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It seems to me that there are at least two kinds of substitutions which regularly occur in the kitchen. The first one is born from spontaneity and is rather unexpected. Envision that a rising need for chocolate mousse holds you hostage at about 10:45 pm whilst comfortably lounging about in faded flannel pajamas. Laziness, urgency and the logistics of an echoing barren cupboard result in instant sharp culinary creativity that borders on brilliance and insanity. The absent requisite 6 oz. of unsweetened chocolate is the sole hurdle standing between you and a sinkhole of bliss. Only a few moments are spared to glum spirits before head strong determination and hare-brained strategy take over. Hershey’s syrup, a handful of chocolate chips, rogue M&Ms and a half eaten chocolate bar floating at the bottom of a purse all find their true nature in the cauldron of improvisation and lucky success. Happy accidents such as these are characterized by humor and élan, a definitive willingness to go with what is given.
The other substitution is the down trodden child of a mother whose name is Discipline and an equally dour father named Deprivation. Sad offspring such as these are flung onto the world in the misguided attempts to transform decadence into doable, vice for nice. This is where applesauce and prune puree are exchanged for butter, nutritional yeast for cheese and low fat yogurt stands in for sour cream. With grandiose intentions to rectify recipes with poor nutritional profiles and whip slack bodies into shape- one, two, and up to three offending items are replaced with more virtuous back ups. Of course there are times when these substitutions are heartily embraced due to strong personal convictions and no harmful side effects are endured. But woe to the home cook not fully committed to the swap and inclined like Lot’s wife to wistfully look back, for only disappointment, dejection, and arrested satisfaction sadly awaits.
Why do we tend to look at the substitute as shoddy shoe-in, second fiddle or the next best thing? In a world where contingency plans are the name of the game, where Plan A’s turn to Plan B’s, C’s, and D’s in a scant second and daily artifacts are quickly becoming obsolete; we are forced to sink or swim, flex and grow. Perhaps our reluctance to wholly embrace the substitute comes from a growing resistance to constant change marked by too many options. Couldn’t we be more relaxed and pliant after all this is the age old struggle between sleek nouveau and staunch tradition in new disguise? It seems to me that life doesn’t move in overarching straight lines but in spastic bobbles, dips and occasional glides for which the humble stopgap is right at home. To carob or not to carob, that is the question.
Carob is to chocolate what Postum is to coffee or Tofurkey is to turkey: substitution, madness or both? First, to truly appreciate carob it must be eaten in the spirit of discovery, not stingy reluctance. It is a toasted ground pod with its own virtues apart from chocolate. Ceratonia siliqua or alternately St. John’s Bread is an evergreen tree hailing from the Mediterranean region. The pods of the tree stretch from four to twelve inches, looking like green broad beans which turn dark tobacco brown as they age. The locust seeds within are used as a thickener in many foods and also as cattle feed. The surrounding pods ground into flour have been eaten since ancient times and is high in calcium, potassium, protein, and sugar. Unlike chocolate, it is low in fat and has no caffeine or theobromines which are offensive alkaloids to some people.
Carob appears to fall into that category of healthy non guilt laden foods which are decidedly inferior to their counterparts. The powder itself looks much like cocoa. When mixed with some sort of fat solid, carob deceptively looks a lot like chocolate. But beyond being brown, sweet and slightly earthy there are few remaining similarities between the two. If hasty and closed to the possibilities, carob will be written off immediately upon consumption for it so resembles the other that unconsciously one expects the same and crushing disappointment is sure to follow.
In recent explorations I made a batch of carob brownies (even the name perpetuates this confusion) recalling distantly some fondness for the stuff. Out of the oven I was seduced with how decadent and chocolate-y the brownies appeared, until I ate my first mouthful which seemed a bit heavy and cloying. I recognized that I kept expecting to taste chocolate and was met with another taste altogether. Carob is sweet and slightly honeyed flavored, which is why the two are often paired together. The taste doesn’t have the down to your toes depth that dark chocolate does, nor does it ignite the entire palate, perhaps because it is so low in fat. As said before it is earthy yet light, existing in the strata upon the soil, slightly vegetal, not within it. Homey carob is reminiscent of the mood, taste, and smell of golden graham crackers. And as I think of this it might be more suitable to use carob in recipes where its qualities can shine freely unfettered by the yoke of the incomparable incorrigible cocoa bean. After all in the end don’t we all just want to be seen clearly distinguished from another, for who we truly are? So next time when faced with the opportunity to employ a proxy, take heart and charge full steam ahead, for who knows what places the new trajectory will take you.
Hot Spiced Carob makes 4- Adapted from Whole Foods on-line recipe box.
