Adapted from the April, 2012 Saveur

Many years ago, early on in my relationship with Alfredo, he took me to eat at an inexpensive Cuban restaurant on 8^th Avenue—a narrow, brightly lit place called Havana Chelsea. This was to be my big introduction to Cuban cooking, the cuisine Alfredo had grown up eating, and it was something I was looking forward to. What I hadn’t anticipated, however, was just how mystifying the experience would be, a result of the menu having been written entirely in Spanish, a language I’d bypassed during both high school and college in favor of French. Alfredo, of course, does speak Spanish (or Spanglish anyway) but his menu explanations came in such a jumble and were so abbreviated that I couldn’t sort out the difference between a tamale and a tostone (for the record, the former is a mixture of corn and pork cooked within a dried corn husk, while the latter is a twice fried slice of green plantain). And so I let my instincts drive my dinner choice, ultimately selecting something called boliché, which I understood to be a kind of Cuban beef stew. The selection was a good one, making me an immediate fan of Cuban cooking, though my pronunciation—more French (bo-li-SHAY) than Spanish (bo-LI-chay)—instantly branded me a food tourist and prompted lots of laughs from both Alfredo and our waitress, Violetta.

Almost twenty-five years later that mispronunciation has taken on the mythic quality of an old family joke, just as the meal itself has grown in my memory—capturing everything that’s best about Cuban cooking. Today I cook a fair amount of Cuban food myself, and not surprisingly I tend to focus on those meat-based ones that are sautéed or simmered in a quantity of broth and tomato sauce, just like the memorable stew I sampled that night. All of which brings me to the recipe I present to you here. It’s for a dish called ropa vieja, arguably one of Cuba’s most celebrated exports, and one that’s infinitely more enticing than its name suggests (it literally means “old clothes”). Still, despite these qualities, and the fact that the recipe features a strong acidic component—something I’m always in favor of, particularly in the context of a rich meat dish such as this one—it was one I’d never attempted making myself. Spotting this recipe in Saveur last spring convinced me it was time to change that.

One reason was discovering just how simple the stew is to prepare. That, and spotting the words capers, olives, pimientos, and white wine on the ingredient list was all it took to get me going. And so I set to work, first cooking up a small quantity of bacon (this provides the dish with both its smoky base notes, not to mention the fat needed to sauté the ingredients that follow—a trick that can be employed with virtually any stew), then browning the flank steak I’d cut into 1½” strips (you’ll want to brown in batches, as crowding the beef will actually slow the process). Both of these elements by the way—the bacon and the beef—are cooked independently of each other and then set aside, to be reintroduced later into a mixture that will contain the sautéed onions and peppers (just until soft, about 4 minutes), all of the dish’s wonderful spices (cumin, thyme, and oregano), as well as a quantity of chopped garlic and a 6 oz can of tomato paste. Yum.

Once the above ingredients have been given a brief turn in the pot—about three minutes, or just until the various elements start to caramelize—in goes the white wine. Use this to loosen up any of the tasty bits that may be clinging to the bottom or sides of your pot, and after a minute or so, reintroduce the bacon and the beef, along with the broth and the crushed tomatoes. At this point your work is essentially done (I told you it was easy), though some patience will be required since the entire mixture needs to simmer over medium-low heat for anywhere between 2 and 3 hours, or until the steak is fork tender (I called the meat “done” at the 2½ hour point, though stretching it to 3 hours would not have hurt it any as over-cooking is less of a concern with this kind of dish).

This last stage is critical, of course, since it’s the slow cooking that will ultimately provide the meat with its signature, shredded quality (this is where that “old clothes” image comes in, if you hadn’t made the connection already). That said, the actual shredding does require some participation on the part of the chef, so once the meat is ready, remove it from the pot, allow it to cool slightly (or risk burning the tips of your fingers), then pull it apart into strips—as long and thin as you’re able. Once done, return the shredded meat to the pot (along with any juices that may have accumulated), then add all of those lip-smacking ingredients I mentioned earlier—the olives, the capers, the pimientos, and a tablespoon of white wine vinegar. In other words, if the smells emanating from your Dutch oven didn’t have you swooning already, they surely will now.

