MY FAVORITE PEOPLE, MY FAVORITE RECIPES: PAULA WOLFERT

I’ve never had the honor of cooking with Paula Wolfert, whom I credit in Feeding the Hungry Ghost, but it feels like I have. She’s practically a cult for me and legions of others. I first discovered Paula in an issue of Food and Wine when I was a new bride living far from home in Tokyo. As a gaijin — foreigner — the locals treated me graciously but with Japanese restraint. Paula’s Moroccan recipes were — are — anything but. They introduced a riot of flavors a world away from Japan’s minimalist, elegant food scene at the time. Even the images — bubbling tagines, Marrekesh’s labyrinthine souks with stalls overflow with sacks of spices and grains — promised a bold, bountiful, vivid cuisine I was desperate to try.

Thanks to her, we all can. Paula gave us not only authentic regional recipes but showed us palate-dazzling ingredients like tart pomegranate molasses and soumak and pungent preserved lemons. With her nine books starting with Couscous and Other Good Foods of Morocco and including the James Beard Award-winning Slow Mediterranean Kitchen, she paved the way for today’s hot Israeli food trend decades before Yotam Ottolenghi, Michael Solomonov and Alon Shaya (all Beard winners, themselves).

Trending was never Paula’s thing. While most food writers were covering France and Italy to a fare-thee-well, she looked the other way. “I wanted to know what’s over there,“ she says during a recent FaceTime chat. “I touched on things people didn’t do.” Fearlessly exploring the cuisines and culture of Morocco and the Mediterranean was Paula’s magic touch. She gives a taste of the Other.

Fearlessly exploring the cuisines and culture of Morocco and the Mediterranean was Paula’s magic touch Click To Tweet

She shaped me and inspired me as a food writer long before I interviewed her for Palm Springs Life and Culinate. I hadn’t expected her Brooklyn accent and attitude and long, looping talks that were culinary and cultural adventure of their own. The accent and attitude she never lost. What she started to lose, about a decade ago, was memory. In Unforgettable Paula, Paula’s biographer and former Food and Wine editor Emily Thelin calls it Alzheimer’s. Paula staunchly refers to it as dementia. “Dementia,” she says, “sounds worse.”

New York Times food writer Kim Severson describes how Paula’s palate and comprehension have diminished over time, but Paula remains herself. Once a week, she FaceTimes with other dementia sufferers, aggressively pursuing a cure. “I’m a warrior, not a worrier.” Though at 79, she has no interest or intention of writing another cookbook — “The words float away from the page” — she’s still an inspiration.

Her books continue to be energizing go-tos for me the way bullet-proof coffee, part of her daily ritual to keep dementia at bay, is for her. “Even if they cured me, I wouldn’t give up bullet-proof coffee,” Paula says with an infectious laugh.

As we dish about food and publishing during another long and looping conversation, she laments a certain sameness and safeness in food writing these days. What’s missing, she says, is spirit. Our FaceTime chat kindled that spirit in me all over again, helping me find my way back to what I love about food writing and developing recipes, that sense of pulling you, the reader, into the kitchen to dip a spoon into something new and delicious. When I tell her, she breaks into a face-splitting grin. “God,” she says, “I still can help people.”

I’m beyond excited to feature Paula in My Favorite People, My Favorite Recipes. Thank you, Paula and thank you, Emily Thelin for granting permission to include Paula’s seminal Moroccan ajvar recipe. It’s one of Paula’s favorites and one of mine, too, bright with peppers and eggplant — the produce of summer. Slather it on flatbread, use it to add Moroccan magic to grains, pulses and roasted vegetables. I usually eat it straight from the jar.

For more Paula and more recipes, Emily Thelin’s lovingly written biography /cookbook Unforgettable Paula:The Bold Flavors of Paula Wolfert’s Renegade Life features 50 Paula classics curated from a culinary career that’s spanned half a century. A portion of proceeds go to support Alzheimer’s support and research.

Paula Wolfert’s Ajvar

Proust had madeleines; Paula Wolfert has eggplants. Her love of nightshades was seeded in her childhood, and this is her best guess at her grandmother’s recipe for a Balkan eggplant spread she often made when Paula was growing up. Tangy and only faintly garlicky, it’s an ideal accompaniment to just about anything: grilled skewered meats (like the sausages that follow), grilled fish or vegetables, or spread on bread in a turkey or tofu sandwich. —Emily Kaiser Thelin Excerpted from Unforgettable: The Bold Flavors of Paula Wolfert’s Renegade Life

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Ingredients

  

• 3 or 4 sweet red bell peppers about 4 ounces each
• 1 poblano pepper about 4 ounces
• 2 eggplants about 12 ounces each
• 2 garlic cloves peeled
• ½ teaspoon flaky sea salt
• ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil + more for topping
• 1 tablespoon unfiltered cider vinegar
• Heaping ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• Pinch of mild red pepper flakes preferably Aleppo or Marash (optional)
• Pinch of cayenne pepper optional

Instructions

 

• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
• Char the red bell peppers and poblano pepper by setting them directly on a gas burner with the flame turned to medium-high and rotating them as they blacken. If the skins are fully charred but the flesh is not yet tender, transfer the peppers to a foil-lined sheet pan and bake until soft to the point of collapsing, 10 to 25 minutes depending on the thickness of the peppers.
• Pierce the eggplants a few times with a sharp knife. Set them on a foil-lined sheet pan and bake until soft to the point of collapsing, 30 to 40 minutes.
• Transfer the vegetables to a large bowl, cover with a plate or plastic wrap, and let steam and cool.
• Using your fingers or a paring knife, peel the eggplants and the peppers. Remove any large seed pockets in the eggplant, and then stem and seed the peppers. Transfer the vegetables to a large bowl. Using your hands, pull the peppers and eggplant apart into chunks, then massage them between your fingers to form a coarse paste. Set aside.
• Using a mortar and pestle, the back of a heavy knife and a cutting board, or a mini food processor, crush together the garlic and salt, forming a paste. Add the garlic paste, olive oil, vinegar, black pepper and the red pepper flakes and cayenne, if using, to the eggplant mixture and mix well. Taste and adjust the seasoning with more vinegar, salt, and black, red and cayenne pepper if needed.
• Transfer to a jar and top with ¼-inch layer of olive oil. Cover tightly and refrigerate at least overnight before serving. Season lightly once more before serving.

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