Zester Daily

I was taken aback recently to hear the hard statistics: The United States imports more than 50% of the fruits and vegetables we put on our tables.

We regularly see produce from Mexico, Canada, Chile, China, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru and more — imports that have tripled since the 1990s. The produce is harvested before it is even ripe, so that it can be cheaply and efficiently boxed and shipped to our shores for consumption often weeks later.

And while it is a fact that the local food movement is growing exponentially, the reality is that these small farming efforts are often built on marginal land or urban plots. As for big agriculture, according to the American Farmland Trust we lose more than one acre of farmland to urban development every minute of every day, 24/7.

It all adds up. Stifling competition from often inferior product from abroad. Aggressive developers here at home. Shopping malls. Young farm family members choosing not to follow in their parents’ footsteps.

According to the USDA, the number of farms in the United States fell to a six-year low in 2012.

Shrinking number of farmers

According to the USDA, as of 2007 (the latest date for such statistics) the average age of principal farm operators was 57 years old and there are relatively few prepared with the skills to take their place. How could it be that the Unites States, once the envy of the world in terms of agricultural output, is not even producing enough to feed our own people?

As a nation it’s no secret that we eat too much and too much of the wrong foods, and this has dire consequences on our health. We are currently ranked 33rd on Newsweek / Bloomberg’s 2012 survey of the world’s healthiest countries.

I was reminded of these and other sobering statistics at a screening of “Ground Operations: Battlefields to Farm Fields,” a powerful documentary that addresses the urgent need to retool and reboot U.S. farming practices.

Thanks to the efforts of Dulanie Ellis and Ray Singer, award-winning filmmakers in Ojai, Calif., a social action campaign has been launched nationwide to give combat veterans the opportunity to become a new generation of farmers.

In 2000, Dulanie Ellis launched Walk Your Talk Productions to explore what it would take to protect the world-class farmland in her region of California from development. Thus began her commitment to agricultural activism. Her partner in the documentary, filmmaker Ray Singer, shared her passion and together they embarked on a three-year journey that has profoundly affected each of them. Their goal is to strengthen the growing network of combat veterans who are transitioning into organic agriculture and to build resources for veterans so they can create healthy new lives for themselves and contribute to food security for our nation.

Back from the battlefields

Recently returned from protecting U.S. interests overseas and having traded in their fatigues for overalls, hundreds of veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq are now committed to growing organic produce and selling it to local communities from Seattle to Florida.

Colin and Karen Archipley, founders of Archi’s Acres in Valley Center, Calif., have taught more than 100 veterans not only how to grow crops, but how to run a farm as a business through their Veterans Sustainable Agriculture Training (VSAT) program.

Miles McEvoy, the National Organic Program’s deputy administrator, and Karen Archipley, co-founder of the Veterans Sustainable Agriculture Training program, tour the Archipleys’ organic basil garden in 2012. Credit: Flickr / USDAgov

VSAT is a proprietary hands-on six-week training program “from seed to market” with an emphasis on developing a business plan. Colin and Karen purposefully tap into the skills and military training of the veterans — attention to detail, dedication and thoroughness — and assist with job placement and business creation at the end of the immersive training. Graduates include successful farm owners and workers, soil-testing pioneers, restaurateurs, and owners of food companies.

Michael O’Gorman, a passionate advocate for the cause of teaching veterans to farm, is the founder and director of the Farmer Veteran Coalition (FVC) located in Davis, Calif. This national network of independent veterans-in-agriculture has teamed up with the USDA to offer free educational retreats in sustainable agriculture all around the country, open to veterans and their spouses.

The coalition serves as an important networking agency. Veterans are able to talk with farmers, attend workshops on financing and related business topics. FVC also offers the Fellowship Fund, which makes small but strategic grants to farmer-vets so they can get what they need most to strengthen their operation.

“Our goal is to connect the latest generation of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan to viable careers in agriculture,” says Michael. “What we see amounts to religious conversions. These young folks have taken on the military and farming — two of the hardest challenges we face — and they’re not even 30 years old.”

American-grown food for all — it’s more than a wish. The United States is projected to add some 18 million people by the year 2020. With nearly 334 million mouths to feed by the end of this decade, food supply is arguably one of the defining issues of our time. Think about it. Homegrown food is healthier for you. Healthier for your children. Healthier for our communities. Healthier for America.

The next time you plan your week’s shopping, check first for a local farmers market. You may just find a veteran farmer continuing to do service for our country.

Top photo: Mark Winkworth. Credit: JJ Britt

I grew up with people who liked to eat but didn’t have fancy palates and weren’t interested in acquiring them. Meals were delicious but predictable. Baked stuffed haddock was Friday’s dinner of choice, and an appetizing meat loaf appeared regularly. My mother and father came from long lines of Maine families, so, except during summer’s heat, baked beans were expected on Saturday night.

The closest we came to Italian food was something called American chop suey, a mixture of elbow macaroni, hamburger, and canned tomato sauce; Chinese was represented by an ancient bottle of soy sauce and tins of crispy chow mein noodles which were scattered over the top of a tuna fish casserole. But Indian? Mexican? Greek? Out of the question! French? A bottle of “French” dressing — who knows what gave it that curious cherry-orange color — was sometimes used to dress salads. Olive oil lived in the medicine cabinet. Garlic was indigestible. Mushrooms were toadstools and poisonous. Cheese was a pungent cheddar called rat cheese, delicious but unvarying. And wine was usually sweet and old — not an old vintage but a vintage in a bottle that had been opened a long time ago and kept for the occasional visiting relative who drank the stuff in preference to more customary whisky and rum.

Inspirational hot and sour soup and moules

I owe my early gastronomic education to a Cleveland lawyer who provided a generous allowance for his Harvard undergraduate son, with which the son and I explored Boston’s wealth of ethnic and fancy restaurants from Joyce Chen’s Chinese place in Fresh Pond where I had a first revelatory taste of hot-and-sour soup, to La Duchesse Anne where I sat next to the future Aga Khan (who knew?) and dined on moules, which back in Maine were scorned as mussels. We frequented the Athens Olympia where the belly dancer who entertained on Fridays spent the rest of the week serving up Greek stuffed vine leaves and moussaka, and the Ritz-Carlton’s handsome dining room, its tall windows overlooking the greenery of the Public Garden, where we breakfasted on beautifully poached eggs atop roast beef hash — not, you will note, corned beef hash, much too Irish for the Ritz.

