Zester Daily

6.14.13 -

Traditions of the ancient Greeks continue to echo through modern life, including food customs such as trahana. This combination of a grain and protein sustains modern Greek supermarket shoppers just as it did ancient travelers.

The temple of Delphi, where the ancient Greeks consulted their politically astute oracle, was once a month’s journey over land from Athens but can now be reached virtually overnight by boat through the Corinth Canal, provided the vessel is shallow and slender enough to slip between the narrow cliffs.

Delphi is no longer inaccessible but can be reached via the port of Itea by taking an hour’s coach ride with fellow tourists through a fertile valley with newly planted olive trees and almond trees. As the road rises into the mountains through pine trees with bee hives, snaking up near-vertical slopes in hairpin bends, the landscape becomes bleak and inhospitable, dotted with thorn bushes. It is dry as a desert, so it is impossible now to imagine the survival of any living thing, let alone a community of the size that occupied what are now the Delphic ruins.

The ruins are visible from a distance as planes of pale stone that reveal themselves, on closer inspection, as a vast stone pavement bordered by half-broken Corinthian columns. The semicircular amphitheater is perfectly angled toward the setting sun and a handful of semi-restored domestic buildings, all reached by a steep pathway heavily trodden by tourists’ feet.

There is a museum, of course, an elegant modern building in which rescued artifacts are displayed in cool white rooms. These include statues, fragments of bas-relief, drinking vessels, amphorae, domestic utensils and jewelry.

Eat like the ancients

In an anteroom, a line of screens displays information in Greek and Italian of the foodstuffs used by the temple-dwellers in the days of Homer. The medicinal plants available in region included lemon, bay, juniper, dianthus, unidentified wild fungi, opium poppy and disinfectant rosemary. There also was tilia, or lime-blossom, for soothing infusions. Hemp was grown for rope, genester for thread, and flax for cloth. Olives were pressed for oil and grapes, Vitis vinifera silvestris, for wine.

Fruits enjoyed by the inhabitants were rose hips, quince and peaches. The little scarlet fruits of arbutus or strawberry trees were available, as were figs and pears, which were preserved in honey. There was also, on occasion, feasting on fresh meat from the temple offerings because the gods received the smoke and mortals consumed the substance.

More dependable protein, however, was goat’s or sheep’s milk consumed in the form of yogurt or cheese or conserved as a miniature grainfood, trahana. It is prepared by mixing wheat flour into a dough with some form of liquid, such as milk, yogurt or whey from the cheesemaking. It is then rolled or broken into little pieces and spread in the sun to dry.

Given the Delphic spring-water and a store cupboard full of trahana — protein and grain food in a single portable package — the Delphic community could survive without outside provisioning from one year to the next. This was an important consideration when the advice delivered by the oracle didn’t deliver as planned.

Tracing trahana

Sweet and savory versions of trahana are sold in most Greek grocery stores at home and abroad. Some households still prepare it in much the same spirit as Italians make their own pasta, because it’s good for you and you know what’s in it.

On Ithaca, the island that Ulysses called home, I watched trahana prepared in the old way, with a pestle and mortar for grinding the wheat and the cheesemaking whey used to bind the flour. The dough was then shaped into egg-sized balls turned daily till dry enough to crumble onto clean cotton sheets spread in the sun.

“A most convenient foodstuff,” said my informant, adding that if trahana is prepared in sufficient quantity, your family will never go hungry. Fishermen take it to sea in case they miss the evening tide. Travelers never leave home without it. Trahana, one might suppose, provisioned Agamemnon’s ships as they sailed to Troy to recapture runaway Helen.

Trahana

Serves 4

Ingredients

1 pound flour

4 large eggs

1 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. Mix the eggs with your hand slowly into the flour and salt until you have a few pieces of very stiff dough. If you need more liquid, add a little water. If the mixture is too soft, add more flour. Leave the dough, covered with a cloth, to rest and dry out a little.

2. To use right away — perhaps as tiny dumplings to fortify a soup or as first food for a baby –  grate the dough through the largest holes of a grater straight into the boiling liquid and they’ll take less than a minute to soften.

3. To dry trahana for storage, grate the dough onto a clean cloth over a roomy tray, allowing the gratings to fall loosely in a single layer like grains of barley. Leave them on the cloth for 2 to 3 days in a warm dry kitchen, tossing them lightly every now and again to keep the grains separate and allow them to dry evenly till they’re as hard as catapult pellets. Thereafter they can be stored in an airtight tin more or less forever.

