Foraging

If you like getting stuff for free, Berkeley is a great place to live. That statement will strike many as strange and dubitable; let me explain. Yes, the cost of living in the Bay Area is one of the highest in the country. Rent is ever-increasing, water bills are staggering, and parking tickets should make up a significant percentage of the budget of anyone silly enough to have a car. But at least those costs are slightly offset by the incredible opportunities for foraging!

I now laugh at my former New York-resident self, selecting a plastic package containing three sprigs of rosemary from a frosty supermarket shelf, shuffling up to the check out line to hand over $2.99 for permission to take it home and cook with it. With an average of about three large rosemary bushes per block, no one in their right mind would ever think of paying for it here. Same goes for fennel fronds and lavender.

A few weeks ago I wanted to find a use for the nasturtiums that also grow everywhere of their own volition, including the entirely untended flower beds in front of my house. I used to eat them as a kid because nothing was more exciting that the idea of flowers you could eat, but I knew that I would enjoy their strong peppery taste much more now. I found some recipes for nasturtium butter spreads, but decided instead to incorporate them into mayonnaise, since I wanted to try making it with my new blender stick.

The blender stick method worked much better than my previous food processor attempts, though my hand did get a little tired holding down the power button for so long (woe is me and my electrical kitchen devices). It produced a very thick mayonnaise, probably thanks to the fact that I was forced to be patient about adding the oil since the stick took up most of the opening of the jar, and because I used two egg yolks instead of one whole egg. The chopped nasturtium confetti contrasted beautifully with the creamy white, and added an interesting sharpness to the flavor.

The mayonnaise went perfectly with all of the components of my mother's Shrimp Boil Birthday Dinner: we smeared it on boiled red potatoes, corn, shrimp, and soft herbed bread. It's an impressive jar to bring to a party, being both visually pleasing and somewhat conceptually unusual. You'll seem very gourmet, even though the key ingredient was plucked off a sidewalk. Don't worry, I washed it first.

Nasturtium Mayonnaise

2 egg yolks

2 tbps lemon juice

pinch of salt

3/4 cup oil (I used 1/4 cup canola oil and 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil this time)

3-5 nasturtium flowers, finely chopped

Place first three ingredients in a jar with a mouth wide enough to fit the head of the blender stick. Blend until well combined. Then, while blending continuously, start drizzling in the oil, literally drop by drop at first, waiting to add more until everything is fully incorporated. After the first 1/4 cup or so you can start adding more in each go. The mixture will get thicker as you go on. When all the oil has been added, stir in the nasturtium. Refrigerate.

Avocado Is Enough

Berkeley has a great philosophy program and everything, with well-respected faculty, and what seems to be a nice student community. But my presence here could be construed as somewhat overdetermined. Good quality avocados, while not necessary to my happiness (I coped without them for the better part of five years) are damn near sufficient for it.

My mother often served them for dinner, one half per person, the center where the pit had been filled with balsamic vinaigrette. For a long time that was virtually the only way I ate them, until Katherine showed me that they can be delicious with just a sprinkling of salt, if balsamic vinaigrette seems like too much of an effort. I discovered the avocado and cheese sandwich at some point in college; it seemed like it couldn't get much better than the subtle spectrum of textures of the creamy avocado, firm cheese, and toasted bread.

But the other day I found I was able to improve on this classic recipe, using another ingredient far more commonplace in California than other places I've lived: Tapatio hot sauce. It's quite potent stuff, and just a few dashes to stain a piece of whole wheat toast where enough to provide a good amount of heat. The sweet-and-sour spice brought out the fruitiness of the avocado, and reminded me again of some of the many reasons I'm happy to be here.

