Author Archives: Deborah Madison

Black Bean Chili is Still Good

3 Replies

I recently made the Black Bean Chili from The Greens Cookbook – the first time in many many years. And I’m happy to report that it’s still good and that my husband loved it. I pureed the leftovers and served the resulting “soup” around rice and that was good, too.

I’ve written a lot of bean recipes over the years and they appear throughout my books. Now that my husband likes beans, I am turning to those recipes once again with pleasure. They work!  Give them a try and let me know what you like.

I just planted the last of my many kinds of beans and with this unexpected heat, perhaps they will reward me come fall.  I hope so.

“An Onion in My Pocket” coming out in May

Leave a reply

My new book is coming out in early May. It is not a cookbook but a food memoir that documents the start-up of vegetarian food in the 60s, my experience as a Zen student, the beginnings of Greens restaurant, and in the end, what really matters most about memorable food —and it’s not the absence or presence of meat.
The book is called “An Onion in My Pocket” and the publisher is Knopf.

I will be signing books on May 2 at the Santa Fe farmer’s market as a benefit for the market, and that evening I’ll be speaking at our wonderful independent bookstore, Collected Works. Meanwhile, “An Onion in My Pocket” can be pre-ordered wherever books are sold. I will keep you posted as to where and when I’ll be speaking.

 

 

Amazon:
http://links.penguinrandomhouse.com/type/affiliate/isbn/9780525656012/siteID/8001/retailerid/7/trackingcode/randohouseinc17001-20

Apple Books:
http://links.penguinrandomhouse.com/type/affiliate/isbn/9780525656029/siteID/8001/retailerid/3/trackingcode/PRH091BE96312

Barnes and Noble:
http://links.penguinrandomhouse.com/type/affiliate/isbn/9780525656012/siteID/8001/retailerid/2/trackingcode/PRH091BE96312

IndieBound
http://links.penguinrandomhouse.com/type/affiliate/isbn/9780525656012/siteID/8001/retailerid/6/trackingcode/penguinrandom

On A Way to Garden

Leave a reply

I just received the most wonderful book in the mail, one that is handsome and inspiring and filled with beautiful photographs in a stunning garden.  It is called A Way to Garden by Margaret Roach. Margaret has a somewhat obsessive bent for detail in her own garden, which serves as the subject of this book.  It’s a gorgeous book to look at, and even better to read.  An updated book written 21 years after the first version, she has found that so many things have changed in the world, especially the worlds of plants and climate change that A Way to Garden is really an entirely new book.

I’ve been a fan of Margaret Roach since meeting her on her weekly podcast and web-site by the same name five years ago, when my book Vegetable Literacy came out.  She is bright, hard-working, earnest, erudite and quirky, among a host of other good qualities.  The first book of hers that I read was called Backyard Parables; Lessons on Gardening, and Life. It made me laugh and it made me wince as I travelled with her through a year in her garden. Even though she was hardly just starting out, this new book has stronger legs, shows more maturity, and is based in more experience.  But all of Margaret’s books are wise books.

What pains me about A Way to Garden is that Margaret’s garden is very much an Eastern one. You can just tell that there is plenty of water and acid soil that support many plants that just won’t and don’t care for our highly alkaline New Mexican soil. In a way, it has nothing to do with us—our climate, our aridity, our winds, or the plants that like it here.  Still what I love about this book – really about Margaret— is that she makes room for other forms of life along with the plants in her garden. The book is filled with pictures of the frogs who live there. She can talk about a plant in terms of its ability to attract pollinators. She notices birds and their songs, moths and their patterns, spiders, insects, snakes, and more pesky critters such as squirrels, deer, and a bear. Her garden is far more than plants and this book is, as she says, a blend of horticultural how to and ‘woo-woo” – “the fusion of a science lab with a Buddhist retreat, or a place of non-stop learning and of contemplation, where there is life buzzing to the maximum and also the deepest stillness.” She is such a superb writer I had to use her words.

I encourage you to read this book. It might ignite a sleeping passion that will come to fruition regardless of where you live.

 

Cookbook writing class in September – there’s still room.

1 Reply

 

Some books by Deborah Madison.


This September, as well as last, I’ll be teaching a class at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshop called Secret Ingredients for Cookbook Success.  It goes from Sept. l7-20 (not the 21st as given in a previous post) and is not only productive, but a lot of fun.  The class is small and there are still a few places left. It is especially for those who are just writing a first cookbook, and if the class is anything like last year’s, there will be all kinds of cookbooks.

The place is gorgeous (an old Carmelite nunnery) and the food is delicious.  And it is in  Santa Fe.  Come join!

You can learn more at https://santafeworkshops.com/workshop/secret-ingredients-for-cookbook-success.

 

Jicama is a legume!

Leave a reply

 

Tubers, beans, and leaves of the Jicama plant.

For a few years I had a wonderful job in lower Baja, Mexico working outside of San Jose del Cabo, in the mountains. The project was the dream of the former leader of the band, Tangerine Dream. He wanted to make a retreat where, just for example, the dining room tables were designed in such a way that people couldn’t easily make eye-contact with one another, so that they were, in effect, alone with their thoughts. What was wonderful about the job was not that so much (I  like contact!) but being able to go to Baja every spring, to work with the wonderful and ingenuous Mexicans who could always figure out how to do difficult things with few materials,  to work with rastra blocks of our buildings, and to learn about plants.

I spent a lot of time with a botanist from the area who was showing me some of the native plants we might use in the spa kitchen. He would often say that jicama was a legume. A bean. I thought he was teasing me.

“Really?” I asked him.

“Yes!” he assured me. “It is.”

