Man With a Pan by John Donahue Page B

tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon coriander
2 tablespoons salt (or to taste) 2 to 3 eggs
1 cup bread crumbs
3 tablespoons of tamarind or lemon juice
    Put the potatoes in their skins in boiling water. Boil until a fork poked in penetrates to the center of the potato easily. Run the potatoes under cold water and set aside.
    Dry the fish with a towel. Cut the fish into 3- to 4-inch chunks and put in a food processor. Pulse to grind, but try not to grind too much. The result should be chunky, not pureed. Empty into a bowl.
    Peel and lightly mash the potatoes.
    Sauté the onion and celery in olive oil.
    When the onion is translucent, add the ginger, garlic, carrot, potato, and jalapeño (if using).
    Sauté for 2 or 3 minutes and then add the horseradish, Worcestershire sauce, spices, and salt.
    Set aside and let cool to room temperature (so that the mixture won’t cook the fish when you add the fish).
    Pour off any liquid that might have come out of the pureed fish.
    Mix the vegetable mixture into the fish.
    Add the eggs, bread crumbs, and tamarind or lemon juice.
    Mix, preferably with your hands, as this will give you a better feel for the texture. If it’s too wet, add more bread crumbs; too dry, add another egg or a little bit of olive oil.
    Press into patties.
    Heat some oil in a skillet until it shimmers.
    Put in the fish cakes, taking care not to crowd the pan.
    Fry until medium brown (about 3 minutes).
    Flip and fry for another 3 minutes.
    Cover and turn down the flame, then cook 2 or so minutes more to make sure the cakes cook through to the center.
    Blot the cakes on paper towels before serving.
    Serve with a yogurt-cucumber raita or some kind of tartar sauce.
    Note: To freeze the cakes, cook them first and then defrost them by putting them in the oven at 350°F for 10 minutes or so.
    On the Shelf
    Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, Marcella Hazan. It has great fish recipes (not just heads). I’ve substituted all kinds of fish for whatever she suggests in her recipes. I’m particularly fond of a complicated dish of hers where you bone a sea bass and stuff it with shellfish. Takes forever, but it’s delicious.
    Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, Mark Kurlansky. In addition to giving good background about codfish, this book has some funny, ancient recipes for all sorts of cod parts.
    3men.com. If you’re ever of a mind to smoke fish, I have found this Web site very helpful.
    Jane Brody’s Good Seafood Book, Jane Brody. This is a good one if you’re trying not to add a lot of calories to the fish that you eat. I’m very fond of her fish-cake recipe and her smoked-fish chowder.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM
    The Hidden Brain: Gender and Cooking
    Shankar Vedantam is a reporter for the Washington Post and the author of The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives. He loves food but is invariably pressed for time in the kitchen and is always on the lookout for delicious vegetarian recipes that can be whipped up quickly. You can correspond with him by visiting www.hiddenbrain.org .
    I woke with a start in the middle of the night. I had been dreaming about crows, potatoes, and a recently departed aunt whom I shall call Yashoda. She had died of complications stemming from diabetes. I lay in bed, watching the slowly rotating blades of a ceiling fan, and remembered the many times I had gone over to my aunt’s apartment when I was a child growing up in India. Before serving me delicious meals, Yashoda would lovingly place steamed rice and vegetable dishes on the ledge outside her kitchen window for the hordes of crows and sparrows perched there expectantly. It was a regular ritual, and the birds ate their lunch with what I can only describe as a sense of entitlement. Yashoda believed she was feeding her ancestors, who visited her kitchen window in the guise of birds. We never discussed the ritual; she