Feeding the Hungry Ghost (21 page)

WHOLE GRAINS.
Grains with their nutrient-rich kernel and fiber-rich bran intact. Once written off as peasant food, they’re now recognized as dietary darlings, and we’re coming to appreciate them for what they always have been — delicious, each with its own unique flavor and texture. Get the ones you know, like oatmeal and brown rice, then step out and try bitsy amaranth,
nutty barley, nuttier buckwheat. And quinoa, the quick-cooking ancient grain that’s so fun to say; it has a subtle taste of wild fields, and the tiny grains feel like bubbles in the mouth.

EXTRA-VIRGIN OLIVE OIL.
This is the oil our bodies like to process. It’s rich in cancer-beating antioxidants, with a high smoke point, which makes it great for cooking, and a silky fruitiness. Extra-virgin means it’s made from the first pressing of the olives. It has lower acidity and more antioxidants than other olive-oil grades. It’s elegant, madly versatile, and just a touch gilds a dish. Homer called it liquid gold. I’m talking the Homer who wrote the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey,
not Homer Simpson, who has his own views on food. Please remember he is a cartoon character.

SEA SALT.
Why can sea salt cost anywhere from three to ten dollars a pop, when a big ol’ last-you-forever canister of the supermarket kind only sets you back fifty cents? Because sea salt offers the one-two punch of better flavor and better nutrition. Table salt is refined, with its natural minerals processed out and anticaking agents added in. Sea salt has none of table salt’s burn or bitterness and is naturally mineral rich. It has a mildness on the palate, almost like a spice unto itself. It comes in a whole rainbow of colors, including crunchy pink Himalayan salt and French sel gris — gray salt. I’m especially crazy about Maldon salt, from Essex, England, with magnificent white crystal flakes that dazzle the tongue and make for fun crunching. Pricey, but so vibrant, you need only a little.

WHOLE PEPPERCORNS.
The pepper in your pepper shaker was probably ground back in the last ice age. It’s so dusty and bland, it’ll last you till the next ice age because you rarely use it. Give your mouth some fun. Whole peppercorns are like pearls that release their fullness and spark when crushed. Freshly cracked
pepper adds not just heat but depth of flavor. It beats the panties off the old ground stuff. Go wild. Buy a pepper mill, too.

The Brushstrokes

Legumes, whole grains, olive oil, sea salt, and pepper will take you far. They’re your survival staples. Very nice, but you deserve more. What about thrills and delights? What about full frontal flavor? These culinary treasures are to bland food as an artist’s palette is to a blank canvas.

CONDIMENTS

You don’t need seventy kinds of mustard and forty kinds of pickles. Start with the big three — an earthy, grainy mustard; a rich, fermented soy sauce; and a syrupy, aged balsamic vinegar. They add depth and dimension to food, but no fat or calories.

Ready to upgrade? Ingredients that were impossible to get a few years ago are now on market shelves or just a click away on the Internet. I’m in love with sweet-tart pomegranate molasses and the layers of salty, tangy flavors of preserved lemons. All these ingredients dazzle with flavors vibrant and unique. Like love, they can’t be faked. Unlike love, they can be bought.

SPICES

Spices are the dried, ground bark or seeds of plants. Herbs are the green, leafy parts. Herbs tend to be cooling, while spices are warming. Think of the difference between anise seed and tarragon. Both have licorice notes, but anise, a spice, has a gentle coziness to it, while fresh tarragon leaves provide a light licorice lift. Jarred dried spices last up to two years if kept out of the light, so stock up. Dried herbs, on the other hand, are just sad-making.
They’ll do in a pinch but, at best, will remind you of their live, fresh incarnation. Experiment and educate your palate. Find the seasonings you like. Use them generously. Try new ones. The spices without which I would not care to live include the following.

CARDAMOM.
Rich, mellow cardamom is the star of chai, India’s fragrant spiced tea (see recipe,
page 195
), Arabic coffee, and Dutch and African recipes, too. It’s not cheap, costing right up there with saffron and vanilla, but it’s an aphrodisiac according to
Tales of a Thousand and One Nights.
It’s pretty sexy stuff. Less mythic, more scientific findings show it aids digestion and has a mighty congestion-busting phytochemical.

CHILIES.
The big bang of spices. And the bang is capsaicin, a heart-healthy antioxidant that blasts cholesterol and triglycerides. Chilies are loaded with vitamins A, C, and E. They stimulate your heart and circulation the way they stimulate your palate and sinuses. They fire up foods from corn bread to the beany, spicy mélange that bears their name — chili. How spicy is up to you — and the Scoville scale. The Scoville scale rates the heat of every chili pepper, from the barely-there bell pepper, which has a rating of zero, to the incendiary, legendary ghost chili, which has a rating of over a million. I love ’em all, especially three winning dried red chili peppers from Turkey — Aleppo, with its gentle heat; its sassier sister, Marash; and darker, sharper Urfa, with its deliciously guttural name.

CINNAMON.
Antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and circulation improving, cinnamon aids your respiratory and digestive systems. Not only does this warming, sweet spice add a note of grace to fruits and desserts, but studies indicate that just a quarter teaspoon
a day (a dash in your cappuccino, on your oatmeal, or on a fresh peach) can help lower blood-sugar levels.

CORIANDER.
Coriander is kin to cilantro — in fact, they began life as the same plant. Coriander is the seeds; cilantro is the leaves. Anti-inflammatory, antibiotic, and a cholesterol killer, this is a superversatile spice, rich in vitamin C. The Egyptians embraced it five thousand years ago for both its healthful properties and its sultry notes of citrus and sage. It’s belonged to Arab cuisine ever since, as well as to the cuisines of Mexico, the Caribbean, India, Asia, and Morocco.

