Gujarati Mango Soup

Initially posted on The Jew and the Carrot: www.jcarrot.org.

Walk into any Jewish household on a Friday night, and you'll have an instant window into that family's food legacy. The Syrian table is piled high with ka'aks, zucchinis and eggplants stuffed with lamb and beef, beautiful molded rice with blanched almonds, and my favorite, lahmacun, those wonderful flatbreads topped with tamarind-and-tomato drenched ground meat. The Eastern Europeans have lokshen and cabbage, noodle kugel, gefilte fish, and of course, cholent. But come over to my house, and you might be confused: we'll start with, say, a Moroccan soup called harira. The pièce de résistance, if I'm lucky, is huachinango a la Veracruzana, my favorite preparation of red snapper in a Mexican tomato sauce with onions, olives, currants, hot peppers, and cinnamon. A side of the Indian eggplant curry baingan bartha might round out the meal, and for dessert, my mother's homemade chocolate croissants. If you're following along, that makes one American Jew, born and raised in Washington, DC, with relatives from across Eastern Europe, who, along with her mother, is building a cooking legacy on Indian curry, Mexican fish, Moroccan soup, and French pastry.

I don't come from a strong cooking tradition. It's possible my great grandmothers slaved over some top-notch borscht, or -- in the case of the piece of my family that's been in the US for seven generations -- some excellent apple pie. But I wouldn't know. My grandmother, who grew up in Chicago, didn't cook much at all. My Bubby, who grew up in New York and has spent most of her life in Richmond, VA, used to make an excellent Thanksgiving dinner, but her cooking didn't have a particular perspective or core list of key ingredients.

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Color me jealous: I've always wanted to come from one of those families with a strong culinary tradition. I've longed for native staples - the sorts of ingredients you always have on hand in multiple forms and in massive quantities, that find their way into everything: the Italians' olive oil and tomatoes; the Indians' garlic, ginger, and chilies; and so on.

So we weren't bequeathed a strong culinary heritage by our relatives or our culture; that hasn't stopped us from building our own. My mother has spent years accruing knowledge of different cultures' cuisines, acquiring a taste for spice, learning to achieve that balance of spicy, sour, salty, and sweet that makes food -- of any origin -- great. And ever since I learned to cook, I've been trying to follow in her footsteps. Yes, we're creating our own culinary legacy. Our legacy uses lemon in copious quantities; it doesn't skimp on the chile; it favors things with pools of zesty tomato-based sauces to be sopped up with good bread; and it always includes something sweet to finish things off.

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But there's more. We love olives, capers, and anchovies, individually or all together in a tapenade that'd make a cook in Provence swoon. And we love Indian flavors; we've spent many a meal tasting curries two, three, four times in a row, to decipher their ingredients one by one. As I served an Indian-spiced chilled mango soup to my guests on Friday night -- its pale orange surface flecked with black mustard seeds and buoying a dollop of spicy green chutney -- I felt connected to a cooking heritage. The people may not be my own people, but the legacy of Indian cooking -- the boldness with flavors, the embrace of real, sweat-inducing spice, the mixing of hot and cold together in the same dish -- is one I have come to love, and to take as my own. Not being born into a strong cooking tradition may be a blessing in disguise, after all.

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Gujarati Mango Soup with Green Chutney Adapted from a recipe in Amanda Hesser's The New York Times Essential Cookbook

After initially making this soup, I was concerned it would be cloying, even in small doses. I'd added some lime juice, but it still tasted quite sweet. On a whim, I made this green chutney (below), and its fresh, green heat complements the soup perfectly.

2 tablespoons chickpea flour 1/8 teaspoon ground turmeric 3/4 teaspoon ground cumin 3/4 teaspoon ground coriander 1/2 cup plain whole milk yogurt (Greek is best) 3 cups canned mango pulp or mashed fresh mango pulp (1 mango yields between 3/4 and 1 cup of pulp) 1 1/4 teaspoons salt 1/2 teaspoon sugar (may need more if using fresh mangos) 1 jalapeno pepper, chopped (I used all the seeds. If you prefer less spice, omit seeds and membrane) 2 tablespoons peanut or corn oil Generous pinch ground asafoetida 1/2 teaspoon whole brown mustard seeds 1/2 teaspoon whole cumin seeds 2 whole hot dried red chilies 1/8 teaspoon whole fenugreek seeds 10 fresh curry leaves (optional) Juice of 1 lime

Put the chickpea flour, turmeric, and ground cumin in a bowl. Fill a measuring cup with 1/2 cup of water, and add a couple tablespoons to the flour mixture, stirring carefully until the flour is a smooth paste with no clumps.

