Here’s the secret: it’s really easy.

I know, I know. It is intimidating.

You know, sharp things.  And all those sharpening stones with all their technical names and various properties and not knowing which one is the right one and do you need a different stone for each different kind of knife and so on.  All those manly masculine male men on the testosteriffically detailed knife-geek online forums treating sharpening as if it were a cross between defusing a particularly sophisticated and hairtrigger bomb and skinning a moose with your teeth are not an aid to the neophyte, either.

And what if I couldn’t tell when I’d gotten it right?  Or worse, what if I couldn’t tell when I’d gotten it wrong?  What if I completely screwed up all my knives and didn’t really know enough to tell and then had someone else point out to me that someone had done a piss-poor job of sharpening my knives and had ruined all the edges and now they’d all have to be professionally reground?

Also, you could cut yourself.  But just as it is true that you’re more likely to cut yourself with a dull knife, because dull knives slip and skid, it is true that you may feel entirely free to ignore the chest-thumping of the knife geek contingent, because sharpening knives is not exactly rocket science.

Here’s what knife sharpening is: rubbing a thin piece of metal on a hard rock until the edge of the metal gets sharp.

Any bored teenager in detention hall can do this with a cafeteria spoon and a brick.  What’s your excuse?

What you need is a knife whose sharpness could stand improvement.  You probably have at least one of these already.

And you need a whetstone.  You can get basic ones with a coarser grit stone on one side, and a finer grit stone on the other for less than ten bucks.  Those are a good idea.  You don’t necessarily need a steel, but they’re nice to have and you can keep an edge on your knife easily if you give it a half-dozen swipes on the steel every (or almost every) time you use the knife.

You do not need a “knife sharpener.”  Seriously.  Sticking a knife you like into one of those is kind of like sticking your favorite pencil into the garbage disposal instead of sharpening it in a proper pencil sharpener.  Knife sharpeners have not got the versatility or sensitivity that your hands have, and they have only one angle at which they sharpen.  Different kinds of knives need to be sharpened at different angles — the thinner the blade, the shallower the angle (the closer to parallel with the stone)  at which you have to hold the knife in relation to the whetstone.  You can do this by hand easily, and in fact, you will probably find yourself doing it intuitively: the knife doesn’t slide across the stone nicely if it is at the wrong angle.

You also really don’t need to worry about the 772 different kinds and hardnesses of sharpening stones that are available out there in the big overspecialized world of knife-freak dicksizing.  Unless you discover that you want to.  In which case your kink is fine with me as long as you don’t expect me to participate.

To sharpen a knife, you basically move the blade across the surface of the stone as if you were trying to slice a thin lateral sheet off the top of the stone.  You do this on both sides of the knife, and along the entire length of the blade.  Generally you do it the same number of times on each side of the knife.

After you’ve given it a dozen strokes or so on a side, you can test the sharpness of the blade.  If you are scared of testing it by stroking it with your thumb — I can understand the reticence though it’s a great way of doing it once you get the hang, and it’s not something I can explain, you just have to experience it — then get a piece of fruit, or better yet a tomato or a bell pepper, and gently draw the blade over the fruit without putting pressure on it.  You will soon know whether the blade is sharp enough to cut in easily.  You can improve the sharpness as required with a few more strokes on the stone, or on a steel.

When you’ve got it as sharp as you want, wash the knife, dry it, and put it away.  And when you’re done sharpening all the knives you are going to sharpen, do the same with your stone and your steel.

That’s it.  You rub a piece of metal on a rock until the metal’s sharp.  And then you have a sharp piece of metal.  Mighty useful things, sharp pieces of metal.

The best thing about sharpening my own knives, to me: even the cheapest knives in my kitchen are a pleasure to use when they’re genuinely sharp, and now I never have to put up with them being any other way. And neither do you.

I keep seeing ad copy for “probiotic” things.  Just recently I saw it blazoned across a bag of dog food and I sort of hit my rant threshold, because honestly, really, truly? I don’t get it.

Microorganisms come in three basic types.  There are the ones that can hurt you, a fairly small group.  There are the ones that are neutral where you’re concerned, by far the lion’s share.  And there are the ones that coexist profitably with your body, often in a symbiotic relationship where you benefit from having them around and they benefit from having you as their host.

That part I understand.

What I don’t understand is how people aren’t throwing rocks and rotten fruit (full of microorganisms!) at the ad execs who seem to think it is legitimate to not only promote “probiotics” as some sort of “nutraceutical” that will give you a Kryptonite intestinal tract and make your dick bigger besides, but to sell them for significantly more than you’d pay for, say, just some dumb container of regular old live-culture yogurt.

Here’s why I’m just not seeing the point of the “probiotic” juggernaut. With very little involvement on my part, I can convert an ordinary cabbage, a couple quarts of water, and a small amount of salt into a powerhouse substance chock-full of antioxidants and “probiotics” in about 2 or 3 weeks time, and I can do it for free.

