Swordfish Steaks with Moroccan Spice Rub and Couscous

I have always wanted to travel to Morocco. There is something about the culture, the landscape, and of course, the food, that has always intrigued and allured me. Moroccan cuisine is exotic because of the delicate mix of intricate spices like cumin, cinnamon, coriander and ginger. But it is also a cuisine that is quite simple and readily accessible here in the United States. Couscous -- a Moroccan staple -- can be found on almost all supermarket shelves, and traditional dishes like tagine are slow-cooked stews that require little active cooking.

Argan oil is a lesser-known ingredient to Americans. Argan is a tree species indigenous to the deserts of Morocco. The oil that is extracted from the fruits of the tree is golden-hued and has a distinctively nutty flavor. It can be purchased at specialty stores and fine groceries. I first discovered it at the Marché Biologique at the Rennes Metro stop in Paris, and I've seen it at on occasion at the Columbus Circle Whole Foods in New York.

In some ways, French colonial influence has influenced Moroccan cooking -- though perhaps the influence is reversed. Many French restaurants have adopted Moroccan spicing to their dishes, all the while retaining traditional western preparations. The French love couscous, spices, and Moroccan patisserie and street food; some of the most popular carry-out places in Paris are the falafel joints, and almost every street has its resident North African kebab window. Moroccan restaurants are rife in Paris, especially in the Marais district, in the 3e and 4e arrondissements on the Left Bank. My favorite is 404 Restaurant Familial, where the sexy, dark décor, sumptuous food, and full-bodied Moroccan wines make for a delicious and authentic dining experience.

This recipe for Swordfish Steaks and Couscous is a very simple dish, made more interesting by a simple Moroccan spice rub. With its western preparation, it could very easily be found on a menu at a French restaurant. This meal is very healthy, low in fat, and an excellent source of protein and whole grain, if you use whole-wheat couscous. The toasted almonds and wine-soaked raisins make this light couscous side dish absolutely scrumptious and rich-tasting, especially with a touch of Argan oil. I recommend pairing this dish with a white wine like Joseph Druhin Macon-Village (2005). The white fruit flavors of apple, the crisp mineral tonality, and the hint of anise are perfect complements for the spices in this dish.


SWORDFISH STEAKS WITH MOROCCAN SPICE RUB AND COUSCOUS

Serves 4

4 Swordfish steaks
Olive Oil

For the spice rub
1 Tbsp Coriander
1 Tbsp Cumin
1 Tbsp Chile
1 Tbsp Brown Sugar
1 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground Fennel Seed
1/2 tsp ground Black Pepper

For the couscous
2 c Whole Wheat Couscous
1/4 cup Golden Raisins
1/2 cup sweet Marsala wine
1/2 cup slivered Almonds
2 c Chicken stock
2 c water
Olive oil
Salt and pepper, to taste


Mix all spice rub ingredients together in a large bowl. Brush swordfish steaks with olive oil, then coat fish in the spices, rubbing the mix over all sides. Set aside, and allow to marinate for at least 1hr.

Turn oven broiler to high. Place a cast iron pan in oven to heat up for about 15 minutes before cooking fish.

In a small baking dish, toast almond slivers under broiler until browned and fragrant. Set aside.

In a small sauté pan, bring Marsala wine to a boil, add golden raisins, and reduce to a thick syrup, until wine evaporates as much as possible. Set aside.

In a medium-sized pot, bring water and chicken stock to a boil. Stir in couscous, cover, and remove from heat. Let stand 5 minutes until all water is absorbed, then fluff with a fork, adding almonds and raisins, salt and pepper to taste.

Being extremely careful of the hot cast iron pan, take it out of the oven, and quickly arrange swordfish steaks before returning pan, with fish, directly under the broiler. The heat of the pan will help cook the steaks more thoroughly, and it will sear and caramelize the rub. Broil swordfish steak for 7 mins under broiler on one side, turn to other side for 4-5 mins if necessary. Swordfish will be done when it is white and opaque, and moist on the inside.