After the lawyer’s son, there were other beaux — an Englishman who had spent time in India showed me how to make a proper curry by first clarifying an entire pound of butter; a Greek writer introduced me to rice pilaf with onions and black pepper and chicken stock from a can; a Belgian poet stuffed raw button mushrooms with cream cheese and chopped watercress (don’t laugh — try it: it’s like eating the green lawn after a spring rain!); a run-of-the-mill New York film producer rose to heights of glory when he marinated steaks in mustard and honey, then grilled them in the fireplace of his penthouse apartment, certainly not something you would expect to treasure from a film producer.

But I really learned to cook from Elizabeth David. As it happened, I was working for Harper’s, the American publisher of “French Provincial Cooking,” David’s first cookbook launched in the United States. That was in 1962 and Mr. Canfield, the head of the firm, had picked up the book on his annual tour of British publishing houses. Uncertain what to make of it, he passed it around among his junior staff, all of whom were female and most of whom liked to cook. Or occasionally make chocolate chip cookies when warranted.

Turning a corner with Elizabeth David

I was enthralled from the very first page. Raised like my mother before me on “The Boston Cooking School Cookbook,” aka Fannie Farmer, I had not known that one could think about food like this, let alone write about it. I opened “French Provincial Cooking” to almost any page and was immediately and utterly smitten. Here is Mrs. David on “Soupe de Poissons de Marseille,” which is, she says:

 … made from all sorts of the little shining red, pink, brown, yellow and silver-striped fish which one can buy by the basketful from the market stalls in the Vieux Port … I don’t think it is possible to make the soup without all these odd little Mediterranean fish … and I have not attempted to cook it since I lived on the Mediterranean shores, but still the method, which was shouted above the hubbub of the market to me many years ago by the fishwife at a market stall, is worth recording.

Reading that in a tiny Brooklyn kitchen, I was filled with longing. I wanted to buy those fish, to smell those smells, to taste that soupe, I wanted to be that person. And short of that, I would make that soupe de poissons, even with the meager supply of fish available in New York markets in the 1960s.

Mrs. David was little known in the U.S. at that time. Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” published a year earlier, had failed to interest me with its precise and doubtless foolproof instructions that smacked of Fannie-Farmer-goes-to-France. No, I wanted that fishwife shouting at me above the hubbub of a Marseilles market stall. I could almost be there as the fragrance of leeks, onions and tomatoes, of parsley, fennel, garlic and saffron, of olive oil such as it was back in 1962, enveloped the fish in my cooking pot. I strained it all as directed, “pound[ing] the fish a little with a wooden pestle so that the very essence gets through into the broth.” The very essence! Magical! Then I added a handful of pasta fragments to the savory orange broth and served it up with grated gruyere to spoon on top.

“The soup should be rather highly spiced,” my idol wrote. Indeed it was, spiced above all with my own longing for the world she had opened to me.

Nancy Harmon Jenkins is the author of several books, the latest of which is her newly revised “The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook.”  Her other food books include, “Cucina del Sole: A Celebration of the Cuisines of Southern Italy” and “The Essential Mediterranean,” which looks at a dozen foods key to understanding Mediterranean cuisines.  She also wrote “Flavors of Tuscany,” “Flavors of Puglia” and “The Mediterranean Diet Cookbook.”  She is working on a book on Atlantic salmon.  A former staff writer with The New York Times, Nancy continues to contribute to the Times in addition to writing for The Washington Post, Saveur, Food & Wine and other national publications.  She currently divides her time between a Tuscan farmhouse and a home on the coast of Maine where she was born and raised.  She has lived and worked throughout the countries of the Mediterranean, at various times making a home in Spain, France, Italy, Lebanon, and Cyprus as well as in Hong Kong and England. You can read more of her food writing on her site, NancyHarmonJenkins.com.

Photo: Fish market in Catania, Italy. Credit: Nancy Harmon Jenkins

Shop Indie Bookstores

Shop Indie Bookstores

Shop Indie Bookstores

I once took cooking classes with a French cook who insisted that Brassica family vegetables should always be blanched before using in any recipe to allow the unpleasant sulfurous odor released during the initial cooking to escape. She discouraged steaming because she felt the stinky steam would have no escape from a lidded pot; at the very least, she said, you should lift the lid briefly once the vegetables began to cook.

There’s some scientific truth to many of the cooking maxims I’ve learned from French cooks, though I’m not so sure the steaming lid part of the equation has any foundation. What I do now understand is that blanching cruciferous vegetables releases some of their sulfurous compounds and does help them dissipate. That’s blanching, not boiling. if you cook these vegetables too long, the compounds will increase; the vegetables become mushy, dull and unappealing; and your house will smell like my Russian grandmother’s apartment.

So when I am making dishes with kales, collards, cabbages, cauliflowers and Brussels sprouts, I start by plunging them into a large pot of salted boiling water. You need an abundance of water to dissipate the compounds, and it helps to fill a bowl with ice water before you add the vegetables to the pot so that you can quickly “shock” them to stop the cooking process. Broccoli is less sulfurous than cabbages; I usually steam it, but never for more than 5 minutes. If I do blanch broccoli – which I’ll do when I’m making pasta, since I’ve already got a big pot of water at a boil — I won’t leave it in the water for more than 3 minutes, or the delicate flowers will turn to mush.

Chopping similarly can release sulfurous compounds, as can soaking in cold water after chopping, which will cause many of the chemicals to leach out. This might explain why the Portuguese cut cabbage or kale into such fine filaments for their national soup, caldo verde. I always thought it was because it made the soup so pretty, but it also affects the flavor.

Caldo Verde

Portuguese Green Soup

When I think of the ultimate greens dish, I think of caldo verde. Go to any market in that beautiful country, and you’ll find women reducing Galician cabbage into fine filaments on shredding wheels designed specifically for the task. Galician cabbage is an emerald green Brassica with flat, tender leaves. The color is the bright green of turnip greens, which can be substituted. You can also use collards or kale, but be sure to remove the tough stems and to cut the filaments very thin so they cook properly. If the greens are tough, some Portuguese cooks will blanch them first. Caldo verde would not be caldo verde without the final addition of chourico, the Portuguese version of Spanish chorizo, which can be substituted. If you can’t find either of these, use mild Italian sausage or kielbasa.

