¡Qué maravillosa!

A tasty trip through Hispanic holiday foods By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach In Madison Magazine, December 2006
Recipes and shopping tips follow this article
Photo: Martha Busse

When Melania Alvarez tells me how to make cochinita pibil, a Christmas dish from her native Mexico, she gets excited just talking about it. “Oh, my mouth is watering!” she exclaims. She talks me through each step, and calls back a couple of times with some tips she forgot.

I must sound puzzled at her description of some of the more exotic ingredients, because the next day, I find them in a shopping bag hanging on my doorknob. There’s also an authentic comal – a steel griddle for warming tortillas. It’s a gift, for my efforts to share a dish that’s dear to her. The recipe comes out fabulous. The comal works great.

Holiday food customs matter to people. Here are some favorites of Madisonians from around the Latin American diaspora. ¡Que maravillosa!

MEXICO
Rosca de Reyes (wreath of kings) and Cochinita Pibil (barbecue pork soft tacos)
Alvarez, an anthropology Ph.D. candidate at UW-Madison, remembers fondly the holiday celebrations she grew up with. Dec. 16 kicks off Las Posadas, a nightly neighborhood-wide reenactment in song of Mary and Joseph’s search for lodging, culminating in a party each night at a different neighbor’s house. Festive dishes include ponche con piquete (punch with sting), a fruity, alcoholic concoction. For the children, there’s a piñata filled with peanuts, oranges, tangerines, sugar canes and candy.

Presents arrive on Epiphany (Jan. 6) courtesy of the three Wise Men – not Santa – in remembrance of the gifts they brought Jesus. On that day is served the rosca de reyes (wreath of kings), “a big oval wreath of egg bread with dry fruit decorations and sprinkled sugar on top,” explains Alvarez. “Hidden inside, there is a little ceramic doll which represents the Baby Jesus.”

But the main feast of Christmastime in Mexico, as throughout most of Latin America, is held the night of Christmas Eve. The Alvarez spread was lavish: “We had tamales, romeritos [a green vegetable] with shrimp, pork with plum sauce, bacalao [salt cod with chili peppers], and lots more. Our family loves to eat. In Mexico, food is just an incredible thing. There’s so much variety.” Christmas Day itself is “low-key,” she says – lots of lounging and leftovers.

One of Alvarez’s favorite holiday dishes is cochinita pibil, a kind of tangy pork barbecue served taco style with pickled red onions. Although her family hails from Monterrey in Mexico’s north, this Christmas specialty from south Mexico – an area with a vastly different culinary style – was always on her family’s holiday table. Here’s how it came to be there.

Born in Yucatán in the 1860s, Doña Aurora Canto chronicled the marvelous foods she grew up with, and developed recipes for preparing them in a modern, urban kitchen. Her granddaughter, Melba Sanchez, and her husband, Alonso, opened a restaurant in central Mexico, serving these recipes.

In the 1960s, the Sanchezes befriended a family that had newly moved south to Mexico City. The clan’s matriarch bonded with their little girl – Melania – who loved to hear stories about life in old Yucatán. And Doña Aurora shared with Melania’s family her method for cochinita pibil.

The classic form of the dish involves marinating a whole suckling pig in spices and orange juice, wrapping it in banana leaves, and roasting it in a pit dug into the earth.
This stovetop version from Doña Aurora, however, is easy. “It’s a foolproof recipe,” Alvarez says. “No matter what you do, it’s very hard that you ruin this thing. Put some on your tortilla, add some onion. You close your taco and – heaven! It’s good.”

Cochinitas pibil make a perfect buffet food. Just keep the pork hot in a chafing dish, and put the red onions nearby in a pretty bowl. Warm a stack of tortillas and keep them hot in foil or in a tortilla warmer.

HONDURAS
Torejas (sweet corn puffs)
Christmas Eve dinner in Honduras, just north of Nicaragua, features nacatamales – pork or chicken tamales wrapped in banana leaves, rather than the corn husks-wrapped tamales of Mexico that Americans are more familiar with. And for dessert, there’s always torejas – delicate little spongey disks dripping with rich, sweet cane syrup.

“Everybody has torejas and coffee,” says DeStephen, who was a dentist in Honduras. She came to the States two years ago with her husband, a clinical engineer with Rayovac. “They’re served right after dinner at room temperature. They’re very popular, and very easy. Very nice.”

In other Hispanic countries, “torejas” is a word meaning French toast, or sometimes just toast. But in Honduras, it specifically means these tiny fried corn flour cakes. (Fans of Indian food can consider these gulab jamun for the Western hemisphere.)
The most exotic ingredient here is piloncillo, a cone of evaporated cane syrup, a staple at Latin markets. The label IDs it as “brown sugar,” but it’s not quite the same as American brown sugar, which is just white sugar with a little molasses stirred in. This is the real thing – the pure, unrefined juice of the crushed cane. Compared to our brown sugar, the flavor is rich, hefty, whole.

CHILE
Pan de Pascua (holy season bread) and Cola de Mono (monkey’s tail)
Fruitcake and monkey’s tail: it’s the instant Chilean Christmas celebration kit. “If you say this combination to any Chilean, they will say, ‘Oh, my, how did you know?’” says Paulette Berthelon. “Everywhere you go, everyone offers it to you. You just keep eating and drinking that through New Year’s Eve.”

