Innehållsförteckning för August/September 2017 från SAVEUR

Pongala (Sweet Sacred Coconut Porridge) SERVES 8; Photo pg. 43 Active: 30 min. • Total: 1 hr. 10 min. Pongala means “to boil over,” referring to the moment the starchy water from this sweet rice dish bubbles above the lip of its clay pot. At the Attukal Pongala festival, pongala, the offering made to a Hindu deity, is cooked over fire and seasoned with jaggery (unrefined palm sugar) and coconut. Recipes can vary to include cardamom, cinnamon, banana, and raisins. 1 cup Kerala matta (rose matta) rice, soaked and rinsed ¾ cup jaggery 1 cup freshly grated coconut 3 Tbsp. ghee 2 tsp. freshly ground cardamom 2 Tbsp. chopped cashews, toasted 2 Tbsp. raisins 1 ripe banana, sliced In a medium pot over high heat, bring 5 cups water to…

THE READ: British writer Michael Booth loved Denmark so much, he wrote The Almost Nearly Perfect People, an ode to the Danish good life. Spoiler alert: He moved there. THE BLOCK: On Jægersborggade, one short but mighty street, you can buy handmade ceramics from Danish artisans at Vanishing Point, pick up a cup of singleorigin pour-over from Coffee Collective, and dine on stellar beef tartare and veggie-friendly plates at Manfreds. THE RESERVATION: Located by a harbor in the heart of the city, Bo Bech’s Geist has a delightfully surprising menu that marries left-field ingredients. Don’t miss the coffee-and-cashew shiitakes. restaurantgeist.dk THE HOTEL: At SP34, the suites look like a modern Scandinavian design store’s showroom; the breakfast of Danish breads, meats, and cheeses is painstakingly organic; and the central location is…

ires crackle over a gravel lot and roll to a stop. A rusty latch clangs loose. And amid the manure and mud of a rural, open-air sale barn—a place where beef and dairy cattle are auctioned—in Stephenville, Texas, a 1,300-pound cow ambles out of a trailer, belly swaying side to side. “See that right there?” Wayne Goodman asks, prodding me in the ribs with his elbow. “That’s your steak in motion.” A slight, spry 60-year-old with fine white hair and robin’segg blue eyes, Goodman is like a character straight out of a Western: He catches cattle thieves for a living. Cow-nabbing is alive and well in Texas, and as one of 30 special rangers with the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA), Goodman, a former police detective, spends his…

On a bright, brittle January morning in Sinop, Turkey, fishmonger Mert Kanal barked into a headset, “Where are the hamsi?!” Agitated customers milled outside his family’s fish shop and restaurant, Okyanus Balik Evi. They weren’t waiting for the shimmering blue-striped bonito, pink mullet, or gargantuan flounders heaped on the restaurant’s tables. They wanted hamsi—anchovies from the Black Sea that Turks call “the prince of fishes.” Most mornings between October and February, commercial trawlers on this part of the coast disgorge hills of anchovies at the pier. But for almost a week, violent squalls had prevented them from docking. The previous night, the skies had finally cleared. The big boats were back, and crews worked feverishly, loading crates into refrigerated trucks. Sinop residents wanted their share of the catch—and so did…

USE BONE-IN MEATS AND WHOLE SHRIMP AND PRAWNS. Remember how all the other ingredients are mostly there to flavor the rice? Bones, shells, and heads mean deeper flavors in the stock that the rice cooks in. WAIT UNTIL ALL OF YOUR GUESTS ARRIVE BEFORE ADDING THE RICE. As my mother-in-law always says, “People can wait for rice, but rice can’t wait for people.” DON’T STIR. This is not risotto. Stirring means a creamy rather than dry texture, and you also won’t get any socarrat. REST THE DISH. Before serving, let the paella rest for 5 minutes to allow the flavors to blend and the starches in the rice to firm up so the grains will hold their shape. If the top layer of rice needs to cook more, cover the…

