Harlem is gentrifying like crazy. Crime is down, so brownstones are going, going, gone and craggy old warehouses are being converted to condos for yuppies as we speak. All this is so inevitable that of late even the crunchy socially conscious granola-eating, Subaru-driving community activist types on my block seem to have given up organizing anti-gentrification street rallies.

For about a year, there has been a Citarella on W 125th street. In theory, Citarella sells food, but it is the Vogue of supermarkets: the selection is relatively narrow and strictly based on looks: only the beautiful need to apply. Each and every item is visually perfect, a supermodel of sorts. Citarella seems to be geared toward people who like to have food on display in their house but care little about the disgusting necessity of eating. The Harlem Citarella is surrounded by storefront churches, botanicas, fast food chains, and a sea of public housing projects, but somehow I doubt that an important local form of currency, food stamps and WIC checks, are accepted inside.

Normally, I do my weekly shopping at the boisterous, chaotic, mazelike Uptown Fairway a few blocks west. This weekend, however, I was briefly seduced by the pruned-down Sohoesque industrial chic and lack of throngs at Citarella. Of course, I could find barely any of the mundanities I had jotted down on my shopping list, so I gave free reign to impulse purchases. The Berkeley-based Scharffen Berger cocoa powder was too fetchingly packaged to stay on the shelf. (Antti, do you still ruin your kitchen decor with an O’boy container?)

Pretty incredibly, I never had any hot chocolate during my trip to Mexico in January (how stupid am I? I drank lots of lousy tea instead). Although I can’t vouch for authenticity, the addition of a bit of chili gives this infantile drink a nice, adult edge, and the combination dates back to Aztecs. If you’d rather prepare your drink conquistador style, here is a more historic and involved recipe.

Hot Chocolate with Chiles

1 serving

1.5 dl milk
1 halved dried chili, split with seeds removed
(optional: 1 tsp or stick of cinnamon and half of a vanilla pod)
3 tbsp sweetened cocoa powder or about 30g of dark chocolate squares

Simmer the chili pod (and the vanilla and cinnamon) in milk in a saucepan. Better yet, use the microwave. Whatever you do, not let the milk boil. Whisk in the instant cocoa powder or the roughly chopped chocolate pieces. If using chocolate from a bar, continue to simmer / zap until the chocolate is melted. Take away from the heat and let steep for a bit.

Pretty incredibly, both Antti and I have a wooden tool for the very purpose of frothing hot chocolate: a molinillo, purchased from a gigantic Mexican supermarket in East LA last summer. If you own one, now it is the time to use it to give your drink a frothy crown. Apparently, Mexicans are at least as obsessed by the froth in chocolate as Italians are about the crema in espresso.

Two weeks ago when I was still in Finland, somebody at work brought in Fazer’s chili chocolate. The chili flavor was not jarring and overpowering at all, just a subtle, barely perceptible accent, so I was immediately hooked. Alas, I couldn’t find it anywhere, not even at the airport duty-free :( If anybody knows where to get it, please let me know so I can ruin my diet ;)

The first time I tasted this dish I was in paradise on earth. After exploring the Douro valley of Northern Portugal where grapes for port wines are grown in one of the most dramatically beautiful landscapes in all Europe, we crossed the rolling mountains of the Beira Alta by car. After being too late for the midday meal we were served repulsive Spam-like luncheon meat on overcooked pasta in a surreally dodgy lunch cafe further north. During the early evening, we traversed dense forests and misty weeping-willow lined rivers, ending up in a somnolent townlet so tiny it only had one restaurant. There were no menus and only one or two dinner options. A bit apprehensive, we let the lady who was in charge of the establishment serve us whatever she had prepared for the night. So started the meal that belongs among my top 5 restaurant experiences during this new millennium…

Later on we learned that the dish we enjoyed there is not uncommon in Portugal and among Portuguese immigrants elsewhere. Famous enough to earn its own wikipedia entry, it is called bacalhau à brás. The Swedish classic Jansson’s frestelse (known in Finland as Janssonin kiusaus) is clearly of shared lineage, although I’m a bit ambivalent about anchovies and feel the Portuguese dried-cod version is better amalgamated and far more delicious.

Near New York City, you can get a sampling of authentic bacalhau à brás in the Ironbound section of Newark. This neat working-class neighborhood has a setting considerably less idyllic than Beira Alta, just off the New Jersey turnpike airport exit, a very short distance from the scarred industrial moonscape that houses one of the most blighted urban slums in Northeastern US.

