Cookbooks: A Caribbean state of mind

Published at Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 19, 2012
http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/taste/147967815.html

"Tastes Like Home" offers taste, memories of Guyana and the islands.

BY CATHERINE DEHDASHTI, Special to the Star Tribune

Cynthia Nelson is the author of "Tastes Like Home: My Caribbean Cookbook."

I've enjoyed countless Caribbean dishes at dinner parties without ever lifting a single Scotch bonnet pepper. My friend Pauline does it so well, why should I bother?

At least that's how I felt before I discovered "Tastes Like Home: My Caribbean Cookbook" (Ian Randle Publishers, 335 pages, $34.95), by Cynthia Nelson.

The diverse Caribbean style of cooking was formed from the melding of cultures: African, Indian, European, Chinese and indigenous cuisines in the Caribbean islands and the coastal South American nation of Guyana.

"Our foreparents who came to these shores, whether as masters, servants or slaves, brought with them their food cultures," writes Nelson, a journalist from Guyana who now lives in Barbados.

One hundred straightforward recipes with photos provide a well-rounded taste of this culinary history. In addition to the recipes, 34 essays reflect on holiday celebrations, Nelson's memories of family gatherings and her favorite dishes.

One of my favorites of hers was polenta with okra, called cou-cou, which originally called for flying fish in a spicy tomato broth. I brought it to one of Pauline's dinner parties, confessing I'd used tilapia in place of the flying fish. I also brought curried bottle gourd to the gathering, using one of the gourds I find at Southeast Asian vendors at local farmers markets.

Fried savories and breads are traditional -- many are festival foods -- so Nelson takes a no-apologies approach in presenting them. Batter-fried cassava balls, with creamy centers of cassava root mashed with savory seasonings, were gone in a hurry at my house. Phulourie, a split-pea fritter made for the Hindu festival of Holi, made a spicy late-night snack served with mango-tamarind chutney.

Several dishes in the book can be prepared quickly, such as yard-long beans and shrimp, easily a new weeknight favorite. Similarly, a pumpkin and shrimp sauté goes well with rice or roti. Other dishes take more time, so I put on some Calypso music and made an afternoon of cooking mettagee (salt cod cooked in fresh-pressed coconut milk with root vegetables and dumplings).

Some dishes require planning ahead, such as a black cake that requires months to soak the fruits in rum. Pauline, always ready with rum-soaked fruit, brought one to my house when I hosted my first Caribbean dinner party. I put it on the dessert table next to the conkies -- puddings made from cornmeal, coconut, pumpkin and rum-soaked raisins, steamed in individual packages made of banana leaves.

What tastes like home to Nelson and my friend Pauline was an adventure for me. But it's one I'll keep going with the help of Nelson's cookbook and her blog at www.tasteslikehome.org.

I've found a source of sun-splashed inspiration, and now I finally understand why Pauline has so many parties.

Catherine Dehdashti, a freelance writer from Eagan, can be reached at cdehdashti@yahoo.com.

WHERE TO BUY

 Many Caribbean ingredients can be found at large grocery stores, farmers markets, and Indian, African and Asian markets.

A local store that specializes in Caribbean foods: Galaxy Food & Video, 7128 Chicago Av. S., Richfield, 612-861-7410, www.galfoods.com.

Recipe
SAUTÉED YARD-LONG BEANS AND SHRIMP
Serves 3.

Note: Yard-long beans are also known as Chinese long beans, or "bora" in the Caribbean. Yard-long beans should have their ends trimmed. Fresh green beans may be substituted, but be sure to remove their strings. Wear rubber gloves when working with Scotch bonnet peppers, which are very hot, to avoid burning your skin. Remove the seeds and start with 1/2 of 1 pepper unless you are accustomed to high heat. Serve with rice or the Caribbean flat bread called roti. From "Tastes Like Home: My Caribbean Cookbook," by Cynthia Nelson.

• 2 tbsp. canola oil

• 1 c. small raw shrimp (use medium size if you cannot find small)

• 1 small onion, diced (1/2 c.)

• 2 garlic cloves, crushed

• 2 sprigs fresh thyme

• 1 Scotch bonnet pepper to taste, finely minced (see Note)

• 1/2 c. diced tomatoes

• Salt to taste

• 4 c. yard-long beans, cut in 1/2-in. pieces (see Note)

Directions

Heat oil in wok or large frying pan until almost smoking. Add shrimp and stir-fry for 1 minute only. Remove shrimp to a bowl and set aside.

