To me and to many others, cooking is love. In the kitchen as in all areas of my life, I remain an amateur ­ perhaps inspired, occasionally, but an amateur nonetheless. I like sharing good recipes with friends, who seldom use them, because they'd rather just show up and let me do the work! Such is life. This section of my website will provide some of my favorite recipes and cooking meditations for those who, unfortunately, can't just plop themselves on my doorstep at dinner time! Red Cooked Turkey Thighs B.D.'s Jicama Salad Lion's Head Red Cooked Turkey Thighs This is very simple to make and very impressive to serve to your guests. I adapted this from a wonderful recipe for pork roast I came across years ago in a handmade cookbook by a woman named Ming Li in Syracuse, New York. That cookbook, Chinese Cooking in American Kitchens, remains to this day a classic, in my opinion. It is pure poetry: lucid, accurate, seductive in its apparent simplicity. I'd love to hear from anyone who knows of it. 3 lbs. turkey thigh--(two smaller thighs are ok but shorten the cooking time) 2/3 cup soy sauce (Kikoman or other light soy, like Pearl River Bridge) 2 Tablespoons sugar 2 star anise (or one tsp 5 Spice powder) 1 can beer — good quality (if you have to put a lime in it, it ain't beer) but not stout cayenne to taste Use a pot just wide enough to hold the meat, if possible. Dissolve sugar in soy sauce and pour over meat in pot. Pour beer over meat, add star anise (or spice), and cook over medium-low heat until liquid comes to a boil Reduce heat to simmer for about one hour and a half or until tender. Turn once every 20 minutes. Remove meat and allow to cool a little, then slice into serving sections. While meat is cooling, you can degrease the gravy. If you want the gravy thicker, bring to a boil and reduce as you wish. NOTES: You can add carrots cut into two inch pieces during the last fifteen minutes of active cooking, or even add whole new potatoes for the last thirty minutes or so. Remove these before reducing fluid. Serve with rice or noodles and, perhaps, a nice salad or steamed vegetable. Leftovers can be pulled into shreds and added to salads, or sliced for sandwiches, or ­ best of all ­ shredded and added as a toping to Chino-Mexican tostadas. I'll be addressing fusion in the near future.... stick around. Supertip: Cool and skim any unused cooking sauce. Freeze this for later use. Reconstitute with ingredients at the same proportion. You may keep this sauce in the freezer and reheat, reuse and reconstitute forever. It gets better every single time. B. D.'s Jicama Salad This is a sweet and sour salad with the venerable Mexican vegetable jicama. If you've never tried it, you're missing out. It's kind of like a giant water chestnut with a little more sweetness and an earthy flavor. It holds up well to just about any treatment, but I particularly like it in this recipe, which is pretty much an original creation of mine. Quick! Call the Chairman of Kitchen Stadium, home of the Iron Chefs! Today's ingredient: Jicama! (Chef Sakai is sweating bullets at this point, but he'll win anyway, because he's an Iron Chef.) Since it is bright, piquant and a little racy, it goes particularly well as a side with any kind of barbecue or kabob or smoked dishes. It's also great with succulent roasts or anything deep fried, as the acid cuts the oil like a well-tempered machete. Simplest is often best. I always wanted to start a band called Les Moore and the Minimalists. Wait a minute. Since LM & M has never produced a single piece of music, maybe I already have! Ingredients: 1 medium to large jicama 2 medium to large carrots However you work it out, the proportion of jicama to carrots should be 2: 1 1/2 cup of sugar 1/2 cup of apple cider vinegar (no substitution is appropriate here; you need the tang of apples for the correct flavor.*) at least 1 tablespoon of crushed red pepper flakes - as much as you love, and I love a lot. (Optional) a small handful of raisins, dried cherries, dried cranberries or dried blueberries 1. Peel the carrots and the jicama. 2. Shred them with a hand shredder or a food processor. 3. In a big non-reactive bowl or pan, dissolve the sugar into the vinegar, whisking in the red pepper flakes as well. 4. Toss all the ingredients together and chill in the fridge for at least a couple of hours. 5. Garnish, serving by serving ONLY, with raisins, dried cherries, dried cranberries or dried blueberries, if you wish. DO NOT MIX THESE WITH THE SALAD, because if you have leftover salad that sits, these will become as bloated and mushy as the senior Republican leadership in Congress. Cool stuff: The genius of this salad is the ingredients. While the salad is perfectly great in an hour or two, it is even better the next day, and it maintains itself respectable for several days chilled. I've discovered one after a week, and it was still crunchy. Just don't bloat the berries. If I were to add any kind of nut, it would be gently pan-roasted pine nuts, again only to the individual serving at the table. *Footnote: I was in a stupid poetry workshop at Syracuse