by John Donohue
Today I cook not only for myself but also for my family: my wife; two daughters, aged eight and five; and a son, who is three. My inspiration to cook arose from the need for survival (I was hungry in boarding school because I had difficulty adapting to American food during my first year in the United States). My wife, even though a complete believer in tsibbu and its effect on people, has no reason to engage in the practice, as she is quite confident that I will not marry another woman in addition to her. Her confidence comes not only from my assurance to her but also from the vow I have made not to subject any woman to the horror my mother went through as the first wife of my father, a man who eventually exercised his full Islamic rights and added three more wives to her. I have always wondered how my father managed to cope with four wives. Having just one is tough enough for me to handle, and I have sometimes wished I could have half a wife instead.
Before my marriage and the arrival of my wife in Brooklyn in May 2000 (she, too, is from Ghana and from the same Hausa-Fulani tribe), my American friends considered me a great cook, and none of them could stop singing the praises of my peanut butter soup, the recipe of which many of them copied from me and sent to their mothers. But no sooner had my wife arrived and they tasted the delicious soups she made than they betrayed me. A close friend was giddy enough after eating my wife’s peanut butter soup to tell me that mine tasted more like an American chicken soup with peanut butter in it. Never mind that this was the same guy who after countless attempts still cannot make a decent, edible peanut butter soup.
Though I stopped making soups a few months into our marriage, I have, in the past ten years, honed my cooking skills to an extent that I am able to hold my own on foods like steak, couscous, suya (Hausa-style barbecued rib-eye steak with peanut-infused peppers), broiled and barbecued lamb, crispy and “dirty” french fries, red red (the ubiquitous Ghanaian dish of black-eyed peas in palmnut oil with fried yellow plantains), and, finally, the dish of which I am the undisputed emir in our house: pasta sauce. I also make spicy noodle soup—the only soup I have mastered enough to have the confidence to make in our kitchen. It is a Japanese noodle dish, with the regular ingredients of bonito and a soup base, which I infuse heavily with African spices and fresh fish.
The big winners of this culinary exuberance are my three young children, who have the option to eat either their mother’s authentic African fare—like kobi (salted and dried tilapia), jollof rice (thought to have originated in Ghana, it is the party favorite all over West Africa and is prepared using the basic ingredients of rice, tomato, onion, salt, red pepper, and any meat choice), banku (fermented corn dough), and tuo zafi (nonfermented corn dough) with jute soup—or my American- and Japanese-influenced African dishes.
As I inch closer toward my forties, I find myself retracing the beginnings of my interest in writing back to the days when I would sit and watch my mother create a delicious soup. Just as a story or a novel is started on a blank page, a dish is started in an empty pot. I have also come to the realization that the art of cooking and the art of writing are similar: both of them require patience, constant practice, and loads of creativity, and there’s no guarantee that one’s mastery will be appreciated. While I work toward greater recognition, especially with my writing, I am more than content with the immediate feedback I receive each night I cook dinner for the family: “Daddy, you are the best pasta-sauce maker ever.” “Daddy, you make the best couscous in the whole wide world.” “Daddy, you are the best dad I ever had,” to which I respond: “You only have one dad, and that’s me!” Talk about finding the best way to a man’s heart.
Recipe File
Kelewele-Spinach Salad: Ali’s Own Original Recipe
Serves 4
Kelewele is my favorite street food in Ghana. It is made by slicing a plantain into little cubes, spicing it up with crushed red pepper and salt, and deep-frying it to make a mouthwatering appetizer.
2 ripe (yellow) plantains
Salt
Black pepper
Crushed red pepper
2 bunches of fresh spinach leaves
1 tart apple
Olive oil
Vinegar
Slice each plantain lengthwise into 4 strips, then cut into little cubes.
Add salt, pepper, and crushed red pepper to taste.
Deep-fry in oil until crisp but still yellow.
Place the kelewele on a napkin to drain off the oil and let it sit for 5 minutes or so.
Meanwhile, wash and dry the spinach leaves and place them in a salad bowl.
Thinly slice the apple and add to the bowl.
In a separate bowl, mix the olive oil and vinegar and a little black pepper.