Add more water very slowly, ensuring an even consistency as you stir.

Once enough water has been added that the chickpea flour has been fully incorporated into the liquid with no lumps, add the rest of the water and stir to combine. Whisk in yogurt, mango, and 2 more cups water. Add salt, sugar, and fresh chilies. Mix well.

Put oil in a heavy-bottomed medium pot over medium heat. When oil is very hot, add the asafoetida, and then — in quick succession — the mustard seeds, cumin seeds, dried chilies, fenugreek seeds, and curry leaves (if using). Have a splatter screen on hand: the mustard seeds will pop almost immediately after being added.

As soon as you have added the above ingredients, remove from heat and add mango mixture. Stir to combine, return to medium heat, and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring. Then remove from heat, cover, and allow to steep for 30 minutes.

At this point, you can either reheat the soup to serve warm, or do as I did, and refrigerate it to be served cold. Either way, strain the soup through a coarse sieve, then spoon some of the smaller seeds from the strainer back into the soup. Immediately before serving, stir the lime juice into the soup.

Serve soup in small bowls, with a spoonful of the chutney in each.

Spicy Green ChutneyAdapted from a recipe by Madhur Jaffrey

2 tablespoons lemon or lime juice (lime is preferable) 1 small tomato, diced 3/4 teaspoon salt 3 fresh hot green chilies, such as bird’s eye or jalapeno (can start with 2 and add to taste) 2/3 cup fresh chopped cilantro 1/3 cup fresh chopped mint 1/2 cup grated coconut, fresh or frozen and defrosted

This chutney can be made rustic in a mortar and pestle, or smooth in a blender.

Combine 3 tablespoons water, lime juice, tomatoes, salt, and chilies. Mash or blend until combined or smooth.

Add cilantro and mint; mash together or blend until smooth.

Finally, add coconut and blend or mix more, until chutney is fully mixed or completely smooth. Serve cold.

Chutney will keep in the refrigerator for a few days, but will keep for months in the freezer.

Many of the ingredients in each of these recipes are available online at Kalustyans.com.

Za'atar Flatbread

Behold the strangeness of za’atar.

Za’atar is an herb. Sorry – it’s not a specific herb, but one of any number of herbs in the hyssop family. Scratch that: it’s a combination of herbs. But wait, sometimes there are sesame seeds. Actually, it’s a paste made with some type or type of herbs, sesame seeds, and lots of olive oil.

Confused? Join the club.

In reality, za’atar is all of these things. There is a bush that grows in the deserts of Israel known as za’atar. The bush is most likely a member of the hyssop family, though some call it savory or wild oregano. Za’atar leaves are small and somewhat rough, and their flavor is a fusion of wild oregano and thyme. 

The za’atar you buy in the supermarket is most likely a blend of different herbs. According to Lior Lev Sercarz, owner and spice blender behind the New York-based spice shop La Boîte à Epice, the most traditional elements of a za’atar blend are za’atar leaves, sumac, sesame seeds, and thyme. The color of these blends varies from forest green to dark, deep red-brown, and the flavor ranges from woodsy and deep to tangy and a bit nutty. It all depends on the balance of herbs in the blend, and every country -- nay, every spice blender -- makes it a bit differently.

Za’atar has many uses. Food carts and hole-in-the-wall lunch joints use it as flavoring for labneh, a thick sheep’s milk yogurt. In Lebanon, the traditional salad of tomatoes and ripped pita called fattoush is topped with a dusting of za’atar. The Druze, a community living primarily in the north of Israel, use za’atar in a salad of red onions, lemon, and olive oil. But in countries across the Middle East, from Israel to Egypt to Syria and Lebanon, za’atar’s most common application is as seasoning for bread. If you order a “laffa im za’atar” from one of the stalls in the Israeli shuk (open-air market), the stout man behind the counter will hand you a hot, floppy flatbread shmeared with a layer of za’atar paste, made of crushed herbs, sesame seeds, salt, and plenty of olive oil – an addictive combination.

