Food, Wine and Travel ... With Recipes: TableConversation.com

A Slight Pause

TableConversation.com is going on vacation, or rather, to work, prospecting for new restaurants, wines and recipes. Keep posted until I post again, toward the end of May.

Microwaving by the Book

I tend to scorn microwave cookbooks. They seem practical and dull, oriented toward machines rather than food. The frequency with which they turn up in thrift shops indicates that others feel the same way.

Nevertheless, I bought a microwave cookbook recently. Of course this one is different, exotic and fun. I picked it up at Higginbothams in Chennai (Madras), a grand, high-ceilinged place that that is India's oldest book shop.

The book is “Cook and See. Part 5,” published by S. Meenakshi Ammal Publications in Chennai. The recipes cover north and south Indian dishes and continental food, a legacy of the British.  All are vegetarian.

Author Priya Ramkumar writes in her introduction: “This book is an attempt to prove that microwave ovens can dish out a variety of yummy recipes at the touch of a button.”

I have to admit that she is right, judging by her book at least, and my long-standing prejudice is wrong.

The recipes work, with minor changes that may reflect the difference between microwave ovens in India and the United States. And they are delicious, like this cream of tomato soup, which I have  adjusted slightly for American cooks. 

CREAM OF TOMATO SOUP
From “Cook and See, Part V” by Priya Ramkumar

1 pound tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 medium onion, peeled and quartered
1 potato (I used a small russet potato), peeled and quartered
1 large carrot, peeled and roughly chopped
1½  to 2 cups water
2 tablespoons cornstarch
3 tablespoons milk
1 to 2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon white pepper
Heavy cream
Cilantro

Combine the tomatoes, onion, potato and carrot in a microwave proof deep bowl. Sprinkle with ½ cup water. Cover and microwave on high 8 to 10 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender. (In my oven, this took 15 minutes).

Blend the mixture in a blender (or with a hand blender). Put through a sieve to remove seeds and peel.

Stir the cornstarch into the milk until smooth. Add this to the soup along with the sugar, salt and pepper. Add 1 cup water, or more if needed to thin the soup. Cover and microwave on high 3 to 4 minutes (8 minutes in my oven) until heated through.

Stir well. Ladle into heated bowls and garnish with a swirl of cream and cilantro.

Variations:  Season with ½ to 1 teaspoon garam masala. Add canned sweet corn. Garnish with croutons.

Makes 4 servings.

The Wine and Food of Puglia

The red wine that I am drinking tastes like a bowlful of gorgeous fruit—raspberries, cherries, jewel-like pomegranate seeds.

It is Cacc’e Mmitte di Lucera DOC (Albert Longo) 2005 from the region of Puglia (Apulia in English) in Italy. But it tastes like a sunny summer day in California.

The reason I am tasting this wine is that a trade mission from the province of Foggia in the northern part of Puglia has come to Los Angeles to show off the region, its wine and food.

Puglia’s most important product is olive oil. Green gold, they call it. And this wine is red gold.

It is made from Uva de Troia grapes combined with other grapes such as Sangiovese, Malvasia and Trebbiano.

We drink it with appetizers—deep fried artichoke hearts, marinated mozzarella, tiny meatballs and sandwich-like canapés filled with eggplant and ricotta.

And we drink it with lunch, along with  a golden white wine, Le Fossette, made from the  Falanghina grape, which dates back a couple of thousand years.

A bottle of  Sciroppo extra virgin olive oil, produced in Foggia, is also on the table, and we pour green-gold pools of it onto plates for dipping bread.

Lunch, at Valentino in Santa Monica, is composed of Puglia specialties. A baby octopus and clam soup reflects the region’s involvement with the sea. Located in what is the heel of Italy’s boot, it has the longest coastline of any mainland region and faces two seas, the Ionian and Adriatic.

Durum wheat and tomatoes are important products in Puglia, and these are combined in the next course, orecchiette pasta with ricotta cheese and fresh tomato sauce.

Then come the main dishes-- red mullet topped with organic spinach that has so much body it seems more like chard and beef roulades filled with a creamy puree of broccoli rabe, a vegetable that is cultivated in Puglia.

Dessert is a Puglia style doughnut that looks like a small, round, puffy churro, flanked by pistachio and chocolate gelati, berries, cookies and a tiny golden circle of passion fruit sauce.

Puglia cuisine is a rich blend of historic influences—Greek, Roman, Macedonian, Turkish and more. The region is proud of its artisanal foods, prepared by small family operations in accordance with generations of gastronomic tradition, and we look at displays of olives, roasted tomatoes, vegetable preserves and pasta.

But olive oil is the star, because Puglia is the largest producer not only in Italy, where it outdoes Tuscany, but in the entire Mediterranean basin—possibly even the world, as its enthusiastic representatives let us know.

(Thanks to photographer Johanna Erin Jacobson for brightening my food photos, which were taken in a very dark setting at Valentino.)