Add the dressing to the spinach and apple, add the kelewele, and serve.
Peanut Butter Soup
Serves 4
2 pounds beef, chicken, or lamb with bones, cut in bite-size chunks
1 big onion
Salt
½ cup water or less
3 to 4 tablespoons creamy peanut butter (without added sugar)
1 tomato (not too big)
1 to 2 8-ounce cans tomato sauce, to taste
Ground red pepper
1 Maggi bouillon cube
Cook the meat with ½ onion, salt, and water (this is called steaming the meat in Ghana because so little liquid is used) on the stove top at medium heat for about 15 minutes.
Add peanut butter and stir until it has loosened and mixed with the broth from the cooked meat.
Combine ½ onion and the tomato and tomato sauce in a blender.
Pour the blended mix into the pot and let it cook for a few minutes.
Add water to fill the pot and let it cook over medium heat for 1 hour.
Add the red pepper and the Maggi cube.
Turn the heat to low and cook for 5 minutes, then serve.
Eat with boiled rice, pounded yam, or bread, or on its own.
On the Shelf
The Silver Palate Cookbook, Julee Rosso, Sheila Lukins, and Michael McLaughlin. This is my go-to cookbook because the recipes are very simple and I can find almost every recipe I am looking for, from appetizers to desserts and everything in between. I also like the authors’ insistence on fresh ingredients and the basic approach to cooking. Though the book is small, it is very comprehensive—so much so that it was the only cookbook we had in the ten years before we purchased Yolele! (see below) in 2009.
Yolele!: Recipes from the Heart of Senegal, Pierre Thiam. Thiam is the owner of Le Grand Dakar, a Senegalese restaurant in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, that also makes excellent North African/Mediterranean food. My family and I rarely make chicken dishes. We eat beef once in a while, but we eat lamb almost every other day. The Senegalese are known for their succulent lamb dishes, and for me, purchasing this book as soon as it was issued was a no-brainer. I have also eaten a few times at Thiam’s restaurant, and each plate was magnificent. Thiam isn’t only a master of Senegalese cooking; the recipes in the cookbook are not strictly Senegalese. The influence of Portuguese and Moroccan cooking has always been present in Senegalese cooking, and Pierre does a good job of incorporating them all in the cookbook.
IN THE TRENCHES
Pat Alger, a sixty-three-year-old singer-songwriter with three solo albums to his credit, has written hits for Livingston Taylor, Trisha Yearwood, Nanci Griffith, and Garth Brooks. He has a twenty-eight-year-old son and two stepdaughters, ages twenty-two and seventeen, and he lives with his wife, Susan, in Nashville.
I was born in New York, but I was raised in LaGrange, a small town in southern Georgia. My father was from Brooklyn, and he stood out in LaGrange. He had only an eighth-grade education, but he was pretty smart, and he taught himself to be a commercial cook. We were very lower-middle-class. We lived in a mill house—a very modest mill house at that—but I remember as a kid that he subscribed to Gourmet magazine. I saw it lying around the house. He never did much cooking at home, though. My mother did it, and she wasn’t very good.
When I first got married, I discovered that my wife couldn’t do much of anything in the kitchen. She was Italian, but she couldn’t even make spaghetti. We were going to have to eat out all the time, or I was going to have to learn how to do some things. The first thing I learned was how to make a good pot of soup.
In 1973, I was living in Atlanta and I saw an advertisement for a free one-day cooking class with Pierre Franey at a local department store. So I went, and I was the only guy there. I was a hippy. I had long hair and a beard and wore jeans and a T-shirt. He’s still my all-time favorite chef. His books are fantastic. He made a chicken dish while he was talking. And I thought, That’s incredible. That’s what I want to do. I want to be able to talk, watch TV, and make something good. So I got one of his books. The other guy that I really liked was Jacques Pépin. One of the great books that I got was Everyday Cooking with Jacques Pépin. It’s real straight-ahead, no nonsense. What I liked about both those guys was that they were very masculine cooks. They made it look like it was juggling instead of cooking.
