This Rapini, Cannellini and Italian Sausage Melt is our new favorite easy, one-pan weeknight dinner

Our recipe for a cannellini, rapini and Italian sausage melt is gluten-free and incredibly cravable.

By Leslie Brenner

When you come right down to it, we’re all looking for the same elusive thing: Weeknight dinners that are quick and easy to make, delicious and satisfying. And if they can also be craveable, gluten-free and made in just one pan, so much the more fabulous.

An Italian-flavored Rapini, Cannellini and Italian Sausage Melt I recently concocted fits that bill — and then some.

I spent most of my adult life whipping up, at least once a week, pasta with Italian sausage and broccoli rape (aka rapini, aka broccoli rabe). It has long been my favorite easy comfort dinner. Though the dish is traditionally made with orecchiete as the pasta shape, I always used penne — smooth ones, not penne rigate. I just enjoy them more than those flat little ear-shapes.

No need for a recipe to achieve that old standard: Just blanch a bunch of rapini (saving the vitamin-filled water to cook the pasta in), brown a pound of Italian sausage, add the rapini, cook the pasta (saving a little cooking water), add pasta to rapini and sausage, along with a little pasta cooking water, cook briefly, add grated parm, a shake of Aleppo pepper and serve. To me it’s one of the most simply perfect dishes in the world. Garlic is a welcome but not entirely necessary enhancement.

But at some point I seriously cut back on refined-flour products (along with sugar), and so the dish changed for us from once-a-week favorite to once-in-a-while special treat.

Then came The Great Confinement, and with it, the feeling that under the circumstances, we should be able to eat whatever we want. The pasta dish appeared on our table with increasing frequency, the longer the pandemic stretched out. I made it with whole wheat pasta a few times, but it tasted punitive.

Beans, I thought. Beans and greens: Such a dreamy combo. Why not swap the pasta for cannellini beans — from a can, so it’s quick and easy? With the Italian sausage, of course. And Parm stirred in at the end.

It was good, but it wasn’t craveable. It wanted some spicy zing, and something melty on top.

Next time, I stirred in some harissa — North African chile paste kissed with caraway seed — and a bit of fresh rosemary. And then, after stirring in the Parm, I topped it with slices of fresh mozzarella. Not too much; I wasn’t looking for decadence, just irresistible, creamy deliciousness. Under the broiler it went, till it was bubbly and browning.

Eureka!!!

Treat yourself tonight, and let me know what you think.

RECIPE: Rapini, Cannellini and Italian Sausage Melt

Author Andrea Nguyen brings unforgettable Vietnamese flavor into every home cook's wheelhouse

‘Vietnamese Food Any Day’ by Andrea Nguyen

By Leslie Brenner

Editor’s note: Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month (and maybe even into April!) — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

Over the past year, I’ve been working on developing a few Vietnamese-inspired recipes with the invaluable help and guidance of my dear friend An-My Lê — Cooks Without Borders’ Vietnamese cooking advisor. I want to get them just right, so I’ve been moving slower than I meant to on them; they will be coming sooner than later, I hope!

A brilliant photographer by profession, An-My happens to be one of the best cooks I know — in many idioms, including French (as well as Vietnamese). When I asked her some months ago to recommend the best Vietnamese cookbooks for home cooks, she didn’t hesitate. Andrea Nguyen’s books, she said, along with Charles Phan’s Vietnamese Home Cooking.

Author Andrea Nguyen / Photograph by Aubrey Pick

An-My is not alone in her opinion, obviously; Nguyen’s work has been honored with many prestigious awards, including a James Beard Cookbook Award for The Pho Cookbook and an IACP Cookbook Award for Unforgettable: The Bold Flavors of Paula Wolfert’s Renegade Life, which she edited.

Nguyen, who lives in Northern California and describes herself as “a bank examiner gone astray,” has published five other books as well, including Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, Asian Dumplings, Asian Tofu and The Banh Mi Handbook, as well as her most recent, Vietnamese Food Any Day, with which I’m currently obsessed. One of the dishes in that last title — a rice-noodle salad number — was a dream-bowl for us last summer.

Happily for her fans (me included), she also has a fabulous blog — Viet World Kitchen — where you can find a wealth of delicious stories, videos and recipes.

[Watch our Video Q & A with Andrea Nguyen and An-My Lê.]

I’d recommend Vietnamese Food Any Day for anyone wanting to dive into Vietnamese cooking, whether you’re a newbie or have lots of experience. The book is wonderful for teaching us how to bring the Vietnamese spirit and style of cooking and eating into our American home kitchens, starting with what to keep on hand — including brands: Red Boat or Three Crabs fish sauce! Three Ladies rice paper and jasmine rice!. But Nguyen has a great palate and delightful creative flair, with plenty to offer even someone like An-My (who can make spectacular bánh xèo with her eyes closed).

Nguyen’s parchment parcels of fish baked with ginger, garlic, baby bok choy and scallions is a great example — a quick and easy dish that’s as appropriate for a weeknight dinner as it is for a special evening (post-vaccine reunion?!) with friends when you want to really celebrate.

Halibut and baby bok choy with ginger, garlic and scallions roasted in parchment, from Andrea Nguyen’s ‘Vietnamese Food Any Day’

It’s just the thing to keep in mind to as we come into halibut season. It’s so damn easy to overcook or otherwise ruin halibut (which is expensive!), and this foolproof method gives you an impressive, fabulous slam-dunk. Let your guests or family tear open the parcels at the table, and they’ll find fish that’s gorgeously silky throughout, absolutely elegant, bathed in umami-rich and gingery-bright sauce that melds marvelously with the bok choy. I can’t recommend the recipe highly enough. It’s a great example of why you need this book.

Want something fancy to start that’s also easier than it might seem?

