SpiceLines

Limeade spiked with ginger juice invigorates the senses on a torrid summer day.

The most refreshing drink I have ever quaffed was freshly squeezed kaffir lime juice over ice. It was at the Singapore Polo Club and the day was so steamy and I was so miserably hot that I almost kissed the white-jacketed steward who came bearing a tray of frosty glasses.

The second most refreshing drink was sweet limeade spiked with peppery ginger juice. It was on a sweltering day in Washington D.C., where the summer miasma easily rivals Singapore’s round-the-clock heat and humidity. (Of course if you live in Singapore, on rainy days everyone wraps up in shawls and complains about the chill.) I staggered into a branch of Teaism, not far from the Mall, drained two glasses of this elixir and had started on my third before I regained my senses.

Ginger limeade is an invigorating summer drink, guaranteed to stir your senses from a heat-induced torpor. If you are making a lot of limeade, run a pound of fresh ginger through a vegetable juicer and within seconds you’ll have a cupful of pale yellow liquid. It will keep in the refrigerator for a day. But if you just want to make a glass or two, it’s simpler to grate some ginger, wrap it in a small square of cheesecloth, and squeeze the juice into a small dish.

I like to sweeten the limeade with thick sugar syrup. I use the recipe in The Joy of Cooking, which calls for two parts white sugar to one part water. This will keep indefinitely in the back of the refrigerator, so make enough to last for a few weeks.

Ginger-Spiked Limeade

To make one glass

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
2 to 3 tablespoons cold sugar syrup (see note)
2 teaspoons ginger juice (see note)
5 to six ounces of cold water
Ice
A sprig of mint for garnish

Other:

1 tall glass
Small square cheesecloth
Microplane grater

Method:

1. Chill a tall glass by rinsing it in water and putting it in the freezer for a few minutes.
2. When the glass is frosty, remove it and fill with ice. Add the lime juice, sugar syrup and ginger juice. Stir. Add cold water to taste. Then taste and adjust the flavors to your liking—you can always add more of any ingredient, or dilute the drink with more water.
3. Add the mint and serve at once.

Note: To make the sugar syrup, combine 1 cup water and 2 cups white granulated sugar in a small saucepan. Stir and boil for 5 minutes. Let cool before using.

To make ginger juice, grate 1 or 2 tablespoons of ginger using a microplane or other grater. Wrap the ginger in a small square of cheesecloth and squeeze the juice into a bowl. One tablespoon of grated ginger will yield 2 to 3 teaspoons of juice, depending on freshness.

Chef Andrea Reusing in the serene Asian-ispired dining room of the Lantern
Restaurant in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Photo credit: Natalie Ross

Chicken as revelation—that’s a hard notion to swallow.

But five years ago, the Lantern Restaurant’s Tea and Spice-Smoked Chicken offered tantalizing possibilities. The bird was full of genuine flavor, the slightly gamey taste that comes from a life in the outdoors spent pecking and scratching. The first bite was succulent, oozing with luscious juices. With the next came a delicate smokiness and the mild astringency of black tea. Then the spices hit my palate: sweet cinnamon, licorice-scented star anise, aromatic cloves, peppery red chilies. The chicken had been brined and smoked, then roasted to order, and the miracle was that, after all that manhandling, it was tender and utterly delicious.

Last fall, Gourmet gave the Lantern the No. 47 spot on its list of America’s Top 50 Restaurants. The editors got it right: Chef Andrea Reusing “cooks to her own tune.” Like a lot of American chefs, she starts with local fare--in this case pristine North Carolina ingredients like briny shrimp, flounder and soft shell crab; heritage pork; free range duck and chicken; locally made cheeses; sourwood honey; and truckloads of wondrous vegetables grown on nearby farms. But then Reusing performs a sort of culinary legerdemain, using these raw materials to conjure dishes from five Asian culinary traditions (Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Chinese, Japanese) that remain true to their roots yet have a distinctly modern sensibility.

Here’s what I ate at the Lantern a few weeks ago: North Carolina crab cakes spiked with vibrant Thai flavors such as lemon grass and mint, with a sweet-hot house-made chili sauce that titillated every one of my 10,000 taste receptors. Sumptuous coconut-braised pork shanks, falling off the bone tender, cooked with fresh gingery galangal, topped with crispy shallots and a side of addictive Vietnamese style green papaya salad. Dessert was a deceptively simple crème fraiche panna cotta served with local organic strawberries.