Hold on just a little longer, though, as it’s important to let the sauce simmer a bit more, until it’s thickened slightly (think sauce, not broth)—a process that should take no more than a half hour. Once it looks thick and glossy, stir in a ¼ cup of chopped cilantro—an important flavoring component here, so best not to skip—and you’re good to go. What will be waiting at the end of your fork is all the rich, beefiness you associate with a really good stew, but rounded out by a bright, zesty tang thanks to the presence of all those acidic elements. It’s just the thing to cut through the richness of the meat and to raise the ho-hum stew experience to something truly special—a little Latin allegría as the cold weather begins to settle in.

And a final note on the dish’s traditional Cuban accompaniment: yellow rice. After considerable trial and error, and after conferring with various of Alfredo’s Miami-based relatives, I discovered that the signature hue associated with yellow rice does not come from saffron as I’d imagined, but rather from a little-known spice known as annatto powder (also called achiote and marketed under the name Bijol; I’ve provided a resource link, below, as it can be difficult to find). Since annatto actually has a very mild flavor, true “yellow rice” calls for a base (or sofrito) made up of a variety of ingredients including olive oil, garlic, and onion, which is then added to the rice and the various seasonings. For the purposes of this dish, however, the yellow rice plays more of a visual role than a flavoring one, since the stew itself really requires nothing more in this department. Given this, the recipe below provides you with what’s essentially standard cooking instructions for rice, but with the added coloring component—in other words, something that will achieve the bright yellow look on the plate that’s so key to the experience, but that will still taste much like traditional white rice. Or you can click here to get the full-tilt Cuban yellow rice experience.

Ingredients:
—6 oz bacon, roughly chopped
—2 lbs flank steak, cut into 1½-inch strips
—Kosher salt and black pepper, to taste
—1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced
—1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
—1 Cubanelle or green pepper, thinly sliced
—6 oz tomato paste
—1 tbs cumin
—1 tbs dried thyme
—1 tbs dried oregano
—5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
—1 bay leaf
—1/2 cup dry white wine
—2 cups beef stock
—1 16-oz can whole peeled tomatoes, crushed
—1/2 cup halved, pitted green olives
—1/3 cup sliced jarred pimiento peppers
—3 tbs capers, rinsed and drained
—1 tbs white wine vinegar
—1/4 cup roughly chopped cilantro

Directions for Ropa Vieja:
—Render bacon in a 6-qt Dutch oven over medium high heat. Transfer to a plate, leaving fat in pot.
—Season steak with salt and pepper. Working in batches, cook until browned on both sides, about 6 minutes; transfer to plate.
—Add onion and peppers to pot; cook until soft, about 4 minutes. Add tomato paste, cumin, thyme, oregano, garlic, and bay leaf; cook until lightly caramelized, about 3 minutes.
—Add wine; cook, scraping bottom of pot, for 1 minute. Return bacon and steak to pot with stock and tomatoes; boil. Reduce heat to medium-low; cook, covered, until steak is very tender, 2 to 3 hours.
—Remove steak, and shred; return meat to pot with olives, pimientos, capers, and vinegar. Cook until sauce is slightly thickened, about 30 minutes.
—Stir in cilantro and serve over yellow rice (see recipe, below).

Directions for Simplified Cuban-style Yellow Rice:
—Place 2 cups long grain white rice in a saucepan and add 4 cups of water. Stir in a ½ tsp annatto powder (also called achiote or Bijol), and 2 tsp salt if using.
—Bring the mixture to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to low, cover pan, and simmer.
—Cook until all the water has evaporated and the rice is tender, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from heat, let sit five minutes uncovered, toss with a fork, and serve.

Serves 6 to 8

The post 10/25/12 • COMFORT FOOD, CUBAN-STYLE appeared first on THE RECIPE GRINDER.

From A Taste of Old Cuba (HarperCollins)

Last night Alfredo and I hosted a small dinner for our good friend Scott who was celebrating one of those big birthdays that only come around a few times in your life—the kind with a nice round number that the celebrant generally prefers not to linger on (and so I won’t either). It was a great night with good friends, good food, and too much drinking, and I have a doozy of a hangover to show for it, one that’s made everything from getting to work today to stringing together a coherent sentence especially challenging. Still, the evening was well worth all the frustrations of this morning, not least of which because Scott seemed to so thoroughly enjoy himself. And, on a secondary level, it gave me an excuse to whip up a large batch of paella, something I’ve been craving, and which is the ultimate party food in my book.