I encourage everyone to get their hands on a ripe avocado today, and try it out. I usually use a mild cheddar, swiss, or fontina, but it would be interesting to experiment with sharper cheeses. I don't melt the cheese because I like how the different types of firmness of the cheese and avocado compliment each other, but I toast the bread, usually a regular sandwich bread with a fine crumb, so that it adds a bit of crunch. This time I drizzled it with Tapatio, but mustard also works well. I layer the cheese on first, then slices of avocado, and often a sprinkling of course-ground black pepper.

A Call for Cream

Food and travel both tend to lead to cultural analysis, and I have a question to pose to my homeland now that I’m back: What’s with the lack of proper appreciation for cream?

There is a paucity of knowledge in this country of the various textures, viscosities, and acidities that cream can take on when its fat content and temperature are allowed to roam freely. I blame a combination of the ready availability of Reddi-wip (that’s right, I googled the spelling), an aversion to the idea of fat, and a fanatical fear of bacteria. If you couldn’t get whipped cream in a can, maybe laziness would lead to the discovery that those strawberries will taste great swimming in a pool of liquid cream. Better yet, double cream. But I have a horrible feeling that people around here don’t really know what double cream is.

Squeamishness about pasteurization and fear of fat form the biggest obstacle, the latter inhibiting motivation to try new creamy things, and the former providing an excuse not to. Clotted cream, the ultimate does of milk fat, is very difficult to find in America, and also impossible to make at home, since it has to be made from unpasteurized milk. The milk is heated just below boiling and then left to sit, allowing the cream content to rise to the top. The resulting silky substance is skimmed off for spreading on scones and cakes. They make a similar product in Turkey, called kaymak, which is served in a pool of honey and eaten with toast. Not something you need to have heaps of at every meal, but certainly part of a complete breakfast or special teatime snack.

Then there’s fromage frais and crème fraiche. Crème fraiche is starting to show up more here (Trader Joe’s makes it), and it’s essentially the same thing as sour cream, though I think it has a better texture (maybe it has fewer unpronounceable viscosifying chemicals in it). But fromage frais remains elusive, which is a shame, because it’s a perfect tangy accompaniment to stewed fruits, tarts, or fresh berries. Greek yogurt or softened cream cheese would probably work in many of the same contexts, but there’s still something specific about fromage frais.

Maybe there are completely acceptable substitutes for all of these creamy concoctions, but with a centuries-old tradition of dairy science experimentation, why limit ourselves?

To cleanse the palate, I’ll end with some photos of the impressive produce at the Fatih Mosque street market.

Mulberries

American summers are full of berries: strawberries in shortcakes, blueberries in pies, raspberries in tartlets. But now that I’m back in the States, I’m finding it impossible to track down an incredible berry that I saw on almost every corner in Istanbul: the mulberry.

Mulberries aren’t entirely unknown in this country, but they’re probably a C-list ingredient recognized mostly from their roles in “Pop Goes the Weasel” and specialty store jams. I don’t think I had much of an idea of what a fresh mulberry looked like until I saw them in Turkey, and was extremely surprised to find out that they come in white. Though there are darker varieties, the white ones were common in Istanbul, and have a delightfully maggoty look. Their taste was very mild, similar to figs, and I’m sure their delicate softness makes them very difficult to transport. Which is unfortunate, because I would like very much to buy some white mulberries and convince my German roommates that maggots are used all the time in American cuisine.

It just goes to show you that you shouldn’t pass up food in unfamiliar colors, or you might miss out on some tasty experiences. I was skeptical that the bright green figs I bought could be in any way ripe, but it turned out that they contained delicious ruby insides, and were very refreshing after hiking to a beach on one of the Princes’ Islands.

Though the summer fruit here in the Bay Area leaves nothing to be desired, I still slightly miss the novelty of Istanbul’s produce, and the fun of asking for it in Turkish. Mulberry is “dut,” and you never get to say anything as amusing in an American market.

