I’m so ready to heat things up in the kitchen, but opportunity hasn’t been knocking. It’s been too warm to start the soups, stews and roasts of chilly weather cooking. So, following on the heels of the preserved lemons and chicken stock, I’m continuing the theme of getting some basics ready for nippy nights. This time, it’s harissa, a condiment sometimes used in North Africa cuisine. In it’s basic form, it’s made with peppers, garlic, olive oil and a few spices.

If you read the LA Times, you will have seen that Amy Scattergood did a recent article on harissa. She suggests chipotles in her mix, call me a purist, but I completely disagree, this is not the place for their smoky flavor. Her recipe and many others call for caraway, but that flavor doesn’t remind me of the harissa in the couscous restaurants in Paris I used to go to with my friends when I was a poor student in Paris, so I leave it out. I also find that too much raw garlic is too strong (and I’m not one to skimp on the garlic), so I only use two cloves. Trust me on this one.

The word harissa in Arabic means to crush, and it’s traditionally made in a mortar and pestle, but you can use a food processor. Harissa is used in all sorts of ways in North African cuisine. It’s a must when making "un grand couscous," a meal of couscous grains topped with a stew of vegetables and meats. The stew itself is full of flavor, but the harissa adds a tangy garlicky heat that this dish really needs. Plus, it’s useful that the heat is added by each person at the table; it makes it easier to feed kids and adults the same thing and you also don’t have to worry about the guest who doesn’t like spicy food. You can serve this along with a chicken breast, with some grilled lamb, put a dollop of it in some soup or lentils, put it on potatoes or eat it like in the Maghreb spread on a piece of bread. Or just do like me and make it ahead of time and wait to steam up the kitchen another day. I’ll put up the couscous recipe sometime between now and the first big frost.

harissa

• 6 oz. dried chiles (guajillo or ancho or a mix), stemmed and seeded
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and quartered
• 1 t salt
• 1 T coriander
• 1 T cumin
• 2 t cayenne pepper (start with this amount and add more if you like it really hot)
• 2 T extra virgin olive oil, plus more for storage
• juice of one lemon

Put chiles in bowl and cover with hot water. Let sit for 1 hour until softened; drain. Place all ingredients into a food processor and pulse until smooth. Add a little water if necessary to form a smooth paste. Transfer harissa to a jar and add just enough olive oil to cover. Refrigerate until ready to use. Makes about 1 cup.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of ceres & bacchus. Looking back to last October, I’m reminded of something Edward Said wrote, “Beginning is making or producing difference.” I started this site as an outlet for my culinary obsession and because my husband wanted to become a web designer (watch out everybody, because now he wants to increase his skill set to include video and podcasts). We both had the feeling that we could make something different within this genre, but I hadn’t realized all of the ways in which it would make a difference in my life. There’s the cliché idea that in writing a blog, one participates in a global virtual community. Sounds sappy, but it’s oh-so-true. I’ve had contact with people all over the world, I’ve found inspiration gastronomical and otherwise and I’ve even received foodie packages in the mail. The site has also allowed me to have contact with friends and family that I wouldn’t have had otherwise (hi grandma!). I’ve challenged myself with tasks I hadn’t realized would be part and parcel of this venture: choosing recipes that people will love and that are different from what everyone else is making; writing instructions that are clear and concise and that make it so people can actually reproduce the recipes; making a coherent narrative that will keep all of you interested in coming back here; and of course, the monster that plagues us all, the photography, because let’s face it, everybody wants the food porn. The one thing that writing here on an almost bi-weekly basis has done for me that I hadn’t foreseen is that it’s made me a better writer in my academic work. The more I write, the more I write. That’s a tautology, for sure, but it holds. If you’ve been with me for the last twelve months, you’ll have noticed that I’ve had an eventful year, full of changes both exciting and daunting and we’ve had some great food and great parties. The next year will bring more challenges and certainly more good food. And I’m signing up for another twelve months of this; I’ll already be making dinner, might as well share it with you all. Let’s hope I won’t have too many disasters.

