Meal 72: Haiti

Have you ever pondered what would have happened if something went differently at a given point in history? Compared with the rest of the Western Hemisphere, Haiti is sort of a real-life example of contrarian history. The crux is a slave revolt against French colonial masters that, incredibly, led to independence in 1804. The slave system was ruthless and required a constant influx of slaves, which had the silver-lining consequence of a strong syncretic culture quickly developing that combined French and West African influences — ranging from language (Kreyol is mostly French vocabulary but has strong West African grammatical influence) to cuisine to religion.

Our meal fell directly on fet gede, a Vodou celebration blending the Catholic traditions of All Souls' Day with West African-derived spirits and beliefs. To get into the mood, we made an altar with some of the traditional elements, including an offering of our own ancestors' favorite foods. The meal, while not unique to this holiday, is one that would be appropriate to the festivities, particularly because the spirits related to death love spicy food. To bring a little bit more of Port-au-Prince to Brooklyn, we turned out the lights and ate by candle, since most folks only get electricity a few hours a day, if any.

Joining us for this adventure were Lisa, Alex, Samantha, Johan, CJ, and Rachel. Alex spent a month in Haiti, whereas CJ recently lived there for a year.

Kremas | Rum cream | Recipe

The drink par excellence for fet gede is pikan, hard liquor steeped with scotch bonnets. CJ brought some that she'd made for last year's, so you can imagine how pungent it was — all you need is the tiniest sip of this truly firey water.

For the rest of our Haitian-style drinking, we drank this cordial that's pretty much the opposite — an unctuous, sweet, spiced blend — with the only part in common is the alcoholic strength, thanks to being made with overproof rum. Between the spices (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg) and the thickness of the liquids (condensed milk, evaporated milk, cream of coconut), this drink was quite reminiscent of eggnog, just a whole lot stronger. While all enjoyed the flavor, some found the thickness too heavy to indulge in more than a glass, but I quite happily managed to have several.

If you choose to follow this recipe, just note two things: you should use more than a quarter-cup of water to make the simple syrup, and this made two liters in total (and I only used a 750 ml bottle of rum, rather than 1L), so be prepared to give plenty of it away. Oh, and it's extremely important to look people in the eye when toasting. Goodness knows you don't want to get on the wrong side of the spirits.

Pikliz | Spicy pickled slaw | Recipe

Growing up in California, taquerias were a core part of my childhood, and at some point my dad taught me the awesome trick of picking out the carrots from amongst the pickled japaleños at the salsa bar, to get the spice infused from the surrounding peppers while also getting more of the vinegar flavor. I feel like pikliz takes this concept to a marvelous extreme, with just a few extremely hot scotch bonnet peppers seasoning a whole jar of shredded cabbage, carrots, and whatever other veggies you throw in, by bathing together in spiced vinegar. And then there's whole cloves thrown in there to add a little more exotic flavor. I threw all the vegetables through the Cuisinart's shredding disc, but next time I would probably use the thin slicer for the cabbage to keep it in larger pieces.

Pikliz is such an essential part of the cuisine that everyone who'd been to Haiti whom I told about this meal asked if I'd be making it, and there's even an expat website called Pikliz.com. So, if you're doing a Haitian meal, don't leave this out, and be sure to start this a few days in advance to let that spice from the peppers migrate over to the vegetables! And then throw it on just about everything, as there's little on the Haitian table that won't go well with some vinegary crunch-n-spice.

Tasso cabrit | Fried goat | Recipe

This was, hands down, the tastiest goat I've eaten in my life. What it's lacking in visual appeal, it way more than makes up in flavor and texture.

It started with a trip to the Fertile Crescent, where the butcher cut stew pieces of meat to order, including the super-tasty rib bits. Then to Bed-Stuy where I had to pop into a few markets to find the elusive sour orange, a green fruit with thick skin, a ton of square-ish seeds, and appropriately named flavor that's just excellent as a marinade. The night before the meal, I squeezed up the oranges, mixed with a bunch of other ingredients including lime, ground clove (there's that spice again!), hot peppers, etc.

