Near & Far: Recipes Inspired by Home and Travel [A Cookbook]

by Heidi Swanson

Overview

Known for combining natural foods recipes with evocative, artful photography, New York Times bestselling author Heidi Swanson circled the globe to create this mouthwatering assortment of 120 vegetarian dishes. In this deeply personal collection drawn from her well-worn recipe journals, Heidi describes the fragrance of flatbreads hot off a Marrakech griddle, soba noodles and feather-light tempura in Tokyo, and the taste of wild-picked greens from the Puglian coast. Recipes such as Fennel Stew, Carrot & Sake Salad, Watermelon Radish Soup, Brown Butter Tortelli, and Saffron Tagine use healthy, whole foods ingredients and approachable techniques, and photographs taken in Morocco, Japan, Italy, France, and India, as well as back home in Heidi’s kitchen, reveal the places both near and far that inspire her warm, nourishing cooking.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781607745495
Publisher:	Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
Publication date:	09/15/2015
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	473,545
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Heidi Swanson is the New York Times bestselling author of Super Natural Cooking, Super Natural Every Day, and Near & Far, as well as a photographer, website publisher, and shop curator. She is a two-time James Beard Award winner and was named one of the 100 greatest home cooks of all time by Epicurious. She has been featured in Food & Wine, Bon Appétit, Vegetarian Times, Cherry Bombe, British Journal of Photography, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and on Food52. She lives in Los Angeles.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

January 25—Long, thin whips of deep green puntarelle, a swarm of tiny yellow key limes, dried persimmons with downy skins, red-skinned hand-cracked walnuts, chickpea flour, sprouted mung beans, a friendly giant pomelo with twin glossy leaves attached, stubby bouquets of nameko mushrooms, little yellow pom-poms from snipped branches of acacia tree. 

February 15—Fresh fenugreek, ruffled baby cabbage, parrot tulips and buttery freesia blossoms, rose petal jam, French radishes, the tiniest, pointiest green onions, and sprout-fed eggs.

March 22—Helleborus and daffodil, Tahitian pomelo, dried blood oranges, seascape strawberries, amaranth, nettles, fresh pressed olive oil, kumquats, and lazy clusters of fragrant lilacs ranging in hue from pale, dusty purple to electric violet. 

Like many cooks, I keep journals. And when you look at mine, you notice cracked spines and paper that is no longer crisp, or clean, or bright. The corners are dull and dog-eared, the pages filled with my handwriting—black ink, the all-caps penmanship I suspect I inherited from my father. Scraps, scrawls, and sketches are taped to lined pages. Newspaper clippings, laser printouts, and magazine snippets commingle in an unruly mob of fonts. There are photos, stamps, receipts, lists, and sticky notes. I keep the journals for a number of reasons, but mostly so I don’t forget details—the pattern of an ancient Italian olive grove as seen on approach to the Bari airport, colorful pickles and tiny salads beautifully arranged as part of a bento lunch in Kyoto’s Nishiki Market, the markings on the craggy, hand-painted bowls piled high with fekka and chebakia pastries at a shop in Marrakech, or the impossibly small cherry tomatoes, no larger than blueberries, at Takashimaya in Tokyo. Closer to home, I note the comings and goings of ingredients in my own kitchen, the details of meals shared, and my favorite farmers’ market finds week by week.

As I turn the pages of these books, it’s clear that much of the food I cook is inspired by two things: where I live (Northern California), and where I’ve traveled. Food rooted in place—both near and far. This is a cookbook that attempts to explore both. 

I’m forty years old now, which means I’ve lived long enough to settle in a bit. I’m generally happy, curious, and optimistic. I like to think people who know me would concur. My life in San Francisco is a series of rituals and routines. I collect fresh flowers every week. Walk most places I go. Have coffee on Saturday morning with friends. Brew beer with my brother-in-law, but not as often as I’d like. Northern California is where I try to stand still a bit, keep things simple, and watch things change around me. The markets evolve incrementally week after week—poppies giving way to peonies, donut peaches and Pandora leeks giving way to gypsy peppers, amethyst radishes, and purple wax beans. The pruned trees in Golden Gate Park go from twiggy and lifeless to lush, green, and full in a steady march through spring into summer and fall.

Home is good. That said, I started traveling, extensively, as soon as I found a job after college and could afford to. I spent the bulk of my bank account on a flight to Europe, a trip that showed me I could explore far-flung places on my own dollar, sparking a desire to see more of the world I was a part of. In an interview, Pico Iyer said, “It’s only by stepping out of your life and the world that you can see what you most deeply care about and find a home. . . . And home, in the end, is of course not just the place where you sleep. It’s the place where you stand.” Travel inspired my thinking, relationships, sensibility, sense of self, and, eventually, the way I approached cooking. I do my best to explore someplace new, or revisit a place I love, a couple of times a year. 

Once you’re home from a trip, details tend to fall away. I noticed, long after I’ve forgotten the names of monuments, train stations, or boulevards of a city I’ve traveled to, the flavors would stay with me. Every place has its own always evolving culinary voice. And it’s not just ingredients and flavors, but also techniques, traditions, and vessels. In the broadest sense, these impressions and memories are what inspire new ideas in my own kitchen as well as spark the urge to re-create dishes or flavor combinations that made the deepest mark.

