If you patronize your local farmer’s market, you may be surprised at the huge number of different types, sizes, colors and shapes of tomatoes available out there.

Tiny round red, green, yellow or orange cherry tomatoes, pear (usually yellow but sometimes red) tomatoes, long finger-like red cherry tomatoes, giant beefsteaks in myriad colors and bi-colors, red or orange plum tomatoes for making sauces, and even tomatoes that are relatively hollow inside that are perfect for stuffing.

Stuffers are available in red, yellow or a pretty striped variety that is red with orange-yellow tiger stripes. It is the latter type I found for sale by Larry and Kim Cowdery of Cowdery Farms, and of course, I had to pick some up.

The truth is, you can stuff any kind of tomato you want, even cherry tomatoes (I’ve done it–I don’t recommend it, though–it’s maddeningly finicky to stuff things that small), but these mostly hollow stuffers are simple. They have three to five chambers for their seeds and the gel that surrounds them, with evenly thick walls of flesh surrounding them. They are also kind of squat or bell-shaped so they have a nice flattish bottom to sit on.

All you have to do is cut the top off the tomato and use a scoop, spoon or just your fingers (guess which venue I chose–yep, fingers) to remove the seeds and gel. Now you have a nice hollowed out tomato ready for filling up with whatever you like.

And I mean it. ANYTHING can go into a tomato.

I personally like to use leftovers. I basically combine an already cooked leftover grain: rice, spelt berries, bulgar wheat or quinoa, with a leftover sauce, then add any vegetables I want, and voila! Stuffing.

In the version pictured–I heated up leftover steamed rice, and mixed it with heated up leftover sausage-enriched (Harmony Hollow Farm Italian Sausage) marinara (the last of the jars I canned last fall) that I used for lasagne. I added some sauteed onions (from Vest Berries), but I could have easily added some steamed broccoli or sauteed chard or spinach.

I made a bit more filling than I needed to to fill the tomatoes and after oiling the bottom of a small casserole dish with olive oil, I lined the bottom with the filling, then filled the tomatoes and nestled them into the rice and sauce mixture in the dish.

And then, I added cheese.

I used a ripened blue goat cheese from Integration Acres called “Percy’s Blue.” When melted under a broiler, the cheese melts into an unctuous, delicious, gooey, satisfying topping that contrasts beautifully with the still cool, fresh tasting tomatoes, and the warm, flavorful filling.

Finally, I minced up some Greek Columnar Basil from my deck garden and sprinkled it on top.

The result is an almost completely local Farmer’s Market lunch–the exceptions were the rice and the olive oil. If I had wanted to be perfectly local, I could have used Shagbark Seed & Mill’s spelt berries and Hartzler’s butter instead.

Stuffed tomatoes are very versatile. One could use cooked dried beans instead of grain, or in addition to grain. Or, you could use leftover grilled or roasted corn, cut from the cob, as the grain. Any kind of cheese could be used as the topping. Or, one could use Greek yogurt as a topping.

For sauce, one could use salsa or instead of a tomato based sauce, use a creamy one like Alfredo. Or, one could puree roasted bell peppers and use that as a sauce.

Basically, instead of a recipe, this post is going to give you a formula so you can make up your own versions of stuffed tomatoes. It’s a great, frugal way to use up leftovers and turn them into something new for a very quick lunch or dinner dish. It can have meat or be vegetarian, it can be vegan–it can be made however you like it.

Stuffed Tomato Formula
Ingredients:

8-12 stuffing tomatoes (or beefsteaks)
1 1/2 cups cooked leftover grain (corn cut from the cob, rice, spelt berries, bulgar wheat, quinoa, wild rice or cooked dried beans, or a mixture of the two) (If you have huge beefsteak tomatoes, you will need more grain or beans.)
1 1 1/2 cup leftover sauce (salsa, tomato or cream based pasta sauce, pureed roasted vegetable sauce) (If you use really large tomatoes, you will need more sauce)
1/2 cup cooked leftover vegetables (optional)
1 teaspoon olive oil
2-4 ounces of any kind of meltable cheese or Greek yogurt
Minced fresh herbs for garnish

Method:

Preheat your broiler to high and set the rack so it is within two to three inches of the burner.

Cut the very tops off of the tomatoes and scoop out the seeds and gel to leave a hollowed out cup.

Heat the grain and sauce in the microwave and mix them together. Use enough sauce to bind the grain together. Add the leftover vegetables if you want, and mix it into the filling.

Lightly oil the bottom of your casserole pan–use the smallest dish you can to fit the number of tomatoes you have.