Some recipes call for a simple vinegar marinade and then boiling with all the flavors; other call for a rich marinade and then a simple boil. I find it hard to let go of good flavors once you've got 'em, so the next afternoon I dumped the whole bowl, meat and marinade alike, into a pot, added water to cover, and then let that simmer for a good two hours or so. The recipes say to boil, but tough meat always enjoys slow heat, and my tweaks were vindicated by a really tasty and tender meat.

But wait, there's more! Once I finished frying up the plantains, I turned up the heat and threw the goat in the same oil, adding a lovely crisp to all the edges. Once served, these tasty chunks lasted approximately five minutes on the table. The only challenge was successfully navigating all the bones by candlelight!

Sauce Ti-Malice | Tomato and onion sauce | Recipe

This sauce is pretty much soupy sautéed onions with hints of other ingredients. I saw it mentioned on pretty much every site I visited, but I'm not sure I get it. The rest of the cuisine has such vibrant flavors and textures, while this came across as kinda bland and watery. Did I do something wrong?4

Diri ak pwa | Rice and beans | Recipe

Doesn't that look like an exotic, perhaps African, name for this dish? Actually, it's the Kreyol transformation du riz au pois. Highlighting one face of the large American presence in Haiti, this recipe comes by way of a missionary.

I'm fascinated by how many ways there are to cook rice and beans. This one has you boil the beans (which I'd pre-soaked), adding some coconut milk and parsley toward the end, then re-introducing the bean broth and the beans and then finally the rice, with a heavy unlidded boil and then finally a slow simmer with the lid on. It was a lot of work and required a lot of attention, which proved quite worthwhile, with a great semi-moist texture on both the rice and the beans, and a nice richness thanks to the coconut milk. (I actually made coconut milk from scratch, by cracking, prying, and shredding coconuts, adding water to the shreds, and squeezing to extract the milk. Maybe that made a difference, but it was probably hardly worth it.)

I made a whole ton of it, using a pound of little red beans and five cups of rice; three nights of leftovers later and we've still got plenty left! Fortunately, it tastes great when crisped up in the frying pan with the addition of extra veggies and some pikliz!

Banan peze | Twice-fried green plantains | Recipe

For all the fried ripe plantains I've made, this was actually the first time I've fried the unripe version. Known as tostones or patacones in Spanish, these bananes pesées — weighted-down plantains — are fried once, smashed, and fried again. I can't find confirmation online, but my suspicion is that if the edges would burn before you managed to cook it all the way through, so smashing after the heat softens it makes all part of the slice close to the surface. Or maybe it's just that more surface area means more crispiness. Anyway, yum. Even though I have a deep-fryer, I made these in a frying pan so I could get more of these flat things going at a time.

Bonbon siwo | Molasses cake | Recipe

This cake-like dessert can be pretty honestly described as a fluffy brownie, but with molasses and spices instead of chocolate. I thought it was OK, but on the dry side. (The first recipe I found called for a ridiculous four sticks of butter, whereas this one has one stick, perhaps the truth and beauty lies somewhere in between.) However, it was an excellent supporting actor for a scoop of the nutmeg ice cream left over from the Grenada meal!

Post-dinner lingering, by candlelight

Meal 70: Guatemala

Corn, beans, tomatoes, squash, peppers, turkey...if it's a classic New World food, chances are you'll see it in Guatemalan cuisine. While it's incorporated smatterings of good stuff from Europe (note the olives in the tamales), by and large this meal could have been cooked six hundred years ago, before a conquistador set foot on Mayan lands. However so ancient the ingredients may be, the techniques  aren't: I made liberal use of the blender, and really wish I'd had a food mill, since there was a lot of tedious straining of blended sauces. We were fortunate to have some experts on hand: Mica on the left grew up in Guatemala, and Christen on the right met Laura on a human rights delegation in Guatemala. Between them are Alex, Laurel, Diana, Jennifer, Grant, Sophie, and Suzanne.

Tamales colorados | Red tamales | Recipe: Crisco; Lard: Spanish, English

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I find Mexican tamales too dry, and too sparse on filling relative to the mass of corn. Happily, Guatemalan tamales suffer neither of  those challenges. Rice and fat moisten up the masa quite well, and the filling is intended to be generous.

