Citrus

Chef Daniel Rose (see page 68) served the following salad with brandade potato latkes (see page 308) at his Spring Restaurant during Hanukkah. The secret to this colorful winter salad is to keep the fennel very cold. This recipe, and all Daniel Rose’s recipes, may change according to the market and ses humeurs (the chef’s moods).

“I so miss Shabbat meals in France,” a young North African man from Marseille living in Washington told me when we were seated next to each other on a plane. “My mother never makes fewer than ten to fifteen salads.” One of these salads might be a combination of oranges and olives. It is very refreshing, and looks beautiful as one of many Moroccan salads. The black and orange colors remind me of black-eyed Susans. Prepared with argan oil, which comes from argan pits harvested from the argan tree, the salad is balanced with the oranges and grapefruit. These are all 2,000-year-old Moroccan flavors.

Artichokes, one of my favorite vegetable, are edible thistles that were prized by the ancient Romans as food of the nobility. They have been a springtime food in the Mediterranean for thousands of years and particularly loved by Jews. Usually the French serve artichokes as a cold salad appetizer with a vinaigrette. Although I have seen this recipe in many Jewish cookbooks from North Africa, I hadn’t tasted it until Paula Wolfert cooked it for me on my PBS show, Jewish Cooking in America. It was a merveille, as my French friends would say. In the years since, I have eaten many different versions of this salad. Céline Bénitah, who lives in Annecy but came from Berkane, on the Algerian border of Morocco, said that all North African Jews who grew up in this orange- growing region have their own versions of this recipe. Hers includes saffron. Of course, this salad tastes best when fresh artichokes are used, but frozen artichoke hearts or bottoms work as well.

This is one of the salads that I make frequently. For some reason, although people always ask me how I make it, I have never put the recipe in any of my cookbooks. Grilling the peppers softens the pulp and brings out the natural sweetness. Sometimes the peppers are mixed with eggplants and tomatoes in North African salads, such as the salade juive (recipe follows) or the tchoukchouka (see page 94). Sometimes they are served alone. For Rosh Hashanah and dinner parties, I love to serve the colorful combination of red peppers, carrot salad (see page 112), and roasted beet salad (see page 108).

Chef Daniel Rose starts his day in the kitchen at 7:30 a.m. He begins with the chicken broth, first browning chicken wings, then adding a wine reduction, and then water, leeks, and other aromatics, but never carrots. “This isn’t the way my grandmother would have done it,” Daniel told me. “But we don’t want so much sweetness in our soup.” He doesn’t bother with a bouquet garni: “I just stick the herbs in the pot.” Freeze any broth that you don’t use right away.

I have always thought that the best part of fish soup is the rouille, a peppery, garlicky sauce that is slathered on toasted rounds of baguette and floated on the surface of the soup. I also like to stir some rouille into the broth. Similar to the Provençal aioli, a garlic-flavored mayonnaise, rouille is flavored with hot pepper and saffron, which give it its signature rust color. (Rouille literally means “rust” in French.) Today I have noticed that North African Jews often spice up their rouille even more, by adding a little harissa (see page 33) to it. Traditionally, a mortar and pestle are used to pound the garlic, pepper, and egg yolk, gradually incorporating the oil to make a mayonnaise. Today it is easy to put everything in a food processor and slowly add the oil, drop by drop. Leftover sauce is good on sandwiches or as a dip.

At Le Monde Des Épices, I delight in seeing how simple olives can be turned into a colorful appetizer by melding different kinds and colors of cured olives and doctoring them up with garlic, preserved lemons, oregano, and basil, and serving them in a large, clear bowl. Although the majority of the olives in the shop are grown in Spain and North Africa, many, like the tiny Picholines from Provence, come from the south of France. When I first visited, the olives were simply cured and kept in barrels. Now the many different- flavored varieties are displayed in attractive bowls to tempt the customers. When doctoring up olives you buy, just make sure to include some red peppers, orange kumquats, or bright- green herbs. I love to serve a variety of sizes and kinds in a clear glass or earthenware bowl. Remember to have a tiny bowl nearby for the pits.

This is Sri Lanka’s everyday coconut sambol. Known as pol sambol, it would be called a chutney in India. It may be served with any meal.

My North Indian family called this salaad, or salad, but similar salads with varying seasonings are known in some parts of India as cachumbar. These salads generally contain onions (our Indian red onions), cucumbers, and tomatoes but, according to the seasons, we in Delhi could find radishes or kohlrabi in them as well. In some parts of India, barely sprouted mung beans and peanuts could be added. This fresh salad was always at our table at every meal in some form, with the simplest of dressings added at the last minute. There was never any oil in this dressing. Instead, there was fresh lime juice, salt, pepper, chili powder, and ground roasted cumin seeds. We just put a generous dollop on our plates (or side plates) and ate it with everything.