Stuff your tomatoes, and pack the filling so it is just even with the top of the tomatoes. Do not mound it–if you mound it, the melted cheese will have a tendency to slip off the top.

Put leftover filling into the bottom of the casserole and settle the tomatoes onto it, leaving them close together in a cluster.

Add cheese or Greek yogurt to the top of the tomatoes and over the top of any exposed stuffing in the casserole dish.

Run under the broiler for 5-10 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbly and lightly browned and everything is heated through.

Remove from the broiler carefully, turn off the broiler and garnish with minced herbs.

Which meant I made it only out of Italian basil, pine nuts, garlic, Parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and olive oil. And I eschewed pestos made of other, untraditional herbs, cheeses and greens as being inferior copies of a perfect Italian sauce. Pesto was only made of Italian basil, pine nuts, garlic, Parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and olive oil, and just because someone ground up some green herbs, something cheesy and some garlic and olive oil together in a food processor did not mean they could or should call it pesto. It was really just some tasty green stuff that needed a name other than pesto, because it wasn’t pesto.

(You must forgive me for my rigidity–I’d been reading a lot of Marcella Hazan, and she really is a pesto purist.)

And then, I started adulterating it with heavy cream, because I found that the addition of cream slowed down the natural oxidation that causes the emerald green sauce to turn brown, and eventually black very soon after it’s added to hot pasta or whatever else you put it on. The addition of cream is not a method approved by Harold McGee, the great explainer of all questions culinary, but I found I liked it better than his suggestion to cook the pasta in acidulated water, which results in tart pasta (blech), or his belief that if you just use leaves and no stems or flowers bracts, the pesto will not darken (it still does, just more slowly), or his assertion that if you use pine nuts instead of walnuts, it doesn’t darken as much. The problem was that I used pine nuts in the first place and as soon as the oil is ground up with the basil leaves, the leaves oxidize and that’s just all there is to it.

So, I started adulterating the pesto. For some reason that I do not quite understand, except that perhaps the cream seals out the oxygen by coating the tiny basil leaf pieces, the addition of cream slows oxidation so much that it is essentially is no longer a problem. It keeps it brilliant green all through the length of an average meal.

But one adulteration leads to another, as most adventurous cooks already know.

I took to adding some raw spinach leaves to the food processor–about 1/10th of the total volume of the basil leaves–along with adding the reduced cream at the end. This resulted in a very green pesto that had a luxurious velvety mouthfeel thanks to the cream and still tasted of supremely fresh garlic and basil.

Then, I started reacting badly to tree nuts, and away the very expensive pine nuts went.

No one noticed. The pesto still tasted mighty amazing.

So, I took to adding some Aleppo chili flakes instead of black pepper and some Thai basil and lemon basil along with the regular Genovese basil that I had used for years.

At this point, I had dipped my toe into the heresies of unconventional pesto-making far enough, that I decided to jump in feet first and just go all the way.

What tipped me over the edge was a taste of some cilantro pesto that John Gutekanst of Avalanche Pizza had to dip some of his amazing bread he sells at the Athens Farmer’s Market on Saturdays. It was green, glorious and good, popping with fresh flavor that any cilantro and garlic lover would crave, but I still hated calling it pesto.

But what to call it? “I dunno, lad, but it’s green,” (Star Trek Geek points to the reader who knows who says this in what episode and in what context) is way too long of a name for a foodstuff, so I gave up and just call it Cilantro Pesto.

But mine is very different from John’s.

I figured if I was going off the chain and putting cilantro in pesto, I might as well just throw in whatever I felt like, and not be constrained by what other people might think was right and proper. Besides, I was already risking the wrath of Marcella Hazan, so I might as well go down with a happy tongue and a full stomach, right?

So, I added a few other herbs. Some basil. Thai basil. Some Italian parsley. A wee pinch of fresh spearmint. The greens of a scallion.

And, I put some other green things in–like a kale leaf for bitterness and some spinach leaves for color and vitamins.

And I left the Parmesan cheese out and replaced it with two year old super-sharp white cheddar made right her in Ohio.

And Aleppo pepper flakes. And, a smidge of black peppercorns.

Of course, garlic, but also a bit of scallion bottom–the white oniony bit.

And finally–olive oil.

No nuts. Sadly. I would have tossed in some black walnuts otherwise, because their assertive somewhat musky flavor and sweetness would have complimented the cilantro perfectly.

So, what did I use my wicked, subversive, heretical pesto on?

Well, I first used it as a condiment on a cheeseburger. And it was wonderful.

