Posts from — April 2007

Cooking Time: 2 Hours
Serves 6

This traditional Dominican Lenten and Easter dessert is adapted from a recipe by Wendy Castro’s mother, Mercedes, and is a special on Solar Café’s menu.

Ingredients:
1¾ cups dried, dark-red kidney beans
1 medium-sized batata* (Caribbean sweet potato), peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
2 2-inch long cinnamon sticks
1 cup coconut milk
3 cups evaporated milk
10 cloves
1/2 cup sugar (or more to taste)
½ teaspoon coarse salt (or more to taste)
1/4 cup dark raisins
milk crackers for garnish* (optional)

Directions:

1. The night before: Soak beans overnight in 3¼ cups of cold water. Drain, and add same amount of fresh water. Bring to a simmer and cook until soft, roughly 40 minutes. Drain and set aside.
2. Bring 4 cups of water and one of the cinnamon sticks to a boil. Add batata cubes and simmer until al dente, approximately 15 minutes. Strain and set aside, reserving cooking water.
3. Puree beans in a food processor or blender, adding batatas’ cooking water as needed to achieve a smooth, thick paste, nearly the consistency of sour cream. Push beans through a fine mesh sieve to remove skins.
4. Put coconut milk, evaporated milk, cloves, remaining cinnamon stick, salt and sugar in a three-quart pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer gently, stirring often, until sugar totally dissolves. Simmer for 10 minutes. Strain to remove cinnamon stick and cloves.
5. In a large pot, mix together bean puree and milks. Mixture should be the consistency of oil. Add cooking water from the batatas, as needed, to achieve this. Add salt and raisins, and simmer on medium-low for nearly 15 minutes, stirring regularly to avoid sticking.
6. Add batatas and simmer gently, mixing often, until mixture is the consistency of heavy cream. .
7. Serve warm or chilled, garnished with milk crackers.

* Available in Caribbean markets.

It is one of those sayings that have always struck a chord in me (pun intended for those who can get it). Lots of people say “stay in touch”, “keep in touch”, “are you in touch with him or her?” I have always wondered what is really behind that ‘in touch’? Because we usually do not mean actually touch someone even though the old saying from the 80’s was something like “Reach out and touch someone” and then they would show a son or daughter calling their parents or grandparents.

As a lot of us know, marketing has a lot to do with stirring up emotion and giving the idea of the possibility of healing an emotional pain or feeling of lack. However, there is no denying that they were on to something—look at the Internet. It’s just one big universe based solely on communication of information of every shape, color and size from the profane to the divine and everything in between. Communications and communication is something we do all day long, in person, in phone conversations, emails, faxes, and of course blog posts! The simplest definition of the word “Touch” seems to be: “To be in contact with.” That makes sense but doesn’t necessarily help me really understand what “Being in Touch” really means. In contact with what? When we say that about another person, does that mean in person, does that mean their body, their voice, their email, their cell phone voicemail, or perhaps their soul?

Well for me personally there are two reasons I find this interesting and I believe it to be important.

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The other day, as we walked to lunch, I and my colleagues, canvas publishers Tom and Matt, again started to discuss a topic that has been much on our minds of late: The argument about organic vs. local products—primarily foods.

It’s a question I’ve been asked a lot lately—not only because I am the editor of this sustainable lifestyle magazine but because of the fact that I am a professionally trained chef and veteran food writer—a fact that many of you may not know.

Given those two sides of my professional self most folks make the assumption that I must be ardently pro-local. After all, any seasoned chef worth his or her toque always aims to use seasonal ingredients in the kitchen. There are a lot of reasons for this: Cost is one because bountiful seasonal items are often cheaper than there cross-country shipped counterparts. Plus, locally produced food just tastes better because of the foreshortened time getting it from field to market.

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