In truth, you kind of need a party to get up the mojo required to make paella, because there’s a lot of advance work associated with preparing it. The good news is that most of the heavy-lifting is done before your guests arrive, which means you can stand around drinking too much wine without worrying whether dinner will make it to the table. And it makes for an impressive presentation on the plate that doesn’t require lots of different serving dishes—it’s a vivid one-dish meal that everyone tends to like (as long as all your guests eat shellfish). I mean what could be better than chunks of chicken, chorizo, and shrimp, nestled in a mound of rice that’s plump with the moisture of absorbed chicken broth, all of it infused with the flavor of saffron? In fact, I have a Tupperware container holding some of last night’s leftovers sitting here on my desk, and it’s been teasing me since about 10:30 this morning, asking me if it isn’t lunchtime yet.

Which brings me to the subject of this week’s posting, arroz con pollo (rice with chicken)—a Cuban classic that’s similar to paella in some significant ways but that features a fraction of the ingredients and is less labor intensive as a result. Like paella, arroz con pollo calls on saffron for flavoring and a short grain rice such as Valencia or Bomba for the all-important starch. And in both dishes the rice is left to cook in a large quantity of chicken broth, liquid that it tends to suck right up thanks to the magnificent absorption properties associated with this variety of grain. In this way the consistency of the finished dish is almost like risotto—not quite as broken down, but sticky, wet, and full of the flavors of whatever other ingredients have been added to the pot.

In the case of arroz con pollo, the rice is not just cooked alongside the saffron and the chicken broth, but also several pounds of previously browned chicken parts, as well as a quantity of sautéed onions and green peppers . . . and nothing else. In other words, unlike paella, arroz con pollo is only rice and chicken—meaning there’s no seafood, no chorizo, and none of those other tasty add-ins that tend to be featured in the Spanish dish. Think of it as a simplified version of paella, and a meal that’s simple enough for an easy weeknight dinner.

The version of the recipe I bring to you here comes from A Taste of Old Cuba by María Josefa Lluriá de O’Higgins (I love this woman’s name almost as much as I love her classic Cuban recipes!), and the dish takes no more than forty-five minutes or so to prepare, not counting the time needed to marinate the chicken in a mixture of mashed garlic, salt, pepper and something called “sour orange juice.” This last item is produced by a number of companies, including Goya (who markets it under the name “naranja agria”), though in my experience it’s hard to find it at most markets. No worries, though—it can be made easily enough by mixing regular orange juice with an equal amount of lime juice. As for the marinating process itself, though the recipe suggests allowing just an hour for this, Alfredo’s aunt Toya extends this to as much as four hours, something I tried on my last outing and will incorporate into future versions, as well.

Also, while the recipe calls for a mixture of breasts, thighs and drumsticks, I prefer all white meat, cut crosswise to make for a more manageable size. In any case, once marinated it’s time to brown the chicken, a process that should take about three minutes per side. The recipe says to do this in a wide shallow pan, but given the three cups of liquid to follow, here again I’d propose a small change, swapping the wide pan for a large Dutch oven. Either way, when the chicken has taken on a nice golden color it’s removed from the pot and set aside, at which point it’s time to sauté the onions and pepper, which serve as the flavoring backbone for this dish. After three minutes or so these ingredients should take on a translucent quality, which tells you it’s time to introduce most of the other items—the broth, the saffron, the tomato sauce, the marinade the chicken was left to soak in, and the chicken itself. This mixture is left to simmer for five minutes, and then it’s time to add the star ingredient: the rice.

Since the rice (duh) requires liquid to cook, it’s important that all the grains be fully submerged—and to stay that way—during the estimated half hour of cooking time. That means it’s important to keep an eye on the pot and to add more liquid (chicken broth, dry white wine, even beer) as needed. Also, while those thirty minutes should be sufficient to get the job done, on a few occasions I’ve found it took longer. If that’s the case be sure to give the mixture a few good stirs as you go, since the rice at the bottom of the pot risks burning after more than thirty minutes. In any case, once the liquid has been absorbed and the rice is plump and tender, remove the pot from the heat while you quickly warm the petit pois and the sliced pimiento. These are then scattered across the surface of the finished dish. And that’s it!

