You take a few raw ingredients – the edible equivalent of base metals – mix them up, add some heat, and abracadabra! presto-change-o! voila! you’ve got a miraculously delicious dish. Culinary gold. You step away with raised hands (like the contestants on “Chopped”) wondering, “Did I make that?” You can hardly believe your own eyes, nose, and mouth.

In this New Year of 2013, I would urge everyone to explore this land of Culinary Alchemy, or “magical cooking.” Enroll in a local cooking class, invest in a few new cookbooks (especially those that emphasize healthier cooking), learn to enjoy cooking again – or, okay, for the first time – and in the process produce dishes that are not only fun to make but also beautiful, healthful, and tasty; dishes that are not too difficult, not too pricey, and not too spicy. As Goldilocks would say, “Just right.”

For an example of this delicious alchemy, I’ve chosen homemade egg pasta, cut into what Northern Italians call tagliatelle — long, flat ribbons. Made of little more than eggs and flour, the end result is truly magical – golden, silk-like ribbons worthy of the chicest restaurant. In fact, in the early 1970s Bologna’s chapter of Italy’s gastronomic society standardized tagliatelle’s dimensions by casting them in solid gold. This “golden rule” – an actual ruler 5/16 inch wide and 1/32 inch thick – has since held a place of honor in Bologna’s city hall.

My own recipe for tagliatelle has some whole wheat flour added to it for extra goodness, flavor, and an earthy color. Serve it with your favorite ragu or, even better, mushroom-cream sauce. If you don’t have a food processor or pasta maker, not to worry; Italian home cooks have been mixing, rolling, and cutting pasta dough by hand for centuries. You can do the same.

Whole Wheat-Egg Tagliatelle Pasta (“Silk Ribbons”)

1 cup all-purpose flour

½ cup whole wheat flour

½ teaspoon salt

2 whole large eggs

2 egg yolks

1 tablespoon olive oil

Add dry ingredients to the bowl of a food processor and pulse until combined. Combine wet ingredients in a small pitcher and, with the processor’s motor running, pour them slowly into the dry ingredients. The dough should begin to form a ball. (If it doesn’t, add about 1 teaspoon of water.) Wrap dough in Saran and refrigerate 1 to 24 hours. Follow pasta maker’s directions for rolling and cutting the pasta. If cutting by hand, roll the dough in smallish portions on a floured board as thin as possible and cut the pasta ribbons roughly ½-inch wide. Cook in a large pot of boiling, salted water until soft, about 2 to 3 minutes. Serve with butter or your favorite tasty sauce. Makes 4 servings.

We have Marcel Proust to thank for the literary link between involuntary memory and these shell-shaped, feather-light, little sponge cakes from France’s Lorraine region. In his classic work Remembrance of Things Past (also known as In Search of Lost Time), Proust’s narrator makes this link at least a half dozen times. Here is one:

She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called petites madeleines, which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim’s shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body… Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? … Suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings…my aunt Leonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.
— Remembrance of Things Past, Volume 1: Swann’s Way.

My friends and I drank coffee with our teatime madeleines instead of tea, but the memories resurfaced nevertheless. They asked me what it was like to win a “Best in the World” award from Gourmand International at a world-class event in Paris for my Peace Corps memoir-with-recipes How to Cook a Crocodile.

“At first,” I confessed to them, “I was confused and worried – worried that they’d made some sort of mistake. My book, after all, is not a cookbook, yet it won a cookbook award! So, at the risk of having the award rescinded, I worked up the courage to ask the vice president of Gourmand privately, ‘Did anyone read my book? Was it clear to your judges that it’s not a cookbook?’

“‘Yes,’ he said, smiling, ‘we know. Gourmand is interested in more than recipes. We have a very broad worldview. We look at food as a cultural connection, and your book certainly expresses that.’”

What a relief it was to be back home in Taos, quietly enjoying madeleines with friends and trying to make sense of these recent events. In a sense, I had to remember, this international award in the category of “Charity and Community” was a tribute to the Peace Corps too, because my Crocodile would not exist if it were not for my Peace Corps experience in Gabon.

