The first time I was aware of fish sauce, I thought that the sewage pipe had broken in our Singapore kitchen. I was upstairs getting ready to go out to dinner and Beth, a young Filipina who lived with us, was cooking dinner for my sons. Beth was not a great cook but the boys always enjoyed the chicken adobo she made. I ran to the kitchen, expecting to have to deal with toxic waste, and found Beth laughing. She assured me that the smell was just a bit of fish sauce that she had poured into a hot pan.

I couldn’t believe that something that smelled so terrible could make anything taste good. I soon learned that fish sauce has been used, around the world for at least 2500 years to add flavor and as a main ingredient in both dipping sauces and dressings for grilled meat and fish, noodle and vegetable salads. Fish sauce is made by fermenting fish that have been layered with salt and it imparts umami, a Japanese word that translates as “good taste”, to food. Garum was the name for fish sauce to ancient Romans but it was usually referred to as that “evil smelling sauce”. Not only did Romans use it to season meat and fish dishes there is mention of its use in a pear and honey souffle!
Fish sauce is the ingredient that transformed a shrimp and vegetable salad into a Vietnamese inspired, summer salad that was grand enough to serve at an elegant dinner party. This salad combines many of the flavors of Southeast Asia and can be varied to suit your palate, pantry and pocketbook. Pork or chicken can be substituted for shrimp, and mangos or other melons can be substituted for the watermelon. Rather than making this salad in a large salad bowl I made individual salads. Here’s how I did it: … read more

As I was making papaya salad for a party we had on Friday night, my friend Victoria began to sing a song I hadn’t heard since I was eight. My father loved big band music and crooners and Perry Como was one of his favorites.

When he played his 78-rpm record of Perry Como singing Papaya Mama, my sister and I jumped around and tried to dance like Carmen Miranda. She was the Brazilian samba singer who wore hats piled high with fruit and the inspiration for Chiquita Banana. I didn’t think of papaya as something to eat until many years later.

The first time I tasted papaya, a friend had whirled it in a blender with milk and ice. The drink was a lovely pale, peachy-orange color and tasted terrible. I next tasted it a few years later with pineapple, mango and banana as part of a tropical fruit salad on a holiday in Puerto Rico and I didn’t mind it. It had a nice texture and I enjoyed it topped with a bit of lime juice.

Papaya is a native of Mexico and it is cultivated in most tropical and subtropical countries around the world. It grows on a tree-like plant that looks a bit like a small umbrella of leaves atop a very long stem. There are two types of papayas, Mexican and Hawaiian. Hawaiian papayas are small, usually weighing about a pound. Mexican papayas are much larger and may weigh as much as ten pounds. I prefer the slightly less intense flavor of the Mexican papaya. The edible seeds from the hollow center of a ripe papaya have a spicy, pepper flavor and are used in salad dressings or salsas.

Packed with vitamins, minerals and natural fiber, papaya delivers a nutritional punch. Indigenous Americans have used papaya, rich in an enzyme called papain, to tenderize tough meat for thousands of years. Rubbing papaya peel on to skin rashes, insect bites, jellyfish stings and burns is a common, natural remedy where papayas grow. Papaya extract is sold in tablet form as a remedy for digestive problems.

Although there are lots of good reasons to eat papaya, the best reason is that it is delicious, particularly when featured in an Indian inspired vegetarian dinner salad. Here’s how I made it: … read more

My son Noah and I made sushi for lunch the day before we were to fly off to Sicily for our two month adventure.

Noah cooked the rice and cut the carrots and avocado and I went to the market to get yellow tail tuna and ‘crab with a k’.  Crab with a k or krab is also called imitation crab meat or seafood sticks. Krab originated in Japan and is a type of processed seafood made of ”Surimi” or finely pulverized white fish.

Along with the fish, I found pickled ginger powered wasabi and seaweed sheets called nori in the Asian Food aisle of the well-stocked grocery.

Ella made sushi hand rolls and Dylan opted for peanut butter. Noah and I made sushi for everyone else. Here’ how we did it .

… read more

After I had decided to make egg salad to serve with tomato soup for a simple dinner, I discovered that there was no mayo in the fridge. Rather than hopping in the car and driving to the market, I decided that I had what I needed to make both mayonnaise and egg salad.

I had a dozen eggs from Thymless Herbs, a nearby farm in Bridgewater, Vermont. I could use one to make mayo and four to make egg salad. The egg shells ranged in color from creamy white to warm brown and shades of pale blue and soft gray green, more beautiful than eggs dyed for an Easter basket. Aracauna hens laid the blue and green eggs. It had never occurred to me that chickens had ears until Suzy Krawczyk, the farmer, explained that the color of each hen’s eggs matched the color of that hen’s ears. I find it nearly impossible to put the empty shells on the compost pile.

Mayo is an emulsion of oil suspended in the liquid of an egg, stabilized by lecithin in both mustard and egg yolks, and flavored with vinegar, salt and cayenne pepper.

With all of the ingredients in place, all I needed was a fork and a dinner plate to make mayonnaise.

Here’s how I made it:

… read more

Cookies spark memories for me. After a harrowing journey from Delhi to Kashmir, Charles and I looked out at the lotus blossoms on Dal Lake from the small deck of a houseboat.

We were grateful to have arrived safely and couldn’t imagine anything that would make the moment more perfect. And then the boatman arrived with a tray of tea and almond macaroons. It was beyond perfection.  At breakfast the next morning, I asked the boatman, who was also the cookie baker, how he made the macaroons and he invited me into his tiny kitchen. Here’s how we made them. … read more