Add onions to pan and sauté 1 to 2 minutes (if pan needs more oil, add a drizzle). Add garlic, thyme, Scotch bonnet pepper and tomatoes. Continue to sauté for about 1 minute. Season with salt.

Add yard-long beans and mix all ingredients thoroughly, cover, reduce heat to simmer and let cook for 15 to 20 minutes or until beans are cooked through. (Cook less time if you prefer beans al dente.)

About 2 minutes before the beans are done, stir in shrimp and finish cooking with pan uncovered.

Nutrition information per serving:

Calories 206 Fat 10 g Sodium 460 mg
Carbohydrates 16 g Saturated fat 1 g Calcium 120 mg
Protein 14 g Cholesterol 102 mg Dietary fiber 5 g
Diabetic exchanges per serving: 3 vegetable, 1 lean meat, 1 1/2 fat

Teaching the kids to roll their own

12-year-olds rolling sushi

I’ve always liked to roll things: long loaves of stromboli, Bûche de Noël cakes, stuffed grape leaves. My high school boyfriend counted on me to roll his joints, but that seems like it was a million years ago.

There’s a zen type of pleasure in the act of layering ingredients then rolling them up and slicing to see cross-sections of color and texture. Somehow, in all my years of cooking, I had never rolled my own sushi—until last night.

Some friends wanted to mark the coming-to-an-end of seven years of our girls being in a French Immersion school together. It’s a magnet school in St. Paul, so girls and boys come from far and wide for the elementary years. They form a learning community that transcends neighborhood boundaries.

About half continue on in a middle school French program while others scatter back to their neighborhood schools or other places. The girls have been tight, and it’s hard to think they won’t see each other daily for much longer. There has been a lot of reminiscing.

But these moms wanted to have a chance to look forward as well—to let the girls hang out as we women gathered over glasses of sake and bottles of Japanese Sapporo beer to discuss where each girl will be next year.

My daughter will go to our suburban neighborhood middle school. Her entrance into the teen years is a great source of anxiety for me—probably because I still remember all the bad choices I made during those years (that above-mentioned boyfriend, for example). I jumped at the chance to huddle with the other moms over our bamboo rolling mats.

One host-mother, Dawn (otherwise known as Lily’s Mom) found the sushi chef. Cheiko, Dawn’s neighbor, isn’t actually a chef (she explained to our girls’ that for a long time in Japan women could not be, which our girls could hardly fathom). But she had what it took to teach 16 mother-daughter pairs: experience, ingredients, and patience.

The other host, Lisa (A.K.A., Elise’s Mom) supplied the party house with the kitchen large enough for this big group. She also offered alternatives for those girls who were not quite ready for sushi even though we were starting with California rolls and not raw fish.

Some girls ate the sushi as if they’d been eating it all their lives. Others ate pizza and played around, making walrus faces by hanging a chopstick from each nostril. They then retired to the basement to watch “Hairspray” while the women ended the evening gathered around the kitchen’s center island with green-tea ice cream and sorbets.

There are six weeks left before we mark the end of the school year with the new tradition of elementary school graduation. The girls have been shopping for their dresses for this rite of passage.

Ready or not, my girl’s teen years are coming. But as my friends assure me, she will do great. She’s confident and wise already beyond her years. And if she does run into a few bumps (or bad boys) in the road, she’ll get over them just like I did. She’s ready to roll.

Ooh la la! French-American cuisine with a Persian accent

Published at Minneapolis Star Tribune January 19, 2012

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/taste/137599018.html

BY CATHERINE DEHDASHTI , Special to the Star Tribune






A world of flavor accompanies this story of exile in an Iranian-American chef's memoir.


"Donia" is the Persian word for "world," and an apt name it is for Donia Bijan, author of "Maman's Homesick Pie: A Persian Heart in an American Kitchen" (Algonquin Books, $19.95, 250 pages). From Iran to Majorca, from California to France, Bijan was shaped by the kitchens of all of those places.

