As an air breather, it can survive out of water for several days. It also can migrate over land, wreaking havoc on wildlife in its path. With a large, protruding mouth that contains canine-like teeth and a predilection for using them, it is, by all accounts, one tough fish.

In America, the snakehead has become a cause for concern. A non-indigenous predator lacking any natural enemies, it could decimate native fish species and permanently alter our aquatic ecosystems. Because of this concern, most states have outlawed the sale of it. Even so, thanks to live fish markets and anglers surreptitiously stocking their local waters, snakehead keeps turning up in U.S. lakes, ponds, canals and reservoirs.

Frankenfish key source of protein in Cambodia

While it may be viewed as an invasive menace in the U.S., in Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia, snakehead is considered an essential part of everyday diets. 

In Southeast Asia, the snakehead’s toughness serves as a selling point. Because it lives in shallow, murky waters, eats virtually anything and grows quickly, it is a boon to struggling fish farmers looking for a hardy, low-cost, fast-yield crop.

The fact that it can get by for several days outside of water is gift to both farmers and consumers. Because of this unique feature, snakehead maintains its freshness in the worst of transportation and market conditions. While visiting outdoor markets in Siem Reap, Cambodia, and Ho Cho Minh City, Vietnam, I was stunned to see 1- to 2-foot-long live snakeheads sitting out in crates and on unrefrigerated metal trays. In spite of the less-than-ideal storage conditions, they looked as healthy as if they’d been pottering about in water-filled tanks.

What do cooks in Southeast Asia do with all these rugged fish? They feature them in soups and stews as well as in poached, sautéed, grilled and fried dishes. The snakehead’s moderately high oil content means it also responds well to smoking and drying.

In Cambodia, snakehead stars in a traditional curry dish known as amok trey. Amok refers to the technique of steaming fish, chicken or tofu in woven banana leaf baskets. In amok trey, the fish is steamed alongside a mixture of coconut milk, fish sauce, eggs and the Khmer flavor paste known as kroeung. Served inside a hollowed-out coconut, the final dish is juicy, fragrant and flavorful.

I got a chance to prepare amok trey with snakehead at the Tara Angkor Hotel in Siem Reap. The fish with which I worked had originated in the nearby Tonle Sap Lake. The largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, Tonle Sap contains roughly 200 fish species and accounts for 75% of the country’s inland fish production. Snakehead is one of the most popular and economically important species in this lake.

Asian snakeheads, aka Frankenfish. Credit: Kathy Hunt

Because I was starting my amok trey with a whole snakehead, I had to clean and then fillet the fish first. To accomplish this, I followed the same technique I would use with any round fish. After a minimal amount of effort, I ended up with two beautiful, white, firm-fleshed fillets.

Although I would slice the fish into thin strips for amok trey, the snakehead fillets could just as easily be pan-seared or grilled. I could then serve them with a grind of black pepper, dab of salted butter or splash of lemon juice. While mild in flavor, this fish needs little adornment to shine.

Back in New York City, I can continue cook with snakehead fish. In spite of a 2002 federal prohibition on the transportation and sale of live snakehead, Asian seafood markets around the city continue to carry this fish. Plus, if recent reports prove true, snakehead has moved into a neighborhood near mine, into the urban fisherman’s oasis of Central Park’s Harlem Meer. Anglers there have been instructed not to release this fish back into the lake.

In spite of snakehead’s growing presence in the U.S., I substitute striped bass or another firm, white-fleshed fish when making amok trey at home. However, should a snakehead happen to slither onto my doorstep, it would star in one tasty and authentic Cambodian meal.

Angkor-Style Striped Bass (Amok Trey)

Taken from my first cookbook, “Fish Market” (Running Press, 2013), this recipe features striped bass instead of the traditional snakehead fish. My version of amok trey does, however, use the distinctly Cambodia flavoring kroeung. You’ll find galangal root and morinda or noni leaves in the produce section of Asian markets and jars of galangal root in the Asian section of most supermarkets.

Serves 4

Ingredients

For the kroeung:

2 garlic cloves, chopped

1 tablespoon chopped lemongrass

1 tablespoon minced galangal root

1 (1-inch) piece fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped (about 2 tablespoons)

1 teaspoon sea salt

½ teaspoon ground turmeric

For the fish:

¾ cup well-shaken canned coconut milk, plus more for serving

1 morinda or noni leaf, chopped

2 tablespoons fish sauce

2 teaspoons sugar

2 large eggs, whisked

½ teaspoon sea salt

¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

12 ounces striped bass fillets, skinned and thinly sliced

½ small red bell pepper, thinly sliced

3 to 4 cups steamed rice, for serving

Directions

1. Fill a large, wide pot with 1½ inches of water. Place a steamer basket in the pot and bring the water to a boil.

2. Using a mortar and pestle, pulverize the garlic, lemongrass, galangal root, ginger, salt and turmeric until you have a thick paste. You’ll have about ⅓ cup. Spoon 2½ tablespoons of kroeung into a large bowl. Cover and refrigerate the rest for future use.