Ingredients

Directions

1. Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil over medium heat in a large, heavy soup pot and add the onion and a pinch of salt. Cook, stirring, until tender, about 3 to 5 minutes, and add the garlic. Cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds.
2. Stir in the potatoes and water. Bring to a boil, add salt, reduce the heat, cover and simmer 30 minutes, until the potatoes are falling apart.
3. While that simmers, prepare the greens and the sausage. Stack 6 to 8 leaves, roll them up tightly and slice crosswise into very thin filaments. Sauté the sliced sausage gently over medium-low heat in a medium skillet for 8 to 10 minutes, until the fat runs out. Discard the fat.
4. Mash the potatoes in the pot with a potato masher or a hand blender. Stir in the sausage and simmer 5 minutes. Stir in the greens and simmer uncovered for 5 to 10 minutes (depending on the type of green and how tender it is), until the greens turn bright green and tender.
5. Taste, adjust salt, and add pepper. Stir in the remaining olive oil and serve, with crusty bread.

Note: You can blanch the greens before adding to the soup in salted boiling water for a minute or two if they’re very tough.

Pan-cooked Brussels Sprouts with Bacon and Dill

This is a classic preparation. If you don’t like Brussels sprouts, it’s probably because you’ve always had them overcooked. The sherry vinegar adds nice flavor; it will dull the color of the sprouts.

Ingredients

Directions

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil while you trim the bottoms off the Brussels sprouts. Fill a bowl with ice water. When the water comes to a boil, salt generously and add the Brussels sprouts. Boil 2 minutes, transfer to the ice water, then drain. Quarter the sprouts or slice them ¼- inch thick, and set aside.
2. Heat a large, heavy skillet over medium heat and add the bacon. Cook the bacon until it is chewy in the middle and crisp on the edges. Remove from the pan and transfer to a double thickness of paper towel. Cut crosswise into ⅛- inch thick slivers. Set aside. Drain most of the fat from the skillet.
3. Heat the olive oil over medium heat in the same skillet in which you cooked the bacon and add the Brussels sprouts. Season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring or shaking in the pan, for 5 minutes. Add the vinegar and cook until the vinegar has evaporated and been absorbed by the sprouts and the sprouts are tender, another 5 minutes. Stir in the bacon and the dill and continue to cook, stirring, for another minute or two. Taste, adjust seasonings, and serve.

Clifford A. Wright’s Brussels Sprouts

There’s another fantastic way to cook Brussels sprouts that I learned from cook and author Clifford A. Wright, and it doesn’t require blanching. You simply heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat, cut the sprouts in half and put them cut-side down in the hot oil. Cook them until golden brown, turn them over and cook them on the other side until cooked through. The seared flavor of the Brussels sprouts is addictive (Who knew you could ever use the words “addictive” and “Brussels sprouts” in the same sentence?).

Mashed Potatoes with Kale (Colcannon)

Colcannon is one of the great signature dishes of Ireland. The most common version pairs cabbage with potatoes, but the dish is also made with kale. Curly kale would be used in Ireland; I like to make it with cavolo nero.

Serves 6 to 8

Ingredients

Directions

1. Cover the potatoes with water in a saucepan, add about 1/2 teaspoon of salt and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium, cover partially and cook until tender all the way through when pierced with a knife, about 30 to 45 minutes. Drain off the water, return the potatoes to the pan, cover tightly and let steam over very low heat for another 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and mash with a potato masher or a fork, through a food mill or in a standing mixer fitted with the paddle, while still hot.
2. While the potatoes are cooking, bring a large pot of generously salted water to a boil and fill a bowl with ice water. If using cabbage, quarter and core, then cut the quarters crosswise into thin strips. If using kale, tear the leaves from the ribs and clean well in two changes of water. Add the cabbage or kale to the salted boiling water and boil for 4 to 6 minutes, until the leaves are tender but still bright green. Transfer to the ice water, allow to cool for a couple of minutes, then drain and squeeze out excess water. Chop fine (you can use a food processor for this).
3. Towards the end of the potato cooking time, combine the milk and the scallions in a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Remove from the heat and let steep for a few minutes. Stir the chopped cabbage or kale into the hot mashed potatoes and beat in the milk. The mixture should be fluffy (you can do this in an electric mixer fitted with the paddle). Add salt to taste and freshly ground pepper. Transfer to a hot serving dish, make a depression in the center and place the butter in the center to melt, then stir and serve at once. Alternatively, keep warm in a double boiler: set the bowl in a saucepan filled one third of the way with water. Make sure the water doesn’t touch the bottom of the bowl. Bring the water to a simmer. Stir the potato and kale mixture from time to time.

Martha Rose Shulman is the award-winning author of more than 25 cookbooks, including “Mediterranean Harvest: Vegetarian Recipes From the World’s Healthiest Cuisine,” “Mediterranean Light,” “Provencal Light” and “Entertaining Light.”

Photos by Martha Rose Shulman

It was the kind of interview I hate. Thirty minutes with a famous chef. In and out, and the chef, surreptitiously checking his watch, is itching to be done before we even start. Two hours later, and we were still talking. Jean-Georges Vongerichten was in my town and in a talking mood. He arrived in Boston to check on his new venture, Market, at the W Hotel, one installation of the partnership of his company — Culinary Concepts — with Starwood Hotels. It was Bastille Day and Boston was lucky (and a little surprised) to capture him on the French-est of public holidays. On Tuesday night he had been host of a dinner at his restaurant and invited a score of local Boston chefs. On Wednesday, he was presiding over a Bastille Day do at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art with the French Consul. In between, for a couple of hours, he was talking to me.

The chef swatted open the kitchen door, smoothing the sleeves of his fresh white jacket. He was smiling, calm, a seal-cap of short, perfectly glazed dark hair and blue eyes that are hard not to describe as “bleu marine.” I was unprepared for his friendliness, and for his willingness to spend the better part of the afternoon chatting with me about the restaurant business, his early life, his first marriage, his success and how much he hates to travel — a surprising admission from a chef with 22 restaurants on multiple continents, from Shanghai to Vegas, and plans for 50 more.

It was a tad terrifying to begin a conversation with an icon. What could I possibly ask him that he hasn’t been asked 300 times before? But, what the hell, he’s the most famous chef in the world and I’d gotten a chance to talk to him. I decided to go with my heart, the question I always want to know: How did Jean-Georges become “JG”?

How do you transit from being a good, hard-working chef to a monogram?