Pan de Pascua, or Chilean fruitcake, translates as “bread of the holy season.” Dense, rich and bready, it’s sort of a cross between our fruitcake (less sweet, and not phony) and German stollen.

Cola de mono, meaning monkey’s tail, is the Chilean cultural equivalent of eggnog. This sweet drink is made with spiced milk and coffee and spiked with aguardiente, a Chilean liquor distilled from sugar cane.

Eaten in tandem, you’d think the two sweet treats would just cloy and cancel each other out, but in fact they combine in transcendent spicy harmony. “You eat and drink these two together, and – I don’t know, it’s just right,” says Berthelon.”It’s so good.”

Pan de Pascua is thought to originate from regions in the south of Chile settled by Germans in the early twentieth century, and Berthelon’s favorite recipe is the family treasure of a friend whose great-grandfather arrived in Chile around that time.

RECIPES AND SHOPPING TIPS

Rosca de Reyes In Madison, the Panaderia Marimar (270-0711; 1325 Greenway Cross) bakes delicious roscas de reyes in time for Epiphany. You can call ahead to reserve one, and arrange to pick it up at any of Marimar’s three mercado (market) locations around town.

Here’s a group of party-friendly recipes: every one of these can be prepared days in advance, and most get better with time. Enjoy!

Mexican Cochinitas Pibil
Alvarez recommends making cochinita pibil a day or even a week ahead of time. “It gets better and better,” she says. The pickled onions mellow and improve with time in the fridge, also.
Achiote is a garlicky condiment made chiefly from crushed annatto seeds. Annatto’s flavor is mild, but its color is a spectacular orange. (Used in tiny amounts, annatto gives cheddar and other orange cheeses their familiar ruddy hue.) Achiote is easy to find at any Latino food store. It comes in a little box about the size of a bar of soap, usually sporting a jaunty drawing of – a roast suckling pig.

Banana leaves are also uncommon to the American kitchen, but readily available at a mercado.

In Yucatán, a special orange, the naranja agria (bitter orange), is juiced for the marinade, but, says Alvarez, “You can only get it in Yucatán.” This recipe uses vinegar plus orange juice to duplicate the super-sour quality of naranja agria.

Tortilla warmers, cases to keep your heated tortillas hot, are available inexpensively at most Latino specialty mercados and tiendas (stores). Yue Wah (2328 S. Park St., 257-9338), a multiethnic supermarket, is also an excellent source for Latino groceries and accoutrements.

Cohinita Pibil Recipe

3 pounds pork shoulder butt roast
3/4 bar achiote (annatto) paste
2–3 feet banana leaves
5 oranges, juiced (or 1 1/2 cups OJ)
3/4 cup white vinegar, plus more cups vinegar
1–2 red onions
1 lime
1–4 serrano or habanero peppers
plenty of corn tortillas

Pork
Combine juice and 3/4 cup vinegar. Dissolve the achiote into the liquid. Cut the pork into six or more pieces. Marinate the pork in the achiote mixture overnight. A zippered freezer bag – inside another bag or a bowl just in case – works well.

Transfer the meat and marinade into a heavy pot. (Iron or enameled iron are perfect; uncoated aluminum is not a good choice, because the acid will pit it.) Loosely wrap the meat into foot-long lengths of banana leaf. Add water to cover. Simmer, covered, 3–5 hours, until very tender – enough that you can easily tear it into little strips with a fork. (Some people like to use an electric crockpot for this slow cooking; others say it just isn’t the same.) Discard the banana leaves. Shred the pork. Keep the lid off and cook liquid down until it’s juicy, but not soupy. Keep in mind that when it cools, much of the liquid will be absorbed. Mash another teaspoon or tablespoon of achiote with a little vinegar and stir it in, to freshen up the taste. Excellent right away or reheated. Be careful not to let this get scorched: “Burnt annatto tastes terrible,” says Alvarez.

Onion condiment
Slice the onion into thin rings. Place in a glass bowl or other container suitable for fairly long-term refrigeration. Add the juice of a lime. Add vinegar to cover. Slice the pepper(s) lengthwise and add them – as many as you think you will want the heat of! Refrigerate at least a day before serving. The sharpness of the onions mellows over time.

To serve Over low heat, warm tortillas on a griddle or an authentic flat steel comal (available at mercados). Make a soft taco by putting some pork on a tortilla, adding red onion (lift it out of the vinegar), and folding the tortilla in half.


Honduran Torejas

3 eggs, separated
3 tablespoons corn flour (finer than corn meal)
3 piloncillos
3 cups water
Oil for frying (about 1 quart)

Woodman’s carries big, cheap jugs of peanut oil. With its high smoking point and unobtrusive flavor, is a good choice for frying. It can easily be strained and reused after frying torejas.

Beat yolks till thick and creamy, like mayonnaise. Beat egg whites till stiff peaks form. Stir whites and yolks together. Stir in corn flour.

Fry in 1" of hot (375º) oil, dropping batter from a teaspoon. Fry torejas until golden brown, flipping once. It doesn’t take long. By the time you fill the pan, it’s time to flip the first ones you dropped in. By the time you’ve turned them all, it’s time to start removing them to a rack. Cool on rack, then remove to paper towels for better drainage. At this point, they’re feather-light, mostly air – the better to soak up the delicious piloncillo syrup.

Place in the syrup. Refrigerate overnight. Serve about three torejas at room temperature in lots of syrup in a little dish.

