Innholdsfortegnelse for October/November 2023 i Cook's Country

IF YOU’VE SEEN my kitchen pantry, you know it is where my culinary identity is stored. It embraces flavors handed down from my vegetarian mother, my upbringing in Southern California, and the diverse palate I have nurtured through my work. There are aromatic spices, from allspice to za’atar, and a dozen bottles of vinegar plus a whole world of condiments, such as harissa, sriracha, and fish sauce, that make global cooking fun, an adventure. The grains section is packed with more than just white and brown rice. Here, you’ll find long and short grain, sushi, jasmine, arborio, and Carolina Gold next to organic millet, couscous, and the African “super-grain” fonio. I could go on. The holiday turkey featured in my cookbook, Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking (2019),…

• HAND-HARVESTED WILD RICE WITH DRIED MULBERRIES Serves 4 Total Time: 55 minutes We developed this recipe with wild rice from Native Wise LLC of Minnesota. The recipe times are specific to hand-harvested wild rice. If you buy cultivated wild rice, see our recipe for Cultivated Wild Rice with Dried Mulberries at AmericasTestKitchen.com/nov23. This recipe can easily be doubled. 2¼ cups water1½ cups hand-harvested wild rice¼ cup dried white mulberries1 tablespoon sunflower oil1 tablespoon maple syrup4 fresh sage leaves¾ teaspoon fine sea salt½–1 teaspoon flake sea salt 1. Combine water, rice, mulberries, oil, maple syrup, sage, and fine sea salt in medium saucepan and bring to boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes. 2. Without removing lid, remove pot from heat and let…

PAW PAWS — Sometimes referred to as “America’s forgotten fruit”—are the largest fruit indigenous to North America. These green‑skinned peanut-shaped fruits range from 3 to 6 inches long. Their interiors vary from a soft yellow to a golden or light orange hue. Each pawpaw contains several large lima bean–size seeds. This seemingly tropical fruit grows in hanging clusters that resemble a “hand” of bananas. Some people refer to papayas as pawpaws (or papaws), but they are not the same fruit. A member of the custard-apple family, pawpaws have creamy, rich, and custardy flesh. Their sweet flesh is highly aromatic and lacks tartness and acidity. The flesh has notes of banana, mango, and pineapple and varies in flavor depending on the variety and growing location. Underripe pawpaws are generally quite mild,…

MASHED POTATOES ARE the Thanksgiving meal’s crowd-pleaser—who doesn’t love buttery, creamy spuds? But they can be so heavy that you don’t always have room for much else. For this recipe, we sought to create lighter mashed potatoes that felt more fitting for a vibrant dinner, without sacrificing any of their textural or flavor appeal. Instead of using cream or butter, we decided on extra‑virgin olive oil as the fat of choice (potatoes mashed without fat lack richness and cohesion). To make this dish work, you can’t skimp on the EVOO—we use ½ cup for 2 pounds of potatoes—and you need to use a bit of technique. To start, peel and cut Yukon Gold potatoes into chunks and simmer them in salted water until tender, which takes about 15 minutes; our…

TAKING INSPIRATION from beet dips found in Middle Eastern cuisine and at restaurants and specialty markets in the United States—such as kiz güzeli (a Turkish dip made with beets, yogurt, and garlic) and mutabbal shamander (a Syrian dip featuring beets and tahini)—this bright dip combines shredded roasted beets with thick, creamy Greek yogurt and nutty tahini. Roasting beets concentrates their flavor and sweetness, and the rich yogurt helps round out their earthiness. Fresh lemon juice and subtly bitter tahini balance the sweetness, while minced fresh garlic, warm cumin, and Aleppo pepper (mild dried chile flakes with a subtle fruity flavor) contribute heat and spice. Dried mint adds a cooling note. Chilling the dip for 30 minutes allows the flavors to meld and the color to deepen to a striking magenta. A…