3. Add the coconut milk, morinda leaf, fish sauce, sugar, eggs, salt and black pepper to the 2½ tablespoons of kroueng. Mix the ingredients together until well combined. Add the fish and stir gently to coat.

4. Spoon the mixture into 6 to 8 small, oven-safe ramekins, filling each about two-thirds full. Place them in the steamer basket, cover and allow the fish to steam for roughly 15 minutes. When finished, the fish will feel firm and appear white and cooked through.

5. Carefully remove the ramekins from the steamer. Garnish the top of each with slices of red pepper and a drizzle of coconut milk. Serve hot with steamed rice.

Top photo: Amok trey. Credit: Kathy Hunt

The post Menacing Frankenfish A Dietary Staple In Parts Of Asia appeared first on Zester Daily.

And why would I bother to have and squander any emotion at all about the word veggies? I’ve wondered myself about why I don’t like it and won’t use it. I think it’s this: The word veggie is infantile. Like puppies. Or Cuties. It reduces vegetables to something fluffy and insubstantial. Think about it: We don’t say “fruities,” or “meaties” “or “wheaties” — unless it’s the cereal. We don’t say “eggies” or “beefies.” We don’t have a Thanksgiving birdy; we have the bird. But we don’t seem to be able to say vegetable.  Certainly it’s no longer than saying “Grass-fed beef” or “I’ll have a latte.”

Veggie turns vegetables into something kind of sweet but dumb, and in turn, one who eats a lot of vegetables might be construed as something of a lightweight, but one who can somehow excused. “It’s just veggies, after all. They’ll snap out of it.”

‘Vegetables’ speaks to their many strong traits

But the word isn’t used just by errant omnivores. Vegetarians are very fond of the word too, and they use it all the time. Plant foods, especially vegetables, are the backbone of vegetarian magazines, yet even there they’re reduced to veggies. I think vegetable is a more dignifying name by far. Just think of what plants do and what they’ve gone through to be on our plates.

They’ve been moved all around the world and gone rather willingly to where we humans have wanted them.

They’ve been altered to be pleasing to human palates.

They have adapted to all kinds of circumstances and survive against all odds and at extremes ranges of heat and cold, wetness and aridity.

The tiniest sprouts can move concrete. Eventually.

They can be dangerous and deadly, or they can be tender and sweet. And some come close to being both in the same plant. Like potatoes and tomatoes.

They can cure ills, for example, aspirin comes from willow; liver remedies are derived from members of the aster family, which include artichokes, burdock, chicories, milk thistle and lettuce among others; brassicas may prevent cancer. There’s the whole pharmaceutical stance one can take regarding vegetables given the truly amazing nutrition they offer.

Radicchio. Credit: Deborah Madison

Vegetables have serious means of protecting themselves — with spines and thorns, or by emitting subtle odors or substances. They can keep other plants at a distance so they alone can make use of limited amounts of water and nutrients; they can find ways to use other plants to climb on. Seed pods are cleverly designed to attach a ride to a jacket, a hat, a dog’s fur to be carried elsewhere to grow. (The burdock burr was the model for Velcro.) And they can defend themselves against predators; pinions discharge a sap that keeps bark beetles from boring in. (The food part is the pine nut).

Plants also keep other forms of life going by attracting bees and hummingbirds, moths and insects, which they feed.  They can sometimes cajole birds into carrying away their seeds to plant elsewhere. Plus they give us flowers and fruits in abundance. We love honey of all varietals — especially that derived from thyme, a member of the mint family, and flowers, too. We even use flowers in the kitchen.

Their seeds can sometimes last for hundreds of years or more. Some sprout only in fires, which is one reason burned forests can recover some kind of growth soon after a fire.

Angelica. Credit: Deborah Madison

They don’t complain when we waste them by using only the most tender parts and ignoring rough-looking leaves and stems and cores. Chickens are grateful of them.

In short, plants are generally quite amazing, strong and clever beings that evolve with time. Whether you are an omnivore or a vegetarian (or a chicken), we all benefit by eating plants. Plant foods. Vegetables. Fruits. Seeds. Stalks. Heads. Crowns. Skins. Cores.

I hadn’t thought about it when I was working on “Vegetable Literacy,” but I think — I hope — that the book, among other things, offers a way to go beyond the “veggie” concept of vegetables by introducing them as the eccentric and powerful personalities they are.

Top photo: Rainbow chard. Credit: Deborah Madison

The post Stop Calling Them Veggies; Vegetables Are Due Respect appeared first on Zester Daily.

