Bean There, Done That

By Alli Sinclair

As a writer, I take research very seriously. I’ve invested years sampling this particular invention so I can present today’s post with good authority—chocolate.

Three thousand years ago, the people of Central and South America, and in particular, Mexico, cultivated theobroma cacao, the original cacao bean, and used it in religious ceremonies and for medicinal purposes. They found the bean could combat fatigue, not unlike the effects of coffee. For intestinal and stomach problems, a chocolate drink was mixed with the bark of the silk cotton tree. If fever and fainting were the problem, then patients consumed eight to ten cacao beans mixed with dried maize kernels.

Archaeologists in Puerto Escondido, Honduras, discovered the cacao had been cultivated as far back as 1100 to 1400 B.C. when they found a white pulp from the cacao bean in a vessel and, later, discovered the ancient Hondurans used cacao pulp as a sugar fermented to create a type of alcoholic drink. 

The Aztecs didn’t use chocolate in cooking, even though many people think they did. According to food historians, the Aztecs prepared their chocolate drink by grinding roasted cacao beans and mixing them with water and adding chili, maize, or honey. Sometimes they added flowers, and consumed the drink cool, not hot. Coriander, sage, and vanilla (extracted from the pods of orchids) were also favorite additional flavorings.

The Mayans of the Yucután drank their chocolate hot, a precursor to today’s popular drink. In 1556 A.D., a conquistador published only as the Anonymous Conqueror documented how Mayans prepared the drink. They mixed the powder with water and transferred the liquid from one basin to another so the foam rose to the top of the vessel. They stirred the drink with gold, silver, or wooden spoons and kept their mouths open wide to let as much foam as possible pass between their lips. The conquistador witnessed people drinking this concoction in the morning then walking for miles for the remainder of the day, not stopping for more food. (Probably trying to burn off those calories, methinks.)

Conquistador Francisco Hernandez sampled a variety of chocolate drinks on his travels—green cacao pods, honeyed chocolate, flowered chocolate, and a bright red chocolate made from the huitztexcolli flower. And according to accounts by the Spanish officers who dined with Montezuma in 1520 at Tenochtitlan, the king enjoyed drinking chocolate from cups made of pure gold.

After the Spanish conquistadors made their mark in the Americas, they imported chocolate to Europe. Only the wealthy could afford it, and to keep up with demand, the Spanish fleets enslaved the Mesoamericans (people of Aztec and Mayan descent) to get them to produce more cacao. Eventually, the Spanish grew their own beans and used African slaves as labor.

By 1657, a Frenchman opened London’s first chocolate house. And in 1689, Dr. Hans Sloane discovered a drink made from chocolate in Jamaica. The bitter taste didn’t appeal to him, though, so he mixed it with milk. He sold the powdered chocolate in tins to the Cadbury brothers in 1897 and, in my humble opinion, the world changed for the better. The Dutch van Houten family created what is known as “dutched chocolate”—a method that squeezes out cocoa butter, enabling the chocolate to be set hard in molds. Yes, history’s very first chocolate bars! But it wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that these little bars of joy saw mass production and became available to the general populace.

In 1899, Jean Tobler opened up a chocolate factor in Berne, Switzerland, changing the course of chocolate once again. He invented the modern Toblerone by combining almonds and a unique blend of cocoa. My mouth thanks you, Mr. Tobler, but my waistline doesn’t!

A Mr. Rudolfe Lindt thought adding cocoa butter back into the cocoa mass of crushed and ground beans might be a good idea. He did this, lengthened the kneading process, and a velvety smooth and very shiny type of chocolate was born. Mr. Lindt, you are to blame for those extra hours I should be pounding the pavement!

So next time you wander into Starbucks for a hot chocolate or a mochaccino, perhaps pause and give thanks to the clever Mesoamericans for discovering a little thing that has brought joy to many over the centuries.