The Book
The book is divided into two major sections—Near and Far. The Near section focuses on recipes inspired by my life in San Francisco and Northern California. Far is divided into five chapters: Morocco, France, India, Italy, and Japan. These are places with rich, often ancient, culinary cultures—places I’ve spent a good amount of time, in many cases with extended or multiple trips over a span of years. I’ve also threaded a few of my favorite travel-friendly preparations into a section titled En Route.

At the start of each chapter, I list favorite ingredients traditionally used in the cuisine of that place (My Moroccan Pantry, My Japanese Pantry, and so on). They are the ingredients that resonate with me and speak to my cooking approach best—they aren’t intended to be comprehensive but are more a sketch of the ingredients I turn to most or am most enthusiastic about using within that palette. Many are used within the recipes here, but not necessarily all. They’re listed this way for quick brainstorming and inspiration in your own kitchen.

Within each chapter, recipes are organized starting with lunch, moving on to dinner, drinks, and treats. I tend to think of the next day’s breakfast at the end of the day, so those close out the chapters.

The Recipes
The recipes in this book are rooted in place and correspondingly organized. I tend to be drawn to places where natural foods are celebrated and traditional foodways are in practice. Much of that influence is woven into the recipes throughout. That said, it’s not the sort of cookbook that is going to drill down on the nutritional benefits of this pulse or that vegetable—although those considerations are a part of how I cook and certainly one aspect of what I think about as I approach a recipe. For those of you who have Super Natural Cooking or Super Natural Every Day on your shelf, consider this a companion volume. You’ll recognize the spirit of the previous volumes—real food and powerful vegetarian ingredients made into dishes that are worth making. 

Perhaps some description of my approach will help illuminate how I came to include the recipes you see here. Everything starts with me trying to garner a sense of place, particularly when I’m traveling. On the culinary front, I attempt to gain a basic understanding of the traditional culture of the cuisine I’m immersed in, gather some historical context, get a handle on what ingredients are typically used and which cooking techniques are deployed, and understand what people are cooking and why. A good amount of wandering and meandering is part of my process, punctuated by stops at specific shops, restaurants, stalls, markets, and establishments I’ve earmarked ahead of time. Perhaps most importantly, I seek out my beat within other cultures (as well as my own). In Japan, I tend to focus on many of the macrobiotic and shojin-ryori (Zen Buddhist temple cuisine) preparations and ingredients. Or, related to India, I like to learn about what ingredients practitioners use for Ayurvedic treatments, or what they eat daily in an ashram or in a Jain temple or in the narrow street alleys of Chandni Chowk, Delhi’s ancient market. It’s from this vantage point that I begin to think about cooking and recipe development, and where I often find my own angle, voice, and technique. 
You’ll see a mix of recipe types in this book. One recipe was inspired by Grace Young’s passion for cooking with a cast-iron wok, another after I saw a group of women breaking for lunch on a crowded Delhi sidewalk; there was a carrot salad I encountered in a snowy mountain monastery town, and another recipe idea sparked by a favorite Japanese spice blend, shichimi togarashi. There are recipes inspired by ingredients I’ve encountered, markets I’ve shopped, cooks I’ve chatted up, books I’ve read, and scribbles I’ve made in my journal; there are my takes on regional preparations and others based on snapshots I’ve taken with my camera. 

Stylistically, I have some rules—although rule might be too strong a word: best practices could be a better term. I tend to work within a regional palette of ingredients. Meaning, you won’t see a whole lot of cross-cultural ingredient mixing within recipes or chapters. If I’m cooking with Japanese ingredients, I’ll likely use oil from that palette—perhaps sesame. The vinegar might be brown rice vinegar, the noodles buckwheat soba, and the seasoning shoyu or mirin. So I won’t often mix, say, shoyu with ras el hanout or use preserved lemons with miso. I also tend to do multiple dishes from one region and not serve, for example, a tagine alongside saag paneer.

Many of the recipes lend themselves easily to seasonal adaptations, so keep that in mind—if a recipe calls for asparagus, and it’s autumn, consider using broccoli or cauliflower.

Finally, a word about sourcing ingredients. It is understood in many cultures that food is powerful medicine, with whole or natural foods being the most beneficial, interesting, and delicious. Do your best to avoid genetically modified crops or those that have been sprayed intensively with pesticides, or grown in soil that has been fertilized with chemicals known to damage the environment as well as the health of the individuals harvesting your food. Seek out food and ingredients that are healthy, powerful, and full of beauty and vitality—the sort of food that lifts the spirit and sustains the body: food that hasn’t been stripped of its natural nutrients and beneficial properties. It matters and it is worth it. 

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Baked  Oatmeal
pluots • kefir • almonds


I suspect the baked oatmeal recipe in my last book made it into more kitchens than any other recipe I’ve ever written. It’s still a regular here at home, in various guises, and this is a version worth celebrating. Made with crimson-fleshed Dapple Dandy pluots, it rides the line beautifully between the sweetness of the summer fruit and the tanginess of the kefir or buttermilk. Other stone fruit can be substituted. 