OK, this was a lot of work. Even making the pumpkin-seed-based tomato sauce was the effort of an average dish, what with individually toasting the different seeds in addition to simmering the sauce. Add to that cooking up the pork, roasting the peppers, and especially the forearm-building effort of mixing the masa...and now it's time to trim the banana leaves, and finally to assemble and wrap the tamales before a good 90 minutes of steaming.

The results were well worth it, a tasty bundle of flavor with so many different textures and directions. But I can understand why most Guatemalan families don't make this more than once a year!

Kaq'ik | Turkey and smoked chili soup | Recipe

This soup pre-dates the arrival of the conquistadores, and some consider it the national dish of Guatemala. As with so many ancient recipes, there are as many variations as there are abuelitas, but the important part is to have turkey, chilies (including a smoked variety), and a tomato-rich broth. There are two aspects I particularly liked about this recipe. The first is that you broil all the vegetables, including even the dried chilies, lending a depth you just don't get from sauteeing. The other is that it has you use just turkey legs, rather than the whole bird, and I'm much more a fan of dark meat, especially to go along with those roasted veggies. While not so labor-intensive as the tamales, this certainly isn't the simplest soup to whip together, but I didn't at all mind the work after enjoying the depth of flavor from the roasting combined with the slow simmering of the turkey.

Frijoles negros | Black beans | Recipe

While the tamales and kaq'ik are special-occasion dishes unique to Guatemala in their preparation, it's the black beans that led the folks who'd lived in the country to reminisce. I cooked them in the crock pot, a technique I'm growing to love because it really allows the flavors to meld while also preserving the structural integrity of the bean. This recipe has plenty of vegetables, including a whole head of garlic, plus onion and bell pepper. I didn't add salt at all, because the topping took care of it: the appropriately named queso duro frijolero, or "hard cheese for beans." Saltier even than parmesan, it suits its title so very well. I'm glad I made a double-batch, because we enjoyed the leftovers throughout of the following week.

Ayote en dulce | Squash stewed in sweet sauce | Recipe: Spanish, English

Though we were a month out from the Day of the Dead, Guatemala has such a particular cuisine for that holiday that I felt compelled to make something from it. I chose to make this winter squash simmered in a sugary, gently spiced sauce, which is then boiled until syrupy. I'd say the dish was okay, but didn't quite bring the flavor punch I'd been expecting. I'm pretty sure I got the right kind of green-skinned, fairly smooth squash (thank you, farmers' market!), so either I started with too much water and hence had to boil it too long to thicken it, or maybe this dish is just supposed to be subtle.

Atole de elote | Corn and milk drink | Recipe

This drink, on the other hand, was more of an intense experience than I'd bargained for. You go through a lot of corn -- one ear per cup of drink -- and blend the kernels with milk, then strain it out and sweeten and cinnamon it up. With the nuttiness of the fresh corn plus the richness of milk, this warm beverage is a thick one. Would probably go even better on a chilly day, perhaps even as a breakfast drink.

I'm posting this on World Food Day. That marks one year since we did that epic Democratic Republic of the Congo meal for 75 at the youth hostel. We've now raised just about $16,000, enough for 64,000 meals. Please take a moment to think about the joy of food and the comfort of food security -- it's something we really oughtn't take for granted.

Meal 66: Greece

Greece has seen myriad civilizations, invaders, and influences over the millennia, and a climate in which most anything can grow, all of which have contributed to a cuisine that is both abundantly flavored and for the most part extremely healthy. It's also built to be sampled in abundance, with a wide range of mezedes for nibbling and sharing. Fortunately, most of these dishes didn't need to be served piping hot, which made it a little less insane to prepare ten dishes in a medium-sized kitchen with one helper (thanks so much, Neil!).

Our setting for this Nosh certainly encouraged relaxed enjoyment of the Earth's bounty: the porch of our friends' home in Asbury Park, on the Jersey Shore, on a very pleasant summer evening (thanks so much, Jenifer and Phil!).