Comfort for a Cold

By Patricia Winton

When I was about eight years old, I stayed home from school, in bed with the flu. Nothing tasted good. And while I don’t remember my mother trying to tempt me with goodies to make me eat—she isn’t that kind of mother—she did make me potato soup. Somehow, that appealed. In fact, I liked it so much that I wanted it again and again.

Such a simple dish, potato soup. Finely chopped onions sautéed in butter until soft. Potatoes cut into tiny cubes. Simmer these two in water for a while. Salt and pepper to taste. What could be easier?

Yet for me, it evokes warmth and stability and, yes, comfort. Over the years, I’ve tried many variations. Leeks instead of onions with watercress produces traditional French vichyssoise when chilled. Sometimes I’ve added bacon and corn for a lovely chowder. Clams makes it even better. I’ve pureed the basic potato soup to make a smooth concoction and topped it with a dollop of sour cream and chives. I’ve combined the basic recipe with roasted red peppers and cream to produce a first course for a fancy dinner party. I’ve even added braised fennel and bluefish for a hearty main course. But when I’m sick, or want to feel pampered, it’s back to that simple onion, potato, and water recipe.

Once when I worked on a political campaign and stayed with comparative strangers in a city I didn’t know working with people I’d never met before, I came down with a cold. I went “home” at noon, stopping at a grocery store on the way. In the strange kitchen, I cooked my soup and ate some of it, putting the remainder in a plastic container in the fridge. Then I went to bed.

Several hours later, I woke up feeling a bit better and hankering for the leftover soup. In the kitchen I found the householder and her sister preparing their evening meal. They’d been to the grocery store, too, and everything in the fridge had shifted. I searched and searched to no avail. Finally, I asked if anybody had seen the blue plastic bowl. “Oh,” said the householder. “I had to make room for all this food. I opened that bowl and it smelled awful, so I threw it out.”

I still recall the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach almost forty years later. One woman’s comfort is another’s wormwood.

Please join me on alternate Thursdays at Italian Intrigues where I write about all things Italian. Next week I write about pasta and tuna.

Hungry and Far from Home

By Beth Green

Image by Pong/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What do peanut butter, cheese, beans for breakfast, maple syrup, Vegemite and McDonald’s Big Macs have in common? They’re all fixes for homesickness—although the remedy usually only lasts through the final bite.

When I was young my parents and I sailed through the Caribbean and South Pacific on their home-built trimaran. If we were on a longer ocean crossing—more than a few days—my mother and I would play the “what will you eat” game. We’d sit in the cockpit watching for flying fish and describe, in as much detail as possible, the perfect meal for when we reached shore: strawberries, fleshy and red; milk as white as the crest of a breaking wave; crumbly, chocolatey Butterfinger bars. And my favorite, the cold, delicious thickness of a chocolate milkshake.

Since then, my tastes have changed a bit, I suppose (though it’s difficult to imagine a world with too many chocolate milkshakes), and the foodstuff I hanker for most when thinking of the U.S. is that wonderful, juicy, symbol of Americana—the hamburger.

Photo by gt_pann/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When I lived in the States (I’m based in Southeast Asia now), I nearly never ate a hamburger. I was a slow-food kind of girl. I’d still whip through a McDonald’s drive-thru for a shake and possibly an order of fries, but I kept the hamburger to a once or twice a year maximum.

But somehow, my various transitions around the world have given me a slight obsession with the proper way to prepare a hamburger. This is why it was quite distressing to find that, in China, the word hamburger has been translated to han bao 汉堡 (sometimes doubled to han bao bao) and the term has expanded to include all sandwiches made with buns—even sometimes all sandwiches. Order a hamburger in China, therefore, and occasionally it would be a ham sandwich. Or, ask for a cheeseburger—and get a lonely Kraft single between two slices of sweet white bread. Hold the (fruit-flavored) mayo.

For the record, this is how I like my hamburgers, from the top down:

Toasted buns, topped with sesame seeds. Buns should be fluffy enough to sink your teeth into easily, but not so fragile that the juices from the meat leak through to your fingers.

Frilly lettuce. Not too much. Spinach leaves acceptable.