Piloncillo syrup In a saucepan over low heat, place piloncillos in water and cover. The dried cane syrup will dissolve into a thin syrup after several minutes.


Pan De Pasuca
Holy Season Bread, or Chilean Fruitcake
Most Panes de Pascua are yeasted breads, time-consuming constructions involving various kneadings and risings. This one, however, is leavened with baking powder, so it’s much simpler to make. It’s legacy, however, is authentic, dating back generations in a German family of southern Chile.

1 cup of butter, room temperature
1/2 cup milk
4 eggs, separated
2 1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons honey
1/4 teaspoon anise extract
1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoon grated lemon peel
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups chopped walnuts (not too small, break every piece in half)
3/4 cup almonds (optional, broken in pieces as you do with the walnuts)
1 1/2 cups golden raisins
1 cup mixed candied fruit
1/2 cup brandy or rum
1 teaspoon white vinegar

Preheat oven to 325º. Grease two deep 9" round cake pans or one 9" springform pan. Spray pan(s) with cooking spray. For extra nonstick-ness, line the bottom and sides of the pan with foil, then spray.

Combine the fruits and nuts in a medium bowl. Toss in a handful of flour and mix to coat. The flour keeps the fruits and nuts from sinking to the bottom of the cake.

Beat butter in a large bowl until creamy. Add all the sugar and beat until
light and fluffy. Add honey. Beat in egg yolks one at a time, beating well at each addition. Add vanilla. Stir in lemon peel and egg whites. Add some of the milk.
Sift flour, baking powder and spices and add to butter mixture alternately
with brandy or rum, beating just until blended. (Get someone to do the adding while you do the beating, and it will be much easier!) Add the vinegar. Now add enough of the milk to make a batter no thinner than an average cake batter. This might mean adding all the milk. Thick is OK, but you don’t want it too thin. Fold in reserved fruit and nuts mixture.

Spoon into pan(s) and smooth top. Bake for one hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the cake is firm. (It might take up to fifteen minutes longer.)

Cool completely on wire rack. Cover with foil and refrigerate or store in a cool dry place. Pan de pascua keeps for several days.

Chilean Cola de Mono
Monkey’s Tail

1 quart milk
8 tablespoons sugar (or more to taste)
4 tablespoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon grated cloves
sections of peel from 1/4 orange, white pith scraped away
1 1/2 cups freshly brewed coffee.
3/4 to 1 cup aquardiente

Aquardiente, a cane-based spirit that predates rum, is difficult to find stateside, but rum or tequila are serviceable substitutes. Paulette cautions against using vodka: “It gives a bitter taste. Don’t even try it.”

Place the milk, sugar, vanilla extract, grated nutmeg, grated cloves, and
orange peel in a two- or three-quart saucepan. Over medium heat, heat the mixture to just before to the boiling point, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat just as it’s about to boil. Stir the coffee into the hot milk. Let it cool at room temperature. (If you prefer to use instant coffee, dissolve 4 teaspoons in a cup using a little bit of the hot milk mixture, and then add it to the rest of the mixture.)

Add the liquor after the liquid has cooled. If it’s still warm, the alcohol will evaporate! You can add the liquor by stages, to adjust the strength to your taste. You might even want to add the liquor later, to suit individual tastes and so that children and other non-drinkers can enjoy it.

Remove the orange peels, strain the cola de mono and decant into bottles, using a ladle and funnel. Cover tightly and chill before serving. Keeps several days refrigerated.

Wheels of life

Eco-aware cheese making in America’s dairyland By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach In Madison Magazine
March 2002 Column: Table Talk

“To make great cheese, you’ve got to have great milk. And great milk does not come from factory farms,” says Willi Lehner, a maker of fine cheeses in Dane County. A Dane County Farmers’ Market favorite since 1988 (in the off season, it’s available at Star Liquor or by calling 767-2875), Lehner’s Bleu Mont Dairy is one of Wisconsin’s many small-scale operations dedicated to producing cheeses that are worlds beyond ordinary, commercial fare.

Lehner is especially excited about a new cheddar he’s introducing at the Farmers’ Market this spring: “Last summer I hooked up with a farmer who does rotational grazing. I made cheese from the milk of his Jersey cows.” Jersey cows are renowned for their sweet, delicious milk. But because they’re not the biggest producers, they’re now rarely used by the mainstream dairy industry.

“This cheese – oh!” he sighs. “It’s complex and rich, with more depth of flavor.” The cows’ natural, fresh diet results in a high carotene content in the milk, which lends the cheddar a golden hue. “It almost looks like we added coloring to it,” says Lehner. Traditionally, cheddars made with the richest, most delicious milk were yellowish, so cheese makers began the practice of adding color, he explains. If you want to magnify this cheese’s qualities even more, Lehner says you can age it at home. “If the package is hermetically sealed, cheese will age gracefully in the fridge. You can easily age it for a year or two or three.” Won’t it go bad? Lehner says not. “The expiration date on cheese is kind of a joke, except for high-moisture ones like camembert and brie.”

Another feature of the spring cheddar: “It’s made with raw [unpasteurized] milk, which makes the most flavorful cheeses.” Pasteurizing destroys the naturally occurring enzymes that produce the intricate, enigmatic tastes of traditional cheeses. “Up until 50 years ago, almost all cheese was made from raw milk,” Lehner says. In recent years the USDA has been trying to ban raw milk cheese entirely.