In Bar Pozano, a narrow workingman’s hangout across the river from the Burgos Cathedral in northern Spain, half a dozen older men sat talking and ignoring a soccer game on mute on a flat-screen TV high on the wall near the front door. In the narrow refrigerated display case on the bar were the tapas of the day. Plates were displayed with Spanish omelets (tortillas de palatas), Iberian ham sandwiches (bocadillos) and skewered octopus bits seasoned with olive oil and pimentón. With all those delicious tapas inviting attention, it was the anchovies gathered around hard boiled eggs, pickles, pitted green olives, poached tuna and mussels that won my heart.

Anchovies are part of the ocean’s bounty. Found in great abundance all over the planet, the tiny fish, like goldilocks, prefer temperate waters that are not too hot, not too cold. Available in some areas fresh as filets with the silvery skin on one side, anchovies are usually sold as skinless filets in jars and flat tins.

I left my heart in Spain but brought home the anchovies

The thing about anchovies is that people either love them or hate them. With these delicate fish there is no middle ground. For those diners who enjoy them, anchovies have an umami flavor similar to that of shiitake mushrooms but with a deeply nuanced saltiness and feather-light raspiness on the tongue.

Bar Pozano in Spain. Credit: David Latt

The Spanish get the best out of anchovies by applying them liberally on tapas and pinxtos, Basque open-faced sandwiches. Italians know that skinless anchovy filets will dissolve in heated butter or olive oil, creating an exquisite sauce that adds a depth of flavor to braising sauces and pastas.

Part of the beauty of anchovies is that they are easy to use. To have a delicious snack, just open a jar or tin, drag out a couple with a fork, lay the filets over a piece of grilled bread with slices of Manchego cheese, drizzle with olive oil, dust with pimentón and serve with ice cold beer or a light white wine.

For an entrée, only a little more work is required. Dissolve four or five anchovies in heated oil, toss with cooked pasta, sprinkle with finely chopped Italian parsley and freshly grated Parmesan cheese and the main course is finished in less than 10 minutes.

To have a thoroughly enjoyable evening with anchovies as the centerpiece, all that’s needed is a group of like-minded diners who regard the anchovy as one of nature’s best treats.

Anchovies With Hard-Boiled Eggs

Infinitely variable, the basics are the salty anchovy filets, which contrast with the dry and creamy hard-boiled eggs. In Spain, a condiment made with finely chopped, charred red and green peppers and onions is used as a topping on neutral tasting products like poached tuna filets or mussels. That topping goes beautifully with the hard-boiled eggs and anchovies.

I am indebted to Katie Goodman who described her method for hard-boiling eggs to facilitate easy shell removal.

Serves 4

Ingredients

4 farmers market fresh large eggs, washed

1 teaspoon kosher salt

¼ red pepper, washed and seeded

¼ green pepper, washed and seeded

¼ medium yellow onion, washed and peeled

2 tablespoons olive oil

8 anchovy filets packed in olive oil

4 mini-dill pickles, cut in half longwise

8 mussels, canned or freshly steamed, debearded and shelled

Sea salt

Black pepper

Pimentón (optional) or cayenne

8 long toothpicks or short bamboo skewers  3 or 4 inches in length

Directions

1. Cover the eggs in a pot of water. Add 1 teaspoon kosher salt. Bring to a vigorous boil and cook uncovered for three minutes.

Remove from the flame, cover and let sit for 15 minutes.

Pour off the hot water and soak the eggs in cold water. Allow to cool, then remove the shells. Dry and refrigerate in an airtight container until ready to use.

2. On a hot barbecue grill or on a stovetop gas burner with the flame turned on high, place the green and red peppers and the onion on the flame. Allow the outer skin to lightly char. Turn once with tongs and remove.

Once the peppers and onions are cool to the touch, use a sharp chef’s knife to finely chop the vegetables and place in a small, lidded container. Cover with the olive oil, seal and refrigerate until ready to use.

3. Assemble just before serving. First, carefully slice each hard-boiled egg from top to bottom using a very sharp paring knife. Slide the skewer through one anchovy, then through the side of one half of the hard boiled egg, then the pickle half and the mussel. Add one more anchovy on the other end if desired.

Top with an espresso-sized teaspoon of the marinated peppers and onions and a little olive oil. Season as desired with sea salt, black pepper and pimentón.

Variations

• Instead of the mussel, place a slab of canned tuna fish filet, preferably a good quality tuna from Spain.

• Instead of the mini-dill pickle, use a pitted green olive.

• Instead of the mini-dill pickle, use crisp and vinegary, pickled Basque guindilla peppers, available from Spain in jars.

• In addition to the marinated charred peppers and onion topping, dust the hard boiled egg with finely chopped fresh Italian parsley.