According to the recipe the finished dish should be enough to serve between six and eight people, though in my experience the number is more like four—something I attribute to just how very good this simple dish can be. So good, in fact, that the last time I prepared it I began to congratulate myself on having taken a key step in mastering the art of Cuban cooking. Alfredo, however, was not quite as effusive. While he agreed that the dish tasted just as it should, he found it lacking in one key area: color—specifically the bright yellow hue associated with so much of the prepared rice in Cuban cooking. And this despite the fact that I’d gone heavy on the saffron! So in search of an answer I reached out once again to Alfredo’s aunt, who revealed that the secret lay in a condiment called Bijol, which is produced in Cuba and is composed of a mixture of corn flour, ground cumin and a few other goodies, including (ahem) food coloring. In the case of my arroz con pollo, she assured me that a ¼ teaspoon or so would be enough to imbue it with the signature shade associated with the country’s signature starch, all without altering the flavor. I’m still not quite sure how I feel about adding food coloring to my cooking, though I suppose when it comes to flying the proper colors for a favorite national dish, exceptions must be made.

Ingredients:
—3 garlic cloves, peeled
—1 tbs salt
—1 tsp pepper
—1/4 cup *sour orange juice (or a 50/50 mixture of sweet orange juice and lime juice)
—4 lbs skinned chicken thighs, legs, and breasts
—1/4 vegetable oil
—2 medium onions, peeled and finely chopped
—1 large green pepper, cored, seeded, and finely chopped
—3 cups chicken broth
—4 strands saffron, toasted in a dry skillet over medium heat for about 30 seconds or until they lose their moisture
—2 tbs tomato sauce
—2 cups Valencia rice
—Beer, dry white wine, or additional chicken broth
—Two 8 oz cans petit pois (tiny peas), drained, or 1 cup tiny frozen peas, thawed
—One 6 oz jar pimientos, drained and cut into strips
*Goya produces a concentrated sour orange juice called Naranja Agria.
Directions:
—Mash the garlic into a paste with the salt and pepper. (A mortar and pestle works best, but you may mince the garlic finely with a knife or put it through a garlic press and mash the seasonings in with a fork.)
—Add the orange juice and pour this marinade over the chicken pieces. Refrigerate for about one hour.
—Heat the oil over medium heat in a paella pan or other wide, shallow pan. (NOTE: As mentioned above, I prefer to use a large Dutch oven.)
—Blot the chicken pieces on paper towels and brown them in the hot oil. Reserve the marinade. Set the browned chicken pieces aside.
—In the same oil, sauté the onions and green pepper until the onions are translucent, about 3 minutes. Add the broth, saffron, tomato sauce, reserved marinade, and the chicken and simmer for about 5 minutes.
—Add the rice and stir just enough to cover it with liquid. If the rice is not fully covered, add more broth, wine, or beer. Simmer until all the liquid has been absorbed and the rice is cooked, about 30 minutes. Add more broth, wine, or beer as needed.
—Remove the pan from the heat while you warm the peas and pimientos separately. Garnish the arroz con pollo with them and serve.
Serves 6 to 8

The post 05/10/12 • CHICKEN, CUBAN-STYLE! appeared first on THE RECIPE GRINDER.

After nearly twenty-five years of being partnered with a Miami-born Cuban American, I’ve come to have a certain proprietary feeling for many of the national dishes he grew up with. Okay, maybe ropa vieja and arroz con pollo don’t have the same nostalgic pull for me as they do for Alfredo, but when it comes to the what-to-eat-on-a-Sunday-night-because-you’re-feeling-blue test (the ultimate comfort food yard-stick in my book) Cuban cooking is right up there for me with spaghetti and meatballs. Perhaps that’s why I felt entitled to take some liberties with one of my favorite Cuban dishes, picadillo. For anyone not familiar with this spectacularly satisfying (and easy) dish, it’s essentially ground beef that’s been added to a quick sauté of onions, peppers, and garlic (known as a sofrito — the foundation for most Latin cooking), then enhanced with a variety of savory ingredients such as olives, capers, tomato sauce, and white vinegar. I mean can you imagine a better combination? Of course, like most dishes that have been passed down from one generation to the next, nearly every Cuban cook has his or her own way of making picadillo (some add pork to the ground beef, others fried potatoes), but when it comes to serving it, the standard seems to be alongside a large quantity of white rice (with the possible addition of a fried egg on top). Either way, it’s a combo that’s hard to beat.