In spite of its sophisticated airs, Chapel Hill is still a small, laid back southern university town where you might reasonably expect to find black-eyed peas and fried green tomatoes on the menu. But Reusing is the ultimate insider’s outsider, and she brings a global spin to the kitchen. She grew up in Washington DC and New Jersey, fell in love with homegrown tomatoes in her parents’ garden, studied cinema at NYU, ate out a lot in Chinatown, edged into line cooking in the East Village. After marrying Durham rock musician Mac McCaughn, she ran a catering business out of their house, then helped open Enoteca Vin in Raleigh where the focus on food and wine pairings won national raves. She left in 2001, gutted the old Darbar and Leo’s space in Chapel Hill, and with her brother Brendan, opened the Lantern in 2002.

Those are the basic facts. But they don’t capture Reusing’s boundless energy, or her passion for the Slow Food movement and the dedicated farmers whose bounty is the focus of the Lantern’s menu. When she addressed the American delegation at the Slow Food summit in Italy last year, she summed it up in one sentence: “…food grown by people with strong connections to their land and community is the only way a girl from New Jersey could open an Asian restaurant in North Carolina and even approach some idea of authenticity.” Check out the menus for the Lantern Table, a dinner series celebrating local fare, and you’ll see what she means.

One of the things I like best about the Lantern is the way it transports you to another place. The dining room that opens onto Franklin Street is cool and serene, with walls the color of green tea and clusters of George Nelson bubble lamps casting a diffuse glow over the scene. It has a calm, almost meditative vibe—until it fills up with 58 hungry people, of course. But go down the back alley, open the iron gate, push aside a heavy velvet drape and you’ve walked into an oriental dream right out of a Charlie Chan movie. It’s the coolest bar in town, dark and moody as an opium den, with dangling red lanterns, a laughing Buddha, and exotic drinks like the Red Geisha (muddled fresh strawberries with lime, ginger and vodka) and my own favorite, the Hibiscus Petal (pink flower-infused vodka with Thai basil.) You can eat here too, so you have a choice of escapist fantasies in which to enjoy this very global local fare.

I first visited with Andrea at the restaurant a couple of months ago. Here’s what we talked about.

What was your first cooking job?

I was writing for a political consultant in New York and also working as a cocktail waitress. Then I started as a line cook at the Telephone Bar which was an English pub in the East Village. It was easier than waitressing because I didn’t have to wear heels. I was getting up at 6 AM to make Sunday brunch—kippers and scotch eggs for 100 people. I had no experience, but the chef, Ellen Smith liked hiring women and she trained me.

Where did your interest in food come from?

My grandparents were good cooks. They lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In the summer, we’d walk across the road to pick corn. My grandmother would take us to Amish farms to buy cheese and eggs and milk. We’d also go to Central Market which is the oldest farmers’ market in the country. It has homemade pickles, amazing chickens, good dairy products. There’s a man who grinds fresh horseradish on an old grater with wheels. The flavor is completely different from what you get in the bottle. Everything was local and delicious.

My parents loved food too. They always had a garden. We’d eat tomatoes only in summer. They’d get Asian or Chinese recipes from Craig Claiborne and make Chinese American food. We always had a wok.

Going from catering to being chef at Enoteca Vin must have been a big jump. How did that happen?

The people who were opening Vin took a big chance on me. I was cooking mostly Asian food at the time and some of that was on the menu. The focus, then as now, was on wine and food pairings, so we’d serve different spicy dim sum with great champagne. There were tons of cool artisan cheeses. But the real emphasis was on local, very seasonal ingredients. I was there for two years. Ashley Christensen is the chef now.

Did you have a signature dish at Vin? What was most popular?

We did a salt cod hash with fried local egg. Roasted whole cauliflower with fontina and white truffles. A homemade seafood choucroute with monkfish and periwinkles. I made picnic hams out of local pork shanks. Our most popular dish was steak frites—we served it with duck fat-fried potatoes with olive butter and arugula.

What was your concept for the Lantern?

There weren’t many Asian restaurants in Chapel Hill, so that was a good niche for us. And I wanted to have a friendly neighborhood spot where people could drop in for great food whenever they felt like it. The space had a really good vibe. Before Darbar [an Indian restaurant], Leo’s had been there. It was a beloved Greek restaurant run by an Italian family. I know of two couples who got engaged there.

What’s the idea behind the Lantern’s menu?