Serve swordfish atop a mound of couscous with a drizzle of argan oil. This meal goes well with vegetables such as zucchini, yellow squash, and asparagus, roasted in the oven in olive oil and salt and pepper. Serve meal with Macon-Villages, and finish with a plate of Moroccan pastries such as Gazelle Horns, a simple ambrosia of oranges, mint, and honey, and a soothing cup of Moroccan mint tea.

Bon appétit!

The Tradition of Good Taste: An Interview with Jacques Pépin

Even amidst the busy bustle of the farmer’s market where crowds of locals and summer travelers picked through the ripe and colorful produce, his familiar smile drew me straight to him. Indeed, he had already drawn quite a crowd to his little booth off in the shade where he sat signing his new book, Chez Jacques: Traditions and Rituals of a Cook; but it wasn’t the crowd of admirers that gave him away. It was this smile of Jacques Pépin, so familiar and inviting, that instantly helped me to recognize one of the first and most esteemed celebrity chefs of our time.

A resident of Madison, Connecticut, Mr. Pépin lives just minutes away from the town in which I grew up. Throughout my growing up in Connecticut, I had occasionally heard of Monsieur Pépin’s comings-and-goings about town; making celebrity appearances at local epicurean events, signing books at R.J. Julia Booksellers, performing cooking demonstrations at Cook’s Kitchen. I had even spotted him once, late one night on the Shoreline East commuter train. But when I heard that Mr. Pépin would be in person at the Florence Griswold Museum’s annual Connecticut Farmer’s Market, I quickly arranged an interview with him, then jumped on the MetroNorth from New York and made my way home.

Yet despite all of his local fame, Jacques Pépin is not just a local celebrity. He is one of the original celebrity chefs who brought French gourmet cuisine to the United States, and has since taught chefs and ameteur cooks alike about the elegant possibilities that can be had in every meal.

Born in France near Lyon, Mr. Pépin came to the United States in 1959 and soon became a rising culinary entrepreneur and one of the original celebrity chefs. He has accomplished so much throughout his career; from cooking for Charles de Gaulle to cooking with Julia Child, Jacques Pépin is unquestionably one of the culinary greats. But unlike many celebrity chefs of the moment who portray a chef's career as fame, glamour, and glitz, Mr. Pépin has always maintained a sense of humility and realism about working in the kitchen: “You still sweat a lot, and you still work Saturday and Sunday, and you still work 16 hours a day, you don’t make that much money. So you really have to go into that business for the right reason, which is really having the bug and loving what you are doing.”

Now in his early seventies, Mr. Pépin looks as though he could still handle the energy and the stamina required by this life of a chef. On that summer afternoon of the interview, wearing a patterned short-sleeved button-up shirt with his grey hair swept into a dapper coif, Mr. Pépin had the relaxed yet sophisticated air of an epicurean Frenchmen, truly in his element surrounded by food. He welcomed his admirers with sincerity and signed their books with care; even after decades of international celebrity, it seemed as though Mr. Pépin still had an appreciation for these simple rewards of his fame. “I certainly did not go into that business [of being a chef] to ‘become famous,’ because it was totally unheard of until 30 or 40 years ago.”

When Jacques Pépin first started his career, being a chef was not the glamourous career that a culinary career seems to have today with the current obsession with foodie culture. Back then, being a chef was still very much considered a position of service: “At that point, we were quite low on the social scale. Any good mother would have wanted her child to marry a lawyer or a doctor, or to become a lawyer… but a cook? But now, we are genius.”