Still, as much as I love this dish in its classic form — and especially when accompanied by a serving of fried plantains and black beans — I wondered what would happen if you baked it in a casserole, crowned by a puree of something starchy. It was an idea that first started nagging at me as I flipped through the current issue of Fine Cooking and came across their recipe for cottage pie topped with mashed sweet potatoes.

Of course, the filling for both cottage pie and its cousin shepherd’s pie (the former is made with ground beef, the latter with cubed lamb) is similar to that of picadillo, in that all three involve sautéing the meat with a variety of aromatics, tomato (in some form or other), and a range of other ingredients, though it’s a similarity I’d never given much thought to, that is until I stumbled on that Fine Cooking recipe — or more specifically, the image that accompanied it. What’s more, it reminded me that as much as I’ve enjoyed the meat and lamb fillings in both cottage and shepherd’s pie, I’ve never enjoyed either as much as I have a good picadillo. Which prompted me to ask: why not introduce a little Latin beat into these staid English classics?

Nailing the filling would be easy enough — true Cuban cooks may work from closely guarded family formulas, but I’ve always followed the picadillo recipe found in A Taste of Old Cuba, and it’s never failed to deliver. No, the bigger challenge was what to layer over top. This proved something of a puzzle, as in my (albeit limited) experience of Cuban cooking, mashed or pureed anything has never really had a starring role (the one exception: yucca, which I deemed too fibrous to work here). Might this perhaps be an occasion for the sweet potato topping used in the Fine Cooking recipe? I knew from Alfredo that the starch was one he’d eaten each year at his family’s Thanksgiving dinner (pureed and studded with marshmallows), though that didn’t exactly convince me of its Cuban bona fides, much less that it would do the trick here.

Unsure, I reached out to someone I felt could fill in the gaps in my limited Cuban cooking catalog — Alfredo’s sister, Anika. She quickly shot down the idea of sweet potato as (just as I had feared) it tends not to show up much in the national larder. Instead, she threw out the name of something I’d never heard of, much less tasted: malanga. A quick Internet search revealed this to be a root vegetable popular in the tropics and South America that can be found in the US at “Latin American markets” — not exactly Cuban and, from the sound of it, not exactly easy to find, but perhaps the answer nonetheless. I’m not quite sure what makes a market “Latin American” but none of the ones I know that carry Latin American brands and/or ingredients were familiar with this particular vegetable. So I again threw my net wide, asking a Dominican friend who lives in Queens if he knew where I could find the tuber — the next day, six showed up at my door. My malanga moment had arrived.

Now here’s something you should know about uncooked malanga — it isn’t pretty. That was my reaction, anyway, as I stared at what looked like nothing so much as a dirty potato in need of a shave. But cut it in half and the tuber reveals a sweet, slightly melon-y smell, along with pale pink flesh the texture of eggplant. And, suggesting that the vegetable might be more common to Cuban cooking that I’d originally thought, I discovered that my cookbook did, in fact, offer a recipe for mashed malanga — one I followed to a point, cutting the vegetable in thick slices as directed, then placing the peeled rounds in a pot of boiling water. But when it came to the final step, I decided the preparation called for a little doctoring, replacing the suggested milk with half-and-half, and adding a handful of roasted garlic into the mix for good measure. The additions were sound ones, and the finished puree was rich, creamy, and full of flavor – similar to mashed potatoes but with a hint of sweetness. It was just the thing to top my picadillo pie (which, by the way, a series of forkfuls had already convinced me would soon be touted as one of the great inventions of 2012… I mean, they give awards for these things, right?!).

