
This week, I talk about that magical ingredient, butter–salted vs. unsalted, various types, when to use a lot, when to use a little…. 







Butter is one of those great ingredients that makes a lot of things taste sensational, but people can be unreasonably afraid of it as well. Yes, restaurants are often guilty of applying it gratuitously, for a quick-and-easy taste sensation, but at home, you can use it judiciously. You shouldn’t skip it just because it seems like it might be bad for you.







To convince you that maybe butter won’t kill you, check out Jennifer McLagan’s excellent cookbook Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient. There’s a whole chapter devoted to butter. Granted, it’s titled “Butter: Worth It,” so, yes, it implies it might be a bit of a guilty pleasure. But it also has a sensible attitude toward the use of it. I of course don’t recommend cooking everything in this book at once, but you’ll learn a lot.







Reminder: a lot of my cooking advice is also available in How to Throw a Dinner Party Without Having a Nervous Breakdown, my cookbook with Tamara Reynolds. Available where all fine ebooks are sold. 

RERUN Episode 16: Recipe Decoder: Butter

Arts

Literature

Performing Arts

Design

Food

Fashion & Beauty

Visual Arts

Health

Alternative Health

Self-Help

Sexuality

Fitness & Nutrition


This week I do a little brain dump about saffron, a treasured ingredient that feels fitting for spring. How to buy, what to cook with it, and so on. Plus an easy saffron recipe. Ambient noise of the week: subway. (Sorry.)







Mentioned in the episode:



Frying Pan Food Adventures — fantastic walking tours of Dubai, on semi-hold right now, due to lockdowns, but they have a podcast too, so you can live vicariously!



Saffron all wrapped up to keep the light out



Heray Spice — where I recently bought my ridiculously huge load of saffron, though I see that they sell only through Amazon now, which is less ideal. Still, quality is high.



League of Kitchens — love these online cooking classes! Mab’s Persian class was wonderful.



Persia — cookbook by Naomi Duguid with a lot of good saffron recipes and general guidance.



The Art of Eating — fantastic food magazine, really focused on why certain things taste the way they do. Incredibly educational and well edited.



Chard Stalks with Anchovies — the original Provençal recipe as published in The Art of Eating, which through my inattention and outright laziness turned into…



Chard Stems with Saffron and Cream



Approximately 7g of saffron. Enough for a while!



Turn on your oven to 350-400 — heat depends on how much else you’re cooking and how fast you want this to go.



From a big bunch of chard, cut out the stems — I do this with scissors, folding the leaf onto itself so the stem is kind of the exposed spine, and cutting through the double layer of leaf to remove the stalk. Fine if it’s not super-precise, and you get a little green on the edges.



Rinse your stems well. Don’t cut them more yet, as they start to oxidize. 



Crush up a couple of garlic cloves — I like mine chunky. If you have salt-packed anchovies, rinse them and bone them. Or use oil-packed anchovy fillets — one or two, depending on your taste — or the equivalent squeeze of anchovy paste. Heat a little glug of olive oil or butter in a skillet and stir and fry your anchovy and garlic, just so the anchovy melts a bit and the garlic is fragrant. 



Add a pinch of saffron threads (six or so? eight? not a lot) and stir those around just until you can smell the saffron. Take the skillet off the heat. (If you have saffron water made, the way I describe in the episode, you can stir it in to the half-and-half instead.)



Now trim your chard stems — cut off the brown ends, and I like to cut mine into, say, two-inch lengths, on the bias. They look like fancy little tiles, and they fit on your fork better than whole long stems!



Put the chard stems in a shallow baking dish — ideally something with a lid, and wide enough that the chards stems are not more than a double layer in the bottom. More like a single solid layer, maybe with a few more pieces on top, is ideal. 



Pour the garlic/anchovy/saffron oil over and stir a little to combine. Add a few big glugs of half-and-half (or cream) to the dish. You don’t need to cover the chard stems — but about halfway...

Travel Episode 4: All About Saffron (Recipe: Chard Stems with Saffron and Cream)


Your host is a little spaced out this week, but luckily it’s a quick and easy meal, learned from a Syrian doctor and single mom: a fast way to get all the satisfying flavor of much more labor-intensive stuffed squash. Pair it with rice and yogurt for an easy lunch or dinner.







