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FOR OLEANA CHEF, SPICES ARE THE SPICE OF LIFE
By Alison Arnett, Globe Staff | April 12, 2006
Boston Globe
April 12 2006
LINCOLN -- Ana Sortun rolls a narrow wooden rolling pin over a plastic
bag filled with coffee beans and cardamom pods. As she crushes the
mixture, scents of both perfume her small, open kitchen.
Outside glass doors, spring snow is drifting onto lawn chairs and
covering the jonquils. Inside, as Sortun makes Arabic coffee pot de
creme, it smells like a sunnier clime. Spices do that.
And they also permeate Sortun's cooking. At her restaurant, Oleana,
in Cambridge, the cuisines of Turkey, Greece, and Armenia are center
stage. Just as her first cookbook, "Spice: Flavors of the Eastern
Mediterranean," is about to reach bookstores (it will be out next
month), the chef is preparing several dishes from it at home. "What
I wanted to do was to focus on teaching people how to use spices in
a way that wasn't overwhelming."
"Mediterranean" has been the marketing engine for many modern
restaurants, but it's mostly an umbrella term for Italian and French
dishes. Sortun set off on a slightly different path, emphasizing
foods and flavors from lesser-known cuisines, including Moroccan and
Persian. The dishes on her wildly popular Oleana menu earned Sortun,
who is 38, the James Beard best chef of the Northeast award last year.
Sortun, a Seattle native who apprenticed at La Varenne cooking school
in Paris before moving to Boston in 1989, pours the crushed coffee
and spice mixture into a saucepan of cream and milk, lets it come to
a boil, and then sets it aside to steep. A purple-hued puree of red
beans and walnuts is enhanced with chopped parsley, mint, and dill.
The herb mixture is integral to Eastern Mediterranean cooking, she
says; the bean puree will become an Armenian bean and walnut pate,
a signature appetizer at her restaurant.
The pate comes from an Armenian friend who grows teas used at the
restaurant. He began with a very traditional recipe and added wild
dried tarragon he brought back from Armenia. Sortun serves the pate
with Armenian string cheese flecked with nigella seeds and tops it
with pomegranate seeds. The spread can also be eaten in a sandwich
with greens. "There's always these bean and nut combinations in these
Eastern Mediterranean cuisines," Sortun points out. The cooks of
these often poor countries cleverly add layers of flavoring without
adding heaviness. Nuts are often used to thicken instead of flour,
she says, and light cheeses or yogurts instead of butter enrich
foods. The result is satisfying but "not European heavy."
Her book has an unusual progression. Instead of the common chapter
organization, beginning with appetizers followed by main courses,
Sortun arranged the book by clusters of spices, herbs, and other
flavorings. These include cumin, coriander, and cardamom; curry powder,
turmeric, and fenugreek; dried mint, oregano, and za'atar.
"I was really stubborn about this," Sortun says. She admits that home
cooks won't be able to use the book as easily as they might with
a more conventional approach, but she wanted "to teach people what
spices work well together.
"What sets this food apart from the rest of the Mediterranean is the
use of spices," she says. If, for instance, you're wondering what to
do with the coriander in your spice cabinet or you want to reproduce
the taste of a Greek salad you ordered recently, Sortun wants to
help. "I'm hoping everyone will be inspired," she says. "There are some
very easy things [in the book] and some that are very complicated."
That doesn't mean there's consensus on what distinguishes a particular
dish in the cultures she writes about. Quickly chopping leeks and then
sauteing them with chopped thyme and sage to top thick rounds of cod,
she says that "what makes something taste Greek, what makes something
Moroccan" is controversial, and people from each culture might insist
on their own way.
These Eastern Mediterranean dishes are often confused with Middle
Eastern cooking. Sortun finds Middle Eastern food less sophisticated.
But whether they play out in a Turkish dish or in one from Spain,
the flavorings have Arabic roots.
Sortun has traveled to Mediterranean Europe and Turkey -- "some of the
best food I've had anywhere has been in Turkey" -- and this year plans
to go to Beirut. But her recipes, as is true of the food at Oleana,
aren't just a re-creation of traditional dishes. "I love to figure
out the rules before I break them," she says.
As she salts cod before adding leeks and then truffle shavings, she
explains that the cod had also been salted earlier. "I like to have the
salt sit on the fish for a little while because it makes the fish taste
more Mediterranean," she says. Greek and Turkish friends taught her
this, since Mediterranean waters are saltier than the North Atlantic,
where this cod was caught. "It doesn't make the cod saltier at all,
just seasons it throughout a little better."
Sortun places the fish on rectangles of white parchment paper and
then folds the edges into a curved calzone or empanada shape. As
she pops those in the oven, her husband, Chris Kurth, bundles up
7-month-old Siena, their daughter, to go to his mother, Mary Kurth,
who's babysitting this afternoon. Siena, who has Sortun's startlingly
blue eyes and dimples, and a winning personality, waves her arms and
legs as her mother puts blue socks on her tiny feet and gives her a
goodbye kiss. Kurth is tending his greenhouses, getting ready for
the first season of his new Sudbury farm, named Siena, which will
sell a wide range of vegetables and flowers to farmers' markets
and restaurants, and, of course, supply Oleana. Sortun will head to
Cambridge to get ready for dinner service.
She wrote the cookbook while pregnant and says it was incredibly hard:
"I have a new respect for writers." But she wanted to share her love of
these cuisines and pass on what she knows. So she would remind herself,
"I'm doing this for Siena," and push on.
"Travel changed my life," says Sortun, "and got me cooking this way --
for which I'm grateful."