Mushroom pâté puffs from Andrea Nguyen’s ‘Vietnamese Food Any Day’

I’m a sucker for puff pastry, especially the all-butter frozen, buy-it-at-the-supermarket variety, and Nguyen’s Mushroom Pâté Puffs take full advantage. Their filling is a simple yet perfect mix of rehydrated dried shiitakes, white button mushrooms, shallots, butter and thyme. Nguyen’s recipe, which yields about 30, is meant to serve 8 to 10, but unless you are far more restrained, reasonable and mature than the four of us still-sequestered together (though not for long!), you will devour them like some insane, puff-pastry-starved maniacs. I shouldn’t be admitting this, but just want you to know how good they are.

On tap, for the very near future, I have bookmarked recipes for Baked Shrimp and Celery Toasts; Grilled Trout Rice Paper Rolls; Shaking Tofu; and Grilled Lemongrass Pork Chops.

All of which is to say many thanks, Andrea Nguyen, for improving the quality of our lives.

Looking for a new cookbook to make your spring and summer light, elegant and delicious? Look no further.

RECIPE: Andrea Nguyen’s Ginger Halibut Parcels

RECIPE: Andrea Nguyen’s Mushroom Pâté Puffs

A love letter to vospov kofte: How my mother and I quashed our beef and swapped it with lentils

By Varty Yahjian

My mother and I see eye to eye on exactly three things: inappropriate humor, dangly earrings and eating with our hands. (Vehement approval!) Oh, and we both sleep in on the weekends and cancel plans before noon.

Aside from these, it’s hard to find common ground between us, and we widen that distance in the kitchen. There, we disagree about it all. She doesn’t salt food while it cooks, while I think it’s a mistake to wait till the end; I like caramelizing onions, while she thinks it's a waste of time.

We do, however, have a common food heritage, one that spans the 36 years between us: We both grew up eating food native to the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. 

Our family tree is ethnically Armenian, but for the three generations preceding me, we have had Bulgarian nationality. In the early twentieth century, my paternal great-grandparents escaped ethnic cleansing in Anatolia and settled in Sofia, Bulgaria — where my father was born, and where my parents would eventually meet in the 1970s. My mother’s great-great-grandparents left Anatolia for the same reason even earlier, sticking to the Black Sea’s coast following their voyages as refugees. 

The result of these migrations is our family’s tradition, a fabulous mix of Armenian, Bulgarian, and now with me, American sensibilities. 

Gayane (left) and Varty Yahjian, making vospov kofte / Photo courtesy of Varty Yahjian

As with most immigrant families, my mother is the sovereign of the stove. To her it’s an indisputable reign, making for a tumultuous dinnertime environment because over the years, I’ve relied less on her recipes as I create my own. For instance, I use stewed tomatoes and a lot of dill in our flu-season chicken soup in lieu of her usual celery and bell peppers. Like a true monarch, she loathes these types of rebellions, vexedly announcing “I’m sorry, but no, this is not how you do it!” before storming off. 

When we were all younger, my mother fed the whole family, of course. I don’t know how she did it, because after working a ten-hour workday and pulling dinner together, she had to deal with my ruthlessly picky palate.  

Until I was in middle school, I rarely ate anything that wasn’t potatoes, rice or macaroni. Mushrooms were smelly and pretended to be meat; buckwheat tasted like aluminum foil (yes, I said that exactly); and romaine lettuce, my final boss of hated foods, was unbearably bitter. 

Regardless of protest, my mom always made sure my plate left the table clean; if not, “mekhké” — it’s a shame, as she would say — because those last few bites were my good luck charms.

Thankfully my tastebuds evolved in tweendom. Perhaps it was the feeling of unsupervised freedom after being dropped off at the mall that led me towards the food court’s salmon nigiri and fried chicken with waffles. 

Or maybe my budding womanhood began to recognize how incredible it was that my mother managed to feed us every single night. I owed it to her to honor her food, especially because at this point, she was also working on the weekends. Looking back, I see that my mother’s cooking was a love-language, and I understand now why she’d get so upset when I brought back full Tupperwares of food from school.

But part of my coming around could also just be that at some point, I saw how unbelievably lame it was to be so stubborn about food. 

Photo by Varty Yahjian

In seventh grade I started watching Food Network, and my mother took note. Encouraging my growing curiosity, she bought me a copy of Cooking Rocks!: Rachael Ray 30-Minute Meals for Kids, and in her typical compliment-and-command delivery, inscribed on the first page “To my cute Varty to cook some meals!” 

And cook some meals I did, starting with Ray’s Tomato, Basil and Cheese Baked Pasta recipe, which I’ve since memorized and still make, with some grown-up additions. My parents loved it, and I was immediately validated — a powerful feeling for anyone, and especially a Green Day-listening, greasy-haired thirteen-year-old.

In high school, armed with my new driver's license in our family's Volvo wagon, I began tearing through Los Angeles' incredible culinary jungle — thrilled by the star anise and coriander at our local pho shop and tacos de lengua in Cypress Park. 

At home, I started carefully watching my mother because those smells of toasted butter, tomato sauce, and allspice had begun to signal more than just “dinner’s ready.” They were re-introducing me to flavors of my heritage — a connection to my great-grandparents I now feel so grateful for. 

I slowly learned the basics of our household standards: pilaf with vermicelli noodles, Bulgarian meatball soup, moussaka and dolma. I mostly observed and tried not to intervene because the few times I did, I slowed my mom down and got in the way. I watched how she used her hands to scoop roughly chopped onions into a pool of olive oil with a slice of butter for taste, and then liberally season them with paprika and chubritsa, a dried herb essential to the Bulgarian kitchen. 

Fast-forward to 2021, and we’re back in the same kitchen. My mother and I don’t really cook together; typically it’s only one of us preparing dinner for the family at a time. 

Varty (left) and Gayane Yahjian / Photo courtesy of Varty Yahjian

Except this time we’ve decided to collaborate — on a popular Western Armenian dish, vospov kofte, lentil “meatballs.”  