It’s called making sauerkraut.  Any idiot who can cut up a cabbage and dissolve some salt in some water can do it.  You certainly don’t have to know what a microorganism is, or which ones need to go into the sauerkraut crock.    The microorganisms volunteer their efforts.  They just show up.  People made sauerkraut, and all kinds of other fermented foods besides, for thousands of years before anyone even thought about inventing the microscope. Limiting which ones will grow is taken care of thanks to a little elementary chemistry: brine encourages the growth of only certain sorts, and submerging the cabbage in the brine further limits things by permitting only anaerobic microorganisms to thrive.

Fascinatingly enough, the same thing is true of letting a great variety of other foods rot in a controlled way, or, in other words, ferment.  Milk will get you yogurt, kefir, sour cream, buttermilk, and cheese, among other things.  In countries where they aren’t so damned afraid of a few  microbes as it seems America is, butter is also made from cultured cream.  (If you’ve ever traveled abroad and wondered why the butter in Europe is better than it is here, that’d be why.  Culture your own cream at home and make your own butter and you may never switch back.) Sourdough bread is the result of spontaneous local microbes, and the reason San Francisco sourdough tastes different from what I make here in Baltimore is because the local microbes aren’t the same.  Many forms of pickles are, of course, fermented.  Miso.  Soy sauce.  At least a thousand condiments ranging from Chinese chili and broad bean paste to Vietnamese fish sauce.  And let us not forget to pause a moment in praise of beer, wine, mead, and all the other delicious adult beverages whose delectable transformations occur through the benificent offices of the friendly microbe.  Yes, of course, in modern food production, microbes of very specific types are often added intentionally to insure certain sorts of consistency.  But originally all these foods and many, many more were made with wild microorganisms.  And every single one of these foods, wild-cultured or inoculated, depends on microorganisms acting on and in it for its very existence.

So why the hell is anyone paying extra for “probiotic” foods when there are plenty of foods out there with happy little beneficial microbes already resident?  As far as I can tell, it’s because there’s an artificially generated market for it. First through the  expedient of killing off the microbes in fermented food before it is sold, which seems pretty underhanded to me since the microbes are part of what makes it a fermented food.  Then people are reminded, via advertising, that beneficial bacteria are good for you… and told that in order to get them, they’ll have to buy the fermented food that has had its microbes killed off, then new ones added.  This practice strikes me as both idiotic and larcenous, and if I were you, I would strongly consider giving up the bad habit of standing there in line with your wallet out waiting for the opportunity to pony up the premiums that pay the doubtless princely salaries of the marketing geniuses who thought up this little boondoggle.

Me? I buy yogurt that hasn’t been heat-treated to kill off the bugs that made it into yogurt in the first place.  My kimchi, sauerkraut, miso, and some of my pickles keep fermenting slowly in the fridge until I finish eating them.  If I really need buttermilk for something, I’ll let some milk clabber. (Look it up.)  Like I said, I make my own sauerkraut, and pickled beets, and pickled turnips, and whatever else piques my fancy.  I haven’t tried brewing at home yet, but I have quite a few friends who do and I am sometimes the happy beneficiary of their bubbling, microorganism-rich vats.

You want “probiotics”?  Eat fermented foods that haven’t been pasteurized.  Ferment them yourself if you want to, it’s pretty easy.  Simple as that.  It’s how the entire population of the globe has been getting its beneficial microorganism infusions for thousands of years. You can even give your dog some.

Spring’s nice with regard to the eating-type leaves.  Lettuces, spinach, pea shoots, that sort of thing.  And I do enjoy them.  But my heart really belongs to the kind of eating-type leaves that are available mostly in the fall, many of which taste best after a frost or so.  Kales, broccoli leaves, collards, mustard greens, turnip greens.  And of course the season-long standout, chard, with its glorious texture and delightfully toothsome stems.

A few weeks ago, shortly after fall greens season started to hit its stride, my Belovedary peered into the refrigerator and announced that our household was not normal, because the fridge was full of, and I quote, “bags of leaves.”

True enough.  But leaves are a pretty good thing to have your fridge be full of, as far as I’m concerned.  But then again I may not be entirely normal on that score, myself.  I’m pretty diehard about my greens, and have turned into something of an evangelist on the topic as a result.  To the extent that I’m gearing up to teach some classes — probably in the springtime, it’s looking like — on cooking and eating greens, in cooperation with a local organic produce outlet that is building a commercial kitchen in its facility.  (I’ll let you all know when this actually gets scheduled.  Right now I’m planning a greens class, a cole crops class, and a canning 101.)