I started my apprenticeship in Strasbourg in Alsace at 16 — one day at school, four days working in the restaurant kitchen, Auberge de L’Ill. I started cooking right away, plucking chickens and pheasants, cleaning fish. I learned to skin a fish, break it down and butcher it correctly. It was a fourth-generation restaurant, and had a family feeling. For me, a very soft breaking into the restaurant business. I spent two years at the restaurant as an apprentice, and then took another year to learn more. And then, I was a commis in Paris, and I got a chance to cook at the Elysee Palace for the French president! Pretty exciting for a boy not yet 20!

Did you plan to leave Paris, ever?

At that point, I had to go into the army for my compulsory service. I was the chef on a boat, cooking for one captain and three officers. We sailed to dozens of ports — to Italy, Hamburg, Norway, New England, Canada, Portugal, Casablanca in Morocco … My job started when we pulled into port. The captain always invited guests on board for dinner­­ –– the mayor of the city, the French consul, whomever it was important to entertain. In each port, I went shopping at the local markets. I loved going to the souk in Morocco to buy food! But honestly, being in the army was sort of a waste of time for me, although I did learn how to smoke a cigarette!

I finished my service, and went back to the kitchen for another apprenticeship. I wanted to see another region of France. I had already cooked in Alsace, where I was from, but the South of France was all about different flavors — I went from cabbage and pork, the flavors of Alsace, to rosemary and lavender, basil. Summer flavors. Next, I wanted to work with Paul Bocuse in Lyon, another rich culinary region in France.

How did you end up cooking in Bangkok?

The chef I’d worked with in the South of France began consulting for The Oriental in Bangkok. He asked me to become the sous chef. I thought he was crazy. I was a young kid. I’d never directed a kitchen or done any kind of purchasing. He called me every day for two months.

I went to Bangkok. It was a very different time. Today, if you want to know about how to cook something, you go online. You can find recipes, descriptions. Then, in the early ’80s, there were hardly any cookbooks. I used to learn about new dishes by reading the Guide Michelin, where it described the specialty of the restaurant. As I read the description of the chef’s specialty, I could think it through. Today, whatever you want to know, you just go online.

I figured they would throw me out of the country after two nights. I stayed in Thailand for two years. I was 22, I didn’t know how to run a kitchen, I’d never placed an order, even in French­­ — and I didn’t speak English or Thai, which meant I did not have a common language with any of the 22 Thai cooks working under me. Some of the chefs were 45 years old and I’m supposed to do 80 covers a night, and teach Thai-speaking chefs how to cook French food for the hotel’s fine-dining French restaurant? I’d cook in the mornings and evenings, and in the afternoons, I took English lessons with the hotel staff — the housekeepers, the bellboys.

So you lasted more than two weeks in Bangkok?

I ended up spending two years in Bangkok and five years in Asia before landing in London. I loved Asia. I learned about lemongrass, ginger and chilies. I was running a French restaurant, but for myself, I wasn’t about to cook with apples and butter in Bangkok! I converted myself to a Thai eater, and decided to eat only Thai food for my first years in Bangkok. I visited every hotel in the country. I went to Phuket in 1980, and slept on the beach. There weren’t any hotels there yet. I did eight hotel openings for the same chef/entrepreneur. By the time I got to London, people told me I spoke English with an Asian accent.

As a Boston writer, I’m curious about your time in Boston.

For two years I was the chef at the Marquis de Lafayette, the fine dining French restaurant at the Swissotel in Boston. We were one block from the Combat Zone, and two blocks from Chinatown. I learned a big and valuable lesson in Boston. The idea of a full French meal at lunch wasn’t attractive. No one wanted to spend that time on a meal.

I started changing the concept, adding in my own recipes with lemongrass and ginger that I bought at the street markets in Chinatown. I got great reviews, but the restaurant was considered wonderful for chefs and critics but not for customers. Then, I moved to New York, where time moves even faster. Much less time spent at the table. Even at home, people spend 20 minutes eating, unless it’s a special occasion.

How did you morph from a fine dining hotel chef in New York to “Jean-Georges”?

We lost the contract at the Swissotel and my mentor wanted me to go to Chicago. But I decided I belonged in New York. I was 31 or 32, and I was really starting to develop my own food. I didn’t want to move to Chicago and cook his food anymore. He had a hard time understanding. It was hard for him when I broke off.

I went to the head of the Swissotel, and I said, “I’m ready. Put a wall up between the two restaurants and I’ll pay you 10 percent of sales.” It turned out to be a bad deal for me, but on the other hand, I didn’t have any build-out costs. By this time, I had 200-300 of my own recipes in my portfolio.

An easy transition from chef to owner?

I learned right away that being a chef and a restaurateur are two very different things. I’d left school at 16, I knew nothing about business. And at the same time my first marriage began to break up. We’d married in Bangkok when she was 21 and I was 23, so that she didn’t have to keep going back and forth to get a visa renewed. Our son was born in Bangkok, our daughter in New York. Ten years later, we were two different people. One morning, she woke up and told me she wanted to move back to France with the kids. I didn’t want to go back to France! My life had really just begun. The day the Gulf War started, she went back to France, and took the kids. We had a legal separation. It was hard. But in so many ways, my real life started at that moment. For the next 10 years, I was free to devote myself to work. Everyone told me that my kids would hate me forever, but right now the two oldest are living in New York. I have a new project — my 10-year-old daughter.

How do you keep up with the travel? Are you ever home?

I only travel one week a month. I’m really disciplined about that. I don’t want to be a vagabond. I need to be at home every night. I can’t sleep well on airplanes and can’t be creative if I’m away from home all the time. On the other hand, I don’t do day-to-day management. I don’t do payroll or the bookkeeping. Even if I open 50 more restaurants, I can’t be away from home more than I am now. I hire well and train even better. I don’t micromanage. What I do is create recipes and style beautiful food.

Zester Daily contributor Louisa Kasdon is a Boston-based food writer, former restaurant owner and founder of letstalkaboutfood.com. She is a columnist for the Boston Phoenix, the food editor for Stuff Magazine and has contributed to Fortune, MORE, Cooking Light, the Boston Globe, Boston Magazine and the Christian Science Monitor, among others.

Angelenos drive right by them all the time: nondescript ethnic markets that make one wonder what they’re selling, who’s shopping in there, and — after passing by them for years — how they’ve managed to stay in business for so long. We ponder these questions for a stoplight, then continue on our way to Whole Foods.

I’d been driving past Tehran Market, a 21-year-old institution in Santa Monica, almost daily for a decade before I finally stepped inside. If it hadn’t been for my friend Tomi Yaghmai, who is married to an Iranian and lived in Iran for years, I might still be. Now I pity the passing cars filled with those unaware of the amazing array of Middle Eastern specialties and great produce that fill the small market. A whole community of food lovers that gathers here — Iranians, Russians, Turks and third-generation Santa Monicans — looking for foods from their homelands or foods they’ve recently learned to love.

