AN: TO EAT

Recipes and Stories from a Vietnamese Family Kitchen by Helen An and Jacqueline An

Curating the menu from this book was a collaboration of love. Scott asked me what I thought of all the possible choices. We began to imaging the smells, colors and textures. It was a sensual delight.

• Scott & Heide

  Your host and hostess. Together for over 2 years and experimenting with the recipe of love.

• PJ & Mallika

  Guests and friends. Married almost 20 years and newbies in the kitchen of AN.

• Ollie and Cora

  Seriously together and just announcing their engagement. Hot and heavy on appreciation!

• Timm and Kerry

  Love birds. Newly together and exploring tastes!

• Geoffery

  Single man whose heart yearns for a woman with whom he has been burned.

Tiato Rolls

eponyous nomeculture, playful green and purple herbs, yellow tran-suclulent wrapping, and sweet pairings of vegetarian fillings made this an enctuous appetiser.

Amuse a Bouche

Pho First!

Jars of Sumptuousness

Homemade Vietnamese yogurt, pickled vegetables and pickled mustard greens.

Exotic and Powerful

A rendezvous of Waygu and Chinese Long Beans

I’m Galangal About YOU!

Crispy Turmeric Fish with Fresh Dill.

For your Sweety

Candied Heirloom Carrots

A menage a cinq! Well, four couples and Geoffery! (Not pictured, Scott and Heide)

Ollie said he felt like we were eating like kings and queens!

jamie's kitchen - A Cooking Course for Everyone

Collaborative Dinner #2

There was the preparation and then there was the presentation!

And then there was the digestion….

This was a delicious meal from start to finish that was characterized by the fun and fresh approach that Jaime Oliver brings to his storytelling in the cookbook.

NOPI (a bigger collaboration!)

Our first Collaborative Dinner with a curated menu!

The Uncommon Meal website has been quiet for almost two years. A couple of fun meals happened and left happy memories untethered by words. These were the Bahn Mi Fest in Summer 2021 and the Solstice pizza night of 2021. Both were culinary triumphs that deserve a story. This is not those stories…

Feeling self conscious about my lack of writing followup in 2021, I am boosting the chance for success by partnering with Heide to re-imagine and energize this dinner party and cookbook review series using the website in new ways to connect with people around food.

Together we quickly chose NOPI as the featured book and with minimal deliberation we narrowed down the 100+ recipes to 12 to share with our actual guests and our (new concept) virtual guests. This is how the new collaboration page was born and immediately put to the test. Our guests were able to choose recipes from the 12 offered and make their dishes without needing the actual book in front of them. I am eager to make more changes and improvements with enhanced sophistication and interactivity.

In starting the vision of our own part in cooking this meal, I was immediately and oddly attached to the Jerusalem artichoke soup with hazelnut spinach tarragon pesto (pictured above on the night of service). More on that later! This dish was a star. To round out the meal and to take responsibility for a main dish, we choose Lemon sole with burnt butter sauce and toasted capers. For the week or two before the event it was definitely a, “calm before the storm” kind of feeling mixed with a familiar, “life is busy outside of the kitchen” vibe.

I did most of our shopping a couple of days in advance, stockpiling specific needs of this menu and planning a final ‘day of service’ shopping trip to AJ’s for the fish and the artichokes and a few last minutes inspirations.

I started the day with an easy sense of having plenty of time for everything, while Heide wisely suggested making a timeline that included prep work, setup, and each phase of cooking. Having taken that extra (for me…) step of planning really paid off in making the day flow smoothly and stay fun even with the inevitable little bumps in the road.

