Quail To Go

When I first moved to Boston I seized every opportunity to dive into the labyrinthian playground of food that is Chinatown. In my Brandeis days I would often take a combination of buses and trains just to have dinner at Penang, which became a favorite spot for birthdays.

The food was great and the atmosphere thrilling compared to the sameness bubble of a college campus, though the dish of ice and sweetened beans that came with a sparkler in it - on the house - never quite took the place of a cake.

Paradoxically, once I moved closer to Chinatown I went there less often, rarely tempted to go beyond the inexpensive neighborhood eateries of Cambridge and Somerville. But now that I'm teaching food writing at the new Boston Center for Adult Ed., I find myself a stone's throw from Chinatown every Wednesday. Last night I finally had time to sneak over for a bite, or as it turned out, a quail.

With only ten minutes to find and eat something exciting, I ducked into a small establishment with the requisite smiling ducks and geese dangling in the window. I needed something that I could eat while walking (briskly) to class, and the small, plump roasted quails looked like just the thing. For $2.50 I soon had my own bird, nestled in a palm sized styrofoam dome, unaccompanied but for a drizzle of golden brown, sweet and salty soy glaze.

I ate the little wings, legs and breast while hoofing it, deciding mouthful by mouthful whether or not it was okay to crunch and swallow the bones.

A small, bony bird may not be as convenient as other, more mainstream on-the-go foods, like the Taco Bell "cheese roll-up," but unlike such alternatives, it won't kill me. (Well, maybe the bones will.)

Either way, the bird served as an amuse for the larger feast I intend to have the next time I fully reenter the labyrinth.

My Other Kitchen Garden is a Tropical Paradise

My apologies for not posting since last week, but I've been swamped. Literally: I'm visiting family in Florida. Yes, like Mark Bittman, my parents live in Delray.

There are many obvious differences between South Florida, where I grew up, and Maynard, MA where I now live. For instance, when I go swimming in Massachusetts, there's nothing in the water that can kill me. In Florida, there are many things.

The windows of my apartment look out over maple, walnut, and beech, none of which currently have leaves. But as I type this from my mom's porch I see palm trees, strangler figs, live oak, and Spanish moss, all cloaked in undying green.

Besides myself, there are some species that somehow manage to thrive both here and there. Blue jays and squirrels, for instance. I even saw elders in bloom at a nearby wildlife refuge, though they also grow on the pond behind my apartment that so recently was skateable. Our elders won't bloom for weeks, but I'm amazed that one variety of the plant can endure sub-zero temperatures while the other can withstand the constant gawking of sunburnt tourists.

But the greatest divide lies in the kitchen garden. As you know, mine has nothing but a tuft of sorrel and a few garlic sprouts. But my mom's has, in various stages of development...

Mango.



Avocado.



Meyer's lemons.



Lizards.



And the pineapple pictured at top, plus nine more, all grown from sticking the cut-off tops of other pineapples into the dirt. No aspect of life in New England, except being cold, is that easy.

Sadly, despite the drastic differences in locale, supermarkets in both MA and FL are full of the same exact stuff, most of it horrible: hard plums from Chile, flaccid asparagus from Mexico, and tomatoes grown by slave labor.

I dream of a world were regional food is more distinct than just saying hoagie or grinder, and not just for gastronomic reasons (there's also environmental, social, political and spiritual fruits to reap). Thankfully, we're getting closer to it.

Photography Note: You'll also notice a completely different quality of light in these photos than in any I've taken up North. As in the Low Country pics, the light down here is much whiter.

Soup Loaf

The only downside to freezing food is that it's then frozen. No matter how much you suddenly want to eat that frozen piece of cake or goat kidney, unless you plan ahead or have a microwave (and I'm not big on either), your appetite alone will not make it melt.

That's why I recently found myself sawing a soup in half, as pictured above. It was the last of the infamous buffalo yam chili, which I had the foresight to freeze but not to defrost by the time I wanted it. So out came the bread knife and the elbow grease (mine, not the buffalo's, though there may have been some of that, too).

But when life gives you frozen lemons, make room temperature lemonade. My blood sugar level crashed as the soup slowly passed through phases of matter on the stove top, but I tried to view the experience in a positive light. However, all I could come up with was that I'd never seen a cross section of a kidney bean before.

Speaking of patience, my garlic didn't grow as much in the past 24 hours as I'd expected.

Kitchen Garden Update

April showers bring may flowers, and we all know what Mayflowers bring, but this morning I discovered that March showers bring March garlic.

The bulb that I split up and planted back in November has finally raised several green flags down in the kitchen garden, heralding the return of the kind of weather that couldn't kill you.

Speaking of which, I cannot believe that this tuft of French sorrel survived the winter:



That's because from mid December until a couple of weeks ago, the yard looked like this:



But those few, fragile leaves somehow emerged triumphantly after being buried under feet and feet of snow, ice, and fox pee.

Now I survived the winter too, but the difference between me and the sorrel is that it didn't have a coat, hat, gloves, snow tires, hot toddies, oil heat plus an electric space heater, wool socks inside Tibetan slippers, gourds upon gourds of mate, a freezer full of meat, carpeting, an apartment, and a girlfriend.

Now doesn't it seem unfair that it's me who gets to eat it?

Adventures in Tealand

Seth, one of my former sketch comedy partners, and Maggie, his life partner, are traveling through tea country, apprenticing at estates in the Darjeeling district and beyond.

See here for their travel updates and to find out where the stuff that's everywhere actually comes from.

Quote of the Day

From Sally Falon's The Ploy of Soy:

"The longest living man in the West was Old Par, an English peasant who labored in the fields until his death at 152 years. His diet consisted almost entirely of raw goat milk products."

Killer Peas

Risen from the dead by rehydration, these dried peas came back with a vengeance.

I cooked them in an effort to work through the many mysterious bags of dried legumes we seem to have accumulated. We have enough to live on for several days, but have no idea where they came from, since dried beans can last longer than your memory of where and when you got them.

In an effort to purge the kitchen of unwanted but still edible items, I've been slowly using up our stash by making chili, soup, kitchari, and so on. But when I found these peas I wasn't quite sure what to do: I've had peas fresh, split, frozen, canned (yuck!), and wasabied, but never dried whole.

I started by soaking them overnight, which made them much more appealing. Formerly a dusty shade of gray, the soaked peas turned a plump, luscious green. I decided to first try them straight up, cooked in salted water and eaten like a grain. When I did, they promptly turned gray again and didn't taste much better than they looked.