Serves 6


Zest of 1 lemon
2 cups | 7 oz | 200 g rolled  oats
1/2 cup | 2 oz | 60 g whole Marcona almonds
1 teaspoon aluminum-free baking powder
Scant 1/2 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
1/3 cup | 2 oz | 60 g maple syrup,  plus more for serving
1 cup | 240 ml kefir or buttermilk
1 cup | 240 ml water 1 egg
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 pound | 455 g ripe pluots, quartered and pitted
A bit of cream, to serve


Preheat the oven to 375°F | 190°C with a rack in the top third of the oven. Generously butter the inside of an 8-inch | 20cm square baking dish (or equivalent), then sprinkle with lemon zest.
In a bowl, mix together the oats, almonds, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl, whisk together the maple syrup, kefir, water, egg, half of the butter, and the vanilla. Arrange the pluots in a single layer in the bottom of the prepared baking dish. Cover the fruit with the oat mixture. Slowly drizzle the kefir mixture over the oats. Gently give the baking dish a couple of raps on the countertop to make sure the liquid moves through the oats.

Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, until the top is nicely golden and the oat mixture has set. Remove from the oven and let cool for a few minutes. Drizzle the remaining melted butter on the top and serve. Finish with a bit more maple syrup if you want it a bit sweeter, and a thread of cream to bring it all together.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Near
San Francisco

En Route

Far
Morocco
Japan
Italy
France 
India

Accompaniments

Acknowledgments
Index

Editorial Reviews

07/06/2015
Swanson (Super Natural Cooking) offers a unique but uneven collection of vegetarian recipes inspired by Northern California, where she resides, and the diverse locales she’s visited, including Morocco, Japan, and Italy. All recipes, she states, are rooted in place, incorporating the culture of the cuisine as well as common local ingredients and techniques. She starts with San Francisco and Northern California, showcasing lackluster offerings such as cucumber salad, yellow wax beans, and shredded tofu stir-fry. Fortunately, the majority of her overseas offerings are much more appetizing. Morocco’s saffron tagine, yellow couscous, and roasted winter squash exude a variety of rich flavors. Her chapter on Japan is superb, especially nori granola, turmeric miso soup, sake-glazed mushrooms, and watermelon radish soup. Surprisingly, Italy disappoints, with radicchio salad, brown butter tortelli, and biscottini—safe but unremarkable choices. France fares only slightly better with olives with grapefruit juice, wine-washed arugula, three types of tartines, and lettuce hearts with melted brown butter. India provides Swanson with an opportunity to shine once again with saag paneer, aloo bhaji, rasam, and makhaniya lassi. She concludes with a hodgepodge chapter on accompaniments, including brown rice, fresh ginger juice, whey, and labneh. Diverse but unbalanced, this collection vacillates from the unusual to the mundane, offering cooks occasional culinary gems amidst the humdrum. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Over the last decade, Heidi Swanson has done more than anyone to diversify the modern pantry and elevate kitchen aesthetics. Simultaneously universal and deeply personal, Near & Far will stoke your curiosity, guide you through an ever-expanding list of flavors and ingredients, and inspire you to try something new, all over again.” 
—Samin Nosrat, chef and writer

“Near & Far is a delicious paean to the culinary glories of world travel, and the grounding comfort found in returning to one’s own home kitchen. Heidi Swanson has married her keen traveler’s eye to her devoted home cook’s soul, and created a quietly sumptuous masterpiece rooted in place that stands alongside the work of Pico Iyer and Yotam Ottolenghi for sheer, mouthwatering breadth. This book will never leave my kitchen.” 
—Elissa Altman, author of Poor Man’s Feast

“I love Heidi Swanson’s recipes. They’re unique and special, and everything I’ve made from Near & Far has been enthusiastically enjoyed by friends at my table. But what I especially love about this book is Heidi’s singular, centered voice. Here is a person who cooks, eats, and travels—all the while standing calmly in a complex and interesting, but not always easy, world.” 
—Deborah Madison, author of Vegetable Literacy and The New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

From the Publisher

07/01/2015
Readers may not realize this is a health-focused and vegetarian cookbook, because unlike its predecessors Super Natural and Super Natural Every Day, it reduces eating advice to a single introductory paragraph. In what she describes as a companion to those titles, James Beard Award-winning author Swanson shares recipes and writings from her life at home in northern California and her travels to Morocco, Japan, Italy, France, and India. Her seasonal and ingredient-focused lunches, dinners, drinks, and treats include elegant hot and cold salads (grated cucumber salad), whole grain-enriched pastas (fennel frond orzo), piquant appetizers (lucques in grapefruit juice), and modest desserts (madeleines). Swanson's airy food and travel photographs are rich with colors and textures, and in this book's simple layout, they shine. VERDICT Highly recommended for anyone who loves unassuming and easy gourmet cooking. Fans of David Tanis (One Good Dish) and Alice Waters (The Art of Simple Food) will love this.

Library Journal