Lemon-Almond Madeleines

(adapted from Gourmet – 10/91)

4 large eggs

2/3 cup sugar

½ teaspoon almond extract

1-1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest

1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted

½ cup whole almonds, toasted and coarsely ground

1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Confectioner’s sugar for dusting

In the bowl of an electric mixer with the whisk attachment, ribbon the eggs with the sugar until thick and pale yellow in color. Add the almond extract and lemon zest, then the flour, gently folding it in ¼ cup at a time. Then fold in the almonds and melted butter. Spoon batter into 24 well-buttered madeleine molds and bake in a preheated 375-degree oven for 10-15 minutes, or until golden. Cool on racks. Dust “scalloped” side with confectioner’s sugar. Serve with tea (or coffee). Yields: 24 madeleines.

Among the many intangible benefits of bread baking – besides the intoxicating aroma of just-baked bread wafting from your kitchen throughout your home, and the musical “mmmmm’s” and “ahhhhhh’s” and “ohhhhhh’s” you’ll enjoy hearing when family and friends taste your bread creations – there are these, I feel: The process of bread baking teaches patience, attentiveness, and respect (especially for other, smaller, life forms) like nothing else you might make in the kitchen.

Every step of the way, bread baking teaches patience, because the truth is, you are not in full control. The bread dough, filled as it is with living, breathing, expanding yeast, you’ll find, has a mind of its own. You are working with the dough, paying close attention to its needs. It needs, for example, to be treated with kindness; using hot liquids will likely kill the yeast altogether and therefore kill your plans to bake yeast bread.

It needs, also, to go through (normally) two rises, both times rising to double in bulk. The beginner yeast-bread baker, left alone in her kitchen, may take the recipe’s timing too literally. If, say, the recipe states that the dough will rise to double in an hour,and she goes by the clock instead of her observations, she may wind up with disappointingly dense bread. The secret is to pay attention to the bread dough: What does it look like before each rise, and what will double that size look like later?

While serving in the Peace Corps in Gabon, a country on the equator, always hot-hot-hot and HUMID, my bread dough rose in record time at room temperature – well under an hour. In New York City, where I made homemade bread on site for all of the private parties I catered, the dough would rise to double at varying rates, depending on the temperature in each client’s kitchen. And here now in Taos in winter, where I deliberately set my thermostat at 60 degrees (to save on the electric bill!), my bread dough takes much longer (about two hours) to rise to double, giving me more time to do other things, such as go for a good, long walk, restoring my soul with the magnificent mountain views.

Like most things that are particularly satisfying and worthwhile to do – such as playing the piano, painting an outdoor scene, or writing haiku – yeast bread baking takes practice, which implies time and patience. But you’re sure to find, I firmly believe, that it will be time and patience well spent.

Here is a step-by-step, foolproof recipe to get you started.

BB’s Honey Whole Wheat Bread

Step One: Make the “sponge.” In a medium-size bowl, combine 1 package active dry yeast, 1 cup lukewarm (not hot, or you’ll kill the yeast) water, and 1 cup bread flour. Stir well, cover loosely (so the mixture can breathe), and allow to sit on your kitchen counter overnight (during which it will bubble up and then calm down). [Note: Making this “sponge” ahead of time will give your bread extra flavor and extend its shelf life.]

Step Two: Make the dough. In a large bowl, combine 1 teaspoon salt with 1 cup warmish (not hot) milk, ¼ cup honey, 2 tablespoons vegetable oil (such as canola), 1 cup whole wheat flour, 2 cups bread flour, and the above “sponge” mixture. Stir well with a wooden spoon.

Step Three: Knead the dough. On a clean, flat counter or table, spread 1 cup of bread flour in a dinner-plate-size circle. Scrape the contents of your big bowl onto the floured surface and knead rhythmically and steadily with both hands (being “both strong and gentle – at the same time,” I tell my students) for 10 whole minutes. (Don’t skimp on the time.) If your dough is sticky, add more bread flour in small increments.

Step Four: First Rise. Form the dough into a smooth ball and place in a large, buttered bowl, turning to butter all sides. Cover loosely and allow to double in bulk at room temperature. This will take a shorter time (under an hour) in a warm room and a longer time (up to about two hours) in a cool room.

Step Five: Punch and Form. Place the doubled-in-bulk dough on a floured surface, and knead it again, briefly, to eliminate its puffiness. Form into the size and shape you wish – small dinner rolls, larger hamburger buns, freeform round or oval bread loaves, or traditional loaves made in bread pans.