Recreating legendary restaurant meals at home is usually a pretty futile task. Supposedly, I’m watching my weight right now and trying to eat as healthfully as possible. Too bad my cupboards are full of temptations – for example a pound of bacalhau. Well, dried fish is not exactly unhealthy, just the company it keeps… eggs and oil by the bucketful. This was my first attempt at a bacalhau dish, but the results were so delicious that I almost couldn’t believe it. Also, this is definitely the first time I find myself cooking from a wikipedia entry. I decreased the bacalhau-potato ratio because the cods of the North Atlantic have been overfished to near extinction.

Bacalhau à Brás

3-4 servings

250-300g of bacalhau (dried codfish)
500g of potatoes, julienned into matchstick-like pieces
2 onions, finely chopped
large quantities of canola or corn oil for frying

2-3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
6 eggs, slightly beaten
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
0.5dl chopped parsley
black olives

Soak the codfish for 24 h, changing the water 3-5 times to get rid of excess salt. When the fish has softened, check for bones and cut into pieces with kitchen scissors.

Peel and cut the potatoes into long, thick matchsticks. Rinse several times until the water remains clear; drain in a colander. Heat the oil in a large skillet, fry the potatoes till golden. (I use oils more suitable for heavy-duty frying and less expensive than high-grade olive oil for this purpose and enhance the taste of the dish by using good oil later in the process). Transfer the potatoes on a plate lined with kitchen towels to absorb excess fat. Next, fry the chopped onions in the oil until lightly browned. Put aside, and stir-fry the cod in the remaining oil.

Heat a little olive oil in a thick-bottomed kettle. Infuse the quartered garlic clove until golden, then remove. Add half of the potatoes and all of onions and bacalhau. Lightly beat 6 eggs in a bowl, season with freshly ground black pepper, then add this mixture into the kettle. Stir gently over a low heat, not unlike scrambling eggs: when the eggs are firm, take away from heat; add the chopped parsley. Just before serving, add the remaining fried potatoes to maintain their fried crispness. Decorate with black olives if desired and serve immediately with good crusty Portuguese bread and wine.

The meal is pretty substantial – don’t plan on doing anything more important than taking a nap or viewing one of Manuel de Oliveira’s slowmoving films a few hours after this meal.

It’s good to back in New York. My New York, the unsung Uptown, where I’m enveloped by the golden vowels of Antillean Spanish and the throb of bachata and reggaetón from passing cars.

The ribbon of park along Riverside where strangers smile and greet each other every morning. Bodegas where air fresheners are so strong they almost knock you out. Sidewalks where vendors sell sculpted pineapples and crushed oranges from shopping carts, rats scurry among abandoned mattresses, and a gaggle of men with millimeter-thin sideburns have consacrated a few square feet of pavement as Zona D Yankees.

The city where I won’t ever feel alone, because I’m gently rocked to sleep by jackhammers, car alarms, wailing sirens, reversing trucks, the thunder of the elevated subway track. The city I love.

No time for cooking right now. Instead, I’ll soothe my jet lag with a tub of green tea ice cream. In Finland I couldn’t get the storebought stuff, so I reclaimed my ice cream maker and made a batch from scratch. Just like New York, people either love it or hate maccha ice cream. And it’s the color of Lady Liberty, more or less.

Green Tea Ice Cream

2 dl milk
2 egg yolks
3 tbsp sugar
2 dl double cream
3 tbsp maccha green tea powder
1 dl hot water

Lightly whisk egg yolks in a pan that has a thick bottom. Add milk and sugar to the pan and mix well. Heat over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens (and coats the back of a wooden spoon – about 7 to 8 minutes). Remove immediately from the heat and soak the bottom of the pan in ice water to prevent splitting and curdling. Cool the mixture. Mix hot water and green tea powder together. Add the green tea to the egg mixture and mix well, cooling in ice water. At this stage, it’s a good idea to refrigerate the mixture for a few hours or overnight, particularly if the ice cream maker uses a bowl or plate that is frozen separately.

Add whipped cream to the green tea ice cream mixture and mix well. Freeze the mixture in an ice cream maker. This recipe makes less than one liter of ice cream, so if you are serious about it, double all ingredients.

My mom bakes buns and pies almost every weekend, and this lingonberry and carrot pie is one of her staples – and super good at that! The pie crust is made from the same dough as the cinnamon buns/rolls she also makes (pulla in Finnish), which is very convenient as you can bake several pastries with the same batch of dough.

The lingonberry and carrot pie is just one of the many flavors my mom bakes, other staples being apple (fresh apples or apple sauce depending on the season), blueberry, plain carrot, carrot and apple and rhubarb. The linognberry & carrot pie combines the tartness of the lingonberries with the sweetness of the carrots in an exquisite way making it very refreshing. It is also very moist and visually appealing with its super intense shades of red.

