Idli steamer

An idli (or iddly) is a steamed rice & lentil cake from India. I first tasted one at a New York City restaurant called Madras Woodlands (it's now in the suburbs, on Long Island) that specialized in vegetarian food from south India. Idlis are wonderful, light discs that are somewhat like airy pancakes. They are always served with a fresh chutney, like coconut or cilantro.

To make idli, you need a special steaming rack that resembles a multistory egg poacher. A batter made of ground uncooked rice and lentils, often seasoned with Indian spices, is poured into the indentations in the idli steamer and it's placed in a covered pot of boiling water to cook.

Now, I'm telling you all of this not because I think that you're going to run out and learn how to make idli (though it might be fun), but because this neat piece of equipment ($30 from indiaplaza.com) can also be used to make single-serving frittatas, tortillas (Spanish frittatas) or eggah (Middle Eastern frittatas), which I think would make the neatest appetizers or brunch dish. And speaking of brunch, I've no doubt the idli steamer can be also used as an egg poacher.

Greek elephant beans

I have a friend named John Vasiliadis whose family is from Kastoria in northern Greece. Most of his family now live in this country, near Manhattan, in a heavily Greek neighborhood where the grocery stores are stocked with wonderful Greek ingredients like my new favorite beans: Elephant beans.

These delicious beans--which look like white kidney beans on serious steroids--actually come from Kastoria, where they've been cultivated since the 17th century. It's hard to describe their meaty, buttery taste (wait, I just did), but you will have to taste them to see what I mean.

The brand that my friend John brought for me to try is called Arosis. On their packaging it very sweetly states "In the villages of Kastoria, life goes on peacefully with faith in human values. Taste a product made with respect to nature and to the consumer."

I encourage you to look for Greek elephant beans (also called gigantes) wherever you might find Greek or Mediterranean groceries.

UglyRipe tomatoes

Santa Sweets, a tomato grower in Plant City, Florida, won a court battle this past January to be able to market an heirloom hybrid tomato called UglyRipe outside of Florida. The UglyRipe had not been allowed to show its face outside Florida because the state's Tomato Committee (there's a committee for everything, isn't there?) declared that the tomato just didn't measure up to their beauty standards and was thus ruining Florida's reputation for pretty tomatoes (?!?).

This has now been resolved and the UglyRipe can be sold in grocery stores--including Whole Foods--outside Florida. However at the moment UglyRipes may be hard to find because, with all the hoopla about them, the growers are having trouble keeping up with the demand.

From all accounts--and I have not been able to find one myself--the UglyRipe may be ugly, but it is extremely tasty. The same grower also sells Santa Sweet grape tomatoes, and if they are any indication, I can't wait to actually get my hands on an UglyRipe. In any case, Florida stops shipping tomatoes out of state by June 15, so we still have a couple of weeks to see if we can locate the elusive UglyRipe.

Planting pumpkins for their seeds

If you're a gardener who lives in the temperate zones, you're probably making plans for what to put in your garden this year. So here's an idea: How about planting kakai pumpkins? They weigh between 5 and 8 pounds each and have dark green stripes. But here's the cool part: Inside are large, hull-less, dark-green (almost black) seeds, which are delicious roasted.

*Health bonus: The kakai is related to the pumpkin used to make Austrian pumpkin seed oil, which has been found in a number of European studies to be extremely good for prostate health.

Each plant will produce 2 to 3 pumpkins in 100 days. The plants are described as "semi-bush, short-vine," which I take to mean that they take up less room than a standard pumpkin plant. You can get a packet of 30 seeds for $3.35 from Johnny's Selected Seeds. Or, if you have an empty field available, you can buy 25 pounds (55,000 seeds) for $1,300.

American Food Writing by Molly O'Neill

Molly O'Neill--food writer, cookbook author, memoirist and (I'm sure this description would annoy her, but here goes anyway) the sister of Paul O'Neill, former outfielder for the New York Yankees--has put together an anthology of American food writing called (no surprise) American Food Writing.

The food essays are organized chronologically, beginning with early 19th-century foodie Thomas Jefferson and moving up through the decades past Herman Melville (who writes about chowder in Moby-Dick), Emily Dickinson (who sends her friend a recipe for a brandied fruit cake), Gertrude Stein (who delivers a long, unpunctuated ramble on the nature of American food), Langston Hughes (on soul food) and Rex Stout (with a porterhouse steak recipe from his gourmand character Nero Wolfe).

The last half of the book includes a long string of more contemporary food writers, including Calvin Trillin, Laurie Colwin, John Thorne, Alice Waters, Ruth Reichl, Julee Rosso & Sheila Lukins (who by the way have just published a 25th anniversary edition of their now-classic Silver Palate Cookbook) and tons more. All in all there are 162 entries, including lots of recipes. And O'Neill has written nice little notes to put the food essays into historical context. It will take you a while to read (that's a good thing), and by the end you will have seen the interesting arc that American food has taken in the 250 years that writers have to bothered to record their thoughts on the subject.

Get a grip: baking dishes with silicone handles

The KitchenAid brand is most often associated with appliances--dishwashers, stoves, stand mixers, et.al.--but the company also has an extensive line of bakeware. The particular piece of bakeware that has caught my attention is a deep, square (9-inch) baking dish with silicone grips. Or, more precisely, what caught my attention was the silicone grips themselves.

How many times have you brought a dish to the table that was too hot to pass around? The removable grips that come with the KitchenAid dish solve the problem. Once you take the hot dish out of the oven, you slip the two silicone "potholders" onto the sides and take it to the table, where everyone can pick the dish up without burning fingers.

The dish comes in red and blue, and there are dozens more sizes and shapes in this same line, including oval gratin dishes, lasagna pans, pie dishes and loaf pans. The 9-inch square version sells for $35 at kitchenware stores or from the KitchenAid website.