To prepare dried trahana as porridge: Bring 1 pint milk and 1 pint water to the boil and stir in the above quantity of dried trahana. Simmer for 3 minutes or so, until all the liquid has been absorbed. Eat with honey and yogurt as a nourishing breakfast, or with grated cheese for supper.

To prepare as gratin: Toss the cooked trahana with butter or olive oil and spread in a heated gratin dish, sprinkle with grated cheese and bake in a hot oven — 450 F — for 10 minutes or till brown and bubbling.

To prepare as a risotto or pillau: Treat dried trahana exactly as you would grains of rice: fry them first with your chosen flavorings, then add the cooking liquid and simmer till soft.

Top illustration: The amphitheater at Delphi. Credit: Elisabeth Luard

6.14.13 -

I’ve never really understood the lure of molecular gastronomy. I’ll admit that the science behind it is fascinating, but as food it just never rocked my world. While dining on cotton candy foie gras at a restaurant known for molecular gastronomy, I ordered an Old-Fashioned. By the time I’d swallowed the chemically engineered “cherry” at the bottom of the drink, I’d had a brainstorm. This experience would be a lot more fun if the chef would simply sit beside me and explain why the seemingly solid maraschino cherry magically disappeared in my mouth. In fact, I wanted to know everything about the scientific principals that made crazy concoctions like this possible.

Unfortunately I’d never found a way to make this happen. That is, until I attended the 2nd Annual Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream Social at LA Makerspace in Los Angeles. It was really less of an ice cream social and more of a molecular gastronomy magic show. This event answered my question about the maraschino cherry, plus a few I’d never thought to ask.

The molecular gastronomist at work

The mastermind behind the event was Ariel Levi Simons. He’s a passionate amateur molecular gastronomist, as well as a physics teacher at Wildwood School in West Los Angeles and a founding member of LA Makerspace. In front of a group of about 50 people, Simons created culinary illusions, while simultaneously explaining the science behind the magic. Families with small children helped him freeze ice cream in less than 30 seconds under a cloud of bubbling liquid nitrogen. Grown-up science geeks mulled the question of which tasted better, carbonated pineapple or fizzy habañero-infused avocado.

I was most excited to learn about spherification, the process by which my faux-maraschino cherry was created. Simons enthusiastically described a magical elixir that could turn almost any liquid into a sphere. It’s all thanks to sodium alginate, a common food additive derived from kelp that many of us eat every day. It’s used to prevent freezer burn in ice cream and thicken McDonald’s apple pies. Simons makes a slightly more upscale concoction: synthetic caviar.

Simons loads equal amounts of a concentrated syrup, such as Torani, and sodium alginate into a syringe. Then he squeezes small drops of the mixture into a solution of food-grade calcium chloride. When the two solutions meet, the calcium ions bind to the sodium alginate, forming a skin around the liquid that magically transforms into a sphere within a few seconds.

It’s pure physics and chemistry. When you bite into these tiny spheres, the thin skin immediately bursts, unleashing the taste of tangerine or black tea inside. It’s not quite caviar,  but the mystery of the faux-maraschino was solved.

The greater mystery of the event turned out to be Simons himself. I was surprised to learn that Simons’ interest in food chemistry runs deeper than the simple parlor tricks of molecular gastronomy, which he describes as “the showiest and quickest” way to talk about food chemistry.

Molecular gastronomy illuminates our food preservation traditions

Simons is passionate about traditional methods of food preservation, as I am, and we discussed real magic: the slow but startling fermentation of kimchi, the alchemy of 1,000-year-old eggs, and the mysterious transformation of black garlic. Simons is fascinated with the chemistry of even the most basic foods. He revealed the fact that corn syrup is far more chemically complex than anything he made at the ice cream social. In fact, the production of corn syrup is so complex that it is only economically feasible because the United States government subsidizes the production of corn, which makes it almost free as a raw product.

Simons thinks the complexity of our food actually may be a problem, especially because no one realizes how ubiquitous it is. “Food production has been a driving force in human history,” he said. And sadly, this driving force has largely been forgotten.

“We don’t think about food production because we don’t have to,” he said. “We’ve sort of won the game.”