Image: Sura Nualpradid/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Thick, red slices of tomato. Not those skinny Roma tomatoes that fall out onto your lap when you bite into the burger, either.

Dill pickle slices. Leave your sweet pickles for hot dog relish, thank you.

Mustard. Yellow mustard is OK, but brown mustard is that much better. Hot or fancy mustard gets more points.

Ketchup. Not so much that it drips, but I love that sweet-and-sour taste.

Cheese optional. If put on, it should not have come pre-wrapped and shouldn’t be too drippy when cooked on top of the…

…medium-rare beef patty. I am not a cook, so I can’t truly describe what I like here—but I know it involves high quality beef, finely chopped onion, a good twist or two of freshly ground pepper, and, I believe, some egg yolk.

And, then we’re down to the bun.

Did you enjoy our little game of “what will you eat?”

Your turn!

Bite-Sized Pockets of Love

By Kelly Raftery

A few months into my marriage, I asked a question any new bride might ask, “What is your favorite food?” My Kyrgyz husband answered, “Manty with pumpkin.”  I believe my response might have been something eloquent and deeply meaningful, along the lines of, “What the heck is that?”

Manty is a potsticker.  A lamb potsticker.  Steamed, not fried.  A dumpling.  No more, no less.  With my husband’s explanation of dough wrapped around meat in mind, my younger self set off on a Mission to make the Perfect Manty.  It was more than food, it was my first real challenge as a wife and I would not let it defeat me. 

 

First off, to make the perfect manty, one must obtain a special piece of equipment–a dumpling steamer–basically a large stockpot topped by layers of metal steaming racks.  Next step is the dough.  As a new bride, I doggedly pursued making the perfect manty dough from scratch--flour, water, and a bit of salt.  The dough should be substantial enough to hold the filling in, yet thin enough to not be chewy or tasty of flour.  During an early attempt, my new husband watched his American-brought-up-on-TV-dinners-and-canned-vegetables-wife struggle with the dough, then he abruptly grabbed the rolling pin out of my hands and muttered something along the lines of, “Don’t they teach women anything here?”  Apparently, in Kyrgyzstan making and rolling dough of all kinds is a task mastered by every child.  

Once dough preparation had been appropriately delegated, we moved onto the filling.  Mix together finely chopped lamb, onion, and pumpkin with some salt and pepper.  Then center a small amount of lamb and vegetables on a square of dough, seal the edges with water, make the dumpling look pretty by folding the dough into a nice design on top, place on oiled steaming racks over a big pot of boiling water and leave for 45 minutes.  There you have it – perfect manty!  Except it wasn’t.  

For months, I tried to make the food my husband craved, what reminded him of home and it just never turned out right.  The dough was too thick, the filling was just wrong.  We bought pumpkin after pumpkin after pumpkin, tried different cuts of lamb.  Every weekend for months was filled with experiments in manty-making.  I was determined to get it right, even if it killed me and him both.  And, while it never went that far, I do remember one batch that resulted in us both doubled over with stomach pain and fighting for the bathroom.  Each failed batch of manty seemed to reinforce my own overwhelming feeling of being completely unsuited to being a Kyrgyz wife.  My husband, who had left his whole life behind for me, deserved someone who understood his culture and how to roll dough properly.

One day, not far from Embassy Row in Washington, DC, a wise Kyrgyz woman told me the secret, which was both culinary and linguistic.  The word tykva in Russian is generally translated as “pumpkin” but it means more than that, it means “squash.”  I was trying to make jack ‘o lantern pumpkins into something edible when I really should have been using butternut squash.  That afternoon, we passed a farmer’s market and excitedly picked out a suitably curvy and coffee colored specimen for the next batch.  The manty filling was right for the first time.  Mission successful, first test as wife finally completed, tragedy averted.  

There have certainly been refinements over the years – I have stopped trying to make my version look like a proper Kyrgyz dumpling, favoring substance (i.e. taste) over style, I buy wonton wrappers, skipping the rolling pin and we top ours with a totally non-traditional squirt of Siracha sauce.  