Step Six: Second Rise. Cover your bread(s) loosely and allow to double in bulk again at room temperature (which, again, will take longer in a cooler kitchen than a warmer kitchen).

Step Seven: Bake, Cool, Serve. Bake your bread in a preheated 375-400-degree oven for about 30-35 minutes, until “GB & D” – golden brown and delicious! Remove from pans (if using) and let bread cool on a wire rack before eating.

Which got me thinking…

The Year of the Dragon, according to the Chinese Zodiac, begins today, January 23, and lasts until February 9 of next year. In ancient China, this mythical celestial dragon represented a powerful emperor. Today, the dragon is the ultimate auspicious symbol signifying success and happiness. In Sung Dynasty texts, the dragon is described as having the head of an ox, the muzzle of a donkey, the eyes of a shrimp, the horns of a deer, the body of a serpent covered with fish scales, and the feet of a phoenix.

Which got me thinking about success and happiness … and healthy eating … and Chinese stir-fries.

Let’s say that one of your New Year’s resolutions roughly twenty-three days ago was to eat more healthfully every day of 2012 (and beyond). And let’s say you haven’t quite begun to live up to that lofty resolution. This new Chinese New Year provides a second chance. (And, let’s face it, aren’t we Americans suckers for second-chance narratives?)

Today you can begin again. Invest in a new wok if you need one (my new one cost only $13.88 at the Wal-Mart here in Taos), hang it in a handy place in your kitchen, and use it at least once a week to make a quick, healthy, colorful, flavorful, veggie-filled dinner for yourself and your family. Add to your weekly shopping list FRESH GINGER, SCALLIONS, and GARLIC, which constitute the triumvirate of flavors most stir-fries start with. Splurge on a beautiful cookbook, such as Grace Young’s gorgeous Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge: The Ultimate Guide to Mastery, with Authentic Recipes and Stories (Simon & Schuster, $35), and you’ll be all set.

Here is one of Grace Young’s recipes to get you started on your road to success and happiness in this new Year of the Dragon:

Cantonese Cashew Chicken

1 pound skinless, boneless chicken thigh, cut into ½-inch cubes

1 tablespoon minced garlic

2 teaspoons soy sauce

1-1/2 teaspoons cornstarch

1 teaspoon plus 2 tablespoons Shao Hsing rice wine or dry sherry

¾ teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon sugar

¼ cup chicken broth

2 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil

2 tablespoons minced ginger

½ cup sugar snap peas, strings removed

½ cup thinly sliced carrots

½ cup thinly sliced celery

½ cup unsalted roasted cashews

1. In a medium bowl combine the chicken, garlic, 1 teaspoon of the soy sauce, 1 teaspoon of the cornstarch, 1 teaspoon of the rice wine, ½ teaspoon of the salt, and sugar. In a small bowl combine the broth, the remaining 1 teaspoon soy sauce, 2 tablespoons rice wine, and ½ teaspoon cornstarch.

2. Heat a 14-inch flat-bottomed wok or 12-inch skillet over high heat until a bead of water vaporizes within 1 to 2 seconds of contact. Swirl in 1 tablespoon of the oil, add the ginger, then using a metal spatula, stir-fry 10 seconds or until the ginger is fragrant. Push the ginger to the sides of the wok, carefully add the chicken, and spread it evenly in one layer in the wok. Cook undisturbed 1 minute, letting the chicken begin to sear. Stir-fry 1 minute, or until the chicken is lightly browned but not cooked through.

3. Swirl the remaining 1 tablespoon oil into the wok, add the sugar snaps, carrots, celery, and cashews, and sprinkle on the remaining ¼ teaspoon salt. Stir-fry 1 minute or until the sugar snaps are bright green. Re-stir the broth mixture, swirl it into the wok, and stir-fry 1 minute or until the chicken is just cooked through.

(Serves 2 to 3 as a main course with rice or 4 as part of a multicourse meal.)

Ever stop to wonder why we bother to wrap gifts? Wouldn’t it be easier to just dispense with all those rolls of red, green, silver, gold, striped, polka-dotted and snowman’ed wrapping paper, Scotch tape, and multicolored ribbons this holiday season? Think of the savings in time, money, effort, stress… Why not simply give your gifts in the bags or boxes they came in from the store?