It’s also good on grilled chicken, as a bread dip and I bet it would make a great pizza sauce with toppings of fresh heirloom tomatoes, roasted red peppers and fried eggplant. It’s great mixed in scrambled eggs, though it does make them, well, a wee bit verdant-looking. So, if you are unlike Sam-I-Am and you do not like green eggs and ham, don’t put this pesto in your eggs.

But my favorite use has been to melt it on some just browned sauteed zucchini or yellow summer squash. Stirred up with the sweetly caramelized squash, it’s just rich, gooey, nummy and good.

Well, anyway, here’s the recipe. It’s super-easy and can be frozen for up to four months and thawed with no ill effects.

Oh, and unlike basil pesto–it doesn’t oxidize easily–so no need for the cream. (But, of course, you can add it to a cream sauce if you like…..)

Cilantro Pesto
Ingredients:

3 cups tightly packed fresh cilantro leaves and fine stems, washed and well dried
1 3″ sprig of Thai basil leaves, removed from stem, washed and well dried
1 crown of Italian basil leaves (just the leaves at the tip of a branch–works out to about four leaves) washed and well dried
1/8 cup Italian parsley leaves, washed and well dried
4 mint leaves
light and dark green top of 1 scallion
2 kale leaves, big vein removed, washed and well dried
1/4 cup packed fresh raw baby spinach leaves, washed and well dried, big stems removed
1/4 cup two year old (or older if you have it) very sharp cheddar
1/4 teaspoon Aleppo pepper flakes
1/2 of the white of 1 scallion
head of garlic, cloves peeled and cut into chunks
olive oil as needed to make a sauce
salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Put all ingredients up to and including the garlic cloves into the bowl of a food processor.

Put the lid on the food processor and start it running. Drizzle olive oil slowly into the feed tube and continue until the ingredients coalesce into a finely ground, thick barely pourable sauce.

Add salt and pepper to taste, and go to town figuring out your favorite way to use this gregariously green stuff.

Note: If you want to make this vegan, replace the cheese with one good tablespoonful of white or shiro miso. I like Miso Master brand. Be careful with your salt addition if you use the miso though.

Surprise! I’m back. Yes. Back. Actually, I’ve been here all this time, just not writing, because I’ve been busy doing other things.

“Like what?” you may ask. Well, you may ask it, and I’ll even answer it.

I’ve been cooking, and I’ve even been good and photographed the bounty of my kitchen, but have not gotten around to recording the recipes because–Kat started kindergarten, so our family has had to adjust our schedule. Seems like I finally got used to the way it worked with her in preschool (after only a year–I’m slow on the uptake sometimes) and BAM! The kid’s in kindergarten, in real school, doing real school things.

And Kat loves kindergarten. She’s already been learning to read–Zak and I have been teaching her, and I’ve been teaching her elementary addition and subtraction, as well as how to count all the way to 100, but now she has continual classroom support on these subjects, and she loves it. LOVES it. She is so happy to go to school in the morning and happy to come home and tell us what she’s been doing. And she’s so much more mature as well.

AND, she’s turning five at the end of the week. Five. It’s been a long, wild five years, let me tell you, but it is so wonderful watching her grow and change so quickly each day of her life. Truly, our whole family is blessed.

AND, Morganna has finally gotten her driver’s license and is now the proud owner of our old Subaru Outback, Big Blue. The process of getting the car fixed up to be safe for her to drive all over creation, and of her getting that license was long and arduous–as a person who was seriously phobic about driving and had PTSD flashbacks to the horrific drivers in my past, I never believed I’d be able to teach someone else to drive. But, I did. I realized as I did so that I’m not afraid of cars anymore, at all. In fact, these days, I’m pretty fearless.

So that’s a great thing, but teaching someone to drive, as well as carting them to and from work and home is a time consuming process.

And then there’s the documentary. It gets its own post, mind you, but Dan and I have been out filming hither and yon, and our team has added a third person, sound technician and foodie Heather, who was one of the originators of the idea of a documentary in the first place. So the three of us are always out and about carting equipment, setting it up, asking questions, falling over from heat prostration, and filming, always filming and it’s just a lot of fun. But also a lot of work.

Especially the behind the scenes work that I get to do, being the producer. I set up filming schedules, keep the clearances and waivers and other paperwork straight and filed, buy equipment, figure out locations and take care whatever physical needs and transportation needs our crew might have–it’s a lot of stuff to keep track of. But, it’s fun, and I have to say–it’s almost as much fun as running a restaurant kitchen. And it uses similar skill sets….but more on that later.