It’s pan-Asian, with respect for regional Chinese, Thai, Indian, Vietnamese and Japanese tradition, using local ingredients as much as possible. We have wonderful North Carolina eggs, greens, pork, mushrooms, seafood.

We rotate the vegetables so that they are strictly local and served only in season. In the fall we do braised Asian greens and yellow wax beans. In the winter, dark green crinkly savoy cabbage, which has a really interesting flavor. In spring, lots of asparagus and sugar snaps. Whatever’s wonderful and growing right now.

There’s been a big move towards heritage pork around here…

Our small farmers are raising amazing pigs. Ossabaw fat is delicious. It’s high in omega-3’s and low in transfats. Another great one is Berkshire Red Wattle. We use local pork for all our dumplings and roast pork dishes. The pork shanks are pasture-raised from Niman Ranch. An animal only has two hind shanks and we use 100 a week. That would be 50 pigs and there’s not enough volume to support that.

What items are always on the menu?

Tea and spice smoked chicken. We brine it, smoke and roast it to order. We sell 130 of those a week. Also the dumplings: pork and chive, and cabbage and shitake mushroom.

Braised pork shanks are another big favorite. In the fall we cooked them with soy, sugar, orange peel, cassia and star anise, and paired them with mushroom sticky rice and braised watercress. Right now we’re doing shanks braised in coconut milk with galangal root. The spicy papaya salad on the side is a sort of crossover Thai-Vietnamese dish

Is there a spice that you’re really excited about?

Vietnamese black pepper from Adriana’s Caravan. It’s pungent and spicy and has an almost floral taste. We use it to finish “shaking beef”: the meat is stir fried with lalat leaves and seasoned with salt, sugar, fish sauce, rice vinegar and lime. The pepper goes on at the end.

Do you make your own spice mixes?

Oh, yes. We grind the garam masala for an Indian soup made of local white sweet potatoes. It’s based on Julie Sahni’s recipe and has cumin, coriander, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, bay leaves and mace. We sauté it in ghee and add it to the soup at the end.

What’s your favorite dish?

The local pickle plate. Right now we’re doing one with ramps, turnips, green tomatoes, radishes and kimchi.

After five years, how do you stay excited?

The farmers and the ingredients keep me excited. I appreciate people who work really hard but who have a great time doing it. It makes them fun to hang out with.

Tell me about your car.

It’s a 1985 Mercedes diesel that runs on cooking oil from the restaurant. We use a German converter. If you smell fried fish driving around town, it’s me.

To see Andrea's recipe for Indian Stew with Tomato-Saffron Broth and Chickpea Dumplings, go here.

At the Lantern Restaurant, a spicy South Indian stew includes farm fresh vegetables
and savory chickpea dumplings spiked with toasted cumin seed and green chiles.

Here’s what Andrea Reusing says about the Lantern’s savory summer stew:

“This is an extremely versatile stew that can incorporate a wide range of late summer market produce in various combinations with great results. It is an ideal make-ahead dinner: all elements can be prepared several hours in advance and then quickly combined right before serving. At the restaurant, we serve it with a fresh cucumber-yogurt raita and spicy pickled red onions, but it would pair well with a prepared chutney as well. The dumplings are not of the fluffy variety, but are dense, sour and chewy, similar to the traditional southern Indian idli, which are typically made from fermented dhal and rice.”

And, I would add:

The dumplings are most delicious if the batter has been refrigerated for the full 24 hours (or even longer). They are firmer, chewier and spicier. To make the dumplings, I used two teaspoons and a sort of triple scooping technique, using one spoon to take up the batter, the other to scoop it from the first, and then using the first to push the batter into the boiling water. It doesn’t make perfectly egg-shaped quenelles, but as long as you use a modest amount of batter, the dumplings are fairly tidy. What matters, of course, is that they are delicious.

Indian Vegetable Stew with Tomato-Saffron Broth and Chickpea Dumplings
(adapted from Andrea Reusing at the Lantern Restaurant)

To serve 6:

Ingredients for the stew:

1⁄/4 cup canola oil or ghee (clarified butter cooked to a slightly
toasty golden brown) (see note)
10 fat cloves of garlic, smashed and coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh ginger
4 finely chopped serrano chiles, seeds included, or to taste
1-1⁄2) tablespoon spice mix (recipe follows)
1 tablespoon yellow mustard seeds
6 large, ripe tomatoes cut into a large dice and lightly salted for
10 minutes
A generous pinch saffron, crumbled
Handful fresh curry leaves (optional) (see note)
Kosher or sea salt to taste
2 pounds mixed summer vegetables, roasted (see note)
1/2 -1 cup water, depending on the ripeness of the tomatoes
1 recipe chickpea dumplings (recipe follows)
1/2 cup thinly sliced scallion
1/2 cup cilantro leaves

Method for the stew:

1. In a large, heavy dutch oven, heat ghee or oil over medium heat and
add garlic and saute until medium golden brown. Add ginger, chiles, saffron and spice mix. Season with salt and continue to cook until fragrant, about one minute.