But Simons recognizes that there are good reasons to understand where our food comes from and how it’s made. The point of Simons’ “magic show” at the ice cream social was to “show that it’s not actually magic. It’s a technique we developed to take food and transport it and sell it across the world.”

For me, the real thrill of molecular gastronomy is discovering the science behind the seemingly magical concoctions that I eat. I’ve tried my own food alchemy demonstrations with my kids, including making my own sugar from sugarcane. And when I next have the opportunity to taste potato foam gnocchi or dried olive soil, I won’t need the chef sitting next to me to fully enjoy the experience.

But frankly, my favorite form of molecular gastronomy involves the chemical reaction between a large bag of salt and the back leg of a pig.  Country ham — now that’s magic.

Top photo: Molecular gastronomy in action. Credit: Susan Lutz

6.14.13 -

Wild asparagus was one of the first wild foods I learned to pick as a kid, and it is probably the one I hold dearest to my heart. I’m so smitten with the wild variety that I refuse to eat store-bought asparagus, with rare exceptions like an elderly aunt’s Thanksgiving table.

I’m convinced that there is nothing finer  than the wild asparagus I pick with my own hands each year as spring arrives. I hold this belief because of my family history with it, because it is a seasonal celebration and because I genuinely think it is one of the most scrumptious foods on earth.

When I teach people to identify asparagus in the wild, I remind them that it is the very same species of asparagus, Asparagus officinalis, sold in stores (in the U.S.). Thus, wild asparagus looks remarkably similar to the spears sold in grocery markets and is readily recognized once one knows what to look for. It may vary in diameter, from very thin as a whip to thicker than my thumb. Sometimes wild asparagus twists and curls as it reaches for the light, and it occasionally looks wild and raggedy. But more often than not, it looks quite similar to asparagus found in the store, and it always tastes good.

It occurred to me this year that I should run a taste test between wild and store-bought asparagus, given that they are essentially the same thing. I used the participants in one of my wild foods cooking classes as the test subjects. I presented two batches of identically cooked asparagus (steamed and dressed in olive oil and salt). I informed them that one was wild and one was purchased from a supermarket, and in a blind test, asked them which they preferred.

The results shocked me. I had thought that there was no way wild asparagus could lose. However, the tasters preferred the store-bought asparagus by a 3 to 1 margin. Even the tasters were surprised by the results, many swearing they thought for certain they had correctly chosen the wild asparagus.

I have some theories as to why the commercial asparagus won. Most of the tasters agreed wild asparagus tasted sweeter. Perhaps they had pre-formed notions that wild asparagus might taste slightly more bitter. I think my biggest mistake was in informing my tasters that they would be choosing between wild and store-bought asparagus. I simply should have asked them which they preferred without informing them why I wanted to know.

Will the results of my informal poll alter my preference for wild asparagus? Not a chance. For me, wild asparagus is as much about ritual and celebration as it is about flavor. I will continue to boycott the asparagus that comes from the store, and look forward to next spring’s crop of wild asparagus.

Simple Grilled Asparagus

Ingredients

1 pound thick asparagus

1 to 2 teaspoons olive oil

½ teaspoon sea salt

½ teaspoon lemon zest

1 tablespoon wild onion compound butter

Directions

1. Prepare the asparagus by using a vegetable peeler to peel the lower third of each stalk, and snapping off any ends that seem too woody.

2. Place the asparagus pieces on a sheet pan, drizzle them with the olive oil. Toss them around lightly until each spear is evenly coated with the oil. Next, season the asparagus with salt.

3. Grill the asparagus over moderately high heat, turning once, just until they start to blister and are tender when pierced with a knife. Do not overcook the asparagus, or it will become soggy and develop a bad flavor.

4. Once the asparagus is off the grill, finish it by letting the compound butter melt over the hot spears, then sprinkle them with the lemon zest.

Top photo: Grilled asparagus. Credit: Wendy Petty

6.13.13 -

The transformation of Mexico City’s historic center from abandoned and tawdry into an exciting nighttime glamor spot is astounding. New bars clubs and restaurant have opened right and left, beckoning upscale revelers who until now have seen this, the oldest part of the city, as dangerous and unattractive.

Limosneros, a new restaurant, is emblematic of the change. It’s located in a colonial building  near the site of the original Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlán. 