The answer of course is that gift wrapping adds an extra layer of pleasure to the receiver’s delight. The pretty, colorful, beribboned wrapping increases the gift’s appeal, mystery, and surprise. It adds suspense and drama and heightens the opener’s anticipation. It gives the recipient something to do, a task – a bit like digging for buried treasure or diving for gold doubloons.

“Oh, what could this be?” the excited person exclaims, as she tears at the paper and pulls on the bows.

Along the same lines, food that arrives on your guests’ plates “gift-wrapped” in parchment and puffy from the oven can have a similarly exciting effect. So, to take the ho-hum out of your holiday dinners in the coming days, I recommend wrapping them up.

By this I mean cooking en papillote (as the French say), or in a parchment paper case. Yes, aluminum foil or paper bags can also be used for these cases, but I prefer the more elegant, “gift-wrapped” look of parchment, especially during the holidays.

The method, like most methods, is simple, once you learn how:  You place an individual serving of food in the pouch, seal it, and bake it, during which the food steams in the oven, essentially in its own juices.  Once the cooking is complete – in usually 10 or so minutes – each individual diner has his or her own puffed, slightly golden packet to open at the table. And when they do, you’ll see them lean over their plates to enjoy the aromatic steam as it escapes.

The advantages of this cooking method – in addition to the novelty, drama, and excitement at the table – are that it’s healthy (low in fat, high in flavor), clean (no pots or pans to scrub!), delicious, quick, and fun. I introduced it to the students in my Healthy Cooking class this semester, and soon saw that it became one of their favorites.

As for the technique in making the paper case, I’ve always done it the French way, whereby you cut the parchment like a Valentine heart, place the food on one side, fold the other side over, and seal the edges like a calzone. (See a step-by-step video at www.finecooking.com/videos/how-to-cook-en-papillote.)  But I recently learned a new, presumably American, method from Brette Sember’s new Parchment Paper Cookbook, which results in a packet that resembles a party favor.  (Go to http://nopotcooking.com/index.php/technique/ to see how.)

Here is a simple fish en papillote recipe from my book How to Cook a Crocodile from the chapter on my catering days in New York. I used pompano then, but in fact any nice fish fillets will do.

Pompano (or any fish) en Papillote

Butter a large (about 15 inches in diameter) circle of parchment paper (or aluminum foil).  Lay one small (one serving) fish fillet on the paper, right of center.  Sprinkle the fish with sliced, blanched vegetables (such as carrots and/or French green beans).  Season with salt and pepper, freshly squeezed lemon juice and/or white wine.  Fold parchment (or foil) into papillote (paper case), and seal the edges (like a calzone).  Place on a cookie sheet and bake for 10 to15 minutes at 400-425 degrees, or until puffed.  Serve each person an individual papillote (unopened), with a small pair of sharp scissors, to open the cases themselves and savor the steamy aroma.

Ask any careful, thoughtful chef what she or he strives for in their finished dishes, and their answer will likely be “balance.”  Successful, satisfying meals have it, a kind of Goldilocks golden mean:  not “too” anything.  Not too hot nor too cold, not too salty nor too sweet, not too soft nor too crunchy, not too spicy yet never bland.  The goal is always that elusive, subjective thing called “just right.”

To achieve this, the professional chef — and the smart home cook as well — must stop and consider before serving up their creations.  “Taste for seasoning” should be the tag line on every savory recipe.  For professionals it’s an unwritten code of conduct. This step, like every important step in life, takes care and thought, judgment and experience.  It requires a fresh, questioning, critical mindset:  What does this dish lack?  What will give it just the right balance?  What will make it “sing”?  A pinch of salt?  A squeeze of fresh lemon?  A tad more minced garlic, maybe?

Akin to balance in the cooking-as-life-metaphor story for me is also the idea of proportion.  Especially in baking, the right proportions of the right ingredients, measured carefully and incorporated with skill, make all the difference in the ultimate outcome.  Isn’t that what we strive for in life, too?

The last time I was in New York, drawn as always like a magnet to my favorite big ol’ Barnes & Noble on Broadway and 86^th, I bought a bunch of books (yes, real books

 with real pages that really turn!), one of which was Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking.  This book captivated me because it seemed to confirm one of my long-held personal theories:  Much of cooking, when you boil it all down, so to speak, is formulaic.  And once we know the basic formulas — proportions, or ratios — we’re pretty much free.  Free, that is, of our slavish dependence on recipes.

