It’s New Year’s Eve Day, I’m in Miami, Florida where I have traveled with my pets for a little 45-day snowbirding experience (and possibly the subconscious desire to travel to the source and unravel some deep seeded and complicated emotions I have been carrying for far too long). It’s currently 80 degrees and I’m in my swimsuit outside by the pool near the beach with my pets. I have a sweet little menu prepared for a dinner tonight and was just lollygagging a bit when I got a text asking me for the recipe for that cold weather chicken congee I made during the recent artic chill. You remember, the congee recipe that I had labeled one of my best dishes. The one I was supposed to have posted the recipe for already, the one I keep getting asked for. Here you go. I’ll warn you, my congee recipe is a little different. But what do I know, I had never made congee before. But different is who I am and what I do and staying authentic to who I am is a constant goal, New Year or not.
Winter
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.
I have been toying with the idea of getting a physical space again for Ger-Nis Culinary & Herb Center, this time in Kansas City. I’m needing a commercial kitchen for making my herbal salts and other herbal products for Herbal-Roots, and it’d be nice to have another dedicated food photography studio and with that I’d likely have some in-person cooking classes and food events focused on fresh herbs and my usual- local, organic, sustainable, fairly traded food ingredients and artisans. During a chat with one of my business advisors highlighting some of the most popular culinary classes we offered back at Ger- Nis Culinary & Herb Center in Brooklyn one class stood out: part of our Fill Your Freezer series: Fresh Sausage Making. This was a class that I personally taught and a wave of nostalgia later I made a bunch of sausages and in the process updated many of my older recipes with more fresh herbs and spices as well as a few new tricks and techniques. I also created a few new recipes.
In my long herbal life thus far the question I have been asked most about herbs exposes a deep fresh herb hesitation: “How do I use them all up?” My answer has always sounded as smart-assy as I am, despite the sincerity. “You just do. You just use them up.” Transcend the conservatism. Learn at least a little about the flavor and potencies of the herbs you like, play and take risks. That’s how we grow as cooks and eaters. I have always had my work cut out for me in trying to encourage fresh herb usage in American kitchens. My herbal salts, which are all packed full of fresh herbs, are just one way to increase excitement about herbs.
I have to go back pretty far to recall how my herbal salts first materialized. While surely some form of fresh herbal salt has existed in my culinary repertoire for a long time, I know the first shelf-stable, oven-dried version started in Brooklyn while running Ger-Nis Culinary & Herb Center: one of the few Brooklyn-based businesses I started in my early 30’s. My herbal salts transformed and matured as I traveled the globe. I became a better, more skillful cook and ingredient finder as I traveled to each new place, my herbal salts reflected this growth and found more creative fuel for my artistry, more passion and more personal happiness in creating. The herb salts just kind of metamorphized, despite the irony to of me being a salt-hesitant cook, into what they are today, as I fed my mind, passion and artistry and I hardly even noticed it was happening. It’s been an incredible journey refining this herbal salt thing inside me, cultivating joy while doing it, all from the unlikely position of southern Missouri. But it is indeed here, in my Blue Eye, MO, kitchen that these herbal salts have culminated.
From an early age, I desired to embrace life to the fullest regardless of the loneliness of such a path. I have spent most of my life traveling. That is when I am happiest and at my most humble and learning. Through my work in agriculture, famers have invited me into their homes and kitchens. Here I discovered the deep connecting power of food, culture, and community. Here I learned my love of cooking. I have witnessed how food ignites and excites and connects humans all over the world. I discovered the same in myself.
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.
One for Rudolph, two for me. This is one of my most whimsical recipes and one that is perfect to make with your kids the day before Christmas eve. Basically, the kids make herbal sugar cubes for Rudolph and you get amazing sugar cubes for an old-Fashioned cocktail. It’s a rather fun project for all and one that the adults can enjoy long after Santa is gone. The recipe is super easy. Some herbs, sugar and ice cube trays are really all that’s needed outside a few drops of water.
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.
While it’s true that my favorite season is spring due to the deluge of budding, blooming and sprouting spring herbs, peas, baby artichokes and asparagus, wintertime has some extraordinary offerings in the form of citrus that strongly excite me. Not just the fruit but the zest, which leads me on many more kitchen adventures. I’m here to remind all of the access we have these days to citrus variety and also suggest to all that they use more zest, in general and especially in the peak of winter citrus season.