The facade of Tehran Market isn’t exactly inviting. The windows facing busy Wilshire Boulevard are papered over with taped-up posters and signs. Peer past them, and you see a jumble of cleaning supplies: paper towels, Tide and Ajax. Inside, the linoleum floors reflect the fluorescent lighting, and cardboard boxes clutter the shop’s short aisles. But no one’s here for the decor. They’ve come for the jars of pickled, fried or pureed eggplant; the bags of dried chickpeas, lentils and black-eyed peas; or maybe the selection of grape leaves.

I arrived seeking the fixings for panir sabzi, a dish Tomi served at a dinner one night. Sabzi, which means vegetables in Farsi, generally consists of a heap of fresh herbs — tarragon, basil, mint — and vegetables, like radishes and onions, which are served with feta and walnuts. You wrap up a bit of everything in a small square of lavash and eat it as the salad component of a Persian meal. I found myself craving the dish. Tomi insisted the only place to buy the ingredients was Tehran Market.

As shopping there became habit, I noticed Morteza Pourvasei, who runs the family business with his brother, Mory, chatting with customers from behind a counter filled with a variety of halvas, nuts and olives floating in large, plastic storage bins, all identified by handwritten tape labels. But it was only recently that I had a real conversation with him. The little shop was busy, but Pourvasei, a dapper 72-year-old with a full head of gray hair, seemed pleased to take a break to chat with me, while Francisco Panameno, an employee since soon after the shop opened, manned the counter.

Like many Iranians living in their war-ravished homeland in the 1980s, Pourvasei, who was working at an oil company, wanted to leave but found an American visa elusive. (As he tells me this, he grabs some fresh, raw pistachios from a bin on the counter and peels one for me. Delicious.) He sent his eldest son to Los Angeles as a student in 1985, then his eldest daughter, a year later. A year and a half after that, his wife and other two children arrived. Finally, Pourvasei joined them — and the family business — in 1989, a year after his brother had opened the store.

Pourvasei excuses himself to retrieve an envelope from a drawer near an outdated cash register. He opens it and nods slowly and proudly as he shows me snapshots taken at festive occasions and family gatherings of his chic wife, his handsome college-educated children and grandchildren. His hospitality is genuine. “It’s our culture to be friendly,” he says.

On a recent shopping trip, I bumped into my friend, Tomi. I was surprised, but she wasn’t. “I see everyone here,” she said. I told her I was here for mint, feta and walnuts. She suggested I get some mortadella to go with the sabzi. “Mortadella?” I asked, surprised. “Yes,” she replied, going on about how delicious it is wrapped with cucumbers and tomatoes and feta in lavash. “It’s the perfect light meal. Ask for the one without extra garlic.” When I pointed out that it was a bit surprising that a Persian market would serve mortadella, she laughed. Over the centuries, Iran welcomed influences of many countries, Italy included. Why mortadella — and not prosciutto or salami — gained popularity is anyone’s guess. I suspect it has something to do with the pistachios that stud the meat. (Tehran Market sells a beef-and-pork version as well as one made with just veal for non-pork eaters.)

Over time, I’d added fresh and dried herbs, vegetables, rice, tea and olive oils to my Tehran Market shopping list, but it wasn’t until I walked the aisles with Tomi that I learned what lures in-the-know Middle Easterners here. “This rice is crazy good,” she said, lifting a box of prepared Rice-a-Roni-looking stuff from a shelf. If you make the herbed rice — or many other classic Persian dishes — from scratch, she explains, you’ll spend a lot of time chopping. She led me to a freezer case and revealed a Persian cook’s secret weapon: packages of chopped herbs — some fried, some not — ready to be mixed into the rice dishes and stews that are hallmarks of Persian cuisine.

Expensive saffron, I learned, is kept in a drawer behind the counter and a taste of Iranian pistachios is available for the asking. Customs are high for nuts shipped directly from Iran to America, so they usually pass through Canada. Sometimes they get stuck in customs and Pourvasei’s supply dries up temporarily. Luckily, he had a handful left when I was there and offered me one. It had a rounder, fuller flavor than the Californian — it was tasty — but I don’t know that I would pay almost twice the price for the import.

Long before Persian cucumbers were available at Trader Joe’s, they were at Tehran Market. “People brought seeds over,” Pourvasei says of his countrymen. You can get Persian basil here, which is a little more bitter than the Italian variety, and, in the summer, Persian melon. What customers had been missing at the market was a meat counter. Pourvasei, the attentive shop-owner, will be installing one soon. {sidebar id=9}

Tomi learned to cook Persian specialties by listening in on her mother-in-law’s instructions to the family cook when she was living in Iran. Now she shops at Tehran Market weekly, buying flat breads; her favorite Best Tea (a blend of Ceylon and Earl Grey); the freshest Persian cucumbers; tart, dried barberries to sprinkle on top of rice dishes; pistachios and (as an occasional treat) her husband’s favorite raisin cookies. I note that Tehran Market sells these identical-looking cookies from four different local bakeries. I ask Pourvasei why. “Customers have their favorites. [The cookies] are similar, yes, but different.”

This might explain why there are so many variations on other baked sweets, pickles, olives, beans, grains, pomegranate molasses, jams, rices, flat breads and olive oils. “Customers ask for special brands,” Pourvasei says, and he delivers. “A lady came in for the first time and when she saw the different cheeses we have, she told me she feels at home. I want them to feel at home when they are here.”

When asked about his competition, Pourvasei doesn’t mention other Persian grocers in nearby Westwood, he talks about Vons, the supermarket down the street. “We have good prices here. We’re friendly and try to get to know our customers. If something costs $12.05, we’ll just ask for $12.” The prices, on everything from produce to French feta, are, indeed, competitive. And that may be part of why the store has been around for so long and why it’s always busy.

