Have you asked your grocer about these foods?

I have the good fortune of having a fabulous and low cost fresh fruit and vegetable market near my home once a week. Every Saturday morning, I do my best to get there by about 8am, before the crowds really hit. As I walked through a few weeks ago, I realized that supermarket shopping that I was so used to, often neutralizes food for us. It sanitizes the real plant, cutting it just so, removing leaves and flowers and roots, to make a carrot look dead or a cabbage like a bowling ball. When they do this, we miss so much! We miss not only in seeing the full plant as it was actually grown, picked or cut, but we also, frankly, get ripped off! And in these economic times, we should be making use of every delicious part of our fruits and vegetables as we can!

In purchasing my produce a little more rustic, I have been enjoying a few items that perhaps you can rediscover. These are true PovertyFood specialties and depending on where you are from you may already be familiar with them. Here are a few examples of what your grocery store should be providing. If they are not, ask the manager if they clean and prepare the produce in house. If so, take advantage of these fabulous foods that they will probably just give you for FREE!


Zucchini Blossoms: At my market they don't sell the simple zucchini. They sell it with the zucchini blossom still attached! This is amazing to me considering the zucchini blossom has become something of a delicacy that can be battered and fried as with a good Japanese tempura  or eaten raw in salads and other dishes.  HINT: Most squashes have edible flowers. If you are growing them, absolutely try the blossoms!

Turnip greens: If you are from the Southern part of the United States, such things as turnip greens, mustard greens, etc will be an old familiar favorite!  I have recently discovered their versatility and their flavor. Turnip greens are delicious. This is PovertyFood for sure! Indeed, greens were one of the major food stuffs of the poorest of the poor in the United States, including slaves, for generations. Today, they are a standard part of Southern cooking. I ask the turnip seller at my market for an additional bag of greens that most people here discard and he gladly gives them to me for free. I cook them within 24 hours or so, as they can wilt relatively quickly. Just boil in salted water until cooked, drain and add shallots or onions that have been cooked in butter, heavy cream or cream cheese and even a few dashes of hot sauce! Delicious!




Radish leaves: Another "green" that I have discovered the savor of here in France! And in France and Belgium, radish greens make a traditional soup, "Veloute des fanes de radis", or Pureed radish greens soup.   Here is the basic recipe:

Simply wash the radish leaves well and saute in butter in a large soup pot. Add 2 cut potatoes and enough water to cover. Bring to boil. When potatoes cooked, remove from heat and add salt and a little grated nutmeg and one egg yolk. Puree the mixture and serve with a little heavy cream or creme fraiche! Delicious  and peppery! I guaranty it!

Send me your ideas of foods that you have rediscovered and I will feature it here on PovertyFood!

 

 

 



 





Focus on Mauritania: The Fattening of Girls

Poverty Food asks the question, is the consumption of food a pleasure or a torture? 

I recently saw a program on CNN on the fattening of girls in Mauritania, one of the poorest countries on the planet. The fattening practice is centuries old in this western African nation. A young woman who is thin or normal sized by western standards is considered not only un desirable by men in some parts of Mauritania and therefore, difficult to marry off, but she is also considered unloved by her husband if she is married. In Mauritania, many men, particulary in more rural areas, want to marry a plus sized girl and keep her that way through their married life. "In Mauritania, a woman's size indicates the amount of space she occupies in her husband's heart," said Mint Ely, head of the Association of Women Heads of Households" in an article from the Guardian in 2009. A large sized girl is so highly prized, that mothers will conduct the force feeding of their own daughters. The punishment for not drinking the fat rich milk, a staple fattening drink, or to be constantly consuming food, is to have another woman crush the child's feet between two wooden poles. And if the girl simply can't stand it any more and vomits, she must also consume the vomit. Sound unbelievable? 