Pommelo

While numerous studies have shown that taking Vitamin C has no curative effect on the common cold, I nevertheless crave citrus when I’m not feeling well. Maybe it’s because the placebo effect has taken root after a childhood of being told to drink orange juice if you’re sick, but I swear it actually does make me feel better. Or at least like I’m doing something. I’ve been trying to fight off a cold with this method all week, guzzling orange juice and eating an orange or grapefruit with every meal. I was feeling marginally better, but then I passed by the green grocer and saw something I had to have: the biggest dose of citrus found in nature. The pommelo.

The pommelo, pictured here with a large grade AA egg for size comparison, is native to Southeast Asia. It’s easy to find at Chinese supermarkets like Ranch 99, and thus the fruit made several appearances on afternoons during high school when we had nothing better to do than drive around El Cerrito buying novelty snacks, then trying not to get too much pommelo juice on the leather seats of the ’85 Volvo station wagon (though juice stains would have been the least of its problems, since it lacked functional seatbelts, the ability to go above 40 mph, and a muffler). Katherine and Jess also expertly rigged up a pommelo as the vehicle for their egg drop project in Physics class (the results were positive; the egg suffered no cracks).

I hadn’t had a pommelo in a while, probably because they’re a bit high maintenance. First of all, they’re not exactly a single-serving fruit. And though I’ve managed to eat one in a moving car, even on a kitchen counter they’re not exactly easy to prepare. Prying off the skin takes some effort, and then you’re face with hacking away at a thick layer of spongy pith before you even see any of the edible flesh. But today, this dissection process turned out to be more worthwhile than I could have imagined. If a colony of bees ever raised a grapefruit to think it was a honeycomb, it would taste like this fruit. The segments were succulent but not messily juicy, unlike the cruel grapefruit that spurted all over my dress on Saturday. I thought we were a bit past citrus season at this point, but it must be prime pommelo time – hurry out and get one today.

I think I’m feeling significantly better, but I’ll probably keep eating pommelo just to be safe. I have a feeling pommelo might be a habit-forming substance, but until conclusive studies are conducted, I’m going to take my chances.

Hot Food

Not only have we begun a new year, but a new decade as well, and media sources everywhere are telling us What’s Hot and What’s Not for all imaginable arenas of interest. Naturally, commentators on the culinary world have had a lot to say about it – I’ve read that while 2009 was the year of bacon, duck fat will be much more important in the coming year. My experience with duck fat does not qualify me to weigh in on this statement, but I am always searching for new and entertaining ways to stock my cupboards and refrigerator. So I’ve come up with five things that have impressed me recently, that I think will be key figures in 2010. Here they are, in no particular order.

1. Herring. While at home for Christmas, my cupboard excavations turned up a number of tins of this stuff, and their slim pocket-size and eternal shelf life made them a smart addition to our supplies for a weekend at Stinson Beach. I’ve made a lot of excellent meals with anchovies and sardines, but I discovered that these kippered fillets don’t need much accompaniment at all to constitute a satisfying dish. People who eschew canned fish citing cat food comparisons need to get over themselves. A piece of crispbread topped with herring chucks is a beautiful thing.

2. Roasted chestnuts. The kind that come in colorful air-tight packages sold at Asian convenience stores are nothing new, but personally roasting them in their shell over an open fire (like a fireplace – that counts, right?) is new for me. And lots of fun. Cutting slits in them gives you something to do as the fire gets started, and engineering a roasting receptacle out of two pie tins and a wire hanger produces a rustic and resourceful feeling that really compliments the fire. Actually, I'd recommend any kind of cooking over a fire – the chestnuts were done after about 50 minutes of sitting under the grate that held the fire, and we moved on to marshmallows and hot dogs and a number of creatively constructed heating devices. Burning chestnut shells and course catalogs also provided a lot of entertainment. I predict fires will be very hot in 2010.

