

Make this in a foil pie tin rather than a glass or ceramic one. It can be enjoyed room-temp or reheated at 375 for about 20 minutes, or slice first for quicker re-heating. If it’s not to be eaten that day, it can be wrapped in plastic and refrigerated for up to a week. Remove plastic wrap before re-heating.

Tu Casa Mi Casa Chicken Tinga

Transfer to a half-size foil roaster with instructions to either warm, covered, in a saucepan, or reheat 20 minutes in a 375-degree oven. Make a batch of Arroz Blanco (Mexican-style white rice) to include with it; include instructions to reheat the same way as the Chicken Tinga, or transfer the rice to a micro-wave-safe bowl, sprinkle with a few drops of water and reheat in the microwave. Or include a batch of home-made or store-bought corn tortillas, which can also be revived in the microwave.

‘Falastin’ Cilantro-Crusted Roasted Cod

This delicious dish from Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley’s wonderful 2020 book Falastin is quick and easy to put together, and travels well. Roast for about 6 minutes, rather than the full 7 or 8, and when it’s reheated — 20 minutes at 475 degrees — it should be about perfect. (Instruct recipient to check one of the fillets to make sure it’s cooked through, then plate, garnish with the lemon wedges and drizzle tahini sauce on top, if including.) Deliver in a half-sized foil roasting pan, with lemon wedges in a zipper bag and the optional Tahini Sauce in a jar or plastic tub. If you like, include a box of instant couscous and/or store-bought pita bread in the package.

Deviled Duck Legs Provençal

These succulent, crunchy-topped duck legs are super-easy to make — about five minutes of prep, then shove ‘em in the oven to roast for an hour and a half or a little longer. They reheat really well — cover loosely with foil and reheat in a 375-degree oven for 25 minutes.

Consider including a bag of baby arugula or washed, dried and torn frisée, a jar of vinaigrette, and instructions to dress the salad lightly and serve the duck legs on top.

Or include a batch of French Lentil Salad, which can be served room-temp, or reheated along with the duck legs or on top of the stove.

Najmieh’s Fresh Herb Kuku

Finally, this recipe for a Persian-style frittata-type dish, packed with fresh herbs — from Najmieh Batmanglij’s ‘Food of Life’ — is a great way to deliver a harbinger of spring. Transport on a foil sheet pan, wrapped in plastic film or foil, with the caramelized barberries in a jar or plastic tub and fresh dill garnish in a zipper bag. Include instructions to either serve room temperature or reheat in a 375 degree oven for 20 minutes, then transfer to a serving plate and garnish with the barberries and dill.

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Chef Daniel Boulud gives a humble French dish, hachis Parmentier, the royal treatment

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By Leslie Brenner

The dish known as hachis Parmentier is decidedly not one of France’s sexier dishes. In fact, it’s not a sexy or aspirational dish at all. At least I didn’t think it was — until I heard of one I simply had to have.

Traditionally, hachis Parmentier was leftover pot roast chopped up (hâcher means to chop), covered with mashed potatoes and baked. Today, most French people know the dish as a layer of sautéed ground beef in a baking dish topped with mashed potatoes, then browned in the oven. The beef may have some chopped onion and carrot in it, but that’s as fancy as it usually gets. In other words, it’s more or less shepherd’s pie.

That’s why when I read that Daniel Boulud, New York City’s superstar French chef, has a thing for hachis Parmentier, I was dying to hear how he approaches it.

I had been researching the dish, looking for recipes from cookbook authors I admire, and found one in Dorie Greenspan’s excellent Around my French Table. Dorie’s headnote led with an anecdote. She and her husband were lucky enough, some years back, to have Boulud cook a meal for them. “It was luxurious,” she wrote:

“and at the end of it, after thanking Daniel endlessly, I asked him what he was going to have for dinner. ‘Hachis Parmentier,’ he said with the kind of anticipatory delight usually seen only in children who’ve been told they can have ice cream. We had just had lobster and truffles, but Daniel was about to have the French version of shepherd’s pie, and you could tell he was going to love it.”

I had to have it! I’d already scoured the four Daniel Boulud cookbooks on my shelves without turning up a recipe; next I searched online. Nada.

So I emailed him, asking the Lyon-born, world-renowned, double-Michelin-starred chef — who was recently named the best restaurateur on the planet — if he had a recipe he might share with Cooks Without Borders. Thrillingly, he did! (Thank you, Daniel! And thank you, Daniel’s wonderful team!)

Daniel Boulud’s recipe

Ground beef? Nah — Daniel’s recipe starts with cubes of boneless ribeye steak. Which you marinate in Burgundy wine. The meat gets seared, then diced onions, carrots and parsnips are sweated, and all of it gets simmered for hours with the Burgundy (which you reduce way down first), combined with veal stock flavored with a bouquet garni with herbs, garlic and peppercorns.

“Hachis parmentier is all about how you build your sauce and flavors,” Daniel had written in the headnote. “It is a baked dish that starts with humble ingredients and simple techniques. I love to expand my version with the deep and rich flavors of Boeuf Bourguignon under a layer of creamy mashed potatoes topped with nutty Gruyère cheese.”

Those mashed potatoes? They’re not just figuratively creamy; they’re enriched with lots of butter and cream.

“Nothing warms your soul like the anticipation of this casserole on a cold winter’s day,” Daniel added. You can say that again.

Unless you’re a lot wealthier than I am (ribeye is expensive!) you won’t be making this dish on a random Tuesday; it’s special enough for dinner party fare. I confess I did not open a bottle of Burgundy for the sauce (don’t tell Daniel!); I used a $14 French pinot noir instead. The pinot was decent enough that I bought a second bottle to drink with the finished hachis Parmentier.

Meltingly tender after its hours of marinating and slow braising, the ribeye had fabulous flavor — this was by far the most luxurious beef stew I’ve ever simmered. I didn’t have veal stock (unless you’re a chef, odds are you don’t either), so instead used Daniel’s recommended second choice: store-bought beef broth boosted with veal demi-glace. (D’Artagnan makes a good demi-glace that you can buy online or find in some higher-end supermarkets.) You need that boosting because the sauce has to be substantial enough that it holds the meat together under the potatoes and doesn’t run all over the plate when you serve it. The natural gelatin in demi-glace (and also in veal stock) adds the right body, as well as a lot of flavor.

Because the dish is so expensive (even with the pinot swapped for Burgundy, the ingredients totaled more than $60), I wondered how it would be with a less pricey cut of beef. So I made it again — substituting chuck for the ribeye.

It was good — and I do recommend that if you’re keeping to a budget. But it’s considerably less special than Daniel’s original.

Without further adieu, here is Chef Boulud’s recipe. After that, we’ll dive into some of hachis Parmentier’s finer points and history, so unless you want to geek out with me, you may now be excused from the table.

What sent me down the H.P. rabbit hole

The recipe that started me on the hachier Parmentier mission was one in World Food: Paris, published last year by James Oseland. The dish was delicious (I love the idea of adding umami and body to ground beef with oyster sauce), but the recipe had some small technical issues. It whetted my appetite for it, though, and piqued my curiosity about what the dish could be in its best expression.

Read “Cookbooks We Love: James Oseland’s new ‘World Food’ title celebrates the iconic dishes of Paris”

Though I’m married to a Frenchman and have spent a lot of time in France over the decades, hachis Parmentier is not something I’d ever been served there — too homey, probably, to serve to a guest.