“The liquid must be completely absorbed at the precise moment that the rice is al punto [at the point],” I wrote in my book La Paella. “And here lies the challenge, in a shifting equation of pan, heat source, and liquid.” $19; Chronicle Books “If you look closely enough, you will find the entire history of Spain within the perimeter of a paella pan,” opens Matt Goulding’s chapter on Valencia in Grape, Olive, Pig, a deep dive into the dish synonymous with the region and the fight for authentic paella. $35; HarperCollins…

In late May, the medieval German town of Nienburg crowned a new asparagus princess in the garden of the Lower Saxony Asparagus Museum. It was the day after the annual asparagus run, and the winners of other local pageants put on party dresses and sashes to welcome the Spargel Prinzessin to their royal court. There was an herb princess in a green skirt, a harvest princess in a floral headdress, and two rhododendron princesses in red gowns. “I can get used to being around so many beautiful women,” the potato prince, who wore a brown suit and was the only male pageant winner, told the emcee. The asparagus princess, a shy teenager named Nicole Cybin, had an exalted place among her peers: In Germany, Spargel, or white asparagus, reigns supreme…

CHAMOMILE-PICKLED NEW POTATOES WITH BEURRE BLANC AND FLOWERS SERVES 4–6 Active: 50 min. • Total: 3 hr. “We have always had a big potatoes-and-gravy culture in Denmark,” says Møller. “Once you get into summer and new potatoes start coming into season, white gravies—usually milk thickened and flavored with herbs like parsley—come back in style instead of heavier brown gravies.” His fresh spin on the combination uses a bright, high-acid beurre blanc in place of a cream-based gravy, and features lightly crunchy pickled potatoes infused with chamomile, a flower that grows wild even in the city. For the potatoes: 2. lb. new potatoes (as small and round as possible) Kosher salt 2 cups plus 2 Tbsp. white wine vinegar 1 cup sugar ⅓ cup fresh or 3 Tbsp. dried chamomile flowers…

RIPENESS IS USUALLY EVERYTHING when it comes to choosing tomatoes. Each summer, though, I keep an eye out for firm, unripe green specimens to make one of my favorite tart pasta sauces. Even when cooked, green tomatoes have punch and brightness to them, and they retain a slight crunch, which lends texture to tender pasta noodles and clings to crusty bread. Simmering them briefly tames their puckery acidity a bit, but you could also leave green tomato sauce raw, tossing it with hot pasta to do the cooking for you. Easy Green Tomato Sauce In a food processor or blender, purée at least 6 coarsely chopped green tomatoes. Sauté a few slices of garlic in olive oil until aromatic, then add a handful of fresh basil and parsley (or any…

SILVER-SKINNED FRESH ANCHOVIES, or hamsi in Turkish, are the holy grail for Robyn Eckhardt, writer of “Hamsi Season,” (pg. 13), and author of the forthcoming cookbook, Istanbul and Beyond (Rux Martin). Unlike the cured ones, fresh anchovies are sweet, delicate, and barely briny. They’re great battered in cornmeal and deep-fried, or marinated in white wine vinegar and herbs to use on sandwiches, but one of the best ways to enjoy them is with juicy, flavorful summer tomatoes. At Emre Balikcilik, a rustic seaside restaurant in Giresun, on Turkey’s northern coast, owner Turken Tunan prepares hamsi buglamasi (from the Turkish for “steamed” or “boiled”): Freshly filleted anchovies are layered with sliced tomatoes, sprinkled with chiles, and topped with knobs of butter. It is simmered just until the anchovies cook through…

rnesto Alpízar didn’t taste a strawberry until after the revolution, when he was 34 and living in Eastern Europe. As a kid in the 1930s, he recalls seeing the fruit from afar in Bauta, the rural village outside Havana where he grew up. A farmer there cultivated them exclusively for wealthy Cubans and expats. Like Coca-Cola and cars, the first strawberries had arrived from the United States in the early 1900s. But the plants didn’t fare well in the tropical climate and remained a rarity. As a young man, Alpízar taught English in high school. After the revolution, he was given the opportunity to study abroad as part of a Castro-sponsored program to train citizens and reward supporters of the revolution. (Alpízar’s father, the head of a baker’s union, had…