And then, there’s the volunteer work I’ve been doing for the CFI. That’s Community Food Initiatives for those not from here in Athens. In short, it’s a volunteer organization that combats the issue of food security (that is, in a word, hunger) on multiple fronts. More on the CFI in a post of it’s own. It’s too much to explain in a single paragraph, and the work that all of us in the organization is doing is important and worthy of a proper introduction and explanation.

Let it suffice to say that the CFI allows me to feed people who REALLY need good, healthy wholesome food on a larger scale than any other way I’ve done before. And it makes me happy to feed folks who really need it.

But enough about me. I didn’t come here to write about me.

What I want to write about right now are zucchini-carrot muffins.

Why in the world do I want to write about zucchini-carrot muffins? Why? I mean, really, why? Don’t muffins like that just suck? Aren’t they either dry and crumbly and rather cardboardy in texture and listless in flavor, or worse, greenish and goopy-sticky and sickeningly sweet?

Well, yeah, most vegetable-based muffins fall into one or the other of those less than enticing categories, but this recipe is different.

Why is it different?

Because I made it up, that’s why. If readers haven’t figured out by now that I utterly refuse to make and eat or feed others repugnant food, I don’t know what to say.

And why zucchini-carrot muffins? Why not something else?

Well, because I’m in charge of bringing Kat’s class their classroom snack for the next couple of weeks and while I want to make them tasty stuff, I also want to bring them stuff that’s good for them, while I’m at it. It’s part of my mission to educate not only the minds of children while they are at school, but their palates as well.

The first day of my reign as Sultana of Snacks, I brought blueberry mini-muffins that Kat and I made together. From my usual blueberry muffin recipe, though I did modify it a bit–instead of using sour cream, I used all Greek yogurt with an additional 1/8 cup of milk. And I used white whole wheat flour in place of the all purpose flour and whole spelt flour for the white whole wheat flour, and I did replace the melted butter with canola oil and then didn’t coat the top of the muffins with melted butter dipped in sugar. And no white sugar, but only raw sugar.

Let me tell you–those were some good muffins, and by damned if they weren’t also pretty darned good for the wee schoolkids. (They were popular, too. Each kid ate two muffins–which I didn’t expect.)

After two days of fresh fruits and vegetables, I decided it was time to bake again, and this time, Kat asked for zucchini muffins. Yeah, she asked for them by name.

So, zucchini muffins it was to be, though I decided I wanted to add carrots, too, so that the color would be more varied and interesting. I also ended up adding some golden raisins and dried cranberries, because if some vegetables make muffins good, some dried fruits will make it better. Kat did reign me in when it came to the walnuts, though, citing that lots of kids don’t like nuts.

One flavor at a time, said I to myself as I reluctantly set aside the walnuts.

We’ll see how these muffins go over. I baked them in regular sized tins, but they would have made perfectly fine mini muffins as well. Kat sure liked them–she had one for dessert after dinner tonight and pronounced them to be, “Supendous.”

Yeah, she’s got a great vocabulary for a five year old, even if she spoke while she was chewing and left the “t” out of the word. (I choose to believe that lost “t” came about because of that little issue of “talking with the mouth full of muffin.”

At any rate, here are some mighty fine vegetable and fruit-based muffins, perfect for using up the late summer bounty of squash and carrots that are pouring in from a garden near you. These bake up to be moist without being soggy, flavorful without any of the spices dominating, with cute little flecks of dark green and orange suspended in a light brown matrix of spongy cake-like goodness and little chewy amber or garnet colored fruit bits that give a burst of concentrated sweetness that is neither cloying nor insipidly distracting.

These are just damned fine muffins, that’s all there is to it.

Kat’s Zucchini-Carrot Muffins

Ingredients:

2 cups white whole wheat flour or all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole spelt or regular whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger
1/4 teaspoon cardamom
2 cups coarsely shredded zucchini (DON’T peel it! You’ll lose the pretty green flecks if you do!)
1 cup coarsely shredded carrot (peel that one, though)
1 cup packed light brown sugar
4 large eggs, beaten well
1/2 cup canola or other vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 drops orange oil (optional)
1/2 cup buttermilk
3/4 cup golden raisins
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1 cup chopped walnuts or black walnuts (optional)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Line muffin pans with paper liners–you will need enough pans to make 24 muffins, though to be honest, you may end up with only 21 muffins, depending on how well you fill the cups.

Whisk together the dry ingredients (from the flours to the cardamom) until they are well combined in one bowl.

In another bowl, whisk together the vegetables, sugar and eggs until well combined, then stir in the vegetable oil, extract/orange oil, and buttermilk, and whisk lightly. Then stir in the fruits and if you are using them, the nuts.