Vospov in Armenian translates to “with lentil” and kofte, or “meatball,” is spelled in Turkish. Neither word necessarily explains where the dish originates from. Lest we forget, the majority of the Middle East and all of Anatolia — where my great-grandparents are from — were under Ottoman rule for centuries. Present-day Armenia and Turkey share a border, and given their history, attributing food to either one is fertile ground for an argument in the comments section.

Typically the dish is served as part of the cold mezze on Western Armenian dining tables. It’s popular during Lent, when animal products are shunned in observation of Jesus Christ’s forty days resisting the devil’s temptation. As such, Armenian Lenters have gotten pretty creative over the last two thousand years in reworking dishes to meet the orthodoxy’s expectations. Vospov kofte is one of these remixes, where beef or lamb is swapped with red lentils and bulgur to make for a lighter, all-vegan version that pleases God and mortals alike. It’s so delicious that in our family, we enjoy it year-round.  

Given our foundational cooking disagreements, the idea of my mom and I preparing these vospov koftes together is a big deal. 

We begin by bickering over which saucepan to use, a common pre-cooking ritual for us. I prefer to use a smaller pot, but my mother insists (and I’ll now admit rightfully so) that we’ll need the larger one to contain the lava-like bubbles red lentils make when they simmer into a thick paste.

After enough shuffling around one another in near-silence, the tension finally breaks as we laugh about how the measuring cup could have disappeared into thin air. 

We measure out and soak bulgur, which will get stirred into the thick lentil paste along with parsley, spices, scallions and sautéed onions, discuss the supremacy of Italian parsley over curly-leaf as we chop, and compare the ways we’ve failed at trying to cut onions without crying. We learn that neither of us is the timer-setting type, and our bulgur probably spends a bit too long soaking. Not a big deal, though.

We hand-knead everything together with great conviction, and slowly it turns into an aromatic paste, sticking to our fingers. After scraping as much of it off our palms into the bowl as we can, we set aside a little bowl of water, dip our fingers in, and start shaping the kofte into its characteristic, ovalesque shape, lengthened on the ends and slightly flattened in the middle. We arrange our koftes in a neat wreath, decorate it with more chopped parsley, and then finally face the truth: It is extremely rare to find us in the kitchen together. Why is that?

“Because you always tell me what to do for no reason,” I say with a touch of shade.

Vospov kofte / Photograph by Varty Yahjian

My mom pauses, and for a millisecond drops eye contact before returning with the smile of someone who’s seen me spit out celery and start fights over cilantro: “You have a great taste, and everything you make is very yummy. Let’s cook together more.” 

And because she wouldn’t be my mother without giving me a task, she hugs me and says, “Just you need to do clean-up after you cook.” 

I’ll heed her words, because she’s right: The countertop is a cacophony of utensils, parsley stems and spilled cumin. But for once, this mother and daughter are totally, deliciously, in sync. 

Varty Yahjian lives, works and cooks in La Cañada, California. This is her first story for Cooks Without Borders. 

Author Najmieh Batmanglij is the revered ‘goddess of Iranian cooking'

By Leslie Brenner

Editor’s note: Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

The Washington Post called her “the grande dame of Iranian cooking.” Yotam Ottolenghi called her its “goddess.” Super-chef José Andrés has called her “a wonderful guide to the Persian kitchen.”

We’re talking, of course, about Najmieh Batmanglij — the author of seven books, including Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies; Joon: Persian Cooking Made Simple; Cooking in Iran: Regional Recipes and Kitchen Secrets and other titles.

I’m embarrassed to say that Batmanglij’s wisdom only came into my life last year, when I started exploring Persian cooking in earnest. Food of Life — the magnum opus that she first published in 1986, revised for a 2020 25th-anniversary edition and is once again updating — is a great place to begin, if you want to explore this magnificent cuisine.

Sabzi polow — rice with fresh herbs — prepared from Najmieh Batmanglij’s ‘Food of Life’

Some of my happiest memories of annus horribilus 2020 involved Food for Life. For my late-September birthday, a masked celebration in the backyard of dear friends, my son Wylie and his girlfriend Nathalie prepared (at my request) an elaborate, insanely delicious rice dish from the book: Sabzi Polow,* Rice with Fresh Herbs. There are a full seven cups of fresh chopped herbs in the dish: dill, chives, parsley and cilantro, and it sports a crisp tah-dig crust. (Once I prepare it myself — soon! I’ll be sure to write about it.)

A couple months later, I spent a luxurious afternoon preparing abgusht-e morgh ba kufteh-ye nokhodchi — Persian chicken soup with chickpea-and-lamb meatballs. The aromas of dried rose petals, cardamom, saffron and fresh herbs lifted my spirits and transported me to another time and place.

The book has been on my mind lately because Nowruz — Persian New Year — begins this coming Saturday, the first day of spring. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate than with Batmanglij’s Fresh Herb Kuku, which is traditional for the holiday. It’s like a Persian frittata packed with dill, parsley, cilantro and spring onions, beautifully spiced (more rose petals!) and garnished with quick-confited barberries.

[If you’re cooking with kids this weekend, consider quick-ordering Batmanglij’s Happy Nowruz: Cooking with Children to Celebrate the Persian New Year.]

Najmieh’s other six books are all on my wish-list(Joon is at the top.)

Still if I had to choose only one cookbook to cook from for the rest of my life, I would seriously consider Food of Life. The 330-recipe volume has enough delicious culture in its 640 pages to keep me delighted cooking and discovering Iran for a long time.