By Alison Arnett, Globe Staff | April 12, 2006
Boston Globe
April 12 2006
LINCOLN -- Ana Sortun rolls a narrow wooden rolling pin over a plastic
bag filled with coffee beans and cardamom pods. As she crushes the
mixture, scents of both perfume her small, open kitchen.
Outside glass doors, spring snow is drifting onto lawn chairs and
covering the jonquils. Inside, as Sortun makes Arabic coffee pot de
creme, it smells like a sunnier clime. Spices do that.
And they also permeate Sortun's cooking. At her restaurant, Oleana,
in Cambridge, the cuisines of Turkey, Greece, and Armenia are center
stage. Just as her first cookbook, "Spice: Flavors of the Eastern
Mediterranean," is about to reach bookstores (it will be out next
month), the chef is preparing several dishes from it at home. "What
I wanted to do was to focus on teaching people how to use spices in
a way that wasn't overwhelming."
"Mediterranean" has been the marketing engine for many modern
restaurants, but it's mostly an umbrella term for Italian and French
dishes. Sortun set off on a slightly different path, emphasizing
foods and flavors from lesser-known cuisines, including Moroccan and
Persian. The dishes on her wildly popular Oleana menu earned Sortun,
who is 38, the James Beard best chef of the Northeast award last year.
Sortun, a Seattle native who apprenticed at La Varenne cooking school
in Paris before moving to Boston in 1989, pours the crushed coffee
and spice mixture into a saucepan of cream and milk, lets it come to
a boil, and then sets it aside to steep. A purple-hued puree of red
beans and walnuts is enhanced with chopped parsley, mint, and dill.
The herb mixture is integral to Eastern Mediterranean cooking, she
says; the bean puree will become an Armenian bean and walnut pate,
a signature appetizer at her restaurant.
The pate comes from an Armenian friend who grows teas used at the
restaurant. He began with a very traditional recipe and added wild
dried tarragon he brought back from Armenia. Sortun serves the pate
with Armenian string cheese flecked with nigella seeds and tops it
with pomegranate seeds. The spread can also be eaten in a sandwich
with greens. "There's always these bean and nut combinations in these
Eastern Mediterranean cuisines," Sortun points out. The cooks of
these often poor countries cleverly add layers of flavoring without
adding heaviness. Nuts are often used to thicken instead of flour,
she says, and light cheeses or yogurts instead of butter enrich
foods. The result is satisfying but "not European heavy."
Her book has an unusual progression. Instead of the common chapter
organization, beginning with appetizers followed by main courses,
Sortun arranged the book by clusters of spices, herbs, and other
flavorings. These include cumin, coriander, and cardamom; curry powder,
turmeric, and fenugreek; dried mint, oregano, and za'atar.
"I was really stubborn about this," Sortun says. She admits that home
cooks won't be able to use the book as easily as they might with
a more conventional approach, but she wanted "to teach people what
spices work well together.
"What sets this food apart from the rest of the Mediterranean is the
use of spices," she says. If, for instance, you're wondering what to
do with the coriander in your spice cabinet or you want to reproduce
the taste of a Greek salad you ordered recently, Sortun wants to
help. "I'm hoping everyone will be inspired," she says. "There are some
very easy things [in the book] and some that are very complicated."
That doesn't mean there's consensus on what distinguishes a particular
dish in the cultures she writes about. Quickly chopping leeks and then
sauteing them with chopped thyme and sage to top thick rounds of cod,
she says that "what makes something taste Greek, what makes something
Moroccan" is controversial, and people from each culture might insist
on their own way.
These Eastern Mediterranean dishes are often confused with Middle
Eastern cooking. Sortun finds Middle Eastern food less sophisticated.
But whether they play out in a Turkish dish or in one from Spain,
the flavorings have Arabic roots.
Sortun has traveled to Mediterranean Europe and Turkey -- "some of the
best food I've had anywhere has been in Turkey" -- and this year plans
to go to Beirut. But her recipes, as is true of the food at Oleana,
aren't just a re-creation of traditional dishes. "I love to figure
out the rules before I break them," she says.
As she salts cod before adding leeks and then truffle shavings, she
explains that the cod had also been salted earlier. "I like to have the
salt sit on the fish for a little while because it makes the fish taste
more Mediterranean," she says. Greek and Turkish friends taught her
this, since Mediterranean waters are saltier than the North Atlantic,
where this cod was caught. "It doesn't make the cod saltier at all,
just seasons it throughout a little better."
Sortun places the fish on rectangles of white parchment paper and
then folds the edges into a curved calzone or empanada shape. As
she pops those in the oven, her husband, Chris Kurth, bundles up
7-month-old Siena, their daughter, to go to his mother, Mary Kurth,
who's babysitting this afternoon. Siena, who has Sortun's startlingly
blue eyes and dimples, and a winning personality, waves her arms and
legs as her mother puts blue socks on her tiny feet and gives her a
goodbye kiss. Kurth is tending his greenhouses, getting ready for
the first season of his new Sudbury farm, named Siena, which will
sell a wide range of vegetables and flowers to farmers' markets
and restaurants, and, of course, supply Oleana. Sortun will head to
Cambridge to get ready for dinner service.
She wrote the cookbook while pregnant and says it was incredibly hard:
"I have a new respect for writers." But she wanted to share her love of
these cuisines and pass on what she knows. So she would remind herself,
"I'm doing this for Siena," and push on.
"Travel changed my life," says Sortun, "and got me cooking this way --
for which I'm grateful."