2004 Menus & Recipes

Mullberry Crunch I Pasole De Perlita I Thai Squid Salad

Seth Bixby Daugherty

MULBERRY CRUNCH

In 1987 five hundred citizens from the United States and what was then the Soviet Union marched from Leningrad to Moscow in hopes of raising the awareness of the potential nuclear holocaust that existed between the two countries. A year later, a second march was organized, with 250 citizens of each country gathering near Washington, D.C., for a fifty-eight-day trek across the States.

After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, instead of seeking my next restaurant job, I found this chance to volunteer, and there aren’t that many times in your life when you’re offered the opportunity to utterly contribute. I signed on as cook for the march; looking back, I see how much that blessing has provided. The rest of the march’s culinary “staff” had no kitchen skills. They were all well-meaning hippies—like me—that the peace movement had brought together.

Two weeks before the rest of the marchers arrived, the fifty organizers gathered at a large park in Maryland. Our main objective was to practice setting up and breaking down camp, and we moved the campsite from one spot to another in the same park every day for two weeks, improving our efficiency and speed. In addition to tents for five hundred, we had a silver Airstream for our kitchen, two domed tents for prep work, two emptied school buses for storage, twelve school buses for transporting marchers, and four gigantic U-Hauls for our belongings.

Maryland summers can be brutally hot. And this “exercise” was not exactly keeping peace. We got tired and anxious. The air was so humid you could almost taste it.

Late one afternoon I found a tree near our campsite filled with ripe mulberries. The park was full of them—that was part of the smell, these berries ripening and even fermenting in the heat. I asked these two women to hold this blue tarp under the mulberry, and I climbed into the branches and shook the tree until berries covered the tarp. Then one woman helped me weed out all but the plump, juicy ones. Our fingers were stained for days.

When I brought this warm mulberry crunch to the table, everyone was blown away.

Not just dessert, but a warm, delicious dessert . . . made out of the very air! And I think we all sensed a certain coming together over that dessert—giving up our cranky, hot, exhausted feelings from the previous week. We knew we were going to be family for the next fifty-eight days. And we knew we’d be welcoming 450 more family members in the coming days, 250 of whom the world had been trying to estrange us from over the last seventy-five years.

That dessert changed my life and all my expectations. It helped me understand that the good energy I put into making food is transferred to the finished dish and then into the people who share it. Cooking has brought me everything I’ve ever wanted in my life, including my wife, who was the woman who helped me sort the mulberries.

The march took us to Baltimore, D.C., Delaware, Philly, and Pittsburgh. Then from Indianapolis to Rock Island, Illinois, where we hiked twelve straight days to Des Moines. From there we flew to California and walked Highway 1 from Los Angeles to San Francisco, where the march ended with a big benefit concert.

Along the journey our basic supplies were supplemented with donations. One day a food co-op donated a hundred pounds of granola. Another day we had fifty gallons of rice milk. Whatever showed up, I figured out how to use. At six one morning, I made fresh blueberry syrup for a hundred loaves of cinnamon bread a bakery had delivered. What a treat to present that surprise to everyone at breakfast.

Less of a treat was preparing a thousand sandwiches for lunch every day for fifty-eight days.

I barely slept that summer. Passion kept me awake. All day I’d hike or prepare food, and then I’d stay up till four in the morning talking and talking, and then, at seven, begin breakfast prep. Most of the Soviet marchers spoke English, we had many interpreters, and, besides that, 97 percent of language is nonverbal. As is the fellowship of sharing food.

MULBERRY CRUNCH

Serves 12 to 14

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold, cut into ½-inch pieces, plus 2 tablespoons for pans
3 pounds mulberries, picked over and cleaned, or other fresh or frozen berries
1½ cups sugar
Freshly grated zest and juice of 2 lemons
½ cup packed light brown sugar
4 ounces cream cheese
2 cups all-purpose flour
1½ cups quick-cooking oats
Freshly grated zest of 1 medium orange
2 cups whipping cream
½ vanilla bean, split

1 Preheat the oven to 375°F. Grease two 9 X 6-inch pans with 1 tablespoon butter each. (Alternately, use one larger baking dish that holds the fruit at a depth of about 1 inch.)
2 Toss the berries, 1 cup of the sugar, the lemon zest, and juice together in a mixing bowl. Set aside.
3 Combine the remaining 8 tablespoons butter, remaining ½ cup sugar, the brown sugar, cream cheese, flour, oats, and orange zest. Rub the mixture together between your hands until it resembles a coarse meal.
4 Place the berries in the prepared pan(s). Cover the fruit with the crumble topping. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until the topping is golden brown and the berry juice is bubbling and thick. (If longer cooking is needed, watch that the top does not brown too quickly; if it does, cover with aluminum foil.) Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly.
5 Whip the cream until it forms soft peaks. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean and fold them into the cream. 6 Scoop a portion of the crunch onto individual plates and top each with a dollop of whipped cream.