When we were in Bordeaux last summer, I picked up a copy of Le Grand Livre de La Cuisine Française: Recettes Bourgeoises & Populaire, by the renowned Paris chef Jean-François Piège. It’s a mammoth tome of nearly 1,100 pages, published just about a year ago. Basically it defines, catalogues and provides recipes for the French canon of standard dishes (in French only; it has not been translated). And yes — among its 1,000-plus recipes is one for hachis Parmentier. The beef cut: “3 grosses joues de boeuf” — three big beef cheeks. One is instructed to cook them for two and a half or three hours in red wine and veal stock till they’re “très fondantes” (very melty). Piège has you pull the braised beef cheeks apart with your fingers, then enrobe them in strained-and-seasoned braising liquid to which you add chopped parsley. Lay that in an oven-to-table baking dish, cover with brunoise (tiny dice) of onion, carrot and celery that’s been gently cooked in butter, top with potato purée, then with bread crumbs you’ve tossed with chopped garlic and grated comté cheese. Bake until the top has a “belle croûte dorée” — a beautiful golden crust. Et voilà.

Beef cheeks: Not the easiest cut for home cooks to find, and the recipe assumes much more cooking knowledge than most American home cooks will possess.

Wait, what about Dorie’s version?

So glad you asked! Dorie called for either cube steak or chuck in the version that follows the diverting headnote in Around My French Table. After simmering the meat, she chops it up — then adds pork sausage to the filling, which no doubt amps up the flavor and adds richness. Her hachis Parmentier looks very good; I look forward to trying it one day soon.

That’s about all I’ve got on the hachis. That leaves the Parmentier!

France’s permanent potato prince

Any French dish with “Parmentier” in its name necessarily involves potatoes. That’s because in the 18th century, Antoine Augustin Parmentier, a French agronomist and pharmacist, won a prize in 1773 offered by the Academy of Besançon for the discovery of plants that could be useful during times of famine, according to Larousse Gastronomique. Parmentier’s plant of choice: the potato.

Prior to that time, the French considered potatoes to be unwholesome and indigestible, suitable only for animal feed or to nourish poor people. Parmentier extolled potatoes’ nutritive virtues, and didn’t fail to let people know that they also taste really good. After winning the prize, Parmentier popularized the potato, publishing booklets about its uses and cultivation. He famously prepared a dinner for visiting statesman Benjamin Franklin starring a potato-centric menu, putting the potato permanently on France’s culinary map.

“For a time the potato itself was known as the parmentière in his honour,” Larousse recounts, “and he gave his name to various culinary preparations based on potatoes, especially hachis Parmentier — chopped beef covered with puréed potatoes and browned in the oven.”

And so we come full circle. The recipe that follows in Larousse goes roughly like this: “Dice or coarsely chop” boiled or braised beef. Cook lots of chopped onion in butter, sprinkle with a little flour, cook till lightly brown, add beef stock, cook down a bit, then add the chopped beef. Put the beef and onions in a gratin dish, cover with potato purée, top with breadcrumbs, moisten with melted butter and brown in the oven. “Although it is not traditional, a small cup of very reduced tomato sauce can be added to the chopped meat and a little grated cheese may be mixed with the breadcrumbs.”

I’ll be making Daniel’s recipe again before long, I suspect. I might even make veal stock to use as its foundation, should veal bones present themselves. Hard to imagine another version with such luxurious depth.

Maybe I’ll even spring for a bottle of Burgundy. No, not for the braising liquid, but to honor the finished — and fabulous — dish.

RECIPE: Daniel Boulud’s Hachis Parmentier

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These 6 chocolate desserts are the solution to many of life’s problems

The Mexican-Chocolate ‘Situation’

By Leslie Brenner

A chocolate dessert is the answer to so many of life’s difficulties. Anxiety about Russian aggression in Ukraine. Pandemic ennui. How to put a delicious flourish on a Valentine’s Day dinner.

Here’s how six of our favorite chocolate treats can come richly to the rescue.

Chocolate Dynamite Cookies

It’s a snow day, school’s closed, you find yourself working at home, and the kids — who used to pray for such a situation — are despondent they can’t see their friends. Answer: Making a batch of these super-chocolately cookies is a great form of therapy.

From Roxana Jullapat’s wonderful Mother Grains cookbook, they pack a triple chocolate punch. Melted bittersweet chocolate chips and Dutch-process cocoa powder go into the dough, and they’re studded with more chocolate chips. Rye flour gives them whole-grain earthiness. They’re rich, melty and soft. Even small children will enjoy helping you roll the dough into balls and then baking.

Molten Chocolate Cake

Didn’t think anyone would want dessert, so you haven’t planned anything? This classic dessert — created in New York City in the 1980’s — can literally be on your table 30 minutes after you decide to make it, making you an instant kitchen hero. With soufflé-like lightness, it has a secret treasure of creamy chocolate inside.

Because it’s so elegant, simple and easy-to-execute, it also makes a dreamy end to a Valentine’s Day dinner.

Your Favorite Chocolate Mousse

You need a dessert that can be completely made ahead. And two of your guests is gluten-averse. And your oven’s on the fritz.

Your Favorite Chocolate Mousse is the answer. It’s creamy (though it’s dairy-free, except for the optional whipped cream dollop on top), luxuriously chocolatey and transporting. Why is it “your favorite”? Because you can customize it and make it your own by using anything from Cognac to orange liqueur to vanilla to coffee to flavor the mousse (the possibilities are literally endless). Then you can decorate it with shaved chocolate, cacao nibs, rose petals, a candied violet or multi-sprinkles — whatever you want!

Oh, and yes — this is also a fabulous flourish for a Valentine’s dinner, and you’ll have extras in the fridge as treats for the following days.

The Mexican-Chocolate ‘Situation’

This one — which celebrates chocolate’s ancestral home, Mexico — is great for all kinds of ennui. It’s also what we recommend if you participated in the Great Resignation and you’re trying to figure out what to do next: Make this dessert.

With a texture a bit like a cakey brownie, but with the moist richness of almond meal instead of flour, these treats also solve the “I don’t have the right pan” problem, as well as the gluten-free guest conundrum. (A panoply of problems this one solves!) You can make it in a round cake pan and cut into wedges, or a rectangular or square baking pan and cut into squares or bars. Flavored with cinnamon, ancho chile, vanilla and brandy — which, along with the almondy taste, makes them taste just like Mexican chocolate — they’re delicious as is, or topped with ice cream, or maybe cinnamon-flavored whipped cream.

Don’t have almond flour? That happened once when Cooks Without Borders’ designer Juliet Jacobson and I wanted to whip them up on the spur of the moment. We ground up whole almonds instead — and got a slightly more rustic texture, just as wonderful. Don’t have ancho chile powder? Use a pinch of cayenne instead, or skip the spice. Don’t have brandy? Double up on the vanilla. How did we get along so long without this?

World Peace 2.0 Cookies

For foreign affairs angst, a batch of World Peace 2.0 Cookies is the remedy. At once chewy like a brownie and sandy like a French sablé, these rich and buttery treats — flecked with cacao nibs, dried raspberries and melty chocolate — come from Dorie Greenspan’s latest cookbook, Baking with Dorie.

