Have a smoking good time with warming foods

It’s cold and damp outside and time to eat foods that make you feel warm. Cocoa, obviously, is a good choice. Iced tea and lemonade, obviously bad choices. Ice cream? No.Lentils? Yes, especially if you eat them when they are warm (as opposed to cold, on a salad, which is also very yummy but not particularly warming).All warm foods, obviously, are warming (hello). Lentils are doubly warming, however; they are also included in the list of Traditional Chinese Medicine’s warming foods (I think it has something to do with the qi or air flow in your body). The list of warming foods is long and fairly weird. Some of the items on it are surprising (dill and basil, which I think of as summer foods). More obviously the list includes foods that become farm market staples at this time of year: cabbage, kale, leeks.You could actually make a really nice stir fry with thin-sliced cabbage and top it with some sauteed leeks and lentils and a sprinkling of (delicious and subtle) black sesame seeds.But I digress. The real purpose of this column is to talk about foods that are not just warm, not just hot, but absolutely smoking. Literally. I’ve learned how to cook foods in a very simple stovetop smoker. It’s one of those cooking tricks (like making butter) that is endlessly impressive to other people, even to accomplished cooks. It’s very worth the minimal effort and it has many advantages — one of which is that you can smoke garlic cloves and carrots and add them to your lentils and they taste phenomenally good. The first question that will arise (since this is the health page) is whether smoking foods can cause cancer. The answer is no, at least in theory and at least unless you are eating smoked foods several times a week (unlikely to happen; smoking foods is easy but still cumbersome and time consuming). When we hear about smoked foods being unhealthy, as a general rule what we are hearing about is smoked meats; and it isn’t always the smoking process that creates carcinogens, it’s usually the nitrates and the salts. There are also carcinogens that are created when you cook meat at very high heat, and when fat from meat drips onto charcoal and creates chemicals that rise back up onto your food.But health experts have even relaxed their warnings somewhat on meats cooked on a barbecue grill. Generally, if you’re not doing it three times a week, you’re good.Smoking vegetables is even more benign. That’s not to say that it won’t someday be found to be unhealthy or cancer-causing; these days, doesn’t it just seem like everything you eat eventually turns out to be bad for you? But the flip side of that is that many things can be bad for you in excess, but most things are pretty much OK if you eat them in moderation.The way this whole smoking obsession of mine began was during a dinner at a restaurant in Lenox, Mass., called Nudel. The chef had created a wonderful smoky/creamy apricot soup. We asked him how he’d made it and he said, “We have a smoker in the back and we just tossed some apricots in it.”He made it sound so easy. And of course, he probably has a real smoker, so it probably is really easy. But making a home smoker, it turns out, is just as easy. I found the instructions online, and I’ve now done this four times and have had great results every time. It’s not an exact science, I will warn you. But in the end, it’s all good (literally).There are several online tutorials that can explain this technique. I used the mini movie posted by Saveur magazine editor Dana Bowen (it was posted in 2012 but the magazine posted a text-only version this summer, in July). I am lucky enough to have a deep cast-iron skillet with a lid, so that’s what I used and it was ideal. You can also use a wok if you have a lid, and there are online tutorials specifically dedicated to smoking with a wok. You can in theory also use a deep enamel-cast iron pot.You will need some wood chips (I used Stubb’s All-Natural Bar-B-Q Smoking Wood Chips from Lowe’s; they work great) and a lot of heavy-duty aluminum foil and a vegetable steamer basket. First take about two cups of chips and soak them in a bowl of water. Next, line the bottom of your pan with two long sheets of foil, one going in each direction. Smoking is messy, so you want the bottom and sides of your pot to be completely covered (this is why a cast-iron skillet is ideal; you can usually buy one at Tractor Supply in Amenia). Drain your wood chips and then scatter them over that base of foil. Then add on another layer of foil, very long again because you’re going to crimp it up over the sides of the lid to your pot. Lay the steamer basket, as flat as possible, on top of that next layer of foil. You’re going to put your vegetables now on top of the steamer basket. For some reason, raw vegetables take the smoke better than ones that are cooked. Your veg will come out of this process, probably, a little hard. Once they’ve been smoked, you can cook them further if you want.I find that carrots, cut into a small dice, smoke excellently well. I also smoked some garlic cloves this week and they were phenomenal (I peeled them and sliced them in thirds). And I smoked some peeled pears; they were amazing too (I put them on a big salad of kale and arugula, along with some beets).So, put your veg on top of the steamer basket. Then take the lid of your pot and lay on two long sheets of foil, one going in each direction. Fit the lid on the pot and bring the foil from the pot bottom up so it meets the foil from the pot lid; crimp them together so the smoke doesn’t escape. Although, of course, the smoke will escape, somewhat, so you’ll want to maybe keep a window open or turn on the exhaust fan over your stove. But it doesn’t smoke the whole house up and cause your smoke alarm to go off. Once your foil is all crimped up nicely around your pot, put it on the stove at high heat for five to 10 minutes, until smoke starts to come out of the pot. Lower the heat to medium for the next 10 minutes, then turn the heat off. I like to then let the veg sit in the closed pot for about another 15 minutes while the smoke dissipates. This, of course, means that everything in my pot gets very thoroughly smoked. This is the trial-and-error section of the recipe. I think probably every batch of food that you try to smoke will come out slightly different, but they’ll all be good. At this point you might be wondering what all this has to do with lentils? In my experience, it’s hard to make lentils taste delicious. Unless you cook them with some smoked savories. So, saute your smoked carrots and garlic (and leeks or onions, or maybe even smoked pear slices) in a deepish saucepan until tender. Add one cup of green French lentils (which remain firm and disc-shaped, unlike brown and orange lentils, which turn to mush). Add four cups of water. Add a bay leaf. Add a little bit of curry powder. Cook, uncovered, for about 20 minutes until the lentils are tender and, I hope, most of your liquid has boiled away. I also like to add, late in the cooking process, some frozen tomatoes from my summer garden. The flavor is fantastic; keep in mind that a little bit of smokey flavor goes a long way, so don’t overdo it.You can add smoked savories to many winter dishes. I haven’t tried it in stew yet, but probably it will work well when I do it. I added some chopped smoked garlic to a bowl of black olives before a cocktail party this week. It was fantastic.