Shopping list



* Ground beef or lamb* “Gray” squash or zucchini* Garlic* Allspice (ground for the recipe)* Dried mint* Olive oil* Lemon* Ground sumac* Red chile flakes (Aleppo pepper ideally) 



Quick / Faux Koosa Mahshi (Syrian-style stuffed squash)



Yup, meal in a bowl, and no shame in that.



This is a super-shortcut, weeknight version of stuffed squash. For that dish, traditionally you’d use koosa, which is a kind of bulbous squash that gives you a bit more to core and stuff. It’s sold in my NYC market as “gray squash” or “Mexican squash.” (There’s a photo at the bottom for reference.) If you can’t find that, of course, for this recipe, you don’t need to core anything, so ordinary zucchini is fine as well.



In the podcast, I say I’m going to make a little yogurt-cucumber salad…and then I just don’t bother! I figured it’s a little redundant, because cucumber is basically squash, and there’s already dried mint in the dish. But if you want it, here’s a recipe/description (scroll down).



But if you want to make this a slightly more elaborate meal, you could do two things: 1) nice rice, like a basmati rice with a little butter, and maybe some onion, and 2) yogurt with a bit of salt, garlic and dried mint, to better approximate the sauce you’d usually get with the proper stuffed koosa.



One more thing I sometimes do (not mentioned in the podcast) is cook the meat and squash with a bit of goat butter. Only because we happen to have it! Adds some nice funky richness.



For 3-4 portions, with rice
4 or 5 garlic cloves
Olive oil
3/4 pound ground lamb or beef
2 large pinches ground allspice
Salt and pepper
4 gray squash
2 even larger pinches dried mint
Aleppo pepper or other red chile flakes, totally optional
Juice of half a lemon
Ground sumac



Peel and roughly chop the garlic.



In a large skillet, add a tiny bit of olive oil and fry the ground meat with a bit of salt, breaking it up with a spoon. Midway through, add the pepper, allspice and the garlic. (Or…if you space out like I did in the podcast, you can add the spices to the meat later, and fry the garlic with the squash!) Stir and fry until it’s good and brown and crumbly, and most of the liquid has cooked away. Scrape the meat and all the browned bits into a large bowl (you’ll be adding all the cooked zucchini in here later).



While the meat is browning, trim the ends off your squash and cut into thin half-rounds. (Slice in half vertically, then line up the halves and slice through — quarter-inch slices are fine.) If you have very thin zucchini, no need to slice in half, although they’re easier to manage with a flat cut surface.



Go with this single-layer approach to frying if you want more browning and less mush.



In the same pan as the meat, add a little more olive oil and fry the squash. If you want them a bit brown, do them in two batches. If you want them a bit softer (and possibly done faster), throw them all in at once. You can even put the lid on for a bit, so they steam through. When they’re close to done, add the dried mint,

Travel Episode 3: Quick Koosa Mahshi (Syrian Stuffed Squash…That’s Not Stuffed)


A short episode, for a very simple but surprisingly satisfying vegetable dish, optionally made heartier with lentils. From the Aegean coast of Turkey — but, honestly, from the Turkish Airlines inflight magazine! Eat as a side dish, or as a full meal with rice and a little yogurt-cucumber salad.







Shopping list 



* Small, thin eggplants* Turkish green peppers* Garlic* Olive oil* Canned or fresh tomatoes* Brown lentils (optional)
And if you’re making a whole meal:* Cucumber* Yogurt* Dried mint* Rice



Çığırtma (Turkish Eggplant and Green Peppers)



Eggplants and green peppers, all snuggled up nice!



Ideally make this with smaller, slender eggplants, so you can nestle the eggplants and peppers together. Turkish-style green peppers are long and thin and not very meaty — see below the recipe for a photo. They’re usually mild, but occasionally some can have real heat. If you can’t get them, Anaheims would be fine, but they might need additional cooking time. If you can only get a big globe eggplant, then dice it and the peppers — a different shape, but same taste! 



Lentils are my addition, totally optional. I make three portions, usually — two for dinner, and one to save. 



For more on this style of cooking, see last season’s episode on oil-cooked vegetables.



