Mad Hungry CraVIngS 14395_MHC_p i-27 1 Page i 11/1/12 2:22 PM also by Lucinda Scala Quinn Mad Hungry: Feeding Men and Boys Lucinda’s rustic itaLian KitcHen Lucinda’s autHentic JaMaican KitcHen 14395_MHC_p i-27 2 Page ii 11/1/12 2:22 PM Mad Hungry CraVIngS Lucinda Scala Quinn photographs by Jonathan Lovekin new york 14395_MHC_p i-27 3 Page iii 11/1/12 2:22 PM H Copyright © 2013 by Lucinda Scala Quinn Unless indicated below, all photographs copyright © 2013 by Jonathan Lovekin Photographs on pages 4, 7, 8, 21, 43, 81, 159, 166, 180, 186, 191, 219, 258, 271, 290, and 306 by Lucinda Scala Quinn H All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced—mechanically, electronically, or by any other means, including photocopying—without written permission of the publisher. Published by Artisan A division of Workman Publishing Company, Inc. 225 Varick Street New York, NY 10014-4381 artisanbooks.com Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son, Limited H Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Scala Quinn, Lucinda. Mad hungry cravings / Lucinda Scala Quinn. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-1-57965-438-2 1. Cooking. I. Title. TX714.S3155 2013 641.5—dc23 2012010032 H Design adapted from Jennifer S. Muller and Nick Caruso Printed in China First printing, February 2013 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 14395_MHC_p i-27 4 Page iv 11/1/12 2:22 PM contents introduction 1 mad hungry maxims 5 broaden your horizons 9 the larder: if you stock it, you will make it 11 break the fast first one H breakfast 31 anytime 24/7 two H soups and sandwiches 55 three H salads 93 four H noshes and nibbles 115 what’s for dinner? five H main dishes 145 six H noodles, rice, and corn 185 seven H veggies and other sides 213 spirits & sweets eight H spirits 243 nine H sweets 263 epilogue by calder quinn 291 acknowledgments 293 index 295 14395_MHC_p i-27 5 Page v 11/1/12 2:22 PM introduction 1 H 14395_MHC_p i-27 6 Page vi 11/1/12 2:22 PM introduction Crave it. Order it. Eat. Repeat. How could I, twenty-first-century New York City, but my mom as a cook, or as a mom, possibly compete? was known to occasionally succumb to the lures of convenience cooking, like the TV dinner. Salisbury Takeout meals are just too easy—especially steak, mashed potatoes, creamed spinach, and when we’re busy. And even when we’re not apple-cherry cobbler—all neatly tucked into a busy, cooking can seem so hard, liable to divided aluminum container—was served once a be derailed by the smallest inconvenience. week on TV tables. My brothers and I loved it! Don’t have that six-ounce can of tomato So how to reconcile these two distinct notions— paste? Better order in, eat out, get it to go, that we should be eating home-cooked healthy meals, but we also lust to eat things we want and nuke it, toast it, reheat it—or just add water. crave? In my resolve to regularly make fresh-cooked It’s instinctual to yearn for the food of our mothers’ food for my kids, I had an epiphany: Copy the food and grandmothers’ tables, but it may be the foods that you want to order in or eat out. Make it tastier encountered in the outside world that hold the and more nourishing. Any time a hankering hits, most sway over our imaginations. I’ve fed three you’re a well-stocked fridge or pantry away from sons good old-fashioned home cooking day in and preparing it in your own kitchen. day out for more than twenty-five years. Yet, to You know that sloppy, dog-eared file almost every a boy, as soon as they were old enough to stray family has of their takeout menus? The thing you from my apron strings, out they walked—down desperately riffle through on Tuesday night at six the elevator, out of the building, and up the block thirty, while hollering out, “Do we want pad thai, to Broadway, where a whole new table of food General Tso’s chicken, or Grandma’s pizza?” Well, awaited them. The fabulous New York City streets thanks to the recipes in this book, that file’s days were a place of convenience and independence will be numbered. Granted, ordering out now and from their we-cook-at-home parents. then is a welcome break from the everyday routine And so it was that a bowl of homemade steel-cut of cooking. But remember that home cooking oats couldn’t hold a candle to the delicious instant has a lot more value