After moving around a little—I lived in upstate New York and New York City—I landed in Nashville. And then I got divorced. I had custody of my son half the time. He was seven and I told him right off the bat, “This ain’t a restaurant. You’re going to have to learn how to eat like I eat. Because I’m not going to make two meals a day.” I have to say he didn’t complain about it. And to this day he’s a real adventurous eater.
I do about half the shopping; I’ve since gotten remarried, and my wife does the other half of it. Often we don’t check with each other, so we sometimes duplicate what we’re buying. I buy different kinds of things than she does. I’m really into vegetables; I love them. That’s one of the good things about being raised in the South. We always had a garden. I’m one of those guys—I like to open the refrigerator, see what’s in there, and then figure out what to make from it. I find that to be the most satisfying cooking. It doesn’t look like there’s anything in there, and then suddenly you make something, and everybody goes, “That’s good. What was that?”
I have a good enameled dutch oven and I’ve got a good All-Clad sauté pan, and I’ve got an omelet pan and I say, “Nothing gets cooked in here but eggs, guys. Don’t use that for your grilled cheese.” Just basic stuff. That and my grandma’s corn bread skillet, and my mother’s iron skillet, too. Those are the ones that you really can’t replace. I’m not big on tools. I don’t have any fancy-shmancy cooking stuff, but I do have good knives. And I think that’s really important.
Once you get a little experience, recipes start to make more sense. But recipes can’t always be trusted. I have an interest in the Shakers. I have some of their artifacts, and I’ve been to all the Shaker museums. They had a recipe in an old cookbook for a lemon pie. I thought, Lemon pie, that is so strange sounding. But it intrigued me, and I made the pie for a Thanksgiving dinner about twenty years ago. It was a really long recipe, and it took forever to make. When I was done, the crust looked perfect, just like the picture in the book. My mother, who’s no longer with us, she was an eater. She never found anything she didn’t like. She took the first bite. And she had this look on her face like something had just bitten her on the tongue. It was the most sour pie in the history of pies. Nobody could eat more than one bite. It was the biggest flop. The recipe was written wrong; they must have left out a step. There was a lot of sugar in it, but something happened to the rind that just tasted awful. It was hard to get the taste out of your mouth.
Recipe File
Lone Star State of Mind Chili
2 pounds lean pork, coarsely ground
4 tablespoons of chili powder (use McCormick’s cocoa–chili powder blend or add 2 teaspoons of unsweetened cocoa to regular chili powder)
Fat from 2 strips of bacon plus 2 tablespoons of olive oil
3 pounds of sirloin tri-tip cut into small cubes (gristle and excess fat removed)
1 large onion, diced
4 large jalapeños, seeded and minced
5 cloves garlic, minced
3 or 4 poblano chilies, roasted, peeled, and chopped
1 large bell pepper, roasted, peeled, and chopped
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon Mexican oregano
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 bottle of any Mexican dark beer
1 32-ounce container unsalted beef broth
1 28-ounce can diced Muir Glen fire-roasted tomatoes
¼ cup finely ground cornmeal or masa harina
Brown the ground pork in a heavy dutch oven with 1 tablespoon of chili powder, then drain into a colander and wipe the pan clean with a paper towel.
Add the bacon fat and oil, then brown the beef quickly over high heat—don’t cook too long or it will be tough.
Remove the beef with a slotted spoon and set aside in the colander with the pork.
Lower the heat, add the onions, jalapeños, garlic, chilies, bell pepper, and remaining chili powder, and cook until the onion has wilted.
Add the cumin, oregano, salt, and pepper and cook briefly.
Deglaze with the beer, then add the beef stock and tomatoes and cook for 1 minute.
Return the beef and pork to the pan and very slowly bring to a boil, then simmer uncovered on low, being careful not to let it bubble, for at least 3 hours.
When the meat is tender, remove ½ cup or so of the liquid and mix in the cornmeal or masa harina until the lumps are gone and it has a smooth, thick consistency.
Stir this mixture into the chili and let it simmer another 15 minutes.
Cover and let stand for 1 hour.