Last October, the initial post was for a simple roast chicken recipe. I’ve been making roast chicken for years, because it’s economical and delicious. Now that fall is upon us, I’m pulling that recipe back out and I’ll start putting it on the menu again every couple of weeks. When I make a chicken, I take the bones and make stock, use the leftover chicken for sandwiches, salads, stir fries, enchiladas, risotto, or whatever other thing I can think up to put variety on the table. The first recipe I ever wrote down and shared with my family was for this chicken and what to do with the leftovers. My dad now calls it “the recipe for one three dollar roast chicken that feeds you and your family for five days.” We do like chicken, but the other reason I make it I can no longer bring myself to buy chicken broth, the stuff I make from the chicken bones is just so much better, and I especially like broth made from a chicken that has been roasted, it’s darker in color and richer in flavor. If you’re thinking you don’t have space in your freezer for that, let me tell you that you’re better off having a freezer full of homemade fat free chicken broth than a freezer full of just about anything else, so eat up those Lean Cuisines and Stouffer’s Pizzas and make room for some of this. If space is truly an issue, just reduce the stock by half and add some water when you’re ready to use it. This recipe is really easy, just throw everything in a pot the day after you’ve roasted a chicken and wait for it to turn into liquid gold. I always cool it in the fridge and wait a day so that I can skim all the fat from the top, but you can leave some in if you want some schmaltz in your soup. You’ll also note that I don’t call for salt here, it’s best to wait and see what you’re going to do with it before you decide how much salt it will need. In any case, this might not be the most original recipe out there, but I know that some of you haven’t ever made this before and some of you have forgotten just how good it is. Make this, you won’t regret it.

chicken stock

• bones from one roast chicken
• one onion, cut in half (I don’t peel it, you don’t have to either)
• two medium carrots, broken into several pieces (ditto)
• one celery stalk, broken into several pieces
• 1 bouquet garni: two stalks parsley, a few sprigs of thyme and a bay leaf tied together with twine
• 10 black peppercorns

Put all ingredients together in your largest stock pot, fill pot with water and put on stove on high heat. Once it comes to a boil, turn heat to low, cover and let simmer for about three hours. Skim if a lot of foam appears on the surface (the best way to avoid the foam and thus avoid the skimming is to keep it at a bare simmer with no boiling bubbles at all).

I can finally start getting into the idea of fall, because you see I found my sweaters. They were in a box in the garage of our new house and I was refusing to believe that fall was coming, refusing to think it was going to ever be cold outside, refusing to cook for fall. Now that I’ve got my apparel in order, I’m ready to appreciate the changing colors of the leaves and ready to heat things up a little in the kitchen.

This weekend, my parents and my sister came to visit. We didn’t spend a lot of time cooking anything elaborate; tapas for friends on Friday night and a big family dinner on Saturday. I didn’t even cook dessert; we just bought Magic Brownies and Pecan Blondies from Zingerman’s - no need to find the perfect brownie recipe, people, just order these. The big news of the weekend is that my muscle bound sister slung a bunch of boxes around and my mother unwrapped all the kitchenware and organized my cupboards; my father helped, too (thanks y’all!). This is a good thing, because I was having a block about getting started, especially since we moved from a very large kitchen into a much smaller one. Where to put everything? Thanks to mom, I didn’t have to make any decisions and she put everything away in the perfect place - of course she did, she’s my mom, right? This reminds me of the last time I was at her house for lunch and she was making sandwiches. She said, "How do you like your sandwich?" and I just stared at her for a couple of seconds and finally said, "I like it how you make it, you’re my mom."

Now that the family has christened the house and the kitchen is organized, I can get down to the business of making plans for cold weather cooking. I decided to start by replenishing my supply of preserved lemons. I realize I’ve given you this recipe before as an addendum to something else, but I don’t think you’ll mind me repeating it. I found these wonderful tiny lemons at Trader Joe’s, but any lemons will do and when Meyer lemon season rolls around, try using those. These take about three weeks of marinating before they’re ready. I’m still looking for the tagine and the couscoussier, but I know by the time I find them, it’s going to be good and chilly outside. I’ll put a pot of d’jej m’chermel on the stove, slip on my favorite sweater, and curl up on the couch with a book and a glass of wine until it’s ready.