Anyway.  One of the reasons that I’m gearing up to teach a greens class is because I’ve noticed that a lot of people seem to not really know what to do with greens, or have had only bad experiences with them being overcooked and slimy and nasty, and I think both are a shame.  Greens are, of course, good for you, but I think that’s beside the point: they’re also tasty, and useful in the kitchen.  You can do lots of things with greens.  Many more than most people think.  I’ve written about some of them in the past, in a post on kale.  And indeed, there was a little greens recipe in the preceding post, if you noticed that.

But perhaps you’d like something a little more main-dishy to do with greens.  And perhaps you’re just getting used to greens, and would prefer that the greens not take the starring role in the dish.

Pazi dolmasi — Turkish stuffed chard — is the perfect solution for you.  It’s basically stuffed grape leaves, what you might know in Greek as dolmades, but made using chard leaves instead of grape leaves as the wrappers.  The chard has a different texture to the grape leaves, and a different taste, but I think you’ll like the buttery smoothness of the chard as a wrapper around a savory, engagingly-spiced filling.  This is one of the recipes I plan to teach when I teach my greens class, to help people break out of the mindset that “eating greens” means having to eat a huge pile of greens all by themselves.  I mean you can.  And I often do.  But there are plenty of other options, and this is one of those stealthy ones that sort of sneaks the greens in by using them as a conveyance for something enticing.

You can make either a vegan or a meat filling for these.  I like both equally well, to be honest.  The process is more or less the same for both, it’s just a matter of swapping out grated/salted/squeezed zucchini for ground lamb.

Pazi Dolmasi (stuffed chard)

1/2 pound ground lamb OR 4 cups grated zucchini, lightly salted, allowed to sit for 10 minutes, then squeezed dry
3 medium onions, diced
5-7 cloves garlic, minced
medium bunch parsley, minced
large handful pine nuts
large handful dried black currants or Zante currants (which are a grape, actually, but they still taste good) or finely chopped dried apricot or dried unsweetened tart cherries
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon dried spearmint leaves, rubbed to powder between your hands
1 teaspoon dried dill weed (if you like it, leave it out if you can’t stand it, opinions can be strong)
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 cup coarsely ground tomatoes (canned is fine, or put fresh ones through the big holes on a box grater)
1 cup medium-grain rice
juice of a lemon
olive oil
salt
water

2 large bunches fresh chard, washed and trimmed of stems so that no stem protrudes past the base of the leaf
Heat a large, heavy-bottomed pan over a medium heat and when the pan is hot, add the onions.  Saute until onions are transparent, and add the pine nuts and saute until the pine nuts are lightly golden.  Add lamb or zucchini and cook until lamb is thoroughly cooked or zucchini is limp, as relevant.  Add garlic and and stir in, then spices, herbs, parsley, and dried fruit.  Finally add tomatoes and rice, and stir in well.  If the tomatoes are thick you may want to add a little water — not more than a half cup — to give the rice some moisture to soak up.  Add a little salt, if you think it needs it.  (Canned tomatoes can be kind of salty.) Cook over a low heat, stirring frequently, until the filling is a reasonably cohesive mass and could concievably be dolloped out into little piles without it running all over the place.  Turn the heat off and let it cool a bit, so you can handle it.

While the filling is cooling, place your chard in a large heatproof bowl or pot and pour boiling water over the chard until it is submerged.  Let the chard sit in the hot water for about 10 minutes, just long enough to soften it but not long enough to make it mushy.  After 10 minutes, pour off the hot water and pour in some cool water, and let sit another 5-10 minutes.  When you are ready to roll some pazi dolmasi, drain the chard and proceed.

Preheat the oven to 350F/ 180 C.

You will need a plate to roll on, and  large baking pan to put the rolls into when they’re rolled up.  Begin by selecting a chard leaf and placing it, stem side up, on your plate, with the stem end of the leaf nearest you.  Place about a tablespoon, perhaps more (depending on the size of the leaf) of filling about 2 inches up from the bottom and in the middle of the leaf.  Fold the bottom of the leaf up over the filling.  If the stem is thick, this may require a little force, but the stem should bend without breaking too badly (if it breaks a little, don’t worry).  Next, fold the sides of the leaf in over the lump of filling, so the leaf is now more or less the same width as the filling.  Finally, roll this little packet of filling up the rest of the way in the remaining leaf, tucking any stray bits of leaf in at the sides as you go.  You should have a little dark-green burrito-esque packet, and you should put it, flap-side down, in the pan.

Repeat until you’ve used up all your leaves or all your filling,whichever comes first.  After you’ve made a few batches you’ll have a pretty good idea of how to get it to come out more or less evenly.

Once you have finished rolling dolmasi, you need to make them a cooking liquid.  The rice inside the rolls, as you will recall, is not fully cooked yet.  Nor are the chard leaves.  So that’s the next stage.  Mix 1/4 cup olive oil, the juice of a lemon (use a lemon and a half, or possibly even two lemons, if your lemons are small or dry or if you just really like a lot of lemon), and a cup of water, and pour the mixture over the dolmasi.