Cooked black beans can be added in the final 15 minutes. Garnish with chopped cilantro, extra-sharp cheddar cheese, chopped sweet onions, sour cream, or plain Greek yogurt with savory corn bread from Grandma’s skillet on the side. Then eat it like John Wayne in The Searchers!
WESLEY STACE
Patience Rewarded versus Instant Korma
Wesley Stace is the author of three novels, Misfortune, by George, and Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer. Under the name John Wesley Harding, he has made fifteen albums of deliciously dark folk rock. He was born in Hastings, East Sussex, England, and has lived in the United States since 1991.
The photograph was stunning: a cooking pot vibrant with the color riot of autumn—oranges, reds, and yellows—stuffed with onions. Heaven knows what else. Experience tells me tomatoes, peppercorns, dried chilies, cardamom pods, bay leaves, cayenne, and a pinch of turmeric for the yellow. When I first saw it, all I could identify were the onions. It’s a prime example of the stylist’s art, for sure, but I’d seen well-groomed food before. Looking back, it’s difficult to work out what specifically I saw that changed my life, that stopped me being a noncook.
Of course, it wasn’t just the visual. Context is important. The image took up a full page of the color magazine of the British newspaper the Independent on Sunday. That’s the immediate context but not the whole story, for if I’d been in London and this newspaper had dropped onto my lazy Sunday doormat, I’d most likely have ignored its lifestyle agenda altogether. But I was living abroad, in San Francisco, and as it was, I’d bought the Sunday paper on a Monday (as an exile, you got used to getting your news a day or two late) on Twenty-fourth Street in Noe Valley. I preferred to buy that paper, and never the San Francisco Chronicle, because I missed home and I didn’t feel American. I didn’t understand the tone of American news. (To a certain extent, nothing has changed. I still prefer the Guardian Web site, particularly for news of my adopted country.)
My work as a musician had brought me to America, but my private life kept me here. I missed Britain, more specifically England, so I became, unavoidably, one of that shady group of people who get up at 5:00 a.m. to go to Irish bars to watch important games of football over a pint of Guinness. Having moved for the romance and the music, I found myself missing Marmite and Match of the Day. This was before the Internet, of cours
e: 1994. Now it’s all changed: you watch the games at home and order your Marmite online.
So I bought the Independent on Sunday. And there, as I leafed through the magazine, was the photo—of a curry: chicken dopiaza. In Hindi, do means two and piaz means onions, so it’s a dish, the accompanying text told me, that involves either twice the normal proportion of onions or in which onions are used twice in the cooking process. The unique selling point is an unnatural amount of onions.
Curries were another thing that I missed about England. What could be more English? It is apparently a fact, often repeated on BBC cookery shows, that chicken tikka masala has overtaken fish-and-chips as Britain’s favorite dish. And there: this inviting picture of curry. How hard could it be to make?
When I say I was a noncook, of course, it’s not entirely true. I’d cooked before, but I’d never made the effort to follow a recipe. I remember, in an early attempt at bacon and eggs, burning a girlfriend’s mother’s frying pan and smoking out a kitchen, to her unsympathetic annoyance (as if I’d meant to). I don’t remember cooking anything at university except rice, a staple ruined for me for years afterward. Having said that, I can’t remember eating at university at all. I may have had five meals total at my college canteen, four more than the number of lectures I attended. I went to plenty of tutorials and did quite a bit of work—it was just eating and lectures I avoided. I vaguely recall trying my hand at a shepherd’s pie (in which, for some reason, I put water chestnuts) in Shepherd’s Bush, and even a joint of lamb, the most impressive thing one could possibly cook. There was the odd, uncharred breakfast. That accounts for the previous twenty-nine years of my culinary life.
I came from a family of cooks. Is it odd I didn’t cook? No, because it was the women who did the cooking. What did the men do? The men carved what the women cooked (a remarkable piece of last-minute scene stealing), as though sharp knives were too dangerous for women outside the kitchen. The men also handled the wine. They ate, of course, alternately praising the food and joking good-naturedly about it, and they oversaw the resurrection of ancient family jokes. Then they stayed at the table reluctantly when the football came on, wondering how to avoid the washing up. (My great-grandfather used to lock himself in the toilet with the Sunday paper.)