The Brazilian Chocolate Cake, before the top layer goes on

Brazilian Chocolate Cake

And honestly, there’s nothing the perfect chocolate cake can’t solve. Even the marital crime of having failed to conceive a dessert for your spouse’s birthday, or the parenting sin of desiring a birthday cake for your kid that you’ll feel is worth the calories as well. And of course it’s excellent for Valentine’s Day: Yes, it’s a whole cake, but a slice the day or two after, eaten with the fingers and enjoyed with a cup of coffee, makes February gloom taste awfully sweet.

Finishing the Brazilian Chocolate Cake

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Celebrate Chinese New Year with luscious red-braised pork belly (and greens!) from Betty Liu's 'My Shanghai'

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By Leslie Brenner

In her beautiful 2020 book, My Shanghai, Betty Liu has a lovely page about Lunar New Year. In Chinese households on New Year’s Eve, she explains, “guests are welcomed with cups of tea and fresh fruit,” and then there’s a parade of foods that in one way or another symbolize prosperity: whole fish, egg dumplings, tatsoi and sticky rice cakes among them.

Tuesday, February 1 marks the start of the Year of the Tiger, and in Chinese and the other Asian cultures that celebrate the holiday (including Vietnamese, Korean, Tibetan and Mongolian communities), the celebrations last about 15 days — from the new moon to the full moon.

One of my culinary adventurist dreams is to be invited, one day, to celebrate Lunar New Year’s Eve in the home of a Chinese or Chinese-American family. Alas, this year it will be but a dream once again. Given that we’re back to keeping to ourselves at home for dining lately, I think we’ll mark the occasion of Lunar New Year’s Eve by cooking something from Liu’s book — which I’ve only scratched the surface of.

So far, so great. The dish pictured above — Shanghai-style red-braised pork belly — has no specific symbolic connection to the holiday (that I know of!), but it is included in one of the Chinese New Years menus at The Woks of Life, one of my favorite cooking websites. And given that the holiday lasts a couple weeks, the wintry dish, which simmers for at least three hours (filling your kitchen with gorgeous aromas!) should be perfect for one of those dinners.

Watch Makers, Shakers & Mavens: Woks of Life co-founder Sarah Leung talks about Chinese and Chinese-American cooking with Leslie Brenner

In her headnote, Liu calls the dish“perhaps my favorite recipe in this entire book,” mentioning that it’s the dish that best represents Shanghai cuisine, so I had to try it as soon as I got my hands on the book last winter, just after it was published. It’s a winner — rich, tender, deeply flavorful and very soulful. I love that it’s her mom’s recipe.

One you get all the meat browned and braising, the dish simmers for at least three hours, which means if you work at home, you might even be able to manage it on a work day.

What to serve with the red-braised pork?

Certainly the dish could be part of a big feast, but it’s so rich and satisfying that it’s also wonderful with just white rice (its traditional accompaniment), and a simple stir-fried green, such as baby bok choy.

As a student of Chinese cooking, I’m always interested to see how Chinese cookbook authors and other cooks I admire approach a basic Chinese greens stir-fry — a versatile dish I can’t get enough of at home, and one that’s a fixture on Chinese tables.

I love Fuchsia Dunlop’s recipe for Baby Bok Choy with Shiitakes, from Every Grain of Rice. But with the red-braised pork belly, I wanted something even more basic, without the umami-richness of shiitakes. Happily, I found it in My Shanghai.

Liu’s recipe for a Basic Winter Greens Stir-Fry calls for baby bok choy, but regular bok choy, choy sum or Chinese water spinach take to it well, too. Best of all, there’s a valuable cooking lesson in Liu’s recipe, so this is a great greens recipe to try if, like me, you consider yourself a student of the genre.

Flavor of a thousand tangerines

And finally, here’s a dessert that’s not traditional, but works brilliantly following the braise: tangerine sorbet.

Tangerines are very much associated with the holiday. They’re at peak season now (the ones I’m getting have incredible flavor) and this recipe — adapted from David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop, captures and somehow amplifies all that gorgeous flavor. It’s an amazing (and easily achieveable!) mood-lifter at a moment that more than a few of us might need one.

RECIPE: Betty Liu’s Mom’s Shanghai Red-Braised Pork Belly

RECIPE: Basic Winter Greens Stir-Fry

RECIPE: Tangerine Sorbet

More about Lunar New Year traditions

• There’s a wealth of great info about Chinese New Year traditions at The Woks of Life, including menus.

• Award-winning cookbook author (and friend of Cooks Without Borders) Andrea Nguyen has a delicious post about Vietnamese Lunar New Year (Tet) at her splendid blog, Viet World Kitchen. There you’ll find some cool info about people born in the Year of the Tiger and, of course, a passel of enticing recipes.

More recipes and delicious ways to celebrate

Turnip Cake — a dim-sum favorite, can be even better made at home.

Cooks Without Borders Chinese and Chinese-American recipes page has plenty of other delicious dishes you might explore during the new year festivities. Glorious Lacquered Roast Duck or Chinese Lacquered Roast Chicken would be great centerpieces – both require some advance prep, but the effort involved is shockingly minimal. Lo Bak Go — the daikon cakes you find in dim-sum restaurants (where they often call them turnip cakes), can be even better when made at home; our recipe comes from The Woks of Life. Yangzhou Fried Rice would be awesome, as would Silken Tofu with Soy Sauce. Check that page — I think you’ll find lots you’ll want to try.

And these couple of weeks would be a great opportunity to dive into Chinese culture by cooking through an excellent book. Betty Liu, Fuchsia Dunlop and Eileen Fein-Lo are all great teachers as they write, and books by any of them are great places to start. And there are many more! Liu’s book has the bonus of gorgeous photos of Shanghai, so it feels like a getaway, as well.

Mix and match these recipes to conjure a spectacular Indian feast (and yes, we have Butter Chicken!)

By Leslie Brenner

Imagine inviting your family or friends to sit down to a sumptuous Indian feast, all prepared by you during a fragrant and soul-soothing afternoon in the kitchen.

The experience can absolutely be yours, and more easily than you might think. Your spread can be vegetarian, or it can star one of my own family’s absolutely favorite dishes — murgh makhani, known the world over as butter chicken. Below you’ll find menus (and recipes!) for both.

With the exception of just one of the recipes (a deliciously transporting dish of charred baby eggplants that calls for curry leaves), everything you’ll need should be available in a well-stocked general-purpose supermarket.

If it’s the butter chicken-centered feast you’re after, surround the main dish with basmati rice, cucumber raita, a minty coriander chutney and something green. When I orchestrated a birthday dinner for my husband Thierry recently, our green was baby spinach simply sautéed with garlic.

If you’d like your feast to be plant-based, you might choose a jazzy saag paneer (simmered greens with fresh Indian cheese) as your centerpiece. I love the version from Maneet Chauhan’s book Chaat, which uses pretty much any kind of greens you like (spinach, chard, collard greens, etc.) — or stick with spinach, if that’s what you’re craving. Use Chauhan’s method for making wonderful home-made paneer (that’s the fresh cheese); for that I’d probably make the cheese the day before. But you could swap that for purchased paneer. Alternatively, do as Priya Krishna does in her book Indian-Ish and use feta in place of paneer.