preserved lemons

• 4-6 lemons, preferably organic, scrubbed
• 1/2 cup sea salt
• 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
• Enough boiling water to fill your jar
• A sterilized jar, with a tight fitting lid, large enough to hold the fruit (to sterilize, boil in water or run it through the dishwasher right before using)

Take each lemon in your hand and make vertical slits from the blossom end to the tip without cutting all the way through the fruit. Place the lemons, salt and lemon juice in the jar. Add enough boiling water to come to the top of the lemons. Put the lid on the jar. Place the jar in the refrigerator for at least a week before using the lemons. When you want to use a lemon, use a clean utensil to fish one out, not your hands. Will keep in the refrigerator for six months to a year.

My brother, Ken (of the excellent salsa and remarkable margaritas), grows this in his backyard. No, it’s not what you’re thinking. He grows other things, too, including a wide variety of herbs like coriander (first the herb, then he lets it go to seed and harvests those, brilliant, right?) and pears and crab apples and loads of other fun things. I happened to be at his place the other day to drop off Jessica’s tooth fairy bag. She had left it at Nancy’s lake house (it somehow had more money in it than when she lost it, go figure). Of course I was smart and timed this visit for 6 o’clock when I knew that he’d offer us something to eat and drink.

When we arrived, he was harvesting this from his garden. It grows on a vine and you need to dry it before using it (that’s the drying rack you see below, next to my feet). The first person to correctly guess what it is will receive a package of edibles from yours truly. There is no purchase necessary, feel free to guess more than once, you must be 18 to enter, and please no family members or close friends of ceres and bacchus.

French toast is not French. I just needed to get that out of the way at the beginning, since that’s the recipe you’ll find below and the rest of this post is going to be a mish mash of family history and a small glimpse of the U S of A from the perspective of three French children. I’ll also tell you a little about our trip up north as they say here in Michigan, and because this site is about food, I’ll try to get around to telling you about some of the things we ate. In my last entry, I described my brother Ken as a shaggy dog story teller. I’m afraid that one might come back to haunt me with what follows.

I’m from one of those families where the door is always open, there’s always more room at the dinner table and a few extra people around was never a problem. This is how my parents ended up with three French women in their 20s staying with them in the summer of 1989. They were part of a group who had been lured to the states by a publishing company (whose name I won’t divulge) with promises of fast cash and fun in America. What they got was a cultish experience and virtually no greenbacks. And no place to stay. Can you believe they were told they could get a cheap room at the Salvation Army in downtown Detroit and survive on peanut butter? Friends of friends told them to knock on our door and they did and they stayed for three or four months. Laurence was one of them and the only one who has stayed in touch. That summer of ‘89, my mom advised ditching door-to-door book selling and found Laurence a job working (under the *cough* table) as a hostess in the fanciest restaurant in town. I was away for the better part of that summer, playing nanny for a friend, so I was there for only about a month of the French girl circus (which is a good thing, because they were in my bedroom). One of my memories of Laurence was that she had only one nice outfit that she fastidiously cleaned every day after work and put on again the next day. She must have confirmed all sorts of stereotypes her colleagues had about the French.

We’ve seen her on trips to Paris, but this summer she came back to visit for the first time and brought along her three children, Jean, Louis and Marie. I was once again reminded that I really wouldn’t mind having a child if it could be a French one. They help in the kitchen! They eat everything! They stay at the dinner table for hours with no complaints! They sit up straight - well, especially with their mother poking them in the back to remind them not to slouch over, I guess I’d have to be a French mother to have French children.

These kids were liking the soda and the beach and the big cars, but had lots of questions and some negative reactions. These are my favorites. On entering the house through the screened in porch Jean asked me, "Why all the screens on all the windows? Are there lots of bugs everywhere here? Don’t you get claustrophobic?"

At lunch after a crab salad stuffed tomato on Boston lettuce, Louis asked, "Can I help bring out the next course?" Poor boy, he thought that was just the starter and was expecting a roast and potatoes and then green salad and cheese and some sort of dessert. All he got were cookies and peaches.