One of a new breed of  Mexican restaurants that stick to traditional cooking, simply tweaking it and bringing it up to date, it’s a smashing success. The menu, designed by gastronomic scholar José Luís Curiel and chef Lula Martín del Campo updates classics in a hip, modern but unpretentious way. This food aims to please without ostentation or dubious reinvention. Recipes generally stick to the contents of grandma’s larder or gently introduce a new but familiar element — always straight from the market, not from the lab. For example, costillas en salsa de morita y mezcal recall those crowd-pleasing red ribs that old-style Chinese restaurants used to offer. But a more complex smoky aroma from the mezcal marinade reminds you that this is Mexico, not Chinatown. Or, crisp handmade corn tostadas topped with shredded duck and a quince/chile salsa — marketplace comfort food with a sophisticated twist.

The creative force behind the place is handsome Juan Pablo Ballesteros, great-grandson of the founders of Café Tacuba, a venerable 100-year-old institution just around the corner.

Proudly knowledgeable about every aspect of Mexican food and drink, Ballesteros is enthusiastic and ready to expound. His bar is his pride and joy, and in keeping with current trends serves only Mexican products.

Ballesteros insists that wine pairs well with Mexican, a cuisine famous for being spicy. He elaborates: “You have to separate the idea of spicy from picante or hot. Yes, a lot of our dishes are made with complex spice mixtures, but few are truly hot. We leave that to the salsas, which are served on the side. So robust or fruity wines go with these dishes.”

While Mexican wines are little known outside national borders, fine vintages are being produced in Baja California and Querétaro. “We’re correcting the mistakes we used to make with wine,” Ballesteros explains. “If you look at the history, wine came with the Spaniards. In fact, Cortés ordered a quota of vines to be planted and the first vineyard, Casa Madero, was set up in 1579. But later, Spain forbade the production of wine for all but religious purposes so it wasn’t until the 20th century that vineyards started to reappear. Ten years ago there were only a few and most were producing low quality wine. Now there are over 60. People here are beginning to appreciate wine and to buy national wines — they’re supporting our own products.”

Famous Mexican beer ‘mediocre’

While Mexican beer is known around the world, little, according to Ballesteros, is any good.

“They make a mediocre product,” he laments.  ”They add starches from things like beans and rice to give it body. It’s nice to drink, goes down easy, like water. But not well-made like European beer. For example, it has to be very cold to taste good. So I found a craft beer maker here, met with him. Together we developed new products that’re not generic. You can add flavorings to beers, but it’s a sin to have a good beer then just pour some mango on it — it has to be done during the process. So we base our beers on European models and add flavorings that make them special, local.”

Mezcal, not tequila, is the ticket

And, finally, there’s the libation most associated with Mexico: tequila. But at Limosneros, tequila is eschewed in favor of mezcal.

Ballesteros explains that tequila is actually a kind of mezcal. While there are 55 types of agave — the cactus mezcal is brewed from — tequila only uses one, agave azul. The first tequila producer in the 19th century was José Cuervo. Their plant was called Fábrica de Mezcal Tequila, then it was shortened to just tequila. They sold it all around the country and it became popular, emblematic of Mexico — good marketing.

Until recently mezcal was thought of as a rotgut tourist souvenir, a bottle with a worm in it.

Ballesteros insists that most mezcal drunk in small towns has always been a superior product. “Normal mezcal is refined, it’s great! Mezcal has existed for a long time, since colonial times. Today, many mezcals are produced by small distilleries, often in the hands of families. These guys learned from their fathers and grandfathers. They’re incredible artisans.  You should see them at work! They’re like old-fashioned wine or cheesemakers in Europe.”

There’s a boom going on now in Mexico: local corn, national drinks, pulque, mezcal are celebrated. Ballesteros is part of the new generation that no longer carries a chip on their shoulders about being Mexican. “We have a word here, malinchista,” he says. “It means someone who thinks non-Mexican things are inherently better. But new generations are finally letting go of that. In a culinary sense, the Slow Food movement has made us realize it’s good to be local. So we’re taking back our country.”

Top photo composite:

Juan Pablo Ballesteros, next to Conchas from Limosneros restaurant in Mexico City. Credits: Peter Norman

6.13.13 -

Marshmallows were a staple in our house when I was growing up. Not a staple like potatoes and carrots, which showed up in one form or another on the table for most dinners, but marshmallows were always in the cupboard, waiting to float in hot chocolate or be skewered and toasted over a campfire. Other times, they got all gooey, sandwiched with chocolate between graham crackers; was there ever a better name for a treat than s’mores?