So, we had one other unofficial dish to make because I found chickpea flour buried in the fridge that called out to be made into NOPI’s faranata flatbread. It seemed simple with only three ingredients and I pictured it as a perfect soup and sauce dipping food. To my surprise it was complicated to make and didn’t even taste good to me (others liked it at least ok…)

As mentioned earlier, the soup was amazing. It was fun to make, starting with the pesto, and even including the peeling of a zillion odd shaped Jerusalem artichokes. (Pro tip: use the tip of a spoon to peel) Everything about this dish felt great. I mean, each ingredient seemed special, tasted good, and played an important role in the final experience. I made my own vegetable broth from scratch in order to bring all of the flavors of fennel, leek, carrot, onion, lemon, and jalapeno into the soup base.

Cooking the fish was always going to be a last minute thing. We prepped as far as we could with toasting the capers (who knew?!?), chopping the parsley, and zesting the lemon. The fish slipped under the broiler as the guests arrived to be plated with the burnt butter sauce mixed with ginger, lemon, and parsley.

The meal itself was a great experience of connecting with people socially (9 of us total) and of tasting so many great dishes inspired by the same book.

My Bombay Kitchen (a collaboration)

Yay for forward by Alice Waters…

Hello friends. I am once again long overdue for writing about a lovely (and definitely uncommon) meal that took place in October 2020. Its early days of 2021 now and I need to address this persistent writer’s block issue I have after such fun cooking for close friends and family. One last time (see Mozza), I’ll blame the pandemic.

This Parsi (Indian/Iranian meal is my first with guest host, Heide, who provided the book, the inspiration, and an abundance of enthusiasm for planning the menu.

side note: yes, this means that I still have 50 books left in the series. Fasten your seat belts! 2021 will be an exciting culinary ride…

This blog post is dedicated to Eric, Forest & Brian who cheerfully ate everything that Heide and I produced.

Lime crunching kitchen monster

This is every bit as wobbly, savory, creamy, and sweet as promised…

Indian jaggery ‘sugar’ chunk

This meal is a symphony of color and emotion and care. So many shallots and chilis and bouquets of cilantro. So many cumin & fennel seeds, and other fun spices. So many moments of laughter and last second collaborative decision making. A funny thing about timing happened this night. We showed up to Azimuth Ranch with our groceries at around 5:00pm and knew that Brian and Forest couldn’t possibly get back from the Canyon before 9:00. Thus, we figured that we had more than enough time to cook everything, and we may even eat first and save them plates. Turns out (you guessed accurately) that we were not even close to done cooking by the time they rolled in from their week long hike. Thankfully this gave them time for showers!!

Somehow, recipes that presented as “simple” turned into exercises in complexity and precision.

The Menu:

• Carrot & fresh coriander soup p.74

  • deeply orange and fully delicious

• Katles Kavab p.116

  • Introducing “Impossible burger” as a game time decision after a lack of cashews disqualified ‘cashew cream chicken’

• Tomato gravy p.118

  • Reduction of liquids = intensification of flavor

• Red lentil & rice khichri p. 165

  • This gave us the beautiful color of lentils along with the individuality of each grain of perfectly plump (non-sticky to itselfy) rice

• Caramelized fried rice p. 168

  • introducing jaggery for extra sweetness

  • questions were asked right about now, why a second rice dish that barely fits on the table or in our bellies? Well, jaggery is the answer. Most amazing basmati rice I’ve ever had.

• Wobbly cauliflower custard p.189

  • enough said!

• Cabbage salad w/ lime & mint p.214

  • see photos for the fresh colors of lime and mint. The flavors were intensely bright and refreshing

• Parsi green chutney p.227

  • oh my! impossible to get enough of this mashed up alchemy of coconut, chili, mint, cilantro, and lime. Add a hint of cumin and jaggery and it is a truly unusual addition to every dish that completely elevated this meal.