Of the dozen or more Iranian-American women's memoirs I've read, this is the first I've seen with recipes. Her 30 recipes go far beyond the traditional Persian dishes. That's because Bijan's story is one of a chef who trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, interned at two- and three-star restaurants across France, and ran her own San Francisco Bay Area restaurant, L'Amie Donia.

"Maman's Homesick Pie" doesn't focus on Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, but the revolution does put in motion Bijan's entry to the United States at age 15. Her mother's political connection to the shah's regime and work as a women's advocate meant that the family could not return safely from a vacation in Majorca after revolutionaries came to power.


A different path
After finishing college at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Bijan realized she wanted to be a chef instead of following in her father's footsteps to become a doctor as he had expected her to do.

Her father mocked his daughter's "cookery scheme," noting the resemblance of ratatouille to a common Persian eggplant dip. "So this is what you've learned?" he asked her. "Your grandmother could have taught you this."

As much as she wanted to win her father's approval, Bijan knew that, like the chefs with whom she apprenticed in France, she couldn't choose any other career, and her mother supported her decision.

French recipes such as duck à l'orange and Persian-French creations like stuffed quince follow recipes for a persimmon parfait and a fava bean omelet from Bijan's childhood in Tehran and vacations by the Caspian Sea. The memoir is largely a tribute to her mother, who threw herself into American cooking in order to adjust to U.S. life, thus a recipe for apple pie keeps sync with the story.

When Bijan opened L'Amie Donia, she enhanced its French-American cuisine with ingredients such as pomegranate, saffron, quinces and cardamom. She writes that she drew from her Persian, French and American pantry "not for the sake of novelty, but because I couldn't help being a sum of those cuisines."

"I began to imagine the marriage of French and Persian flavors, conjuring wild menus in my head, like seared duck livers with sour cherries, or cardamom crème caramel with pistachio tuiles," she writes.

By channeling the Iran of her pre-revolution childhood, the California of a family in exile and the France of a budding chef, Bijan builds a bridge of commensality.

Although there is stinging loss and sadness in her story, I closed the book feeling like the author had just been sharing memories and recipes with her many friends of the world, and that I was now one of them.


Catherine Dehdashti, a freelance writer from Eagan, can be reached at cdehdashti@yahoo.com.


Recipe: Braised chicken with prunes
Serves 4.


Note: Serve this simple dish with soft polenta, couscous or saffron rice. From "Maman's Homesick Pie: A Persian Heart in an American Kitchen," by Donia Bijan.


• 4 whole free-range chicken legs
• 3 tbsp. olive oil, divided
• 1 large yellow onion, peeled and diced
• 1 tbsp. honey
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 2 whole cloves
• Juice and grated zest of 1 lemon
• 2 c. water or chicken broth
• 11/2 c. pitted prunes
• Kosher salt and fresh-ground pepper


Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.


Season the chicken legs well on both sides with salt and pepper. In a cast-iron skillet or Dutch oven over medium heat, brown the chicken, skin side down, in 1 tablespoon olive oil. Briefly turn the chicken legs to brown on the other side. Remove the chicken legs and arrange them in an ovenproof dish.


Discard the fat, and in the same skillet, sauté the onion in 2 tablespoons olive oil until soft and translucent. Add honey, cinnamon, cloves, lemon peel, lemon juice, and water or chicken broth. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Add the prunes and check the seasoning, adding more salt or lemon juice according to your taste.


Carefully pour the broth with the plums over the chicken legs. Cover and braise in the oven for 1 hour. Remove the chicken pieces and prunes, arranging them on a platter and covering them with foil to keep warm.


Simmer the remaining broth until the sauce coats the back of a spoon, spoon it over the chicken and serve.


Nutrition information per serving:


Calories 490 Fat 21 g Sodium 110 mg
Carbohydrates 51 g Saturated fat 5 g Calcium 64 mg
Protein 29 g Cholesterol 105 mg Dietary fiber 6 g
Diabetic exchanges per serving: 3 fruit, 1/2 other carb, 4 medium-fat meat.

Reducing Holiday Stress (or, My Other Name is Scrooge)

December drives me up the Christmas tree. Busy at work, out of control at home. So last year I decided to make one little change to free up some time and money, and lower the stress. I would stop exchanging Christmas gifts with the adults in my family.

I wasn’t canceling Christmas. We’d still have good times, but the gifts would be just for the kids.

