That Potato Salad

At the core of it the potato is a humble vegetable. Salt of the earth kind. One that has no frills on. It is what it looks like. No layers or fancy schmacy building of flavor as you chew on it. Just honest, wholesome food.

Yet, it has been at the center of many a revolution. From economic turmoil after the potato famine to the emergent Californian trend setting of fingerlings and purple potatoes. Spuds have had their hey days in several shapes and forms. From Russia to Ireland, it has been a staple of the poor man's diet and from East to the West coast of US it has been the darling of farmers' markets.

I doubt any other vegetable has been fodder and food and happily accepted as both by man and beast.

I remember growing up on a lot of it. It was fried, spiced, curried and all manner of things were done with it. Then I left India and I ate it a few more ways - baked, frenched, roasted, steamed, with and without skin. Over the years, I have found my favorite varieties. I always gravitate to the red jacket ones. Except when they are new potatoes. I like the non-powdery cores. I like them waxy. I am not a french fry but if you give shoe string fries with rosemary or truffle, I won't say no. My favorite way to eat them is when they are small and roasted whole with rosemary and lots of pepper.

Recently, I picked up a bag of new potatoes and decided to do something different. I wanted something not hot. So no roasted spuds. Well, salad it was to be. This is simple salad that everybody knows of and has their own childhood or adult version of. Except mine has an unique dressing. That is all that is different and I think it is bold enough to warrant a whole post about it. It really makes this salad.

One recipe three dishes!

The basic protein is cottage cheese and it makes an incredible creamy base. You can bake any leftover dressing too. In fact, I used some of this creation as a dressing and baked the rest and crumbled it into my salad. It is really good. Take my word for it! Or, don't. Try it out and tell me you don't like it! :)

I tossed in some spinach, raw onion and rosemary along with the potatoes and it was scrumptiously satisfying!

Also, it is a raw dressing made with raw yolk and whites. So, I highly recommend consuming all of it as soon as it is made. If you don't eat raw eggs, then I have another reason for you to make this dressing anyway. It makes a great savory cheese cake when baked. If you want to make it a whole meal, you can use it as a tart filling and pour into a crust!

---

Cottage Cheese Salad Dressing

3/4 cup drained cottage cheese

1 small egg

2 tsp olive mustard or Dijon mustard

1 T oil

salt, pepper as needed

To make the dressing, whip all the ingredients into a creamy sauce like consistency.

Bake any unused dressing into a cake below within 24 hours.

Savory Cottage Cheese Cake

To bake as tart, simply use the recipe below to make the filling and bake in a par-baked tart shell

3/4 cup drained cottage cheese

1 small egg

2 tsp olive mustard or Dijon mustard

1 T oil

salt, pepper as needed

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Whip everything together and pour into a prepared baking tin.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden on top and set in center. Crumble into salad or eat as a tart.

Nettling into Comfort

The other day a friend mentioned to me "Have you noticed the bins of ramps at Whole Foods? I thought they were wild plants!". Well... what can I say. Ramps, along with fiddlehead ferns have caught the imagination of the farmers' market scouring well-heeled foodie crowd in New York. The result of which is that they are no longer foraged but rather farmed. Organically, small-scale for the most part around here. And, commercial scale in California farms that supply to Whole Foods, ergo bins of them. Nevertheless, they are still organic.

My own stand on this situation is ambiguous. I am not entirely thrilled that these previously foraged crops have been caught in a fashionable frenzy and now find their way into every farm conscious restaurant menu around the country and are of course contributing handsomely to the bottom line of everyone in the supply chain from the farms to the stores to the restaurants. However, I take solace in that it is organic still. That many more can enjoy a new food and flavor, possibly diluted in comparison to their wild cousins, but very tasty, is a positive.

Note, I have never had the foraged versions, so I cannot really complain. And, neither will I. Because, while I can take or leave the ramps and the ferns I am rather partial to another previously foraged wonder, Stinging Nettles.

