I make really good moles, and I don’t think it’s because of my connection to Latin America. Despite the fact that I learned a lot of my flavors in my travels there starting even before I traveled there at 10 years old. I think it’s because, as a cook, I embody what a mole really is: a melting pot of ideas and concepts that continuously evolves. It has no real recipe, no real beginning, and no real ending. I cook, like a mole is. My first mole was a Cherry & Duck Mole for a special Taco Party event at my old cooking school in Brooklyn. From there I went on to create such masterpieces as my Passion Fruit Pork Mole, which came to be while I lived in Ecuador where passion fruit practically dropped from the sky. That recipe is also where I came to use carrots as a source of natural sweetness and a thickening agent (moles generally use a myriad of ingredients as thickeners). I even make mole cocktails and once made a recipe for a Cherry Mole Manhattan. The mole-making process delivers immense pleasure for me and reminds me of the importance of openness in cooking. It reminds me that even in what most consider traditional and culturally specific there is diversity.
Places
As you are probably aware, brining helps create a more succulent meat. I am a big fan of the dry brine when it comes to cooking a turkey or even a chicken. The dry brine is easier and less messy than wet, and it delivers moist meat and a crispy and flavorful skin, which I happen to be a fan of. Adding herbs and spices to a dry brine (salt) adds flavor, texture, and a joie de vivre by creating an aromatic and flavorful experience customized to your palate. The salt on the skin draws moisture from the turkey and then comingles with the herbs, spices and salt and gets re-absorbed back into the turkey, creating flavorful, succulent and juicy meat. The salt and air dries out the skin which allows it to become extra crispy when roasted, and the herbs and spices add extra flavor as they cook and get embedded into the chicken skin by means of chicken fat. If you are lucky enough to get a jar of my Chipotle Cranberry Mezcal Herbal Brine in time for Thanksgiving, you will need to know how to use it. And if you didn’t get one (which is likely because I made limited quantities this fall), you can still make one using the same formula.
Unbeknownst to most people, an herb garden on the verge of disappearing into a cold winter offers some of the most potent flavors imaginable for making culinary magic. The same herb garden that appears to be dying an unceremonious death is alive and rich with potency. The metaphor is strong: life cycles carry the essence of transformation and change, and change offers something new; in this case new flavors, aromas and textures that we might not expect. My herb gardens tend to be wild, not surprising I suspect. Most try and control gardens, I go with the flow my Missouri garden is pretty wild. Part of this wildness is because, I’m lazy, in the way that I don’t like to exude effort that’s not needed, and in my Blue Eye abode I have had to grow many herbs in subpar conditions: too much shade, too little water, soil that is too acidic or in spots Inca (my dog) wont pee. This is real and herbs thrive in realness, which is likely why I have always been drawn to them. I have found great beauty (and flavor) in my wild herb garden here in Missouri.
Something deep inside me lights up in the presence of fresh herbs. I am enraptured by them, as well as those who grow and use them. I hope I can inspire you to use more of them. Fresh herbs have been a symbol of my own artistry and creative spirit since I started growing them in my garden in Eugene, Oregon, in my early 20’s. Not only are they a staple in my cooking, but they have sprung up in every aspect of my life ever since. My Herbal Roots is the creative manifestation of everything herbal I have experienced along the way, and a projection of all to come. It’s a place for me to share my herbal passion indiscriminately, allowing me to document the herbal moments that light my path, providing a home to pause in celebration and appreciation. I have been conscious of my own innate passionate streak from an early age. Like many others, I remember coloring outside the lines as a child. What set me apart was the self-confidence I had that couldn’t be swayed by anyone telling me it was wrong. My inner strength carried me forward from the get-go, fearlessly driving me to where and who I am today. The Summer 2022 – The Fruit Series is a manifestation of my life in Missouri. I hope you enjoy.
Where do I belong when I am “different”? How do I belong in both the bigger world and in the smaller place I reside simultaneously? These questions have followed me around my whole life and feel fresh again as I carve out a real home for my fruity & weird self here in Missouri. The questions, the timing, maybe my age, and certainly the remote and wildly different-for-me locale I’m afoot in has been challenging everything I know about myself. But it is exactly here that my culinary and herbal creativity has produced some of my finest, most precise and innovative work yet. My creative visions are soaring despite the trouble I have finding my grounding here. My herbal concoctions – the herbal salts, most definitely – have always been a collision of everything I see and feel, flavors, people and cultures in ingredient form. Could Missouri be a place where I thrive in the ways I need to most? Is Missouri stirring my creative juices? Maybe, just maybe here is where I need to be: to learn more, to do more and grow more.
2022 will be the year I focus on what and who sets my soul on fire. While I have almost always approached life this way, these days the older and wiser me has a much deeper connection to what that actually means. There has always only been one path to get here, to this position of soul fire clarity: by allowing myself to feel the fullness of things deeply, which is not often a comfortable task. My world, the world that I saw from an early age has always been a large one. My path has always been one that seeks, explores, travels and shares.
Thanksgiving and the act of giving thanks, the acknowledgement that there is something to be grateful for is something I think we all need to do more often. On Thanksgiving many Americans put forth great effort to make elaborate or in the very least home cooked (from the heart) meals. This effort, that they put forth annually, gives me faith in people and in love because loving people is about showing up and putting in effort.
It would be difficult for me to write a fluff piece on non-alcoholic drinks. That’s not simply because a fluff piece is generally rare for me (unless I’ve been paid good money to do so, which is also rare) but because I consider the topic of non-alcoholic drinks to be an incredibly important one these days, a topic with many layers and complexities. Mostly I want to encourage honest discourse on the darker side of alcohol, the side that far too many of us are well acquainted with in one way or another. Today there is a myriad of non-alcoholic drinkers out there that are often forgotten about: under-agers, sober people, the health-conscious and those with a general consensus that too much alcohol isn't ideal for the human body, spirit and mind. Kids and adults alike should all have easy access to well crafted, non-alcoholic great tasting drinks regardless of whether we are at a restaurant, a park, the beach or at home.
I think about this topic a lot: courage and creativity. In terms of courage, I wonder why some people have it, the ability to be courageous, while others seem to have none. I wonder if it’s like a muscle you have to build, strengthen and exercise it or if it’s more like eye color; we’re given what we are given through genes. Courage has been something I have had since I was young, for as long as I can remember. I have a lot of fear, the same as everyone else, but for whatever reason I am courageous regardless of my fears. And trust me, my fears are probably way bigger than yours. I’m afraid of everything and everybody.
My ‘moving to Missouri’ story began back in August. I had a few sessions with a renowned astrologer, as part of my crisis response to learning I had to move quickly and, essentially, charter the next course in my life. If I’m being honest, this was one of the hardest times of my life. Normally I make decisions quickly and with ease, but this one I knew would create massive disruptions in all aspects of my life.