SHAVED CAULIFLOWER salads are increasingly ubiquitous in the culinary world and for good reasons: The mild flavor of cauliflower is a perfect canvas for bold dressings, and the thin pieces are delicate enough to enjoy raw. Large chunks of raw cauliflower in a salad can be firm and waxy, leaving the cauliflower under-seasoned and preventing the salad from feeling cohesive. Shaving the cauliflower instead results in pieces that soften and make for a more harmonious salad. You don’t need any special equipment, such as a mandoline or a food processor, to shave the cauliflower. Breaking the cauliflower into large florets and slicing the florets and core thin with a chef’s knife yields similar results (see “How to Shave Cauliflower”). The goal is to get the thinnest pieces possible and let the…

BAKING WITH APPLESAUCE is nothing new: A humble, affordable pantry staple, applesauce has been adding sweetness, moisture, and structure to baked goods for decades (see “Baking with Applesauce, a Patriotic Duty”). For those who grew up with applesauce cakes, this one is a buttery reminder of those nostalgic treats. And for those who didn’t, well, let me introduce you to your new favorite every-occasion cake. This recipe contains a whopping 2 cups of applesauce, making for an ultramoist 13 by 9-inch cake that stays soft for days. The applesauce imparts a subtle fruitiness, but it doesn’t wallop you with apple flavor, so the cake takes well to other flavor enhancers: Brown sugar adds a caramelly depth, a heavy pour of vanilla contributes floral notes, and a host of spices brings…

THESE ULTRARICH chocolate chunk muffins, with their tall shape, “fancy” parchment liners, and glistening sugared tops, will look like they came from your favorite bakery. Their richness and intense buttery flavor come from adding nutty browned butter to the batter. Like most muffins, they are made using a mixing method called the “muffin method”: combining the wet ingredients and then folding in the dry ingredients. This means you can simply stir these muffins together—no stand mixer needed. Gently folding in the dry ingredients prevents overmixing and limits gluten formation, keeping the muffins tender. Instead of chocolate chips, irregularly sized chocolate chunks disperse throughout the muffins, making for soft, melted bits of chocolate in each bite. • BROWNED BUTTER CHOCOLATE CHUNK MUFFINS Makes 12 muffins Total Time: 1¼ hours, plus 30 minutes…

SUNFLOWER OIL Sunflowers, native to the American Southwest, have been grown and put to a variety of uses by Indigenous peoples for millennia. Recent history has seen the sunflower become one of the world’s top oil crops, with Rus-sia and Ukraine leading global production. Sunflower oil is available in two primary types: refined and unrefined. Refined sunflower oil is the most commonly available in American supermarkets. It is neutral-tasting with a high smoke point (450 degrees), making it ideal for high-heat cooking applications such as searing, sautéing, frying, and baking. This is the type of sunflower oil you’ll want to use for making our Grilled Sweet Potatoes with Maple Chile Crisp (page 12). Unrefined or cold-pressed sunflower oil is more flavorful (retaining more of the nuttiness of the seeds) but…

OWAMNI BY THE Sioux Chef, the modern Indigenous restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, sits along the Mississippi River atop the ruins of an 1800s-era flour mill. Chef and owner Sean Sherman, who is Oglala Lakota from Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, opened Owamni in July of 2021 to promote the foodways of the Ojibwe and Dakota tribes with a menu of precolonial ingredients indigenous to North America. The dining room has clean lines of blond wood, black steel, and gray brick. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the Mississippi River and St. Anthony Falls, a sacred site known as Owámniyomni in Dakota. The bar seating gives diners a view into the heart of the open kitchen where a dozen or so cooks, waiters, and bartenders work in quiet harmony. Sherman, whose Lakota name…

• GRILLED SWEET POTATOES WITH MAPLE CHILE CRISP Serves 4 to 6 Total Time: 21⁄4 hours, plus 2 hours cooling Plan ahead: The potatoes should cool for at least 2 hours before grilling. Orange sweet potatoes of any variety can be substituted for the white sweet potatoes called for in this recipe. This recipe can be doubled to serve a larger crowd. 2 (12- to 16-ounce) white sweet potatoes, unpeeled, each lightly pricked with fork in 6 places4 teaspoons sunflower oil, divided½ teaspoon fine sea salt, divided½ cup Maple Chile Crisp (recipe follows), plus extra to taste½ teaspoon flake sea salt1 scallion, sliced thin on bias 1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 400 degrees. Line rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and place potatoes on…