Ingredients:
2 C water
1 inch chunk of ginger sliced
½ cinnamon stick
3 crushed cardamom pods
4 Tblsp carob powder
2 C low fat milk
Honey to taste
Whipped cream for garnish
Directions: Bring water to a low simmer in a pot with the ginger, cinnamon and cardamom pods for about 5 minutes. Retrieve and discard spices. Add carob powder mixing thoroughly and stir in milk cooking until mixture is hot, but not boiling. Lastly add honey to desired sweetness. Pour into mugs and garnish with whipped cream.
The bad news is that they are disturbingly visceral, the pale pink taupe of a moist nether world exposed and unapologetic. With an appearance contrary to their dainty demure description, maiden herrings which have yet-to-spawn or matjes fillets still manage to seize their share of attention at the smorgasbord, and not just because of the liberal sloshing of aquavit. In an oceanic drift of multi flavored herring bits, these bold beauties stop traffic and breath, even in the full power of summer.
Now, where behind every leaf is a zucchini elongating by the minute, where green beans diddle and dangle in lazy baroque curlicues and tiny cherry tomatoes mischievously pop out from behind an odd neighbor’s ear; I am filled to my core, human cornucopia with the fruits of this enthusiastic season. For weeks I’ve piled my dinner plate high a veritable still life of raw, barely steamed, plain and unadorned vegetables, homage to local farmers and good old Cézanne too. If I were a tree, this chlorophyll rich sustenance would feed my leaves; palms stretched open to the sun. I’ve been buzzing along buoyant and nimble, content with the offerings of this green earth. But I am more beast than shrub and in the final count I paw for food that provides ballast to muscle and bone, counterbalance to air and froth.
It occurred to me that fruits and vegetables infused with the sun are not only stuffed plump with vitamins and minerals, but with the lingering traits of recent past months. Summer produce simply cannot help but be associated with picnics and glad affairs, long day hours, levity and pleasure. They hail from the land of the living, diurnal terrestrial creatures. While I willingly hoot and holler, juggle summer squash and eat salad three times a day, in the end I, a quiet citizen of the dark, naturally seek a shade of shadow when exposed too long to the glare of bright.
In self preservation I dipped below the earth this mid month of August to ferret out some wine soaked fish from the forgotten recesses of my icebox. Herring or Clupea harengus are small silvery fish which travel about in large schools throughout the Atlantic. Raw, smoked, pickled, and fermented, the oily Omega-3 Fatty Acid rich flesh has been teasing palates and fueling the economies of Northern European countries for thousands of years. Nutritious and super charged they ignite soulful passion amongst those that like it rich, over-the-top, and just a little crude. In Scandinavian countries where in particular these fish are favored, there are over a dozen of pickled preparations. Affectionately singled out as “sill” rather than “fisk”, herring are the foundation for any smorgasbord, Christmas time or midsummer festivity where they are accompanied by crisp bread (knäckebröd), butter and cheese (vasterbotten), boiled potatoes, hard boiled egg, sour cream, and fresh chives or onions. Interesting note, there is nary a vegetable in sight.
On the plate visually, this bold repast reminds me of a painter’s palette. Instead of a typical show stopping entrée with an equally partnered side dish, there are little piles of neutral colored, similarly textured food. Its absolute homely appearance is well made up for in taste. Herring eating is an individualized call and response experience. First, one must answer the call which is highly personal and emerges from some amorphous space between gut and tongue. Curry, Dill, Sour cream and onion or perhaps Matjes? Matjes- excellent choice! Dense and rich it is silky like lox but more substantial. The first salty hit is immediately joined by a sweet almost sandalwood flavor. That taste is slightly confusing, a tad strange but enjoyable. It is succulent incense infused fish. Maybe it would be best to temper the next bite with a cloud of chive speckled sour cream alongside a slice of egg. While this calms down the bite, it only amps up the richness for which the only reasonable solution is to imbibe a shot of sinus clearing, scalp tingling caraway flavored spirit. This obliterates everything before so that one can start anew with more mixing and sampling, layering and deepening.
Matjes fillets are my antidote to too much lettuce, birthday cakes festooned with fluffy frosting, and overly polite social behavior. They are serious, heavy hitting and feed the belly of the beast. While veggies bring me closer to the earth, maiden herring take me to the abyss, to that vast unknowable place where desire springs from. After these summer months of so much up and out, a little brined intensity is needed to send me back home.
Nordic House: Source for jarred and tinned matjes fillet, as well as all things Nordic. They also make an excellent homemade version. Though I do not know if they send these across country. Surprisingly I found mine by the pickled herring in the supermarket. New Hampshire, who knew?