Being a “genius” is one thing that Mr. Pépin can include on his list of qualifications, not only for his culinary aptitude, but also for business savvy, his ability to translate French cuisine to Americans (and vice-versa), and his academic background in liberal arts. Like any great artist, Mr. Pépin dedicated much of his life to learning all of the nuances of his craft. After beginning in his mother’s restaurant, Le Pélican, at age 12, Mr. Pépin left school the following year to begin his French apprenticeship under chef Lucien Diat at the Plaza Athenée. Upon coming to the United States, Mr. Pépin enrolled for a PhD in Civilization Literature. Yet even though Columbia did not accept his final thesis about the history of French cooking within the context of French literature, Mr. Pépin’s educational experience gave him a context into which he could place his own work and translate the nuances of French cuisine to his American audience. Later in life, he used this academic background to become a teacher himself: “I teach that [field of study] at Boston University now, the same class, and there is a Master in liberal arts with a concentration in Gastronomy. The crazy part of it is that we’d be very happy to have that today at Columbia.”

All the while that Jacques Pépin was learning about the art and literature of French cuisine, he was simultaneously learning about American food culture of mass production during his ten-year apprenticeship with the Howard Johnson Company. It might seem anathema for a French gourmet chef to be learning from the hands of a chain-restaurant entrepreneur, but for Mr. Pépin, it was the birth of his American gourmet career. “I wanted to work in a totally American environment, learning the language and learning about American eating habits and about production – mass production – and chemistry of food.” He credits the success of his work with New York restaurants to his experience at Howard Johnson, both his consulting on Windows of the World in the World Trade Center and his restaurant, La Potagerie on Fifth Avenue.

It seems so very hard to believe that the McAmerican way of cooking could provide anything of use to the hands of a young French chef. But Mr. Pépin fully esteems his American experience, and was even ready to defend American produce over a comparison to French. “The earth is the earth. If you grow it the right way, it is the same result.” A walk with him around the local farmer’s market showed that such a claim might be true; but ultimately I got Mr. Pépin – an avid gardener himself – to admit that there was some truth to my bias for European goods. We discussed wild mushrooms (Mr. Pépin is an avid mushroom-hunter in Connecticut and upstate New York as well as in Europe), which he cited as evidence to the mystery of diminished taste in American produce: “Now I’m talking about walking 15 miles up the mountain here or there, so it’s not like its cultivated or anything. It just doesn’t have as much taste as it has in Italy or in France.”

Just like Mr. Pépin may have to apply extra seasoning in America to bring out the flavors of produce, he also makes an effort to keep some of his French “rituals and traditions” in his life here in the United States. Like true epicurean, Mr. Pépin’s culture is one that truly involves the use of all of his senses. “My culture is a culinary culture, and that takes place around the table, and there is much more than food.” He and his wife, Gloria, are avid epicureans, and he cooks often with his daughter, Claudine, who has also made herself in to a well-known chef. Summer seems to be the time when these cultural traditions come about most easily: “From going mushrooming to playing pétanque, you know we play boules, to going frogging as we did the other day, to going to the beach to get the tiny little white bait that we fry like French fries, to doing the garden.”

For Mr. Pépin, incorporating these epicurean traditions into his life is what defines him. Much in the spirit of building a community, Mr. Pépin sees his culinary culture – particularly the communication of recipes – as a way to keep traditions and pass on cultural rituals. “If we do a ritual like playing boules, those rituals are part of a culture and part of the culture is those rituals, and those rituals are expressed in traditional recipes.” Like the academic that he deeply is, Mr. Pépin cited Claude Lévi-Strauss: “The process of cooking is the process by which nature is transformed into culture.”

The ritual of cooking is, for Mr. Pépin, the ritual of narration. Is it telling a story, keeping traditions, and bringing people around the table in conversation. As we made the last turn to a stall in the farmer's market, I couldn't help but ask him what he was planning on making for dinner. Gloria had purchased red leaf lettuce, fresh corn, and a few tomatoes, and I was curious what he was crafting with those simple ingredients. But like any good chef, Mr. Pépin did not have a recipe in mind, and would just follow his senses: "For dinner? Well, we'll just go home, look at what we have, and then, well, we'll see."