Maneet Chauhan’s Saag Paneer

For a butter chicken feast, I keep it pretty simple. Murgh makhani is the only dish that’s very involved, and to that I add plain basmati rice (perfect for soaking up all that delicious, rich sauce), something simple and green (like that spinach), plus cucumber raita and coriander chutney — both of which come together quickly, with no cooking. If I’m feeling carby, I might pick up some garlic naan from Trader Joe’s. If you’d like an actual recipe for an excellent Indian-style veg, Peas and Potatoes Cooked in a Bahari Style or Spinach with Dill (Dakhini Saag) are both super easy; both come from Madhur Jaffrey’s wonderful Vegetarian India, which we reviewed in 2015.

If you want to achieve a few things ahead of time, you can make the raita and chutney the day before, along with one of the ingredients in the butter chicken: Ginger-Garlic Paste. (Note: That’s also something you can pick up in Indian groceries, but I have found the one’s I’ve bought too salty or off-tasting.) Toast and grind spices and make a fabulous garam masala in advance, or you can buy a really good Punjabi-style one (perfect for butter chicken) at Penzeys. If this all sounds too labor-intensive, you can take a real shortcut: Buy a supermarket roasted chicken, skip to the sauce part of our butter chicken recipe, and simmer the pieces in the sauce a few minutes. (We won’t tell anyone!)

But first, perfect easy basmati rice

If you do go with the butter chicken, you’ll probably want rice. I learned to make perfect basmati rice from Jaffrey’s book as well, and you don’t need a formal recipe for it. Rinse 2 cups of basmati rice in several changes of water, cover it with a couple of inches of cold water and let it soak for half an hour. Bring 2 3/4 cups water to boil in an oven-proof pan with a tight-fitting lid. Drain the rice, add it to the boiling water, bring it back to the boil, and then transfer it to a 325-degree oven for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven, let it sit (still covered) for 10 minutes, fluff with a fork, and serve.

World Butter Chicken

As for the chicken, I honestly think nothing beats our World Butter Chicken, which streamlines our adaptation of chef Monish Gujral’s recipe from The Moti Mahal Cookbook. (Gujral’s grandfather first created murgh makhani a century ago.) We’re honored that Monish has given his nod of approval to our recipe.

Spices for Garam Masala

Murgh Makhani (Butter Chicken) Feast

World Butter Chicken

Basmati Rice (see above)

Cucumber Raita

Coriander Chutney

Sautéed Spinach with Garlic OR Bahari-Style Peas & Potatoes OR Dakhini Saag (Spinach with Dill)

Garlic or Plain Naan (pick up at Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods)

Anjali Pathak’s Charred Baby Eggplants

A panoply of plant-based treats

On the other hand, I can’t think of anything more enticing than a gorgeous, aromatic array of Indian vegetarian dishes. It would be super fun to cook up the feast with a friend or two. Or do it as a potluck — any of the dishes listed below should travel just fine. Or just pick two of three of the dishes listed below to keep it more basic.

Another great centerpiece besides saag paneer is the platter of charred baby eggplants shown above, adapted from Anjali Pathak’s The Indian Family Kitchen. A crunchy topping of coconut, mustard seeds, curry leaves and ginger make it really special; fresh red chiles add a zing of heat that gets smoothed out with dabs of yogurt. It’s a fabulous dish.

One of the dishes listed below is a favorite from Madhur Jaffrey’s Vegetarian India: Roasted Cauliflower with Punjabi Seasonings. I make it frequently, sometimes as part of a vegan meal, with lentils, or a vegetarian one, with a rich and buttery dal.

Indian Vegetarian Feast

Anjali Pathak’s Charred Baby Eggplants

Maneet Chauhan’s Saag Paneer OR Dakhini Saag

Roasted Cauliflower with Punjabi Seasonings

Peas and Potatoes, Bihari Style

Cucumber Raita

Coriander Chutney

Basmati Rice (see above) AND/OR Purchased Garlic or Plain Naan

Whichever way you go with your Indian feast — or maybe you’ll just tackle one delicious dish — I wish you a beautiful and most fragrant journey.

Want to find all of Cooks Without Borders’ Indian recipes in one place? Visit our Indian Cuisine page.

Did you enjoy this story? You might like:

Cooks Without Borders Japanese Cuisine recipes page

Cooks Without Borders Middle Eastern/Levantine recipes page

Cooks Without Borders Recipes by Food Culture

Around the world in chicken soup: 7 recipes that soothe and delight

[Editor''s note: This story, originally published on February 6, 2021, is as relevant as ever.]

Chicken soup is a nearly universal expression of love, nurturing and care-giving — one that deliciously manifests itself from culture to culture.

In this series of stories, we have explored chicken soups on five continents and one sub-continent. (Excuse us, Australia! Sorry Antarctica!) We thought, as the Northeast is blanketed in snow, that it would be cozy to round them up.

Thailand: Tom Kha Kai (Coconut-Galangal Chicken Soup)

“If you can smash things, cut things and boil water, you can pull off this classic on the first try,” writes Leela Punyaratabandhu in the headnote to her recipe for coconut-galangal chicken soup in Simple Thai Food, from which this recipe is adapted. (Read our review of the book.) She’s right: Once we had those key fresh ingredients, which we found at a local Asian supermarket, making the soup was remarkably quick and easy — and stunningly delicious.

It has lovely richness from the coconut, tang from lime juice and beautiful perfume from lemongrass and makrut lime leaves. Though it was based on store-bought chicken broth, it was as fabulous as any we’ve had in Thai restaurants.

In Brazil, chicken soup comes with rice. “Canja de galinha is the soup my grandma used to make — not just for me but for our whole family,” says Junior Borges, a super talented Rio-born chef in Dallas.

The chef still enjoys his canja. “I think it’s definitely one of those comforting, comforting things. For us, it’s our chicken noodle soup.” (Read more about it here.)

For this one, you’ll start with chicken parts, so it’s a homemade broth, soothing and aromatic. It’s finished with cilantro and parsley.

RECIPE: Junior Borges’ Canja de Galinha

Ethiopia: Ye Ocholoni Ina Doro Shorba (Peanut-Chicken Soup)

Thick, warm and satisfying, Ethiopian ye ocholoni in doro shorba gets its richness and body from peanuts; it’s beautifully spiced with Berbere spice mix. Ours is adapted from Jenn Louis’ The Chicken Soup Manifesto — a marvelous cookbook that explores chicken soups and stews from 64 countries. Lately Louis, a well-known chef in Portland, Oregon,has devoted herself to feeding her city’s homeless people, who have been suffering terribly during the pandemic. (There’s a link on her website to help her with donations, or even with cooking.) Thank you, Chef!

RECIPE: Ye Ocholoni Ina Doro Shorba

Eastern Europe: Ashkenazi Jewish Chicken Soup

This is the chicken soup I grew up with, which is in the same vein as the chicken soup Jewish mothers all over the United States have made for their families for eons. I happen to think the one my mom taught me is the best in the universe. It starts with a whole chicken. Very basic, very delicious.

RECIPE: Joan’s Chicken Soup

Mexico: Sopa de Lima (Yucatán-Style Chicken-Lime Soup)

I love this bright, light chicken soup from Mexico’s Yucatán region, which also comes to Cooks Without Borders via Louis’ The Chicken Soup Manifesto. It’s a good one to make when you don’t have time to make homemade broth. I do like to take the time to fry up some tortilla chips — which is also a great way to use up stale corn tortillas. If you miss Mexico as much as I do — or always wanted to go there — you’ll love this.