Sprinkle the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients bowl, and stir until well combined. Don’t beat the batter and don’t even stir more than you absolutely need to–you don’t want to encourage gluten formation here–that makes for tough muffins. And no one wants a tough muffin. No one.

After you have it all mixed together, spoon the batter into the lined muffin cups and bake for between 15-20 minutes. Muffins are done when lightly browned on the top and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan for ten minutes then remove from pan and finish cooling on a wire rack. Store in an airtight container and serve within 24 hours.

Makes 21-24 muffins.

The very first chapati I ever had was not very good.

Mind you, it was made by an American friend whose cooking skills were less than impressive, from a recipe from an American vegetarian cookbook (one of the older ones where the recipes tended toward the “less-than-delicious vegetarian glop dishes” that used to be the norm way back in the day) by a cookbook author whom I am certain probably never tasted a well-made chapati in her life.

The first one I tasted I ate out of politeness, because it was a dry, cardboard-like affair that I could not imagine ANYONE in her right mind liking–much less an entire subcontinent of people not only liking it, but eating it often. I didn’t even get why anyone would call it a bread–it was more like a somewhat pliable cracker.

So that experience kept me from trying a proper chapati for years.

When I finally did try one, I had already fallen under the spell of naan, bhatura and pooris, so I was still somewhat skeptical of something as simply made as a griddle-baked flatbread being good.

But, the chapati I had made in the hands of a good cook was pretty good, so I could at least see why people liked them. However, compared to the glories that were naan, bhatura and poori–I didn’t find myself craving chapati.

Until I had a truly flakey, tender and delicious version, one that was subtly scented with spices and had an elusive nutty flavor that I soon recognized as coming not only from the usual whole wheat flour, but also some besan–toasted chickpea flour.

After tasting those chapati–I changed my mind about the formerly humble griddle baked flatbreads and decided I had to figure out how to make ones that tasted just like the ones at my favorite restaurant.

And so, I did.

My first task was to research recipes.

I looked online, but found no recipes that sounded exactly right, so I started digging through my three shelves of Indian cookbooks.

I found what I was looking for in one of oldest cookbooks–Julie Sahni’s Classic Indian Cooking, which is one of the cookbooks that taught me many of my first Indian recipes. Copyright 1980, this older book with very few illustrations and no photographs is truly a classic in the best sense of the word–and Sahni, the author, is not only very knowledgeable about Indian cookery, she is deftly able to put her knowledge onto paper in the form of step-by-step instructions easy enough for a beginner to follow without the benefit of illustrations.

What I found in Sahni’s tome is a recipe for “Besan ki Roti”, or chickpea flour flat bread. The spices she used in her recipe were not what I was aiming for, and the method she used for rolling out the dough would not result in as flaky a bread as I wanted (but I wasn’t worried about that as I had a pretty good idea as to how to make the breads flaky my own self–because I knew how to make flaky Chinese scallion pancakes, and was going to use the same technique here).

I also ended up adding a little bit of yogurt and ghee to the dough itself to tenderize it further–according to Sahni, the besan makes the dough stiffer and chewier than just using the usual durum atta flour that most cooks use to make chapati. Knowing well the tenderizing properties of fats and dairy products in bread dough, I decided to add some–and it turned out to be the correct decision.

Finally, instead of the usual method of cooking a chapati, which consists of baking for a few seconds on a flat, hot cast iron griddle, then passing it over on an open fire, I added a third technique–a short steaming (about 10-20 seconds) wrapped in a napkin in the microwave.

The result is a very flaky, tender, delicious chapati, just like the title of this post says. They are nutty, subtly scented with fenugreek and cumin and have a delicious nutty flavor and aroma, thanks to the small amount of besan. They taste perfect with any Indian dish–but I particularly like it with channa masala and safaid keema mattar.

The truth is, these chapati would be good with ANY Indian dishes. And even though my explanation of the technique is going to sound long, involved and difficult–it really isn’t. It takes longer to explain how to make these flatbreads than it does to make them. After I got the hang of it, I could cook a chapati, from pinching the bit of dough from the ball to rolling it out, rolling it up, rolling it out again, cooking it on the griddle, then over the fire, then in the microwave, in two minutes flat, give or take a second or two. One the rhythm is established, your hands will be able to go fast as lightning, and you will find yourself able to make a pile of these little breads for your friends and family in no time.

Flaky Chapati
Ingredients:

2 cups whole wheat chapati flour or regular whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup besan flour
1/4 teaspoon ground fenugreek seeds
1/8 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ghee
1 tablespoon Greek style yogurt
1 1/8 cup to 1 1/4 cuo warm water (start with smaller measure, use more as needed)
all purpose flour for rolling out
melted ghee for rolling out

Method:

Either the morning of the evening you want your chapati or the night before, mix together the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

Oil your hands with a small amount of canola oil or ghee so the dough will not stick as you mix and stir the dough.