   

On chilly autumn afternoons, you will find my husband and me doling teaspoons full of lamb and vegetables into bite-sized pockets of love, our home filling with heavenly-smelling clouds of warm steam.  The first batch out of the steamer is devoured in minutes and my husband and son eat manty for every meal until they are gone then plead, “More manty, please!”  In our home, love and comfort are measured in manty.     

The Sinful Sushki

They're irresistible. They're addictive.
They're the guilty pleasures of the Russian reality.

By Lina Zeldovich

Oh, sushki!

They're irresistible. They're addictive. They're the guilty pleasures of the Russian reality, its rainy autumns and icy winters, when homes, restaurants, and your friends’ kitchens welcome you in with a cup of hot tea and a bundle of sushki next to it. The Western world binges on chips and popcorn, but Russians are hooked on sushki. Walk into a Russian store anywhere in the world, and you find them. Actually, you’ll find a variety.

Sushki are dry bread crackers – in fact the name comes from the word “sushit” which means "drying out." Circle-shaped with a hole in the middle, they are too low in sugar to earn the sinful title of dessert, but satiating enough to grow into a delightful addiction. Think of them as a cross between bagels and tea biscuits. Or a hybrid of cookies and pretzels. Worse, they aren’t just tasty – they are also fun to play with. You can twirl them on your fingers. And if you’re still in that blissful age of under ten, you can hang them on your ears.

The cousins of American bagels, sushki are smaller, crunchier, and more resilient – keep them in a dry place and they will stay crispy for weeks without ever growing the blue dots of mold. Bite into them too hard and you’re risking breaking your tooth – but that’s part of the fun. The little crunchy fragments with a mild delicate sweetness melt in your mouth oh so satisfyingly. They sneak up on you too: suddenly you realize you’ve eaten half the pack. Some people dip them in milk and others in butter – depending how much they are prepared to sin!

Suddenly you realize
you’ve eaten half the pack!

Besides bagels, in Russia sushki have even more dough cousins of various sizes and “toughness” – bubliki and baranki. They are all members of the same family of bread products made from dough that has been boiled before baking. The dough is made from flour, eggs, water and salt, and then cut and rolled into thin strips; for sushki thinner than a quarter of an inch. The strips become little circles which are dropped into boiling sugary water and then baked in an oven. Traditionally, sushki were sold stringed on a twine, from which you’d bite them off if you were a kid or just crush them with your palm and munch on its crunchy wreckage fragrant with vanilla and sometimes honey.

They are also almost an ideal junk food. They work perfectly with tea. They work with milk. They work as a nighttime snack, a midday mood booster, and even as a quick morning bite when it’s too early to even think of breakfast. It’s five o’clock and you're craving carbs? Sushki are literally the golden cure for you only need a few yellow-brown rings to chase away your afternoon blues. And they are a calorie-friendly comfort food – low in food and high in comfort.

But most amazingly, this lovely combo of snack and dessert also used to serve as travel provisions. Sushki don’t spoil. I don’t think I've ever seen them go bad. Such impressive toughness made them easy to store and transport. Traveling across Russia years ago, merchants brought bundles of sushki on their journeys. Even if everything else turned sour and moldy, sushki wouldn’t!

Keep them in a dry place and they will stay crispy for weeks
without ever growing the blue dots of mold!

A Favorite of the Pharaohs

As I write this, I’m preparing to drive 15 hours to Tennessee to a huge family gathering where, on Thanksgiving Day, we’ll mark the occasion by dining on both traditional American and Indian meals. But my mind right now is on my latest manuscript, set in Cairo, and the big spread of comfort foods Egyptians enjoy there every year. 

Not at Thanksgiving, mind you, but on a smaller scale, every evening during Ramadan with the iftar fast-breaking meal just after sunset, and especially on the final evening of Ramadan, with the traditional feast of the Eid ul-Fitr. Muslims the world over celebrate the end of Ramadan with the Eid dinner in celebratory fashion, surrounded by family and friends.