RECIPE: Jenn Louis’ Sopa de Lima

Tibet: Thukpa (Tibetan Chicken-Noodle Soup)

Thukpa, a fiery chicken-noodle soup from Tibet, is just the thing when you want super-flavorful chicken soup with lots of veg — it has cabbage, green beans, tomatoes, carrots, bean sprouts, bamboo shoots and bell peppers. It comes together quickly, as it’s based on store-bought chicken broth.

We found it in Maneet Chauhan’s Chaat: Recipes from the Kitchens, Markets and Railways of India. Read more about it here.

RECIPE: Maneet Chauhan’s Thukpa

Iran: Abgusht-e Morgh Ba Kufteh-ye Nokhodchi (Persian Chicken Soup with Chickpea and Lamb Meatballs)

I saved my favorite for last: a Persian chicken soup with tender lamb meatballs and an incredible garnish of dried rose petals, herbs and garlic.

This is the most aromatic and interesting chicken soup I've probably ever tasted — tinted with aromatic saffron and redolent of cardamom and cumin. It’s adapted from one of my favorite cookbooks — Food of Life by Najmieh Batmanglij. We wrote about it last month.

Making this soup is a huge project, so reserve a whole afternoon for it — it’s the perfect project for this weekend!

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Salsa macha is the hottest condiment of the year, and we've got the best recipe

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By Leslie Brenner

Back in April, we wrote about salsa macha, the glorious Mexican condiment that was just starting to take off.

READ: Look out chile crisp: Here comes salsa macha, the Mexican condiment that may change your life

Since then, it has swept the nation — Food Network Magazine just included Salsa Macha on its hot list, among “the food and drinks you’ll see everywhere in 2022.”

In the article, the editors wrote:

“Chili crisp was everywhere last year, and now another spicy oil-based condiment is poised for stardom: Mexico’s salsa macha, made with dried chiles, nuts and garlic. Demand is so high that chefs like Olivia Lopez and Rocio Camacho have started bottling their own beloved versions.”

Yes, that’s Olivia Lopez — Cooks Without Borders’ Mexican Cuisine expert! The business she founded last year, Molino Olōyō, sells her salsa macha locally in Dallas. (Contact Molino Olōyō by DM through its Instagram feed to purchase — please note that it is not yet available for shipping; local orders only.)

Don’t fret, though. If you don’t live in Dallas, you can still enjoy Olivia’s Salsa Macha — which to my taste is the best salsa macha in the universe — because Olivia was generous enough to share the recipe with Cooks Without Borders. I love it so much that I always (and I mean always) have a jar of it in the fridge. When it starts running low, I make more — we have become that addicted in my household. When my son Wylie, who has a peanut allergy, was visiting over the holidays, I made up a batch using cashews — just as delicious.

Would you like it? It’s yours. Happy Macha Year.

More for your repertoire: Cookbook recipes we loved last year (Part II)

Sopa de Lima from Jenn Louis’ ‘The Chicken Soup Manifesto’

By Leslie Brenner

Editor’s note: This is Part II of “21 Recipes from cookbooks we loved last year.”

In Part I of this story, we ran through recipes from Najmieh Batmanglij, Fuchsia Dunlop, Yotam Ottolenghi, Marcus Samuelsson, Andrea Nguyen, Enrique Olvera & Co. and Roxana Jullapat. Here are nine more recipes we loved from the cookbooks we covered last year.

Jenn Louis’ Sopa de Lima

If ever there was a cookbook meant for a years-long pandemic, it’s Jenn Louis’ The Chicken Soup Manifesto. Published in October 2020 (which means she started working on it long before anyone ever heard of COVID-19), it celebrates the world’s favorite feel-good elixir at it’s expressed in 64 countries.

I wrote about the book the month after it was published, but it took awhile before we cooked up Louis’ Sopa de Lima, which turned out to be one of my favorites from the book. At once bright, bright, optimistic and soothing, it evokes the sunny attitude of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.

‘Wine Style’ Marinated Mushrooms

In August we reviewed Wine Style, the first solo book by one of our favorite cookbook authors, Kate Leahy. (I’m jumping around time-wise in the year, because I wanted to save the rest of the sweets for the end of the story.) These miraculously easy and delicious marinated mushrooms make a fabulous pre-dinner, wine-friendly nibble or side dish, which is why I’ve made them at least half a dozen times.

Italian Sausages with Roasted Cauliflower and Greens

Like everyone else in the universe, I’m always looking for easy, appealing weeknight dinners. This one, starring Italian sausages, baby spinach and cauliflower, is great for wintertime.

‘Wine Style’ Roasted Edamame

Keep a bag of edamame in the shell in your freezer at all times, and you whip up this irresistible bar snack in a jiffy. It’s fantastic with sake, beer or orange wine.

Dorie Greenspan’s Gouda Gougères

The recipe for gougères — French cheese puffs — in Dorie Greenspan’s latest book, Baking with Dorie, may be my favorite ever. Aged gouda and cumin seeds make them special, and their texture is perfect. We reviewed the book in October.

Apricot and Pistachio Olive-Oil Cake

Ready? Here come the sweets! This was the first thing I made from Baking with Dorie, and it bowled me over. Apricot and pistachio is a fabulous combo.

Showstopper Rolled Pavlova with Peaches and Blackberries

Yotam Ottolenghi struck again in July, when I fell in love with the rolled Pavlova filled with whipped cream, blackberries and peaches in Sweet: Desserts from London’s Ottolenghi. He wrote the 2017 book with Helen Goh. You’ll need to wait for summer peaches to make the exact thing, or you could try one with blackberries and blueberries. Or maybe even sliced bananas or mangoes and blueberries. Or dried apricots and prunes poached in red wine with a little sugar.

‘The Perfect Scoop’ Tangerine Sorbet

When we reviewed David Lebovitz’s 2018 book The Perfect Scoop last year (yep, three years after it was published), it was July — prime ice-cream season. But don’t think frozen desserts are only for summer: This tangerine sorbet spectacularly captures the flavor of great tangerines (also known as mandarins) at the height of their season — in other words, now! It’s insanely wonderful.

Gianduja Gelato with Stracciatella

Last, but absolutely not least, if I could make only one ice cream for the rest of my life, it might well be this one. It’s such a classic — gianduja is Italy’s famous marriage of hazelnut and chocolate. The gelato, also from David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop, is swirled at the last minute with melted chocolate, which turns magically into streaks of rich chocolate chips. Amazing!

21 recipes from cookbooks we loved last year (Part I)

Persian Chicken Soup with Chickpea and Lamb Meatballs from Nadjieh Batmangli’s 1986 cookbook ‘Food of Life’

By Leslie Brenner

My lifelong love affair with cookbooks has been supercharged by the pandemic, and the ups and downs of 2021 offered plenty of opportunities to explore titles both old and new. We reviewed nine of them during the course of the year, including new books by Marcus Samuelsson, Roxana Jullapat, Kate Leahy, Dorie Greenspan and James Oseland, plus titles (some recent, some older) from Fuchsia Dunlop, Yotam Ottolenghi, Enrique Olvera and David Lebovitz. You can find them all here, along with stories celebrating cookbook authors in honor of Women’s History Month.

Here’s the first batch of my favorite recipes from those reviews and stories. Part II will follow in coming days, so do check back!