The movement against raw milk is just one aspect of industrialized dairying that bothers Lehner, and his feelings are common among artisanal cheese makers: “I have a huge problem with the way the industry is headed. Cows are injected with rBGH to maximize production, and they burn out after a few years. My father visited a place in California where they had 3000 cows in the herd. They were milking them three times a day, making them stand on concrete.

“At the Farmers’ Market, I try to educate people about this – where do they buy their food? If they buy from small scale producers, they’re supporting farmers who’ve made a commitment to sustainable agriculture, who treat animals humanely.”

For thousands of years cheese was a highly individualized signature item, different at each farmstead. Modern technology has transformed it into a uniform product suitable for mass marketing. But the 1980s saw a renaissance of small scale cheese making. Today, Wisconsin is one of a handful of states that abounds in cheese offerings like Bleu Mont’s, each a one-of-a-kind treasure lovingly made in limited quantities by conscientious craftspeople who seek a balance between humans, animals, food and the land. What makes their products distinctive varies: some use certified organic milk, some use raw milk, some use the milk of animals other than cows.

At Lovetree Farms in northwestern Wisconsin, Dave and Mary Falk age their raw milk sheep’s cheese in a fresh-air cave they dug themselves, where the wild yeasts of the Northwoods can inoculate the cheese with their unique flavors. Consequently, no cheese in the world is quite like their fruity and nutty Trade Lake Cedar.

Upland Cheese Company near Dodgeville is one of only a few cheese makers that use the milk of their own cows. These cows graze in pastures of thick, soft grasses and wildflowers from early spring through fall, instead of subsisting on barn-fed silage year-round. Their award-winning cheese, Pleasant Ridge Reserve, is available at only a few outlets, including Whole Foods in Madison and a few cheese boutiques in Manhattan.

Many cheese makers favor goats’ milk for its velvety, vanilla-like flavor – and because goats have a lighter impact on the environment than cows. Wisconsin has more goat dairies than any other state.

As the country’s top cheese producer, Wisconsin makes 2 billion pounds of cheese each year, or one-third the national total. It’s nice to know that it’s not all about quantity.

Cheese lover Vesna Vuynovich Kovach is a contributing writer to Madison Magazine.

Food for Thought: A culinary celebration downtown

By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach

In Madison Magazine, Sept. 2001
Column: Table Talk

Here’s some food for thought: U.S. food travels 1300 miles on average from farm to plate, with 90% of our nation’s fresh vegetable crop grown in a single state, California.

The cost of fuel is just one reason to question a food system based on trucking and flying everything across the country (and around the world). There’s also the social justice factor: do you really want to raise your kids on tomatoes from a field where day laborers toil, exposed to pesticides, for $2.50 a day? There’s the environment: agricultural runoff from the Mississippi and its tributaries creates a summer-long dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, more than 5,000 square miles devoid of marine life. And, there’s the economics: 79 out of every 100 consumer food dollars pays not for growing the food, but for marketing-related activities: transportation, advertising, packaging.

Concerns over such issues have put Madison at the forefront of a movement towards more sustainable food practices. On September 8, you can experience the fruits of sustainability, and learn more about it. Enjoy yummy samples from local farmers and grocers. Get cooking lessons from Rick Bayless, one of America’s foremost chefs and cookbook writers, whose celebrated Frontera Grill restaurant in Chicago buys much of its produce from small-scale Wisconsin farmers. Hear from author Ruth Ozeki, whose provocative novel “My Year of Meats” explores the shady side of the American meat industry. All while enjoying music in the long rays of the harvest sun.

It’s the third annual Food For Thought Festival, where over 60 diverse groups will celebrate environmentally friendly agriculture, family farming, fair trade, and delicious, healthy dining. Last year, the mix of participants included Mifflin Street and Willy Street Co-ops, L’Etoile, the American Farmland Trust, Progressive Dane, UW Greens, the Wisconsin Home Garden Project, Q106 FM and the Gray Panthers. The festival will take place just off the Square, during the Dane County Farmers’ Market (a fitting venue—it’s one of the nation’s largest farmers’ markets, circulating a quarter of a million dollars of revenue through the local economy weekly).

On display will be the oversized trompe-l’oeil potato sculptures of local artist Mark Harmon. Stilt-walkers and other wandering performers will set a festive tone. Folk singer Ken Lonnquist will share some of his favorite songs about food. The Milwaukee-based band Leahy’s Luck will perform upbeat Irish music. For kids, there’ll be face painting, farm animals, and a veggie jewelry-making booth—carrot rings and radish circles make smart pendants, dontcha know.

Food For Thought isn’t about convincing people to “give up everything and live on nuts and berries,” says Jack Kloppenburg, a professor of rural sociology at UW-Madison; rather, its aim is “to present the alternatives, to show how fun and doable they are.” Kloppenburg is on the steering committee of Dane County REAP (Research, Action, Education & Policy on Food), the group organizing the event. REAP is a independent grassroots organization made up of, as its Web site says, “concerned citizen-eaters.”

Besides the festival, REAP’s biggest project right now is assembling a comprehensive “Farm Fresh Guide” to Dane County and surrounding areas. “It’ll list farmers’ markets, U-pick orchards, CSAs [community supported agriculture, where a subscriber buys a share of a single farm’s produce, a season at a time], direct producers who market right at their farms, everything,” explains Kloppenburg. The highly regarded Wisconsin Cartographers’ Guild will draw up the guide’s maps, he adds: “We hope to have a mockup of it at the festival.”