My kids would still get something small for my parents, but it not be from me. I can’t make exceptions for some adults in my family and not others because the slippery slope bottoms out at the Mall of America parking lot. And I didn’t want to run around that mall crazed and racking up credit card debt anymore.

This shopping season has me holding firm, but it’s not easy. Today my mom called me from her cell phone. Here’s how the conversation went:

MOM: I’m at Ridgedale with your sister, shopping for your Christmas present. Do you wear a medium or a small sweater?

ME: But you aren’t supposed to buy me a Christmas present, mom. We agreed last year, I’m not exchanging with adults.

MOM: This cardigan is SO you. I’m just not sure what size to get you.

ME: Mom, don’t get it for me, please. You buy enough stuff for my kids. I don’t want anything.

MOM: I’m getting your sister a present, so I can’t not get you one. I would feel bad.

ME: I’m not getting you a present, so I would feel bad if you gave me one. Just make sure you have a box of chocolate-covered cherries at your house. I'm looking forward to those.

MOM: It’s pink, purple and black, with flowers. It’s so pretty.

ME: I don’t want it. Really, I mean it.

MOM: You sure sound mad! This is the appreciation I get for wanting to buy my own daughter a nice present?

ME: I’m sorry. I’m not mad.

MOM: Silence.

MOM: Small or medium?

I'm still holding firm, but tomorrow is Saturday, and my mom and the kids and I have plans to meet…at the mall.

Sex, Pirates, and Babette Cole

Published by Catherine Dehdashti at Open Salon: http://open.salon.com/blog/catherine_dehdashti/2011/12/09/sex_pirates_and_babette_cole/comment

My daughter Z had a favorite book when she was little—it was about a child's uncle who is a pirate. The pirate falls in love with a mermaid and marries her. Written and illustrated by Babette Cole in her distinctive style, The Trouble with Uncle was a swashbuckling good read.

When Z was eight and I decided to tell her how babies are made, I was pleasedl to find that Ms. Cole had a book on that. I checked out Mommy Laid an Egg, or Where Do Babies Come From from my library and read it with my daughter. Reveling in Ms. Cole’s droll humor, we read The Trouble with Uncle again too, for old times sake. Both books are a laugh-riot. Love me some Babette Cole.

I know that when my mom told me about sex, she did her best; she even drew pictures. But I still didn't quite understand what goes where. So I thought that checking out a book or two on the subject was the way to go with my daughter. As hilarious as the drawings were (sex positions—OH MY GOD, in one they are on a skateboard), there was clarity on what went where. Z got that. I thought we were good.

Soon after, we had some family friends over for dinner. We had a fun evening with the other couple, whom we’ve known for years, while Z and their little girl, 10 months younger, shut themselves in a room downstairs.


The next day, my friend called, audibly distressed. Z had told her daughter about how babies are made. My friend wasn’t ready to talk to her daughter about sex. But what really disturbed her, and she said she didn’t quite know how to say this, was how Z had told her daughter about how women get pregnant. “She said that women get pregnant when they have sex with pirates,” my friend said, voice shaking.

I’m not quite what sure my friend was thinking—perhaps that my daughter had caught me and my husband in some kinky role-playing game, him with a patch on one eye perhaps. But I knew right away what had happened. Babette Cole. My daughter had meshed the two books in her head. She had relayed the sex part just fine. I secretly cheered my success on the what-goes-where part in my head, then apologized to my friend about Z spilling the beans, and feebly explained the mix-up with the pirates and the sex.

Last week, my now 11-year-old and I had the opportunity to attend a mother-daughter retreat facilitated by Planned Parenthood. With 10 other sets of moms and their girls, we spent a full day together in a church basement learning about sexuality, puberty, and also playing theater/drama games and activities that helped us open up the lines of communication and build trust in each other.

Some mothers and daughters were hesitant at first, but the facilitator and educators from Planned Parenthood have been doing these retreats for, oh I can’t remember, maybe 20 or 30 years. The retreat cost $70 for each mom-girl set, to spend the day together, learning about something essential to humanity. I’m so grateful to the mom who set it up and to Planned Parenthood for having such a wonderful offering. Considering my past experience, I wonder if sex ed really is best left to the pros.