Here's the irony: pinning down the origins and uses for this mysterious herb was actually more complicated than making that delicious flatbread. Laffa im za'atar is a snap to make, no two ways about it. If you can't find a za'atar blend at a specialty or Middle East grocer, I've provided a recipe for homemade za'atar, which is my take on the Israeli za’atar blend I ate regularly during my time in Jerusalem. The restis simple: make flatbread dough, stretch it on a sheet pan, drizzle it with olive oil and sprinkle with za'atar, and bake in a piping hot oven until bubbly and browned. If you're staying really traditional, you'll let the thing cool and eat it as an on-the- go snack. That's if you can resist a bite of za'atar-coated bread right out of the oven, which I cannot.

Laffa Im Za'atar (Flatbread with Za'atar)

Za'atar blend:

3 tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted 2 tablespoons dried thyme 1 tablespoon dried oregano 1 tablespoon sumac 1 tablespoon sea salt

For the Flatbread:

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour ½ teaspoon instant yeast ¾ teaspoon salt ¾ cup water

Olive oil, for drizzling

In a large bowl, mix flour, yeast, and salt. Add water and stir until blended. The dough will be quite sticky. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rest in a warm place for about 2 ½ hours. 

Preheat oven to 500.

Spread 1 tablespoon olive oil on each of 2 rimmed baking sheets. Separate risen dough into 2 pieces, and using a light touch, start to spread dough into circles on baking sheets.  When the dough balls have been spread into circles about 8 inches wide, sprinkle 1 1/5 tablespoons of za'atar onto each. Drizzle 1 tablespoon olive oil overtop.

Bake flatbreads for 10-12 minutes, until browned and crisp. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Sweet and Sour Pearl Onions

The last in a series of posts on great side dishes for Tday. Happy Holidays to everyone!

Here's one last easy side dish to top off your Thanksgiving feast. Not limited to Tday, these onions are great year round; I serve them alongside oxtail or shortribs, and they make a great complement to savory chicken dishes.

These onions get their sweetness from one of my favorite ingredients, silan, or date honey. Silan is darker, more viscous, and more intensely flavored than regular honey. It gives the onions a nutty quality, sweetening more gently but imparting plenty of great flavor. If you don't have silan, feel free to use regular honey; the onions will still be tasty.

Sweet and Sour Pearl Onions

1 pound pearl onions 2 teaspoons olive oil 2 tablespoons silan (date honey) or regular honey 3 tablespoons rice wine vinegar

This recipe happens in three steps. First, the onions are blanched and shocked so their thin skins can be easily peeled. Second, the onions are boiled until al-dente. Third, the onions are sauteed in oil and coated in the sweet-sour marinade.

Fill a medium pot halfway full of water and bring to a boil over high heat. Meanwhile, set a bowl of ice water on the counter. Drop onions in boiling water for about 60 seconds, then transfer immediately to ice bath to stop cooking. When onions are cool enough to handle, peel skins; they should come right off.

Empty pot and refill with clean water. Return to a boil, and add peeled onions. Cook for about 3 minutes; you want the onions to be tender outside but still somewhat firm within, as they'll continue to cook in step 3. After 3 minutes, drain onions and empty pot.

Add olive oil to the empty pot and heat on medium. Add onions carefully -- they'll spatter a bit -- and saute about 3 minutes, shaking occasionally, until onions have turned golden brown in spots. Meanwhile, stir silan and vinegar together until they are well-combined and there are no clumps of honey. Once onions have browned, add silan-vinegar mixture to the pan; it will bubble vigorously. Shake pan occasionally to coat onions with marinade. As marinade reduces, it will coat onions more thickly. The whole thing will take about three minutes. Transfer onions to a bowl, and drizzle marinade from pot over onions. At this point, either serve immediately, or refrigerate, and warm before serving.

Mushroom Conserva

This is part of a series on great side dishes for Thanksgiving and year-round. The first of the series can be found here.