Jansson’s Temptation: This has been on my “must-make” list for some time now for practically the name alone. But take a look- potatoes, cream, butter and anchovies? It is important to note, that Swedish anchovies are not similar to what Americans think of as anchovies. They can also be purchased at Nordic House.
Sillgratin: Essentially this is a spin-off on Jansson’s Temptation but uses matjes. Every recipe I’ve looked at has a slightly different potato to cream ratio. I have yet to try this because for now I’m hooked on eating them straight out of the jar. Must do in the next few weeks.
Sill Lover: What more can be said?
“He is not worthy of the honeycomb, that shuns the hive because the bees have stings.” William Shakespeare
I had almost nothing in common with G_ except for the smallest of shared loves, the taste of spun honey and sharp cheddar cheese sandwiches. As far as I was concerned this was enough for a brief moment in time. And it so happens, this tenuous connection, a faulty hinge barely worth mentioning also characterized my relationship to honey. With a birth name which coincidentally rhythmically rhymed with Sue Bee, my adoration for sweet amber flower nectar should have been fated. Missing the mark, I deviated ever so slightly to the left with the barely audible hum of an allergy which sent me fleeing rather than flying. Honey tickled my throat, not my fancy and I avoided the stuff just like I dodged the bounding bumbles feasting on azalea buds outside my door- in scared strategic scuttles.
Henceforth I made tentative forays into the Promised Land: delightfully benign Luden’s Honey Cough Drops, Honey Vanilla Häagen-Dazs (senselessly retired in 1985), syrup laden layers of baklava, and occasional swipes of honey with cheese or crisp apple slices with little laryngeal distress. Over the years singular samples of monofloral honey managed to hit my palate unveiling a previously unknown story of time, mood and place. What I had experienced before as achingly sweet sticky goo became a dazzling symphony of flower, landscape, and molten sun ripened heat. Rather than a midline thin non-descript note squeezed out of an 8 oz. plastic bear, exceptional honey is thrilling, lustrous, multilayered and royally substantial. Sardinian Corbezzolo, Hawaiian Christmas Berry, and New Zealand Manuka: these lingering drops of ambrosia traveling from afar have seeped in forging a nascent tender loyalty.
Consider the fact that an individual honeybee produces about 1/12 of a teaspoon in its short lifetime (40 days). Yet an average hive can produce about 60 lbs. of honey in a year, of which 25 lbs. are needed to survive winter. Known for being diligent and orderly, job assignments are allocated based upon age beginning with tidying up the cell from which they were born out of. While each bee has an individual story and place within the hive, every isolated movement has within it an intention that serves the survival of the whole. A bee is even willing to self immolate to protect its colony. Collectively it takes 2 million visits to flower sources and 55,000 air miles to make about a pound of honey. The tiniest effort matters. Face to face with bewitching color and fragrance, bees not only drink carbohydrate rich flower nectar which becomes honey when mixed with enzymes and aged, but they collect pollen on their legs to feed the brood back home. Subsequent visits to other flowers provide pollen exchange and fertilization from which fruits and vegetables blossom into being. Our very own food sources are dependent upon the life affirming actions of the tiny mighty bee.
I am beginning to sweep broad beyond what my two small eyes ordinarily see, past a world of black and white, mine and yours- to try and see what the honeybees see. I live in a myopic insulated dream saturated with the unimportant drama of the individual me, busy acquiring and managing fragments of information about the gross and the obvious. The life of the industrious bee is about the inconsequentially small invisible which becomes essential with the weight and shaping of the collective in touch with the mysterious. Their divine food has wakened me out of my lonely reverie as I unknowingly follow the faint ecstatic footprints of earliest man.
A drop of honey is a collection from the souls of flowers. It is complex photographic impression translated into taste of a specific moment in time and place, each element of the equation bearing consequence upon the other. This magical recipe has been enchanting cultures for ages because the formidable efforts required to create such an elixir are shielded by the unseen and ineffable. Honey has been prized by ancients as money, medicine, preservative, offering to the gods, and as a symbol of love and fertility. It perfectly embodies the constant diligence needed to sustain life as well as being a sensuous balm that makes those efforts worthwhile.
Now as we face a time when Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is making headlines, I suggest we take a cue from our friends and exchange the “I” for “we”. Part of our cultural alienation comes from the inability to hold two pictures at once, viewing disparate events as separate, pushing us further away from our natural mind. We are the bees; and as they are dying off from exhaustion and weakened immune systems whether from pesticides, miticides, changed weather patterns, or overwork- we are suffering a little each day too. Just as honey cakes were offered to the snakes (symbol of transformation) vital to the healings performed at the Temple of Asclepius, I extend a dab of honey to our collective soul in the hopes for renewal and abundance. Long live the Bees!