RECIPE: Najmieh’s Fresh Herb Kuku

RECIPE: Persian Chicken Soup with Chickpea and Lamb Meatballs

Related story: “Take a moment to honor 98 year-old Diana Kennedy, the “Queen of Mexican regional cooking”

Related story: “Outstanding cookbook author Toni Tipton-Martin puts history at the center of the American table”

Related story: “Dorie Greenspan knocks it out of the kitchen with books about baking and French cooking”

*The dish is the vegetarian variation of Sabzi Polow Ba Mahi — Rice with Fresh Herbs and Fish. We dropped the fish as the dish was meant to accompany delicious lamb kebabs my friends grilled outside on the Weber.

For out-of-this-world pozole rojo, start with dried heirloom corn from Mexico — then nixtamalize (yes, you can!)

By Leslie Brenner

If you want to try your hand at nixtamalizing corn, but don’t want to get into the elaborate procedure of grinding it into masa, I’ve got one word for you: Pozole.

Pozole is a soup or brothy stew starring nixtamal (hominy) — kernels of dried corn cooked in an alkaline solution (the process is explained here). Pork or chicken may be used for the broth. Leave it at that, and you’ve got pozole blanco. Add tomatillos and fresh green chiles and maybe herbs and green vegetables, and you’ve got pozole verde. Forget the green stuff and instead add a sauce made from toasted red dried chiles, and pozole rojo’s in your pot.

Most pozole you find in Mexican restaurants in the United States is made from canned hominy, says Olivia Lopez, chef de cuisine at Dallas restaurant Billy Can Can and Cooks Without Borders new Mexican cuisine expert and advisor. “It’s less time-consuming,” she explains. “The cans are really cheap, as well.” And while the dish can be wonderful, that’s usually more because of wonderful broth and the condiments that go on top than the hominy.

Pozole prepared from just-nixtamalized heirloom corn, on the other hand, is spectacular through and through. The nixtamal itself (those grains of corn that have been liberated of their skin) has wonderful earthy flavor and aroma, as you can see if you taste it before it goes into the pot. It actually tastes like corn, and its texture provides some nice resistance to the tooth.

Happily, you can buy everything you need for the nixtamal — the heirloom grains and cal — from a new(ish) online store, Masienda. You’ll also find links to several of Masienda’s products, including a Pozole Kit, in Cooks Without Borders CookShop.

“You can definitely tell the difference,” says Lopez.

Making your own nixtamal can be a lot of work, mostly because in order for the grains to “flower” properly in the broth, you need to remove the tip end of the grain, known in Spanish as the cabeza (head). It’s a painstaking process that can take hours, but it’s worth doing at least once in your life.

Marisel E. Presilla, in her encyclopedic and authoritative 2012 book Gran Cocina Latina, puts it this way:

“When I nixtamalize corn for any dish — but particularly for pozole, the rich soup/stew — I view it as something very special. It is a process that requires care. Not onlly is any Mexican cook with her salt familiar with the changes the corn goes through in cooking, but she is willing to cut of the germ end of every single kernel of corn in order to eliminate the slight bitterness of the germ and make the kernels flower when cooked again. For this effort you must have your mind fixed on a high and shining purpose, great texture, and good looks, not just fifteen minutes of table fame.

“. . . Whether it is the lye used for hominy (not the same as the calcium hydroxide for treating Mexican corn) or the effect of the can, the flavor [of canned hominy] just seems horrible to me. Make pozole from scratch even once and you will know the right taste.”

There may be a worthwhile hack, however; we learned about it after we developed our recipe, and haven’t yet had a chance to test it. Lopez suggests making the nixtamal a day in advance and freezing the kernels for easier blooming, even without removing the cabezas. (We’ll update this page once we test it.)

Nixtamal kernels after they’ve “flowered” in the broth. The kernel in back, which still has its cabeza, did not bloom.

Traditionally, pozole rojo is made with a pig’s head. If you want to make that happen in your own kitchen, we commend you (and hope for a dinner invitation!). But for us mortals, outstanding results can be achieved with pork shoulder (also known as Boston butt or pork butt). Once you finish preparing the maize, it’s actually quite a simple dish to prepare.

Many recipes suggest cooking the nixtamal separately from the broth, but I found cooking them together to be ideal. The nixtamal can take anywhere from four to six hours to be tender. The pork will be ready sooner, but it can easily cook that long — or you can remove it for part of the time if you prefer, then add it back in before the end.

The method for adding ancho and guajillo chiles is pretty cool: Remove the seeds and stems, toast them briefly on a hot skillet, rehydrate them in hot water, then purée in a blender with some of their water. Heat oil and fry the sauce for a few minutes, deepening its flavor, before you add it into the nearly-cooked broth. Some recipes skip the frying step, but I feel the depth it adds is worth the small effort — which after hours of decapitating corn kernels, really isn’t a big deal.

Then comes the fun part: all the garnishes. Serve them in separate bowls, so each eater can garnish as they please with shredded cabbage (or lettuce), lime wedges (which slice through the richness), sliced radishes, chopped white onion, dried Mexican oregano, crumbled dried piquín chiles and cilantro.

RECIPE: Heirloom Pozole Rojo

RELATED STORY: “Next-wave masa: A forward-looking purveyor and passionate chefs bring heirloom corn from Mexico to their tables and yours”

Next-wave masa: A forward-looking purveyor and passionate chefs bring heirloom corn from Mexico to their tables and yours

Heirloom maize and masa harina from Masienda

By Leslie Brenner

[Editor’s note: Since this article was first published, Masienda founder Jorge Gaviria published a cookbook — Masa: Techniques, Recipes, and Reflections on a Timeless Staple. Read our review.]

Ten years ago, most people who live and eat in the United States had never heard the word “nixtamal.” I know what you’re thinking: Still today most have not heard it. (It’s pronounced “neesh-ta-mal.”) But many who are serious about Mexican food most certainly have heard the word — and probably tasted dishes made from fresh nixtamal, as more and more chefs here are nixtamalizing corn in their own restaurants in order to make outstanding tortillas and masa-centric dishes.