than just the nutritional gratification of bacon, egg, and cheese on a roll kind—especially when the bill from ordering at the corner deli, or else tamales from the lady in Chinese food is equivalent to half the week’s near the subway. After school, a wide range of grocery budget. (And that’s to say nothing of the snacks tempted my boys: pastry from Starbucks, unwelcome side effect of puffy fingers, dry mouth, shawarma from the halal truck, hot dogs from or a tummy ache from the loads of salt, sugar, and Gray’s Papaya, fried rice Chinese takeout, or, preservatives often added to the take-out food.) inevitably, a McDonald’s Big Mac and fries. The sesame chicken you make at home (see page 174), will let you have what you crave, at home, but Often they would fill themselves up before dinner for less money and with more flavor. but not really nourish themselves. As a cook and a mom, that really annoyed me. But part of me also gets it: I will never forget my first fast-food French how did we get there? fry, eaten with the babysitter when my parents The fast-food economy over the past half century went out. It was a clever plan, while it lasted, to has dramatically changed our home lives from divert child-me with a boxed burger and fries while those of our grandparents and their grandparents. Mom and Dad parked me and my brothers with Nourishing ourselves and our families in the the sitter. preindustrialized home meant planning for the Back then, the suburb of Detroit where I grew up growing, preserving, and cooking of our food on a certainly didn’t have the many ethnic options of daily, seasonal basis. But for the last few decades introduction 1 ★ 14395_MHC_p i-27 1 Page 1 11/1/12 2:23 PM the leap from planting a seed, nurturing its growth, ground zero of our health is what we eat— harvesting, cooking, and eating its fruit has been a time to take out in! heck of a giant one. Many of us mothers will admit that frozen pizza, To many moms’ credit, they persevered with simple chicken nuggets, and packaged mac ’n’ cheese home cooking over the years—even though the frequently are default mealtime solutions. And if modern conveniences were alluring. Meanwhile, the nuggets and noodles are organic, it’s dinner newer fangled prepackaged and engineered foods served almost, but not quite, guilt-free. Guilt dogs us continued to grab our attention. Yet still, it’s a mothers like nothing else when it comes to feeding privileged few across socioeconomic lines who our kids. The same can’t be said about college kids, routinely eat fresh-cooked food regularly made though, who live on chicken (wings, not fingers), with good wholesome ingredients. fast-food burgers, and take-out pizza too. Whether it’s fingers, wings, or nuggets, a steady diet of any For many of us today, cooking has largely been of these is no way to nourish a body. Add in the handed over to distant high-volume food manu- average employee’s office break at the java-spot- facturers—whether it’s procured from a fast-food du-jour for a four-dollar calorie-rich mocha-choka- chain, a restaurant, or the grocery store shelf. Mass- loca and a cardboard pastry and you begin to produced food on this scale doesn’t mean a cook is realize that for many of us, home cooking truly has chopping onions or peeling tomatoes before they been supplanted by distant food-service machines. go into the industrial-sized kettle to simmer into a sanitized “meal.” We’ve reached an imbalanced situation where we spend more money to eat inferior food out, and in Instead, prechopped produce originates from the process, we not only jeopardize our health but several different specialized suppliers; the onions also deprive ourselves of less expensive, tastier, and garlic from one distributor, mushrooms and and healthier home-cooked meals. And there is no broccoli from another. Vegetables—otherwise healthier diet than fresh food—vegetables, fruits, known as “inventory”—are cleaned, cut, and whole grains, meat, poultry, and seafood—eaten in shipped in large plastic tubs from the source moderation. factory to the central manufacturing location. While this makes good economic sense for the production of industrialized food, there are cook what you crave obvious compromises in the quality and flavor of Roll up your sleeves and get into the kitchen and the finished food