Top photo: A Spanish tapas made at home with anchovy, mussels, hard-boiled egg, marinated chopped peppers and onions and pickle on a skewer. Credit: David Latt

The post Abundant Anchovies Lend Themselves To Spanish Tapas appeared first on Zester Daily.

How to proceed, and how to do some good, so you and future generations can still get your coffee mojo? Two approaches: Buy coffee that is produced sustainably and pays a fair wage and safeguard the place of origin of coffee so its rich biological and cultural diversity thrives to benefit all growers in crisis worldwide.

Top tips on sustainable, fair-trade coffee, it’s best to buy:

• Organic or low-chemical and low-pesticide use beans.
• Shade-grown coffee. (Rustic is best.)
• Products labeled fair trade.
• Rain Forest Alliance-certified coffee.
• “Bird-friendly” Smithsonian Seal of Approval coffee.

Also, ask your local markets to carry those brands. In sum, vote with your dollars, ask questions and support other establishments that advocate the above practices.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Ethiopia deforestation and hopeful solutions

More than four decades ago, 40% of Ethiopian land was covered in forests; now only 3% remains, based on a report from the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Historically, local communities rely on the forest for biological and cultural sustenance. Dependence on subsistence farming, as of late, has changed the delicate balance where deforestation ensues. Partnering with the Ethiopian government, several governmental and non-governmental organizations have designated the Kafa Biosphere Reserve in 2010. The reserve is recognized by UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme and tasked to promote sustainable development built upon local community participation and sound science.

An indigenous organization, Kafa Limat Forum, is at the forefront of establishing a National Coffee Museum in the Kafa Biosphere Reserve in Bonga. The museum will be a crossroads and gathering point for the many diverse communities to celebrate the rich cultural heritage, including the origins and ceremonies around coffee. The museum will provide a sacred space for locals and visitors to unify in diversity. The museum seeks to reaffirm the communities’ connections to the dwindling sacred forests that represent the centers of biocultural variety.

Maybe it is time to support the economy and people of Ethiopia directly with the purchase of Ethiopian coffee varieties grown on smallholder farms from some of the main coffee-growing areas: Bedele, Ghimbi, Goma Woreda, Harar, Illubador, Lekempti, Limu, Sidamo and Yirga Cheffe. Or, better yet, follow the general coffee-buying guidelines and help all cultivators, growers and laborers revitalize their lives and their environments.

Top photo: Coffee beans. Credit: Sarah Khan

This article was partially underwritten by the The Christensen Fund, a nonprofit organization, dedicated to biocultural and agricultural diversity of marginalized people and landscapes globally.

The post African Origins of Coffee: Why Sustainability Matters appeared first on Zester Daily.

The Veneto region around the city of Verona, in the northeast of Italy, is Soave country. The wines are named for the town of Soave, and the best ones, like this Inama, come from rugged surrounding hillside vineyards of mineral-rich basaltic rock in the Classico zone, the original Soave area mapped in 1927. Only wines made in this zone can use the word Classico on the label.

The grape is late-ripening Garganega, which very much reflects where and how it’s grown. Soaves made from grapes grown on the flat valley floor outside the Classico zone tend to be pretty neutral. Though up to 30% of a Soave can contain Trebbiano or Chardonnay, Stefano Inama sticks to 100% Garganega, from old vines, which he believes give wines more richness and complexity.

Giuseppe Inama, the estate’s founder, began assembling a patchwork of small top vineyards in Classico zone in the mid-1960s, but sold his wine in bulk. Starting in the mid-1990s, his son Stefano shifted to organic viticulture, cut yields and started bottling the wines.

Climbing the Soave ladder

Inama makes three different Soaves; this is their basic, entry-level bottle, fermented and aged in stainless steel. The other two, which come from special parcels and single vineyards on Monte Foscarino, are fermented in barrels.

If you’ve dismissed Soave as just white plonk, it’s time to try again. This 2011 Inama Soave Classico is a low-cost introduction to the good stuff.

Top photo composite:

2011 Inama Soave Classico label. Credit: Elin McCoy

Vineyard. Credit: Courtesy of Inama

The post Elin’s Wine Pick: 2011 Inama Soave Classico appeared first on Zester Daily.

Oh, the simplicity, a work-harried friend wistfully whined to me one morning while we were on the train, commuting two hours to our Manhattan jobs from rural Connecticut.  I really want to live and eat like that, she added, looking over my shoulder at my iPad — simply and quietly.

Of course you do, I told her. And so do I.

Neo-Nostalgia

And, apparently, so does everyone else these days, so much so that a new crop of magnificently-produced, nearly wordless, expensive magazines — maga-Tumblrs, really — has arrived on the scene, promising vicarious calm, conviviality and aspirational serenity of the sort that Thoreau went to the woods to find 159 years ago. Instagram-softened images of meaningful dinner parties abound; young flannel-shirted men in their 20s — Smith Brothers look-alikes — smoke vintage Meerschaum pipes as they gaze across placid ponds at tire swings swaying in the distance while their ladies thoughtfully pour local herb-infused gimlets into authentic 1930s Ball canning jars. You read the sparse text. You swoon. You study. You wonder if these people have day jobs.