3. Grapefruit. My mother always served us grapefruit halves sprinkled with brown sugar and heated in the microwave for a few seconds until the juices started to seep out and form a syrup on top. Until recently I thought grapefruit was inedible without this coating of sweetness, but I learned better when my sister encouraged me to peel the whole thing and eat the segments plain, like an orange. Of course, my orange-eating technique produces an incredible mess, as I like to peel off most of the membrane around each piece to reveal the juicy jewels of pulp inside, but my grapefruit addiction has gotten to the point that I’m willing to undergo the humiliation of performing this process at work.

4. Hazelnuts. From Sahadi’s, whole, roasted, and unsalted. These were discovered in late 2009 but aren’t going anywhere. It may be an illusion due to my considerable nutella consumption over the last two decades, but I swear these things taste strangely like chocolate.

5. Roasted cacao beans. I got a box of these a few months ago, but only just realized their potential for adding unexpected flavor to both sweet and savory dishes. I had been snacking on them occasionally, but if eaten plain their bitterness builds up and coats the mouth with a unique, but not entirely pleasant, flavor of soot. On the basis of an Alice Medrich recipe I happened to see, I added a few crushed cacao beans to some haricots verts with feta and balsamic vinaigrette. The sweetness of the balsamic and the creaminess of the feta dampened their intensity and allowed the nuttiness to come through, creating a sort of smoky green beans almandine. I plan to try them out in some dinosaur cookies soon, possibly combined with coconut and an earthy sweetener like maple syrup.

Closer runners-up were cauliflower, tomato jam, and Hot Toddies. And an honorable mention goes out to the block of quince paste that my mom made over a year ago. It started as a sticky mess and was abandoned in the fridge for 15 months, and during that time matured into an aromatic and toothsome slab that's much easier to slice and pairs perfectly with hard cheeses. 2010 is sure to be its year. As for What’s Not Hot, frozen pizza from Trader Joe’s could probably use a rest; I’d like to see their 99-cent raw pizza dough make a comeback in my kitchen. Also, 2009 saw a few too many carrots – sure, they’re undeniably tasty and ridiculously cheap, but if you want some vegetables to use as vehicles for dip, endive leaves and fennel slices are a nice change. Lastly, apples are out (of season). It’s a tragedy, but I’ve had too many disappointing apple experiences recently to risk many more. In the meantime, I’m sticking to pears, and citrus of all kinds.

Autumn Is for Apple

My first year in New York was virtually fruitless. I hardly ate any fruit. At home in Berkeley, our fruit bowl was dependably filled with softball-sized oranges, glowing nectarines, juicy Asian pears, and, on more exciting days, lychees, pomegranates, and starfuit; in New York, all I could find were puny bananas and apples with the taste and texture of packing peanuts. I should mention, however, that my searches didn’t reach beyond the NYU dining halls, which I assume cut costs by accepting shipments of the rest of the city’s reject fruit every few weeks. Eating a piece of cafeteria fruit was such a joyless experience – reaching for the least dusty apple, glancing around to see if you were getting weird looks for removing what was actually part of a month-old counter decoration, biting into the thing and being unable to discern any difference in taste from the soup, bagel, and chocolate cake you had eaten previously – that I rarely put myself through it.

After freshman year I started cooking for myself, and I stocked up on fruits and vegetables weekly at Trader Joe’s, occasionally treating myself to superior produce at Whole Foods. I found the fruit merely adequate; it came nowhere near to producing the transcendent fruit-eating experiences I remembered having in California on a regular basis. Apples and bananas were reliably decent, but it took me three years to eat an orange in New York City. It’s taken me several more years to figure out that those transcendent experiences can be had here, but it takes a little more effort to seek them out, and it really comes down to eating seasonally.

The harvest cycle is immediately apparent at any farmers market. There are always a few sad weeks in early March when the stalls offer nothing but limp carrots and bruised apples; then suddenly the vendors will unload tomatoes in shades of ruby and dark purple, along with mountains of stone fruits and berries. In the moment, at least, the excitement is worth enduring the more unpleasant aspects of the previous season. (Does admitting this make me a real East Coaster?)