Now, if you were mooching about the country side in UK or Ireland, where they are supposed to be indigenous, you are likely to trip on them fairly often. These herbs love damp and well, few countries were better made for them than those just across the Atlantic. They love soils that have been enriched by animal waste and are often found thriving alongside cattle and pig farms. Which is a wonderful natural balance as the plants carry potent immunity boosters and has potential to aid with taming several health maladies from allergies to the common cold to arthritis.

I cannot vouch for any of the health benefits, although I do subscribe to the common granny idiom that anything bitter or or with a bite usually has something to desirable and necessary for humans. So, I am sure the stinging nettle does carry a ton of antioxidants but it is not my concern.

What I rather like about the nettle is its flavor and how it reminds one of warmer weather. In taste, it is akin to the cucumber with a freshness bursting through and wholly reminiscent of Summer. Besides, unlike several other greens which kind of lose themselves when cooked, the nettle leaves maintain integrity and retain a nice meaty texture, leaving a satisfying bite to eating them.

On the subject of the sting, it really isn't bad to be honest. I have always handled them with bare hands and I do remember last year that I had a whole bush of them. It was just fine. It is more a persistent tingle than a sting and that only when handled over large amounts.

This year, I ordered a bunch, through the good people at

Good Eggs

, from the

Rogowski Farm

that looks to be a legit small farm operation (serving high end restaurants being the hallmark of one). I liked them although the ones from the Union Square market were better. I made soup, of course but with red lentils for added comfort and heartiness. I experimented with a couple of other recipes as well. I am really kicked about one of them and it made the cut for the Summer issue of

NOURISHED magazine

!

This is a simple soup. Something that evokes the happiness in its humble ingredients and pays them due respect. No strong notes allowing all the flavors to come together on their own. Nothing fancy. Just everyday food.

Red Lentil and Nettle Soup

3/4 cup red lentils

1/2 red onion, halved lengthwise (I like to leave the onion in chunks for this soup)

4 cloves of garlic

1 cup vegetable stock

1 cup water + more as needed

1 tsp cumin

1 T butter

handful of nettle leaves, picked and washed

salt to taste

Over low heat, melt the butter and then toast the cumin seeds till fragrant. Add the onion and garlic and sauté for a few minutes until tender.

Add the lentils and toss till they are all coated with butter and cumin. Season with salt.

Pour in the stock and water and bring to a boil on high heat. Lower the heat to medium, cover and cook until lentils are soft, about 10 minutes. Add more water if too thick.

Sprinkle the nettle leaves and let them cook for a few minutes until they wilt and feel tender. They will no longer have the 'sting'.

Serve warm with a teeny bit of butter and perhaps some mint.

A Different Kind of Bun

There is a certain luxury in living life across borders and a certain jauntiness that comes with that in the purposeful blending of cuisines. Having lived in India, Japan and now the US and including my travels in Europe, I have mentally collected, hoarded really, several cooking ideologies and traditions.

At times, this wide range of experience makes me want to play and experiment without necessity and just for the pleasure and thrill of it. This is in broad terms called fusion cuisine. I am all for it because it is whimsical and filled with flow. But, it really serves no real purpose or fills no void. It is simply an expression of art.

At other times, I am struck by the simplicity with which a solution to a dietary constraint can be so easily borrowed from another cuisine and near seamlessly applied. This isn't a hack, it is progressive collaboration.

On a recent visit to South India, I reconnected with the vast variety of the regional cuisine and reacquainted myself with dishes I had lost touch with. One day, as I was eating the oh-so-delicate

neer dosa

and was struck by an epiphany; Indian cuisine has several naturally gluten free, vegetarian and vegan ideas! All it needed was a bit of adaptation for a different application or palate.

Of that stroke was born a few ideas that are approachable, accessibly, non-curry like in taste and entirely functional in the Western eating agenda.