The message is clear: You – yeah you, with the three kids in daycare and the divorce, getting off the IRT and running into Starbucks for your McVenti before hunkering down in your cubicle under those fluorescent lights for eight hours while the jackass next to you yammers on his cell phone about the great sex he had last night — you, too, can live a simple life.

That is, if you work hard enough at it.

If you wear the right authentic clothes and drink the right authentic drinks out of the right authentic vessels. If your food is unfettered and unfussy and thoughtfully produced and served in the right coffee bowls of the right color, and was perhaps procured from the right CSA or the right farmers market.

Overwrought authenticity

For those of us who have suffered through the fashion of anxious, nervous food — inauthentic, tall, overwrought — such simple, gastronomical style is exactly what we’ve been breathlessly waiting for. But has the style of living and eating this way, with its gorgeous prepackaged rusticity and come-hither appeal, just become exigent fetish? Are our attempts to be “simple” so self-conscious and superficial that the benefits of real simplicity, peace, mindfulness, thrift are lost? Will being simple — eating simply, living simply — go the way of the Pet Rock?

Trends are a direct reflection of our ever-changing cultural and socio-emotional needs. In the greed-is-good 1980s, everything was big — shoulder pads, hig hair — and the contrived food of the time, unnatural vertical and architectural, was an extension of that style. In late 1988, I was served an elaborate, human fist-sized chocolate piano at a restaurant in Beverly Hills. A scaled-down replica of a Steinway baby grand, it had eighty-eight black and white chocolate keys, and strings fashioned from spun sugar. After the grim 1970s, life was suddenly all about the frantic quest for the elaborate and ornate, and the food on our plates reflected it. In the 1990s, everyone declared themselves a home-schooled chef — the Food Network went on the air in 1993 — and we all went out to buy kitchen blowtorches and home foamers and timbale molds. After 9/11, we craved peace and conviviality, and the next big thing was comfort food. The sale of crockpots and Creuset casseroles took off like they’d been shot from a cannon.

So what created this fraught mandate for the ancient saucepan — dented to perfection — that we spend hours searching for at Goodwill? Why the farmhouse tables laden with elemental dishes and the longing gazes serene as stone? Desperation for simplicity and authenticity smacks of a sort of psychic exhaustion, and the stark realization that living and eating in a complicated overdone way will take a toll on our souls. It compels us with an almost furious hysteria to return to preconceived notions of what’s real, even if what’s real is nothing more than an often fetishized metaphor for ever-elusive safety, and a commodified yearning to bind our frayed connection to equanimity and control.

In a world of constant digital connectedness, of nebulous relationships and jobs that disappear before our eyes, of an often fraudulent and dangerous food system, where we feed our children pink slime and anyone can slap a green label on their over-processed product and pretend it’s organic, we’ll pay anything we can to get simplicity, or some semblance of it back.

But if simplicity really is just a fetish, what will happen when the fetish fades and the trend is over? What will we eat and how will we live?

Top photo: Elissa Altman. Credit: © Susan Turner

The post Living Simply Is Complicated — Is It Just A Fetish? appeared first on Zester Daily.

St-Germain is made in France, but the idea for the liqueur was born in England. While visiting London on business in 2001, a young American named Robert Cooper tasted a cocktail made with elderflower syrup, and became intrigued by its unique flavor. As it happened, Cooper was in charge of marketing for Chambord, the French raspberry liqueur, which was developed for the U.S. market by his father.

Cooper returned to the States with the idea of creating an elderflower liqueur, but soon found that the process was more challenging than he’d imagined.

“I began vigorously working on the project in 2003, and it was not in marketing until early 2007,” Cooper said. By then he’d left the family spirits business to launch his own operation, Cooper Spirits International. “It was quite difficult to make the macerations from something as volatile as a fresh flower.”

St-Germain is made from the blossoms of wild elderflowers that bloom on the hillsides of the French Alps for just four to six weeks in early spring. Once the flowers have been hand-harvested, the race is on to process the fresh blossoms before they lose their delicate aroma and flavor.

Mixologist Mike Henderson of Denver’s Root Down loves the versatility of St-Germain. Credit: Root Down

They’re immediately macerated to preserve their freshness, and each day’s macerations are successively combined until the blooming period is over.

“We make the maceration once a year, much like a wine, surrounding the elderflower harvest,” Cooper explained. That means there’s only one chance each year to get it right.

The ‘bartenders’ bacon’

Cooper’s dedication has resulted not only in a wonderfully delicious liqueur, but something of a cocktail revolution.