Stir in the ghee and yogurt with your fingers until mixture is crumbly, with a few little lumps like happens with a very shaggy pastry dough before you add the water. (Alternately, you can use a fork to mix in the ghee and yogurt, but I find it easier to just use my fingers to rub it in.)

Slowly stir in the water, mixing with your hand until the dough firms up enough to knead. Once the dough is firm, yet still slightly sticky, begin kneading with both hands until the dough is elastic and and smooth, yet still a bit tacky to the touch. (Not so sticky that it clings to your fingers, just not dry and silky like most yeast doughs are supposed to be after they are kneaded. It should just feel like it wants to grab onto your finger, but it doesn’t actually do it.)

Put the dough into a ziplock bag, and place in the fridge to rest for at least three hours, though, I like it best if I make the dough the night before and let it rest until lunch or dinnertime the next day. For whatever reason, the dough rested longer is much more pliable and soft when baked up than the fresher dough made just a few hours before and rested at room temperature.)

Remove the dough from the fridge about a half hour before you are ready to cook some chapati, then turn the dough out onto a flour-dusted surface, and knead it gently to warm it up and to dry up any surface moisture with the extra flour.

Now, there are two ways you can go about dividing the dough into little balls ready to be rolled into flatbreads. The way you are supposed to do it is to roll the dough in your hands into a big ball, then cut that in half. Set aside one piece of dough and seal it back up in the ziplock to keep it fresh and moist. The other piece of dough, you roll into a snake about 15 inches or so long and cut that into 12 equal pieces. Then you roll each of those pieces into a perfect ball and cover the ones you are not working with to keep them from drying out.

Or…you could be lazy like I got as I experimented with a couple of different batches of dough and just pull off a chunk of dough and roll it into a ball in your palms and call it good, while leaving the rest of the big dough ball covered. Having done it both ways, it works fine either way.

Then, you take your dough ball and flatten it into a disk between your palms. Make it look like a little UFO. Very cute, right? Then, you dust flour onto the rolling surface and set your disk down. Dust your rolling pin with flour and roll that disk out into as perfect a circle as you can manage, as thin as you can manage. Turn the dough a quarter turn between rollings if you want a perfect perfect circle, if you don’t care, just roll it out in different directions until you get a very thin (less than 1/8″ thick) roundish sheet of dough.

Brush with a little bit of melted ghee. Please do not go overboard with this. Just use a little bit. (In your head, or out loud, sing the backup singers’ part of Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,”–”Just a little bit, just a little bit, just a little bit–sockittome,sockittome….” etc. This helps you remember to go easy on the ghee.)

Then…start rolling that flat bread dough disk into a cigar or another snake like shape with your fingers. It won’t want to do this easily–ignore it and endeavor to persevere, and you will end up with a cylinder of dough before you know it. Stretch that dough out by pulling at either end and then spiral it inward upon itself into a snail or rosette shape, making it a flat disk once again, but this time, with a spiral design on it. Pinch the end to and along the spiral to hold it together–just nip the edges together with your fingers.

Then, dust it and the rolling surface with flour, dust your rolling pin and roll it out flat again.

Now, that all sounds very hard, but really, it takes much longer to explain and write it down than it does just to do it. Trust me. If you want more explanations of the technique, read my recipe for Scallion Pancakes.

Set your pancake aside on a lightly flour dusted surface and roll out another one. While you are rolling out a second chapati, start heating up your griddle.

Now, in India, these are cooked on a flat, round cast iron griddle called a tava. Not having one of those, I used a heavy cast iron skillet. You could also use a cast iron griddle, or even a cast iron Dutch Oven if that’s all you have, but whatever you use, make it a heavy, well-seasoned cast iron pan. If you don’t have cast iron, you should–go out and get a cast iron skillet and season and treat it well and your cooking will improve vastly. They aren’t that expensive, and if you’re lucky, you can find an old, blackened, well seasoned one in a relatives cupboard, forgotten and unused, or you can get one at a yard sale.

Anyway, I digress. Put your cast iron cooking surface on the burner and turn the heat up to high. Let it heat. Then, turn on the burner next to or behind that pan and just let it go. If you don’t have gas–you can still do this with electric, but it won’t have that fire-cooked aroma. But it will still work, so long as you have your burners on high.