I love summer, but fall comes with enough new good things to eat to make up for the dropping temperature. Specifically, apples. Magical things start happening to apples in late September. They go from reliable to remarkable, and they’re available in countless delicious varieties. This fall I’ve been particularly taken by the simple goodness of the apple and the subtle differences between types, and I’ve compiled a short guide to some of the Apples of Our Lives.

Gala: Available year-round at reasonable prices. Not overly sweet, but dense and hardy; excellent for pairing with cheese.

Pink lady: Very juicy but with a good crunch, and extremely sweet. Its sugary taste and flamingo color almost make this variety more candy than apple.

Honeycrisp: A new discovery, and I think I might have discovered the fruit of the gods. These apples have a beautifully dappled skin and glowing yellow flesh, and the mellow sweetness of honey and melon.

Macoun: You can tell these are going to be tart from the bright green that muscles through their ruddy red streaks. The minute I took a bite of one I decided it tasted like a backyard (in a good way). Definitely best eaten outside.

Mutzu: These are a muted pale green, much prettier than electric Granny Smiths. This softness is reflected in their flavor as well: sweet but slightly lemony and herbal (although this might have been the result of sitting in a bag with a bunch of sage for several hours).

New Mexican Hatch Chilies

Usually, I approach the airport security check with bored confidence, my contact solution, water bottles, personal packs of propane, and other forbidden liquid conveniences left at home or packed safely in my checked luggage. But on the trip back from San Antonio last weekend, my heart beat a little faster than usual. We were transporting an insulated bag full of frozen Hatch chilies, which were in a solid state when we left the house but (I worried) could dissolve at any minute into a spicy illegal soup and be confiscated by greedy airport personnel. Thankfully no one stopped us, but they would have faced some harsh confrontation if they had. So, although I had never heard of Hatch chilies a few weeks ago, I now have a freezer full of them. Sometimes life is kind.

Hatch chilies, I have since learned, are a particular appellation of pepper, grown exclusively in the region of Hatch, New Mexico. Every year their harvest is accompanied by a local festival and chili cook-off, followed by large-scale stockpiling – the chilies actually improve (meaning they get spicier) the longer they’re kept frozen, and New Mexican chili enthusiasts buy pounds and pounds to last them throughout the year. The enthusiasm has spread to Texas, and my fortunate connections there hooked me up with several bags of roasted Hatch chilies, some of which were a milder version, and a few raw ones to experiment with.

The spicy roasted chilies need very little help to make them a delicious accompaniment to any number of foods – all I did was puree them with a diced tomato and some lemon juice to dampen their fieriness just enough. The smoky flavor from the specks of black char seeps into the salsa the longer you let it sit, and is balanced by the acidity and heat. It was great on top of tamales and jicama. The milder raw chilies were perfect in a salad with quinoa, carrots, and lima beans; they had the crunch and astringent taste of green bell peppers, with a slightly meatier flesh and a tingly spice that appeared almost as an afterthought. I’ve got enough chilies left for a dozen other experiments, and about ten months to come up with something spectacular to present at the Hatch Chili Festival cook-off, in case I decide to attend.

Jerusalem Artichokes

Even in the pouring rain, holding too many bags for two hands and a broken umbrella that kept collapsing and dumping water down my back, I had to stop in front of a farmer’s market stall displaying some fantastically knobbly produce. The ruddy specimens were almost prismatic in shape, with tiny nubs budding out of larger warhead-like sections. These kinds of shapes are not usually edible, so I was set on eating them.

I asked someone who seemed to be working there what the unusual vegetables were. He replied, “Ginger.” The color was gingery enough, but these things were spikier than any ginger I had ever seen. I was ready to assume they were some exotic and unknown ginger species, perhaps originating from the foothills of Australia and brought to the Finger Lakes region by a migration of settlers in the late 1990s, but another man stepped up and corrected the first guy: “They’re Jerusalem artichokes.”