So I did what made me need to make them in the first place: I forgot about them. A day later, the peas that were still submerged in water had sprouted tiny tadpole like tails. I put them in a a colander to slow the process, and forgot about them all over again. A day later, they were poking through the mesh, coming to get to me.

Since they were so ugly cooked and since sprouted things are supposedly better for you, I've just been snacking on them raw, which I hope has the same effect as chopping up a zombie so much that no part of it can attack you.

Let this be a lesson: you can forget about legumes, but legumes won't forget about you.

I Heart Lamb Heart

I have a friend whose meat CSA has a cooler full of $1 parts such as hearts and tongue. Clearly they haven't gotten the memo about offal.

Like lobster and countless other foods that were once thought of as edible when necessary, offal has gone from rags to riches. To get a sense of the popularity of these non-meat cuts of meat, just google "the offal truth." That gives you a glimpse of how much it's being talked about, plus it's fun to see how many people thought that they invented the (admittedly clever) phrase.

But back in my world, two lamb hearts still cost a dollar. I adapted a recipe from Nose to Tail and braised the hearts on the stovetop with a cornbread stuffing (and by "adapted" I mean "left out lots of bacon").

The stuffing and the braising liquid were both the results of some serious scrounging. Ingredients included over-fermented cider and chopped up bits of Tom-Tom Turkey Sticks. Before there were in-sink-erators, there was braising.

Besides timidly nibbling chicken parts in gravy, these were my first real hearts. I won't share the recipe since it wasn't an unmitigated triumph, and the next time I'd probably try roasting or oven braising. But they did turn out well and I'd eat them again. The texture was quite nice - between steak and liver - as was the appearance. Sliced into cross sections, the stuffed chambers made for an attractive semi-spiral.

Also, cramming the stuffing into the heart provided a good visual aid for what it might be like to eat too many fatty foods.

Whitehouse Greenhouse?

The Obamas have finally bowed to pressure from trowel wielding lefties and have torn up part of the White House lawn for a vegetable garden.

This a good thing for more reasons than a giddy Alice Waters could tell you in an elevator pitch.

Besides, how great is it to see the first lady with her feet in the dirt, clutching a rake? Laura Bush always appeared as though through a thick haze of surreality, but now we have proof that the new first lady quite literally has her feet on solid ground.

To state the obvious, the actions of the first family set the tone for the nation, and I have my own personal experience as proof. I can remember being in kindergarten and standing in a circle with my fellow classmates, talking about how tough Ronald Regan was. We may have gone so far as to suggest that he could beat up "anybody in the world."

I like to think that today, somewhere out there, a new crop of five-year-olds are talking about how delicious Obama's arugula will be.

(photo courtesy of the NYT)

My Freezer

Spring has sprung, and since even the most stubborn mountains of snow in the corners of parking lots are beginning to ebb, what better time to scrutinize the contents of one's freezer. In the confessional spirit of Bittman and the IFA, I thought I'd do so publicly.

As you can see from the photo, we're well stocked. Literally: most of what you see is stock. Like many others, I keep a container of carcasses in the freezer and add bones, pan drippings, skin and such until it's full, at which point I cook it down into rich and delicious golden-brown chicken liquor. I like to think of every time I make stock as a sort of mini festival. Stockstock, if you will.

When it comes to stock, it's all about something-from-nothing. I won't add anything that has to be purchased anew (fresh meat) or could simply be eaten as is (celery). To me, stock exists not to be adulterated but to give waning ingredients a second chance. And which is the more noble way to treat a bird: throwing it in the trash or wringing its corpse for a few more drops of flavor and nutrition?

The white paper packages with red labels indicate another sub-zero staple: meat from Codman, a local, sustainable farm. A full blown vegetarian diet may seem better for the environment, but I still see animals as having a key role in the closed loop of sustainable farming. Plus, we don't eat too much of it, and the amount of red meat that you see in the photo will last us for weeks.

In addition to saving food for later, freezers can also serve as a purgatory for undesirable but not entirely unwanted items. Like the spiced rice I made for the Tu B'Shevat seder. It was good, but not great. Hence it lies enshrined in an icy tomb until I make myself -- or the bacteria in the compost bin -- eat it.

There's also some partially defrosted grapefruit sorbet that has separated into syrup and ice. I'm throwing it out as soon as I finish this post.

Between the identical rectangular tubs of stock and the yogurt containers (also full of stock), you'll see a heel of Elise's excellent oatmeal bread. It's so good that I don't know how it wasn't gobbled up fresh, but I'll be toasting it this afternoon.

In the background you'll notice a few amorphous plastic bags lurking. One contains hunks of pumpkin, the others are full of shrimp tails and pea pods, destined for (separate) stocks. There's one item in tinfoil that I can't identify. I don't know what's in it, and I don't think I'll find out.

At top right you'll see a container of the buffalo yam chili, and there are several items on the door rendered invisible by the angle of the shot. These include balls of dough, frozen jugs of slightly expired goat milk, the tough part of a chicken of the woods, the fat from my duck proscuitto -- too granular -- and of course vodka.

What I've learned from this exercise is that most of the skeletons in my closet belong to chickens. It seems my freezer is essentially a repository for stock, ingredients for stock, and things I didn't have the heart to get rid of but might still have a role to play in future meals.

Duck fat-goat milk-chicken of the woods-vodka pudding, anyone?

For Mate Morons, More On Mate

After my last post on mate (the tea, not the romantic partner), I received a stern rebuking from my Chilean mate muse. He had this to add:

There are some points that could help you to improve your mate (not maté):

Aclaración: the idea is the leaves are getting wet from the bottom to the top. You said that you must cover the leaves with cool water... that's a mistake: you musn't cover it. You have to put in the water and try, always, to do it in the same point, in order to keep the top leaves dry: don't spread the water and never cover the leaves. Like that, it'll taste better and it will last more!!!

Not only did I accent the word incorrectly, I also missed out on the whole concept of the water percolating up through the leaves rather than down from above. So from now on, when I drink mate, I'll say "bottom's up!" And no one will know or care what I'm talking about.

I also received advice for brewing mate in a grapefruit, which sounds like a much classier version of smoking pot out of an apple. Eli wrote:

Make mate in your grapefruit. Delicious:

1. Hollow out a mate-sized hole in a grapefruit. Leave a thick layer of flesh on the bottom and sides. (You can still use the grapefruit scraps.)