That’s not really what brings me in. I may have started out coming for sabzi fixings, but now I come for so much more — many new foods and community.
{igallery 44}

While New York is basking in a few days of glorious spring, my taste buds have moved with the season from winter to salads, my favorite spring and summer fare. The warmer weather seems to call for a rotation from winter root vegetables as much as a shucking of jackets and Ugg boots. Somehow, the salads of my youth fade into a pale blur the shade of iceberg lettuce. There was my mother’s potato salad: pristine pure — potatoes, celery, onions, and, if she was feeling frisky, a mince of green bell pepper. There was her coleslaw — shreds of cabbage with a mayonnaisey dressing, and occasionally a mix of carrots and dark plump raisins. Winters brought a ruby red beet salad of, dare I say it — canned beets mixed with mild onion and topped with a sweet/ sour vinaigrette. Summers brought a slurry of cool thin cucumber slices dressed with the same sweetened cider vinegar. These delights that I now try to re-create with the fervor of an alchemist attempting to discover the philosopher’s stone were always served in addition to the obligatory vegetables that my nutritionally-educated mother prepared each and every day of my childhood.

My salad epiphany would occur years later in Paris, home to so many culinary ah hahs. There, in a restaurant called Chez Garin on the Left Bank, I learned what a salad could mean to a meal. I had been dazzled by a dinner prepared by Chef Georges Garin, whose restaurant boasted Michelin stars and was the favorite haunt of writer Andre Malraux and others. I had been dazzled by my meal that began with a dense velvety slab of pate de foie gras and proceeded through a truffle stew so rich that each dark mouthful was a revelation in the complex possibilities of taste. The saddle of lamb that was the main offering  arrived on the silver serving chariot with a crust of crisp breadcrumbs and spices and was perfectly rosy pink. The accompanying haricots verts were the size of newborns’ fingers. Then, in a pause before the cheese course and the dessert, it arrived: a bowl where a whiff of garlic mixed with the fragrance of lamb to flavor a handful of crisp buttery light green leaves topped with a dressing that mastered the principle of just enough red wine vinegar, olive and walnut oils, and a hint of mustard. The whole salad was heightened with a sprinkling of salt that brought all of the tastes into sharp focus. The classic salade verte tied up all of the flavors of the main course and left my mouth ready to proceed to the meal’s end — refreshed and ready. The simplicity and the perfection of each ingredient was startling even to one who was used to eating well. (My mother after all hadn’t been a slouch in the kitchen department!)

A passion ignited by gazpacho

Since that day more than 30 years ago, salads have become my passion. I have learned, therefore, that they exist around the world. The trick is to identify them in their many different places on the menu, and, when given the opportunity, to select and savor. My early days in France gave way to numerous Mediterranean sojourns. My parents briefly had an apartment in the south of Spain, where I learned that while a Spanish ensalada mixta could be had a virtually any cafe, my favorite salad in southern Spain and arguably the most refreshing one, was gazpacho. The mix of tomato, garlic, onion, and stale bread produces a fragrant cooling liquid (broth) that is given density by the addition of finely minced bits of onion, cucumber, tomato, bell pepper, and buttery croutons added at the last minute according to the diner’s preference. It is a far cry from the over blended pulp that masquerades as gazpacho on so many American restaurants’ summer menus.

Taking a hydrofoil or ferry from Spain’s Costa del Sol to Tangiers took less than a day, but the salads were world’s apart. Though certain tastes in Andalusia reflect their Moroccan origins, they pale in comparison. In Morocco, I learned that salads come first. The salades, as they’re called, are a raft of savory small plates that may be marinated fava beans or cooked carrot pieces topped with vinaigrette and snippets of cilantro. There may be roasted peppers drizzled with a fragrant oil or a mash of zucchini or a plate of beet cubes topped with a slick of olive oil.  Meals, from the simplest daily lunch to the most elaborate diffa all begin with this virtuoso opening salvo that changes with the seasonal availability of ingredients. In Tunisia, the choices may be simpler, but the salad as starter still rules the menu as it does in traditional Egypt as well.

Further down the African continent, salads are a modern addition to the diet and appear only on westernized tables, if at all. Their recent adoption in no way impedes the cooks’ inventiveness and all manner of salads can be seen on the West African table. Before the country’s current strife, the seasonal arrival in the market of buttery avocados of the Cote d’Ivoire was an incentive for local chefs to get busy. They were accompanied by everything from shrimp and crab meat to chunks of the sweet ripe pineapples that always seemed to arrive at the same time. Before the arrival of tourism in West Africa placed salads on hotel menus, canny colonials improvised the salads they knew from local ingredients in Ghana, Nigeria, Congo and elsewhere. They used native yams instead of potatoes to produce yam salads and dressed colorful arrangements of canned vegetables. In South Africa, the Islamic culinary aesthetic prevails in the cooking of the Cape Malay and small plates again accompany the meal. The Swahili Coast culture of eastern Africa that prevails along the Indian Ocean from Kenya to Tanzania melds the small plates of the Islamic world with the culinary traditions of the east and savory nibbles of pickles and such may turn up at any point in the meal.

Far Eastern and Caribbean improvisations

I’ve spent more time in Africa, but I’ve also savored salads in the East. The one trip I took to India decades ago left me with a lasting desire to return to the subcontinent and a love of the minced salad known as katchumber along with the savory mix of vegetables and yogurt known as raitas. Cooling and refreshing, they are the perfect accompaniment to the spicier dishes. Farther east, dishes such as the bonito flake-topped soy-flavored cooked spinach known as oshitashi and the sweet density of hijiki could pass as salads on any western menu and the hybrid soy, sesame, rice wine vinegar dressing that adorns the iceberg in many a stateside Japanese eatery has become one of the most ubiquitous examples of east-meets-west fusion.

Aside from the African-American classics that imprinted their tastes on my DNA during my 1950s childhood, the New World offers its own array of salads. In the north, the Caesar is a must even in these days when the traditional poached egg and the anchovies have all but disappeared. The thick summery tomatoes of the Northeast and the juicy firm Creole of New Orleans seem to cry out for a drizzle of olive oil and a hint of basil or, as my grandmother would add, a pinch of sugar to bring out their sweetness.

The Caribbean area and regions to the South join the salad sweepstakes as well and the cassava that Columbus was served on his first meeting with a Caribbean caicique turns up cooked and dressed in a garlicky sauce on some Cuban tables. The French islands grate the vegetable squash known as mirliton in New Orleans and chayote in the Hispanic world and in much of the US. It’s then mixed with vinaigrette and served over lettuce. In Brazil, they even blanch okra and serve the mucilaginous pod with lettuce in a savory sauce. Even the cucumber salad that I so loved as a child arrives with an extra zip in Jamaica from the heat of minced of scotch bonnet chiles that are added to the cane vinegar that dresses it.