Place the pan in the oven and leave it there for about an hour.  Check in with it after a half an hour or so and make sure it still has a little water in the bottom of the pan.  If it looks too dry, add a quarter-cup to a half-cup of water.  And if, after an hour of baking, it still looks pretty wet, give it another half an hour to dry it out a little.

When you remove the dolmasi from the oven there should still be a little liquid left in the bottom of the pan.  Not much, just enough to coat it.  Let the pan sit, loosely covered (I usually just toss a baking sheet on top of the pan, but you could use tinfoil I suppose), for a half an hour.  Serve warm, or at room temperature.  I do not recommend serving dolmasi chilled as it mutes the flavors.

This makes a lovely main dish, but can also be served as an appetizer or as part of a mezze spread.  I am particularly fond of pairing pazi dolmasi with cucumbers in some form or another, sometimes just plain old sliced ones.

If you have leftover filling, save it.  Tomorrow you can bung it into a pot with some broth, or even some water, and some lemon juice, and cook it until the rice is soft, and call it soup.  It’s quite pleasant.  And if you have leftover chard, you can slice it up and saute it and squeeze some lemon juice on it and eat it and that is quite pleasant too.

If you don’t, you should.  Braise the chopped greens in a large enough pan for a bit — water or broth — until they’re mostly cooked, then cook off nearly all the liquid.  Make a well in the middle of the greens by pushing them to the sides, pour in a little oil, add a couple of anchovy filets (they will basically dissolve if you poke them with a spoon, which is exactly what you want) and a liberal quantity of chopped garlic and a scattering of the chiles, cook it all in the oil until the garlic starts to get soft, then toss it all with the greens.  Eat as is or with a splash of vinegar.

And naturally, in the course of things, you  sometimes end up with some leftovers, don’t you?  Yeah, I know what you mean.  Pain in the ass, leftovers.  You gotta find a little container to put them in, you have to put them in the fridge, and then you have to remember to eat the damn things before they grow fur and tentacles.

Well, that’s not a problem here.  You know why?  Because of the Frittata Principle.  The Frittata Principle states that any savory leftover(s) present in small quantities in your refrigerator may be judiciously combined in a hot frying pan, heated through, and then smothered with beaten egg, which is then cooked until it is set throughout, to create a sumptuous eggy cake of wonderment in which no two bites are exactly the same.

So go ahead.  Put a little drizzle of olive oil in that nice hot cast iron frying pan.  Throw in your leftover greens.  Cook off any liquid you’ve got going on in there, and when the greens are no longer soggy, beat a couple-few eggs in a bowl (You know how many that is, right?  It’s the number that seems like it affords the right proportion of eggs and greens.) and then pour them over the greens.  The eggs won’t take too long to cook, but if you are in a rush or just really hungry you can take spatula-sized hunks of them as they start to set and flip them over so they cook all the way through a little faster.

Eggs and anchovies have a special affinity for one another, you’ll find.  And so do eggs and chiles, eggs and garlic, and eggs and greens. Basically it’s a match made in heaven, if heaven is a frying pan, which sometimes it is.

If you want to make it decadent, brush a slice or two of good crusty bread with a little olive oil and grill it so it’s nice and crunchy.  Put appropriately-sized chunks of eggs/greens on top.

Don’t share.  Unless you really, really want to.

Thing the Second:
I had heard through the grapevine that the inimitable and talented Andrea Nguyen of
Viet World Kitchen was very approachable, helpful, and friendly, and you know what? It’s all true. I’ve been making my way through her fantastic new Asian Dumplings book and had a question about gluten-free doughs for steamed dumplings, so I emailed her, expecting that maybe at some point she’d address the question in her Asian Dumpling Tips blog, if I was lucky. Instead, she emailed me back, linked me to a recipe for Slanted Door’s Banh Xep Chay, and pointed me to its dough, a combo of rice and tapioca flours. I can’t wait to play with the recipe. Thanks, Andrea!

And to the rest of you, if you like dumplings (and who doesn’t?) and you haven’t bought your copy of the Asian Dumplings book yet, you know what you need to do. The recipes are clear and consistently good, the dough recipes and methods particularly welcome because so many cookbooks try either to scare you with how difficult dumpling wrappers are to make, or just assume you will use packaged dumpling skins. (Prepared skins are fine, but don’t exist for all kinds of dumplings. Also, I find that using them is a little like using pre-made pie crusts… you definitely notice the difference if you’ve gotten used to the homemade versions.) Best of all, Asian Dumplings has recipes for dumplings that go far beyond the dim sum repertoire: samosas, momos, mandoo, vada, karipap… even a Filipino empanada. Try the cucur badak. Really. You can thank me later.