Marie’s astonishment at not being understood by my nieces was charming, "They don’t know what babyfoot is? These Americans are crazy." I explained that while babyfoot is indeed a combination of two words in English, it is used in French to designate the game that here we call foosball. Hand smacks forehead.

Other highlights of the French monkeys include the following. Louis confided to me that he abhors smoothies. Jean’s zizi was hanging out of his bathing suit and Marie wouldn’t keep her suit on. She also complained about the fat on my arms.

Because Laurence and her brood lived for a time in England, they have good English skills, but not perfect. The biggest blooper of the weekend was when she asked my seven year old niece, "Jessica, give me a French kiss." You should have seen the look on that kid’s face. This obviously led to discussion of all of the things we call "French" here in the U.S., like French dressing, French fries, Frenched green beans and lamb chops, and Sunday’s breakfast, French toast. There’s a similar preparation in France, called pain perdu (lost bread, because you usually make it with the stale leftovers, this can sometimes be prepared like bread pudding as well). Laurence and her kids had never eaten it. "It’s peasant food," Laurence told us.

This is my niece, Jessica. After breakfast, we had a short rain storm and she’s pictured here belting out her rendition of singin’ in the rain. She was recently diagnosed with an allergy to eggs. It’s taken years for her parents to figure out why she was not interested in eating and why she’s in the smaller end of normal for her age. She seems to be thriving on her new egg-free diet. We’re trying to make meals with no eggs and that’s an awfully tall order for Sunday breakfast. I happened on a vegan recipe for French toast with a banana to replace the egg and thought we’d give it a try (I don’t remember where I read about it or I’d cite the source). The vegan recipe used soy milk instead of cow’s milk, so if you swing that way, feel free to make that substitution. If you like the flavor of bananas, you’ll love this one. We ate every last crumb. I’m left with a question. If there’s no egg, is it still French toast? Erik calls it monkey toast.

monkey toast (eggless French toast)

• 1 loaf white bread, sliced
• 1 banana
• 1 cup milk or half & half
• 1 t vanilla
• optional (and truly not French): a pinch of cinnamon or other flavoring of choice
• butter or cooking spray

Place banana, milk or half & half, vanilla and optional flavoring (if using) into a blender and mix until smooth. Place mixture in a shallow bowl. Heat skillet over medium-low. Place a small pat of butter in the middle of skillet or spray skillet with cooking spray. Take one piece of bread and soak it in the milk mixture, then put it in the skillet. Repeat with as many slices of bread as will fit in your skillet at one time. Cook until bottom of bread is golden brown, flip and brown the other side. You can put the finished slices on a platter tented with aluminum foil while cooking the rest, or dish them out to your monkeys as they are ready. Serve with butter and maple syrup.

P.S. We have my best friend Nancy to thank for opening her family lake house up to us for four days of swimming, boating, eating and general whooping it up. If you’d like to see more photos of our trip, they’re over here.

Buying little plastic bottles of water is for chumps. It’s not only bad for the environment and a threat to the public water supply, it’s really expensive. I was happy to see the short editorial “In Praise of Tap Water,” in last week’s New York Times. I’ve always been one to snag a plastic bottle from a friend and re-fill it umpteen times before tossing it for a new one. Some people say that re-using a plastic bottle is not good for your health, so I was worrying about that one, just not enough to stop re-filling my bottle (after cleaning it, of course). Last year, I noticed a trend among my cool socially aware students; they have started re-purposing glass jars (from say pickles or canning) for their water. I’ve adopted their habit and I’m really happy I did. Now I don’t have to worry about the plastic at all and I get to drink out of glass, which always tastes better.

While I’m fretting about the environment and saving a few dimes by not purchasing bottled water, some people writing blogs have money to burn. I’m talking about Ashwin Khanna who is giving away $2500 in order to get more blog traffic. If you want to participate, just post this to your blog:

Over at Ashwin’s blog, you will find one crazy blog owner!! You can win $2500!! To enter just copy this text and paste it in your blog!! But hurry, this competition will not last long! So get posting!

In the next few days, I’ll be taking a break. I’ll be soaking in a large spring-fed lake in northern Michigan, some of the best water in the world and dreaming about winning this money. That would really be wild, right?