The festival’s motive is simple, says Kloppenburg: “We want to get people to think about what they put in their mouths.”

Sidebar
3rd annual Food For Thought Festival
September 7-8, 2001
Friday, Sept. 7, 7:30 pm, 272 Bascom Hall: Food For Thought Forum. Talk by author Ruth Ozeki, panel discussion with Ozeki and chef Rick Bayless.
Saturday, Sept. 8, just off the Capitol Square in downtown Madison: Food for Thought Festival takes place during the Farmers’ Market on the Square.

Brown rice, good and easy – long version

This is a lightly edited early draft of a much shorter article that was ultimately published as my Table Talk column in Madison Magazine in the summer or fall of 2001. Although it's not as polished as the published version, this draft contains a lot of info that didn't make it to press. I came upon it when posting the Table Talk column to this archive blog, and thought it was worth dusting off to post alongside. In truth, the need to abbreviate so severely for mainstream publication has been, for me, one of the most painful things about freelance writing.

To read a version of the rice article closer to the published version, click here.

– VVK, October 1, 2009

It's easy to make a perfect pot of brown rice, fluffy and appealing as a bed or side dish for just about any main course. What's not so easy is finding out how.

You wouldn’t expect this to be so. Brown rice is practically a symbol of the whole natural foods movement. It’s available everywhere, from the tiniest co-op to the slickest supermarket. Yet, I can’t count the times that friends – good cooks, whole foods enthusiasts – have told me that brown rice just won’t cook up right for them. It always seems to end up mushy, or scorched, or underdone, or somehow otherwise yucky. “I hate brown rice!” cried a vegetarian friend. Why? Because it always comes out just awful.

Really, this is as much as can be expected. Many published directions for plain brown rice – even those printed right on the packages, strangely enough – are literally recipes for disaster. As an experiment, instead of preparing rice the way I usually do, I tried following the instructions on the bag of Tsuru Mai California Brown Rice, my usual brand. Sure enough, I wound up with a insipid, soupy, crunchy, unpalatable mess.

I did some more investigating, and I was appalled at what I found. Most of the recipes I checked out include at least one feature guaranteed to wreck the rice. Like, they don't include salt – which you need to bring out brown rice=s marvelous, but mild, flavor. Or they have you turn down the heat to the lowest possible simmer – thereby guaranteeing a pot of pulpy sop. Or they have you cooking a single cup of rice in an enormous pot or pressure cooker.

Sometimes there's simply not enough information. For instance, one recipe, which doesn’t even tell how much rice to use, just stipulates “enough water to cover the middle finger to the middle of the second joint as the fingertip rests lightly on the top of the rice.” No wonder some people decide, after a few bouts with it, that brown rice is for the birds.

Why are the instructions so often so wrong? I can't even guess. But after about twenty years of practice, I do know how to make brown rice so that it's: tender (not mushy), moist (not soggy), and agreeably firm to the bite (without aggravating little hard spots). And so can you.

Brown rice is a little trickier to cook than white rice. But you can learn the tricks. And it's worth it.

Brown rice makes a hearty, tasty foundation for any high-fiber, low-fat, whole foods diet. [Author’s note, 2009: I no longer follow, espouse, or believe there are any benefits to a low-fat diet. Nor do I believe anymore that grain is an optimal foundation for a human diet. See this manifesto on lowcarbarama.com, my low-carb site, for a more current representation of my views on the matter.] It’s got two to four times the fiber of white rice, and is a richer source of naturally-occurring B vitamins (white rice is usually enriched artificially), Vitamin E, essential oils, and minerals like magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium and zinc.

Rice naturally has a loose, tough, inedible hull which is easily cracked and winnowed away, even with a hand tool like a wooden pestle. What=s left is the whole grain that we call brown rice – though depending on the variety, it can be brown, red, or even white. More pounding with a pestle will shatter off the edible, nutritious layer of rice bran, leaving only a white core consisting mainly of carbohydrates. This remaining core of white rice can be stored longer – important in low technology societies without modern packaging and storage – and cooks faster – important when fuel is dearly obtained. Also, although rice is not a high-protein food, research shows that what it has is more available when the rice is polished – important when protein is scarce. All these reasons put together may be why white rice became the predominant way of preparing rice the world over.

Ironically, then, brown rice seems to be a true modern health food, rather than the iconic back-to-nature fare it seems to represent. California's Lundberg Family Farms introduced brown rice to an American market in the late 1960s, in response to requests from the blossoming natural foods community. In this light, perhaps it's not so unusual, after all, that we're still figuring out how to get it right.

So what’s the secret to perfect brown rice? It all comes to combining a few ingredients in a suitable container, applying heat for an appropriate length of time – and otherwise leaving it all alone.

Stripped to the essentials, here's how to do it, followed by what you need to know to make it as easy as it should be.

Brown Rice
1 cup short grain brown rice
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 teaspoon salt

Rinse rice. Combine all ingredients in a one- to two-quart saucepan (smaller is better), Bring to boiling.
Reduce heat, cover, and cook 40 minutes at a high simmer/low boil. Do not stir.
Remove from heat and let sit at least fifteen minutes before serving.
Yield: about 3 cups cooked brown rice.

