I heard a rumor we are expecting snow showers next week—can you imagine?! An impending hard frost inspired G to bring in a huge batch of green tomatoes from the garden, the last ones clinging to the now-scraggly vines. Initially, I was a tad exasperated. But then I remembered to be grateful. Not to go all Pollyanna on you, but it's an interesting challenge to turn everything into a positive. The old lemons into lemonade philosophy. Not that a bumper crop of green tomatoes really has anything to do with that. And once they were turned into a tart-sweet, highly spiced chutney—thanks to inspiration from Winnie's Healthy Green Kitchen—I looked at those lovely jars stacked up and felt nothing if not happy. Like all the other animals at this time of year, I'm loading up the larder with stores for the winter.
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I opened the fridge and saw a jar of red chile puree, left over from our chile-fest the other weekend, and thought, instantly: enchiladas. Italians have their red sauce, their seminal tomato "gravy" that gets right to the heart of who they are as a people, a culture, and New Mexicans have their own version, a thick, smoky and deeply complex puree of toasted chiles that is their lifeblood. My mother poured hers from a can—routine at that time, but seems like sacrilege now. It was my grandmother who taught me to lightly toast the leathery, dried chiles in a hot skillet, then soak them before pureeing them in the blender. I've got my own methods now, but the whole process still connects me to the women who came before, the ones who made pink beans and sopaipillas and tamales with their own hands. This is the food of my people, and it tastes of courage, the earth and love.
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Torrential rains accompanied by great gusts of wind have brought many of the fall leaves cascading down in whirling colors. Now the birds are more visible, darting around, and you can see the squirrels—red and grey—perched on branches, nibbling pinecones like corn on the cob. The apples stand out like ornaments on the trees, tempting the deer, which are gorging themselves silly on the sweet fruit. We went back to Julia's ancient orchard to harvest a few more; I wish I knew what they are—2 green and 2 red, heirloom varieties for sure, each more delicious than the next. I decided to cook down their wonderful, winey essence into that most traditional of all preserves: apple butter. It's essentially just a highly concentrated form of apple sauce, produced by long, slow cooking of apples with cider or water to a point where the sugar in the apples caramelizes, turning the rich stew a deep brown. There's no actual butter involved in the product; the term refers only to the thick, soft consistency, and its use as a spread for breads.
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This year, I hope to bring you with me a little more often into the world of South Asian cooking. Having traveled in India, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Indonesia, I've been fortunate to experience many of these flavors in their countries of origin, but my real culinary knowledge of them I owe to Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, authors of two seminal—and well-thumbed—volumes: Hot Sour Salty Sweet and Mangoes & Curry Leaves. They track their recipes to the source, often cooking in humble homes alongside matriarchs of the region, and they really believe in simple authentic dishes. Mangoes & Curry Leaves features the cuisine of the Subcontinent—Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives—so you can imagine the rich variety. I'm sharing a recipe for dhokla, a Gujarati specialty that's essentially a steamed bread. The recipe looks long, but it's really a very simple process, and the result is light and delicious (and gluten-free). So you don't become discouraged about trying these recipes, please find a source for South Asian ingredients. A market in Little India? An online resource? It's exciting to try something new, and a great way to vary both your diet and your repertoire.
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G's short film Aftershock was screened for an all-Chinese audience in Queens a couple of months back, and we took advantage of the occasion to have lunch and do a little shopping in the neighborhood. Before we moved upstate, we lived on the Bowery in Manhattan, on what was essentially the edge of Chinatown, but that does not prepare you for the immersive scene you find in Flushing. All of a sudden Chinese is the spoken language and your white face stands out, though no one gives you a second look. I hope I don't sound like too much of a rube when I say it feels like being in a foreign country. But this is a good thing! It was so exciting to be able to explore and discover just a few subway stops into this outer borough. We had read about Sky Foods, a newly opened 36,000-square-foot supermarket that stocks food from China, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Korea, Japan, Indonesia, India and Singapore, so that was definitely on our list. And we decided to have lunch at Fu Run, a place specializing in Northeastern Chinese cuisine, most notably something called the "Muslim lamb chop."