(crumpled on her desk)

Dear Bill: I’ve made a couple of sandwiches for you.
In the ice-box you’ll find
blueberries - a cup of grapefruit
a glass of cold coffee.

On the stove is the teapot with enough tea leaves
for you to make tea if you
prefer - Just light the gas -
boil the water and put in the tea

Plenty of bread in the bread box and butter and eggs -
I didn’t know just what to
make for you. Several people
called up about office hours -

See you later. Love. Floss.

Please switch off the telephone.

After William Carlos Williams wrote his plum poem, his wife, Flossie Williams, drew up a reply. He took her words and re-worked them as this poem. After his pilfering of the plums, she gives him a recitation of all the things he could possibly get for himself in the kitchen, treating him as if he were a helpless boy.

When I read this reply, I was reminded of the cold coffee, the café frappé, served in Greece. It’s instant coffee, mixed with sugar, water and sometimes milk, shaken in a plastic shaker. It’s the perfect summer pick me up. I also remembered the recipe from the New York Times last month for cold-brewed coffee. I decided to combine the shaker method of café frappé with the brewing method described by Cindy Price. It really didn’t need much sugar at all and unlike my usual java, I used no milk. So sweet and so cold.

iced coffee

• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1/3 cup ground coffee
• Ice
• Sugar and milk to taste

Combine water and coffee in a jar or container and cover for twelve hours. Filter through two coffee filters or a fine mesh sieve. For one serving, place 1/2 cup coffee, 1/2 cup ice and milk and sugar (if using) in drink shaker and shake vigorously. Pour over ice in a tall glass.

In chapter 57 of his sixteenth-century novel, The Fourth Book, Fran?ois Rabelais writes, “The satirist’s sentence, that affirms Master Gaster [Sir Belly] to be the master of all arts, is true.” This seemingly tongue in cheek statement deserves to be considered both literally and figuratively. Food and eating figure prominently in the arts since the pre-historic era. I’m thinking of cave drawings depicting the hunt, for instance; some of the first art produced by humans. Hunger is something more than the body’s signal that we need to ingest calories and food symbolizes desire and identity on many levels. Apples and bananas are the first things that come to my mind. There is also bread and wine, steak-frites and apple pie. And how about lime pickle?

While my professional writing doesn’t have to do with food, I have taught classes on food in French literature and culture, so when I heard about Lydia’s Bookworm in the Pantry series on her blog The Perfect Pantry, I signed up to submit a list of five food related non-cookbooks. It was very difficult to limit my list of books to just five, but the task was easier once I set myself certain rules. First, I didn’t want to repeat any of the previous bookworm selections; I’d rather introduce people to things they might not have read before. Second, I wanted only books originally written in French, because after all, I am a French professor. I might cook food from all over the world, but most of the reading I do has to do with France and her former colonies. According to Lydia’s rules, these all had to be books available in English through a major internet distributor like amazon. You can order them from amazon.com by clicking on the title in English. I also wanted to make sure these books are available in French, so if you do want to read them in the original language, you can order them amazon.fr by clicking on the title in French.

The most obvious food in French literature reference is Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time (the link here is for volume one, you can click from there to get the other 5 tomes). Most of you know about Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu from his experience with a madeleine and a cup of tea that transported him back to his childhood. This book has a lot more references to food and its importance in Belle ?poque France than this one small passage. From asparagus, oysters and boeuf ? la mode to chocolate cakes, petits fours and orangeade, In Search of Lost time offers up a feast of food. Among other things, Proust constructs the character of Fran?oise, the cook, as the consummate artist as in this passage:

Whoever would have refused to taste it, saying: “I have finished, I’m not hungry anymore,” would have immediately debased himself to the level of one of those vulgarians who, even when an artist makes them a present of one of his works, looks at the weight and material when it is only the artist’s intent and signature that have any value. To leave even one drop of it on the plate would have demonstrated the same impoliteness as to get up before the end of a musical piece in the very presence of the composer. (I, 1, 104)

For Proust, the painter, composer and cook are all artists worthy of respect. I am not one of those people who believes that reading Proust is something everyone should do before they die. I have a French friend and colleague who says the only way she’ll ever read Proust is if they shut her up in prison for a couple of years. If, unlike her, you like the long sentences and lingering description, you will find it a satisfying gastronomical read.