Fasolada | Bean and vegetable soup | Recipe

In our culinary journey through time, this humble vegan soup of beans and vegetables brings us both to the very beginning and the most recent days of the history of this part of the world. The Minoan civilization, which preceded the Greeks, grew legumes -- this soup, save for a few New World additions such as tomato, is pretty much their direct legacy. Nowadays, with the Greek economy in a shambles, this soup is as popular as ever, as a big pot is cheap to make and fills the family's stomach. The flavors are simple, with few seasonings or fancy techniques to hide the true flavor of the ingredients, so if you're making this dish as a matter of recreation, make sure to get high-quality beans and vegetables, and take your time simmering to draw out the flavors.

While fasolada is considered by many to be the national dish of Greece, I don't know if I've ever seen it at a Greek restaurant; I've only known avgolemono, the egg-lemon soup that nursed me back from many a college hangover. Why is such a common dish, about which so many Greek food blogs tell deep stories, barely seen on menus of Greek restaurants in the US?

Horiatiki salata | Country salad | Recipe

Unlike the soup, this classic Greek salad is known around the world. The real version, apparently, has no vinegar or lemon juice, it's simply vegetables, feta, and olive oil. This one was pretty good, especially with the farmer's market tomatoes, but unfortunately the cucumber was fairly bitter. (Too bad there was no tartness to balance it out!)

Horiatiko psomi | Country sourdough bread | Recipe

I once read (but can't find again, alas) that a good sourdough starter is so cherished in Greece that saints are invoked during its cultivation, and that despite modern science, many Greek homemakers insist it's a magical, spiritual substance. While I'm all cool with the symbiotic relationship of those yeast and bacteria, to me the magic of Greek bread is the additions of little splashes of milk, honey, and olive oil, which turn mere leavened dough into a springy treat with just enough crunch and tooth to stand up to dipping, spreading, dunking, and straight-up nibbling. The protein and oil make the dough more forgiving to work with, and also crisp up more impressively in a standard home oven. Noted for future baking! Since our hosts weren't going to make bread anytime soon, I figured I should double the recipe, and use the whole five-pound sack of bread flour. By the morning, only one of the five loaves remained.

Skordalia | Garlic potato dip | Recipe

Is this a really garlicky, oily, cold version of mashed potatoes? Or is this a cavalry of garlic (after all, "skorda" means garlic in Greek) hitching a ride on potatoes and oil onto your bread and into your mouth? Either way, it's a surprisingly simple dish to make, and lends itself to endless modification. Creativity, too, because we didn't have a mortar and pestle handy for mashing the garlic, so I put it into a ziploc bag and pounded it a few dozen times with an empty wine bottle. Just don't freak out about all the olive oil in the recipe. If you've got good quality stuff, it'll really make the dip sing.

Alevropita | Feta-olive oil tart | Recipe

From the northwestern reaches of the country comes this dish that's equal parts simple, tasty, and ridiculous. If you can make pancake batter from scratch, you've already got more than enough skill to put this together. If you like feta and flatbreads and the taste of olive oil, you'll eat the whole pan. And with nearly a half a cup of olive oil and a quarter-stick of butter with a little more than a cup of flour, you'll probably be half grinning and half cringing as you make the dish. Even without the feta this would be a tasty starch halfway to fry dough, but with the cheese, it's just super good.

Piperies gemistes me feta | Feta-stuffed peppers | Recipe

Macedonia, the covering much of the north of Greece (not to be confused with The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia directly to the north), is apparently the most exciting place for food in a country that seems pretty stimulating all over. It's a real convergence location between Balkan, Greek, and Turkish, and also has the legacy of a once-sizable Jewish community. These peppers themselves mark a convergence of spicy, creamy, and toasty, making use of the broiler twice: once to soften the peppers, and another to heat the cheese filling to brown. Greece is, of course, a wine country, but if you ever need a Greek dish that goes well with beer, look no further.