Nixtamalization, of course, is the ancient process by which maize (corn) is transformed by soaking it, then cooking it in an alkaline solution, making it suitable to grind into masa, the dough from which tortillas (and tamales, sopes, tetelas, etc.) are made.

Prepared with lime (calcium hydroxide, known in Spanish as “cal”) or wood ashes, the alkaline solution loosens the pericarp (skin) on each kernel — so it can be removed, making the kernels easier to grind than they would otherwise be. It also unlocks proteins and frees up the niacin in the grain, making it much more nutritious. It kills pathogens as well, making it safer.

Once that pericarp is removed, the blanched grain becomes nixtamal. From there, it can either be cooked and eaten whole — most notably in pozole — or ground into masa, the dough from which tortillas and so forth are made. 

Nixtamal made from single-origin maiz cacahuazintle from Edo de México

Invented by the Aztec and Maya civilizations, nixtamalization is a process that has been key to culture in Mesoamerica since at least 1500 to 1200 BCE, according to Sophie Coe, who wrote in The Oxford Companion to Food that “typical household equipment for making nixtamal out of maize is known on the south coast of Guatemala” during that period. Coe is also author of America’s First Cuisines. 

The exact time and place where nixtamalization was first accomplished is uncertain, Amanda Gálvez, PhD, tells us in Nixtamal: A Guide to Masa Preparation in the United States. “But archeological sites dating to around 1000 B.C. point to the use of alkali from residues found in ceramics.”

You may be wondering: Can dried corn be consumed without nixtamalizing it? Yes! That’s what cornmeal — also known as grits or polenta — is. But if you’ve ever tried making a tortilla with cornmeal, you know that it doesn’t hold together. 

Here’s how Gálvez explains why the nixtamalizing transformation is essential to make tortillas:

“The original grain hemicellulose partially dissolves, and starch becomes gelatinized (hydrated, swollen and cooked. The masa swells and cellulose is chemically transformed by alkali. All of these changes allow the masa to be flexible, capable of being extended flat before being baked on a hot pan, resulting in a thin, flexible bread.” 

What is masa harina? Moist masa dough that is dried and then ground into powder. More on that presently. 

Nixtamal’s next wave

Let’s return to those forward-looking (and backward-looking!) chefs cooking Mexican food in the U.S., who have committed themselves to making their own masa, starting with nixtamalizing in their own restaurants. In early 2015, Food & Wine magazine called house-made tortillas a “new trend to watch for” in the coming year, though the story didn’t specify whether these tortillas were actually made with freshly made nixtamal. House-made tortillas had already been big where I lived (and still live), in Dallas, for years. In fact, trailblazing Dallas chef AQ Pittman (then known as Anastacia Quiñones) was nixtamalizing corn to make her own fresh masa at a restaurant called Alma back in 2011. (She continues to do so at the restaurant where she’s now executive chef, José.) Since 2015, the house-made tortilla trend — including in-house nixtamalization — quickly picked up steam, and it’s now going on all over the country.

Which brings us to the new wave: A growing number of nixtamal-focused chefs in the U.S. are using heirloom corn varieties sourced from Mexico to make nixtamal that’s much more nuanced and deeply flavored than nixtamal made from widely-available (industrially farmed) white maize.  

Jorge Gaviria in Oaxaca / Photo by Molly DeCoudreaux, courtesy of Masienda

Behind that movement is purveyor Jorge Gaviria, a chef and entrepreneur who fell into the heirloom seed movement when he apprenticed with Dan Barber at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in 2013. The following year, Gaviria learned of some three million small-scale farmers in Mexico, a number of whom had been collaborating with seed breeders to bolster native populations and were growing traditional, flavor-focused native varieties. He started buying surplus corn from 100 of them, and when he learned that Mexico City superstar chef Enrique Olvera (Pujol) was about to open Cosme in New York City, Gaviria offered to supply him with heirloom corn. Olvera agreed, and Gaviria’s company — Masienda — was born. 

Before long, Gaviria was also supplying Carlos Salgado (Taco Maria), Rick Bayless (Frontera Grill and Topolobampo in Chicago), Gabriela Cámara (Contramar, Cala) and Sean Brock (Minero), Steve Santana (Taquiza) and others. 

Here’s where it gets really exciting for home cooks: You can buy several varieties of the heirloom corn — along with cal, and everything you need to make tortillas, such as a fabulous-looking tortilla press and a traditional comal — online at Masienda. In his 2019 cookbook Tu Casa Mi Casa, Pujol’s Olvera called Masienda “a wonderful project that we recommend as the best source of heirloom corn outside of Mexico.”

The Masienda website is also a treasure-trove of excellent videos about making nixtamal, grinding it into masa, making tortillas and more.

Although making masa for tortillas is extremely involved, no special equipment is required to simply nixtamalize the corn — all you need is a big pot. Grinding it is where things get complicated. Professional molinos (mills) are gigantic and extremely expensive; a smaller molinito is $1,750 and weighs 82 pounds. Masienda sells a small, inexpensive hand-cranked mill, and also has a video showing how to make masa using your food processor. I haven’t yet attempted either, but plan to do so soon.

Two easy ways to enjoy heirloom maize

I was eager to make nixtamal, though, so I bought a sack of single-origin maiz cacahuazintle from Edo de México, nixtamalized it and made an out-of-this-world pozole — literally the best one I’ve ever tasted. Want in on that? Here’s a story about it, with my recipe. Through Cooks Without Borders CookShop, you can purchase the Pozole Kit Masienda sells, another with other Masienda products. 

Pozole made with heirloom maiz cacahuazintle from Edo de México, purchased through Masienda

But even if you don’t want to go to the trouble of making nixtamal, you can still make tortillas, tetelas, tamales and other masa-driven dishes using heirloom corn. That’s because Masienda also sells special “chef-grade” heirloom corn masa harina it produces itself. (It’s also available through links at our CookShop.)

