Volume 9, Issue 71 - October 10, 2005

Hello Recipe Club,

I am happy to introduce our host this week... Paula Wolfert. Paula Wolfert is one of the premier food writers in America. Her writing has received many awards, including the Julia Child Award, the M. F. K. Fisher Award, the James Beard Award, and the Périgueux Award for Lifetime Achievement. She has a regular column in Food & Wine magazine and is the author of six other cookbooks, including Couscous and Other Good Food From Morocco, Mediterranean Cooking and, most recently, the IACP Award-winning The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen.

First published in 1983, Paula Wolfert's The Cooking of Southwest France became an instant, award-winning classic. Hailed as "a gastronomic masterwork" by New York magazine, and praised by critics, chefs and home cooks alike as the definitive source on the legendary subject, Wolfert's recipes for cassoulet and confit literally transformed our culinary landscape. For example, confit, now ubiquitous on the American scene, was rarely served before Wolfert's book premiered.

Now, more than twenty years later, Wolfert has completely revised her groundbreaking book. In this new edition of THE COOKING OF SOUTHWEST FRANCE (Wiley Hardcover; $37.50; October 3, 2005), you will find sixty additional recipes—over thirty completely new recipes, along with nearly two dozen updated recipes culled from Wolfert's other books. Recipes from the original edition have been tested and rewritten to account for current tastes and newly available ingredients, while other outdated recipes have been set aside. Along the way, Wolfert expanded the borders of her own southwestern palate to showcase even more flavors and ingredients. More about the book another day. Let's take a look at three of Paula's recipes...

Avocado-Sardine Toasts

The combination is based on a dish from the Canary Islands, but the brilliant execution is the work of the legendary master chef Ferran Adria, famous for his culinary innovations, which include the use of foams, gelatinized liquid and savory lollipops. This early Adria recipe combines silky, paper-thin strings of ripe avocado and marinated fat strips of salty sardine filets topped with crisp strings of scallions and chives.

Makes 6 servings

Ingredients:

1 scant tablespoon sherry wine vinegar
salt and pepper, to taste
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 cans (4 1/2 ounces each) Portuguese whole sardines in olive oil
1 large firm ripe Hass avocado
6 thin slices day-old country-style bread
fresh chives (for sprinkling)

Preparation:

In a bowl, whisk together the vinegar, salt and pepper. Whisk in the oil and parsley.

Drain the sardines and divide them into fillets. Add them to the vinegar mixture and let them sit for at least 1 hour.

Chill the avocado for 1 hour. Using a mandoline or another hand-held slicer, carefully slice the avocado paper-thin. Remove the skin and pit as you slice.

Turn on the broiler. Toast the bread, turning once, until it is nicely browned on both sides. Drain the sardine fillets, reserving the vinaigrette and brush the toasts with the vinaigrette.Top each toast with 3 slices of avocado, some sardines and chives. Serve at once.

Source: The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen

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Tunisian Chickpea Soup with Harissa

In my opinion, the prize for the most colorful, balanced, freshest, most delicious and most exciting of all Mediterranean streets foods goes to Tunisian lablabi. A soup like meal in a dish, it consists of a large bowl of torn stale bread covered with long simmered chickpeas, a boiling rich broth made with the bones of veal, and medium-cooked eggs, with the whites firm and the yolks still runny. It is served under an ample amount of the famous Tunisian hot sauce harissa, topped with a pinch of capers, a few juicy olives and roasted sweet red pepper strips. Finally, it's garnished with ground cumin, a lemon quarter and at the last minute, a drizzle of some intensely fruity extra virgin olive oil. The resulting mélange, in its colorful abstract beauty, resembles a Joan Mitchell painting.

Makes 8 servings

Ingredients:

1/2 pound dried chickpeas, soaked overnight with a pinch of baking soda
2 cups rich veal or chicken stock
1 pound veal bones (optional)
4 cloves garlic, halved
3 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste
3 cups cubed stale peasant-style bread
1/3 cup harissa (recipe follows)
ground cumin, to taste
24 cured black olives, pitted
1 heaping tablespoon small capers, drained
1 red bell pepper, roasted and finely chopped
olive oil (for drizzling)
1 lemon, halved

Preparation:

Set the oven at 225 degrees. Drain the chickpeas and rinse them thoroughly. Place in a deep, heavy pot. Add the veal or chicken stock, veal bones (if using), garlic, oil, salt and enough water to cover the chickpeas by 1 inch.