Each St-Germain bottle has the “vintage” of the elderflowers used to make the liqueur. Credit: Cooper Spirits International

In the six short years since its release, St-Germain has become a key player in U.S. artisan cocktail movement.

“St-Germain came on the market when the whole mixology and cocktail scene was really starting to catch fire,” said mixologist Mike Henderson of Root Down, an upscale Denver restaurant known for its creative cocktails.

“I think one of the reasons it’s been so successful is that it’s got a unique ability to go with just about everything,” he said. “It works equally well with vodka, gin, rum, tequila, whiskey, scotch and Champagne. It’s joked about in the cocktail community as being ‘bartenders’ bacon’  – it just makes everything a little bit better.”

Henderson includes St-Germain in three of Root Down’s signature drinks, including the Hummingbird (with Prosecco and sparkling water), the Spanish Estate (with rum, sherry vinegar and bitters) and the Pepper Blossom (with vodka, jalapeño syrup and citrus juices).

The complexity of St-Germain’s flavor, he said, is the secret to its versatility. “When you taste it, you get a lot of notes of lychee, pear and tropical fruit, and there’s some citrus in there,” Henderson said. “Because it’s got that depth and variety of flavors it has the ability to bring out whatever flavors it’s mixed with. For example, if you make a cocktail that’s got pear in it, St-Germain has this ability to bring out more pear. If you make a cocktail with kiwi in it, it has this weird ability to bring out more of that kiwi flavor.”

Global domination on the horizon

The wild popularity of St-Germain among cocktail devotees on both sides of the bar led liquor giant Bacardi to buy the brand from Cooper Spirits earlier this year, with the intention of turning it into an international brand “icon” à la Grey Goose vodka, purchased by Bacardi in 2004.

Although Cooper continues to work with Bacardi as St-Germain’s “brand guardian,” I can’t help wondering if global domination will mean a compromise in the liqueur’s artisan production process.

“I have been working diligently for the past three or four years on growing our capacity,” Cooper told me. “So long as we can procure the flowers in sufficient quantities, we can make more St-Germain.”

Pepper Blossom

The Pepper Blossom is one of Root Down’s most popular and creative cocktails. Credit: Tina Caputo

This spicy-sweet cocktail was created by Mike Henderson of Root Down, in Denver.

Serves 1

Ingredients

1¼ ounces vodka

1¼ ounces St-Germain

¾ ounce lemon juice

½ ounce grapefruit juice

½ ounce jalapeño-infused simple syrup*

2 basil leaves

Directions

Combine all ingredients except basil in a cocktail shaker with ice and shake vigorously for 10 seconds.

Strain liquid into a lowball glass and garnish with basil leaves.

*To make jalapeño-infused simple syrup, add 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of water and a fresh jalapeño (cut in half with seeds removed) to a small saucepan. Simmer over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until sugar dissolves. Let syrup cool and remove pepper before using. Will keep in the refrigerator up to four weeks.

Top photo: Elderflowers bloom in the French Alps for only four to six weeks each spring. Credit: Cooper Spirits International

The post St-Germain Liqueur Is A Sip Of Spring With Elderflower appeared first on Zester Daily.

So a new chef enters the machinery of fame. Maybe he’ll succumb to its poison allure. But maybe, just maybe, he’ll sail through. It’s not just his rough roots, his street smarts, his attitude, his culinary eclecticism, his populism, his Dadaist tweets, his skills, and not even his way through and around flavors, that inspires hope. It’s the way he’s using food to think and feel in new ways about culture, high and low.

Good food with a bad boy image

Full disclosure: I was introduced to Choi because I was asked to write a bio of him for speaking engagements at ZPZ Live. But we talked about many things that don’t fit into a bio. It was oddly inspiring. “People are fascinated by the nature of who I am, but they haven’t gone all the way,” Choi said. “There’s the bad-boy image, but they’re not listening to what I’m saying all the way through. I cross worlds, and I don’t pass judgment on anyone.”

His fame arrived through his Kogi BBQ truck, selling $2 Korean barbecue tacos, marketing via Twitter ( “the first viral eatery,” said Newsweek). At the Pantages event, when Bourdain remarked that he’d turn away a homeless person from a restaurant he ran, Choi countered that he’d proudly serve anyone “whose money was green,” according to LA Weekly. “Skaters and rappers and homeless and jobless” is how he described the young people he’s teaching to cook when he volunteers at A Place Called Home  in South Central Los Angeles. The goal: Empowering them to open their own local food-based businesses.

He’s not taking them out to farms in a yellow bus to learn about “real” food. “That would just reinforce the message that they have to leave their community to be better human beings,” he said. “I want to do the reverse, to enlighten them that they are beautiful human beings, and they are responsible to making the community better.