This made much more sense; I’d had Jerusalem artichokes, also called sunchokes, as a child, and I remember loving their nutty flavor and how well they reacted to being smeared with butter. They appeared on our table as a one-ingredient dinner a few times, but I don’t think I ever thought of them as anything other than “those potato-y things.”

These tubers deserve attention as much more than potato-y things. When boiled until tender, their resilient skin adds a nice contrast (and probably heaps of nutrition) to their delicate inner flesh, which has a unique but essentially vegetal flavor, reminiscent of artichokes minus the hint of bitterness that the thistles sometimes have. The batch I got from the farmer’s market were delicious along with some kale and venison stew (from a 99-cent packet heated in the microwave – don’t you wish you lived near Canned Foods or had a mother who did?). For an ingredient with such interesting appearance and flavor I’m always tempted to keep the preparation minimal, but I hear Jerusalem artichokes also make good soups and gratins.

Cooking What Your Mother Tells You

My mother has long insisted on the theory that the cheapest (and best) way to feed yourself is to eat mostly chicken liver. My reaction was always one of mild disgust followed by dismissal. Not that there's anything wrong with liver - I've always liked pate; but the memory of reaching into my lunch box and pulling out a bag of liver-and-onion flavored potato chips to resounding "ews" from my classmates scarred me into rejecting any kind of advocation of liver coming from my mother. However, some recent events compelled me to follow her characteristically English suggestion for the first time.

A few nights ago, I had dinner at the Atlantic Chip Shop, a pub that serves fish and chips, meat pies, and offers a full English breakfast in the morning. Although the people who run it are clearly in no way English, the food is right and they know enough to list a Snakebite on their drinks menu. I went with my cousin Talei, who had recently returned from a trip to Ohio to visit her boyfriend’s hometown and witness the phenomenon that is the Ohio State Fair. She was extremely impressed by this butter cow she saw there, and I suppose she thought it was time to reciprocate the cultural exchange and introduce Adam to her people’s food.

On the whole, there’s nothing too complex about the aesthetics of English cooking. The basic tenets are that things taste good when they contain large amounts of butter, frying is an ideal method of cooking, and most things on your plate should fall into either the Meat or Potato category, so as not to over-complicate things. These were the concepts that went into making my fried fish, Adam’s shepherd’s pie, and Talei’s sausage and chips as delicious as they were. But Chase’s dinner was a step above ours, an example of how some traditional English dishes can go beyond the obvious comfort food and satisfy your taste buds in a new way. He had asked for steak and onion pie, but they brought steak and kidney pie, and I’m glad they did – and even happier that he let me have his leftovers.

Kidney has such a distinct flavor, one that I’m compelled to describe as “dark”; but to distinguish it from gamey meats like goat and lamb to which I might apply that adjective, I’d have to add the qualifier “dense.” It’s rich, but not in the way butter is rich – it has a bite to it that makes you realize you’re eating something very specific, something that fulfilled a definite function for the animal it came from, something with more stuff per ounce (iron, cholesterol, whatever else) than anything you’ve eaten all day.

When I mentioned my kidney experience to my mother, she seized the opportunity to repeat what she’s been telling me for years, that chicken liver is the best way to feed yourself cheaply. It was simple, apparently: “What you need to do is put some chicken livers in a pan with some butter, and have them with a huge pile of fried onions.” Apparently the Offal Speech is a major part of British parenting, because when I turned on BBC America, Gordon Ramsey was trying to teach a similar lesson. He had just slaughtered his sheep and was preparing a feast to introduce his children to sweet breads, brains, and tripe. At the end of the meal, he asked who would eat any of it again, and amidst a lot of bouncing up and down and shouts of “Me!” his oldest daughter exclaimed, “Me please, especially sweet breads!”