Today, I share one such inspiration with you. A gluten free Quinoa Burger sandwiched between

gluten free Chickpea buns

and stacked with quick pickled onions, homemade garlic aioli and fresh mustard greens. The burger itself is inspired by the aloo tikki with coconut flour forming the binding agent.

The buns, now, are my pride. I played with the ratios to create that rise and sponginess one expects in a burger bun while keeping it entirely gluten free by using chickpea flour. The secret here is resting the batter when mixed. Although the flour does not have gluten, this resting period allows some form of bonds to be formed that mimics the functionality of gluten, making the bread similar in texture and crumb to its gluten equivalent. The optimal resting period is 15-30 minutes. Less than that, the dough bleeds without coming together, any longer and it goes flat and the water separates.

I own, I do not know the chemistry behind this happens, but I tested it numerous times and it works. No other flour, lentil or grain (other than gluten ones), possesses such structural integrity as that of the chickpea. It is no wonder, then, that it is used so extensively in several cuisines that consume a variety of flours in ways other than bread and cake, Italian, Meditteranean, Indian, amongst possibly others, I don't know about.

If you know of other cuisines that use the versatile chickpea in interesting ways, I would love to hear about it!

Find my recipe for the burger buns on FOODLY and the burger itself is featured in the latest issue of NOURISHED magazine!

On Trend - Hold the Toast and Sell the Market

I literally woke up to

this article

on the New Yorker this morning. It touches upon a larger subject that I have wanted to voice upon for a long time. So, I decided I may as well tackle it now.

To wit, it is the 'trending' of food. I simply don't get it. And, neither does most of the US but possibly for differing reasons.

Now, this article talks about toast as an

mal-manifestion of a growing emergence

in the food space. I call it that because literally the cycle of it goes as follows:

Discovery -> Hype -> Cash Influx -> Hyper Trending and Mass Disgust.

From stage II onwards, it has for the most part left the realm of reality and turned off several more people who could have gained knowledge but are now loath to be part of a hipster movement, which, in honesty, it is! The frightening bit is how the time frame is narrowing between the aha moment of a few to the fashionable frenzy that follows after displacing several honestly curious overlookers into indifference.

Focus on the last line - "

The issue is not the toast so much as a rapidly changing San Francisco and a world in which food matters, maybe more than it should.

" I cannot agree more. Only in the US, and markedly as an aping effect in other parts of the world, could a restaurant charge exorbitant prices for something anyone can make, but don't because it is cool to eat out. It is also the only country when you can call yourself an elite chef and restaurant simply because you focus on seasonal and local. Really? That sets you apart as a chef, a call on talent? These days, increasingly around NYC, there are restaurants that pop up on premise of local and charge you an arm and leg for a simple dish that I can make at home for a fraction of the price! Oh wait, I forgot! There is an added surcharge for it being comforting food that you can eat everyday.

I understand good quality comes at a price but I refuse to accept that quality of ingredients, rather than the menu, is sufficient criteria for being called a great restaurant.

I don't know when people in US (around the world, they already did) started to become aware of eating well. That was an uncontested step forward. Certainly, the Omnivore's Dilemma made it more mainstream. Thanks to Pollan even those of us who grew up in a natural eating environment, yet, later succumbed to the convenience of not eating from the land, reconnected with the desire to be normal. But, I do not know when that normality began to trend to uber-cool and ultra-pricey. I argue this to be an uncontested step backward.

One needs neither shop at Whole Foods to eat unprocessed and healthy, nor read Kinfolk to know how to live!

In making it an effort of fashion, a luxury to boot, such trends have managed to alienate masses of people. Eating well has come to be associated with being hipster, Brooklynite, twee, West coast hippie, etc.; Everything that the average resident of this country either does not relate to, agree with or afford. In doing so, instead of focusing on quality and dispelling myths about food that began as a consequence of lack of food culture, it only pervades the disparity in understanding of it and a burgeoning cultural divide. I live in Brooklyn and love the area but will go up in arms against the "Made in Brooklyn" hype as well as the proliferation of ironic beards!