CUMIN.
This earthy Egyptian spice naturally contains iron for immunity and stimulates digestion. It also zaps potential nasties thanks to its antimicrobial properties. It may help fight cancer as well. All this, and it’s a must-have for cuisines from the Middle East to Mexico.

GINGER.
This dried, ground rhizome (great word, means “root-stock”) earns its age-old reputation as a stomach settler and a purifier. It has cholesterol-lowering, artery-degunking antioxidants, and antifungal, blood-clotting, and cancer-whacking properties. You can’t make Asian or Indian food without it. Or gingerbread.

TURMERIC.
The other rhizome on the list and the golden spice in every curry powder known to man. It’s valued not just for its gentle heat, but for its anti-inflammatory powers, and may be a player in combating Alzheimer’s. Research indicates it breaks up plaque deposits in the brain. It’s integral to Indian food and makes mustard yellow.

These spices complement each other in recipes and in your body, too. Chilies’ circulatory power allows for better turmeric
absorption. A hot infusion of ginger, cinnamon, and cardamom eases both respiratory and gastric woes. It’s like a divine meant-to-be.

RECIPE
for
DISASTER

I excel at denial. I’m not proud of it; but it’s a coping mechanism, and it’s served me well in times of crisis. I’ve even been able to shrug off a hurricane. It might have been on the weatherman’s radar, but it wasn’t on mine. We hadn’t gotten a hurricane in years, and Miami never got them in August. Why worry? I was more focused on meeting a story deadline and meeting a friend for a little fun. I needed some fun.

Dismissing a major weather event was one thing. Harder was denying the fact that Benjamin and I were in a spot of bad weather ourselves.

Our first two years of married life, we’d lived in Tokyo in a little apartment. Benjamin was there for work; I was there for romance — a new husband, a new life, a new country. It was the best kind of adventure, being in love, playing house, traveling Asia, making things up as we went along. In-laws and responsibility existed in another time zone.

Then we came back to Miami, where each of our favorite grandmothers died within months of each other. We rented another apartment; I worked days to put Benjamin through grad school courses he took at night. We barely saw each other but soldiered on with a sense of duty now for the future — not my favorite sense. He passed the CPA exam his first time out, in one heroic go, and got a job with an accounting firm, and we bought a house.

These are good things, things you strive for, yes? Here was our reward, our harvest, the fruits of our labor. It all accreted on me like weights. I felt left behind, lonely. Benjamin had grown up, I hadn’t, and we were never going to have fun again. The whole world gave way beneath me. I had no idea where I was going. And oh, good, we were going to have a hurricane, too.

I did not know how I was going to survive being stuck in this house with this husband. Oh, they were both nice enough; I was the problem. I was bratty, snappish, and moody. I could barely stand myself.

Further proof of my freakishness — I am not particularly into chocolate. But I’m not stupid, okay? I needed dark chocolate’s antioxidants and mood modifiers. If I was going to manage this hurricane at all, a cake would be necessary. Some vegan chocolate cakes are good, some decidedly not, but most comprise arcane ingredients like xanthan gum. I’m sorry, I still don’t know what that is.

I took a mental-health break to look through Laurie Colwin’s wonderful book
More Home Cooking.
I love her cozy way of giving you a recipe for something simple and comforting, something you want to eat right now, and happily, you can because it’s made with things you have on hand. Combined, though, these ingredients become greater than the sum of their parts. This not only yields you something worth eating; it makes you feel like you’ve executed a magic trick. If I couldn’t have fun, at least I’d have chocolate cake.

I did some vegan ingredient swapping for Colwin’s recipe and came up with a cake that’s quick, easy, pantry friendly, almost guilt-free, and totally vegan — and still provides a mind-blowing chocolate experience.

Vegan Chocolate Cake

Serves 8 to 10

½ cup canola oil, plus more for the cake pan

1¾ cups unbleached all-purpose flour

¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup evaporated cane sugar

1 cup unsweetened almond milk

2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Powdered sugar for garnish

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly oil a 9-inch round cake pan.

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa, and baking soda. Stir in the sugar.

In a small bowl, stir together the almond milk and vinegar. It will curdle; don’t fret. Stir in the ½ cup canola oil and the vanilla.

Gently stir the wet ingredients into the flour-cocoa mixture until just combined and it all coalesces into a dark, thick batter.

Pour into the prepared cake pan. Bake until the fragrance of chocolate wafts through the room, about 30 minutes. You can also give the cake a gentle poke with a finger; it should spring back when baked through.

All it needs is a dusting of powdered sugar.

The cake can be wrapped well and stored in the refrigerator for several days; bring to room temperature just before serving.

So I had the cake. But even I couldn’t deny that the whirling computer-generated graphic the meteorologists were calling Hurricane Andrew was bearing down on Miami. And the local television weather folk, normally so smiley and composed beneath their pancake makeup, were starting to blink, stutter, and sweat. Whatever else I might be dealing with or denying would have to wait.

I went about doing the normal hurricane prep, laying in candles and canned food, taking in the plants and patio furniture, all the while singing the R.E.M. ditty “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine).”

Just as the winds started to kick in, Benjamin lowered our blinds and latched them, turning our house from breezy, open, and flooded with sunshine to dark and close, the set of Sartre’s
No Exit.

Low-pressure system outside, high-pressure system inside. No wonder Benjamin got socked with a major headache. He wisely took to bed.

I didn’t. I read, paced, drank tea, made ice, picked up a book, put it down, watched the weather reports. The stations kept running footage of palm trees battered by the wind, meteorologists in yellow rain slickers squinting through the rain at the camera. This was before hurricane predicting became state of the art. South Florida only realized the power and path of Hurricane Andrew, a category 4 storm, as it hit.