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My first apartment in New York was on Avenue A and 3rd Street, at a time when the East Village was a rather seedy no-man's-land where you couldn't score much more than smack and a good bialy. There were no gourmet stores, no coffee bars, not even an ATM within blocks. But there was the original Two Boots pizza parlor and, for a short and very blissful time, a little joint called Southern Style where you could get some clean and tasty down-home cooking for cheap. To my knowledge, they never served fried green tomatoes but that alone is not enough to explain why I'd never eaten any before making them myself recently. Thanks to new restaurants like this, or this one, Southern food seems to be having quite the renaissance these days, so I'll probably end up sampling someone else's fried green tomatoes soon. But until that day, mine will have to set the standard.
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Use it up. Wear it out. Make it do. Do without.Eleanor Roosevelt said that, probably during the Depression or some wartime crunch. But I love its sentiment: the idea that what we have is enough. "Making do" is not really something you see advertised alongside Big Gulps and $35,000 handbags. Last weekend in the Times' opinion section, I saw this piece about a divorced Brooklyn mother of two who fell on hard times and resorted to starting a victory garden and baking her own bread to get by. (A former Bergdorf Goodman shopper and unwilling to give up perfume, she now makes her own from fragrant herbs!) It was very inspiring, and it gave me serious pause when I went to write "mint tea" on the grocery list that's posted on the door of our fridge. Instead, I went out to the garden and harvested huge armfuls of fresh mint. I had cut the unruly plants back a month ago—and frozen and preserved some leaves then—but they had grown in more vigorously than ever. While I was out there, I also snipped lots of other things to dry and use over the coming winter months.
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Pretty soon there won't be much fresh fruit to rave about. I'm looking forward to quinces, Bosc and Bartlett pears and of course apples all winter long, but while they're still available, I'm eating plums. The late-season varieties have an intensity of color and sweetness that is like the farewell kiss of a summer romance. There's no better way to showcase them than in a simple crumble. The fruit is the star, and you can accentuate its flavor by imbuing the crunchy topping with some subtle complements. For plums, I like to add a little almond and cardamom. (I know, I put cardamom in everything, but it really does go so well with plums!)
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Mark Bittman posted one of his great roundups of recipes in the Times Magazine this weekend, featuring less-expected ways to eat apples. I'm particularly taken with the cheesy apple fritters and that apple tempura! I'm prone to tossing diced apple into lots of salads—with oil-cured tuna, with walnuts and blue cheese, with all kinds of herbs. And when I make oatmeal, I always grate an apple into the pot. This really supports good digestion. We have a big old apple tree on our property at the lake, and it's covered with mottled green fruit that looks dubious but tastes great. Our friend Julia up the road has an orchard of craggy old trees that produce a lot of fruit, including some of the most flavorful red apples ever and a few pears, too. I've already eaten some super-crunchy and juicy Honey Crisps this year, and I'm a big fan of the Pink Lady with its wonderfully tangy sweetness. There are so many things to be made with all these apples, from pies, crumbles, betties and cakes to butter, fritters, cider...and, pedestrian as it may sound, applesauce.
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In the summer of 1976, I was allowed to fly out to New York by myself to visit my aunt, uncle and cousins in Long Island. It was the bicentennial year, and I vividly recall the red-&-white-striped pantsuit my mother made me for this occasion, embroidered with navy blue stars. I was taken into the city to have lunch at Maxwell's Plum, and we drove through the caverns of Wall Street where the skyscrapers soared dizzyingly up into the wild blue yonder. It was at Bloomingdale's, though, where I was most intoxicated by the glamour, the excitement, the sheer abundance. For a thirteen-year old girl with a head full of frizzy curls and a mouthful of metal, the enormous caramel apple they sold there—a kitschy symbol of the Big Apple—was unattainably enticing. As volputuous as a Botero sculpture, one glistening end dipped in chopped nuts, it's remained forever a fantasy.
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