We even made our own marshmallows, from my grandmother’s recipe.  Sometimes we left them as marshmallows, cubes rolled in confectioner’s sugar, while other times we added a short crust and a dusting of sweet coconut and transformed them into marshmallow squares (still one of my favorite cookies).

We had marshmallow love, just like people have had for centuries.

Marshmallow history

Marshmallows have a surprisingly long history, dating to ancient times. They were first made from the pulp of the marsh mallow plant root, which was boiled with sugar or another sweetener like honey, then strained and cooled. The ancient Egyptians used to make this candy for their pharaohs and gods.

Mere and poor mortals in ancient Greece and Rome ate the marsh mallow plant because it was abundant and fed their hunger. Lucian, a satirist of the day, thought it should be eaten like lettuce.

Marsh mallow was also used medicinally. It helped to treat wounds, and when mixed with wine, it calmed coughs.  Marsh mallow water treated catarrhs (inflammations of mucus membranes), among other things.

Modern marshmallows

Marshmallows similar to what we know today were first made in France around 1850 in small sweet shops. Candy makers extracted the sap from the plant’s root, whipped and sweetened it. Although very popular, the resulting marshmallows took a lot of time and effort to make.

In the late 19th century, French manufacturers incorporated egg whites or gelatin and corn starch into their marshmallows (also known as pâte de guimauve). This eliminated the sap but required new ways to combine the gelatin and corn starch.

By the turn of the last century, marshmallows were sold alongside licorice whips and peppermint drops, but they became even more popular when some smart marketers suggested that marshmallows went well with other popular items such as Jell-O. Jellied salads with fruit and miniature marshmallows are still a staple at family celebrations, especially in summer.

In the 1950s, the United States had more than 30 marshmallow manufacturers. Around this time, Alex Doumak patented the extrusion process which allowed marshmallows to be cheaply and quickly produced. This process forced the marshmallow mixture through a tube; it was then cut into pieces and rolled in cornstarch and confectioner’s sugar.

Marshmallow Fluff and creme

Where would a banana split be without a scoop of Marshmallow Fluff or marshmallow creme to go along with the chocolate or strawberry sauce?

The earliest mention of marshmallow creme in an American cookbook is in Fannie Farmer’s “Boston School Cook Book” from 1896. She advises the home baker to, “Put Marshmallow Cream between the layers and on the top” of a cake for a splendid result.

The first marshmallow creme manufactured and marketed in America was Marshmallow Fluff. Although Fluff and creme are similar, Fluff is made using a more expensive batch-whipping process, while creme is made with a continuous mixing process.

Marshmallow Fluff was first made in 1917 by Archibald Query in Somerville, Mass. He turned out batches of the stuff in his kitchen and sold it door to door to housewives, but food shortages during the war caused him to stop production. When the war was over, he was no longer interested in Marshmallow Fluff, so he sold the recipe to H. Allen Durkee and Fred L. Mower for $500.

These World War I veterans continued to sell their product door to door, and soon it became so popular it was stocked on grocers’ shelves. As their business grew more successful, Durkee and Mower advertised in Boston newspapers and on radio.  In 1930, they began sponsoring a weekly radio show called “Flufferettes.” It aired Sunday evenings before Jack Benny, and with its live music and comedy skits, the “Flufferettes” remained popular throughout the 1940s.

Today, sophisticated marshmallow flavors such as chai, champagne and dark chocolate are popular and delicious, but when I want a comforting and easy-to-make treat, I make my grandmother’s marshmallows.

They were sure sellers at her Anglican Church Women’s teas and bake sales. When she made Marshmallow Squares for these socials, her Kenmore mixer practically vibrated as it whipped gelatin, water and vanilla into bowl after bowl of fluffy delight. I sneaked spoon after spoon of the pale pink or yellow-colored marshmallow and later, she would let me roll the top and sides of the marshmallows in coconut. She saved the edges, sliced away first so it was easier to remove the squares from the pan, and set them aside. Later, when the plates of squares were wrapped, waiting to go to the church hall, she and I sat in the mud room and ate what she’d saved for us, marshmallow first and then the crust. That’s still how I eat them.

Marshmallow love truly is forever.