“When you know a culinary ratio,” Ruhlman says, “it’s not like knowing a single recipe, it’s instantly knowing a thousand.”

Without giving it all away (I urge you to buy the book; it’s only $16, paperback), here are just some of Ruhlman’s handy ratios. Keep in mind that these ratios are based on weight, rather than volume:

·        Pie Dough = 3 parts flour : 2 parts fat : 1 part water

·        Crepes = 1 part liquid : 1 part egg : ½ part flour

·        Stock = 3 parts water : 2 parts bones

·        Vinaigrette = 3 parts oil : 1 part vinegar [and I would add:  1/3 part Dijon mustard]

·        Chocolate Sauce = 1 part chocolate : 1 part cream

“The fact is,” says Ruhlman, “there are hundreds of thousands of recipes out

there, but few of them help you to be a better cook in any substantial way.  In fact, they may hurt you as a cook by keeping you chained to recipes.  Getting your hands on a ratio is like being given a key to unlock those chains.”

It’s both empowering and liberating, I tell my Culinary Arts students here at UNM-Taos, to know the fundamental principles, proportions, and techniques of cooking.  Knowledge is power – in cooking, as in life.

When I had a small catering business in Manhattan in the ’90s, I made it a practice to bring almost-risen bread dough to the clients’ homes to bake off in their kitchen so that the just-baked-homemade-bread fragrance would be the first thing to greet dinner party guests when they walked through the door.  I considered this tactic part of my marketing strategy. My business, Bonnie Fare Catering, specialized in “upscale, down-home cooking.”  What could be more down-home than homemade bread?

Marketing professionals know that the nose knows.  In fact, the nose knows more than it can tell.  Of the five senses – visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory – the olfactory sense, or sense of smell, is hampered by our inability to attach language to it.  While the human tongue can distinguish only among five distinct qualities of taste – sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami (“meaty”) – the nose can distinguish among hundreds of substances, even in minute quantities.  However, humans have difficulty identifying and labeling olfactory stimuli.  We just can’t find the right words.

When it comes to memories, though, the sense of smell excels.

As Sarah Dowdey wrote in the online article “How Smell Works,” “a smell can bring on a flood of memories, influence people’s moods and even affect their work performance.  Because the olfactory bulb is part of the brain’s limbic system, an area so closely associated with memory and feeling it’s sometimes called the ‘emotional brain,’ smell can call up memories and powerful responses almost instantaneously.”

One of the in-class writing exercise prompts I now use in my Creative Nonfiction courses at UNM-Taos involves what researchers might term “olfaction-related responses to memories,” or what I just call smell-memories.  When I pass around small amounts of fragrant, common, natural substances – a slice of lemon, say, or a whole grated nutmeg, or an open jar of ground cinnamon – and ask students to write a short piece on a memory one of these substances evokes for them, the pens fly.

Curiously, cinnamon often wins. Poignant personal narratives emerge along similar lines:  Making cinnamon-sugar cookies with Grandma four decades ago, winter holiday family gatherings at Aunt So-and-So’s big house in the country while she was still alive. (This storied aunt always won top prizes for her apple pie at the local county fair, which was clearly what drew the whole family to her house.)  As Dowdey points out, “Because we encounter most new odors in our youth, smells often call up childhood memories.”  The stories that emerge from these exercises are invariably drawn from childhood.

Which brings me to mine, in brief:  My mother Lee made the best pies – especially apple pies – in the world, not just the county.  (My daughter seems to take after Lee in this respect; pie-making prowess appears to skip a generation.)  The following recipe was my mother’s favorite.  Try making it for your Thanksgiving feast. It will give everyone – especially the children – indelible memories of home and family. And keep the recipe handy in case you ever decide to sell your house.

Lee’s Paper Bag Apple Pie

Prepare an unbaked 9-inch pastry shell.  Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Peel, core and quarter four large baking apples, then cut each quarter in half, crosswise, to make chunks. Drizzle apple chunks with 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice.

Combine ½ cup white sugar, 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour, ½ teaspoon grated nutmeg [or ground cinnamon!]; sprinkle this mixture over apples and toss. Spoon apples into pastry shell.