Stay tuned for the next meal in the uncommon series. I am eager to cook for a bigger circle of folks outside my immediate pandemic pod. Perhaps I’ll come up with an uncommon meal “to go”…

Meanwhile, my message to everyone is, “Eat like your life depends on it”

Mozza at Home: a review and a meal

After a meal with Eric at Nancy Silverton’s restaurant Mozza, I knew I had to feature it very early in my 2020 series. The weird thing about this one is that I prepared the meal for an esteemed group of guests in Flagstaff, AZ on March 15, 2020 right as the global pandemic was knocking down our doors. We even questioned, “should we do this?”, and, opting in, we found ourselves awkwardly elbow bumping and keeping a certain distance from each other. Thankfully we enjoyed an amazing meal without any harmful health outcomes. Descriptions below…

My theme for this meal, in keeping with the culinary philosophy of Mozza, was to highlight simple, delicious ingredients prepared plainly with love. With potatoes, tomatoes, chicken thighs, popcorn, and shortbread prominent in the menu, I suppose ‘comfort food’ is another way to describe this.

I was in Flagstaff for construction & remodeling at Azimuth ranch. On the Sunday of the meal, I dropped those tools and picked up my knife, softened plenty of butter, and poured an extra cup of coffee, and totally took over the kitchen

With the sharpest knife on the planet I started with fresh cilantro, parsley, oregano, mint, and lemon juice to marinade the chicken and cut whole celery units (bulbs?) in half to prepare them for their ultra long low roast. Potatoes and tomatoes stayed whole awaiting future attention. Here is the full menu w/ page references for the book, Mozza at Home, https://la.osteriamozza.com/

• Panicale Popcorn, p. 292

  • This is popcorn meant to be the first snack as guests arrived along with Eric’s home brewed beer. The corn is popped with garlic, rosemary, chili flakes, salt, and pepper for a bit of a kick.

• Braised Celery, p. 222

  • celery braised in vegetable stock w/ thyme, lemon, olive oil, and Maldon salt flakes. That’s it! Nearly 2 and a half hours of cooking transform this into celery like you’ve never seen before.

• Slow Roasted Tomatoes, p. 189

  • garlic, thyme, olive oil, and Maldon salt. Again, very simple, and simply delicious.

• Twice Roasted Smashed Potatoes. p. 97

  • Olive oil, sage, butter, butter, butter, and Maldon salt. I can imagine a bunch of dishes that have potatoes, tomatoes, and celery all in one. On this night, I featured each one separately in ways that magnified the essence of each ingredient.

• Flattened Chicken Thighs w/ Charred Lemon Salsa Verde, p. 288-290

  • I digress here in that I am remembering going shopping at Whole Foods on Sunday morning 3/15 and realizing that ‘something’ was already happening to create a surge in shopping. Toilet paper was already gone and the meat guy said he could hardly keep up with demand. Little did I know then how much behaviors will be forced to change to this day and ongoing.

  • Back to the food! This chicken has been marinading since morning in lemon juice, garlic, parsley, cilantro. thyme, fresh oregano, sage, and olive oil. The lemon slices go into a 500 degree oven on a pizza stone to caramelize and char. These are chopped and mixed with fresh oregano and mint and a bit of anchovy for the depth of the sea. I could eat this on anything! Bright minty, lemony, salty, deeply green chimmichurri like salsa on the chicken was ephemeral.

  • The chicken itself was seared in cast iron pans on high heat and then weighted down (flattened) with more cast iron and whatever else I could find in the kitchen. I’m remembering cooking this phase of the dinner as everyone arrives and starts eating popcorn. By this time I am 7 hours into it and probably sweating and certainly having a blast!!!

• Salted Walnut Shortbread, p. 373

  • There are a bunch of desserts in this book that I am sure are amazing. This one had me at shortbread. COuld be something to do with my affinity for butter… Toasting the walnuts first built a rich flavor, and using Nina’s magic baking mixer bowl, made the whole thing mix up so easily. I love this dessert! It was even better the next day.