Recently, I was talking to an European food company about product pricing. He said something, which, stays with me as much for the abject common sense of it as for how it brings in focus the power of knowledge. In Europe, you cannot sell a food product beyond a certain price point because people know what the product is worth and will not pay any more than that value. In comparison, in the US, the higher the price and the more divergent it is from inherent value, the more valuable it is considered. Irony!

Add to all this haute debate, the very real flow of large sums of capital and the death sentence is complete. Food is not fashion. Neither is it a commodity. When food gets commercialized, whether it is a box of cereal or a fanciful toast, it sends the ripple effect through THIS society. And, so, now we are caught with the forces of the need to be at the edge propelled by the seemingly endless fuel of capitalism. It is amusingly and frighteningly ridiculous at the same time.

Market Speak

- Skip this section if not interested in investing.

So, basically, in the US, product beta is very high and one always overpays. This, I can argue, is prevalent across all industries (just look at the flight of capital into social media). But, is particularly worrisome in certain sectors, such as food that is a basic necessity. Longer term, this will induce another spiral in the food industry and a spate of misplaced lobbying, where the only winners are those with money and power to the detriment of every one else. And, make no mistake, this can only be deleterious.

In the near term, btw, this portends a looming correction in the markets. In investing sense, this flight of capital is signal of one thing and one thing only - excess cash that cannot find value in other sectors. Ergo, the markets are overpriced. I am bracing for down cycle. I call end of year.

With that happy news, I leave you with a comforting toast, sorry tartine, made with fave beans! Btw, lava beans is the new rage in the markets. And, of course it comes from California. While everybody and their dog is scampering mad to find "new" and inventive ways to eat this glorious bean 'brimming with nutrients', it is really a staple of the European spring which is showcased in simple, lovely dishes such as this tart and these fritters.

---

Tuna Salad and Avocado Fava Bean Tartines

{makes a very satisfying lunch for ONE}

---

For the Tuna Salad:

1/4 cup drained tuna in olive oil + 1 tsp of the oil reserved

1 T chopped red bell pepper

1 tsp chopped onion

1 T dijon mustard

1/2 tsp peri peri or other hot sauce

For the Tartines:

2 slices of sourdough bread

4-5 pods of fava beans

1/2 avocado, sliced

a bit of crumbly cheese, for sprinkling on top (I used baked kefir)

a few slices of cheddar for melting on bread

salt, vinegar and olive oil

Toss the salad ingredients together and set aside.

Remove the seeds from the lava bean pods and blanch in salted boiling water for 2 minutes. Drain and pop open the thick seed cover to get to the green bean. You can eat it as is or cook in a sauce at this point.

To assemble the tartines, toast the bread slices with oil on both sides. Place cheddar on the toast and warm till it starts melting. Be careful to not burn the other side.

Sprinkle half the beans atop the cheese layer. On one toast, load the tuna salad. On the other arrange the avocado.

Arrange the remaining beans on top of the salad and avocado and crumble cheese on top.

Bon Appétit!

The Not So Humble Sandwich

How do you feel about sandwiches?

Are they something you really dig? Something that is your no-brainer meal when you don't know what to eat? Something that is a guilty pleasure? Something that just fuels you through the day? Something you salivate over and look forward taking a bite of?

Me? Definitely the last, and, sometimes that no-brainer lunch. I rarely get one for dinner unless it is a gooey, decadent cheese sandwich - that I cannot resist and falls square in that section of hallucinogenic experiences. Also, I avoid eating heavy carbs after 6pm. I will usually have homemade wraps or something that is devoid of yeast.