This issue was set aside for many years until one day, recently, in the Santa Monica farmers market I saw a stand of greens, bean pods, and jicama roots, all entwined and attached to one another.  The botanist was right. Jicama is a bean!

The brown papery covered part that we mostly eat is a swollen tuberous root. If you look at jicama images on line, they never show the beans, only the tuber. But here’s an image that shows all parts of the plant. It’s a bit chaotic, but if you look, you can make out the beans and the roots among the leaves.

I’m not saying you should eat the beans – I’ve read that the leaves have a toxic element so maybe the beans have it too. Plus there are other beans to eat.

But who knew?

Mostly this is just a curious bit of information. Enjoy!

 

I’m teaching a workshop on how to write a successful cookbook in Santa Fe, Sept. l7-21!

Leave a reply

 

Lots of people want to write cookbooks for different reasons, and this is the workshop to address what makes for a successful cookbook.

You can bring a manuscript, an idea, a thought and we’ll work together on crafting it into a book. We will also meet with authors who have approached writing a cookbook in different ways—through mainstream publishers, a university press, and self-publishing. These are very different approaches and it will be helpful to hear from these different authors. We will also talk about working with photographers and stylists.

I hope you’ll join me!  Here is more information:  https://santafeworkshops.com/workshop/secret-ingredients-for-cookbook-success/.

This is a beautiful time of year in Santa Fe.

 

 

Cooking with Confidence!

1 Reply

I recently did an on-line interview with Lisa King who has a blog called Cook with Confidence. It was great fun to do and if you’re at all unsure of yourself in the kitchen, I hope you’ll take a look.  The link to my piece is   https://cookwithconfidence.me/DeborahMadison, and Lisa’s site is cookwithconfidence.me.  It’s a worthwhile site and good work that she’s doing.

 

Cooking with Dante

4 Replies

 

I have a very loyal kitchen hound. His sensitive little ears perk up the minute I enter the kitchen to cook and within moments he is sitting at my feet, looking up inquisitively at my motions, listening to the sounds of chopping and slicing, rustling papers, the unwrapping things, all sounds that have to do with food and cooking. Food is very important for dogs, I have learned, even though my dog does not wolf things down. He is endlessly interested in something to eat, however.

Food is important yes, but he doesn’t go for just any old bite. He is quite selective. We’ve been going through this routine for nearly six years, and I know that he doesn’t like onions. Still he makes a lot of little squeaking noises until I offer him a piece. He sniffs carefully and ever so slowly until he’s finally satisfied he doesn’t want the bit of onion. He turns his head to the side, his elegant poodle nose rejecting what I knew he would reject. We go though this with every vegetable, including those that are cooking. I offer him the skillet to preview, knowing he wont’ be interested. But he thinks he might be.

There are some things he likes. They are beet skins. Sweet potatoes. Cooked carrots, and what I call broccoli bones, (the coarse lower ends of broccoli stems, which he’s carries away and works over just as if they were bones). He will accept a kale stem, but then he just walks around the island and drops it on the floor. When I finally emerge from the stove the floor can be littered with bits of stems and leaves. And when I sweep them up, he doesn’t linger at the dustbin wondering if there might be a treat. After all, that’s usually about the time he gets his own dinner, which he far prefers.

You might have met my pup on the page after 231 In My Kitchen. He shows up a few times. But my favorite picture is of him sitting on the kitchen steps looking very robust indeed. In case you’re wondering, his fur is not colored and he is a small Labradoodle – actually mostly poodle. He weighs only 32 pounds, but he’s pretty convinced he weights at least seventy. Must be all those brococli bones! Whatever it is, he’s a good kitchen friend.

 

 

Grubbing Around in the Garden & Looking for Spring

2 Replies

One day every body is complaining about snow and winter, then, the minute the temp sores to 50 degrees, suddenly it’s spring and all is forgiven.  

At least that’s how it was this past Sunday.  And Monday. And even Tuesday.

There wasn’t a speck of green to be seen on Sunday. The rain, wind, sun took their turns throughout the day, and the warmth was pretty fragile. But it was enough to pull people outside and make them feel giddy. I closed my lap-to,  pulled on my gardening gloves and grabbed a rake.  I was so tired of those brown leaves and besides, I was dying to see what was going on beneath them.  Here’s what I saw. Maybe not so thrilling to most people, but let me interpret these tangles among the dead leaves.  There are a few nibs of chives poking out of the withered strands that froze months ago Here are the first sorrel leaves to appear. The leaves of the thyme are looking fleshy here, instead of merely dried. And I didn’t even take a picture of the first red shoots of the lovage plant because they really were pretty small. Barely visible to the uninterested eye. This may not look like salad to you. But in a few weeks there will be a garden salad that will include, along with the lettuce, spinach and arugula still under safe cover of remay, maybe one snipped chive blade, few torn sorrel leaves, probably not the thyme, but perhaps a tender lovage leaf. There will be more snows and freezing nights for weeks to come, but this tiny bouquet will be enough to launch both spring and summer. This is the wild joy that the garden promises.  Even though I’m heartily tired of brown, I rather love this time of year because each day there’s something new poking up and leafing out, usually plants I’ve forgotten about. I stare at some leaves and remember, oh, the agastache!  The daffodils. The wild strawberries. Little signs of life appearing each day, taking hold. It’s like seeing old friends, whether birds as they first return from their travels, or human ones. What I’m wondering, though, would these tender shoots and leaves be happier with their blanket of leaves left to cover them a little while longer. Or can I take them off? Tell me if you have an answer to this because I really want to know. I suspect the leaves should stay, but I’m really eager to see them go.  Many thanks to all who try to set the story straight.