Persian Chicken Soup from Najmieh Batmanglij’s ‘Food of Life’

In January, we wrote about the spectacular Persian chicken soup pictured at the top of this story. Featuring tender meatballs made from lamb and chickpea flour, and garnished with dried rose petals, herbs and garlic, it’s a project to make, and one we thoroughly enjoyed. It’s probably the most exciting chicken soup in the universe, and once again, the time feels right for it. We featured Najmieh Batmanglij in a story in March.

Silken Tofu with Soy Sauce from Fuchsia Dunlop’s ‘Every Grain of Rice’

Published in 2012, Fuchsia Dunlop’s Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking is one of our favorite cookbooks ever, a must for any English-speaking person wanting to dive into Chinese cooking. This beautiful tofu dish, Xiao Cong Ban Dou Fu, is a snap to put together.

Yangzhou Fried Rice from ‘Every Grain of Rice’

Another favorite from Dunlop’s book, this fried rice with shrimp, pork, shiitake mushrooms and more is infinitely customizeable is super fun to make — and will quickly turn you into a fried rice pro.

Brussels Sprouts with Browned Butter and Black Garlic from ‘Ottolenghi Simple’

Three years after it was published in the U.S., we reviewed Ottolenghi Simple, which has quickly become a classic. Four or five of its recipes turned into favorites we’ll be making for years to come.

This umami-packed Brussels Sprouts number is one of them.

Ottolenghi’s Puy Lentils and Eggplant

Also from Ottolenghi Simple, this big, delicious smush of French green lentils with eggplants and blistered cherry tomatoes is smartly set off with fresh oregano. It’s a great thing to throw together when you feel like a satisfying and soulful meatless main course.

Papa Ed’s Shrimp and Grits

If you love shrimp and grits, you must try this version from Marcus Samuelsson’s The Rise — it is literally the best shrimp and grits I’ve ever tasted. The recipe calls for fresh okra, which I’m still occasionally seeing in supermarkets, but that’ll end once okra-growing regions get a freeze. However, the recipe will work just fine with frozen okra.

We reviewed The Rise in February.

Andrea Nguyen’s Ginger Halibut Parcels

One of my favorite dishes from Andrea Nguyen’s latest cookbook, Vietnamese Food Any Day is fish baked in parchment with baby bok choy and lots of ginger and garlic; it gets lots of umami from oyster sauce and soy sauce. Super easy to put together, it’s exciting enough for a dinner party and quick enough for a weeknight. We featured Nguyen as one of our favorite cookbook authors in March, and we were thrilled to host her in a live Makers, Shakers & Mavens event in April [watch the replay!]. Halibut won’t be back in season till the spring, but this recipe works with with other fish fillets, such as the excellent farmed striped bass coming from Baja, Mexico, or with scallops.

Banana-Leaf Fish (Empapelado de Pescado)

From Enrique Olvera’s 2019 cookbook Tu Casa Mi Casa, which we reviewed in June, here’s another fish dish I loved. The ingredients are few and basic: A great fish fillet (we used that Mexican striped bass), slices of citrus, herbs, salt, olive oil and banana leaves to wrap them in, tamal-style. Much easier to make than you might think, the fish is infused with fabulous flavor from the herbs and banana leaf. The book is co-authored by Luis Arellano, Gonzalo Goût and Daniela Soto-Innes.

Tu Casa Mi Casa Chicken Tinga

Also from Tu Casa Mi Casa, this recipe for classic chicken tinga is delicious on its own, and fabulous the next day if you cook it down a bit make tostadas with it. From the headnote, I learned that chicken tinga is “the first recipe any Mexican will cook as soon as they move out of their parents’ home and live on their own.” In other words, if you love Mexican cuisine, you’ll want it in your repertoire.

Buckwheat Blini with Crab Salad

In May, we reviewed the just-published Mother Grains, by Roxana Jullapat, the renowned baker and co-owner of Friends & Family in Los Angeles. In June, Jullapat joined us on Makers, Shakers & Mavens [watch the replay!].

These crab-salad-topped blini are knockouts, and super fun to make. Crab has become insanely expensive recently; happily you can also top them with smoked salmon or other tasty treats (our adaptation’s headnote explains how).

Roxana Jullapat’s Spelt Blueberry Muffins

I’m always attracted to blueberry muffins, but usually they’re too sweet for me, and I hate the way so much white flour makes them stick to the roof of your mouth. Jullapat’s, made with spelt, solves both problems: They’re the blueberry muffins of my dreams.

Friends & Family Macadamia Brown Butter Blondies

One more from Mother Grains — the rich, buttery blondies are insanely delicious.

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Celebrating in place? Try Daniel Boulud's short ribs braised in red wine

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By Leslie Brenner

We all need them — at least those of us who love to cook, and love to entertain need them. They’re the dishes we know we can count on to make everyone swoon. It might be for a family member’s birthday dinner, or an anniversary, or the occasion of entertaining someone you want to impress. Or hey — maybe you need an extraordinary dish for New Year’s Eve, in a season when it feels important to treat yourself to something nice.

Daniel Boulud’s short ribs braised in red wine has long been one of those dishes for me. Braised short ribs are always delicious (as well as very easy to make); what makes Boulud’s version special is that it’s dressed up with a spectacular celery duo — celery root purée and glazed celery — and bathed in a marvelously deep-flavored and silky sauce. It’s gorgeous on the plate, like it came from an incredible restaurant.

The wine-braised short rib dish is from ‘Café Boulud Cookbook,’ which (alas!) is out of print. With so many great recipes, it would be worth republishing!

I first fell for the dish sometime back in the 1990’s, at dinner at Café Boulud, one of my favorite restaurants in New York at the time. (It is temporarily closed, with plans to relocate.) And then, when Boulud published the Café Boulud Cookbook (co-authored with Dorie Greenspan) in 1999, there was the recipe in its pages — what a gift!

The dish is timelessly delicious. Fall-apart-tender, incredibly flavorful and rich short ribs melt into the purée, which is actually a gorgeously earthy, creamy blend of celery root and Yukon Gold potatoes — like potato purée with a PhD in philosophy. The sauce is made by sending the braising liquid through a fine strainer. The glazed celery on top celebrates and elevates a vegetable that used to be a luxury in days of yore.

There’s nothing difficult or tricky about putting it all together. There is a single pyrotechnic moment, when we’re asked to light some heated wine on fire, but if that makes you nervous, just skip that part — it’ll still turn out great. In fact, if you’ve never made short ribs before, this recipe will teach you about all you need to know about them: Brown them, then long-braise them, and you’ll be richly rewarded. You can play with the braising liquid, and it’ll still be good. It’s a perfect dish for entertaining, as it’s ideally made in advance, so you can chill it overnight, lift off the fat and have most of the work done.

Precede the show-stopping dish with a salad of winter greens (maybe with smoked trout, or crab and avocado), or oysters on the half-shell.

The recipe serves eight, but don’t let that bother you if you’re cooking for four or fewer: You’ll have the best leftovers imaginable.

RECIPE: Café Boulud Short Ribs

Looking for more festive dishes for New Year’s Eve? You might like these:

Add these to your repertoire: Cooks Without Borders’ most popular recipes of 2021

By Leslie Brenner

It’s the time of year when we should be kicking up our heels, yet here we are, thinking once again about laying low and hunkering down.

Fortunately, it’s cooking season. If you’re looking for some new dishes to add to your repertoire, or maybe even put in the regular rotation, we’ve got a grillion ideas for you. Our most popular recipes of 2021 can be a delicious place to start.

