How I Got Black Pepper Back

My mother taught me that if you pass the salt, it’s impolite to do so without passing the pepper. In our household the two were always married, side by side on the dinner table. When I was old enough to cook for myself, I seasoned everything from pork chops to vinaigrettes with black pepper. Well into a career as a professional cook I persisted in an automatic two-step routine — reaching for the pepper mill just after sprinkling salt on whatever I was cooking. I’ve always liked the stuff but after a while I think I stopped tasting it.

Some years ago a friend and I took a food trip to Israel. We focused on shawarma and falafel. We visited fantastic markets in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem. I saw table after table overburdened with a panoply of spices. One shop in Tel Aviv had low ceilings and bad lighting and twenty pound bags of roasted cumin and coriander. Also wonderfully powerful sumac and different types of dried chili peppers, aromatic cardamom pods and more varieties of cinnamon than I had previously understood to exist. There were also heaping bags of black peppercorns. But unlike at my dinner table, where black pepper was the chosen spice, here it was just one among many. That experience in Israel crystallized my realization that my palate needed a break from salt’s longtime Plus One. I had to abstain from black pepper in order to explore the rest of the spice world. Upon my return to the States, I set about learning to cook with cardamom, cumin, coriander, clove, cinnamon, fenugreek, fennel seed, sumac, saffron, turmeric and many varieties of dried chili, both fiery and mild. In the meantime, my pepper mill gathered dust and eventually ended up in the back of a forgotten cabinet.

This year, during the winter break, my wife and I took our children to Mexico City and as usual, our stomachs were our primary tour guides. The food of Mexico has big flavors. Herbs that have never hit the shelves of mainstream markets in the U.S. — like papalo and epazote — decorate every plate. Mexicans eat chicken with chocolate (mole) and chocolate sauce with chili (for dipping churros) and they work magic with every part of the pig. The skin becomes crisp chicharrones, the head sumptuous torta de queso and satiating pozole, the feet pickled or stewed, or cooked up with the ribs in cerdo en salsa verde or or salsa roja.

For New Year’s eve, we went to Puebla, a two hour drive over a mountain pass east of Mexico City. The pace is slower there, the buildings lower — most topping out at two or three stories. The vibe is much calmer and a welcome respite after four busy days of sightseeing in the Western Hemisphere’s second largest city. And the food! Puebla’s food has its own flavor.

The Taco Arabe is one of Poblano cuisine’s signature dishes. It’s interesting both historically and gastronomically, having arrived in Puebla by way of the Middle East. It is made with lamb cooked like shawarma on a vertical spit and served in a delicious flatbread that is the love child of a pita and a tortilla. We found our favorite at a restaurant called Antigua Taqueria La Oriental where customers put away between between 1,000 and 1,500 of them every day. They also deliver, which is an invaluable discovery when members of your traveling party are tranquilized into inaction by the view — from our sunny and comfortably appointed hotel rooftop — of Popocatepetl gently spewing volcanic clouds

Though Tacos Arabes are the headliners, Antigua Taqueria La Oriental’s menu has a deep cast of other characters, among them a weird sort of pizza made with a tasty melty cheese, a couple of soups and also something called cebollas al vapor. My grasp of Spanish is limited, so I ordered this last dish because the words sounded appetizing. I guessed at the steam component, but had no sense of what else it might be. A bowl arrived at the table with a bit of a (disappointing) woosh. I was underwhelmed — it appeared to be nothing more than a steamy bowl of sliced yellow onions speckled with particles of the spice I’d sworn off all those years and continents ago.

Still, I asked for a fork and dug in. The fruitiness of all that freshly ground black pepper mingled with the sweetness of the onions, and added a satisfyingly spicy kick. Those onions cooked in water with just a hint of pork fat and garnished very simply with a generous amount of the black stuff (and a squeeze of lime) turned out to be the star in seven days of adventures in eating the wild range of competing, declarative, clap-for-me main dishes of Mexico.

When I got home, I dug back into the cabinet, pulled out my pepper mill and filled it with fresh peppercorns. I steamed some onions and served them with a heavy dusting of freshly ground black pepper, and a strong squeeze of lime. Even at a remove from its boisterous fellow dishes, in the quiet theater of our NYC apartment, this dish sang. I’ve substituted leeks for yellow onions in the recipe below, and butter for pork fat but feel free to use whichever you prefer.

Steamed leaks with black pepper and lime

Cook the leeks

Preheat the oven to 350ºF.

4 good sized leeks

2 tablespoons pork fat (or butter)

1/8 teaspoon pepper

¼–1/2 teaspoon salt (or to taste)

Cut the tough green tops and the root from the leeks. Slice the leeks in half lengthwise and rinse thoroughly to get out all the dirt, fanning the leeks like a pack of cards, keeping each half intact. Shake the leeks dry over the sink or out on the back porch.

Place a piece of parchment on a baking sheet and lay the leeks side-by-side. Schmear with the fat and season with salt then cover the leeks with parchment and wrap the whole baking sheet in tin foil. Fold the foil at the edges to make a tight seal. Put the baking sheet in the oven.

Check the leeks after forty minutes, and make a guess about how much longer they need — if any time at all — and reset your timer. Not all ovens are the same and neither are all leeks, so the cooking time is variable (but it won’t take less than forty minutes and it might take an hour and twenty). When the leeks are done, they should be meltingly tender. If they aren’t then cook them until they are.

Finish the leeks

The cooked leeks

1 lime, cut into wedges

a pepper mill

Slice the warm leeks the long way, plate them and crack lots and lots of black pepper all over the place. Garnish with wedges of lime.