Mom Skanes’ Marshmallow Squares

Makes 16 to 20, depending upon size.

Ingredients

For the marshmallow:

2 packages of gelatin

½ cup cold water

2 cups white sugar

1 cup boiling water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

A few drops of red food coloring (optional)

Sifted confectioner’s sugar for rolling

For the crust:

½ cup butter, softened

½ cup packed brown sugar

1½ cups white flour

Directions

For the crust:

1. Preheat oven to 300 F.

2. Cream butter and sugar together.

3. Mix in flour (only until combined).

4. Turn mixture into a 9-by-9-inch pan and press into a uniform thickness of crust.

5. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes.

Note: The crust should still be a little warm when you add the marshmallow mixture.

For the marshmallow:

1. Soften the gelatin in the cold water for 5 minutes.

2. Place the softened gelatin, sugar, boiling water and vanilla extract in the bowl of a mixer.

3. Start on low speed, gradually moving to high speed, beating the ingredients until you have a thick marshmallow (about 10 minutes).

4. Pour the marshmallow onto the still-warm crust.

5. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until set (about three hours).

6. Remove the pan from the refrigerator and let stand for 10 minutes. (This will make the crust easier to cut.)

7. Cut into squares.

8. Roll the marshmallow (top and sides) in sweet coconut.

Top photo: Marshmallow squares. Credit: Sharon Hunt

6.13.13 -

Fava beans are a spring vegetable with a short season. The good news is these versatile little wonders are about to be plentiful. You can find them at farmers markets, where they will be at their least expensive toward the end of June when they’re abundant.

The first thing I love about fava beans is that they’re easy to shuck. The beans pop out of their pods almost like you’ve unzipped them.

Next, experts debate whether you should remove the beans’ skin or leave them. I’ve always believed that depends on what you plan to do with them. To make the fava bean purée, the skin must come off. That’s easily done by plunging the beans in boiling water for about five minutes so the skins are loosened. Each bean will have a little black seam, which is where you pinch to remove the skin.

I often end up making this fava bean purée because everyone likes it and it’s a great starter dish to feast on while you await grilled food. I have a good number of ways of cooking fava and I have many favorites, including linguine and fava, grilled scallops and fava, purée fava and chicory soup. But this simple purée is such a winner I thought I’d encourage you to try.

Fava Bean Purée

Serves 6

This is a great antipasto or party dip. My original recipe calls for 10 pounds of fava beans, which takes me about 45 minutes to pod and peel. This is a scaled-down version, and you could cut it in half again should you want something even more manageable.

Ingredients

5 pounds fava bean pods

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil or more as needed

2 large garlic cloves, pounded until mushy in a mortar with ½ teaspoon salt

⅛ teaspoon ground cinnamon

Freshly ground white pepper to taste

Directions

1. To remove the beans from their pods, bring a large pot of water to a boil and cook the beans for 10 minutes. Drain. Once they are cool enough the handle, pinch the peel and pop the beans out. You will have about 4 cups of peeled beans.

2. Place the beans in a food processor, in 2 batches if necessary, with the garlic and salt, and run continuously as you slowly pour the olive oil in as if you were making mayonnaise. Stir in the cinnamon and white pepper, taste and correct the seasoning.

3. Store in the refrigerator, but serve at room temperature with grissini sticks or flatbread broken into wedges and fried in olive oil.

Top photo: Fava bean purée. Credit: Clifford A. Wright

6.12.13 -

These app reviews will teach you to become a vegan in 21 days or to mix perfect cocktails from sight alone. There’s also a complete guide to garden herbs (perfect for a farmers market) and finally, a tool to identify the hottest peppers. Enjoy!

Eyeball those cocktails

Clinq takes a strikingly different approach to the cocktail recipe. Instead of listing shot measures, Clinq shows you the ratio of ingredients, each represented by a different color. The idea being, whether you’re making one drink or 20, you’ll get the measures right without counting shots. The stunning yet simple visuals add to the app’s appeal. The home page gives you a choice of five different spirits (gin, vodka, whiskey, bourbon and rum) spelled out in stylish black typeface on a white background. Once you touch the screen to make your choice the screen slides to the left, revealing the outlines of four different glass shapes (highball, martini, hurricane and lowball). Choose your glass and you are given a choice of cocktails — there are over 140 listed. Once the color-coded ratio is shown, you can press the screen for a few seconds and the ingredient names are revealed, then hold it again for a few more and the cocktail making procedure is shown. It may take a few times to get used to the controls, but this has to be one the more creative apps around. Happy mixing!

