Sarasota Soundings

Isabel’s Cantina
Bold Latin Flavors from the
New California Kitchen

Isabel Cruz

Clarkson Potter (August 28, 2007);
224 pages; $27.00

In the introduction to her book, Isabel Cruz relates, “As a single mother with two kids to feed and no formal education to fall back on, I relied on what I knew best, the things I had learned in my childhood kitchen. Naively, I opened a restaurant in San Diego…”

Growing up in Los Angeles, the author’s Puerto Rican family loved to cook and party with their Peruvian, Mexican, Cuban, and Asian neighbors. One quickly realizes that Isabel Cruz had quite a lot to “fall back on.” Now a successful chef-owner of five West Coast restaurants, Ms. Cruz presents a series of bright and simple fusion recipes. She makes the most of California’s produce and ever more available fresh Asian and Mediterranean ingredients like ginger, lemongrass, mint, and basil. Balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, and soy sauce appear in Latin comfort food that has been lightened with creativity, common sense, and Asian dash.

Salmon with Papaya-Mango-Mint Salsa
Photo: Gregory Bertolini

Ms. Cruz’s restaurants have a wide spectrum of clients—those who go for the Power Breakfast plate of brown rice, steamed vegetables, scrambled egg-whites and get their kick from salsa and those who sink into the Pina Colada Pancakes. There are plenty of low-fat, and even some fat-free, recipes, but then there are Churros... (and yes, they’re fried, but in canola oil, not lard.) A make-me-right-now photo of guilt-free Raspberry-Lime Agua Fresca is balanced by a shot of Strawberry-Mango Cobbler. This is not spa food. Rather, it’s an array of beverages and dishes that, though born in restaurants, may be easily prepared by home cooks.

The food Ms. Cruz offers is both “healthy” and indulgent. She admits that she has tried to subtly slenderize both the recipes and those who love the food of Latin America. Lots of steamed, roasted, and grilled fish, poultry, and lean meat get their zing from quickly prepared sauces of citrus, chili, mint, and cilantro. But she doesn’t preach. Recipes include butter, sugar, white flour, and tequila as well as tofu, quinoa, collards, jicama, and chamomile tea. Rich or spare,the dishes are all appealing and speak for themselves; absolutely nothing in the book is self-concious. And in these days of fusion foolishness, Ms. Cruz’s food and philosophy should be welcomed into many kitchens.

Note: Clarkson Potter sent us this book for review

American Masala
125 New Classics from
My Home Kitchen

Suvir Saran with Raquel Pelzel

Clarkson Potter (October 2, 2007);
272 pages; $35.00

Known for his Manhattan Indian-fusion restaurant, Devi, the effusive Suvir Saran takes mainstream American dishes (or once-ethnic dishes that have become mainstream) and infuses some of them with Indian spice and Indian techniques. He also takes inspiration from Mexican, Mediterranean, and North African kitchens.

So, we get Tamarind-Glazed Meatloaf, Turkey Hash Masala, Shrimp Scampi Masala, Indian Eggplant Caponata, and French Toast (with cardamom). There are some very rich, if tame, comfort foods—and a lot of cheese (Parmesan, Gouda, taleggio, fontina, ricotta). Cheese is not a huge feature of Indian cooking, but Mr. Saran is clearly enraptured by it. Two and one-quarter pounds of three different cheeses ensure that his mild Macaroni and Cheese (serving 8-10)will make some people very happy.

Roasted corn on the cob (Chaat Masala Corn with Lime) would make more people happier if there were a guideline for making this sour and salty seasoning blend. We’re glad to see a recipe for Mr. Saran’s version of Garam Masala, but someone forgot to include one for Chaat Masala; at bare minimum, there should be a description of it. (A basic chaat masala would include toasted cumin, coriander seed, black pepper, red chili, powdered mango, asafoetida, and the distinctively sulphurous Indian kala namak, “black salt.”)

Scallops with Roasted Pepper Chutney
Photograph by Ben Fink for American Masala

It’s clear that Mr. Saran loves to entertain, but I will take issue that roasting vegetables in the oven for an hour (and then to purée them as a dip) is what anyone—pro or not—does to whip up a snack for unexpected guests. And I am mystified as to why his skillet corn bread uses a package of prepared corn-bread mix, unless it is some secret, unswerving homage to the recipe’s originator, one Grandma Hayes.

Nonetheless, the spirit of American Masala is contagious. The recipes illustrate that appreciation of flavor occurs at many levels and that spice does not have to mean heat. Though he is a restaurant chef, Suvir Saran delights in preparing food at home and demonstrates that it’s both practical and fun for home cooks to have a global pantry.

Suvir Saran’s engaging anecdotes (Raquel Pelzel is credited as his co-author) make it clear that he grew up in an affluent and well-educated Indian family with their own cook. In contrast, Puerto Riquena-American Isabel Cruz was raised in a polyglot Los Angeles neighborhood of Caribbean, Latin American, Japanese, and Thai immigrants. In the next post on fusion cooking, I will look at her new book, Isabel’s Cantina. —Holly Chase

Note: Clarkson Potter sent us this book for review

Heirloom Tomatoes with Olive Oil-Cilantro Sauce
Photo by Gregory Bertolino for Isabel’s Cantina

Fusion food: It’s a natural development in a world where people travel for work and recreation. And even if they stay home, many people see glossy travel and lifestyle magazines with gorgeous food photos, cooking shows on TV, and what we call “food porn” on the Web. American supermarkets, specialty grocers, mail-order businesses, and farmers’ markets now sell ingredients that twenty years ago were not readily available to those living outside major multicultural urban areas. Even in rural areas of the American heartland, convenience stores now sell beer and wines from Australia and Latin America.