No list of French food in literature could be complete without mention of Emile Zola’s Le Ventre de Paris takes place in Les Halles, the area in the center of Paris that was the centrally located wholesale marketplace until it was demolished in 1971. This novel is the third installment in a series about the Rougon-Macquart family. Florent, an ex-convict, returns from a penal colony in Cayenne to live with his younger brother, Quenu, who owns and runs a charcuterie with his wife, Lisa. This novel presents an analysis of the struggle between the conservative, complacent, well-fed haves (the Fat) and the dissident, dissatisfied political idealists (the Thin). Its political theme is inseparable from the setting of the working people of les Halles and the food that is often used as an allegory of class and a symbol of everything from innocent sexuality to corruption. Zola masterfully creates “still-life” scenes of the charcuterie shop: a mountain of sausages and rosy pink pig fat juxtaposed with Florent’s first notice of Lisa’s voluptuous attractiveness, the glorious cherries, plums and strawberries of the fruit stand compared with the beauty of the young woman who sells them and the well-known “symphony of cheeses” scene in which the malodorous putridity of the cheese symbolizes the rotten heart of its gossiping vendor. This book is only currently available in a truncated translation (an e-text version can be found by clicking on the title above), but if you can wait until the fall, this new translation of The Belly of Paris by Brian Nelson for Oxford World paperbacks is available for pre-order right now from (www.amazon.com) amazon.

Food continues to occupy a central place in the imagination of contemporary French writers. Among the books I have read in the last few years, two of them stand out. The first, published in 1997, is Philippe Delerm’s We Could Almost Eat Outside: An Appreciation of Life’s Small Pleasures. It is a collection of very short stories and food is central in almost every one of them. The French title, La premi?re gorg?e de bi?re et autres plaisirs minuscules, references one of the stories which elevates the pleasure of the first sip of beer to an epiphany of almost Proustian stature. It had to be changed for the American reading public. Puritanism at its finest. The more than thirty stories in this book advocate an oh-so-French joie de vivre and you get caught up in it, too. Reading this book will make you want to stop and savor life. Here is an example:

It’s easy to shell peas. A little pressure from the thumb on the crease of the pod and it opens, docile, a gift. Some of them, less ripe, are more reticent - an incision with the nail of the index finger allows one to open the green, and to smell the wetness and dense flesh, just under the falsely parchmented skin. Afterwards, you slide the balls with one finger. The last one is so minuscule. Sometimes, you want to eat it. It’s not good, a little bitter but cool like the kitchen at 11, cold water kitchen, the vegetables peeled - right there, by the sink, some naked carrots shining on a towel are almost dry. (translation mine)

When I first read Clotilde’s Seven Breakfasts, this book came to mind. If you like Chocolate & Zucchini, I’m sure you’d like this book. If you want a small gift for a food-loving friend, this would be the thing.

My other contemporary French language literature recommendation is harder to describe and less connected to food than the other books, though food does figure in it prominently. Belgian author Am?lie Nothomb’s The Life of Hunger is a semi-autobiographical anti-bildungsroman. The main character of Biographie de la faim is a young girl overcome by a powerful hunger and thirst. Her ’surfaim’ or super-hunger is a twist on the Nietzschean concept of the ?bermensch (surhomme in French) and is epitomized when she gorges herself on water, watches herself eat candy in a mirror or finally turns to anorexia.

Finally, for the Francophiles who would like to expand their culinary lexicon in French, I have a recommendation for a dictionary: Bernard Luce’s Dictionnaire Gastronomique Francais/Anglais - Dictionary of Gastronomic Terms French/English. At 500 pages long, you may find it too big to easily slip into your pocket for your next trip to Paris, but it is the most extensive dictionary of its kind. Written by a native speaker of French for restaurant owners in France wanting to translate their menus into English, some of the English is not perfect, but for those who are genuinely interested in learning all of those names for fish in French (and in English) and the ingredients in all of those sauces, this is a valuable companion to the Larousse Gastronomique Recipe Collection. I realize that brings my list up to six books instead of five. I couldn’t help myself.