Use short grain brown rice, at least to start. Long grain is trickier to pull off; it=s more likely to become mushy. Look for the chubby little grains of short grain brown rice. They stay firm and delicious for days after cooking.

The best pot for this job is a thick-walled, two-quart saucepan. I use a clear glass Corning Visions pot. You can see right through it, without lifting the lid, to check how hard the water is boiling. The bottom is clear, too, so I can look through the bottom of the pot to check for scorching. Newer Visions pots, though, have opaque nonstick linings on the bottoms, so they don't feature the bottom view. The uncoated ones do turn up often at places like Goodwill – that's where I got mine.

If you don't have a glass pot, try stainless steel, enameled iron (with no chips), or some other nonreactive surface. That way, you can store your cooked rice in the same container you cook it in. (Caution: Don't store cooked food in a reactive material like iron or aluminum. Iron rusts, and aluminum pits and can leach aluminum oxide, which is toxic.) And here's another advantage of glass: not only can you stick the pot in the fridge, but you can pop it right into the microwave to reheat!

If you bought the rice from a bulk bin, pick over it carefully for any pebbles you might find. Occasional green grains are normal, but discard any black, spoiled grains. Rinse the rice to get rid of any field dust.

Place rice in pot and add water and salt. From this moment on, do not stir! As the water boils, the rice grains will arrange themselves into a network of nooks and crannies through which the water bubbles up. In this way, each grain gets its own little space to plump up to perfection. You'll be able to see the passageways when you look inside the pot. I tried stirring the rice partway through cooking once, as an experiment. I suppose it was for the good of science, but I felt sorry for the sodden mass of rice that made the sacrifice.

Now, turn the heat all the way up to get a good rolling boil. Leave the pot uncovered for this step, so it doesn’t boil over while you're not looking. It helps to set a timer. On my stove, nine minutes brings me back just as the boil is getting started.

Once you’ve got the boil going, set your timer for another forty minutes, cover the pot, and adjust the heat until it's bubbling lightly, checking in now and again on the activity level. If you can't decide whether to call it a simmer or a boil, you’ve got it where you want it. The rice should be done in about forty to fifty minutes, but take note of how long it actually takes on your stove and with your cookware (check again if you change pots next time), and adjust your timer, or perhaps your flame, accordingly the next go-round.

As it gets closer to time, check in to make sure there's still water in the pot. Since you're not allowed to stir the rice, how can you tell when the water's all gone? Simple: tilt the pot. If you can see water pooling, it needs to cook some more. If no water pools, take the pot off the heat. Right away. Even if the rice looks very moist. Otherwise, it's going to scorch. Fortunately, rice is among the more forgiving of foods in this way; even if the bottom gets moderately scorched, the rest of the rice does okay. (I’ve known people who swear by the supposed fiery energy bestowed by the singed so-called “yang layer” peeled from the bottom of their cook pot. When life gives you lemons, I guess.)

After you take the pot off the heat, leave it alone – tightly covered – for at least fifteen minutes. Longer is fine. But if you serve it now, it'll be wet and droopy, and will lay flat on the plate. Some recipes call for "fluffing" the rice with a fork or paddle at this point, and then covering with a bamboo mat to let the steam escape. Wrong on both counts! This is a critical moment: the hot steam in all those little tunnels and chambers is now quietly finishing up the job of puffing up those individual rice grains. Let the steam do the fluffing. Let time do the work. I can’t stress enough, this isn’t extra time added to the cooking; this is an essential part of the cooking time.

Now your rice is ready to serve. A bamboo or plastic rice paddle, sold at Asian food stores, is the perfect tool for this: the wide, relatively flat, bowl section can pick up a good amount of rice, while the short, stubby handle gives your wrist the right leverage to hoist it.

Brown rice does take longer to prepare than white rice. But the active preparation time is really the same; it's only the total time frame that's longer.

Also, once it's cooked, it's terrifically convenient: it keeps for a few days in the fridge, and reheats easily in the microwave. It comes in handy all day long. For instance, for an easy breakfast that will power you through to lunch, try this: In a bowl, microwave some rice – anywhere between a half cup and a cup – till it's steaming hot. Make a one-egg omelet stuffed with some crumbled feta and perhaps (if you've a few extra minutes) some sauteed mushrooms and onions, and serve over the rice. With all those complex carbohydrates providing a steady supply of blood sugar, you won't be craving doughnuts mid-morning. [Author’s note, 2009: I am no longer under the impression that plenty of carbohydrates, complex or otherwise, stave off hunger. In fact, it’s the fat and protein in the meal describe that wards off the doughnut cravings. See this article by Barry Groves to learn more about this effect.]

At dinnertime, when the rice is freshly made, I like to serve stir-fried veggies and tofu over it. Rice from the refrigerator is better stirred in during the last few minutes of cooking. (But go ahead and take it out of the fridge at the beginning of your meal prep, so it has time to lose its chill.) A handful or two of cooked rice also goes great in soup for a stick-to-your-ribs one-dish meal.

Enjoy!

Brown rice, good and easy

By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In Madison Magazine, 2001
Column: Table Talk

To read a longer, unpublished, version of this article, containing historical notes and more cookery details, click here.

– VVK, October 1, 2009

“I hate brown rice!” exclaimed my vegetarian editor, when I said I wanted to write about how to cook it.