99 cents on iTunes

Help for the Virgin Vegan

Just how does one become a vegan? The first step is probably the most difficult, but if you want to take it, 21-Day Vegan Kickstart might just be the app you need.  Designed by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, the app provides you with daily food lists and recipes to help you along your vegan route. You are able to see what ingredients you’ll need a week in advance, then each day you are given a plan for breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus a snack (one I imagine you will look forward to each day).  Click on the meal and the page flips, providing you with the recipe and nutritional information.  All in all, a very resourceful app that is simple to use and follow. It might just change the way you eat, forever …

Free on on iTunes

How hot is that pepper?

Say you’re cooking up a vindaloo curry or making a salsa, and you want to calibrate the heat that you’ll be bringing. When you’re talking peppers, you need to know one word: Scoville. That’s the name of the scale that measures a pepper’s spiciness.  Every pepper has a Scoville rating, from the slightly sweet bell (0 units) to the burn-your-head-off habanero (100,000 to 350,000 units).  The scale was invented by Wilbur Scoville a century ago — and no, he didn’t assign the heat levels by chomping his way through the world’s chilis. He got other people to do it for him. Scoville the app lists pretty much every pepper in existence, its Scoville rating, and tasting notes or other background information.  The “Jamaican hot,” for example, has flavors of apples, apricots and citrus (under a furnace-like heat on your palate, one presumes) and is mainly used for hot sauces in the Caribbean. In fact, after a quick browse, it seems that everything higher on the scale than the habanero has some sort of health warning and can only be eaten in the tiniest of quantities, with a pint of milk at the ready. One of the hottest peppers, the terrifyingly named Naga Viper, has a Scoville rating of up to 1,382,118 units. It is usually dabbed on food with a toothpick, so as to only use a tiny drop – that is hot to the point of pain!

$1.99 on iTunes

Apps field guide to kitchen herbs

Most of us can tell the difference between rosemary and basil … but to the untrained eye (especially my own), telling lavender from sage can sometimes prove difficult. That’s where Herbs+ fragrantly wafts in. This app would be particularly good for finding fresh herbs in the wild. The entry for each herb offers gardening tips, culinary ideas, medicinal uses and an image to help you identify the herb.

There’s also a handy link to Wikipedia, which you can access without leaving the app.  In the “Herb Garden,” you’ll find basic guidelines for how to launch your garden successfully as well as sections on harvesting, preserving, propagating and winterizing your herbs. There are also useful tips — did you know dill doesn’t grow well if planted near fennel? No, neither did I.  All in all, a very good app to spice up your phone and quite possibly your next dinner too!

$2.99 on iTunes

Top image, clockwise from top left: logos for Clinq, Scoville, Herbs+ and 21-Day Vegan Kickstart.

6.12.13 -

Can chefs change the way we eat? The Chefs Collaborative is taking a stab at promoting sustainability with a new cookbook of recipes gathered from America’s most notable chef-activists.

Celebrity chefs have a long tradition as tastemakers. It began with Julia Child, the French Chef who influenced Americans’ purchasing decisions about everything from pots and pans to whole chickens. More than 30 years ago another Californian, Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, introduced us to mesclun. This baby lettuce mix is now available in every supermarket and served in restaurants across the nation. In today’s television food culture, celebrities such as  Anthony Bourdain and David Chang tempt us with their daring and globetrotting to try foods that are ever more exotic. Meanwhile, another group of chefs in America is influencing another, less flashy but significant trend: responsible eating.

These chefs are members of Chefs Collaborative, a nonprofit devoted to creating a more sustainable food supply. Working in restaurants across the country, they lead by example: celebrating seasonal, locally produced foods on their menus and advocating for farming and fishing communities. For its 20th anniversary, the organization released its first cookbook, “The Chefs Collaborative Cookbook: Local, Sustainable, Delicious Recipes from America’s Great Chefs.” Few of the 115 chef contributors are celebrities of TV fame. Instead, they are community leaders who are drawing attention to critical food issues by what they choose to put on the plate.