 

Each country has its own special dish (dishes, really) that you can count on to be served at either the iftar or especially on Eid. In Algeria, it’s harira, a lamb and chick pea stew simmered in tomatos and herbs, or lahm lhalou, a dish of lamb stewed in prunes. In Turkey, it might be kobete, a savory pie filled with chicken and buttery rice. In Iran, it could be aash, a hearty herb, bean, and rice-based soup. In South Asia, it might be rogan josh, a thick, dark Kashmiri stew often made with lamb or mutton; chicken jalfrezi, a colorful saute of onions and bell peppers; and maybe pakoras, an appetizer of deep-fried savory fritters. All over Southeast Asia, ketupat, a type of rice-filled dumplings, are enjoyed. In Saudi Arabia, it’s mofatah al-dajaj, an elaborate braised lamb dish garnished with sauteed sliced onions, almonds, and raisins.

 

In Egypt, as in most countries, Eid is marked by giving out sweets and taking small holidays, maybe to the beach or to visit family. Egyptians feast, party really, for three days. Families either buy and distribute kadk, a type of Middle Eastern sugar cookie, or make them together as a holiday tradition. 

 

The Egyptians usually break their fast by eating dates or a drink of qamar-eddeen, an apricot juice filled with bits of nut and fruit. The first dish is usually a lentil soup, and all over the table, you’ll find tiny bowls and plates of small savory treats, such as baba ganoush, pureed roasted eggplant with tahini and garlic, bowls of olives, and so on.

 

One small dish that is commonly seen on an Egyptian table during iftar, Eid, or even as a common breakfast item is ful medames, a thick, savory dish of slow-cooked fava beans seasoned with lemon, garlic, olive oil, and a few spices. It’s a simple comfort food that even the pharaohs once enjoyed.

Bon appetit, or as the Egyptians would say, bil hana wish shifa'!

 

Ful Medames (recipe borrowed from Epicurious.com):

Ingredients:

• 2 cups small Egyptian fava beans (ful medames), soaked overnight (and left unpeeled)
• Salt
• 1/3 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
• Extra virgin olive oil
• 3 lemons, quartered
• Salt and pepper
• 4–6 cloves garlic, crushed
• Chili pepper flakes
• Cumin

Preparation: 

As the cooking time varies depending on the quality and age of the beans, it is good to cook them in advance and to reheat them when you are ready to serve. Cook the drained beans in a fresh portion of unsalted water in a large saucepan with the lid on until tender, adding water to keep them covered, and salt when the beans have softened. They take 2-2 1/2 hours of gentle simmering. When the beans are soft, let the liquid reduce. It is usual to take out a ladle or two of the beans and to mash them with some of the cooking liquid, then stir this back into the beans. This is to thicken the sauce.

Serve the beans in soup bowls sprinkled with chopped parsley and accompanied by lavash or pita bread.

Pass round the dressing ingredients for everyone to help themselves: a bottle of extra-virgin olive oil, the quartered lemons, salt and pepper, a little saucer with the crushed garlic, one with chili-pepper flakes, and one with ground cumin.

The beans are eaten gently crushed with the fork, so that they absorb the dressing.

Variations
• A traditional way of thickening the sauce is to throw a handful of red lentils (1/4 cup) into the water at the start of the cooking.

• In Iraq, large brown beans are used instead of the small Egyptian ones, in a dish called badkila, which is also sold for breakfast in the street.

Optional Garnishes

• Peel hard-boiled eggs—1 per person—to cut up in the bowl with the beans.
• Top the beans with a chopped cucumber-and-tomato salad and thinly sliced mild onions or scallions. Otherwise, pass round a good bunch of scallions and quartered tomatoes and cucumbers cut into sticks.
• Serve with tahina cream sauce or salad, with pickles and sliced onions soaked in vinegar for 30 minutes.
• Another way of serving ful medames is smothered in a garlicky tomato sauce.
• In Syria and Lebanon, they eat ful medames with yogurt or feta cheese, olives, and small cucumbers.