Fortunately, this practice is not widespread in most of Mauritania but it is feared that it is making a comeback. Across the atlantic, in the USA, this kind of treatment of a child, both the force feeding torture and the foot crushing torture, would be flat out considered child abuse and prosecuted. We look at it and say, "how barbaric"! Yet, are we really so different?  How many people allow their children and themselves to consume food almost non-stop?  It may not be force feeding, but it is permission to over feed with the same disasterous results. It may not be torture but can it be considered a kind of violence to the body to over consume? For many of us anything that interrupts our constant snout-in-the-feed-bag-lifestyle is the real torture.

What do you think? Do you really need to eat an 16 ounce steak when you go out to eat?   Must something like a hamburger or sandwich have to weight two pounds? Does anyone really have a thirst that can only be quenched by a Big Gulp?  As one Mauritanian woman recalled in an interview from CNN, "My mother started fattening me forcibly when I was 13-years-old. She used to beat me to eat more oiled couscous and fat lamb's meat. Each time I thought my stomach would explode."  A lot of people in the first world feel like that all the time! And we still go back for more.

Algeria and the food of the desert

Our recipe spotlight today is on Algeria.


Algerian cuisine has become very close to my heart. I have been initiated into the art of couscous and the spice of harissa. Algerian cuisine  is a blend of flavors originating from the native Berbers to the influences from Spain, France, Italy, indeed the entire Mediterranean basin to the newar east and Arab influences. In short, it is delicious!

Algerians have gone through much...invasion, war, colonisation, independence and fighting terrorism. They know hardship and suffering.
The following humble yet wonderful recipe comes from a great Algerian chef, Chef Zaidi! But you don't have to recreat this exactly. Couscous in Algeria is prepared a thousand different ways. There is no wrong way...use what you have and it will be wonderful!

Here is the recipe and text from Chef Zadi:http://www.chefzadi.com/2005/10/seksu_bil_khodr.html

There are as many variations of this dish as there are possible combinations for the vegetables we have available in the Maghreb. Some say the number seven is lucky. Some say it's a Badwi or Bidawi (Bedouin) dish. Others say any cook with seven vegetables makes this dish.


I chose my seven based on what I had and also the other dishes I was thinking of making. I knew that my guests liked piquant dishes so I planned on making a few along with a side of harisa. I decided a mild version of couscous with seven vegetables would be a nice contrast to the heat and spice of the soups in particular. I also did not want to add eggplant, tomatoes and peppers because I was making Badenjal chteta or Badenjal zaloka (eggplant ratatouille*).

Ingredients:
Pumpkin (carefully peel with a very sharp knife. peel away from your body)
Zucchini
Fennel
Parsnip
Cauliflower (I MUCH prefer carrots, but I did not have any)
Kholrabi
Turnip
1 onion
Butter
Salt

I really would have preferred to use carrots in this dish. The smell of cauliflower is not one that I like. But these recipes are not about my personal preferences. I will say though that carrots would have been much better for the sweetness. It would have produced a more delicate dish. I also like to add butter to this dish more than olive oil. For me buttered root vegetables are a good thing.
Method:

1) Cut the vegetables as shown. Maghrebi cooking is not about fancy knife cuts. Vegetable cutting is often done directly over the pot or onto the cutting board, not on the cutting board itself. So don't worry about fancy French chef knife cuts here.
2) Some cooks will throw everything into the pot at the same time. Others will add the longer cooking vegetables first. My parsnips were quite thick and tough so I added those in first along with the pumpkin and fennel with about a cup of water. The fennel was also a bit old. I cooked them for about 30 minutes on very low heat, then added the onions, turnips, kohlrabi and cauliflower (carrots would have been better), the butter, seasoned with salt and cooked on low heat until all was tender.

I added a stick of butter for about 2 kilos of vegetables.
Optional spices are saffron, turmeric or cinnamon.

*Don't jump to the conclusion that it's a French influenced dish because of the ratatouille. It is not a French influenced dish at all.