Bring the mixture to a boil, cover and transfer the pot to the oven. Cook for 3 hours or until the chickpeas are tender. Remove and discard the bones and garlic. Skim off the fat. Taste the cooking liquid and add salt and pepper if needed. Keep the chickpeas in the cooking liquid. (This may be made a day in advance. Cool, cover and refrigerate, then reheat to simmering before continuing.)

Divide the stale bread among 8 deep soup bowls. Add a ladle of the chickpeas and some of the cooking liquid. Dribble 1 tablespoon of harissa onto each serving, dot with pinches of cumin and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add olives, capers and red pepper to each bowl, and more cooking liquid if necessary. Drizzle each serving with olive oil and add a squeeze of lemon juice. Serve at once.

Tunisian Harissa

Tunisia is the only Mediterranean country whose hot sauces can be measured on a seismic counter! When the Ottoman Turks returned from the East they brought back Goan red pepper, which they distributed throughout their empire. From the Balkans to North Africa, wherever pepper seeds grew well, the resulting red pepper powders---both hot and sweet---became famous: the paprika of Hungary; the boukha of northern Greece; the flavorful red pepper of Aleppo in Syria; the Mars of southeastern Turkey; the hot and hotter peppers of Nabeul and Gabes in Tunisia. These Tunisian hot red peppers are not unlike our easily available New Mexican and dried Guajillo chile peppers. The chile sauces prepared from Tunisian peppers are important ingredients in Tunisian cuisine, packed and kept under olive oil so as to be always close at hand.

Makes about 1/3 cup

Ingredients:

1 clove garlic
2 dried New Mexican chilies, stemmed, seeded and torn into 2-inch pieces, softened in warm water and squeezed dry
1 sun-dried tomato half, softened in warm water and squeezed dry
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/8 teaspoon ground caraway
olive oil
lemon juice (optional)

Preparation:

In a food processor, combine the garlic, chilies, tomato, salt, coriander and caraway. Pulse the mixture until it is pasty. Add some oil by the teaspoon, pulsing the machine until the mixture is thick and spreadable.

Thin the harissa with enough warm water and olive oil to make it a saucy consistency. Add more salt, coriander, or caraway if you like and some lemon juice (if using) to round out the flavor.

Source: The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen

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Ramps, Asparagus and Serrano Ham

This recipe will appear in my next work, a book devoted to the beauty of cooking in claypots.

You may substitute 3 pounds green garlic or baby leeks for the ramps. Plantin black truffle oil is available online at http://www.plantin.com. Sunflower sprouts are available at farmers markets.

Makes 8 servings

Ingredients:

2 pounds (about 5 dozen) ramps, trimmed and cleaned
4 tablespoons butter
salt and pepper
4 pounds thin asparagus, ends trimmed, cut into 2-inch pieces
4 tablespoons crème fraîche or heavy cream
4 ounces Serrano ham, roughly chopped
1 teaspoon Plantin black truffle oil or other top quality oil, divided
1 tablespoon sherry wine vinegar
3 tablespoons walnut oil
1/4 pound baby tender sweet salad greens, washed and dried
1 package sunflower sprouts, rinsed and patted dry

Preparation:

Place a shallow flameproof casserole (preferably earthenware), or an enameled cast-iron pan over low heat, add the ramps with the butter, cover with a sheet of crumbled wet parchment and cook gently until the ramps soften, 5 to 10 minutes.

Lift off the parchment, add three-fourths teaspoon salt and one-fourth  teaspoon pepper, the asparagus, cream and ham; gently toss, cover with the same parchment paper and a lid and cook for 5 to 10 more minutes, or until the asparagus and ramps are tender. Add one-half teaspoon of the black truffle oil; stir to combine.

Remove the asparagus, ramps and ham from the pan with a slotted spoon. Divide among 8 plates. Cook the cream and cooking juices to thicken and reduce to about 2 tablespoons, about 2 minutes.

Make a light vinaigrette by whisking together the vinegar, salt and pepper, walnut oil and the remaining one-half teaspoon truffle oil. Add the reduced cream-cooking juice to the vinaigrette.

In a mixing bowl, toss half the vinaigrette with the baby greens.  Dribble the remaining vinaigrette over the ramps and asparagus.

Divide the salad evenly among the 8 plates. Garnish each serving with a sprig or two of sunflower sprouts and serve.

Source: 2005 Mediterranean Claypot Cooking.