A few links:
Honey Mousse recipe by TastingMenu- voluptuous and delightful, I froze some to make a very quick and easy ice cream.
Maksim playing Flight of the Bumblebee
Zambezi Organic Forest Honey- after reading about CCD and recognizing that 80% of our fruit and vegetable crops are pollinated by honeybees, it is pertinent to keep the health of our bees strong.
I am sure that somewhere in time there existed a talented hostess reclining in the perfectly coiffed confines of her salon dispensing advice to admiring guests eager to learn grace, poise and the fine art of entertaining. How could she have guessed that this delicate moment in time, a late afternoon of easy conversation would be the birth place of domicile recommendations that would be passed and later shared by her attentive visitors and that in spite of the years and distance which would elapse, her sagacious words would still carry weight and purpose in the minds of future aspiring hosts yet to know a fry pan?
Through some blend of providence and destiny her instructions found me, compelling me to seek out simple recipes to master and rely upon as steady friend in an opening world of dinner parties and glad festivities. Armed initially with only a few Gourmet recipes illegibly scribbled into a notebook, every dinner out was open game for investigation and if need be, appropriation. I was in my early twenties, learning to cook and desirous of authoring my own brand of hospitality for which I had little clue and even less guidance. My ideas for entertaining were disjointed and outdated, the sophisticated independence of Mary Tyler Moore fused with the exotic glam of Charo meets Joy of Cooking with a pinch of Bon Appetit. Dimly I envisioned myself wearing flowing kaftan with turban while holding a silver platter checkered with rumaki. Fortunately for every future guest to be, fate intervened to whisk me away from dreaded gaucherie whilst nudging me towards something both accessible and real.
The evening was a tense one for me, an invitation to dine with my boyfriend’s parents, loquacious intelligent people interested in everything. I suffered tremendously from a fear of being dimwitted and losing the ability to eat and speak at the same time. The warm complex smell of chicken and garlic basting in wine headed me off, wrapping me immediately in a blanket of acceptance and cordiality. I recall such genuineness, a desire to welcome and create a memorable meal in the form of a rustic dish with a glamorous name. I was disarmed. Plump chicken, unctuous wine soaked prunes, herbs at every turn with a wink of caper- I may have looked every part the sensible dinner guest on the exterior, but inside not only was I luxuriating in sensual pleasure but I learned that a good host can create an atmosphere where the perceived differences between people dissolve. Gone were my petty insecurities, feasting on fowl moved the focus from head to heart and allowed a space for friendship to unfold.
Quickly I ascertained that Chicken Marbella had the hallmark of a keeper recipe. The flavors pique the taste buds in lively debate, sweet, bracing, pungent, and herbaceous. The dish escapes easy definition. It is sophisticated enough to be eaten by candlelight in gown or tux, but would be just at home plucked out of a picnic basket. Bold interesting flavors let the guest know this will be no prosaic affair yet its polish belies the ease in preparation. Low effort with high impact, I rely upon this poultry dish time and time again especially when I find myself overly concerned about crafting the perfect meal. Ultimately the job of the consummate host is to receive-- to enfold another into the family. The food and accompanying accoutrements are holy offering signifying that embrace. In the end it is less about the fuss of food, self conscious repasts which require too much sweat and toil, and more directly about the people who eat.
Chicken Marbella serves 6 adapted from the Silver Palate Cookbook
When I first had this dish over 15 years ago, it was one of the most exotic things I had ever tasted. I had the recipe for a short time before it was recklessly tossed into my memory bank to be interpreted anew each subsequent time. I can say that ever iteration has been fabulous. Very recently I found the recipe again only to realize that I had been calling it the wrong name (Chicken Mirabelle) all of these years. It seems that I was also taking certain liberties with the directions. If you want to have a go at directions closer to the original, look here.
Ingredients:
3 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts
8 garlic cloves finely chopped
¼ C Balsamic Wine
¼ C olive oil
1 C pitted prunes
½ C pitted green olives
¼ C capers
3 bay leaves
¼ C packed brown sugar
½ C white wine
2 Tbsp. dried oregano
Pinch red pepper flakes
Few grates orange zest
Salt and pepper
Finely chopped parsley or cilantro for garnish
Directions: Throw everything into a bag to marinate overnight. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place chicken and all other marinated bits into an ample Dutch oven and cover. Bake for about 45 minutes checking until chicken is done. Garnish with fresh chopped herbs. While this dish improves with age, the aroma out of the oven is terrific and is highly recommended for the benefit of dinner guests.