Here’s a roundup of the 20 most clicked-on of Cooks Without Borders’ original recipes (and those adapted from recipes provided by guest cooks/resident experts). In other words, these are the recipes that are not adapted from cookbooks or other published sources — we’ll bring you those in a separate story.

#1 Your Favorite Chocolate Mousse

Why is it called “your favorite”? Because it’s infinitely customizable according to your tastes. Could be good on New Year’s Eve! [Recipe: Your Favorite Chocolate Mousse.]

#2 Quintessential Quiche Lorraine

(See the photo at the top of the story.) So custardy-good, and easier to make than you’d think. [Get the recipe.]

#3 Ultimate Ragù Bolognese

And yes — you are allowed to put it on store-bought spaghetti, if you want. Who says? Carlo.

#4 Grilled Butterflied Leg of Lamb

Sounds very summery, but hey — it’s always grilling weather somewhere. We first published this in 2016. [Get the recipe.]

#5 Cardamom-Pumpkin Spice Bread

I made this again Christmas Eve, for breakfast Christmas morning. Used dark rye flour instead of whole wheat — with fine results. A big hit as usual. [Get the recipe.]

#6 Sweet Potato Gratin with Sage-Butter and Thyme

We took a favorite recipe from Regina Schrambling and turned it on its head for Thanksgiving 2020. It’s delicious all winter long. [Get the recipe.]

#7 Bayo Beans (Frijoles de Olla II)

Not familiar with the bayo? It’s Mexico’s other bean. [Recipe: Bayo Beans.]

#8 Olivia’s Salsa Macha

This one’s courtesy of Olivia Lopez, chef and co-owner of Molino Olōyō in Dallas, and Cooks Without Borders’ Mexican cooking expert. We keep a jar of it in the fridge at all times. [Recipe: Olivia’s Salsa Macha.]

#9 Moussaka for the Ages

We wrote about moussaka and first published our recipe a year ago, and it has been one or our most craveable dishes ever since. [Recipe: Moussaka for the Ages.]

#10 Perfect Creamed Spinach

Just looking at the photo makes us really want it, and now. Maybe I’ll make it tonight. Also would be a fine thing to serve with a fancy joint on New Year’s Eve. [Recipe: Perfect Creamed Spinach.]

Did you enjoy this story? If so, please share it on social or email it to a friend.

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The masa life: Making out-of-this-world tamales is totally within your power!

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By Leslie Brenner

[Editor’s note: This is third in a series of Cooks Without Borders stories (with recipes) about how to live the masa life. Read The Masa Life Part 1 and The Masa Life Part 2.]

Got plans this weekend? If not, let’s make tamales! How do blue corn tamales filled with duck in dark mole sound? Or vegan tamales filled with roasted sweet potato and vegetable picadillo — served with salsa macha? Yes, I thought so!

Because heirloom corn is now available to home cooks in the form of easy-to-use and incredibly flavorful masa harina, making tamales at home has suddenly become an exciting and delicious project — just in time for tamales season.

Until recently I thought that making tamales might not be worth the trouble. Most tamales I’d ever eaten — even those that came wrapped in great reputations — had just been OK at best. Usually the masa was not terribly flavorful, often on the heavy side, with not enough (or not delicious enough) filling.

Then I tasted Olivia Lopez’s tamales, made with masa fashioned from heirloom corn. (As you know if you’ve been reading Cooks Without Borders’ Mexican cooking features for any length of time, we are super fortunate to have Olivia as our resident Mexican cooking expert.) Of course much of her tamales’ lusciousness is thanks to her skill and palate — as chef and co-owner of Molino Olōyō in Dallas, the smashing tamales Olivia sells through her Instagram feed have quickly developed a cult following. (She doesn’t yet have a brick-and-mortar location.)

But another big part of the reason for Olivia’s tamales’ great flavor is the quality of the heirloom corn from Mexico that she nixtamalizes to make her masa.

For a story I published in The Dallas Morning News last spring, Olivia developed a recipe for a Sweet Pineapple Tamal using the newly available heirloom masa harina from Masienda, and the tamales were spectacular.

And so (Christmas lightbulb illuminating — ding ding ding!) for this holiday season, Olivia has been generous to develop and share with us two savory tamal recipes using heirloom masa harina.

They’re out of this world — and believe it or not, not difficult to make.

First is the vegan tamal — one that gets its lushness from coconut oil, rather than the usual lard. It’s filled with roasted sweet potato and a vegetable picadillo. “That picadillo is inspired by the one my Grandma Margarita used to make,” says Olivia. The confetti-like sauté of onions, carrots, tomato, chiles, golden raisins and more is also versatile beyond tamales; if you have any left over, you can use it to fill tetelas, sopes or quesadillas. (I filled tetelas with a little extra picadillo and roasted sweet potato — fantastic.)

Sweet Potato and Vegetable Picadillo Tamales, prepared using Masienda heirloom masa harina, from Olivia Lopez’s recipe

In Mexico, Olivia tells us, tamales are usually eaten on their own, generally not with any salsa. “Usually you just have them with atole,” she says. “Masa on masa!” (Atole is a sweet, hot drink made with masa.) But she loves the late-autumn/early winter flavors of the vegan tamal with salsa macha — and we happen to have a great recipe for that, as well (Olivia’s!).

Our second tamal — blue corn filled with pato en mole oscuro (duck in dark mole) — has a saucy flourish as well: a quickly put-together chimichurri-like salsa made from dried tart cherries, chives (or scallion tops), parsley and lime. “It balances the rich, earthy mole,” says Olivia. Beautifully, I would add.

Tamales de Pato en Mole Oscuro (duck in dark mole), with Tart Cherry-Chive Salsa — prepared from recipes by Molino Oloyo chef and co-owner Olivia Lopez

The tamal’s filling is achieved by roasting duck legs (easy), then saucing the shredded duck in a dark mole that’s also easier to put together than I imagined. (Empowering!) You can use the duck fat that renders when you slow-roast those legs to enrich the masa, or use olive oil — again, no lard. Our instructions have you wrap the tamales in banana leaves before steaming, but corn husks work just as well. The vegan tamales call for corn husks, but they’re also interchangeable — as is the color of heirloom masa harina you use, yellow, blue, rose or white.

Don’t freak out when you see the long recipes — the reason for their wordiness is we’re holding your hand tight, to make sure you’re comfortable with what may be a new process, and to ensure you get great results. To that end, we put together a tip sheet.

And finally, here is the recipe for Olivia’s Sweet Pineapple Tamales. We love pineapple’s sunny and bright flavor during winter’s chill — makes us (almost!) feel we’re in Colima, Mexico, Olivia’s home town. If only!

Want to keep the Sweet Pineapple Tamal vegan? Easy to do — the crema garnish is optional. And all three are gluten-free.

Happy Tamalidays!

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To make a traditional gratin dauphinois, back away from the cheese

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By Leslie Brenner

It’s amazing how wondering about the origins and traditional expression of a famous dish can lead to descent into a rabbit hole. In this case, testing a recipe for Gratin Dauphinois — French potatoes au gratin — from a new cookbook led me to wonder, what is a gratin? Does a proper gratin always involve cheese? Never? Sometimes? Where does the word gratin come from, and could its origin be a clue to what the dish is meant to be? What kind of potato is best? How thin should it be sliced? Where does “Dauphinois” come from? Is the recipe we offered from the cookbook legit? Is there a more classic expression?