“They look me up online and say, ‘You famous, dude? What are you doing here?’ I tell them, ‘Just because I’m famous doesn’t mean I have to change what I am.’ ”

The kids can’t cook. “You have to open their hearts. They don’t want to admit they don’t know this stuff. I tell them, you can f**k things up. Mash things together, like hip-hop, like a skate trick, you can fall down and scrape your knees. Use your swagger. Don’t listen to others,” he said.  He shows them how to hold a knife, how to peel, how to heat a pan and render fat; to follow a work ethic; the core value of cleanliness.

Roy Choi’s Kogi trucks are cherished on the streets of Los Angeles. Credit: Wikimedia / Kogi BBQ

“I teach them how to blanch and cook asparagus, but it doesn’t have to taste like white people food! Vegetables don’t discriminate. They can char it, squeeze lime over it, hit it with chilies and cilantro, and make it taste like they like to eat.

“I show them how to create a food cart, how to honor their Latin heritage, to use umami flavors, yogurt, coconut milk, a little chili and lime — to make it taste like their palate. So they know ‘my flavors are valid, my palate is valid, I can do anything I want.’ ”

He demonstrates how to “build” fried rice: “Start with aromatic vegetables, layering flavors as you go — ginger, garlic, scallions, that’s your trinity — maybe onions, bell peppers, chilies, cooking them, adding rice, cooking it through, deglazing, finishing with butter, eggs, mixing, layering.

“Even simple things like a hamburger, butter the bread all the way around, toast it completely, slow their steps down. Even if it’s just bread and a piece of meat, notice the difference in texture in toasting the bread, seasoning the meat.”

Forever food exploring

In his own cooking, Choi is exploring flavors of the Caribbean, including Jamaica, Trinidad, Puerto Rico and Cuba. He’s jumping into, of all things, Korean food, “wild sesame, and all these really pungent deep viscous flavors,” making his own fermented chili pastes.

“I’m looking for ways to really intensify vegetables, making them really simple with lots of flavor, like Korean side dishes,” he said.

So here’s a toast to Choi’s new fame: Don’t ever change, Roy, and keep changing. “Whatever I’m doing, it has nothing to do with putting anything else down. I love fine dining. It will always exist. I don’t want to squelch what is already thriving. I want to focus energy on things that aren’t existing,” he said.

Here are three fruit-based recipes that Roy Choi has taught his South Central students. When we asked Roy about the title for the last recipe, he replied, “I named it Boba Fett because of the boba (tapioca balls), which a lot of young kids drink.”

Fruit Paletas

For the spice mix:

⅔ cup kosher salt

½ cup organic all natural sugar

2 teaspoons ground black pepper

2 teaspoons ground cayenne pepper

¼ cup chili powder

Directions

Mix in a bowl and store in a shaker top container with a perforated top.

For the paletas:

¼ cup frozen mango chunks

¼ cup frozen pineapple spears

Lime wedges

Directions

Put slightly thawed but still cold fruit into a 4-ounce plastic cup, store on ice. Sprinkle fruit with ½ teaspoon spice mixture, add 1 lime wedge, serve with fork.

Coco Nuts Smoothie

For the coconut agave mixture:

3½ cups (28 fluid ounces) coconut milk (shake before opening)

3½ cups (28 fluid ounces) coconut water

½ cup organic agave nectar

Directions

Thoroughly mix and pour into pitcher and keep cold.

For the smoothies:

¼ cup each of frozen fruits (sliced strawberries, mango chunks, pineapple chunks and peach slices) thawed but still cold.  (Use four different kinds of fruit to make one cup total.)

1 cup coconut/agave mixture

Directions

Place one cup of the frozen fruit mixture in blender. Pour one cup cold coconut milk/agave mixture over fruit and blend. Serve with a straw.

Boba Fett

Serves 1

For the pineapple cinnamon mixture:

1 can (46 fluid ounces) pineapple juice shaken and cold

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions

Mix well and pour into pitcher and keep cold.

For the fruit mixture:

2 tablespoons frozen pineapple cubes

2 tablespoons frozen mango cubes

2 tablespoons frozen banana slices

2 tablespoon frozen diced strawberries

1 cup cold pineapple/cinnamon juice mixture

Directions

Spoon fruit into plastic cup. Pour one cup pineapple juice/cinnamon mixture over fruit.  Serve with big boba straw.

Top photo: Roy Choi. Credit: Fridolin Schoepper

The post Hot Chef Roy Choi Takes His Star Turn In Stride appeared first on Zester Daily.

But if you can’t be bothered to make your own, increasingly bars are making inventive versions, and good bottled versions abound.

Eppa SupraFruta is a bottled sangria, available in both red and white versions, made from organically grown Mendocino County wine grapes.

Slices Sangria is the new creation of Mike Kenton, the founder of OFFbeat Brands. Kenton spent much of his career at Codorniu in Spain, where he fell in love with the traditional drink.