THIS RECIPE TRANSFORMS an affordable cut into an occasion-worthy centerpiece: a juicy, thoroughly seasoned pork loin burnished with a bright, tart cranberry glaze. The almost-candied, caramelized, savory-sweet edges of the roast make a delectable crust. The failproof recipe for achieving these impressive results hinges on some key steps. Since pork loin is a lean cut with subtle flavor, it requires careful treatment. Salting the pork at least 12 hours before roasting ensures that it is well seasoned and helps keep the meat tender and juicy. Cranberries and pork both pair beautifully with warm spices, so a bit of five-spice—with its notes of cinnamon, star anise, Sichuan peppercorn, fennel, and clove—provides additional depth with the salt. Finally, removing the roast from the oven when it reaches 130 degrees takes carryover cooking into…

PERFECTLY SEASONED, tender, delicately browned chicken cutlets are a delight in their own right (and are pretty much good to go with a squeeze of lemon or a drizzle of your favorite condiment), but we wanted to come up with a simple dish that was easy to prepare yet also a tad surprising. We started by prepping the chicken. Halving boneless chicken breasts horizontally and then pounding them to ¼-inch thickness ensured that they cooked through quickly in a hot skillet but still had enough time to pick up some browning, which we further encouraged by dredging them in flour prior to cooking. Mild chicken breasts pair beautifully with a range of flavors, from delicate to intense. Here we used them as a blank canvas for a profile inspired by all…

DRIVING EAST FROM my home in Austin to my birthplace of Houston along US Route 77 and Interstate 10, there are almost as many billboards advertising kolaches and klobásníky as there are Texas bluebonnets blooming in the spring. However, in the stretches between those billboards and in the surrounding counties are small towns where Texas Czechs, including my family, are home baking a tastier, more traditional version of the pastry. Whether meat market barbecue, hoppy beer, smoked sausages, or kolaches, foods of Texas’s Czech community have been of particular interest in food media. But it is the misunderstood pastry known as a klobásník in Czech (usually misnamed a sausage kolache by commercial bakeries) that may be the current darling. Certainly thousands of klobásníky (the plural of klobásník) are sold daily…

SCALLION OIL NOODLES 0are a Shanghainese staple that are happily enjoyed in many environments: They are inhaled beside street carts, slurped up at fancy restaurants, and tossed together at home. The simple dish’s mass appeal, which gains more traction every day in the United States, comes as no surprise; springy noodles dressed with a combination of aromatic oil, rich soy sauce, and sugar form a whole that is far greater—and tastier—than the sum of its parts. To better understand the global craze, I consulted my colleague Valerie Sizhe Li, who devoured countless bowls of this dish growing up in Shanghai: “I had this dish so often, I didn’t even think about it until I moved away from home and realized I didn’t have it at arm’s reach anymore,” said Li.…

WHAT’S NOT TO love about a one-skillet meal? Not only are these recipes often streamlined for ease of cooking and cleaning, but because everything cooks together, the flavors get a chance to hang out, meld, and deepen. Such is the case with this knockout recipe for tender, mild cod cooked with deeply seasoned rice. Rice, of course, is native to Asia, but there has been no turning back since Europeans introduced it to the Americas in the early 1500s; it has become a staple throughout South, Central, and North America. One of the pinnacles of Mexican rice cooking is arroz poblano/arroz verde, or green rice. It’s typically made by cooking the rice in some combination of chopped or pureed green peppers (commonly poblanos and jalapeños), cilantro, onion, garlic, and broth.…

BRAISING TURKEY PARTS is a much more failproof path to tender, moist meat than roasting a whole bird is. This year our holiday turkey is inspired by Sean Sherman, who includes a recipe for cider-braised turkey in his book The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen (2017). In our version—which has a different method and flavor profile from Sherman’s—turkey legs are braised in sweet-tart apple cider with onion, dried porcini mushrooms, sage, and a hint of ginger. There is no stock added; during the 3-hour cooking time the meat, skin, and bones of the turkey legs give up plenty of flavor and body to the cider, effectively creating their own stock. The rich dark meat emerges so tender it pulls from the bone with ease. For the sauce, the onion, ginger, and mushrooms…