Kolokitho keftedes | Zucchini fritters | Recipe

Crete, the largest of the Greek islands, is the home of what is essentially a latke (i.e., potato pancake), but made instead of zucchini. Poor Neil spent upward of an hour shredding by hand the two largest zucchini I'd ever seen in my life, along with onion, carrot, and other ingredients. And all that yellow in the photo? That's extra virgin olive oil, in abundance. The fritters were darn good, especially accompanied by the tzatziki I whipped up (Greek yogurt, shredded cucumber and garlic, mint, salt, done). The only problem with making them for a crowd is that you're spending valuable minutes right around service time standing impatiently around a skillet, waiting for them to cook -- out of all the dishes we made, this is the only one that held up our starting at the appointed hour.

Keftedes me saltsa domata | Lamb meatballs in tomato sauce | Recipe

"What do you do with this stuff?" asked the butcher at Fairway while handing me the ground lamb. "I had it once at an Arab stand and it was weird." Well, dear friend who doesn't enjoy what he's selling, you might enjoy this dish as a re-introduction to the other red meat. The lamb is first blended with spices, especially the ever-present oregano, then fried as little meatballs, and finally nestled in with a tomato sauce -- which I made from fresh tomatoes from the farmers market rather than canned. This one was a winner, especially with the little kids!

Karithopita | Olive oil walnut cake | Recipe

For what the EU called its 50th birthday, the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, all its members sent two cakes representative of their national cuisines. This is one of the two Greece sent. The cake starts out rich enough, with a cup of olive oil, lots of walnuts, and semolina and cake flours. But the real treat comes when it's drenched in a lemony syrup -- so much so that you have to pour it a third at a time to make sure it all absorbs. Not too hard to make, and really nice, would make for an excellent coffee cake and is also great with a dollop of Greek yogurt.

Galaktoboureko | Milk custard phyllo cake | Recipe

I've already made baklava for Armenia, but I felt the need to make something with that flaky phyllo dough for this meal. Behold this amazing pastry, made of an astonishing 10 cups of milk, seven eggs, and a half pound of butter. As long as you're patient and attentive with the stirring, it's actually pretty easy to make, and it's really tasty, a little more subtle and less heavy than baklava. The only tweak I made was to replace about half of the sugar and water in the syrup with honey, which I would definitely do again. The Ottoman influence on Greek cuisine is clear here: "boureko," meaning stuffed pastry, comes from the Turkish "börek."

Meal 53: Egypt

For 12 millennia, people in what's now Egypt have successfully built civilizations around agriculture in a virtually rain-free desert environment. While there's plenty of evidence that they grew fruits and vegetables, the annual cycle of the Nile's flooding made it much easier to grow plants that could thrive on their own in properly inundated soil — which means grains and legumes were much easier than relatively more fickle fruits and vegetables. So, it should be no surprise that our meal was very carb-heavy! (Vegetarian and nearly vegan, too.)

Joining us for our starch-fueled adventure were Shazna, Ron, Nadia, Jessica, Sophie, Angad, Melanie, and Catherine.

Ful medames | Fava bean stew | Recipe

It's apparently a common saying that ful medames is "the rich man's breakfast, the shopkeeper's lunch, and the poor man's dinner." Ful is a popular food around the Middle East, but it's really a core part of the Egyptian diet.

It's made from fava beans, and the same inner skin that makes it a very labor-intensive vegetable to eat fresh renders it a particularly long-cooking dried legume. In fact, I soaked it for twelve hours in warm water with vinegar, then simmered it for four or five hours, and I still think it could have cooked longer to be more tender. No wonder a lot of people buy the cooked beans in a can and then gussy them up for serving. It was tough to find a good recipe that started from dried beans.

As far as the seasoning, there are many approaches, all of them delicious. I tried a pretty straightforward version, eliminating the tahini from the recipe, and going a little heavier on the garlic.

Aish badali | Whole wheat flatbread | Recipe

The perfect accompaniment for this mushy, tangy, rich dish is a fluffy, toasty, lightly nutty loaf of what is possibly the world's oldest form of bread. (Maybe this is what the Israelites were trying to bake when they fled from Pharaoh, and what we now memorialize as matzo?) The standard Arabic word for bread is khubz, but in Egypt they call it aish, the word for "life." It's heavily subsidized, and its quality and availability remains a major political issue.