Spoiler alert: Yes — there is a more classic expression of a Gratin Dauphinois, and it is insanely (even life-changingly) delicious. While we love the one from James Oseland’s World Food: Paris, and that version is ideal for those who don’t own a mandoline and don’t have top-notch knife skills, we wanted to develop a recipe for one that’s more traditional. As it turns out, if you do have a mandoline, our classic version is quicker and simpler to achieve than Oseland’s — and even more delightfully crusty on top and creamy and luscious underneath.

Because not every cook enjoys geeking out on history as much as I do, let’s cut to the chase — the basics of the dish, what it should be and how to make it — before breaking the golden-brown crust of food history and diving into the creamy, rich past.

Warning: If you make this dish once, you’ll probably want to make it again and again, and soon. OK. You’ve been warned. Here’s the recipe.

Now I’ll give you the talk-through version, because in truth, this is not a dish you need a recipe for.

To achieve gratin dauphinois nirvana, peel and slice as thick as a coin a couple pounds of firm, not waxy yellow potatoes. Do not rinse them. Rub a gratin dish or oval baking dish with garlic and butter it, then lay down the potato slices in a rosette pattern, adding a little salt, grated nutmeg and bits of butter on top of each later. Top with a bare layer (no salt, butter or nutmeg), pour in heavy cream to come about three-quarters of the way up the potatoes, bake for an hour at 350 degrees, then add another 1/3 cup or so of cream, turn up the oven to 375 degrees, and bake till crusty golden brown on top, about another half hour.

No cheese, s’il vout plaît!

You will notice — right away, I’m guessing — that this recipe does not include cheese. For context, let’s turn to the late, great English food writer Elizabeth David, who was famous for meticulously researching traditional recipes. In her 1960 book (updated in 1977 and 1983) French Provincial Cooking, she wrote:

“Gratin dauphinois is a rich and filling regional dish from the Dauphiné. Some recipes, Escoffier’s and Austin de Croze’s among them, include cheese and eggs, making it very similar to a gratin savoyard, but other regional authorities declare that the authentic gratin dauphinois is made only with potatoes and thick fresh cream.”

Nearly every French expert I turned up takes the absolutely no cheese position; Escoffier and de Croze seem to be outliers.

David’s recipe differs slightly from mine — she has you rinse the potatoes (which she says is “most important”) and she uses pepper; she uses quite a bit more cream (both initially and in total), cooks the thing longer and at a lower temp, then cranks up the heat for the last 10 minutes, without adding additional cream. I love her assessment of how many you can serve with a gratin made with 1 pound of potatoes and a half-pint of cream:

“It is not easy to say how many people this will serve; two, or three, or four, according to their capacity, and what there is to follow.”

Finally, her instruction to cut the potatoes “no thicker than a penny” aligns perfectly with other authoritative versions, which usually specify a thickness of two to three millimeters, or about an eighth of an inch.

Origin of the word ‘gratin’

To understand the origin of gratin, I turned to Larousse Gastronomique, the encyclopedia of French cuisine. (I referred to the 2001 edition of the English translation, which was updated in 2009.)

Gratin, it tells us, is:

“The golden crust that forms on the surface of a dish when it is browned in the oven or put under the grill (broiler). Usually the top of the dish has been coated with grated cheese, breadcrumbs or eggs and breadcrumbs. Formerly, “gratin” was the crust adhering to the cooking receptacle, which was scraped off (gratté in French) and eaten as a titbit.”

Aha — so gratin means that crusty bit! The recipe that follows in Larousse includes whisked eggs, a much shorter cooking time than either my recipe or David’s. Grated cheese (Gruyère) is only mentioned at the end as a variation.

The Oxford Companion to Food backs that up with its entry for Gratin and Gratiner, the noun and the verb respectively:

“Originally, back in the 16th century or beyond, the noun referred to that part of a cooked dish which stuck to the pot or pan and had to be scraped (gratté) off it was not to be wasted. Since the 19th century the meaning has changed to the effect deliberately created by cooks when they cook a dish so that it has a crisply baked top. This is often achieved by strewing grated cheese or breadcrumbs on top, and the phrase ‘au gratin’ is often taken to mean ‘with grated cheese,’ although the gratin effect can be produced without adding anything on top; as Ayto (1993) points out, the gratin dauphinois is correctly made of sliced potatoes baked in cream with no added topping.”

Potato specifics and the crusty factor

I’m not finding much definitive info on the type of potatoes that are correct. I feel most comfortable going with Jean-François Piège, whose recipe for Notre Gratin Dauphinois in his encyclopedic 2020 cookbook Le Grand Livre de la Cuisine Français calls for “pommes de terre à chair ferme” (firm-fleshed potatoes), adding “veillez à ne pas utiliser de pommes de terre nouvelles” (be sure not to use new potatoes). (The book has not been published in an English translation.) There are more than one variety of potatoes that would fit that description; our recipe calls for widely available Yukon Golds. No cheese in Piège’s, bien sûr; besides potatoes, the only ingredients are cream, garlic, butter, nutmeg and (curiously) skim milk.

J. Kenji López-Alt does not give a recipe for gratin dauphinois in The Food Lab, nor could I find any discussion in its pages about rinsing potatoes for a gratin, pro or con. Sohla El-Waylly offers a spin-off on Serious Eats — “Classic Rich and Silky Potato Gratin” — developed following “rounds and rounds of testing.” Her complaint with traditional gratin dauphinois is that only the crusty browned top is worth eating, so her version is meant to have cheese and potato that has browned on the “bottom, sides, and top.” Even more crusty is López-Alt’s turned-on-its-side Hasselback Potato Gratin on Serious Eats, which uses quite a bit of cheese and gets maximum crusty surface. Both use Russet potatoes, not rinsed. I haven’t tried El-Waylly’s version, which is a good deal more involved and has many more ingredients than traditional ones (milk in addition to cream, plus thyme, shallots, Parmesan and Gruyère). I have tried Lòpez-Alt’s, and enjoyed it a lot.

But I’m sure I’ll make mine more often: I find it beautiful in its simplicity, much easier to prepare, not as messy or involved, more elegant, and I actually love the creamy, rich underneath part, which I find a wonderful contrast to the top crusty part. (How could you not?!) It’s a classic for a reason.

How it got its name

Gratin dauphinois is sometimes confused with pommes dauphine — mashed potatoes mixed with choux paste and butter, formed into walnut-shaped balls, and fried, causing them to puff up. (Rabbit-hole moment: Where does the word “dauphine” come from? Nope — I’m resisting going there).

Dauphinois refers to Le Dauphiné, a former region of Southeast France whose history dates back to the Romans, who called it Delphinatus Viennensis. Interesting to note that the word dauphin, which means an unseated king, derives from that. In the 11th century it became part of the Holy Roman Empire, known as Le Dauphiné. Was the dish invented then? Was it a favorite of Guiges IV, Count of Albon — the nobleman in the region whose nickname was “Dauphin”? The rabbit hole didn’t extend that far down, fortunately or unfortunately.

What we do know is that the dish comes from that region; hence the name. We also know that the Rhône Valley was part of that region — and therefore a white Rhône wine would be a magnificent thing to drink with the dish. Gratin Dauphinois with a white Châteaunef-du-Pape? I can think of worse ways to spend the holidays.