I wasn’t surprised. I’ve heard lots of people complain they can’t get it to come out right—it’s mushy, crunchy, soupy or bland—and that’s why I wanted to share my simple method, developed over twenty years of whole foods cooking.

Brown rice is the quintessential natural food. Yet when I recently searched the Internet, cookbooks and even product packages, it was weirdly difficult to find effective, specific recipes for plain brown rice. When there were specifics, they often served to wreck the rice. For instance, after cooking a single cup of rice in a gallon-and-a-half size pressure cooker (the smaller of two sizes given as options—and anyway, how many people own such a thing?), I wound up with a flat layer of mush: slimy on top, crunchy brown singed beneath. Another cup of rice simmered in a saucepan for so long in so much water that it became a porridgey glue. A third ended up watery and hard.

Happily, good brown rice is easy and totally worth making. It’s fluffy, tasty, stick-to-your-ribs hearty. You can incorporate it into just about any meal as a side or as a bed for stir-fries, chili, omelettes. Toss leftover rice into soups and stews.

And it's good for you. With up to four times the fiber of white rice and lots of naturally-occurring vitamins and minerals (white rice is dusted with vitamins to make up for some of whatÕs polished off), brown rice is a great foundation for healthy eating.

Tips for brown rice perfection—and ease of use

• One light rinse is sufficient—despite the instructions for multiple scrubbings you might find elsewhere.
• If you find many rotten black grains or rocks, try a different brand next time. Green grains, on the other hand, are normal.
• Use salt unless your doctor says you can’t. Saltless rice is insipid.
• A low boil works much better than a slow simmer. It comes out mushy when you simmer at the lowest temp possible (as some advise).
• Never stir during cooking. The delicate network of steam tunnels formed by the boiling water is the key to fluffy rice. Stir, and the end product is sodden.
• Turn off heat according to the “tilt test.” Tilt the pot: if you see water pooling, leave the heat on. If there’s none, turn it off.
• Remove rice from heat and let set at least ten minutes before serving. The rice continues to steam to fluffy perfection during this essential cooking phase. Otherwise, the rice will lie wet and flat on the plate.
• Critical: Do not stir the rice after cooking! Nearly every recipe I found says to stir to "fluff," but stirring is really the anti-fluffer. It destroys the steam tunnels. Don't.
• You can refrigerate unused rice in the saucepan you cooked it in, if you use stainless steel or stove-safe glass. With glass, you have another bonus: you can place the whole thing in the microwave to reheat.

Brown Rice

• 1 cup brown rice
• 1 1/2 cups water (for short grain) or 2 cups water (for long grain)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Rinse rice. Combine all ingredients in a heavy 1 to 2 quart saucepan. On high heat, bring to full boil, uncovered (so it won't boil over). Turn down to a low boil and cover. Cook for 20–35 minutes (the time will vary depending on your stove, cookware, and variety of rice), until you can't see any water pooling when you tilt the pot.

Remove from heat and let stand, covered, at least 10 minutes.

Do not stir the rice at any point. Serve as desired. Refrigerate remainder for up to three days.

----------------------
Vesna Vuynovich Kovach studied brown rice cookery with natural foods pioneer Aveline Kushi.

Low Country Boil

In Madison Magazine, June 2001
Column: Table Talk
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach and Don Kovach

The trees! The birds! The sun! What is it all saying? Have a cookout! You want to make a big heap of food and share it with your friends and family. And you want to be able to relax and enjoy your own party. Celebrate the summer with a Low Country boil.

The Low Country is the expanse of island-dotted salt marsh that makes up the coastal plain of Georgia and South Carolina. Time there is marked by the tides, rather than the hands of a clock. The culture is intimately tied to the life of the sea and the salt water.

Low Country boil is a synthesis of life in that part of the south: shrimp from the sea, potatoes and carrots from the farms, and sausage from the pigs people keep. The simple act of boiling these everyday ingredients in seasoned water creates a lively, eloquent harmony. Low Country boil is also called Frogmore Stew, for the St. Helena Island community where it’s thought to originate. But it isn’t a stew as we know it—a stew is slow-cooked to soft, thick, inseparability. In a Low Country boil, the ingredients all stay separate, though they come together in the pot and get served in a massive heap on the table. Folks just reach in and pull out what they want, as they want it: a shrimp, a potato, a hunk of corn.

Low Country boils are so popular in coastal cities like Savannah and Charleston, and the territory all around them, you’d think this was an ancient custom. In fact, historians have been able to trace it back only to around 1940, about the time sausage in casings (as opposed to sausage patties) were introduced to the region. Maybe it became so popular so fast because it it’s so easy. It’s a lot of fun, and it brings together so many good things. The salted water, when it boils, evokes the smell of the ocean. There’s a fragrant rush of seasoning as you pour out the food. It’s a big meal, a big thing, and it takes the whole of the outside to hold it.


RECIPE: Low Country Boil

A Low Country Boil is great for outdoor gatherings of eight or more people. It doesn’t scale down well below that.
To serve, just dump the food onto a wood or metal picnic table that’s covered with newspaper. No plates are necessary—people can gather around and eat straight from the heap, shelling shrimp and cutting off hunks of sausage as they go. Cleanup couldn’t be easier: put away any leftovers, and roll up and throw out the rest.

Tools:
This is an outdoor cooking project. You’ll need a six-gallon pot with a basket insert and a propane burner with a sturdy stand (the same equipment used for deep-frying whole turkey—Table Talk, November 2000).