In the four literary works I recommend, food serves a transcendental symbolic function and demonstrates that Monsieur Belly is at the center of human activity. Fran?ois de la Rochefoucauld wrote in the seventeenth-century about all sorts of human preoccupations like jealously, love and ego. His proclamation, “Eating is a need, knowing how to eat is an art,” sums up the French attitude toward food that may seem snobbish and imperious but accurately portrays the difference to be made between eating to live and living to eat that can be found in all of these books.

Surprisingly, ceres & bacchus has become most well-known for the fat-free microwave potato chip recipe I wrote about in March. Surprising to me, anyway. This recipe has since gained some popularity and Fer Food even won an award for photos of a salt and vinegar version. Thanks to all of you who have sent messages about it, especially Jennie of Straight from the Farm. She actually bought a mandolin just to make these chips?

For those of you who jumped on this wagon because of the chips, I’ve got another one for you: baked tortilla chips. These are also really low in fat, they’re even easier to make than the potato chips and are a great vehicle for salsa and guacamole. The only issue with these chips, besides the fact that even with virtually no fat they still have calories, is that they are not as sturdy as the deep fried kind. Just make sure you stabilize the underside of the chip with your fingertip as you dip it into the salsa (the chip, not your finger) and you’ll be fine. I’m going to try making nachos with them soon - the not so fattening chips will cancel out all the melted cheese, right?

Also in the picture up there and in the recipes below is salsa made by my older brother, Ken. I know everyone has a salsa recipe already, or you make it so much you don’t even need a recipe, but really people, try this one. I ate about half of it, dipping in my chips when I thought nobody was paying attention so I could scoop as much as possible onto each chip. I told my sister-in-law that I was going to eat it all. I asked Ken for the recipe after I stopped singing, “mi salsa, mi salsa.” He said he tried for a long time to make a salsa his kids would eat by eliminating all of the things that make salsa delicious. They still wouldn’t eat it, so he went full speed ahead in the other direction and makes a salsa with spices and heat that will make your mouth burn in an oddly addictive happy way. The day I made the chips and he brought the salsa, I also made guacamole, something I’m sure you also already have a recipe for, but since it’s in the picture, I thought I’d share mine with you, even though it wasn’t very photogenic.

Baked tortilla chips

• 1 package flour tortillas*
• Cooking spray
• Table salt (I use iodide free)
• Optional: garlic powder, onion powder, paprika (smoked or not), black pepper, etc.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cut tortillas into wedges using a knife or scissors. Lightly spray baking sheet with cooking spray and arrange tortilla wedges on sheet. Lightly spray tops of tortilla wedges with cooking spray and sprinkle on seasonings (if you’re using anything other than plain salt, mix them together in a small bowl ahead of time and sprinkle them on together). Bake until they are slightly browned, being careful they don’t get too dark.

* You can use corn tortillas, but you have to use a lot more cooking spray and some of them come out chewy.

Salsa fresca

• 2 firm medium tomatoes chopped fine
• 1/2 orange (or red or yellow) bell pepper chopped fine
• 1/4 red onion chopped fine
• 2 green onions chopped fine
• 2 jalape?o peppers chopped very fine (adjust to taste)
• 1 t toasted and then ground cumin
• 1 T chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 1/2 T white wine vinegar
• Juice of 1 whole lime
• 2 pinches of kosher salt
• 2 grinds of pepper

Place ingredients in a bowl and stir to combine.

(adapted from Pam Anderson’s How to Cook Without A Book)

Guacamole

• 3 avocados, halved, seeded and peeled
• Juice of 1 lime
• 1/4 medium sweet onion, chopped fine
• 1 plum tomato, seeded and chopped fine
• 2 T chopped cilantro
• Pinch of salt
• 1/2 jalape?o, seeded and chopped fine (optional)

Place avocado in a bowl just large enough for all the ingredients to fit in. Smash the avocado, but leave some large chunks (I use a brass pestle, but you can use a fork or a spoon). Add all remaining ingredients and stir to combine.