As in music—Afro-Celt pop, Polish Reggae, or Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project—fusion has become a flavor. Sometimes the results are brilliant, and sometimes they are discordant, ill-conceived, and, ultimately, unsatisfying.

One is reminded of the scene in the film Amadeus: Mozart has just played a little harpsichord divertimento for his patron, the Emperor Franz Josef. The Emperor, not the brightest flame in the candelabra, is bewildered by the virtuoso brilliance. He shakes his head and mutters, “Too many notes!”

And that’s our feeling, too, when we see restaurant menus on which each dish requires several lines of text. Here are two offerings reprinted exactly as they appear on current menus of two very hot restaurants—the first in Florida, the second in California.

Grouper Cheeks Sous Vide Faux Watermelon, Jasmine Froth, Amaranth, Torn Herbs, Cucumber Vinaigrette

Salad of “Compressed” Kohlrabi Moro Blood Orange “Confite,” Red Radishes, Mizuna Leaves and Black Sesame “Coulis”

One can say that the popularity of fusion is partly due to the simple fact that it is now possible to combine sounds and tastes from around the globe. If musicians mix Tuvan throat singing with bluegrass and chefs sauce lutefisk with lemongrass, it’s because they can. Whether they should is something listeners and diners eventually determine.

With a different audience each night, a musician or a restaurant chef can see how his creations are received. It’s easier for a restaurant cook to test combinations than it is for someone who has another life and comes home from a day job to prepare a family supper. The recreational home cook who entertains on the weekends may or may not want make his guests guinea pigs for a sea-urchin mousse with wasabi pappadams. (Honestly, I just made that up, but I’ll bet the combo exists on a menu somewhere in NY or LA.) With concoctions like that, the home cook rarely gets a second chance to make a first impression. If the flight of fancy does not work, it’s not likely that he’ll spring it again on his friends. On the other hand, the restaurant chef can tweak things and continue to work on a dish, serving it over and over, with variations, until he gets it right.

In the many books, magazines, online columns, and menus that we see each week, I read recipes and descriptions of scores of fusion dishes. Whether I try them out or not, it appears that, despite the sheer silliness of recipes like those cited above, the better-crafted fusion recipes are coming from restaurant chefs, and that’s probably because they’ve had the theatre in which to develop them.

And since I tend to cook this way, I enjoy fusion food publications—they serve to both confirm and inspire food that I prepare myself.

There are a lot of fusion cookbooks out in the firmament right now. In the next post, I’ll be discussing two newly-released books by chef-restaurateurs. Each is beautifully produced with seductive photos—presentations shot on just the right cobalt plate or wooden platter.

Tune in later this week for commentary on American Masala by Suvir Saran and Isabel’s Cantina by Isabel Cruz, both published by Clarkson Potter.

By Holly Chase

Knife Skills Illustrated
A User’s Manual
Peter Hertzmann

W.W. Norton & Co. (August, 2007); 256 pages; $29.95

Before supermarket produce cases were filled with plastic containers of melon cubes and bags of apple slices and lathe-turned “baby carrots,” there were knives. More precisely, there were more people in more kitchens who knew how to wield the oldest of culinary tools.

Peter Hertzmann’s book is an impassioned encouragement to readers that they pick up their blades and fearlessly core fennel, butterfly legs of lamb, and filet fish.

The author gained his own knife skills studying with Chinese and French chefs and working in restaurant kitchens. He passes on the advice of his mentors with grace and humility. Readers will do well to follow the author, mastering Chinese chef Martin Yan’s example of the “pinch grip,” before turning their knives to boning poultry or any of the other prep tasks illustrated here.

By his own admission, Peter Hertzmann is obsessive. So we have detailed drawings and text for each step involved—for filleting flat fish and “round” fish, for mincing both garlic and shallots, for trimming artichokes and asparagus—all of these for both right-handed and left-handed cooks.

One might expect Mr. Hertzmann to send us out to buy a new arsenal of blades at the local cooking emporium. But he’s a purist and a minimalist, convinced that one’s batterie de cuisine needs no more than two well-honed knives: a chef’s knife and a paring knife.

The author’s written explanations are clear and enhanced by exquisite drawings, which, like fine botanical or medical renderings, illuminate more than any photos might. So we must ask who made the editorial call to reduce to postage-stamp dimensions the illustrations for carving large birds and joints of meat? Everything need not be viewed full-size, but the deconstruction of a chicken warrants more space than the slicing of a garlic clove.

And because Mr. Hertzmann is so attentive to the anatomy, care, and safe-keeping of knives, we’d really welcome Mr. Witschonke’s illustration of the honing techniques described in the text. Here, one picture really would be worth a thousand words.

These minor imbalances should be easy enough to correct in a second edition of this useful manual.

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Peter Hertzmann has taught knife skills and cooking at Sur La Table as well as privately in both France and the United States. He also authors the e-zine à la carte. He lives in Palo Alto, California

Disclosure: W.W. Norton sent us this book for our review.