2. Fill the void with yerba, leaving about an inch of space at the top.

3. Pour a little cool water down one side and slip the bombilla in (to keep the yerba from scalding).

4. Your mate is now ready for hot water, sir. Heat the water until it gets noisy, but don't let it boil. As you refill the grapefruit, squeeze it a little to flavor your delicious mate.

Is anyone else doing anything crazy with your mate that we should know about? (Again, that's the tea.)

The Past, Present and Future of Fruit Leather

See here for my (first) article in the Boston Globe. The subject? Fruit leather.

Until starting the article, I was like most people in that I didn't put much thought into fruit leather. In fact, the only thing I ever thought about it was that it wasn't as good as a fruit roll-up, and I haven't thought that since 1994. Between then and now, my mind was a fruit leather wasteland.

But in my research I realized that there's more to fruit leather than meets the eye, which is good, because there isn't much to fruit leather that does meet the eye. I've come to learn that this murky, tacky strip of dried goo is actually quite fascinating.

The blogosphere is rife with fruit leatherheads making their own versions at home, and some of the world's top chefs have embraced leathers as one of the more doable tricks of molecular gastonomy (all you really need is a blender and an oven with the wattage of an easy-bake). On top of that, many cultures around the world make fruit leather as a traditional method for preserving ripe fruit well past its season.

When it came to fruit leather, I had only been able to see the present. But now, like Dr. Manhattan, I can see its past and future.

Again, the article:

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/food/articles/2009/03/18/traditional_fruit_leather_gets_trendy/

Fried Gefilte Fish

See here for my latest article, this one on fried gefilte fish.

For those who don't know, gefilte fish is a Jewish dish of poached, ground fish. Fried gefilte fish is the same thing, but fried, and therefore that much more awesome.

http://forward.com/articles/103824/

Inadvertent Kitchari Cake

While it happened by accident, from now I'll be making kitchari cakes like this one on purpose.

The kitchari was intentional, but the lovely little cake was just dumb luck. It happened when I reheated some leftover kitchari in a small skillet in the oven. When I opened the door, I expected to find a fragrant mush of grains and spices not unlike the one I had put in, the only difference being the temperature. Instead I found this gorgeous little thing, the sides crisp and brown, the interior still moist and fragrant.

For those who don't know, kitchari, aka khitchari or kedgeree, is a combination of spiced grains cooked together. Probably one of the oldest recipes on the planet, it's typically made with mung dahl and rice, though I used green lentils, and the possibilities for other substitutions are endless.

Kitchari has seen a recent spike in popularity with the renewed interest in Ayurveda, though for every one person who is serious about "the science of life," there are a thousand poseurs. You'll know them by the yoga mats sticking out of their backpacks, advertising their higher consciousness and serving as blue, foam lightening rods for good vibes.

If you're going to make kitchari, I suggest experimenting with your own spice blend rather than reaching for that dubious shaker of "curry." I associate curry powder, which is in fact a blend of spices (and sometimes food moths), with a seemingly well stocked but unused spice rack. You'll find it next to the impotent cinnamon and the two containers of cream of tartar with their foil seal intact.

Use fresh spices when they're in season, and when they're not, buy small amounts of whole spices from the bulk section of your local natural foods shop. That way you'll never have so much of something that it will lose its umph, and you can experiment with things you'd never buy an entire canister of. Like fenugreek.

For my kitchari, I just used whatever I had on hand, though I admit that I was well prepared to do so. The blend included whole star anise and dried chiles, cardamom pods, fennel and cumin seed, bay leaves, a small cinnamon stick, and a nub of fresh, minced turmeric.

Since I've only made the cake by accident, I can't give the specifics, but if you mess around I'm sure you could figure it out. Essentially you make kitchari, then bake it.

There are several lessons to take from this experience. They are:

-kitchari is good
-buy small amounts of whole, bulk spices
-good things happen when you don't use a microwave

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Recipe: Kitchari

Serves 2.

1/2 cup brown rice
1/2 cup green lentils (or whatever)
1 can coconut milk
2 tbsp neutral (or coconut) oil
your own spice blend
salt to taste

1. "Bloom" the spices in the hot oil.

2. Add the rice, stir until toasty.

3. Add the lentils, and cover with the coconut milk.

4. Simmer until tender, about a half hour, adding water if necessary. Remove any spices such as cinammon sticks, whole chiles, or bay leaves, or leave them in as surprises.

A Rind is a Terrible Thing to Waste... I Think

Thanks to recycling, I'd just as soon throw a can into the trash as a dog would pass through its invisible fence. In other words, every now and then I do, but it causes me great pain.

I'm hoping that after reading this post, people feel the same way about citrus rinds. Though precisely why that is I don't yet know.

Here's what I do know. Every time we eat a clementine or a squeeze a lime for a michelada, we simply toss (or compost) the rind. But the rind is a powerhouse of vitamins, and it's used in everything from marmalade to Chinese medicine. In other words, there's a deposit we can claim on this bottle.

I haven't decided what to do with the rinds I'm saving, so for now they're simply thumbtacked to the kitchen wall, where they've dried quite nicely and look like tropical snakes. I first thought to save my rinds when I read the following in Joan Nathan's Jewish Cooking in America:

"The [orange] peelings were to be scattered all over the room, so that they could fill it with their aroma. When they began to wither, they were to be cooked for a long time and then used for preserves."

The quote hails from a Polish immigrant who was experiencing their first orange and clearly intended to make the most out of it. If someone handed me an orange for the first time, I certainly wouldn't throw any of it out. Especially not during the Great Disruption.

A Ukranian friend of mine suggested hanging the rinds up in closets as moth deterrent, but I was hoping for something I could eat. Any suggestions?

Buffalo Yam Chili

Like some of my all-time favorite dishes, this one just came to me out of the blue, like a buffalo thundering across the prairie and then into my pot.

I'd never heard of chili with yams (or pineapple vinegar) before, but the spirit moved me to unite these unlikely but not unfriendly ingredients. It turned out to be the best chili I've ever had. I'd be tickled for others to take up the gauntlet, and if you do make it, drop me a line and let me know how it turned out.

There are three reasons as to why it was so good. The first was the choice of ingredients, especially the spices. For those still using "chili powder," I strongly suggest creating your own mix. You might find that you prefer more cumin, or less partially hydrogenated oil and silicon dioxide, all of which are commonly found in the pre-made stuff.