Seth Bixby Daugherty, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, worked for many years with the Four Seasons Hotel Corporation in Washington, D.C., and New York City. For three years he cooked with Gilbert Le Coze at Le Bernardin, and for three years he served as chef at D’Amico Cucina in Minneapolis. Currently executive chef at the Le Meridien hotel in Minneapolis, Seth lives in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, with his wife, Karen, and children, Emma and Cole.

Mullberry Crunch I Pasole De Perlita I Thai Squid Salad I Top of Page

Claud Mann

POSOLE DE PERLITA

Posole soup is a one-dish Mexican supper my wife Perla’s family has shared every Christmas as long as anyone can remember. Simultaneously comfort and celebration, the hominy and pork (or even free-range turkey) soup is passed around the table, and each person garnishes a huge bowl of the broth, hominy, and shredded meat in a different way: chopped lettuce, avocado, shredded cabbage, fresh chiles, radishes, cilantro, onions, chile sauce—it’s like creating a beautiful garden in the center of the table, and conversation plays as big a part in the dish as the edible ingredients.

This recipe began with Perla’s grandmother. I suppose anything that comes from a grandmother’s hands is comforting. On our very first date, Perla’s mother and grandmother were making posole soup at her sister’s. It was my first visit there. Her mother is Austrian-Hungarian, but she grew up in Argentina and learned to cook from Perla’s father, who was from Acapulco. Every single Christmas, Perla’s mother would buy a pig’s head from Grand Central Market, the only place that supplied Mexican foods and produce. Back then the reason to cook the head was economical: use every part of the animal. Today it’s more expensive to buy the head than the rest of the pig’s body.

Now when I make the soup I use a pork shoulder, which is called the butt. (The derrière is actually the ham.) And I use pig’s feet, to replace the flavoring the cartilage from the head would have provided. Unlike other stocks, there’s no mirepoix. Just garlic, bay leaf, and black peppercorns—Perla’s mom wouldn’t add more than water and salt. Still, this version has met with her approval. The key to a great stock is to keep the water just this side of simmering so the meat doesn’t dry out and the fat isn’t incorporated into the stock. At the family gatherings someone is always famished and goes over to the stove to turn the heat up to a boil and speed things along, but you can’t do that. It’s a long simmer, but as soon as you can pull the bone free, the soup is ready. You pick off the fat, shred the meat from the bone, and serve it in a separate bowl.

I’ve been tempted to use fresh hominy, but Perla’s convinced that the real dish needs Mexican white hominy: large, rough kernels straight from the can.

It’s the condiments that reflect the regional aspects of Mexico. Perla insists on the purity of a white broth, while I’m of the red school, so I make a red-chile puree and leave it on the side as another condiment, which I swirl into the clear stock. We always add Mexican oregano, crushing the leaves between our hands so that the smell is everything. And then tons of lemons—each person squeezes half a lemon into the soup, which turns the broth cloudy. And then we pass around the various condiments. We know some families who offer red cabbage as well. And some who put green apples in the soup. And the only other side dish we serve is fresh tortillas.

For fifteen years I’ve cooked posole soup for our family at Christmas. So it’s a complete meal. And it’s so filling! Partly because you end up eating at least three bowls . . . until you need a nap. Which is a good thing, because by that time someone’s started an argument, so it’s a good time to retreat to the couch.

Note: Mexican-style hominy is found in Latin American groceries. Try to purchase half-cooked hominy from a tortilla factory and finish cooking it at home. Alternatively purchase pozole from a health food or gourmet store and cook according to the directions, 3 to 5 hours. Fully cooked canned or frozen hominy is available at most grocery stores.

POSOLE DE PERLITA

Serves 10 to 12

For the soup
3 pounds bone-in pork shoulder butt, cut into 4 pieces
3 pounds pig’s feet, neck bones, or shanks, cut into 2-inch-thick pieces (have the butcher cut these for you)
2 large white onions, quartered
2 whole heads garlic, halved across the middle
1 bay leaf
2 tablespoons sea salt
4 cups fully cooked Mexican hominy (see Note)
1 recipe Ancho Chile Sauce

For garnish, optional
Coarsely ground dried red chile
Dried Mexican oregano
Finely chopped white onion
Halved lemons and limes
Finely chopped red cabbage
Thinly sliced radishes
Diced avocado
1 recipe Ancho Chile Sauce

ANCHO CHILE SAUCE

Makes 2½ cups

6 to 8 dried ancho chiles, stems and seeds removed, coarsely torn
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons white vinegar

Combine the chiles, 2½ cups water, salt, sugar, and vinegar in a small nonreactive saucepan over high heat. Cook for 5 minutes. Cool slightly and puree in small batches. Strain and pour into a serving bowl.

Chef de cuisine for Dinner & a Movie, Claud Mann graduated from the California Culinary Academy and cooked his way up and down the West Coast, including stints as executive chef at the five-star Palmilla Hotel in Cabo San Lucas and Nicola restaurant in Los Angeles. His nonprofit endeavors include Project Open Hand and his own guerrilla catering company, Eat the Rich, which simply never made a penny. Claud also co-runs Mechuda Music, an independent record label, with his wife, vocalist Perla Batalla. They live in Ojai, California, with their daughter, Eva, and are breaking ground on a home-style organic restaurant.