Anyway, my point being, whenever I make sandwiches, I tend put some effort into it and think it through. You see, behind this craving induced sandwich eating is a general indifference to the concept of sandwiches. I love bread, in of its own. I typically love all the fillings by themselves, but the two together simply do not quite hold as much appeal as they individually do. So, I have to make elaborate plans to overcome that, because, lets face it, sandwiches are easy to make, and, can be simply awesome with just a little creativity. I can even write a whole book on how to make really good gourmet sandwiches at home. Really. No, really!

The basic components of a good sandwich for me are

1. Good sourdough bread. First and foremost, this is super important. Not one from a grocery store, only a bakery (or, of course, homemade, which, I have yet to experiment on). To me, sourdough has a right crumb and crunch when toasted that is oh so incomparable. If not sourdough, definitely, fresh focaccia.

2. Something salty and soft in the filling that lets you comfortable sink into. It has to be just the right amount of salty because the saltiness invites you back for another bite. That gooey melted cheese, oh yes. Or tender pieces of braised meat, or salty cured meat.

3. Something crisp and fresh like lettuce, or any fresh greens that gives you a satisfying juicy crunch

4. Something else that rounds it all up. This could be chutney or mustard or pate or another layer of vegetables.

5. Finally, if toasted, then in good olive oil. It is better than butter, I swear. Better for you and in taste! But, do not toast if packing for lunch or a picnic. It goes soggy, not fun.

This one, I am sharing today, is particularly special to me. It is the recreation of a memory from two years past. While visiting Italy then, I fell absolutely, entirely, head over heels in love with the cuisine. The country is filled with passionate cooks who make simply delectable things to eat.

My first bite in Italy was in Il Montino in Pisa. That is a bite I savor even today. It was a sandwich. With a savory chickpea cake as the star, between airy focaccia slices. It was divine. This Tuscan chickpea cake is called Cecina. Try as I have, I have not found it in any Italian (or other) establishment in this city. I think there is a huge unmet need here. Perhaps, I should start a cecina sandwich stand! I will become a millionaire! I swear it is that good.

The beauty of it is that several humble ingredients come together to create something that is absolutely memorable.

Chickpea flour is very often used in India,in various recipes, mostly fried. Sometimes, we make an 'omelette' eaten for breakfast or as a snack. Before Italy, I was not aware of any other region that used it much. Although, the Mediterranean uses a lot of the chickpea itself, rarely have I seen the flour used. So, I was very curious to find it being used extensively in Italy. You'll find a ton of recipes using it on

Giulia's blog

. Cecina is one of them.

To me cecina tastes very close to the omelette we make. Close but not quite. Cecina is closer to frittata, if you may, than an omelette.

Anyway, since my unfruitful attempts on finding it here, I decided to do what I should have long ago, viz. bake it myself. Mine was crisper than the one from Pisa, but I liked it nevertheless. It was actually lighter (and less oily) and better suited with the season. I also flavored mine with rosemary because I love rosemary and I had just picked up a plant from the market!

So, that was #2 checked. #1 well, duh! #3 was Spring pea shoots! #4 sautéed creminis. And, lastly, I did not toast it because they were going to be eaten a couple of hours later. Voila!

Cecina

(Adpated from

here

)

80 g chickpea flour

1 cup water

1/4 cup buttermilk

1 tsp of salt

90 g olive oil

2 tsp ground black pepper

fresh rosemary leaves

sea salt for garnish (optional)

Whisk in water and buttermilk into chickpea flour making sure to avoid lumps.

Add the oil, salt and pepper. You can also mince some of the rosemary and add to this.

Let the batter rest for at least half an hour.

While it rests, preheat oven to 400F.

Grease a 7x9 inch baking tray well. Pour the batter into it as a thin layer. Sprinkle the rosemary on top as well as the sea salt, if using.

Bake the cake for 15 or minutes until golden on the outside and still soft inside.

Slice and eat as is or use in sandwiches. This recipe makes enough for 4 sandwiches.