2. Add mustard seeds and as they pop, add the optional curry leaves (stripped off their wiry stems) and chopped tomatoes and season with salt. Cook over medium-low heat for about 6-7 minutes until the tomatoes have released a substantial amount of juice and their skins have softened.

3. Add the cooked vegetables along with any accumulated juices and adjust the consistency with water to create a slightly soupy mixture. Season again and add 6-8 dumplings per person. Heat through and spoon the stew into heated individual serving bowls or a large tureen, garnishing with cilantro and scallions.

Note: Ghee is sold at Indian markets, or order it from www.kalustyans.com. It has a rich, nutty flavor and makes a much tastier dumpling than the canola oil.

I found fresh curry leaves at Whole Foods, but they are more often available at Indian markets or from www.kalustyans.com.
Used to flavor the vegetarian dishes of South India, they have a very distinctive taste—earthy, with a touch of citrus. Frozen leaves are less flavorful, but can be used if the fresh are not available.

Summer vegetables: Use vegetables such as pattypan or sunburst squash, wedged red onion, Japanese eggplant, baby zucchini and whole okra cut into
attractive, chunky shapes about 1-1⁄2 inch bite sized pieces (they will shrink slightly in cooking). Toss in a little canola oil, salt and pepper and place them in one layer on a sheet pan covered with aluminum foil. Roast in a 450-degree oven until light brown and still slightly underdone, about 20 minutes. Make sure that the oven is pre-heated and that the vegetables are not disturbed until they begin to color.

Ingredients for the spice mix:

1 tablespoon whole cumin seed
1 tablespoon whole coriander seed
1⁄2 tablespoon whole fennel seeds
2 small dried red chiles
1⁄2 tablespoon ground turmeric

Method for the spice mix:

Toast the cumin, coriander, fennel and chiles over medium heat until fragrant, about one minute. Pour into a small bowl and let cool. Grind very fine in spice mill and then stir in the ground turmeric.

Ingredients for the chickpea dumplings:

1/2 cup chickpea flour (see note)
1⁄4 cup all-purpose flour
1⁄4 cup semolina flour
1-1/8 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tablespoon whole cumin seed, lightly toasted
1/2 tablespoon serrano chile, finely chopped, including seeds
1-1/4 cups whole milk yogurt
1 beaten egg
2 tablespoons ghee or canola oil

Method for the dumplings:

1. Combine and sift dry ingredients, including salt and pepper. Whisk eggs and add yogurt, ghee, or oil, cumin and chiles in a large bowl and gradually add the flour mixture until well combined. Let the batter rest refrigerated for at least one hour and as long as 24 hours.

2. Line a sheet pan with aluminum foil. Bring a medium pot of generously salted water to a boil and form small egg-shaped quenelles of the dumpling batter with two teaspoons, allowing them to cook for about 6 minutes, before scooping them out onto the sheet pan to cool and repeating with the rest of the batter.

Note: Chickpea flour is available in Indian markets and natural food stores.

The Stockholm archipelago, one of the largest in the Baltic Sea, consists of
24,000 islands, some no bigger than rocky outcroppings. It stretches 80 miles
east towards Finland. Photo: www.bestofnordic.se

Gone sailing. In the Baltic, that is. From St. Petersburg to Stockholm, alighting in Estonia and Helsinki, meandering through the Aland Islands and Stockholm archipelago, until the Swedish port hoves into view.

There'll be blini, caviar and vodka. Summer palaces and white summer nights. Dreams of fresh honeycomb and spices in Kuznechy Market. Cloudberries, smoked reindeer and cinnamon buns at Kauppatori. The bounty of the Baltic, glistening and perfumed with dill, at Ostermalm. Lunch at Oaxen Skargardskrog. Stylish teapots and ancient Viking warships. Blue water, wildflowers, sea breezes.

One way to keep cool this summer.