Multiply these amounts by the number of people coming. These are the ingredients per person:
1/2 pound raw shrimp, shell on (thaw if frozen)
1/2 pound kielbasa, smoked sausage or ring baloney
1 ear corn, husked and broken in half
3 new potatoes, scrubbed but unpeeled
3 baby carrots (or one pound for up to 16 people)
1/3 clove garlic, peeled and chopped
1/3 bay leaf
1 peppercorn

For the whole pot:
4 gallons water
1 bag crab or seafood boil
2 tsp. salt

Put the seasonings—crab boil bag, garlic, bay leaves, peppercorns and salt—in the water and bring it to a boil. Put the potatoes, carrots, and sausage in the basket, and lower the basket into the pot. Cook for a few minutes until the potatoes are almost done. Add the corn and cook for a few more minutes. The fresher the corn, the shorter the cooking time needed. Add the shrimp, and cook just until they turns red, about 3 minutes. Don’t overcook the shrimp, or they’ll be tough. Lift out the basket, and serve immediately.

Corn bread, cole slaw, green salad, and great Wisconsin beer go well with this meal. Watermelon is a natural to finish.

Vesna Vuynovich Kovach writes this column regularly. Don Kovach grew up in Savannah, where he loved to go shrimping and fishing along the salt rivers with his family.

Make mine a double

by Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In Madison Magazine, April 2001
Column: Tidbits
Photo: USDA image in the public domain, via Wikipedia

Related: Green gunk is an American bestseller on Vesna's Fun World

Guacamole, that spicy green dip, gets its name from the Mexican-Spanish mole, meaning a sauce or mixture, plus ahuacatl, the Aztec word for “testicle” as well as for “avocado.”

This synonym doubtless arose from observation of the fruit’s shape and wrinkly skin.

If the size seems off, consider that in the 15th and 16th centuries, Aztec warriors conquered surrounding lands to build the largest empire in the history of the North American continent.

For best results making tasty guacamole, use a very ripe avocado.

Deep-fried turkey: Fry, turkey, fry

How about a bobbing gobbler this Thanksgiving?
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
Column: Table Talk
in Madison Magazine
November 2000


When I first heard about deep-fried whole turkey, it sounded like a joke. Outrageous. You’d need an enormous pot! You’d need gallons of oil! Really hot oil--it would be dangerous! But, I was told, I’d never eat a juicier, more perfectly cooked turkey, and the skin would be out-of-this-world crispy good.

So I had to try it.

It was all true, including the danger. First, you have to do it outdoors--the risks from splashing oil are too great. You have to observe safety precautions, like wearing closed-toed shoes and keeping the area clear of children and pets.

Our turkey frying kit cost about a hundred bucks at Gander Mountain. It included a propane burner on a stand, a thermometer, a six gallon pot and lid, a strainer basket insert, and a sturdy hook for getting the basket in and out.

You can use other kinds of vegetable oil, but we sprang for the preferred peanut ($23 for a 4 1/2 gallon jug at Woodman’s), with its high flash point and good reusability.

How to do?

• Heat three gallons of oil to 400° F.
• Gently lower in a 12-17 pound turkey--thawed, rinsed, and patted dry.
• Cook at 350° F for 3 1/2 minutes per pound.
• Gently remove turkey.

That’s it.

Frying day was warm, but we wore long sleeves and pants for safety’s sake. The heat of the propane flame pressed a fresh, sweet, peanut smell into the air. The oil gradually expanded, rising inches higher in the pot. It looked thin and light, like it could float away. Heat made the surface gently ripple--without water, oil won’t roil.

An unfortunate little bug fell in with a round, liquid sizzle.

The turkey was next.

For the first few minutes, the bird was invisible beneath the frothing surface. Then I could see it: drumsticks up, a fountain of oil foaming white and golden brown from the cavity. Narrow jets bubbled from the points where I’d injected a marinade (about which I’ll only say that I’m not using it again--it masks the bird’s natural flavor, and fried turkey is plenty juicy). Our twelve-pound bird was done in only 42 minutes.

And it was hideous. It looked ruined: skin drum-taut, mahogany brown to near-black. I thought wildly of Rameses’ mummy. The cavity gaped, crooked. Inside, oil still bubbled darkly against the bird’s rib cage.

But it was great! Juicy and perfectly done. Not dry like roasted turkey can get, and not greasy either. The hot oil had sealed the surface; it hadn’t soaked in. The turkey had cooked quickly and thoroughly, with little moisture lost.

A week later, we fried again: a chicken, without marinade or seasoning. Whole chicken fries at nine minutes per pound, so the cooking time worked out to the same as the turkey’s. The second time around, it all seemed easy, not like the tentative drama of the week before.

Our chicken was gorgeous--as beautiful as the turkey was appalling. The skin cooked to a golden, puffy, crisp crust. It looked like a pastry sculpture of a chicken. Why the difference? I don’t know. Based on my readings, I’d expected a scary-looking turkey. The handsome chicken was the surprise.

As soon as we sliced open the skin, the chicken began to fall apart. Just a little twist took the thigh-drumstick assembly clean off. Even the breast was tender and juicy. The only possible improvement (both taste- and karma-wise) would have been using a free-range bird.

So, what do you get when you cross poultry with several gallons of boiling hot peanut oil? A tender, juicy bird so perfectly cooked, with skin so crisp and tasty, you might never roast again.