Happily, this is one of the easier breads to make, and also pretty healthy given that it's made entirely out of whole wheat. What's fun is that it only takes a few minutes to bake, puffing up rather dramatically in an oven as hot as you can make it. Unfortunately, mine tops out at around 500°F, which isn't hot enough to shock the crust so that you get the classic pocket.

Koshari | Rice, pasta, and lentils with tomato sauce and crisp-fried onions | Recipe

This explosion of complex sugars is Egypt's national dish. In fact, it's been credited with fueling the recent revolution. So how do you bring a taste of Tahrir to your table?

Start with a layer of little pasta — elbow macaroni is OK but even better are quarter-inch-long tubes sometimes seen as ditalini. On top of that put rice (a relative newcomer to Egypt, cultivated since the 7th century) which has been steamed with previously-cooked and lightly fried brown lentils. Then put a layer of vermicelli, essentially little pieces of super-thin pasta, which has been fried and then boiled. Pour on a moderate helping of a basic vinegar-garlic-tomato sauce (way late in the game as a New World food!). Cover generously with paper-thin onion slices fried to within a whisper of burnt. Then top off with a salsa of fresh tomato, raw garlic, vinegar, and more cumin than you probably realized you could actually cook with.

I'm pretty sure that in the time it took me to write that paragraph, you'd have wolfed down half your bowl. It's such an oddly compelling dish, a mutt of starch and tang which laps at your taste buds and nuzzles contently in your stomach. Not surprisingly, given all the steps that go into making all the parts of the dish, koshari is rarely made in the Egyptian home, as it's cheap enough to eat out anyway.

Whom should we thank for this dish? It may surprise you to know that the British are generally given credit for having brought a similarly-named rice-and-lentil combination from India, apparently because it's something they could reliably eat without getting food poisoning!

Quick-pickled eggplant | Recipe

Fresh veggies played a secondary role in ancient Egypt, and the same is true in the modern one too. The most appropriate would have been molokhiya, a leafy green that's bizarrely translated as "Jew's Mallow," and makes for a stew that's goopier than okra. But that wouldn't have worked with koshari, so I went with this good-looking quick-pickle recipe for eggplant. Now, I wasn't able to get the sort of really skinny and small eggplant they call for, Italian eggplant was the best I could do. All in all the dish was underwhelming, and also a little offputting — any guess why the garlic turned blue when stuffed inside the eggplant?!?

Shai | Mint tea

Now, tea is a much more recent phenomenon in Egypt than most of these other staples, but deeply incorporated into life all the same. It's often steeped with mint. Both very strong and relatively mild versions of tea are brewed; I guess we kinda ended up in the middle.

Umm ali | Puff-pastry bread pudding with nuts | Recipe

Why this dessert is called "Ali's Mother" is a matter of debate. But there's no denying that this was one tasty end to the meal. For all the richness, with puff pastry, condensed milk, three types of nuts and coconut, it was pleasingly not too sweet, with no added sugar other than that in the condensed milk. (I even used just milk rather than cream as called for, and we didn't miss any of the extra richness.)

In terms of awesomeness to effort, this is one of the highest ranking desserts yet for United Noshes! Really, provided that you plan ahead — or are a culinary savant and happen to have ingredients on hand — it takes little effort to whip it up, and even less to clean because your guests will be licking the dish.

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And that does it for United Noshes in 2012! It's been our first full calendar year, with 34 Noshes in five cities, over $9,600 raised (bringing us to over $12,300 total) for World Food Program USA, and a few hundred prior friends, friends-of-friends, and new friends served. We're soon heading off for a three-week trip to India over the holidays, where I fully expect to buy tons of spices and pack my already overburdened spice collection to overflowing.

Happy holidays and New Year! May it be filled with good cheer, and of course great food.

Meal 51: Dominican Republic

Another Thanksgiving weekend, another nosh in San Francisco!  To go with the gorgeous weather, the calendar aligned on Dominican Republic, the second-largest country of the Caribbean. While the Bay Area is no stranger to foods from Spanish-speaking lands, there's few Caribbeans around, so these dishes made for something more of a novelty here than they would have been in Dominican-immigrant-heavy New York.