He uses wine made from Spanish grape varieties such as Tempranillo and Verdejo, blended with fruit juices such as orange, lime and blackberry (for the red); or lime, lemon and pineapple (for the white).

“Sangria has been on my family’s dining table for as long as I can remember,” said Slices’ Spanish winemaker, Miguel Gúrpide.

Gurpide also makes a sangria rosé (the fruit used includes lime, lemon and strawberry) and two sparkling sangrias, one rosé and one white.

Relatively light in alcohol (usually under 9% alcohol by volume), sangria is an easygoing cocktail to make for one or for a crowd, doused in club soda or given a couple of cubes of ice.

Eppa-phany Punch

Courtesy Eppa Sangria

Serves 1

Ingredients

2 to 3 cardamom pods

½ ounce lemon juice

½ ounce simple syrup

1 ounce fresh pineapple juice

2 ounces Eppa SupaFruta Sangria

Pineapple leaf, for garnish

Directions

1. In a tin, muddle the cardamom pods.

2. Add the rest of the ingredients.

3. Shake vigorously for 30 seconds.

4. Double strain over ice in a wine glass.

5. Garnish with a pineapple leaf.

Spanish Tortilla

Courtesy Tara and Les Goodman, Adafina Culinary

Serves 2

Ingredients

2 onions, Spanish or sweet, sliced ⅛-inch thick

6 to 7 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled, sliced into ¼-inch rounds

2 cups Spanish olive oil

6 large farm eggs

Kosher salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Place the onions and potatoes in a medium mixing bowl, and toss with a couple pinches of kosher salt.

2. Place a 10- to 12-inch nonstick pan over medium-high flame, adding the onions and potatoes.

3. Pour in the olive oil and stir to coat.

4. When oil begins to bubble, reduce heat to medium-low and cook, turning frequently, until potatoes are fork-tender but not browned, about 15 to 20 minutes.

5. Remove pan from heat and strain the oil from the onions and potatoes.

6. Set aside oil and reserve for another use.

7. Cool onions and potatoes to room temperature, and adjust for seasoning, adding salt and pepper as needed.

8. Beat the eggs and add them to the cooled potato mixture.

9. Return pan to medium heat and stir the tortilla mixture as it cooks until eggs are slightly set.

10. Spread mixture out evenly and reduce heat to medium-low.

11. Cook until bottom is golden brown and eggs are set, about 10 to 12 minutes (you can place pan under the broiler for 2 to 3 minutes if needed to set the top).

12. Remove pan from heat and let cool for 10 to 15 minutes.

13. Place a plate face down over the pan and flip tortilla over — bottom side up. Let cool for a half hour or so, and slice into wedges.

14. Serve with Spanish pimenton (paprika) aioli, crunchy sea salt, and a glass of chilled sangria — or a sangria cocktail.

Top  photo: Sangria. Credit: iStockphoto

The post Cocktail Hour: Fruity-Fresh Versions Of Sangria appeared first on Zester Daily.

Swiss chard is botanically related to beets. It grows well in sandy soil, and it originated on the coasts of the Mediterranean. In fact, the Andalusian seaport of Málaga offers a delightful Swiss chard recipe for acelgas a la Malagueña that utilizes the golden raisins and paprika from the region. The Spanish word for Swiss chard, acelgas, comes from the Arabic word al-silq, meaning Swiss chard or beet greens. Although the coastal port of Málaga is known for its seafood, the local cooking is also favored with some appetizing vegetable preparations such as this.

As large leafy greens are famously nutritious, Swiss chard is an excellent vegetable to cook with for nutritional reasons, culinary reasons and palatable reasons. The following is the recipe I usually use when I teach classes on leafy green vegetables and want to introduce a vegetable. Many people know what Swiss chard is, but few have cooked it. Here’s your chance and you won’t be unhappy.

Acelgas a la Malagueña. Credit: Michelle van Vliet

Acelgas a la Malagueña

Serves 4

Ingredients

2 pounds Swiss chard, heavy central stem ribs removed, washed well several times and drained

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

3 large garlic cloves, finely chopped

¼ cup golden raisins

1 tablespoon paprika

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 teaspoon white wine vinegar

Directions

1. Place the Swiss chard in a large steamer and wilt, covered, over high heat with only the water adhering to it from its last rinsing, 4 to 5 minutes. Drain and chop coarsely.

2. In a large sauté pan, put the Swiss chard, olive oil, garlic, raisins, paprika, salt, pepper and vinegar and turn the heat to medium-high. Cook until it begins to sizzle, about 3 minutes, reduce the heat to low and cook until the mixture is well coated and blended, about 15 minutes. Serve immediately.

Top photo: Red Swiss chard. Credit: Aspen Rock/iStockphoto

The post Swiss Chard the Healthy, Andalusian Way appeared first on Zester Daily.