The odyssey continues and I am gob-smacked daily by the array of ingredients that now turn up as salads. But everything old is new again and I must confess that sometimes, I just want to sit down and crunch into a serving of iceberg of my youth slathered with homemade Roquefort dressing and topped with minced tomato and a crumble of crisp bacon.  I’m glad that the warmer weather salad days are here.

Jessica Harrisis the author of 11 critically acclaimed cookbooks documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora. In 2010 she was named to the James Beard Who’s Who of American Food and Beverage.

Photo: Green salad. Credit: loooby.

I didn’t eat a canned vegetable until I was 12. I was at summer camp, and the minute the canned green bean touched my tongue I spit it out, convinced it was rotten.

I thought I’d eaten canned green beans before — the green beans my mother grew in her large kitchen garden that she and my grandmother would “can” in mason jars and keep in neat rows in the basement pantry. To me, those were “canned green beans” and I loved eating them in the winter… even though I thought my mother was crazy and old-fashioned for spending so much time and energy preserving the food she grew in our large garden plot.

The difference between my mother’s sweet, delicious “canned” beans and the grey, salty blobs I first tasted at summer camp reveals the stark difference between traditional food preservation and the industrial food system.
This stark difference is one reason behind the surge of interest in home canning and preserving.

But there’s another avenue to discovering the joys of successful canning — and it doesn’t require a visit to your grandmother’s notebooks or a search through mysterious old cookbooks.

A 12-week course through the University of California

The Master Food Preserver program is an intense, 12-week program presented by the University of California Cooperative Extension Los Angeles, designed to not only teach the basics of safe and successful food preservation… but to spread the word to local communities.

I first heard about the MFP program when I took a class on holiday food-crafting from Joseph Shuldiner, director of the Institute of Domestic Technology. He mentioned his status as a Master Food Preserver and I had to find out more about the program.

I was instantly fascinated. The MFP Program covers not only canning… but pressure-canning, freezing, dedhydrating, cheese-making, pickling, fermenting — the exciting list went on and on. I’d learned some of my mother’s basic canning recipes back home in Virginia, and I even helped my father make his home-cured hams (which hang in his basement for a year before they’re eaten.) But The MFP Program was clearly more than old recipes re-discovered. The classes promised safe, USDA-approved methods for dozens of types of food preservation.

And once the 12-week session is over, graduates are expected provide 30 hours of volunteer work and 15 hours of continuing food education every year. The goal: to teach simple and easy food-preservation techniques to residents in low-resource communities, to help them eat healthier foods and save money. In a place like Los Angeles — where fruit literally falls from trees that line the city streets — food preservation can be a budget-stretcher and a life-saver.

It’s a rigorous program. But there was the promise of fresh fruit preserves, home-made goat cheese, and perfectly canned green beans. I wanted in.

Focused on sharing the wealth

It turns out that I wasn’t alone. Selection for the class is highly-competitive. The program is offered around the country, and its Los Angeles branch began in 2010. Two classes of 18 students apiece have graduated so far. When I learned the program was accepting applications for the third class, I sent in my application and prayed silently to the gods of cheese-makers and the spirit of my Grandma Willie (whose Shenandoah apple sauce still haunts my dreams).

I was surprised and delighted to find that I was accepted into the program. And thus begun my immersion into the boiling water bath of preservation information.

I quickly learned that the program is more focused on teaching trainees how to share information with others than it is about teaching endless food preservation techniques (although I must say that my knowledge and interest in food preservation has grown exponentially since I started the class.) All MFP trainees are expected to have a solid knowledge base when they enter the program and to keep learning new techniques after the 12-week course ends.

The most surprising discovery of the program was that the reference materials we use in class are available to anyone who’s interested. Some of my favorites include The National Center for Home Food Preservation and The LA County Master Food Preservers blog. I’ve also become a huge fan of the book “So Easy to Preserve“, which I’ve used many times in the past 10 weeks. (The section on fruit butter recipes helped me invent my family’s current favorite toast-topper loquat butter.)

Our lead instructor Chef Ernest Miller runs each class with military discipline (he’s a former Marine), culinary expertise (he’s the chef at The Farmer’s Kitchen — a non-profit community-oriented kitchen) and deep wells of knowledge (he’s a graduate of Yale Law School). I thought I knew everything I needed to know about jam-making, but when he and two former graduates of the class began their lecture, I realized there was a lot more to learn.

Chef Miller started the class by saying “This isn’t Smucker’s”. Over the next four hours I learned the difference between jam, jelly, preserves, conserves, marmalade, fruit spread, and fruit butter. And that was only the beginning.

I’m currently 10 weeks into the program, and “graduation” looms. If I pass my final exam I will be rewarded with the title of “Master Food Preserver” and you’ll see me and my classmates talking about food preservation techniques at local farmers markets and at The Los Angeles County Fair. But my immersion in preservation techniques has only highlighted how inaccurate the term “Master” is in my case. In 12 weeks, I’ve only uncovered the rudiments of these techniques. I’m excited to spread the word, and particularly excited to explore and practice these techniques on new and different foods (Pickled Squash! Salsa Leather! Dehydrated kimchi chips!!!)

And, with luck, my youngest daughter might someday taste a commercially canned vegetable and spit it out, saying “What’s that?!”

I’ll hand her a spoonful of loquat butter to get the bitter taste out of her mouth and say, “Kid… there’s a program you should know about … ”

Zester Daily contributor Susan Lutz is a photographer, artist and television producer. A native of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, she currently lives in Los Angeles, where she is writing a book about heirloom foods and the American tradition of Sunday dinner. She also blogs about the subject at Eat Sunday Dinner.

Photo: Pickled vegetables. Credits for photo and slide show: Susan Lutz

I hate to bake. That’s not to say that I can’t bake. I just don’t like it very much.

Over the past 10 years, I’ve baked a lot. When I got married, I gained not only a husband, but also a stepson, and I quickly learned that baked goods go a long way with boys. I don’t want to be stereotypical and say that the way to a man’s heart is his stomach, but the evidence is compelling. It may not be the best way to express love, but making delicious desserts is a simple and satisfying way to show almost anyone that you care.

Cooking is a necessity and therefore something most of us take for granted. Dessert is an “extra” — a treat we don’t have to have.

So I’ve become a baker. And I’ve learned a few things about baking over the years. These top five secrets have made baking desserts easier, and the recipients happier.