I went heavy on whole cumin seeds and chipotles, and their smoky heat paired beautifully with the sweetness of the yams, while the buffalo kept it grounded.

A word on buffalo. Yes, I used buffalo, like a buffalo, not like a buffalo wing, which is chicken. Some might balk at the idea of eating a buffalo, and if you're ethically opposed to eating meat, then I understand where you're coming from. But if not, and you just can't stomach the thought of eating an animal that doesn't appear in a white kid's barnyard animal picture book, I have no sympathy for you, and you don't deserve to eat this anyway.

Also, from what I understand, buffalo don't tolerate confinement, and so raising them in a CAFO is not (yet, I'm sure) an option. Therefore any buffalo meat, even if it's in an otherwise ecologically disastrous chain supermarket, is technically free range, for what that's worth, which is something. As the NYT reported in '07:

"A meeting of people who raise buffaloes is not at all like a meeting of people who raise conventional cattle. For many buffalo herders it is a calling, an effort to save part of their national heritage. They talk of sustainability and even of a holistic approach to raising their animals, which, unlike cattle, are still wild, not domesticated."

Of course you shouldn't eat too much of it, as you shouldn't eat too much of any meat, especially red. Which is why I used a small amount of buff for a big pot of chili, going with the Mark Bittman-Thomas Jefferson approach of using meat as more of a seasoning than a main dish.

The second reason it was so good was browning. Brown everything you put in the pot, from the cumin seeds to the meat. The broth will be richer, the color darker.

The third reason it was so good is that it was chili.

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Recipe: Buffalo Yam Chili

3 yams
1/4 lb ground buffalo
1 large can of tomatoes (or fresh in season, but never these)
2 cups of precooked beans in the pinto or kidney family (or 1 small can)
2 onions
1 red bell pepper
5 cloves garlic
2 dried chipotle peppers
2 tbsp whole cumin seeds
a splash of homemade pineapple vinegar (or apple cider vinegar)
salt to taste
neutral, high heat oil for browning (i.e. canola)

Note: This might seem like a lot of ingredients and steps, but you're only really doing two things: browning and simmering, and you can certainly handle that. Therefore you'll need a skillet and a big pot.

1. Put the tomatoes in the big pot on medium heat.

2. Toast the cumin seeds and chipotles in the dry skillet. Add the cumin to the pot with the 'maters, set the chipotles aside.

3. Cut the yams into bite sized hunks. Seriously brown them in the oil, then add to the pot.

4. Dice and brown the onions. Mince the garlic and add it and the diced bell pepper to the skillet when the onions are at the halfway point. Transfer to the pot when ready.

5. While the onions are in the skillet, de-stem and de-seed the chipotles. Soak in some of the warm tomato water until soft, then muddle (or blend), and add to the pot.

6. Brown the buffalo. Add to the pot.

7. Add the beans, simmer ten minutes, then add salt and vinegar.

8. If it needs more kick, add cayenne to taste. It's good now, but it will be better tomorrow.

Maté Weather

It's a gray day, no longer winter, not yet spring. Is it warm? Uh-uh. Cold? Ish. On Sunday it was sixty degrees, on Monday it snowed three inches. If Macbeth were here he'd surely proclaim it "foul and fair" (Act I, sc. III).

When it's that hard to get a fix on the weather, nothing feels better than suddenly deciding what it is you want to eat or drink. I imagine this is how some women (or men) feel when they know exactly what shoes to wear. Today, I slid my feet into some warm maté.

The world outside is muddled, but in my apartment I'm drinking maté, and everything is warm and clear. Like the final act of a Shakespeare play, just one sip turned chaos into order.

I'd dabbled for a few years, but it wasn't until last summer that a Chilean friend fully inducted me into the cult of maté (not to be confused with the maté cult). Whenever I drink it I dutifully practice his method, and now so can you.

How to Make Maté Like Gabriel Sepulveda:

1. Fill the gourd halfway with yerba maté leaves. (You could use a less exotic vessel, but you could also drink champagne out of a rusty tin can.)

2. Shake the gourd with your hand covering its mouth, then blow off the dust that gathers on your palm. Repeat until there is no more dust.

3. Gently insert the bombilla (metal straw) into the leaves at a 45 degree angle. Never move it.

3. Cover the leaves with cool water.

4. Fill with near boiling water (between shrimp eyes and crab eyes) by trickling it down the straw.

5. Let steep about four minutes. Drink!

6. Continue filling with hot (but not boiling) water for several more infusions.

Cured Duck Breast à la Ruhlman

In December Michael Ruhlman blogged about how incredibly easy it is to cure your own meat, here and then again here. The original post was entitled "Salt!"

And those are really the only two ingredients you need: salt and enthusiasm.

I couldn't imagine that it was as simple as Mr. MR said, so I decided to test his most basic recipe. I took a duck breast, wrapped it in salt for 24 hours, rinsed it off, and hung it up in a red bandanna not unlike one you might find dangling from the stick of Emmett Kelly.

Pre-salting it looked like this:



Post-salting it looked like this:



The flesh had darkened to a deep, almost purple red, as though somewhat cooked (which is what the salt does). I realize these photos would have a stronger before-and-after effect if I had shot the same side of the breast each time, but I didn't. So shut up.

When the appropriate length of time had passed (one week), I sliced off a piece, giddy with anticipation. It was disgusting.

Elise pointed out that it may have been the way I cut it. If you think of biting into a thick hunk of prosciutto (or prosciutto Americano), you can imagine it validating the too much of a good thing theory. I tried slicing it thinner, a difficult task for someone with knives like spoons. It wasn't bad, which of course means that it also wasn't good.

Once I trimmed the fat (saving it for rendering), I found that a thin slice was quite palatable. Still, it seemed like Ruhlman was right about being able to cure with nothing more than salt, but not about having it be something that you're particularly interested in eating. When I fried some up, all that changed. Crisped in a pan like bacon, the cured duck was extraordinary.



Ruhlman was dead on. With nothing more than salt, meat turns from a ticking time bomb of expiration to a delicious treat that you can keep enjoying from the time you cure it until the time at which you become neurotic about how long it's been since you cured it.

The duck bacon performed best when slivered, crisped in skillet, and served with something of contrasting texture and flavor. For instance, on top of a root veggie mash, as pictured at top.

In addition to tasting great, Ruhlman's simple salt cure provides an extremely low tech solution to making food last. No doubt this is an ancient answer to a problem we now counter with machines that require massive amounts of ill begotten energy.