Olivia Lopez with heirloom corns from Mexico (and masa she made from them) at Billy Can Can in Dallas, TX

I learned about Masienda’s masa harina from Olivia Lopez — who recently became Cooks Without Borders’ official Mexican cuisine expert/advisor. Lopez, chef de cuisine at Dallas restaurant Billy Can Can, purchased a molinito from Masienda in early pandemic, and when the shipment from Mexico was delayed, the folks at Masienda sent her some of its heirloom masa harina to play with while she waited. 

The Colima, Mexico-born chef, who plans one day to open a tortilla shop in Dallas inspired by Olvera’s Molino in Mexico City, is in process of developing several recipes for Cooks Without Borders using the heirloom masa harina. (Look for them in coming days!)

Pineapple tamales prepared with heirloom olotillo blanco masa harina from a recipe by Olivia Lopez

Watch our Cooks Without Borders video featuring Jorge Gaviria and Olivia Lopez.

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You'll love this Blueberry-Lemon-Almond 'Anytime' Cake morning, noon and night

Blueberry-Lemon-Almond Anytime Cake. This loaf-pan cake was inspired by a recipe in ‘Ottolenghi Simple.’

By Leslie Brenner

I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. But I do love to treat myself, now and again (and again and again!) to a slice of cake for breakfast. Or with a cup of tea in the afternoon. I love any dessert involving lemons, and I’m a pushover for almond cakes. Blueberries? Can’t get enough of ‘em.

Show me a gorgeous photo of a blueberry, almond and lemon cake, and that plan I had for shedding those extra Covid 19 pounds (yes literally 19, sorry to say) goes straight out the window.

There it was, on page 277 of Ottolenghi Simple, nestled seductively on brown parchment, its top looking like woodland berries nestled in a blanket of icing-snow. I had to have it. I couldn’t even wait for the right ingredients: Lacking fresh blueberries, I used a pack of frozen “wild” ones I’d been stashing just in case of this kind of emergency.

Blueberry-Lemon-Almond Anytime Cake

The Ottolenghi cake was very, very good. So good, I had to make it again — this time with fresh blueberries, which I knew would give it more juicy, bright pop. As Ottolenghi intended.

But being that person who is not exactly a sweet tooth, I’d cut back the sugar a bit. And because I’d always rather eat whole grains than white flour, I’d try making a swap. I wasn’t sure whether whole wheat flour would be odd with the almond meal that made this an almond cake, but it wouldn’t hurt to try. And because I love citrus, I’d make it more lemony — adding more zest and juice to the batter, and more juice to the icing.

I went for it — not revealing my nefarious, health-conscious tweaks to the rest of my household, two of whom are sugar-loving dessert-maniacs.

They loved it! No one noticed the whole-wheat flour or the missing quarter-cup of sugar. The texture was even nicer, and the extra blueberries I threw in were a bonanza.

The top lost its snowy look, a casualty of the added lemon juice, which turned the icing into more of a glaze — but I preferred it this way.

Especially because of this: Now we had a cake that didn’t look so much like a dessert. I could eat it for breakfast! I could eat it after lunch! I could eat it with tea, or with coffee, in the afternoon!
Say hello (and then goodbye!) to the Blueberry-Lemon-Almond Anytime Cake.

RECIPE: Blueberry-Lemon-Almond Anytime Cake

Take a moment to honor 98 year-old Diana Kennedy, the "Queen of Mexican regional cooking"

By Leslie Brenner

Editor’s note: Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

International Women’s Day feels like exactly the right part of Women’s History Month to celebrate Diana Kennedy. The trailblazing cookbook author — who turned 98 last week — has devoted no less than six decades of her life to studying and documenting the richness, tradition and techniques of the regional cuisines of Mexico.

If you haven’t seen Elizabeth Carroll’s 2019 documentary about her, “Nothing Fancy,” do treat yourself. The 1 hour, 8 minute film does a wonderful job at explaining why British-born Kennedy is widely regarded — even in Mexico — as the world’s foremost expert in traditional Mexican cuisine.

“I think she’s a legend,” says Gabriela Cámara, chef and owner of Contramar in Mexico City and Cala in San Francisco, in the film. “Many Mexicans are against admitting that Diana knows more than they do about their food.”

“I think Mexico as a country will be eternally indebted to her efforts,” was celebrity TV chef Pati Jinich’s take.

The author of eight books on Mexican cooking, including the seminal 1972 book The Cuisines of Mexico, Kennedy was the pioneer who evangelized to the English-speaking world about the depth, breadth and fabulousness of traditional Mexican cooking, the way it is done in cities and villages throughout Mexico. That book is out of print, but it is collected — along with The Tortilla Book and Mexican Regional Cooking — in The Essential Cuisines of Mexico. It is a must-have for anyone interested in Mexican cooking.

It was The Cuisines of Mexico that prompted me to buy an aluminum molcajete and a tortilla press 36 years ago, when I was in my 20s. I still have both, though I’ve graduated to a giant wooden tortilla press.

I’ve learned so much from Kennedy’s books over the years, starting with the proper way to make guacamole, grinding white onion, serrano chiles, cilantro and salt in the molcajete — and no garlic, as Kennedy emphatically exclaims in the documentary. Her books are always the first place I go whenever I have any question about any Mexican dish.

I had the amazing opportunity, back in the early 1990’s, not just to meet Kennedy, but to spend a long weekend cooking with her at my friend Danièle Mazet-Delpeuch’s house in Dordogne, France. As you’ll see if you watch the documentary, Kennedy is famously crotchety, which was my experience as well. But I’ll always treasure the time, which I wrote about a few years ago, in a story about making tortillas.