With encouragement coming from so many directions, I felt I had no choice but to try cooking some kind of internal organ for myself. A container of chicken livers cost $0.90 at Key Food, so chicken livers it was. Chase and his roommates were grilling that night, and were very polite about allowing my slimy experiment sit next to their steaks. I sealed up some liver pieces in a tinfoil pouch along with onion wedges and a few dashes of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. When I took it off the grill after about 20 minutes (probably way longer than necessary, but it's hard to gauge the temperature of the electric grill and I didn't want to risk undercooking), I had a steamy pouch of velvety liver and onions infused with its juices.

Layered on a baguette with some Dijon mustard and roasted grape tomatoes, the liver and onions made a pretty tasty sandwich. It wasn't exactly something you'd find at every pub in England, and perhaps it strayed a little from my mother's instructions to "fry up a heap of liver," but I still felt I was heeding the advice of my English kin in appreciating the deep flavor and cost effectiveness of this distinctive ingredient.

Fava Beans: A Fuul Mess, Resuscitated

I’ve had a container of gigantic dried fava beans sitting in my cupboard since my parents came to visit for graduation and bought me all kinds of exciting things at Sahadi’s. The beans are a soothing green color and could be mistaken for someone's river pebble collection, plus they make a nice clicking noise when you run them through your fingers. But these were not good enough reasons to keep them in their dried form forever, so yesterday I decided to attempt to cook them.

Dried fava beans are a staple food in Egypt (where they’re called something like fuul medames, though transliterations vary wildly), so I thought I’d try out an Egyptian recipe. I concluded from some internet research that most preparations involve soaking the beans, boiling them for several hours, and serving them gently mashed with olive oil, various aromatics, and sometimes some lemon juice. It all seemed fairly straightforward, so I decided to avoid following any specific instructions and simply play it by ear.

I may have overestimated my experience with cooking dried beans, or underestimated its importance. In the morning, I put the beans in a bowl of water to soak, and when I came home from work they were slightly larger, slightly flabbier, and much more intimidating. What were once innocent-looking pebbles now seemed like vestigial organs or ancient earlobes. And I realized wasn’t entirely sure what to do with them next. I decided to remove their outer shells, fearing that if I didn’t they would never soften. When that task was completed, I rinsed my pruny fingers, covered the white inner-beans with water, and set them on the stove to cook.

Maybe the heat was too high, or maybe I wasn’t supposed to shell them, but it only took a little over an hour for them to soften – I was expecting to wait two or three hours. As they simmered, the kitchen filled with a scent that reminded me of my dinner at grandmother’s house. I suddenly realized that fava beans, under the name “broad beans,” are also frequently used in the English stews she makes. It was strange to experience that familiar smell of British cooking – like steamy socks but somehow appetizing, I swear – while making something I thought was Egyptian.

After an hour, the favas had disintegrated into a starchy grayish mush, which I strained, and then stared at. Was it salvageable? It was close to tasteless on its own, and because of its appearance I was doubtful I could convince people to eat it. It may be packed with nutrients that have sustained the Egyptian civilization for centuries, but pure nutrition is not exactly the main concern of the American palate. I was worried I had wasted half a tub of fava beans, but I added the accoutrements I had in hope of resuscitating the dish: the juice of two lemons, several splashes of olive oil, some sautéed onions and garlic, and some crumbled feta cheese.

Somehow, miraculously, it became delicious. The olive oil smoothed out the texture and the sharpness of the lemon highlighted the subtle creamy flavor of the mashed fava, which I had failed to appreciate when I had tasted it by itself. The onions added depth to the dish, and basically made the whole thing more interesting. I served a warm bowl of the stuff with baked cumin tortilla chips, and it was happily consumed by three people in a matter of minutes.

I’m not sure what lesson I should take away from this particular experiment. Cooking is less of a rollercoaster when you’re willing to follow recipes? Or: just as important as staple foods are staple food improvers – add olive oil, lemon, and onions to anything and it will taste good. Probably both are valuable, but the second lesson seems to be a powerful principle in the kind of cooking that totally ignores the first.