How convenient that nature provides fixes to its own problems. God made meat that goes bad quickly, but god also made salt. And Michael Ruhlman.

Quote of the Day

From a recent article in Mother Jones:

"According to a 2008 report from Carnegie Mellon University, going meat- and dairyless one day a week is more environmentally beneficial than eating locally every single day."

If I Made a Commercial for Trader Joe's: A Waltz With Mortality

I have mixed feelings when it comes to Trader Joe's. Actually, I take that back: my feelings aren't mixed at all. I love some things that they have and hate the rest. That's cheap alcohol and excessively packaged, dubiously ecological dry goods, respectively.

The creator of the viral video posted below seems to share some of my negativity towards the store, though for different reasons. Regardless, the film is an interesting new breed of commercial, one which the maker made of his own volition, though it clearly does the work of TJ's marketing board for them. And that's the idea. In his own words from an interview on NewTeeVee:

“I’m interested in the idea of creating a new genre of advertising, the heartfelt commercial, that really expresses how you feel about a product or store,” he said. “It’s a whole new area of advertising, where there’s much less client involvement — they can just say yes or no.”

Still, I have my doubts. It still reads like a fake in the way that the subjects comply with the narrative, from managers who aren't supposed to let the guy be filming to the accommodating yoga moms. Everyone knows that yoga moms are actually really mean.

But viewed as an artistic statement, I like it. Whether it's a new media ploy or not, you'll notice a dark, nostalgic undercurrent, a dance with temporality against a backdrop of life giving juices and bran muffins.

In other words, no matter where you shop, you're still going to die.

Bear With Me

Don't worry, it's the verb form of "bear."

Just a heads up that I'm in the process of consolidating the labels on previous posts, so if anything looks funky in that section, it will be fixed by tonight.

In the meantime, here's a picture of a butternut squash seed that stayed on my dog's butt for a surprisingly long time.

Again, Silk Oolong Formosa

The last time I wrote about the silk oolong formosa I picked up at Red Blossom, I marveled at its milky quality despite the absence of actual milk. I was wrong. Vegans beware, this tea is not for you.

Some s.o.f. actually does contain dairy. Apparently a "milk oolong" can fall into one of two camps. The milk flavor can occur naturally, from a combination of the variety of tea, climate and conditions, or it can be literally infused with milk. Like from a cow, which is what gives Red Blossom's version its warm, caramel aroma and flavor.

I can't tell if that makes me like this tea more or less. It reminds me of my dad's search for the perfect stereo equipment. When surround sound debuted, he saw it as cheating, and wanted a pair of traditional speakers made so well that they could achieve a similar effect. He wanted naturally milk scented sound.

My hunch is that the milk-infused variety has taken the place of the more rare (and expensive) original, in much the same way that "liquid smoke"-infused lapsang souchong has largely replaced tea that has actually been cured over a fire.

Using milk instead of a balletic synthesis of natural elements does seem like cheating, and it is, but if it produces a better result that more people can enjoy, then why not? Because it also threatens a time honored tradition and the livelihood of those who practice it.

But do I enjoy my silky, milky tea? God, yes.

Yogurt Pancakes

Like silly putty, this recipe was stumbled upon completely by accident. Like America, I'm sure someone else had stumbled upon it first.

I wanted pancakes, but didn't have milk (be it cow, nut, grain, or bean) or eggs, and I was in a fluffy mood. I cast about the refrigerator and paused when I saw the yogurt. Yogurt: kind of like eggs and milk mixed together, right?

Wrong. It's better. These pancakes were so light and fluffy that I had to tether them down. I'd previously thought that MB's beaten egg white pancakes were the fluffiest, but these have those beat. Yes, these beat Bitten's beaten ones.

Sure they were poofy, but were they also moist? As moist as the day is long, and I'm not talking about the day of the winter solstice. I'm talking about about that sprawling summer solstice day. In other words, they were extremely moist. The yogurt also imparted a pleasant, savory tang.

On Sunday I skated across Walden Pond and found myself on top of a body of water I had only previously been in or under. The yogurt must have had the reverse experience when mixed into the pancakes. Used to sliding around on top, it suddenly found itself deep within them.

The only downside is that the cooking process probably nullifies the probiotic content of the yogurt. But you know the old saying: you've got to break a few billion bacteria to make pancakes.

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Recipe: Yogurt Pancakes

1 cup mixed whole grain flours (I used barley, spelt and corn)
1 cup plain yogurt (or whatever it takes to look like pancake batter)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
dash of cinnamon

Gently mix all of the above, leaving it lumpy. Marvel at its fluffy nature.

Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a greased skillet (I used a non-stick pan, no oil at all, and they really didn't stick.) Once bubbling, flip, cook briefly on the B-side, and cook again until golden.

Mourn bacteria.

My Dog Makes Orange Juice

Oli, my adopted Puerto Rican mutt, sometimes gets excited when he sees tropical fruit. Perhaps it reminds him of his days rummaging through the streets of San Juan.

The first time he saw me peel a banana he begged as though it were steak. Yesterday I gave him a clementine that was past its prime, and this is what happened.



Eventually, he did eat it.

Miso in the Morning

Continuing on the theme of savory breakfasts, this dish fits into my miso+1 theory. The variable in this instance was millet.

I very nearly OD'd on millet a few years back while suffering through a highly constrictive diet for health reasons. The way I ate in those days is why the thought of slightly steamed kale still makes me shudder, and the only way I can choke it down is cooked to death in soups with lots of sausage. But I just couldn't stay angry at millet. After all, there's nothing to be angry about.

Millet is a plain, inoffensive grain. There aren't many reasons to eat it, but there are even fewer not to. If nothing else, it will help you escape from the rice-is-the-only-grain-on-earth paradigm.

The first time I had millet was probably when I was kid, sampling birdseed. But now I like to pair it with miso for a breakfast that somehow feels both light and substantial. Simply boil millet as you would any grain, add a little miso slurry (this time I used red), and slurp. Millet can be nice and fluffy, but for some reason I'm liking it best when soupy.

Why? Why not?

Food for Breakfast

Mark Bittman's post on savory breakfasts seems to have struck a chord with many of us. For some, it might be novel: having food for breakfast instead of breakfast food.

A longtime proponent of starting the day with salt, this morning I made a variation on the ever present theme of savory oats, with eggs, garlic, collard greens and plenty of whisk-crushed black pepper.