‘Think like a chef’ with Chefs Collaborative Cookbook

The recipes in this seductively photographed cookbook are grouped in four categories — vegetable and fruits, meat and poultry, fish and seafood, and dairy and eggs. While I expected the recipes to be organized seasonally, this approach made page-turning like armchair-traveling through the seasons. Reading through each recipe inspired me to “think like a chef,” considering how each contributor selected ingredients and flavors together with attention to seasonality, yes, but deliciousness, too.

Another novelty is that this chef-driven book is not cheffy at all. Certainly the glossy pages include luxury ingredients and multiple steps, but this collection is not intended to dazzle or bewilder with culinary alchemy or sleight of hand. Not one to languor on the coffee table, this chef book is enticing, instructive and very approachable.

Take the recipe for turnip soup from Dan Barber. The chef of Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Barber is the role model of the sustainable chef. Dining at his Upstate New York destination restaurant-farm-education center was dubbed “a life-changing experience” by Food and Wine.

Turnip soup: There may be no flash to this pea-green fall soup recipe, but there is more than meets the eye. For one, the ingredient list is a carefully selected assemblage of leeks, parsnips, purple-topped turnips plus uncommon parsley root (for which Barber offers a substitution). There is also attentive cooking technique: “Be careful not to get any color on the vegetables” and a teaching note about how parsnips and turnips will be sweeter if harvested after the first frost. Though summer had not yet arrived, I yearned for fall immediately.

Helpful color-coded sections

While the recipes keep the teaching light and informal, other sections of this book offer more hard-hitting resources for study. Interspersed throughout the book, robin’s-egg blue pages called “Breaking It Down” deliver encyclopedic listings demystifying the myriad labels for beef, poultry, seafood, eggs and more, delivering essential understanding for making purchasing decisions today. Other goldenrod-colored pages offer nuts-and-bolts information on topics ranging from using every part of the vegetable to understanding grain varieties to exploring various fish-catching methods. It raises serious issues without being overbearing.

The strength of this book is the variety, including all the highly regarded chefs it introduced me to who work and cook beyond my region. In a series of moss-colored pages titled “Straight Talk,” I read many of them muse about their essential pantry items, their favorite bean varieties, and how they decide between local or organic, among other topics. These read like conversations with the chefs themselves, and I would have welcomed more of them.

As a whole, “The Chefs Collaborative Cookbook” offers insights into the complex web of decisions involved in cooking responsibly and eating mindfully. Without great fanfare, these tastemakers — the contributors and chefs in the Chefs Collaborative — are notable for leading the way to a more sustainable and exemplary way of eating.

Turnip Soup

Serves 4 to 6

If you make this soup with turnips and parsnips harvested after the first freeze, it will be noticeably sweeter. When exposed to cold weather, root vegetables convert their starches to sugars to prevent the water in their cell structure from freezing. Their survival tactic is our reward.

Parsley root, also known as Hamburg parsley, is a pungent cross between celery and parsley. If you have trouble finding it, substitute 1 cup of peeled, thinly sliced celery root and an additional 2 tablespoons of parsley leaves.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 small onion, cut into ¼-inch dice (about ½ cup)

1 small leek, white part only, finely chopped

2 medium purple-top turnips (about ¾ pound), peeled, halved and thinly sliced

1 parsnip, peeled and thinly sliced

1 parsley root, peeled and thinly sliced

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

4 cups vegetable stock (homemade or store-bought)

1 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves

½ cup picked fresh chervil leaves

¼ cup picked pale yellow celery leaves (from the core)

Directions

1. Heat the butter and oil in a large heavy-bottomed pan over medium-low heat. Add the onions and leeks, reduce the heat to low, and cook slowly without browning, about 5 minutes.

2. Add the turnips, parsnips, and parsley root and season with salt and pepper. Stir to combine well with the leeks and onions, cover, and continue to cook slowly for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the vegetables become very soft. Be careful not to get any color on the vegetables.

3. Add the stock, bring the mixture to a simmer, and cook for 10 minutes. Allow to cool slightly, then purée in a blender in batches, adding some of the parsley, chervil and celery leaves each time. Make sure each batch is very smooth, then combine and strain the soup through a fine-mesh sieve. Chill in an ice bath to preserve the soup’s bright color and fresh flavor. Reheat to serve, adjusting the seasoning as necessary.

Top photo composite: “The Chefs Collaborative Cookbook” and Dan Barber’s turnip soup. Credits: Courtesy of The Taunton Press