If it’s interesting or vexing to contemplate the idea of honoring a British-born woman as the “queen of Mexican regional cooking,” as a Los Angeles Times story by Daniel Hernandez did last year, consider the comments in the documentary of Abigail Mendoza. The chef and owner of Tlamanalli, a restaurant in Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca, had been friends for 35 years at the time the documentary was filmed. “Ella está una hija adaptiva en México — She’s an adoptive daughter of Mexico,” she said.

“She’s very Mexican in her soul and heart. I believe Diana is a Mexican, who does not have to have been born in Mexico. But she is in Mexico and lives in Mexico, is working in Mexico and is a Mexican.”

Happy International Women’s Day. I’m off now to make a batch of guacamole.

In celebration of gumbo z'herbes, a gloriously green, soul-nourishing Louisiana Lenten tradition

Chloé Landrieu-Murphy’s vegan gumbo z’herbes / Photograph by Chloé Landrieu-Murphy

By Chloé Landrieu-Murphy

Unless you’re from Southern Louisiana, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of gumbo z’herbes — an essential dish across the region, particularly for those who abstain from meat on Fridays during Lent. 

Often referred to as “the queen of all gumbos,” its name is a Creole dialect contraction for gumbo aux herbes, meaning “gumbo of greens.” (It’s also known as “green gumbo.”) Earthy, delicious and comforting, it is built like other gumbos, but it also includes an entire garden’s worth of leafy greens. 

Though traditional Lenten preparations of the dish don’t include meat, part of the appeal of gumbo z’herbes is the flexibility with which it is prepared, using any combination of greens, and optional meats. Meat versions may include ham hock, chaurice (a spicy Creole pork sausage), smoked andouille sausage, chicken, brisket and/or veal.

While the combinations of greens and meats that can be used are endless, tradition says that the number of greens included in your gumbo represents the number of friends you’ll make in that year, and that an odd number of greens should be used for good luck. Theories surrounding the symbolism of the greens vary, with some suggesting that nine varieties should be used as a representation of the nine churches visited by Catholics in New Orleans on Good Friday in remembrance of Jesus and his walk to crucifixion. 

A bowl of New Orleans’ most famous and sought-after version — the one served at legendary Dooky Chase’s Restaurant — earns the person eating it nine new friends, the late great chef Leah Chase told Southern Living magazine in 2016. “And I always hope that one of them’s rich,” she added. Chase died in 2019 at the age of 96.

Since 1941, the establishment — founded by Emily and Dooky Chase, Sr. (chef Leah Chase’s mother-in-law and father-in-law), and now run by Leah’s grandson chef Edgar “Dooky” Chase IV and her daughter Stella Chase Reese —  has served the city as a gathering place not only for Creole classics like gumbo, fried chicken and red beans and rice, but also as a vital space for everything from the arts to community organizing. Dooky Chase’s was a place where civil rights leaders, both black and white, came together for strategy sessions with luminaries including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the upstairs dining room.

Dooky Chase’s Gumbo des Herbes, prepared from a recipe in ‘The Dooky Chase Cookbook’ / Photograph by Leslie Brenner

Only once a year, on Holy Thursday (the Thursday before Easter, which falls on April 1 this year), does Dooky Chase’s serve its famous gumbo z’herbes. Featuring roughly equal parts meat (smoked andouille sausage, hot sausage, ham hock, chicken, brisket and veal brisket stew) and greens (collards, mustard greens, turnip greens, beet tops, cabbage, lettuce, watercress, spinach and carrot tops), it reflects the culinary traditions of the city’s Creoles of color.  

To achieve gumbo z’herbes greatness, chef Edgar boils the greens, then purées them. He then steams the meats, covers them with a quick roux, combines that with the puréed greens and their potlikker and simmers it all together before stirring in filé powder and serving it over rice. He generously shared the recipe with us; you can also find it Leah Chase’s The Dooky Chase Cookbook. 

Still, if you make it at home, there will be something missing. 

“You can put pretty much anything in it, if it’s green,” says Poppy Tooker, a New Orleans culinary ambassador and close friend of the late chef.  “But Leah had a secret ingredient, something you couldn’t buy in the store. Here in New Orleans, there’s a weed that grows wild in the levees and the medians called peppergrass. That was one of Leah’s secret ingredients, and there were some gentlemen who would walk the levees to gather the peppergrass for Leah to put in her gumbo every year.” 

While gumbo z’herbes is most certainly a gumbo, thanks to all those greens, it differs greatly in look and taste from more familiar gumbos. In her book Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at The New Orleans Table, Sara Roahen notes its uniqueness: 

“The only ways in which gumbo z’herbes resemble more common meat and seafood gumbos are that it’s eaten with a spoon, often crammed with sausage, and thickened with a roux —  and the latter only sometimes. In preparation, gumbo z’herbes is a multiplicity of smothered greens united in a communal pot likker. Its flavor and its origins are more mysterious: no two bites, or theories are the same.” 

So what makes gumbo z’herbes a gumbo? “You’ve still got a stock, you’ve still got a roux, you still have filé and you’re still adding all your meats and all that, so all that is the same base as a gumbo,” says chef Edgar. 

As with so many dishes in Louisiana’s culinary canon, the dish is reflective of a deep and complicated history with both West African and European influences. “All of this can be traced to the West African way with greens and to West Indian callaloo,” Toni Tipton-Martin explains in her 2019 cookbook Jubilee: Recipes From Two Centuries of African American Cooking, which also includes a wonderful version.

Toni Tipton-Martin’s gumbo z’herbes, from ‘Jubilee’ / Photograph by Leslie Brenner

In The Welcome Table: African American Heritage Cooking, culinary historian Jessica B. Harris speculates that the dish could be a cousin of the West African stew Sauce Feuille. There could be some German influence as well; in his Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cooking, author John Folse postulates that the dish came to Louisiana in the 1700’s with German Catholic settlers who traditionally ate a German seven-herb soup on Holy Thursday.