we eat. The difference between you can produce anything you want to eat right freshly procured vegetables, hand-chopped in your now! Lose the middleman who stands between you kitchen before a quick stovetop sauté, and the and enjoying the food you crave at home. This book precut ones exposed to oxygen, machines, plastic shows how you can make all those dishes you enjoy packaging, and multiple unknown plastic-gloved eating out of the house—at home. Anything can hands boils down to the simple sacrifice of taste be made better at home—tastier, healthier, more and nutrition. affordable—plus you get the rich rewards of sitting Many of the so-called fresh bakeries or pastry around a home table with family and friends in a shops in our supermarkets are not actually less rushed manner—communicating, savoring, creating the bread or desserts at all. These are also and sharing stories around your table rather than delivered premade, ovenproofed, and par-baked scarfing down dinner at a fast-food joint or forking to the destined commercial location only to be it out from a white cardboard container in front of finished on site. If you’ve ever had an esteemed the television. bakery’s croissant—baked crusty and flaky outside Try this experiment: Call to order in a plain pizza, with a moistly coiled puffed dough inside—then and as soon as you put down the phone, make surely you must wonder what the heck those flying- Classic Tomato Soup (page 61) and grilled cheese saucer-sized, soft and dry throughout, so-called sandwiches. Set the timer and see which is faster. croissants that come from a commercial purveyor It’s the same foods—bread, tomatoes, and are. They are mere figments of their former selves. cheese—but when it’s cooked with fresh, flavorful, 2 Mad hungry cravings introduction 3 ★ ★ 14395_MHC_p i-27 2 Page 2 11/1/12 2:23 PM healthy ingredients, it can be knock-it-out-of-the- versions into your own repertoire. Sideline the park delicious. prepackaged meals from the commercial grocery shelf or freezer while you create a few of those Shopping is half the hike to cooking. If there is recipes from scratch yourself, like Brined and something—anything—in the pantry, you can feed Fried Chicken (page 170), just as Grandma did. The yourself. There’s always something to cook that’s recipes here draw from the wealth of inspiration at least half as good as the best takeout or twice as in the outside world and will bring it into your own good as the worst (see, for example, Mac ’n’ Cheese, cooking and eating experience at home. Connected page 194). to the stories and the sources they spring from, Even the crappiest fast food adds up to more these dishes teach us about people and places. money spent than the same amount for good So leave the sandy, bruised lettuce, sugary-sweet homemade meals. With few exceptions (and I don’t dressings, and preservative-laden croutons of mean Jamba Juice), this is unhealthy “shortcut” the salad buffet behind for the salads on pages food with the potential to lead to a host of ills. In 92–113. Capture the alluring flavors of your favorite order to avoid the telephone, you need to shop Indian restaurant with a simplified Chicken Tikka weekly and make sure your pantry, freezer, and Masala (page 171) or pull a handmade sweet and fridge are well stocked. Just knowing you can do tangy Lemon Icey from your own freezer (page 289). this is a revelation. That favorite pad thai (see page Maybe you just make your mama’s meat loaf and 196) or beef satay (see page 140) is a mere equipped- mashed potatoes (see pages 152 and 215) or simmer kitchen and prep-cook-job away from your lips. a big pot of childhood chili (see page 156). But cook This book includes recipes for the foods we’ve what you crave at home! Excavate your own taste usually handed over to others to make, the ones memories and assemble that personal recipe box. we like to order in or take out, from ethnic spots Restore your food traditions and make new ones. serving Italian, Greek, Chinese, or Japanese; from Reclaim your home kitchen! old-fashioned soda fountains, street carts, and burger joints; from chicken shacks, roadhouses, grills, concession stands, and ice cream trucks. Eat them out now and then, but ease a few handmade 2 Mad hungry cravings introduction 3 ★ ★ 14395_MHC_p i-27 3 Page 3 11/1/12 2:23 PM