Planned Parenthood has mother-son retreats too. (They tried father-son retreats for a few years, but participation was low.)

I hope to go to one of these puberty and sex ed retreats with my son when he’s a little older. We'll just have to get there before he learns about me and that pirate.

My writing highlights of 2011

As everybody trying to balance work and family knows, it's hard to fit in anything else, but I'm trying. It helps that I don't even try to fit in a work-out regime--more time for writing! (I'll make any excuse for not exercising.) Finding creative time does seem to get easier as the kids get older.

THANKS for reading the few articles I've managed to publish outside of work in 2011, and one of many I wrote for my job at the U of M.

Cookbook review: Scholars serve up Middle Eastern dessertsNov. 24, 2011

Cookbook review: A Persian feast for the new yearStar Tribune, March 30, 2011

Agroforestry: New ways for old terrain
Source Magazine, Fall, 2011

Kotex ad was a launch pad to a different tween talk
Salon.com, Open Salon Editor's Pick, April 8

Cookbook review: Scholarly authors serve up Middle Eastern desserts

Published at Minneapolis Star Tribune, November 24, 2011

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/taste/134412958.html

The Arabian Nights get new life with this collection of stories and the sweet treats that are part of them.

"SWEETS OF ARABY: ENCHANTING RECIPES FROM THE TALES OF THE 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS"

(Countryman Press, 128 pages, $19.95).

Long before the stories of 1,001 Arabian Nights were told by Scheherazade to save her life from the murderous King Shahryar, women have told stories. Leila Salloum Elias and Muna Salloum join the tradition with "Sweets of Araby: Enchanting Recipes From the Tales of the 1001 Arabian Nights" Stories about growing up on their mother's desserts as third-generation Syrian-Canadians help the sisters personalize this dessert cookbook.

The unusual feature of this book is its connection to the Arabian Nights, a collection of short stories told within the shell of the frightening relationship of the royal Persian couple. Scheherazade not only curtailed the king's wrath with her stories each night, say the authors, but also with sweets. "She must ensure that his love for her became even more powerful," the Salloums write in opening. "Starting tonight, she would serve with each tale a sweet from Araby that would please him even more."

The Salloum sisters translated the recipes of these life-saving delights from ancient texts. Sure, perhaps they could have gotten several of the recipes from their mother or from one of the cooks they met as they enjoyed the treats across the Middle East.

But isn't the whole point here the telling of stories? It's much more fun to prepare these exotic treats after learning how the recipes were directly translated by the authors, both Middle East scholars, from 10th-century manuscripts before being adapted for today's modern cooks.

Most of the 25 recipes (one for each tale included) use the same core ingredients. If you like rosewater and spiced nuts, you're as golden as the almond-filled fried doughnut hole called luqum al-qadi, or the pistachio-stuffed and batter-fried dates. If Scheherazade's desserts don't tempt you like they did the king, consider the book a sweet compilation of 25 of the legendary tales, colorfully illustrated by Linda Dalal Sawaya.

CATHERINE DEHDASHTI, freelance writer

Recipe: Hays (Date-Nut Balls)
Makes 35 balls.

Note: According to the authors, these no-bake morsels are one of the oldest sweets recorded in Arab history and were a stepping stone for the desserts enjoyed in the Middle East today. The recipe requires a food processor.

3/4 lb. fresh, pitted dates, chopped
2 c. finely ground bread crumbs
1 c. ground almonds
1 c. chopped pistachios
1/2 c. plus 1 tbsp. light sesame oil
Powdered sugar for rolling

Directions
Place the dates, bread crumbs, almonds and pistachios in a food processor and process for 2 minutes.

Pour the sesame oil evenly over the mixture and process for about 5 minutes. Press a small amount of the mixture in the palm of your hand to make sure it sticks together. If it doesn't, process the mixture a little longer until it begins to bind.

Form the mixture into balls that are each about the size of a walnut. Roll the balls in the powdered sugar and place on a serving plate.

Nutrition information per each ball:
Calories 120 Fat 7 g Sodium 45 mg
Carbohydrates 14 g Saturated fat 1 g Calcium 26 mg
Protein 2 g Cholesterol 0 mg Dietary fiber 2 g
Diabetic exchanges per serving: 1/2 fruit, 1/2 bread/starch, 11/2 fat.