If you prefer things like pop-tarts, saying "I could eat you for breakfast" simply becomes an empty threat. But if you eat breakfast like I eat breakfast, the phrase is nothing short of menacing. All the more true if you're talking to a vampire (garlic).

In all seriousness, eating real food first thing in the morning makes me feel invincible. Like I can slug my way through the day's tasks undaunted, my stomach full of power. I've been around a lot of sick folks lately, and I can't help but feel that my healthful savory breakfasts have helped me escape the wrath of their pathogens.

This has been a cold, snowy, flu-inducing winter, and in response I've upped my intake of the hot stuff (black and chili pepper, ginger, and garlic). Their bracing, medicinal qualities have gone a long way, and they rival coffee as an eye-opener.

I feel as healthy as a horse. And what do horses eat for breakfast? Savory oats.

Eating the Sun

As I poured eggs over some repurposed truffle salt French fries from the Franklin in Gloucester, this minuscule splash reared up, freezing mid-leap from the radiant heat of the skillet.

It's just a little drip, yet it conjures images of the most spectacular celestial activities, like comet trails and solar flares, giving new meaning to the phrase "sunny side up."

And why shouldn't it? As Pollan reminds us, we are essentially sunshine eaters. The chicken that laid the egg ate the grain, which had in turn consumed the sun. It's all very chad gadyah.

It also brings to mind the words of John (Fire) Lame Deer, a Lakota medicine man who has had a tremendous impact on my thinking about most things, food included.

He said:

What do you see here, my friend? Just an ordinary old cooking pot, black with soot and full of dents.

It is standing on the fire on top of that old wood stove, and the water bubbles and moves the lid as the white steam rises to the ceiling. Inside the pot is boiling water, chunks of meat with bone and fat, plenty of potatoes.

It doesn't seem to have a message, that old pot, and I guess you don't give it a thought. Except the soup smells good and reminds you that you are hungry. Maybe you are worried that this is dog stew. Well, don't worry. It's just beef -- no fat puppy for a special ceremony. It's just an ordinary, everyday meal.

But I'm an Indian. I think about ordinary, common things like a pot. The bubbling water comes from the rain cloud. It represents the sky. The fire comes from the sun which warms us all -- men, animals, trees. The meat stands for the four-legged creatures, our animal brothers, who gave of themselves so that we should live. The steam is living breath. It was water; now it goes up to the sky, becomes a cloud again. These things are sacred. Looking at that pot full of good soup, I am thinking how, in this simple manner, Wakan Tanka takes care of me. We Sioux spend a lot of time thinking about everyday things, which in our mind are mixed up with the spiritual. We see in the world around us many symbols that teach us the meaning of life. We have a saying that the white man sees so little, he must see with only one eye. We see a lot that you no longer notice. You could notice if you wanted to, but you are usually too busy.

The Tale of Niman Ranch

Brendan here, with a word about meat. If you're familiar with Niman Ranch meats, you probably know that it was recently taken over by Natural Food Holdings, a bigger company not founded by hippies (probably). Bill Niman isn't impressed by what they've done with the place, and won't eat the meat that still bears his name. On the other hand, the company is now showing a profit, for the first time ever. A synopsis of Niman Ranch's founding, rise and buy-out can be found here.

I think people should raise animals the way Bill Niman does. But if you can't show a profit that way, forget about the business. Raise the animals, eat them, barter with them, and find another way to pay the bills.

Sichuan Gourmet in Framingham

Anyone who has meticulously scoured Chowhound for the best Chinese restaurants in Boston (guilty!) has surely heard of Sichuan Gourmet in Framingham. Anyone who hasn't just did, and everyone should go there.

Pictured above is what I couldn't finish from my leftover smoky hot shredded chicken with cayenne. I loved it, but no one who grew up on "barbarian pepper" could ever eat (or digest, I should say) equal parts chili and chicken, which is how the dish is served at S.G.

Zoe's in Somerville is still my top pick for one stop shopping Chinese food (range, price, location, jellyfish), but at Sichuan Gourmet I tasted the single best Chinese dish I've ever had within 416 miles of Boston (the distance to Grace Garden, the best Chinese food within 7,000 miles, the distance to China). That dish was Dan Dan noodles.

The chef had expertly combined sesame, garlic, and chili, all present, none overpowering. The noodles were dressed with the perfect amount of sauce then topped with crispy ground pork, and for the first time I understood why Fuchsia Dunlop is so crazy about them.

While I haven't made a completely exhaustive search of Chinatown, so far I generally agree with the notion that the best Chinese food in Boston lies in the burbs. But if you're like me and Ezra Klein (favorite political blogger!), and you really like Sichuan cooking, go to Framingham.

If you can't make it there, the stuff in Chengdu is probably good too.

Happy (Tree) New Year!

I just wrote an article about Tu B'Shevat, a holiday which is known as the Jewish Arbor Day and the new year for trees. The date coincides with the blossoming of the first fruit trees in Israel, a fact which is hard to register given how numb my hands are as I type due to the eleven degree windchill that I just walked the dog in.

My Tu B'Shevat menu synthesized Middle Eastern fare, Israeli tree crops, and local, seasonal New England foods. Every dish contained at least one ingredient from a tree, even if it was just cinnamon. For instance, sweet potatoes glazed with palm sugar, naan with carmelized onions, goat cheese and dates, and banana cream pie.

For those of you who object because the banana is not a true tree, don't worry, the pie also had lemon curd. We washed it all down with hard cider and pine tea, both tree products and both locally made/foraged, even now in the dead of winter.

While it might seem strange to celebrate spring in winter, there is a convenient connection for those who wish to find a relevant, tree themed event currently happening in the U.S. Here, Tu B'Shevat also marks the start of maple syrup season.

Coincidence? Yes. See here for the article.

My Other Pepper Mill is a Whisk

One of the reasons my kitchen implements are so crude is that I believe that much can be done with very little. Another reason is that, like Konstantin Dmitrich Levin and ice skating, "I wanted to achieve perfection."

I won't buy a good knife until I decide which knife is the right knife, and in the meantime I'm still using an un-honed garage sale find with the sharpness of a spoon. By holding out for something better, I'm sticking with something bad. That same stubborn hesitation has left me without a peppermill for years.

For a while I used my (awful) knife to crush peppercorns as one reader suggested. When I first heard of cracking pepper with a knife, I didn't believe it could be worth the effort. In the hierarchy of pepper, I thought that anything that didn't come pre-ground was tops, and that a knife could not improve on a peppermill. Otherwise, waiters at fancy restaurants would walk around with kitchen knives instead of grinders.