For 2-3 portions
3 small, slender eggplants
2-3 glugs olive oil
6-8 cloves garlic
3 Turkish green peppers/chiles
3-4 heaping tablespoons crushed canned tomatoes, or equivalent fresh, diced
1/4 cup brown lentils (optional)
Large pinch salt



Rinse the eggplants and pull off the extra bits around the stem — but leave the stem on. Peel the eggplants in long stripes, then make a spiral cut down each one. (The easiest way to do this is set the knife diagonally on the eggplant, then rotate the eggplant.) Be careful not to cut all the way through — you still want a whole eggplant in the end.



Be generous with your olive oil!



Heat the olive oil in a large shallow pan with a good-fitting lid. Add the eggplants and brown on each side.



While the eggplants are browning, peel the garlic and leave whole. (Fine of course if you end up crunching it a little while peeling it.)



Add the green peppers to the pan (whole, no need to remove stems), nestling them in alternating with the eggplants. Scatter the garlic evenly between the vegetables. Turn down the heat to a simmer and spoon the crushed tomato evenly over the vegetables. 



If using lentils, add them around the vegetables (you want them down at the bottom of the pan) along with 3/4 cup water. (Do not add water if not using lentils.)



Cover and cook without stirring until the peppers have collapsed a bit and the eggplant yields when you press it with the back of a spoon (be gentle — you want to be able to put a nice whole eggplant on a plate). If you’ve added lentils, they should be tender and the water should be cooked away. This all takes about 30 minutes.



Serve with rice, each portion getting one whole pepper and eggplant, and a few cloves of garlic. 



Turkish green peppers, with hand for scale.




Cacık (Turkish Cucumber-Yogurt Salad)



For two portions, use a single midsize cucumber (approximately four inches) and peel it, or use two thin-skinned Persian cucumbers without peeling.

Travel Episode 2: Turkish Eggplant and Green Peppers, plus Yogurt-Cucumber Salad


Cooking for virtual travel, starting with a little trip to Egypt through koshari, a combo of rice, lentils and pasta, topped with a tangy tomato sauce and crispy fried onions. It’s hearty and nourishing, with garlicky zing. No sides this time, just pickled peppers and fresh cucumbers.







Shopping list



* brown lentils* short-grain rice* garlic* ground cumin* salt* yellow onions* large (28-oz.) can tomatoes (ideally tomato puree) * tube pasta (elbow mac, or canneroni, aka kofto if you’re shopping in a Greek store)* canola oil for frying* ground/crushed red chile* vinegar* pickled peppers (optional, on the side)* pickled eggplants (optional)* cucumbers



Egyptian Koshari



Koshari: the power meal of Egypt!



As I say in the podcast, this is a real fast-food staple, but it’s also a dish people cook at home. The base is lentils, rice and pasta, topped with tangy tomato sauce and crispy onions. If you want deluxe toppings, you can also add fried vermicelli (gives a nice chewy texture) and/or chickpeas. But honestly, it’s perfectly satisfying this simpler way, and it means fewer pans to wash.



My friend’s mom, who taught me her technique, serves it with pickled peppers and eggplants on the side. In the podcast, I slice up a cucumber too, with salt.



Serves 3-4
1 cup brown lentils
1 cup short-grain rice
5-7 garlic cloves
1 heaping tsp ground cumin
Large pinch salt
2 medium yellow onions
28-oz. can tomatoes (puree, crushed or whole)
2 handfuls tube pasta (elbow mac or shorter cut tubes)
1/2 cup canola oil (approx, for frying)
ground/crushed red chile (to taste, optional)
1 tbsp vinegar (or more, to taste)



Rice cozy in effect.



Rinse lentils and place them in a heavy saucepan (whatever you ordinarily cook rice in) with 2.5 cups water. Cover and turn heat up to boil, then down to simmer for 5 minutes. Add the rice to the same pot and simmer for another 15 minutes or so. You may have to add a little more water, and if it’s all looking a little too wet near the end, you can leave the lid slightly ajar. If the rice and lentils are done, but everything’s a little sticky, set a clean dish towel over the top of the pot and put the lid on top of that — set aside while everything else is finishing.