For the topping: combine ½ cup light brown sugar, ½ cup all-purpose flour, and ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter; sprinkle this mixture over apples to cover top.

Slide pie into a large brown paper bag [Note: I’m sure a turkey-size Reynolds “Oven Bag” would work equally well]; secure open-end tightly; place on a large cookie sheet.

Bake for 1 hour. Remove from bag and cool on a wire rack.

Have a happy – and fragrant – Thanksgiving!

Last summer in Scotland, while doing research on a new book-in-progress (unrelated to food), I ate a bridie.  A Forfar Bridie, as the Scots cookbooks label it.

Scotland – this may surprise those who’ve never been – has a proud culinary tradition, stemming from its historic “Auld Alliance” with France.  Every meal I had during my visit was delicious.  But this bridie was more than that.  It was nostalgic.

There I was, alone, in the little town in Angus where my paternal ancestors lived and died long ago.  I’d just arrived.  I was tired and hungry — tired from not sleeping at all well the night before, then traveling for over four hours:  by bus to Waverley Station in the center of Edinburgh, then by train to Dundee, where I took a taxi to that port city’s bus depot and waited for the bus to Forfar.  In Forfar I changed to a local bus, which dropped me off in Kirriemuir’s town square.

Instead of succumbing to the longing to stretch out on the tartan-draped, queen-size bed in my spacious hotel room, I headed straight for the Tourist Information office on the ground floor of the Gateway to the Glens Museum in the center of this charming old town, where I spoke with a helpful woman who gave me some maps and brochures and pointed out a few places of interest within walking distance.

Then, since I’d been too rushed and nervous to eat anything all day, I was drawn to the local bakery – as pretty as a Parisian patisserie – where, after some difficult deliberation, I chose a Forfar Bridie.

One bite of this savory ground-meat-and-onion-filled puff-pastry turnover — Scotland’s improved-upon version of England’s Cornish pasty — flooded my mind with memories.  To please my father and honor his Scottish heritage, my mother had made bridies at home from time to time when I was a child.  I’d even tried making them myself at home in Taos, NM, in recent years.  This one, which I ate in hand while walking up a road called The Roods in my Scottish ancestors’ hometown, was the real thing, made at the source, the bakery clerk told me, in Forfar.

F. Marian McNeill’s cookbook The Scots Kitchen (1974) credits a Mr. Jolly, a baker in what was called the Back Wynd (now Queen Street) in Forfar, for creating bridies in the mid-nineteenth century.  McNeill’s recipe includes the following ingredients list, with no specific measurements:  steak, pepper, salt, suet, onions (optional), flour, and water.

My updated version uses purchased puff pastry sheets (Pepperidge Farm is a reliable brand), cut into 7- to 8-inch rounds (use a dessert plate as your guide).  Place a healthy mound of meat-and-onion filling (made with chopped sweet onions sautéed with lean ground beef in a bit of olive oil [no suet, please!] and seasoned liberally with pepper and salt and maybe a pinch of thyme) off-center on each pastry round.  Fold the other side of the pastry over (like an apple turnover), crimp the seams, and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet.  Brush the bridies’ tops with egg wash (made of egg yolk, whisked with a little water, and a pinch of salt), vent each with the tip of a sharp knife, and bake in a preheated 400-degree oven until golden brown, about 20 minutes.

This will give you a taste of Scotland, close in deliciousness to the bridies from the source.

My big question for the day is:  If Aspen can do it, why not Taos?  Both are Rocky Mountain ski resort towns, where part-time inhabitants tend to swoop in on their private jets, but where all year round the views are to-die-for, the restaurants are world-class, and the permanent residents possess above-normally-raised consciousness.  This last point, at least regarding Taos, NM, where I’m proud to live, embraces a love for the planet, a deep concern for the environment, and an active interest in health and wellness.   And that includes food.

Aspen, CO, according to a recent article in The New York Times (“Meatless Mondays Catch On, Even With Carnivores,” by Kirk Johnson, 6/16/11), has just latched on to the Meatless Monday bandwagon, and I say:  “Yes!  You go for it, too, Taos!”

“A new nationwide pro-veggie effort … aimed at persuading people to go meatless at least one day a week,” Johnson says, has caught on in Aspen “more than in any other city in America.”  There, “at least 20 institutions and restaurants … are offering vegetarian choices on Mondays under a plan announced this month,” he says.  This is great news.