Now, you need two other cooking implements. A spatula for flipping the chapati over on the griddle or skillet surface, and a set of tongs for picking it up and holding it over the live fire or the naked electric burner. Have these ready to hand. Also have a plate with a cotton napkin (or a paper towel) on it big enough to fold over the chapati at the ready.

After you’ve rolled the second chapati, put the first one right onto the pre-heated cast iron cooking surface. Do not use grease, ghee or oil. Just the hot pan. In mere seconds it will cook on the first side. Flip it over with the spatula and you should see speckly brown spots on that side as pictured above at the beginning of the recipe. Leave it on the other side for a couple of seconds and then use the tongs to pick up the chapati and hold it over the flame or the hot naked burner. Flip it back and forth, this way and that, and watch in amazement as it finishes cooking and even puffs up in places. Isn’t that the coolest? It is.

After flipping it around over the fire for a few seconds–about ten or so total–don’t drop it in the fire and let it burn! After that, put it on the plate, fold the napkin over and microwave it on high for a mere 10-20 seconds. Remove, unwrap, brush one side with melted ghee and fold into quarters than put in a basket lined with a napkin and cover it up to keep it warm.

Continue cooking, then rolling and etcetera until you have enough chapati for a first serving for your family and friends. After that, turn off the burners and serve everything hot–it’s easiest to put the rice, curries and raitas and whatnot on the table first, have everyone fix their plates and sit down, then go and cook the chapati and bring them out all at once. If, after eating one chapati, folks want more, you can go and cook more, or teach them how to do it. You can roll, they can cook and everyone can be fat and happy.

That’s it. I promise that it sounds harder to do than it is–and the results are so worth the trouble of learning how to make these lovely little flatbreads that are nothing like the first unfortunate example I ate nearly twenty years ago in a friend’s kitchen.

Yeah, I know that the title of the recipe involves beef and pork, but really those aren’t the stars of the show. The stars of the show are all of the local vegetables and herbs that go into the bowl on top of the steamed broken rice, long before the grilled beef and pork even come into the picture.

What vegetables, you ask? Well, some of our very own radishes, for one thing. Aren’t they the prettiest things? All shades of pink, rose, purple and carmine with icy white. Kat got to pull some of them her very own self–her favorites so far are the long narrow fuchsia and white ones called, “French Breakfast.” Mine are the large round violet ones: “Plum Purple.”

But those radishes only tell part of the story. Please note the plethora of mixed baby greens we sheared carefully from our salad bed in our community garden plot.

Purple mizuna, various baby lettuces and burgundy colored tatsoi are included in the big pile of salad greens Kat and I cut for dinner. Two days later, you could barely see where we had harvested–the plants grew that fast.

We also picked a great many herbs from the bed dedicated to them in the garden: spearmint, cilantro, basil, lemon basil and lovage.

And then, in addition to our own herbs and vegetables, we had fresh local tomatoes, (From Star at Shade River Farm–she starts them in the middle of winter in her solar greenhouse) cucumbers, turnips, red cabbage, carrots and scallions from the farmer’s market. Counting all of that and the steamed broken jasmine rice, this dish is way more vegetative than its name would imply.

But, it is based on the classic Vietnamese dish, Lemongrass Beef. Which, again, is a name that is somewhat misleading because the name doesn’t really tell you what all is going to be happening in your bowl, so maybe it’s traditional or something to just not talk about the rice, vegetables and herbs that outweigh the meat in the dish by many ounces.

When I say based on, I should clarify–it’s loosely based on Lemongrass Beef. The meat is grilled instead of stir-fried, and while the rub contains lemongrass, there is a finishing sauce I made to use while the meat is sizzling on the fire that contains very little that resembles the original recipe.

The sauce is made of a combination of fish sauce, soy sauce, lemon juice, honey, whiskey, vegetarian (or if you aren’t allergic to seafood like I am, regular) oyster sauce, and Thai sweet chili sauce.

A word about that last ingredient–it’s meant to go on grilled chicken and it’s lovely that way. But, I like it even better with pork, and it’s really good on top of a bowl of Lemongrass Beef. The sticky-sweet, lightly tangy and fiery scarlet sauce is so good that it is addictive–which is why we gave it the nickname, “Cracky-Crack Sauce” at our house.

The marinade/barbeque sauce really made the grilled meats taste fantastic. Don’t get me wrong–the rub I put on the beef and pork made them tender and taste fantastic–I mean, it’s fresh lemongrass, lemon juice, garlic, ginger and scallions–how can it make anything bad? But the sauce when added at the end, really gives it the extra added oomph that tips the meat over the top.