But given the challenges I’d encountered trying to locate malanga in the melting pot that is New York City, I couldn’t assume others around the country would be able to land their hands on any. So an alternate version of the dish was clearly in order — one that I decided to top with garlic mashed potatoes instead (based on a crowd-pleasing recipe from America’s Test Kitchen). Of course, standard potato doesn’t show up in Cuban cooking any more than sweet potato does, but I figured the addition of the garlic would at least take it in a Latin direction. And while the potato variety presented something a little less exotic than the malanga, it too proved an appealing counterpoint to the acidic tang of the beef mixture. (Directions for both options are included below.) Award or no, both versions had earned a permanent spot in my personal Cuban/American cookbook.

A few final thoughts about the recipe: to get the proportion of meat to starch correct I ended up doubling my picadillo recipe (which serves six), so if you’re interested in trying the dish in its traditional form and are only looking to feed that number, feel free to cut the recipe listed below in half. Also, don’t underestimate the importance of using very lean meat here, as too much fat can (and likely will) lead to a smoke filled kitchen once the casserole meets your oven. Lastly, while raisins (a key ingredient in any picadillo) may seem odd in the company of a mashed potato topping, bear in mind that once cooked alongside the meat and other ingredients, their concentrated sweetness dissipates, taking on the combined flavors in the pan. In other words, they’re a good addition. Still, if you just can’t get past the idea, they can always be omitted.

Ingredients for the picadillo filling:
—2 tbs vegetable oil
—2 medium onions, peeled and chopped
—2 large green bell peppers, cored, seeded, and chopped
—6 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
—2 lbs extra-lean (95%) ground beef
—1/2 cup tomato sauce
—1/2 cup sliced, stuffed green olives
—1/2 cup raisins
—2 tbs capers
—4 tbs white vinegar
—1/2 tsp sugar
—2 tsp salt
—1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
—Two 6 oz jars of pimientos, drained and sliced

Ingredients for the topping:
—10 cloves garlic (small to medium-large), skins left on
—2 lbs potatoes or malanga (see note below); unpeeled and scrubbed for the potatoes; scrubbed, sliced into 1” pieces, then peeled for the malanga
—8 tbs unsalted butter (1 stick), melted
—1 cup half-and-half, (warm)
—1/2 tsp table salt
—Ground black pepper

Note: Malanga is a root vegetable popular in the tropics and South America, and can be found in the US at many Latin American markets. It’s generally about the size and shape of a regular russet potato, while the interior can vary in color from cream, yellow, or pink. Although the texture is extremely crisp, once cooked it produces something lighter and flakier than a standard potato. Malanga can be baked, mashed, fried, or otherwise used as you would a potato.

Directions for the picadillo filling:
—Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Saute the onion and green pepper until the onion is translucent, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 2 minutes more.
—Add the beef and break it up well; there should be no lumps. Stir in the tomato sauce, olives, raisins, capers, vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes, or until the consistency is like that of sloppy joes.

Directions for the topping:
—Toast garlic, covered, in a small skillet over low heat, shaking pan frequently, until cloves start to go dark and are slightly softened, about 20 to 25 minutes. Off hear, let stand, covered, until fully softened, 15 to 20 minutes. Peel cloves and, with paring knife, cut off root.
—While garlic is toasting, place potatoes or malanga in a large saucepan and cover with 1 inch water. Bring to boil over high heat; reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until tender (a paring knife can be slipped into and out of center with little resistance), 20 to 30 minutes. Drain. Let cool.
—Set food mill or ricer over now empty but still warm saucepan. If using potatoes, spear with fork, then peel back skin, cut into chunks, and drop into bowl of ricer or food mill; if using malanga, simply cut into chunks and drop into bowl of ricer or food mill. Add toasted garlic and puree along with the potatoes or malanga into saucepan.
—Stir in butter with wooden spoon until incorporated; gently whisk in half-and-half, salt, and pepper to taste.

Directions for final assembly:
—Position a rack in the center of the oven and heat to 425 degrees.
—Transfer the meat mixture to a 2 qt. sized baking dish. Spread the potato or malanga mixture over the top in an even layer making a pattern with the tines of a dinner fork, then place on baking sheet to catch any drips. Bake until bubbling around edges, about 30 minutes. Switch to broil setting and position rack about 6 inches from the broiler element. Broil until starch topping is lightly toasted, 2 to 4 minutes.
—Let cool at least 15 minutes.

Special equipment:
—A food mill or ricer.

The post 01/12 /12 • CUBANO COTTAGE PIE appeared first on THE RECIPE GRINDER.