The underlying pulla crust is thick and soft in a pan pizza kind of way. It is also sweet rather than plain or salty, and has a nice cardamommy flavor to it. If you double the crust recipe, you can also make a batch of buns – I recommend rolling the dough, spreading with margarine / butter, and sprinkling with lots of sugar and cinnamon, and then rolling and cutting the dough in bun-sized pieces. As a kid I loved to eat those buttered-and-spiced buns raw, before baking. I always tried to steal at least one when mom wasn’t looking ;) Not that I wouldn’t like them anymore…

Pulla crust

For one full baking sheet

2,5 dl (1 cup) 2% milk
25 g (1 oz) fresh yeast or 1 pkg dry yeast (12 g / 1/2 oz)
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
1 dl (0.4 cups) sugar
7 dl (3 cups) all-purpose flour
1/2 dl (0.2 cups) canola oil
1 tsp ground cardamom

Mix the yeast in lukewarm milk until completely dissolved, then add salt, egg, sugar, oil and cardamom and mix well. Add flours gradually while kneading. Continue kneading until the dough feels firm. Add more flour if the dough is too moist and sticks in your hands or in the table. Let rise until the volume is roughly doubled.

Lingonberry and Carrot Pie

1 portion of pulla crust (above)

5 dl (2 cups) lingonberries
5 dl (2 cups) finely shredded carrots
3 dl (1.3 cups) sugar
2 tbsp potato flour (corn starch)

Preheat the oven to 200 C (400 F). Mix the berries, shredded carrots and sugar. Check the sweetness by tasting – different batches of berries vary in sourness, so you may want to adjust the amount of sugar. The filling should be sweeter than sour/tart. Finally mix in the starch.

Roll the dough when it has risen to fill a baking sheet. With your finger, press around the edges to create a “rim” to keep the fillings inside the crust. Spread the lingonberry-carrot filling over the crust. Optionally brush some egg over the crust edges to give it a beautiful glaze. Bake for 17-20 minutes until the edges have nicely browned.

Late winter / early spring in Helsinki is not the greatest time of the year. After months of pristine winter weather, long brisk walks on the ice-covered sea become treacherous affairs. Snow turns into a dirty, shoe-ruining slush and everybody seems to come down with a cold.

Hearty stews are a great antidote and survival strategy. My favorite oxtail stew recipe is from Claudia Roden’s “The Good Food of Italy” (its Swedish translation, “Det Italienska K?ket från Piemonte till Sicilien”, has been a favorite since I found it on sale in a department store in Stockholm years ago). My nearly hundred cookbooks have been in storage in Finland for almost three years, so finally being able to unpack them feels very special.

Even the bored-looking butcher at my local supermarket waxed poetic when I requested two kilos (4.5 lb) of oxtails – it seems that few of his customers bother to prepare meals that require four hours of slow stewing. Actually, I have been pretty busy working and socializing, so I did the initial stewing two days ago and finished up tonight. Two kilos of meat and bones sounds like a lot, but there are very few leftovers after Antti stopped for dinner ;)

Oxtail Stew

4-6 servings

2 kg oxtails cut at joints
1 carrot
1 leek
500 g sliced celery stalks
1 tbsp thyme
2 bay leaves
125 g bacon
1 medium onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 tsp marjoram
2-3 tbsp yellow raisins
2 tbsp pine nuts
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Rinse the oxtails, put them in a big kettle (a 5 litre kettle is ideal), cover with water, bring to boil and stew for 10 minutes. Rinse the oxtails, refill the kettle with fresh water, bring to boil again, add the carrot, leek, celery, thyme and bay leaves, and stew for 3 hours.

In a large saucepan, fry the bacon, onion and garlic; add marjoram and the stewed oxtails. Stew for another hour, until meat starts to fall away from the bones. Sprinkle with golden raisins, stew for another 10 minutes, and serve hot, topped with pine nuts.

Antti continues: While Anna’s stew was super delicious, I want to share my different approach with oxtails. I skip the veggies and bacon, but add heaps of onions. My broth is also always tomato-based, i.e. I add a can or two of crushed tomatoes, and then top it up with water until the tails are covered. A splash of wine, and the juices and the zest of a lemon to give zing. The acidity from the tomatoes help balance the otherwise heavy and meaty taste of the beef.

Either way, you won’t be disappointed =) If allowed by your company, add some decadence by grabbing the bones with your bare hands and suck the fall-of-the-bone tender meat straight off. Finger-licking-goodness guaranteed!