Little did I realize that freshly milled pepper and freshly bashed pepper are almost as different as freshly milled pepper and the limp, pre-ground pepper languishing on supermarket shelves around the world. If milled pepper is dust, then cracked pepper is... never mind, milled pepper is just dust.

Using the side of the knife to bludgeon peppercorns was an improvement on using a mill, but it still wasn't jumping off the ice from the steps. So I cast about my kitchen for the right implement, and somehow I landed on the whisk. I can't remember how I made the connection, but the butt end of the whisk is the PERFECT tool for crushing a peppercorn, and I'll never use anything else.



It has the right weight, the indentation is the perfect depth to contain and smash the pepper, and the little bit of lip on the bottom ensures that nary a piece of pepper escapes your wrath. The fallout from the impact also tends to make a perfect circle, looking like a tiny, spicy galaxy.

Heck, maybe god wanted to make our universe out of something better, but you've got to use what you have.

Un-American Cheese

See here for Adam's latest rant, including some mind-boggling government literature defining nacho "cheese."

You're Welcome, Mark Bittman

After months of posting about the wonders of savory breakfasts, especially oatmeal, my contributions to the culinary world have finally been recognized by none other that Mark Bittman. In his latest Minimalist column, Bittman publicly thanks me in no uncertain terms. I quote:

"Here are a few more fast ideas for savory, mostly whole-grain breakfasts some of which come from readers of my blog, Bitten — for these I say a general “thanks”.

You're welcome, Mark.

True to form, today began with savory oats. Salt, barely cracked pepper -- more like quartered peppercorns -- and a seriously fried egg on top. In fact I don't think I've ever fried an egg as hard as I (accidentally) did this morning, yet the yolk remained soft to the point of spilling out over the oats. It was quite possibly the best oat and egg combo I've tried yet, and on the complete opposite end of the spectrum from whipping them together as I usually do.

Why don't I make oats and eggs like that every time? Because I'm stupid. Nothing else could explain it.

Let me know if you need any more pointers, Bitty.

Finally, Something That Does Grow on Trees

As I pulled into the driveway last night, I caught two interesting objects in my headlights. One was my dog Oli, chewing a stick twice his size while on a walk with Elise. The other was a plastic gallon jug that clung to the trunk of our neighbor's maple. If you're from New England, you probably know what that means: syrup season.

Turns out that our neighbor, a retired engineer, started tapping all the sugar maples on the block about two years ago. When I inquired about the presence of the many floating milk jugs, he gave me a tour of the trees and explained the process, which he kept describing as "really easy" and "so simple!"

Though legally blind, he can still make out the sugar maples by their bark. He drills two to three inches into them, inserts a short metal tube, and sticks a milk jug on it. The sap flows when you've got freezing nights and warm days, and on a good day he might get a gallon of sap from a single tree. Of course this has be cooked down to about one fortieth its volume, but the (clean) plastic trash can in which he stores the sap already has about 30 gallons in it, and the season has just begun.

When I came home last night, I was hot, tired and cranky after an eight hour cooking shift. I parked the car, saw the jug on the tree, and didn't think twice. I walked over to the maple, lifted the jug off the tap, and took a swig. The tree filtered sap tasted like the cleanest water I'd ever had, with an unmistakable maple flavor. It was ice cold, it was delicious, and it was straight out of the tree.

Of course that's one-fortieth of a mouthful of syrup we won't get, but it was worth it.

I Made Corn Stock. Now What?

All summer and fall, Elise and I added our corn cobs to a bag in the freezer with the hopes of making a stock come winter. (Okay, we both added the cobs, but only I had the hopes.) But now that I've done so, I don't know what to do with it. Suggestions?

For months the cobs lay dormant beside goat kidneys, the tougher bits of chicken of the woods mushrooms, and other such ingredients I had not yet figured out what to do with. Yesterday, while working from home, I finally freed the cobs from their icy slumber and filled up the stock pot I had originally found on the curb in Somerville.

I let it simmer with nothing else but a fat pinch of salt for a few hours until the amount of liquid had reduced by half, the other half now clinging to the insides of the windows as condensation (corndensation?).

The stock was thick, rich and golden in color, and it tasted as sweet and grassy as you'd hope it would. But such a summer flavor now seems out of place, and I can't quite think of what to pair it with.

Ideally I would use it with actual corn to accentuate the flavor, but I didn't save the corn, just the cobs. I like wringing flavor and nutrition from something I've already finished, and would just as soon make stock out of something I could eat as I would support growing edible crops for biodiesel. In other words, I wouldn't.

Egg drop soup? Grain-on-grain risotto? Take a corn stock bath? Your thoughts are most appreciated.

Accidental, Occidental Fried Rice

For most of us, fried rice means Chinese style fried rice. I used to love the stuff as a kid (and before my 14 years of not eating un-kosher animals), and would pick out the red bits of pork and eat them first, just as I did the chips in mint-chip ice cream. But now the only time I have fried rice is when I ask for brown rice and mistakenly get it instead (though technically it is both brown and rice).

If you've ever had risotto cakes, you know that, unlike a restaurant that only serves penises, the concept of taking rice and frying it is not exclusively owned by the Chinese. (If you didn't click that link, know that it won't disappoint you.)

I recently did so with leftover, cooked Carolina Gold rice that I bought in the Lowcountry. I fried it up into little rice cakes that turned out about a million times better than the airy health food snack that bears the same name. But when I took my first bite, I realized that I had accidentally added seafood stock instead of chicken. As a result it tasted like a shortcut to using a full blown seafood risotto. In other words, the happy kind of accident.

Depending on the texture of your rice, you might be able to fry it as is. I added a dash of spelt flour and the aforementioned stock, plus plenty of black pepper. The cakes were crispy on the outside and as moist and lush as a Lowcountry summer on the inside. But best of all, they weren't a penis.

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Recipe: Fried Leftover Rice

Note: Depending on the consistency of your rice, you might need to add more or less liquid or flour, or nothing at all.

1 cup cooked rice (any kind)
1/4 cup stock (or water)
2 tbsp flour
black pepper
canola oil

Mix the rice, stock, flour and pepper.

Coat a skillet with sufficient oil for frying and set the burner to high.

When the oil is hot, drop in small handfuls of the rice batter. Once the crust begins to creep up the edges of the cakes, press gently to flatten, then flip and repeat on the B-side.