Sage-Wrapped Lamb Sausages with Lentil Salad

As I write this entry from my parent's sunny porch in Connecticut, violet dragonfly bugs of various sizes are buzzing around my chaise, stopping now and again to perch atop my laptop keyboard. Summer has finally arrived in New England: it is cool and breezy in the shade, but hot and bright in the noonday sun.

Last night I shared dinner with my parents outside around their gas-powered fire pit, where we stayed outside late sipping Bordeaux until my younger sister came home with a handful of friends, marshmallows and samurai-sword-shaped grilling spears to make s'mores.

With long days and a fire pit to keep the nights warm, summer dinners are best when begun late and linger through the late hours of night. I love the summer season because local produce is at its best: heirloom tomatoes, peaches, yellow squash and red peppers are some of my seasonal favorites. My mother's herb garden is always pouring over with foliage by July; with two kinds of basil, large-leafed sage, chives, mint, oregano, rosemary, cilantro and garlic, we are always equipped to prepare a meal with the freshest of ingredients.

Late this summer, Goûter will be undergoing a few exciting changes. By summer's end, I will run a feature on the benefits of eating locally and give you recipes from my farmer's market dinner party. To tempt your palate, here is a sample recipe from the forthcoming farmer's market meal, which we tested around the fire pit last night. These Sage-Wrapped Lamb Sausages with Lentil Salad use locally-made lamb sausages from a farmer in East Lyme, CT, herbs and garlic scapes from my mother's garden, and a special sea salt from the Netherlands Antilles. Coincidentally, this recipe is a nice combination of the food I discovered in England, made with these few special ingredients I can only find at home.

SAGE-WRAPPED LAMB SAUSAGES with LENTIL SALAD

For the sausages:

8 large links lamb sausages

16 large sage leaves

For the lentil salad:

1 cup dried French green lentils

4-6 c water

1/2 c baby carrots

4 garlic scapes, separating upper bulb from tender part of stalks

1/4 c fennel, diced

1/4 c fennel fronds

1/4 c celery leaves, finely chopped

3 Tbsp chives, chopped

3 Tbsp fresh mint, finely chopped

2-3 Tbsp red wine vinegar

4-6 Tbsp fine extra virgin olive oil

Herbed sea salt and finely ground pepper, to taste

Heat grill on high heat.

Bring 4-6 cups water to a boil. Add baby carrots and tender scapes. Lower heat, remove once carrots are cooked but still slightly firm. Remove carrots and scapes, finely dice, and put into large bowl. Set aside.

Bring water to a boil again, adding one cup of dried French green lentils. Do not add salt to the water as it will cause the lentils to toughen. Add 1-3 smashed garlic cloves, a stem of a fennel frond, and stir. Bring heat to medium and let cook for 20mins.

While lentils are cooking, finely chop the fennel fronds, celery leaves, scape bulbs, chives and mint. Add to carrots and stalks in large mixing bowl.

When lentils are tender, strain water, then add lentils to ingredients in mixing bowl. Add red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. Gently mix to incorporate all ingredients. Set aside to cool to room temperature.

To grill sausages, use two skewers per sausage stack to hold sausages in place while grilling. Pierce skewers through sausages on either end of links, with about 1-inch between the skewers. Alternate sausage links with lengthwise sage leaves, so that the sage leaves "wrap" around the sausages while grilling. This will infuse the sausages with the flavor of sage.

Turn grill to low and grills sausages, flipping occasionally, until cooked. Attend to the sausages regularly to be sure that the sage leaves to not catch fire. Because fresh leaves are used, the water in the leaves should keep them from catching fire, and they will crisp nicely.

Arrange sausages, grilled sage, and lentil salad on a plate, garnishing with a colorful piece of grilled vegetable, such as yellow squash. Serve sausages warm and enjoy with a French Bordeaux.


Bon Appétit!