Caldo de Pescado (Fish Stock) MAKES 2 QT.; Photo pg. 20 Active: 10 min. • Total: 45 min. Homemade stock infuses the deepest flavor into paella. In Spain, a classic fish stock—the kind used in shellfish paella—is typically made from a combination of small bony, non-oily soup fish (such as little red mullets), the heads and bones of larger species (such as monkfish or cod), and often a handful of Mediterranean galeras (mantis shrimp) or small crabs, and simple aromatics. This recipe doubles easily if you prefer to make a big batch and store it. 1.–2 lb. small, white-fleshed, non-oily fish such as red mullet, or the heads and bones of larger whitefleshed, non-oily fish, such as cod 1 leek, trimmed, coarsely chopped, and rinsed 1 large tomato, halved 10…

“Pop-up” is a goofy term but there’s value in taking the restaurant show on the road. Earlier this spring—between closing the doors of its original Copenhagen location and renovating a new space—Noma moved the entire front-of-house and kitchen staff(and everyone’s spouses and kids) to Tulum. Noma Mexico was an exceptional, built-fromthe-ground-up, open-air, wood-fired restaurant serving insanely interesting food to the very lucky few—and then it was gone. René Redzepi CHEF, CO-OWNER From: Copenhagen, Denmark. Age: 39. Has worked at Noma since 2004. “Routine is comforting, but it’s dangerous too. Routine is how you become an old person on the inside. The success of Noma has been amazing, but success can limit you creatively. You keep exploring the familiar avenues that you know lead to success. Suddenly you have things to…

a railway platform, filling. Men at a fluorescentlit window, yelling for coffee. A chai wallah toward an idle train, his silver pail a tin moon floating across the tracks. Sleeping bodies lined up, linens swaddling heads, tiffins stacked next to shoes. A woman’s voice, lilting and constant, announcing arrivals Malayalam, Hindi, and English. The air is dense, a tropical film slicked across faces and windshields. The banyan trees are heavy with chatty birds. Down the platform, the women gather. First in twos, then fours, and soon by the dozens. The bags piled by their feet are stuffed with weathered coconut tree bark, banana leaves, rice, and lumps of jaggery, every ingredient neatly wrapped in sheets of Hindi newspaper. More women. More bags. More coconut bark. A sea of saris, purple,…

“WHAT IS A GOOD KISS?” Chef Bo Bech and I are sitting on the canal-side patio of his restaurant Geist talking about what makes a Dane a Dane. He’s greeted me with a steady gaze that makes me feel, too much so, seen. I’ve met him for drinks (lemon-thyme cocktails— he’s decided for us both) so he can help me understand what it is that makes his fellow countrypeople tick. I travel a lot, but I keep coming back to Denmark. On each trip I’ve noted and envied the invincibly chill vibes of this fine city, and each time I’ve returned home with arms full of asymmetric T-shirts and cleanlined ceramics hoping to infuse my New York life with some semblance of Nordic order and ease. This time, I explain…

Bloody Marys are a revelation when you swap out drab bottled mixers for sunny, homemade tomato nectar. Blitz your ripest, juiciest heirloom tomatoes in a blender and press through a fine strainer, then season to taste with sea salt, a squeeze of citrus, and a splash of fish sauce. Sweet Green Zebras or Sungolds make for vibrant (if not-quite-bloody) varia tions, and a fragrant spirit like dill aquavit or smoky mezcal adds more delicious dimensions. SEE SAVEUR.COM/BLOODYMARY FOR OUR RECIPE…

WHILE LIVING IN THE Miramar neighborhood of Havana, writer Jen Lin-Liu enjoyed home delivery of strawberries, a scarce and hyperseasonal fruit in Cuba. (See “The Strawberry Whisperer,” pg. 14.) But it was dining out at La Guarida, a well-regarded paladar (a small, usually family-run restaurant), that she encountered this strawberry, tomato, and watermelon soup, garnished with homemade croutons and grilled shrimp. Spanish gazpacho is almost as rare in Cuba as the strawberries themselves, Lin-Liu says. Owner Enrique Nuñez, who has been serving the soup for years, has perfected the formula of adding just enough of the precious berries for the fruit’s tart-sweet flavor to shine through the blend of tomatoes and watermelon.…