U, "conducted" by Philip Booth, in which the great poet Andrew Hudgins presented a poem called "Holofernes Reminisces." During the "workshop," a lot of those present reacted poorly to a beautiful line describing the king's liaison with Judith and the "tang of flesh" he tasted. The workshop group thought that the word "tang" was all messed up, because it would remind people of the desiccated nominally orange-flavored soft drink ingredient that "the astronauts took to the Moon." I argued that "tang" was beautiful, melodically rich, accurate, and that nobody in a hundred years would know what the hell the soft drink powder was all about anyway. I got shot down, of course, since nobody in that workshop ever considered the fact that their "poetry" might endure longer than the time it took to take a whiz, except for Andrew, of course. They were probably correct in that apprehension; however, the line was strong. I later read the poem in one of Hudgins's books. The word had been replaced by a feeble substitute. Now, really. Far, far less than a century has passed, and how many people even know what Tang was (is)? Poetry workshops mainly enforce mediocrity. Lion's Head This is really simple to prepare, and delicious. It's another variation on the recipes from that wonderful little homebound cookbook treasure I found in Syracuse. You can think of this, in a way, as a sort of cabbage roll without the roll. It is in essence much the same: cabbage, ground meat, and spices. When I was in Dallas, working as a Cameraman for Jesus, shortly before I was fired for being a pagan, I met a fine cook named David Wade. I worked camera on his show and got to know him and appreciate his love of the kitchen. He was incredibly gracious and offered the best advice I've ever received, culinary or otherwise: "The first time, follow the recipe exactly, so you know what it's supposed to taste like. After that, you may improvise." This kernel of wisdom can easily apply to many different areas of our lives, I think. I know it has guided me through a lot of writing and a lot of teaching. Thanks, David! I've improvised upon this simple recipe many times. One thing I like to play with is varying the spices along thematic lines. For a Thai meatball, you could use very finely minced lemon grass instead of the ginger, fish sauce instead of the oyster sauce and soy, and Thai chilis, omitting the mustard. You could make a Euro variation by substituting tomato paste for the oyster sauce, retaining the mustard but using typical sausage spices such as fennel, oregano and parsley, along with more garlic and some minced onion - and, of course using regular cabbage instead of the napa. A Mexican variation might include the mustard and tomato paste of the Euro variation, but for spices substitute coriander, minced cilantro, cominos, Mexican oregano, ancho chili powder and, perhaps, a grating or two of queso seco. The "secret" is to wed the flavors to the style of cooking, and keep them in proportion to the meat, so they don't overwhelm. As David Wade would say, Bon Appetite! Here's the dish: 1 and 1/2 pounds ground turkey. Don't use the pure white meat, though, as it is way too dry and lacks the fuller flavor of the regular grind. 2 tablespoons of either oyster sauce or tomato paste (though this is quite a different dish) one piece of fresh ginger, about the size of your thumb two cloves of fresh garlic one tablespoon of dry mustard Soy sauce vinegar (balsamic is nice) one large head of Chinese napa cabbage water or broth one or two jalapeño peppers, or serrano peppers, to taste salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste Peel the ginger. In a food processor or by hand, finely mince the ginger, hot chile, and garlic. Make four meatballs by blending the meat, the oyster sauce or tomato paste, the spices and the mustard. Flatten the meatballs slightly. Now you can either brown these under the broiler or just put them in the pot to steam. As you wish. I do either one, depending on the time I have. First core, then coarsely slice the Chinese napa cabbage into inch-thick strips (do this by cutting on the perpendicular, so you get rings almost). Put the cabbage into a sturdy pot and place on low-medium heat. Put in a little broth or water to get it started, but the cabbage will produce a lot of fluid as it cooks slowly. Put the meatballs/patties on top. Sprinkle about a tablespoon of soy and a tablespoon of vinegar on top, more or less, to taste, remembering that the oyster sauce is quite salty. Be very careful to keep that heat just at a simmer, as you don't want to burn it. Allow this to steam until done, maybe 45 minutes. The cabbage will be soft and considerably reduced. The meat will just be cooked through. To serve: Put a meatball on the plate and surround it with the cooked cabbage and the fluid. If you want, you can quickly reduce the sauce remaining in the pan to pour over. Or you can thicken it by adding 1 tablespoon of corn starch dissolved in two tablespoons of water, bringing to a boil for one minute, and serving. It looks like a lion's head. Hence the name. Devour accordingly.