Marlene Parrish - What Einstein Told His Cook 2

Keep the excess grated material in a tightly sealed jar in the refrigerator, which will contain the vapors and slow down their release. Or try mixing the grated horseradish with chicken fat (technically known as schmaltz ), another Passover staple. When refrigerated, the solidified fatty coating will seal in the pungent vapors.

Better yet, grate the horseradish into enough vinegar to dampen it, as the commercial producers do. The acid inhibits the allyl isothiocyanate-producing reaction by deactivating the myrosin enzyme on the surfaces of the shreds. Then when you chew the horseradish, you break open more cells, more enzyme is released, and the pungency will be born again, albeit not Christian.

Wasabi Guacamole

Even if you could lay your chopsticks on the real thing, it would be a shame to use real wasabi in this recipe, diluted as it would be by the other ingredients. So pick up some ordinary, freshly made “wasabi” paste and pickled ginger at any sushi bar or at a large supermarket. Powdered wasabi that can be reconstituted with water is available in cans. I have found that wasabi paste in plastic tubes varies in quality. Wasabi tends to lose its kick the longer it stands, so make the appetizer only an hour or so before serving. Serve the guacamole with deep-fried wonton or tortilla triangles as an appetizer with any menu with pan-Asian or Pacific rim accents.

1 large, ripe Hass avocado

Juice of 1 lime (about 1½ tablespoons)

1 teaspoon wasabi paste

1 teaspoon minced pickled ginger, optional

1 small clove garlic, crushed and minced

Big pinch of kosher salt

1 scallion, both white and green parts, trimmed and minced

1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro

1.Halve the avocado lengthwise and remove the seed. With a paring knife, cut a grid pattern in the flesh of each half, down to the skin. Using a teaspoon, scoop out the diced flesh into a medium bowl. Add the lime juice.

2.Using a fork or pastry blender, mash the avocado, but leave it chunky. Add the wasabi paste, ginger, garlic, and salt. Mix until well combined. (Warning: Because wasabi and avocado are the same color, be sure to mix the ingredients well. A hit of pure wasabi paste would be an unwelcome surprise.)

3.Adjust the seasoning to your taste, adding more wasabi and salt if necessary, and stir in scallion and cilantro.

MAKES ABOUT 1 CUP

WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN SMOKING?

I have a small electric coffee grinder that I use for grinding dried spices such as mustard seed and peppercorns. But I’ve noticed a strange occurrence. After I ground some cloves, the grinder’s plastic hood was pitted and actually softened around the edges. And now I can’t wash the scent of the cloves out. Do whole cloves have any unusual corrosive properties?

Yes, they do.

Cloves are probably the strongest of all aromatic spices, containing up to 20 percent of an intense, sweetly pungent essential oil.

Originating—appropriately enough—in the Spice Islands, now part of Indonesia, they are the dried flower buds of the tropical evergreen tree Syzygium aromaticum . Dried clove buds have a stem and a head, a shape that gave them their name, clove , from the Latin clavus, “nail.” In the United States, they are most often seen protruding like spikes from the surfaces of hams. (I hate it when I bite into one, don’t you?)

Not surprisingly, cloves contain oil of cloves, the main chemical ingredient of which is eugenol , known familiarly to chemists by its nickname, 2-methoxy-4-(2-propenyl)phenol. You may at one time have had it applied to a tooth by your dentist as an analgesic and antiseptic.

Or, as I have done in Jakarta and on Bali, you may have smoked a few Indonesian clove-flavored cigarettes. These cigarettes, called kreteks , are filled with two parts tobacco and one part ground cloves. Indonesia’s passion for kreteks uses up approximately one-half of the world’s clove production.

Eugenol is a phenol, and phenols can have acidic and corrosive properties. In your case, the eugenol invaded, dissolved, and softened the grinder’s transparent plastic hood, which is probably made of polymethyl methacrylate, or Lucite. The aroma became permanently embedded therein.

I’m afraid you now own a dedicated clove grinder. Buy another coffee grinder for your less rapacious spices, and wash it out well after each use before you use it for coffee. Most other spices won’t permanently flavor the grinder.

ON KOSHER PIGS

In Brittany, I saw salt containers made of pottery that are said to keep salt dry, even though they’re open near the top so you can insert a measuring spoon or reach in with your fingers to take a pinch of salt. How do they work?

This kind of container, common in France and England but also available in many stores in the United States, is called a salt pig. It is shaped like one of those wide-mouthed air intakes on ships that some people think are foghorns: squat, vertical cylinders bent into a right angle.

Salt pigs are made of pottery or terracotta that is not glazed on the inside and hence remains porous. The open pores provide a huge amount of surface area that can adsorb water vapor. The sea salts harvested in Brittany are particularly in need of this drying effect; they’re often damp if they’re not refined. That’s because they contain small amounts of calcium chloride, which is hygroscopic —that is, it absorbs moisture from the air. Common American table salt contains a small amount of a drying agent, so that “when it rains, it pours.”

And yes, you can keep kosher salt in a salt pig.

A pottery salt pig for storing and serving salt. The porous, unglazed interior surface adsorbs moisture and helps keep the salt dry.

I’LL TAKE VANILLA

A few years ago at “National Store X,” a vial containing two vanilla beans cost $4.50. Now the price is $9.50. A few years ago in the same store, an 8-ounce bottle of Madagascar Bourbon Pure Vanilla Extract cost $11. Now the price is $20. With vanilla prices skyrocketing, many people are turning to Mexican vanilla. Is this product real or artificial? Based on its cheap price, I suspect it might be artificial.

Your suspicions are well founded.

Real vanilla has always been expensive because wresting it from nature is a time-and labor-consuming enterprise and because it is grown in faraway lands. And like cacao, cashew nuts, and coffee beans, vanilla is a commodity subject to the vagaries of nature and to the laws of supply and demand. All four of these highly esteemed indulgences come from tropical latitudes, where storms periodically decimate crops and thus affect prices all over the world.

I can’t explain economics (I sometimes think nobody can), but what I can do is explain the nature of real vanilla, how it differs from imitation vanilla, and what the Mexican products may or may not consist of.

First, real vanilla.

Vanilla beans are not beans. They’re the fermented and dried seed pods (fruits) from one of two species of climbing-vine orchid plants, Vanilla tahitensis, native to the Pacific Islands, or Vanilla planifolia, native to Mexico. The Aztecs in Mexico were the first to marry vanilla’s flavor with the seeds of another native plant, the one we now know as chocolate. (Talk about marriages made in heaven!) The Spanish conquistadors came up with the word vainilla , meaning “little scabbard, sheath, or pod,” referring to the shape of the vanilla bean.