Thanks to the kind folks at Hattery, I had a big kitchen to discover the intriguing Dominican way of cooking, which was just, well, different. I used a grand total of one onion with none of that going into the stew, scrubbed every cube of meat with lime halves, and boiled rice at full hilt rather than gently simmering. And that's not even mentioning the oddness of a dessert built around kidney beans.

Around the table are Jon, Bryan, Alley, Suj, Drew, Greg, Emily, Shilpi, and my mom and dad! It was great to catch up with three friends in town from Portland, and of course to share the joy with my parents, cousin, and future cousin-in-law.

Sancocho de siete carnes | Seven-meat stew | Recipe

Can you even name seven meats? Well, it's kinda cheating since there are actually four types of pork (cubes, ribs, ham hocks, and longaniza sausage), plus beef, chicken, and goat. This is a truly rustic stew, with little more than meats plus some whole chunks of vegetables. The trick is putting in the longer-cooking items first, and gradually building up the pot, and getting a good longaniza since that's where the spices will come from.

The result was a really satisfying stew, with tender and flavorful chunks of meat and a sauce worth spooning on top of everything. Given the fun textures of the different root vegetables, it's worth making the effort to find them, especially the true yam, which isn't the same as a sweet potato. If you make this recipe, just be sure to give yourself plenty of prep time, it takes longer than you think to scrub each and every piece of meat! Or if you don't, at least take away the lesson to cut whole ears of corn into rounds, it's a fun addition and much more dramatic than tossing in individual kernels.

Guandules con coco | Pigeon peas in coconut milk | Recipe

Pigeon peas don't seem like much more than pale little lumps when dry, but once cooked they exhibit a rich caramel color and an unexpected smoky taste. They're often served in rice, much like rice and beans, but there's more you can do. This vegetarian preparation uses coconut milk and squash to give a more tropical feel. I'm kicking myself for neglecting to eat the final version, but reports are that even the carnivores thought this was a good dish.

Arroz blanco | White rice | Recipe

The goal with Dominican rice is to get concón, layers of crispiness mixed in with loose, fluffy kernels. Well, I got the loose and fluffy part all right, but nothing approaching crispy. Maybe I didn't let the oil sear the bottom of the pot long enough, or maybe that huge pot was just too big to deal with. Anyway, the rice was plenty fine, and served valiantly to sop up the sauce.

Jugo de tamarindo | Tamarind juice | Recipe

No photo, but imagine a pitcher full of brown liquid and you're set. This recipe is for if you've thought ahead. If you're like me, and you're starting from whole tamarind pods, first peel them (don't need to be obsessive over getting every last bit of peel), cover with water at about six times the volume of the nuts, bring to boil, and simmer for 15 minutes. Place a chinois or strainer over a bowl, dump the pot into the strainer, and use a wooden spoon to press the pulp onto the edges until the pulp is all squeezed through and into the bowl and only the seeds remain which you then throw out. Mix sugar into the still-warm juice, chill, enjoy the distinctive tang. For a really good time, make a cavarindo: half tamarind juice, half cava. (Watch out, it'll foam up like a root beer float!)

Habichuelas con dulce | Sweet bean soup | Recipe

A chilled soup made of pureed kidney beans and chunks of sweet potato doesn't exactly sound like dessert, but we were all pleasantly surprised by how tasty this inventive dish is. With evaporated and coconut milks, it's got a nice but not excessive milky richness, and the spices make it feel vaguely Christmasy. If you're adventurous, it's worth trying!

Ponche de ron | Egg nog | Recipe

One of the few scenes from the Jetsons I remember is the Christmas special, in which Rosie the Robot creates egg nog by mixing one egg and one "nog." Well, two decades later, I've finally made it — or, at least, the Dominican version — and while I can affirm that egg nog indeed has eggs, the "nog" part of it is a bit more complicated, in this case three types of milk plus sugar and spices, all cooked over a bain marie. But gosh it was tasty, not unctuous like the stuff in a carton, but really smooth sippin', and just the right density to warmly embrace the rum and make you forget you've eaten too much and shouldn't put any more in your belly.

So that does it for the D's! Next weekend we head due south to Ecuador. Thanks again to the kind folks at the Hattery for opening their space to us!