Falling Cloudberries

Born in London to a Finnish mother and Greek Cypriot father, brought up mostly in South Africa, and now raising her own family in her husband's native Italy, Tessa Kiros has given us a warm, lively combination of reminiscences and family tales, woven through recipes for the foods of her many homelands. This gorgeous book promises a lot, and for the most part it delivers. Every recipe is a treasure, honest food from real ingredients, with clear narrative instructions and very few stumbling points (such as a couple of recipes calling for British cuts of meat). The photography is lush and perfect; the typography, however, is beautiful but flawed, having been designed more for visual interest than clear readability. Still, I'd buy these recipes if they'd been mimeographed onto paper towels, and Ms. Kiros's reflections, comments and family portraits only make the mixture that much richer and livelier.
    I have already recommended this book to several friends, especially the sort of people the author most reminds me of: the ones whose many arts include those centered around the table. In a world flooded with cookbooks that stress the cheap and convenient, a strong, deeply honest work such as this comes as a bright blessing.
    The recipes are given by country of origin, arranged in order of the author's ancestry first, then of her childhood, then of her present life. Thus we have Finland, Greek Cyprus, Greece, South Africa and Italy, in that order, followed by a potpourri chapter of favorites from friends, family and travels around the world. Each section is arranged more or less as a meal, with the snacks and starters followed by salads, then fish/fowl/meat dishes, then breads and pastries, then desserts. Sometimes the order is broken up a bit, but the standard here is easygoing, never chaotic. The dishes reflect this pleasant attitude, being for the most part straightforward, earthy dishes, as complicated as moussaka or as simple as pasta with fresh tomatoes.
    There are very few ingredients that can't be found readily in a multi-ethnic metropolitan city or online, and if you simply can't find that exact ingredient the author openly welcomes improvisation. Got no pancetta? Use prosciutto, or bacon, or salt pork. No time to soak dried garbanzos? Open a can or two. These are after all mostly cupboard-and-larder recipes, and making something good to eat out of what's at hand is the only hard and fast rule.
    Picking just a few recipes to try was awfully hard to do, but got a bit easier when I decided to do groupings of two, each pair to make a meal, preferably one which would be sufficient with no additions but bread and a beverage. My location in Southern California made the Mediterranean and South African recipes a breeze, not so much the Finnish, so I decided to stick with the Greek and Cypriot dishes as the ones most novel to my own experience and background, and perhaps most suited to our weather. Okay, maybe a rich baked stew of lamb and potatoes might not sound like a hot-weather dish, but consider its origins: it could be assembled in the cool of the morning without much fuss, then put into the oven - probably an outdoor one - and left to cook while the family occupied itself with other things. It would then be taken out and left to sit until they were ready to eat it, whether hot, warm, or at room temperature. And believe me, it's good at any of these temperatures!

FIRST MEAL:

Tava (Cypriot baked lamb with potatoes), p. 173

To serve our family of two, I cut this recipe roughly in half. For the lamb I wanted shoulder, as it's best for braising or stewing; frozen boned shoulder is available here, but I needed only a pound and a half, and for that evening. So I bought not quite two pounds of the round-bone shoulder chops, trimmed them, cut them up and threw in the bones as well for flavor and their marrow. The potatoes were small Yukon Gold, cut into one-inch pieces more or less, and the tomatoes were the ripest Romas I could get; the parsley, red onion and cumin were all in half-portions. The olive oil and butter I did not bother to measure. Everything was packed tightly into an enameled steel Dansk casserole with foil over the top and then the lid pressed down. The only other departure from the recipe was the drying/browning part at the end with the lid off: instead of 45 minutes at 400º, I had to take it out in less than 30, as it was on the verge of drying out completely, and scorching.
    This was an instant hit. I made another small amount the next night - this is a very easy recipe to reduce or enlarge, and easy to remember as well - because we had a friend coming over and wanted her to try it too. More raves. This is now locked into our family's repertoire, as I think quite a few of Tessa's dishes will be.

Black-eyed Peas w/ Spinach, p.186

I made this one full-size, as I intended to see how it would work as leftovers. What I did modify was the presentation: instead of giving each of us a little bowl and having each person mix up his or her own relish ingredients, I put the peas and spinach into one big bowl and the relish, compounded according to my knowledge of what we both like, into a smaller one. Again, I was shopping midday for that night's supper, so instead of dried blackeyes I bought canned. I'd have preferred frozen if I could have found any, and if I were still in Tennessee the fresh ones are in season right now. But I couldn't find frozen and I'm not in Tennessee, so canned it was. I put them into the pot on the cooktop with enough extra water, and when it boiled I threw in a 12-oz. bag of washed spinach. It was quite good, though after a night in the refrigerator it lost some flavor. I do want to re-run this with fresh or frozen blackeyes and really good tomato.

SECOND MEAL:

Boiled Potato Salad, p. 123

I reduced the amounts by about half to provide a sole side dish for two people, plus adequate leftovers. I used six Yukon Gold potatoes approximately 2" x 4" and half of a 4" red onion, juice of one large lemon, and unmeasured but adequate olive oil (we never measure olive oil around here unless we're making mayonnaise!). Got Kalamata olives from a supermarket olive bar; capers were larger than called for but that's what I had. The recipe played through exactly according to the book, and the salad is a lovely one, visually inviting and delightful to eat. I took note of the author's suggested additions of such things as boiled egg and anchovies, and will certainly experiment further in the future. This recipe is definitely another keeper.

Fried Chicken, p. 235

There are some problems involved with adapting this for modern America, not least because the 2 1/4 lb. chicken called for in the recipe is in South Africa probably a 6-month-old barnyard bird, whereas the smallest one I could find at Fresh & Easy weighed 3 1/2 lbs., was half that age or less, and had gotten less exercise than I do. The upshot was that by the time my chicken pot came to the boil, the bird was probably as pre-cooked as it needed to be; the extra 15 minutes of simmering seriously overcooked the breast. This is something I've run into before when adapting old-fashioned recipes for baked chicken that call for poaching it first: we just don't have those tough but flavorful old birds anymore.
    The other problem was with the seasoning of the fry coating. Both the egg marinade and the flour mixture were underseasoned for our taste; I would certainly add more salt, and not only more paprika as well but use some hot in addition to or instead of the sweet. Next time I will also use the American technique of shaking the moist chicken in a bag of seasoned flour, as I found simply dredging it to be difficult and wasteful of flour.
    As it is, this is a pleasant dish of chicken, with a crisp crunch I've never before achieved. I think in the future I'll stick with thighs and legs for this recipe, as even with some overcooking those came out succulent and flavorful.

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