Yes, the garlic can be this coarse. Or you can chop/crush it finer, if you prefer.



Peel garlic and chop or crush in a mortar with salt and cumin. When the rice and lentils are close to done (about 5 minutes out), take a third of this garlic mix and stir it in.



Peel and slice the onions in thin half-rings.



In a large nonreactive saucepan (stainless steel or similar), heat a little glug of the canola oil and add another third of the garlic-cumin combo. Stir briefly, then add the canned tomatoes. If you have whole tomatoes, crush them up with a spoon. Let simmer on medium-low, uncovered. Stir occasionally to check thickness and make sure it’s not sticking.



Set water on to boil for the pasta; salt generously. Add the pasta and cook according to directions, then drain.



In a heavy skillet, heat the remaining canola oil until just shimmering. Add about a third of your sliced onions — a thin layer. Don’t crowd the pan. Stir to keep them moving, and cook until brown on the edges but still a little pale in the center of the slice — they keep cooking after you take them out. Remove with a skimmer and set them on a paper towel to cool. Make sure you get all the bits out before you start the next batch (move the oil off the heat if you ha...

Travel Episode 1: Egyptian Koshari


A bit of a hybrid episode, focusing mostly on how to make a pie crust, plus a little about quiche. There’s a lot of misinformation in pie crust tips and recipes — this episode covers all I’ve learned in three decades.







NOT-shopping list



* All-purpose flour (or pastry flour, if you’re fancy; preferably not bread flour; definitely not cake flour)* Butter* Leaf lard (only if you happen to have access to it; I personally don’t approve of Crisco, but that’s an alternative, if you want really flaky crust)* Eggs* Milk / cream / half-and-half / sour cream / creme fraiche (some combination of these so that you have a mix that’s roughly as fatty as a combo of half milk, half cream)* Miscellaneous fillings (your fridge leftovers!), including cooked vegetables, herbs and possibly cheeses



Basic Pie Crust



The recipe is so simple I’ll mention it first:



For 1 crust for a 9-inch pie plate
1 cup all-purpose flour, plus a few more tablespoons for adjusting
1/2 cup butter (1 stick) or a combination of butter and leaf lard, no more than half leaf lard
1/4 cup ice water
Pinch salt, if your butter is unsalted



See the nifty pattern there? Very easy to remember. Now…all the magic is in the technique, which I go into in more detail in the podcast. Here is the short version, and a few photos. At all times, keep the butter/lard as cold as possible, and keep your kitchen cool. If you feel your fingers getting greasy at all, stop and put the whole bowl in the fridge for about 10 minutes.



Measure the flour (and optional salt) into a large bowl. Set aside some flour for use later, when you’re rolling out the dough.



Cut the butter into small cubes. 



Toss the butter and the flour together, then pick up each piece of butter and quickly squish it flat between your thumb and fingers. (Use both hands to make it go faster.)



This is the texture you’re going for with the squished butter.



When all the butter has been squished, wash your hands. Possibly put the butter-flour mix back to chill, if it felt like the butter was getting too soft.



Slowly drizzle in about half the cold water and stir the mixture with a fork to distribute the water. 



Drizzle in more water, very gradually, and stir gently. The mixture will start to clump together. You will need to assess whether the dough is fine as is, or if it needs all the measured water (most common). The dough should look fairly moist, but it should not be sticky (a sign you added a bit too much water). If you’re baking in a dry climate, or depending on your flour, you may even need a smidge more water than 1/4 cup, but this is rare.



This is the texture you’re looking for after adding enough water. 



Gently scoop the dough together and press it into a ball — does it hold? Don’t try to force it much, or your hands will warm the butter. If it’s too dry, it will fall back in pieces in the bowl, and you’ll need to add a tiny bit more water — really, a teaspoon at a time. If in doubt, chill again.



Once you have a dough that holds together in a ball, cover it with a plastic bag or a bowl and stick it in the refrigerator again. You can hold it like this for hours, if you want. Half an hour is usually enough. (Take this time to get your quiche filling together.)



I don’t have photos for rolling out, but it’s described fairly well in the podcast. Key tips are to knock the ball flat with your rolling pin first,

RERUN Episode 16: Recipe Decoder: Butter

Download our free app to listen on your phone