Finally, you need to make nuac cham–a spicy, fragrant Vietnamese sauce that is like one of the best salad dressings in the world. As the final touch, it enhances not just the grilled meats, but the rice, the vegetables and the herbs. It’s great stuff. AND, it’s easy to make and keeps nicely in the fridge for about a week, though I like it best the day it’s made or the day after. Also, before serving, I like to bring it to room temperature so that the fullness of flavor is expressed.

It sounds like lots of work–making two sauces, a marinade/rub, grilling meats, making broken rice or plain jasmine rice, and prepping the vegetables and herbs. But, really, the vegetables and herbs can be cleaned and cut a day before, the nuac cham can be made a day before, and the marinade and finishing sauce can all be made up to two days before. That leaves just the grilling, rice cooking and assembly for the day you serve the meal. That isn’t so bad, and the payoff is you get lots of fresh local vegetables and herbs, some rice and really tasty grilled meat in amounts that feed a whole crowd of your friends and family. The finished dish looks impressive and theirs something to please everyone.

Vietnamese Style Grilled Beef and Pork
Ingredients for the Marinade/Rub and Meat:

4 stalks of lemongrass, bottom third only, tough outer leaves removed and sliced thinly
3 cloves fresh garlic, peeled
1″ piece fresh ginger, peeled
1 fresh Thai chili
2 scallions, white and light green parts, sliced
juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon fish sauce
pork tenderloin, trimmed and cleaned of excess fat and silverskin
1 1/2 thick piece of top sirloin/ London Broil

Methods:

Grind all solid ingredients into a paste, then mix with lemon juice and fish sauce.

Rub onto meats, then lay the meats into a shallow pan and seal with plastic wrap. Allow to marinate for at least three hours, preferably more, up to overnight.

Ingredients for Grilling Sauce:

1 tablespoon high quality fish sauce
1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
1/2 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 tablespoon bourbon or whiskey
1 tablespoon vegetarian or real oyster sauce
2 tablespoons Mae Ploy sweet chili sauce

Method:

Whisk together and allow to sit at room temperature for at least an hour before use–if you make it a day or so ahead, warm up to room temperature before using it.

To grill the meats–prepare a charcoal grill for very hot indirect grilling, and cook the meats in the section not directly over the flame, turning at least twice until they are nearly done. At that time, move them closer to the actually burning coals, and brush several times on both sides with the sauce, allowing the outside of the meat char and crisp up a bit.

Ingredients for the Vegetables, Herbs and Rice:

3 cups broken jasmine rice
a big pile of mixed lettuces and other salad greens–at least 8 ounces, cleaned, dried and chilled
whatever fresh vegetables you want to use such as carrots, radishes, baby turnips, snow peas, cucumbers, and tomatoes, all cleaned, dried and chilled.
1 cup of cilantro leaves
1/2 cup of mint leaves
1 cup Thai basil leaves
1/4 cup lovage leaves
1 recipe nuac cham
sweet chili sauce

Method:

Cook the broken rice: In the rice cooker, put 3 cups of rice and water. (Always use equal parts rice and water for broken rice.) That is that. You put it in the rice cooker, shut the lid down on it, push the button and walk away.

If you are cooking on the stove top, the proportion of broken rice to water is exactly the same. Put the rinsed rice into a pot with three cups of water. Bring to a boil, give it a nice stir, clap a tight lid down on it, turn the heat down to the lowest setting possible setting and cook for twenty minutes. Let it sit for five minutes off heat, then fluff with a fork.

The lettuces and greens should be torn into bite sized pieces. Choose greens that are a good balance of color, texture and flavor. I like to add some baby bok choy or tatsoi and mizuna to the greens because they are very flavorful and have great textures.

The root vegetables should be peeled if needed, if not, they should be well scrubbed, and then cut into a thin julienne. Snow peas should be stringed and then cut into julienne to match the root vegetables. I like to peel the cucumbers and seed them, then cut into julienne. Tomatoes, if they are full sized, I just cut into thin wedges, while cherry tomatoes get simply sliced in half.

To serve, I slice the meats thinly on the diagonal and set them on platters on one end of the serving surface. I leave the rice in the rice cooker, with the lettuces in a large bowl near it on the other end. Then, the vegetables and herbs are in separate bowls arrayed in between the two ends, with the nuac cham and chili sauce after the meat.

Pass out bowls and let your guests fill them as they see fit. I find it’s tastiest to put the greens in first, then the steamy rice, then the vegetables and herbs covering the rice, with the meat on top, and the sauces drizzled joyfully over the top.

If you have leftovers, and that’s a big if, you can make a cold salad out of everything with a big dose of cold nuac cham as a dressing the next day. I ate it for breakfast and it was a delightful eye opener.