Serve hot and eat plain or with warm red sauce, which provides a welcome acidity.

Sustainable Shrimp

See here for my latest post over at the Chefs Collaborative blog. I recently attended their "Shrimp and Sazeracs" meet and greet with the folks behind Four Winds Seafood, a sustainable supplier from outside of New Orleans.

If nothing else it whetted my appetite to return for a full meal at Hungry Mother, a Cambridge restaurant that serves Southern food better than most of the food in the South.

My apologies for the poorly exposed photo - it was after a few Tabasco martinis.

Clean Your Plate, And Your Leftovers

For the second time in my life, I recently had take-out food so bad that I actually washed it off to make it better.

The offending dish came from a local Chinese restaurant that, despite its horrific, gaudy exterior, I desperately hoped would be good. I hadn't even thought to eat there until examining the dinner menu while having a (flaming) drink at the bar with some friends from out of town. When I saw the Yu Shiang section, my spirits lifted, or perhaps I was being lifted by the spirits shooting up the long straw from the scorpion bowl. In either case, I decided to go back for dinner, and I'm sorry I did.

I ate as much as I could while at the restaurant, choking down rubbery pieces of meat, the omnipresent (in bad Chinese restaurants) bell peppers, and a thick, cloying brown sauce that seemed composed of equal parts sugar and corn starch. I know that would just be powder, but that's how it tasted.

To make matters worse, while eating I was reading Fuchsia Dunlop's Shark's Fin and Sichuan Peppercorns: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China. The contrast between the dishes in her pages and the one before me was depressing beyond the help of any cocktail, no matter how on fire it was. I took most of it home.

There I dumped the slop into a strainer and ran it under water until the sauce broke free and it once again resembled food. I dressed it with nothing but the contents of the two bottles in the photo at top, soy sauce and toasted sesame oil, and the improvement was shocking. The food now tasted more like food and less like the food version of the restaurant's facade.

Still, I'll be going back for cocktails.

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Recipe: Washed Yu Hsiang Pork

1 takeout container of bad yu hsiang pork
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
running water

Dump the "food" into a strainer and hold under running water until the sauce has been rinsed away. Spit down the drain in contempt.

Shake the food until relatively dry.

Dress with sesame oil and soy sauce.

What My Dog Ate For Lunch Today

A raw goat kidney and kale.

But before you lump me together with people who buy clothes for their dogs, know this: the kidney was from a locally raised goat, it was cheap, I think it's healthy for dogs to eat raw organ meat, and I tried to eat one myself (cooked) but just didn't like it. Also, it was just the ends of the kale.

It seems to have given him the energy needed to chase the splash of light created by the sun reflecting off my laptop, which he is currently doing.

No Cheese Pizza

A good relationship has countless advantages. Among them is pizza.

By now some of you know that Elise often delights me by whipping up several pizzas, of course from scratch. Last night's batch included a butternut and an anchovy-tapenade pie, both featured above. (Her halves also had cheese, a dab of which you can see on the slice above right, but more on that in a moment.)

She'll be working diligently from our home office and then suddenly peer over the screen of her laptop to declare "I'm going to make pizza tonight," as though possessed by some other power.

I'm an ardent feminist, but that doesn't stop me from observing that there's something about women and baking. Sure it might be the result of thousands of years of patriarchal oppression, with men demanding that women stick close to the oven for fear of them voting. On the other hand, maybe they just like it.

Among several modern, feminist-leaning, liberal couples that I know, the old gender divides often play out in the kitchen, if nowhere else. The men man the stove top (and of course the grill, fiery phallus that it is), the women the oven. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but there does seem to be a trend.

Perhaps on some subconscious, symbolic level, women relate to the womb-like quality of the oven, a warm chamber from which life sustaining offspring are born. Then, like a male lion, the man eats those offspring.

Regardless, Elise likes to make pizza. And lately she's been indulging my shockingly effective sabbatical from dairy (so long, allergy induced asthma!) and making no cheese pizzas, aka tomato pies. While that might sound as unfulfilling as abstinence, I've actually come to prefer them over the standard, cow secretion covered alternative.

Sure I've had great pizza with cheese, but there's something clean and elemental in the simplicity of just crust and sauce. Without the rubbery, fatty cloak of cheese, it's just you, a little sauce, and the crust. There's nowhere to hide: the sauce has to be good, the crust has to be great.

Now if only a man could figure out how to do it.

Homemade Tortillas

For no good reason, in all of my 28 years I've never made a tortilla. Pita, crepes, pancakes, yes. Tortilla, no. (That last sentence was in Spanish.)

And I still haven't, but last night Elise did, and the results were transformative. If only the standard, suburban "taco night" style dinner would replace packaged tortillas with the real deal, that horrible imitation of Mexican food would become less wooden puppet and more boy. If you then improved on ground beef with "taco seasoning" and shredded iceberg lettuce, so much the better.

But even if you're having DIY burritos or fajitas and you've assembled the world's finest fillings, relying on the contents of that telltale slim ziplock bag for your wrapper can still undo all of your efforts.

Last night I realized that there's nothing like holding a homemade tortilla in your hand. It's durable, yet pliant. Soft, yet firm. It's like holding the hand of a trusted friend, and then eating that hand.

We (Elise) also poached a couple of chicken legs and made a simple sauce with a can of diced tomatoes, dried poblanos, and a splash of the cooking liquid from the chicken. We rolled up the meat from the chicken with a hearty dose of the red sauce and a spear of romaine and were in heaven.

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Recipe: Tortillas
From the More-With-Less-Cookbook
(makes 8-11 tortillas)

Combine in mixing bowl:

2 c. unsifted flour
1 t. salt

Cut in with pastry blender (or a fork or your hands):

1/4 c. lard or shortening (we used butter)

When particles are fine, add gradually:

1/2 c. lukewarm water

Toss with fork to make a stiff dough. Form into a ball and knead thoroughly on lightly floured board until smooth and flecked with air bubbles. To make dough easier to handle, grease surface, cover tightly, and refrigerate 4-24 hours before using. Let dough return to room temperature before rolling out.

Divide dough into 8 balls for large tortillas or 11 balls for common 8-inch size. Roll as thin as possible on a lightly floured board, or between sheets of waxed paper. Drop onto a very hot ungreased griddle. Bake until freckled on one side. (Takes only about 20 seconds.) Lift edge, turn, and bake on second side.