Carrots stand up well to quite aggressive spicing, and they really deepen in colour and change texture when roasted. In this dish I use my jerk seasoning, which is a wonderful blend of earthy spices. It’s really lovely as a sweet glaze with the salty and creamy texture of the vegan feta cheese. I’m a big fan of sweet and salty flavours in the same dish. This feels like it could be a good weekday dinner with a couple of other sides.
Fermentation lies at the heart of Russian cuisine as one of the most ancient techniques of preparing food. As you will notice throughout this book, numerous recipes rely on sauerkrauts, kvass, or rassol (the fermentation liquid) for their distinct tangy flavor. This soup, which carries the name rassol in its very title, is the embodiment of such a tradition. While historically rassolnik is an old Russian dish, the go-to recipe in our family comes from Poland. Back in the 1970s, my mom took part in a school program that allowed Soviet kids to find pen pals in neighboring socialist countries. She hit the jackpot, since she was linked up with a boy in Poland (the most coveted country of all friendly socialist ones). After a few years of correspondence, my mom and her parents were invited—and most importantly permitted by the Soviet officials—to visit her pen pal. Along with a bag full of trendy garments, chewing gum, and fancy stationery, which made her the coolest teenager in school, she brought back this recipe for a good old Russian rassolnik, cooked by her Polish friend’s mom. The delicious soup always reminds me of the interwoven nature of the Soviet and Slavic histories and cuisines.
Cochinita pibil is the pride of the Yucatan peninsula—a dish of smoky, slow-roasted pork marinated in a special blend of ingredients including cinnamon, allspice, and achiote (annatto) seed. Cochinita means “baby pig,” and the real-deal recipes use a whole suckling pig. Traditionally the whole thing is wrapped in banana leaves and then buried in a pib—a pit with a fire at the bottom. Here I use Boston butt and employ a two-stage “grill-and-swim” cooking process to make things a little more convenient and a lot juicier. Pregrilling the meat adds great flavor, while low and slow cooking in a water bath produces especially succulent meat—no pib required. Plus, you won’t have to fire up your grill on taco night, so you can focus on making Homemade Corn Tortillas or that sweet playlist you’ve been meaning to put together.
In Alta Verapaz, a lush and deeply forested region of Guatemala that was part of the ancient Mesoamerican chocolate empire, the Kekchi Maya roast cacao beans and grind them with ululte, the local name for the tiny but devilish chile piquin. They shape the resulting sticky paste into balls, which are then air-dried and stored. To add heat and flavor to feast dishes like the chompipe (turkey) and pepiaries (stews thickened with pumpkin seeds), they grate a little of this mixture over the food.