In much of India, a fresh salad is present at every single meal. This kind of cucumber salad was something that my mother threw together moments before we sat down to eat. Cucumbers with tiny undeveloped seeds have the best texture, but when cucumbers are growing wildly in my garden and some that hid themselves too successfully among the leaves have grown beyond the best picking size, I pick them anyway, peel them, and scoop out their seeds. They still make good eating. (Whenever I pick a particularly large, overgrown cucumber, I can never throw it in the compost heap because I think of Inder Dutt. At the age of thirteen, he came down from a poor village in the Himalayan mountains to try to eke out a living in the plains. In Delhi, he somehow managed to get into a cousin’s household where they taught him how to do odd jobs and eventually even how to cook. He became so adept that my cousin brought him to New York as her cook. Every now and then he would come over to our apartment to help out. I could never get enough of the stories about his childhood. He had spent the snowy mountain winters without shoes, huddling in the floor above the animals to stay warm at night. In the summers, he had to go work in the fields. When he got very thirsty, he would just pick the largest cucumber he could find, snap it in two, and quench his thirst with its juicy flesh.)

Apart from serving these kebabs, freshly grilled and hot, at mealtimes, when they are always popular, I find that if I refrigerate the cooked kebabs overnight and then put them into a hamper for a picnic, they are equally loved outdoors and hold well. In fact, if properly wrapped and refrigerated, they will hold for a good 5–6 days, making them perfect for an impromptu cold meal. For a hot meal, serve with a rice dish and Indian vegetables. For a picnic, serve with salads and crusty French bread.

These duck breasts are not cooked in a tandoor, and not even in an oven, but they do taste like tandoor-baked poultry, hence their name. I marinate them in the same manner that I would a tandoori chicken, then I quickly pan-fry them so they stay a little rare inside. They take just minutes to cook. As for the skin, which is flabby if not crisped to perfection—well, I just remove it entirely. I like to serve this duck with Sri Lankan Rice with Cilantro and Lemon Grass and Swiss Chard with Ginger and Garlic.

This is an oven-cooked version of the Indian classic Murgh Mussallam—a whole chicken cooked in a rich spicy sauce. Although Indians like their chicken skinned, partly to let the spices penetrate better, I have not bothered too much with that in this book, just to make life easier. But it would be good to do it for this recipe, as this is a dish for special occasions. You can ask your butcher to skin the chicken, but it is really not difficult to yank most of it off yourself. The wings are a bit troublesome, so I just leave them alone. I might go to town here and serve Black Beans, Yellow Basmati Rice with Sesame Seeds, and Sweet-and-Sour Eggplant. On the other hand, you could treat this as a spicy roast and just have parsley potatoes and fresh summer peas!

You could use any chicken parts you like for this recipe—dark meat, light meat, or a combination. The bones should stay in but the skin should be pulled off. This chicken needs to be marinated for at least 4 hours. Serve with Plain Basmati Rice, My Everyday Moong Dal, Spinach with Garlic and Cumin, a yogurt relish, and a salad to get the feel of a simple family meal in North India.

An 8–24-hour marination period is required here. This chicken tastes just as good cold as it does hot, making it perfect for everyday meals, formal dinners, and picnics. (Once cooked, if properly wrapped and refrigerated, the chicken will hold for 5–6 days.)

Make this curry as fiery hot as you like. That is how it is preferred in many parts of South India. This dish is generally served with plain rice or with the thin, fresh rice noodles known as idiappam. I have given a method of preparing dried rice sticks, sold in Thai and Vietnamese markets, on page 224 (see Thin Rice Noodles). They are the closest to the Indian noodles. I have also been known to serve this curry over thin spaghettini or angel-hair pasta.

Here is a very quick way to stir-fry shrimp so they are encrusted with spices. They are hot, sour, and utterly delicious. The dish may be served as a first course, as a light lunch with a salad, or as part of a larger Indian meal. Sri Lankan Rice with Cilantro and Lemon Grass goes well with this, as well as the Mushroom and Pea Curry.

If you are looking for a superbly elegant, gentle dish, look no further. In a long line of meats and seafood grilled after they have been marinated very simply in a paste of fresh ginger, garlic, and chilies, this dish is a great family favorite. Have the fishmonger remove the halibut skin. I like to serve this with Karhai Broccoli and a potato or rice dish.

Here I use boneless fish fillets with skin—porgies, red snapper, mackerel, bluefish, gray mullet, redfish, trout, or anything else of modest size. If the fillets are too long, I cut them into convenient 3–4-inch lengths so I can turn them easily in a frying pan. The spicy undercoat is made simply in a food processor or chopper, though you could chop finely by hand if you prefer. If you want to keep the meal simple, serve this fish with Potato Chaat and Spinach with Garlic and Cumin or a salad.

One of the characteristics of tandoori fish in the Punjab, where tandoori—or clay-oven-baked—meat and fish dishes originated, is that they are flavored with ajowan seeds. These tiny seeds look rather like small celery seeds, except that their main aroma comes from thymol, which you find in thyme as well. Instead of using ajowan (ajwain in India), I have simplified matters by using the more easily available thyme instead. Serving suggestions: For a very light meal, you can serve this fish with a salad. You could also make a more substantial meal by offering some rice and either Spinach with Garlic and Cumin or Swiss Chard with Ginger and Garlic.