Wild Heart of Palm Salad

Today Emma and I walked through the USQ farmers market and found something very exciting: Wild Hearts of Palm from Berried Treasures of Cooks Falls, New York. Heart of palm, which usually comes in a can, is a delicacy that graces the menus of most Latin American restaurants. However, I read a while back that it is very destructive to the whole palm tree when it is harvested, and have avoided it since learning that fact. That is why the discovery of Wild Heart of Palm was so great; it comes from the cattail, and is abundant in the Spring.

describes them as this "They're like a combination of tender zucchini and cucumbers, adding a refreshing texture and flavor to salads". Today I thinly sliced them and tossed them with some pungent wild arugula, smoked trout, Mutsu apple, and walnuts for a Spring salad. You can also just munch on them plain, as they are mild and refreshing and really fun to eat.

Jammy Rhubarb at the Union Square Greenmarket

This morning we did a demo and made Jammy Rhubarb at the Union Square Greenmarket. We cooked down fresh rhubarb from Gorzynski farm with some Linden honey from Tremblay Apiaries. To give it some flavor, we added a touch of cinnamon at the end, but you can add ginger, cardamom, or whatever other spice you want. After the rhubarb has cooked down a lot, it gets really jammy and sticky from the honey. At that point we spread it on toast or crackers for a yummy snack.

My personal favorite cracker for this recipe is made by HRH Prince Charles. I had never liked him until a few weeks ago, when I learned about his cool projects (more on that later, this is about rhubarb), and now even his oaten biscuits are winning me over.

Everyone who tried it loved it, especially the kids. I think kids love rhubarb because they love eating sour candies, and that sour tang is very similar. Many women came over to reminisce about their mothers' rhubarb jam and/or strawberry rhubarb pie. I joined in. My mom used to make the best strawberry rhubarb pie when we were young, and now she doesn't. She never loved to bake, so we only got those treats every once in a while. Mom, if you are reading this, please make me some pie!

Emma Piper Burket and Sophia Brittan will be in the August Issue of Teen Vogue

Yesterday was so much fun! Emma and I posed for Teen Vogue's August Issue. We will be giving tips for teens who are going off to college on how to eat right. We got to be dressed up in really fun clothes, and had our hair and make-up done. Between each shot, someone would come in and adjust this or that, and tuck our hair behind our ears, or comb it out. We loved being fussed over. Who else agrees with me that Kitchen Caravan should involve more fashion!?

Right after we made the Halway Gula Zerd, my friend Raz showed me how to make another Kurdish dessert: Halway Ard, or “flour dessert.” It’s a really simple and delicious recipe that is traditionally made for new breast-feeding mothers (though of course it can be enjoyed by everyone all the time…). I’ve posted the recipe in our recipe bank since it's the season to be thinking about our mothers.

We used regular flour, but Raz says that it should be made with barley flour. The texture and taste reminds me of a barley dessert that we are obsessed with at Tsampa, a Tibetan restaurant in New York- except there they serve it with yogurt instead of toasted almonds.    

As we were filming the process of making the dessert, the power went out- luckily everyone uses gas stoves- so we could keep on cooking! Power outages are a common occurrence throughout Iraq; though power is much more steadily available in the Kurdish region, there are still several hours a day that houses have no electricity.  Each family has to get power from multiple sources- so for example they might get power from the national grid at night, and power from a neighborhood generator during the day. Even houses like Raz's that have a third private generator are not exempt from the occasional outage--- we didn't let that slow us down... The video below proves you really can cook in the dark!

8 Grain Spaghetti a la Vodka

Usually when my family is together in New York on the weekends we go out for lunch. But today was one of those rainy days that makes you want to stay home and not be bothered with the rest of the world. We went on a long walk in Central Park with Robin, and got just wet enough to get excited about a warm lunch. I offered to prepare something, and started mentally sifting through my pantry. If you recall, Emma and I canned a bunch of produce last summer, and I am just about finishing up on my Winter stores. I still have a few jars of stewed tomatoes left, and so I thought that a good tomato sauce with last Summer’s fresh tomatoes would be perfect. I would make a Vodka Sauce, one of my favorites. And I would add sun-dried tomatoes for a little more sweetness. In my head I knew it was a done deal.

When I got home, I just chopped up some onion and smashed a clove of garlic. I started cooking it up in the Mexican olive oil I picked up at Fairway the other week, and added about 4 or 5 chopped up sun-dried tomatoes. I let those sweat for a while with some salt, so that they could get really soft and tender. The only Vodka Sauce recipe that I have ever made uses cream. I could already hear my mother telling me that she can’t have dairy, so I was thinking of alternatives. Soy milk sounded so incredibly inappropriate, so I did not even go there. I then thought that I would do what I always read I am NOT supposed to do (but which I secretly love). I would aerate the tomatoes using the hand blender until they turned pink and a bit creamy. Well, it worked. I had to first blitz the tomatoes and their juices up with the blender, and added them to the pot with the onion, sun-dried tomato, and garlic. Once the contents of the pot came to a boil, I added a few lugs of vodka. I then simmered the sauce down quite a bit, and then blended it again with the hand blender, so it got quite creamy. I thus proved myself right in my belief that Vodka sauce can go without cream.

The week before I went to London, a friend took me on a small Brooklyn food tour. We stopped by Caputo’s in Carroll Gardens, where I picked up some of their ‘8 Grain’ spaghetti. I was eager to try it, as it has farro, whole wheat, and semolina flours, as well as a bunch of other grains. I fell in love with family-run Caputo’s the second I walked in the door. The grandfather, son, and grandson all work together making homemade pastas, antipasti, and homemade mozzarella (the grandfather’s specialty). The ‘8 Grain’ proved far superior to all of the whole wheat spaghettis that I have found in supermarkets, and went perfectly with the tomato sauce. My mom and sister loved the simple Sunday lunch. They described the sauce as “yummy” and even used the adjective “divine”. We eat better at home than in restaurants, that is for sure. But with a jar of home-canned tomatoes that were picked at their peak how can we not?