WATERCRESS—a perennial plant in the mustard family that grows wild on the banks of rivers and streams (and is widely available in grocery stores)—is peppery and crunchy and makes a wonderful, palate-cleansing salad green. This cress looks delicate but delivers a bold punch of flavor. It holds its own when paired with other strongly flavored elements, such as smoked fish or grilled meats, but here we wanted a simple salad in which the clean freshness of the cress could shine and serve as a foil to the richer, more complex dishes on our holiday table. One of the unique qualities of watercress is that its stems are hollow and crisp-tender, which, unlike the stems of many other greens, provides a welcome crunch without being too fibrous. To complement this texture,…

Stir-Fried Vegetables and Pork with Crispy Wontons You can usually find crispy wonton strips in the supermarket with croutons or in the international aisles. Serve this stir-fry over steamed rice and drizzle with Chinese hot mustard and/or duck sauce, if desired. ½ cup soy sauce2 tablespoons unseasoned rice vinegar1 tablespoon sugar1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil1 pound ground pork6 scallions, white and green parts separated and sliced thin4 garlic cloves, minced4 teaspoons grated fresh ginger1 (12- to 14-ounce) bag green coleslaw mix8 ounces shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and sliced thin2 cups crispy wonton strips 1. Combine soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, and oil in bowl. Cook pork in 12-inch skillet over medium‑high heat until no longer pink, 5 to 7 minutes, breaking up meat with wooden spoon. Add scallion whites, garlic, and ginger…

ONE GREAT THING about steak is that, if you buy quality meat, you can easily make a homemade dinner that rivals what you can get in a restaurant. Here, fast-cooking skirt steak gets a quick soak in a potent marinade before being cooked in a skillet. It’s delicious and truly easy. Well-marbled skirt steak is perfect for marinating. Marinades do most of their work on the exterior of meats, and here, skirt steak has a distinct advantage. It’s a thin cut with large muscle fibers that are fitted together loosely, creating a ridged surface that equates to a high ratio of exterior to interior—it’s a thin steak with lots of surface area. Unlike what happens when you marinate thick steaks, if the exterior of skirt is well seasoned, the whole…

A BOWL OF PASTA e fagioli, a hearty Italian American pasta and bean soup, takes comfort food to a higher level. It’s rich, warm, and hearty—the kind of dinner you curl up with on the couch. It’s also delicious and easy to make. And while you could make a huge pot of it, if you just want enough for two, it’s easy to pare it down. But don’t worry: Cooking for fewer people doesn’t mean sacrificing taste. Begin by building a soup base teeming with flavor. Combine finely chopped onion and carrot in a saucepan along with a little pancetta, and cook everything until the vegetables soften and the pork fat is well rendered. To further ensure a flavorful foundation, add tomato paste for a savory richness, along with garlic…

HOMEMADE APPLESAUCE might seem like a project, but it’s easier than you’d think and is a great way to capture the crisp and fruity qualities of fresh apples. To make it, start by peeling and coring whatever apples you have on hand. Cut them into quarters and tumble them into a large saucepan with sugar (we like to use brown sugar for its rich caramel flavor, but white sugar also works), cinnamon (just enough to complement the apple flavor without being too prominent), a pinch of salt, and water. Then, simply simmer it together until the apples are soft and squishy, which takes about 30 minutes. A quick blitz in the food processor transforms the apples and cooking liquid into silky-smooth applesauce, perfect for breakfasts, snacks, or your next baking project…

• QUICK SEEDED LAVASH CRACKERS Makes 36 crackers Total Time: 25 minutes If you don’t have a fluted pastry wheel, you can use a pizza cutter or a large knife to cut the lavash in step 2. 1 tablespoon sesame seeds1 tablespoon cumin seeds2 teaspoons kosher salt1 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper1 large egg, lightly beaten1 tablespoon water2 (9 by 12-inch) lavash 1. Adjust oven racks to upper‑middle and lower-middle positions and heat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Combine sesame seeds, cumin seeds, salt, and pepper in small bowl; set aside. Beat egg and water together in second small bowl; set aside. 2. Place 1 lavash on counter with short side parallel to counter edge. Using fluted pastry wheel, cut lavash vertically into three 3-inch-wide…