1. Remember the end goal: happy eaters.

If you’re someone who loves dessert, then you’re more likely to be a baker. I’d rather have a salty snack than a sweet one anytime. So for me, baking is about making other people happy. Real bakers say they love the meticulous nature of baking and find comfort in the almost scientific precision that baking requires. What they fail to tell the rest of us is that the greatest pleasure of baking is its capacity to evoke awe and joy. Baking is a crowd-pleaser. Perhaps not in the process (because for me, baking is not a cook pleaser), but in the delivery from cook to eater, and in the eater’s obvious pleasure as the sweet carbohydrate goodness is consumed.

2. Know your audience.

In my opinion, there is no point in making a 14-layer cake with home-dried strawberries and freshly grated coconut for a 3-year-old’s birthday party. I don’t mean that children don’t appreciate fine baked goods — I have a daughter who loves croissants more than cake. However, on the day your child’s birthday party, you may wish (as I frequently have) that you’d put more effort into foods that provide sustenance for kids who don’t want to take time to eat and less effort into baking. Let’s face it, most kids will eat any kind of cake that’s put in front of them. Why go to the extra trouble of making a fancy dessert when the birthday boy just wants a thick slice of chocolate cake? Sometimes the simplest desserts are the best.

Of course, the flip side of this rule is that there are times to go all out with baking. I recently went to a grown-up party of food-preservers where someone brought dozens of homemade profiteroles. She was a real baker, and she knew that she’d be bringing this finely crafted dessert to an informed audience who would really appreciate her skill and hard work. We did.

3. Don’t make “mini” anything.

I love tiny desserts, as I love anything miniature. But after too many failed batches of tiny cupcakes, I’ve recognized my limits. Baking is not a good multitasking activity, and as a mom I live my life as a multitasker. The proper baking time for tiny baked treats is short, and the window for perfection is shorter. In my opinion, mini baked goods should be left to the professionals. They get paid to give baking their undivided attention.

I do, however, make individually portioned baked goods when it seems like the path of least resistance. I recently invented a recipe for brownie s’mores, simply so I could avoid making cupcakes for my daughter’s class at school. Making brownie s’mores involves nothing more than scooping brownie batter into cupcake liners and topping each portion with graham cracker crumbs, chocolate chips and marshmallows near the end of the baking time.

4. Chocolate chips make (almost) everything better.

If you’re not a chocolate lover but bake for someone who is, embrace the chocolate chip, or chocolate shavings, if you bake primarily for adults. For chocolate fans, a little chocolate will cover a multitude of baking sins. And for the non-chocolate lover, eating something with chocolate chips is much more palatable than eating something that’s made entirely of chocolate.

5. Avoid any baked good that you do not like to eat.

Remember Rules 1 and 2: You are not only the cook, but the consumer as well. No matter how much time and effort you spend in making baked perfection – if you don’t like it, the whole thing becomes a complete waste of time (and makes you irritable as the rest of your audience gobbles up your treats.) Cook for yourself as well as your family.

For instance, I don’t like cakes, which I know is controversial, but that’s just who I am. So our family rarely eats cake. I only make them when someone has a birthday or on the rare special occasion when coconut cake is required.

The special case of coconut cake

Coconut cake is the one exception I made to my cake-hating rule. If you’re from the South, as am I, then you’ll understand. There are certain holidays when family tradition requires coconut cake with seven-minute frosting for dessert. I’ve learned to make it well and it’s become my signature cake for two reasons. First, the seven-minute frosting is almost magical and it will make any yellow cake (even a slightly over-baked one) taste moist and delicious within 24 hours. Second, and perhaps more importantly, this cake is made only for special occasions, which means that people don’t expect me to bake a coconut cake at the drop of a hat. This is perfect for someone who doesn’t like to bake and doesn’t like to eat cake.

I made brownie s’mores for dessert tonight. My youngest daughter was covered in chocolate within seconds and she looked so cute that I couldn’t resist asking her how she liked her dessert. She looked up at me sweetly and said, “I don’t want to talk, I’m too happy.” Moments like these make me think that I may grow to love baking after all.

So when you bake, make yourself happy, both in terms of the process and the results. And send me your cake recipes.

Brownie S’mores

Makes 24 cupcake-sized brownies

Special Equipment:

2 cupcake pans that make 12 cupcakes each (if you only have one cupcake pan, just bake in two batches.)

24 cupcake liners

“small” (2 tablespoon) cookie scooper

1 sifter or fine mesh sieve

Ingredients:

1 ¾ cup sugar

1 ½ sticks butter- melted and slightly cooled

3 tablespoons water

2 eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 ⅓ cup all-purpose flour

¾ cup cocoa powder

½ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon finely ground salt (or ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt)

1 cup mini-chocolate chips (¾ cup for batter and ¼ cup for topping)

1 graham cracker- crushed between your fingers to create crumb topping

¾ cup mini-marshmallows (you need 72 marshmallows if you want 3 marshmallows per brownie)

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350 F.

2. Line cupcake pans with cupcake liners.

3. In a large bowl, combine sugar, butter, water, and vanilla extract. Stir until well-mixed.

Add two slightly beaten eggs and stir to combine.

4. Sift dry ingredients and add to wet ingredients. (I don’t like to do dishes, so I put a sieve over my bowl of wet ingredients and sift them directly into my bowl. This way I don’t have to clean a second bowl.)

5. Mix to combine wet and dry ingredients, then add ¾ cup of mini-chocolate chips.

3. Place one scoop (approximately 2 tablespoons) of batter into each cupcake liner.

Bake for 7 to 8 minutes, until a crust forms around the edges of the brownies, but the center is still slightly wet.

4. Evenly divide reserved toppings (¼ cup mini-chocolate chips, marshmallows, and graham cracker crumbs) between 24 brownies.  Return cupcake pans to oven and bake no longer than 2 to 3 additional minutes. (The marshmallows will deflate if you bake them too long.)

5. Be careful not to over-bake the brownies.  They are done when a crust should form on top of each one. If you put a toothpick into the center of a brownie, brownie dough will still cling to it slightly when you pull it out.

Note: As you may have guessed, I’m a pretty lazy baker, but I do believe it’s important to sift the dry ingredients. This will help distribute them throughout the batter with less mixing and help you eliminate any hard clumps of cocoa that always seem to form in the cocoa container.  

Photo: Brownie s’mores. Credit: Susan Lutz

Zester Daily contributor Susan Lutz is a photographer, artist and television producer. A native of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, she currently lives in Los Angeles, where she is writing a book about heirloom foods and the American tradition of Sunday dinner. She also blogs about the subject at Eat Sunday Dinner.