To my mind, there are two foods whose flavor profiles are so diverse, they can taste like just about anything. One is cheese, which can taste sweet or salty, buttery or nutty or mild, grassy or spicy or altogether funky, like hot peppers or red wine, pure raw milk or bay leaves. The other? Mushrooms.

The buttons taste bland, but when you get into chanterelles that taste and smell of butter and honey, oyster mushrooms with briny undertones, and morels that sing of smoke and springtime, you're talking serious flavor diversity. My favorites are honeycap mushrooms, which smell and taste like honey with chocolate undertones. I could literally sit for days with my nose deep in a basket of honeycaps.

The sweet taste of honeycaps comes at a price: $15 a box, to be exact. With few exceptions, I steer clear, making a b-line for the criminis, shiitakes, and maybe some chanterelles. Criminis are pretty plain, shiitakes slightly less so; when I serve these to company, I'm looking to maximize their flavor and increase their shelf life in case there are leftovers. For this, I turn to mushroom conserva. It comes from one of my new favorite cookbooks, Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc at Home.

A recipe the likes of which only Thomas Keller could have invented, mushroom conserva is to mushrooms what jam is to fresh raspberries. Keller has you essentially poach the mushrooms in oil perfumed with herbs and spices, splash the mixture with vinegar, and then jar them. Submerged in the oil, the mushrooms keep for upto a month -- much longer than they would otherwise. While the recipe calls for wild mushrooms galore, I've found that peppering a mostly crimini/shiitake mix with smaller portions of wild mushrooms works quite nicely, and is easier on the wallet. As if these weren't enough to motivate, this recipe -- just like the green beans I wrote about earlier this week -- is actually meant to be made in advance. Just trying to make your life easier, folks. Thank me later.

Mushroom Conserva from Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc at Home

note: if you don't have piment d'espelette, feel free to use a different paprika. I used smoked paprika one time I made this, and thought it was lovely.

2 pounds assorted wild mushrooms such as small shiitakes, morels, chanterelles, small porcini, hen-of-the-woods, trumpet and oyster; if you can't get these or enough of them, feel free to substitute some criminis, 2 cups extra virgin olive oil 2 bay leaves 4 sprigs thyme 1 sprig rosemary (6 inches) 1 teaspoon piment d'espelette (if you don't have this, feel free to use a different paprika) 3 tablespoons sherry wine vinegar kosher salt fresh cracked black pepper

Just before cooking, rinse the mushrooms as necessary to remove any dirt. Remove any stems that are tough, such as the stems of shiitake mushrooms and discard or set aside for another use, such as a vegetable stock. Trim the end of other stems as well as any bruised areas.

Cut the mushrooms into pieces. The size and shape will vary with the variety of the mushroom. Small mushrooms can be left whole, larger mushrooms can be cut into chunks or into slices. Some mushrooms with meaty stems such as porcini or trumpet mushrooms, can be cut lengthwise in half.

Use the tip of a paring knife to score the inside of the stem in a crosshatch pattern. This will enable the marinade to penetrate the stem. The pieces of mushroom will shrink as they cook, but the finished pieces should not be larger than one bite. You should have about 1.5 pounds (10 cups) of trimmed mushrooms.

Place the olive oil, bay leaves, thyme sprigs, rosemary and Piment d'Espelette in a large, wide saucepan over medium to medium high heat.

Place a thermometer in the pot and heat until the oil reaches 170 degrees F, stirring the mushrooms in the oil from time to time. It may be necessary to tilt the pot and pool the oil to get a correct reading on the thermometer. Adjust the heat as necessary, to maintain this temperature for 5 minutes.

Add the mushrooms to the pot, and gently turn the mushrooms in the oil.

When the oil reaches 170 degrees F again, maintain the temperature for 5 minutes, gently turning the mushrooms from time to time. The mushrooms will not initially be submerged in the oil, but will wilt as they steep.

After 5 minutes, turn off the heat and stir in the vinegar and salt and pepper to taste. Let the mushrooms steep in the oil for 45 minutes. Place the mushrooms, oil and herbs in a covered storage container. Kept covered in oil the mushrooms will keep for up to 1 month in the refrigerator.

Reheat conserva before serving.