The tomatoes were cooked low and slow while the lemons were roasted in an apocalyptic inferno to be macerated into a lemon verde salsa for the chicken. Oh my! The potatoes were also subjected to 500+ degree heat to utterly transform them into bliss inducing pillows to be smashed and doused in butter and garlic. This heat, it’s not rocket science, yet its still not typical in our daily kitchens. I really enjoyed exploring the extremes of temperatures with these ingredients that are so familiar. Take another look at this celery…

When has celery been a main dish in your life? Never? That’s me…

This dish of braised celery was was a revelation (Eric’s fave). Go forth and celebrate the celery :-)

Now check out this walnut shortbread again…

I haven’t been a dessert guy until 2020. My date/caramel cake in February and this toasted walnut shortbread were both off the charts tasty. Cooked this butter-rich, toasted walnut shortbread for over an hour at 225 degrees F and the result amazed me. We had already eaten a full meal and this turned into the perfect late night treat along with the last of the wine.

I’ve been flummoxed by public pandemic expectations (PPE) since returning to Tucson after this deeply satisfying meal. I’ve been unsure about planning another uncommon meal event. I feel that there are some viable options for us and admit to settling into a kind of funk. Just know, that I’m back after being sidelined for nearly 6 months and I need to be cooking for people! I’m exploring doing a takeaway version soon, or an outdoor dining version as soon as ambient temps in Tucson drop below 100 blasted degrees. Stay tuned, for we will surely be eating together again soon.

Everything I Want To Eat

I chose this book by Jessica Koslow of Sqirl in Los Angeles because I love the title and I’ve eaten at the restaurant. My intention with this and the 51 books to follow is to create a meal for 8 people inspired by the books and using actual recipes and techniques found in the books. This meal happened on February 1, 2020. I will write about the experience of foraging, cooking, and eating and reflect on the process of following recipes and serving the meal. I hope to include comments from some of the folks who shared in this experience. These blog posts are meant to be a review of the featured cookbook and a story about food.

Book #1 in the culinary adventure

This meal gave me a chance to use several ingredients that I harvested in the edible landscape of my community. Here is the full menu with locally harvested produce in bold:

• Socca (chickpea flour pancakes) w/ winter squash, zucchini, carrots p.92

  • added leeks

  • mint, oregano, baby greens, lemon

• Stinging nettle cavatelli p.103

  • nettles, lemon, eggs

• Chicken lofte on rosemary sprigs w/ garlic schmear & cabbage kumquat salad p.119

  • rosemary, lemon, mint,

• Sticky toffee whole-wheat date cake p.229

  • I haven’t made a cake in 20 years and this blew my mind

Since this is a cookbook review I need to say that this is a fantastic book. The food I cooked behaved in the way the recipes described. I even behaved (more or less) in the execution of these recipes. I see recipes and cookbooks as a road map leading to a delicious destination. Thus, there is almost always more than one way to reach this destination. A cook needs freedom along with guidance for more complicated journeys and, in this book, Jessica Koslow finds the balance. Her approach to food encourages us to elevate and celebrate the deliciousness in each ingredient. For example:

• stinging nettle brought a unique flavor to the pasta along with its brilliant green color

• kumquat puree drenched the cabbage with eye popping flavor

• agave syrup & butter combined on the stove in gooey toffee alchemy

• rosemary branches gave structure and a subtle base of flavor to the chicken kofta

• 30+ cloves of garlic emulsified with lemon juice and oil multiplied garlicness x 1000

Finally, I served this meal in courses in part because I couldn’t figure out how to get everything hot and ready at once, and more importantly, because it slowed the meal down and gave us more time to taste and talk. Kudos to the cooks at Sqirl for being able to get food out to the tables - always delicious and on time. Go there next time you are in Los Angeles. “Everything I Want to Eat” is delicious…

“I’m a big fan of dates. I’ve been buying them weekly and eating them daily until I run out. Still, up until now I thought a chocolate desert would win out over everything else.

This date cake celebrated dates in a way I haven’t experienced before and challenged my chocolate bias. I loved the combination of the sweet, moist, gooey dates with the deep, bready texture.
”

— Debby U, neighbor