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Christine Keff

THAI SQUID SALAD

Ten years after working—overworking—as a chef in New York (I was then at the Four Seasons, having opened three restaurants previously), I said to my partner Tamara, “Let’s just pick up and go somewhere totally exotic. How about Indonesia?” And we left. We were up for adventure. We wanted to rough it. (We packed three kinds of olive oil and four different vinegars, so we didn’t want to rough it entirely.) We traveled all spring and part of summer in a pickup truck around America, and in August we flew to Asia, supposing we might visit Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Malaysia.

In Asia we traveled by train and bus, except for a few large jumps by plane. Tamara had brought along a Polaroid camera, and in the remote villages she took snapshots of people who’d never had their pictures taken before and left them behind as gifts.

I knew nothing about Asian cuisine, but by staying in guest houses and eating at tiny restaurants I learned a little. In Bali we did make some of our own meals: we’d go to the market to shop with a basket and the few words we’d picked up and come home to figure out how to cook whatever it was we ended up buying. One day at the market, a local villager reached into our filled basket and pulled out some green that we’d selected and put it back on the table. She smiled and shook her head; we got the message.

We stayed in Koh Samui, an island in the gulf of Thailand, at a sort of bed and breakfast. Five dollars per night. Bamboo huts. Vacant beach. We found ourselves so caught up with the people and the peacefulness there that we forfeited our plane tickets to Malaysia and stayed three weeks, befriending the young couple who ran the lodging.

Tamara and I would go to the market each day with Bo, and she’d teach us how to prepare and cook whatever she bought. Before long we’d do the shopping on our own, bringing home anything that caught our eye, and Bo would show us what to do with it: she knew—maybe—ten words of English, and we knew even fewer words of Thai. But the preparations were simple: fresh fish to clean, a variety of greens and vegetables to stir-fry, various chiles and curry pastes to concoct, lemongrass and garlic to chop.

When we left, Tamara took a snapshot of us standing outside our hut and presented it to our host Bo.

Nine years later Tamara and I had the chance to return to Thailand. We were leading a culinary tour in Bangkok, and one afternoon we headed toward Koh Samui, this time by plane, landing on the island’s new airstrip. We were hoping to find Bo and the serene surroundings we’d so loved. But everything had changed—good for that poor community, sad for the two of us. The beach was full of rich tourists, not backpackers. It had a boardwalk, hotels, shops, concrete bungalows, with air-conditioning . . .

But we found Bo. And she could speak great English! We were able to talk about so many things that we hadn’t managed to share nine years earlier. And there, posted on the bulletin board in her kitchen, was the Polaroid of Tamara and me.

This squid salad is one we shared many times with Bo. Similar to Thai beef salad, it possesses those distinctly Thai flavors of garlic and hot Thai chiles, lemongrass and lemon juice, and the intensely salty fish sauce. Ideally this salad cries out for fresh squid, which is almost impossible to find in the States. If you happen to be adventurous, you can come to Puget Sound and jig for them out on the piers, snagging the squid on little hooks. Or you can buy frozen cleaned squid and just imagine yourself on a remote island in the Gulf of Thailand.

THAI SQUID SALAD

Serves 4

2 teaspoons salt
1 pound squid bodies, cleaned and cut into 1/4-inch-wide rings
3 garlic cloves, unpeeled
5 dried Thai chiles, coarsely chopped
3 teaspoons fish sauce
3 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
3 medium shallots, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon minced fresh lemongrass
3 fresh mint sprigs, leaves torn into 4 pieces each (stems discarded)
10 fresh cilantro sprigs, 6 coarsely chopped, 4 reserved for garnish

1 Bring a 2-quart pot of water to a boil, add the salt, and drop in the prepared squid. When the water returns to a boil, immediately remove the squid and place the rings in an ice-water bath to cool. (Even a slightly longer cooking time will toughen the meat.) Once the squid has chilled, remove it from the water and set aside.

2 Heat a cast-iron pan over medium heat, add the unpeeled garlic cloves, and char their skins to a dark toasted color. When the garlic feels soft (about 10 minutes), remove it from the pan. Cool slightly and release the softened cloves.

3 Smash the garlic in a bowl and add the remaining ingredients except garnish. Add the cooked squid rings and toss together. Allow flavors to marry for at least 20 minutes.

4 Serve the salad on a platter, garnishing with the reserved cilantro sprigs.

Christine Keff trained at New York’s Four Seasons Restaurant, Vienna ’79, and O’Neill’s before opening three other New York City establishments under the Project Management Group. After traveling extensively in Asia, she relocated to the Northwest and worked as executive chef at McCormick and Schmick’s and the Hunt Club before opening her own restaurant, Flying Fish. Recognized by the Beard Foundation as the Best Chef in her region, Christine began a second venture in 2000, Fandango, specializing in Latin American dishes. She devotes much of her time to her community through teaching, fund-raising, and mentoring programs.

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