Today, while the Creoles of color in New Orleans generally reserve their meat-filled gumbo z’herbes for Holy Thursday festivities, few New Orleans restaurants besides Dooky Chase’s serve it, so it’s typically made at home. 

That said, you only have to look at two Holy Thursdays for a sense of how important the Dooky Chase’s gumbo z’herbes tradition is in the Crescent City: April 13, 2006 and April 9, 2020.  

Following the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding and closure of Dooky Chase’s, the tradition was put at risk. Restaurateur Rick Gratia opened the doors of his own establishment, Muriel’s, to chef Leah and her team, according to Tooker, who was by her friend’s side throughout. “He turned his beautiful restaurant on Jackson Square over to Leah so that the city of New Orleans wouldn’t be deprived of their Holy Thursday tradition.” 

In many ways, Holy Thursday of 2020 was even harder, Tooker explained to me. “It was the first year without Leah,” she says. On top of that, a week before Holy Thursday, Stella Chase Reese’s husband of 50 years died suddenly of Covid-19.  “But the Chase family still did Holy Thursday, and they did it as a drive-by pickup. There were police, there was traffic for a mile, and there were people lined up. It was a really big deal.”

While gumbo z’herbes is a direct reflection of the Catholic identity and traditions that are so deeply ingrained within Louisiana culture, it’s also a delicious, body- and soul-nourishing dish that can and should be enjoyed by all — which was my thought in developing my own recipe for a Vegan Gumbo Z’herbes.

“When you maintain traditions like gumbo z’herbes, it gives people a sense of hope, a sense of community and a sense of normalcy,” says chef Edgar. 

So if you can’t make it to Dooky Chase’s this year for Holy Thursday, why not bring the tradition into your own home?

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Chloe Landrieu-Murphy is a recent graduate of New York University’s Masters in Food Studies program and a lover of all things food and culture related. This is her first story for Cooks Without Borders.

RECIPE: Dooky Chase’s Gumbo des Herbes

RECIPE: ‘Jubilee’ Gumbo Z’herbes

RECIPE: Chloé’s Vegan Gumbo Z’herbes

Outstanding cookbook author Toni Tipton-Martin puts history at the center of the American table

By Leslie Brenner

Editor’s note: Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

It is history itself that animates the books of Toni Tipton-Martin, a culinary historian, writer, editor and cook who has become a powerful force for amplifying, celebrating and honoring the voices of Black cooks throughout American history.

Toni Tipton-Martin / Photograph by Pableaux Johnson

In 2015, Tipton-Martin published her award-winning The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African-American Cookbooks, which she followed in 2019 with Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking.

[Read more about Toni Tipton-Martin’s Jubilee.]

Its pages are filled with delicious recognition of the contribution of African American cooks and chefs — and include some of our favorite recipes of the last year. I’m forever attached to Jubilee’s Pickled Shrimp, to Tipton-Martin’s Country-Style Potato Salad and to her Pork Chops in Lemon-Caper Sauce.

Pickled shrimp prepared from a recipe in ‘Jubilee’ by Toni Tipton-Martin

Its historical depth is just as appetizing — for instance a deep dive into green gumbo — gumbo z’herbes — that inspired an upcoming Cooks Without Borders story.

In September, Tipton-Martin — who began her career at the Los Angeles Times, and later led food coverage at the Cleveland Plain Dealer as its food editor — was named editor in chief of Cook’s Country.

Dorie Greenspan knocks it out of the kitchen with books about baking and French cooking

By Leslie Brenner

Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

[NOTE: This story was updated Feb. 16, 2022.]

Cookbook author Dorie Greenspan / Photograph by Heather Ramsdell/Food Network

It seems fitting to lead off our series with an appreciation of the woman who launched my own food-writing career: Dorie Greenspan. In the early 1990s, Dorie was the editor of a stapled-together newsletter from a cooking organization that had only been created a few years earlier: The James Beard Foundation. Dorie gave me the opportunity to write for that flier, called “News from the Beard House.”

Dorie was a wonderful editor to work with back in the day; in the decades that followed, she has proven again and again that she’s a splendid story-teller, and a great cook. Her recipes work beautifully, and they’re always delicious.

Dorie’s cookbooks include (among others):

• Around My French Table

• Baking with Dorie

• Baking Chez Moi

• Baking: From My Home to Yours

• Dorie’s Cookies

• Everyday Dorie

Around My French Table is one of my favorite French cookbooks — as is Café Boulud Cookbook, which Dorie co-wrote with chef Daniel Boulud.

An apple-Calvados cake adapted from a recipe in ‘Around My French Table’

A couple weeks ago, I thought about an apple cake I love in Around my French Table, swapped the rum in the recipe for Calvados, and we were all sweetly rewarded.

In honor of Women’s History Month, we’re celebrating our favorite female cookbook authors

By Leslie Brenner

Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors. 

When we think about our favorite cookbooks of all time, the titles that endure, the cookbooks that we reach for again and again over the years — the ones that survive the period purges of our bookshelves — far more often than not, they are written by women. 

Throughout the month, we’ll be spotlighting female cookbook authors. Sometimes we’ll be honoring an entire long, distinguished career; other times a new author with a wonderful recent title; and occasionally someone who didn’t write many books, but gave us one or two truly great ones. 

As March is also our entry into spring, it feels like a great time to edit the bookshelf; bid goodbye to cookbooks that no longer “spark joy” (to quote Marie Kondo). Of course that’ll free up space — and we’re sure you’ll discover authors among those we’ll feature to add to your collections.

The first spotlight is coming shortly. Meanwhile, you might like to browse around our new list at Bookshop: “Women Have a History of Writing the Best Cookbooks.” Note that it only includes books available at Bookshop, so it’s missing some older titles we love. We will be featuring them, along with recent releases, in coming days and weeks in our stories.

Happy browsing!