“Meatless Monday,” I learned from their website www.meatlessmonday.com, is a non-profit initiative of The Monday Campaigns, in association with the Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health. This website provides all the information and recipes anyone might need to start each week with healthy, environmentally friendly meat-free alternatives.  Their stated goal is to help us all to reduce our meat consumption by 15% in order to improve our personal health and the health of the planet.

And here’s some fascinating history:  Presidents Wilson, Truman and Roosevelt galvanized the nation with voluntary meatless days during both world wars.  The intention of this new initiative is to revitalize this American tradition. “By cutting out meat once a week,” they say, “we can improve our health, reduce our carbon footprint and lead the world in the race to reduce climate change.”

Come to think of it, we don’t need to wait for our beloved home towns to officially join in the Meatless Monday campaign.  We can do so individually, starting this very week.  Here’s one of the many meatless recipes from the Meatless Monday website.  Try making it this Monday – and pretend you’ve just swooped into Taos.

Enchiladas

Enchiladas are a traditional dish of Mexico and South America [as well as Taos, NM]. They’re typically made with chili peppers and various fillings. This version uses vegetarian chili, but there are many other options for meat-free enchilada fillings, including beans and tomatoes.

Makes 12 servings

• 12 corn tortillas
• 1 (12-ounce) can vegetarian chili
• 8 ounces low-fat cheddar cheese
• 1 onion, chopped
• cooking spray
• 16 ounces no-salt-added tomato sauce
• 2 teaspoons onion powder
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin

1. Place tortillas in 1/2 inch of water in a microwave-safe container with lid. Cover and cook in microwave on high for about 1 minute. You can steam tortillas if you prefer.
2. Saute onion in cooking spray in skillet.
3. Heat the chili.
4. While chili is warming up, grate cheese and place cheese on the end of the corn tortilla then roll tightly. Repeat with all 12 tortillas.
5. Layer in 9×13 inch pan then pour chili on top. Top with cheese and chopped onion.
6. Bake in oven for approximately 20 minutes at 350 degrees.
7. For the sauce, combine tomato sauce, onion powder, garlic powder, chili powder, cumin and oregano.  Mix and heat.

As a writer who relies heavily on food metaphors and food-related stories to make her points and an instructor in both the English and Culinary Arts departments at UNM-Taos, I suppose it’s natural that language and food tend to hybridize in my mind.  So this coming fall semester, when I teach a new Healthy Cooking course, I’ll be careful to watch my language when I explain the USDA’s new food guidelines.  Instead of the dreaded, “You should eat more fruits and vegetables!” for example, I’ll make sure my words are positive and embracing, beginning with, “We will…”

We will go to the government’s new website (www.choosemyplate.gov) to get the lowdown:  how to balance calories, what foods to increase, which foods to reduce, healthful recipes, and much more.  What’s newest now, I see, is the iconography.  The government’s two-decade-old pyramid design has been replaced by a color-filled plate divided into four, nearly equal-size wedges:  a red wedge labeled “Fruits”; a slightly larger, green wedge labeled “Vegetables”; a purple wedge (the same size as the red one) labeled “Protein”; and the remaining wedge in orange, marked “Grains.”  In the upper right is a glass-size circle in blue for “Dairy.”

As William Neuman wrote for The New York Times recently (in “Goodbye Food Pyramid, Hello Dinner Plate”), “The new symbol was designed to underscore a central mantra of the federal government’s healthy eating push:  make half your plate fruits and vegetables.  And it is expected to be a crucial element of the administration’s crusade against obesity, which is being led by the first lady, Michelle Obama.”

This crusader will teach her Culinary Arts students the best techniques for low-fat, high-flavor, healthy cooking and load them up with recipes for fruit desserts and vegetable medleys so tasty they’ll likely fill more than half of their families’ plates.  We will learn how to cook — and eat — more healthfully.

In the meantime, I’m thinking that someone should manufacture a real plate with the new “My Plate” design on it in all its colorful glory, and with ridges delineating the wedges as a playful challenge to kids to “stay within the lines” when they load up their plates (at their school cafeteria, perhaps?) .  Ooops, there I go using the verb “should”:  Someone should…. Ah, but this is a good “should.”