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After I finished last week’s column, I reminisced about the incredible bottle of aged sherry vinegar my friend Bill gave me years ago. I remembered the huge flavor a little splash added, a mysterious extra something that elevated food and made it memorable. I used it sparingly in pan sauces, lentils, bean dishes, greens and roasted vegetables. Even though it was vinegar, it didn’t taste vinegary, just delicious and tangy. The bottle in my cupboard was a lovely kitchen luxury and I felt wealthy just looking at it. I wondered why, in all these years, I had never replaced it.

My memory was a bit rusty, so I read up on sherry vinegar. Authentic sherry vinegar, Vinagre de Jerez, comes from the province of Cadiz in southern Spain. Vinagre de Jerez is made from either Palomino or Pedro Ximenez grapes, some grown in renowned vineyards hundreds of years old. It is a European Protected Designation of Origin product, meaning it is carefully regulated and can only be made in a specific region. Sherry vinegar is in the same protected league as Roquefort cheese, Champagne, Parmigiano-Reggiano (fancy parmesan cheese) and many others.

The main aging categories are Vinagre de Jerez, aged six months; Vinagre de Jerez Reserva, aged a minimum of two years and Vinagre de Jerez Gran Reserva, aged a minimum of ten years. The tasting profile is a combination of nuts, oak, spice, caramel and dried fruit. Bill gave me the Gran Reserva type, and it was more like thin syrup than ordinary vinegar. I have also bought the Reserva variety and used it in salad dressings. This vinegar comes in an everyday version, and then one for dress-up.

My recipe for a walnut oil and sherry vinegar salad dressing kept crossing my mind, so I ordered a bottle of Reserva on-line along with my favorite walnut oil, La Tourangelle roasted walnut oil. When the package arrived, I whipped up a batch. Fortunately I had memorized the recipe from years ago.

Sherry Vinegar and Walnut Oil Dressing

¼ cup Vinagre de Jerez Reserva
l small shallot
1 tbsp sugar (I use raw sugar)
2 tsp Dijon or stone ground mustard
pinch salt
¾ cup walnut oil

Blend the first five ingredients, and then slowly add in the oil. This dressing may taste tart and sharp on the spoon, but will be perfect on greens. I love this dressing on a salad of baby greens, pears or apples, walnuts and blue cheese topped with homemade croutons. Refrigerate the walnut oil, as it goes rancid quickly when stored at room temperature.

There you have it – a lesson in food and geography all in one column!

The other day I had dinner with my friends Wendell and Kyle. Wendell made a delicious lasagna which we jokingly named “No Big Deal Lasagna” because he claimed the recipe was super easy. I’ll ask him how to make it sometime; his recipe for the meat sauce has a few unusual twists, like capers.

During dinner, we chatted about Kyle’s kitchen. He’s a bachelor and I’m going to help him create an essential-ingredients pantry so he can whip together a meal in a matter of minutes. During our conversation, Wendell asked me what my top five ingredients are. After clarifying the question – he wanted to know what gives my cooking an edge, not the things I use most often ‒ I went blank. For the next several days, I percolated on the question and came up with my list. Here it is, Wendell!

Maldon sea salt. The chefs in the British royal kitchens use Maldon salt; apparently the Queen loved it. I swear it’s not just salt; I think of it as magic crystals that makes food bloom. Finding the right words to describe this salt is difficult. I keep some in a jar and also in a salt grinder. Two Boys in Condon always has it in stock.

Maggie’s Klare Bruhe. It’s a German-made powdered vegetable soup base I also refer to as magical. It adds a tangy taste to soups, stews and vegetables. You can eat dried beans plain when they are cooked with this, they’ll be that flavorful.

Smoked paprika. Just a little sprinkle of this versatile spice adds a lovely, complex flavor to so many foods. I put it on popcorn along with Maldon salt, butter, Marcona almonds and parmesan cheese. Sometimes I eat this for dinner when I’m too lazy to cook (the vegetables can wait until tomorrow).

Freshly ground pepper. I want to write a column about the joys of freshly ground pepper. Pepper is grown all around the world in tropical zones, and each kind has a distinct flavor such as citrusy, fruity or floral. It’s so easy to grind your own if you have a fast pepper grinder.

MSG, Accent or monosodium glutamate. Decades ago, MSG got some undeserved bad rap that simply isn’t true. It’s an awesome flavor enhancer that adds a savory touch, or the umami flavor, to almost anything you cook. A little dab will do ya’.

And I’m tossing in Wendell’s favorite – Greek oregano. This is very different from the standard oregano found in grocery stores. The flavor is intense and earthy, like oregano on steroids.

What are your top five favorite ingredients? Please write me; I would love to know. Isabel@isabelmontclaire.com

For the past several days I’ve been laughing to myself about something that happened last week. And it feels sooooo good to giggle like that—especially with all the dark-side news these days. What was this cheerful chuckle all about? Take a guess. AI!

Last week I followed my usual routine: I uploaded my column to ChatGPT and asked it to copyedit my work. The column was about my top five favorite ingredients. I sent it off and waited for the AI to generate a polished version.

But this time Chat took a detour. In a bubbly burst of enthusiasm, it announced that it loved to cook (oh, do you now?) and promptly volunteered its own top-five ingredients list. In all that excitement, Chat completely forgot to edit my column. Charming Chat informed me that its five favorite ingredients are sherry vinegar, anchovies, preserved lemons, tahini and fish sauce. That sounds like a Mediterranean diet to me.

This jogged my memory about the time my friend Bill gave me a high-end bottle of authentic sherry vinegar—Vinagre de Jerez Gran Reserva—made in Spain, aged ten years, and purchased on his travels. That elixir was a real treat. I quickly discovered that a little splash here and a little splash there—on vegetables, soups, even in a curry—added a surprising sparkle. One memorable salad dressing I made with walnut oil, sherry vinegar, shallots, Dijon, and a pinch of sugar was simply out of this world. Another bottle of the real-deal sherry vinegar is definitely going on my wish list.

The first time I ate an anchovy was not too long ago at Wendell’s house. He was making puttanesca sauce, and I ate the few that were leftover in the can. For years I had been afraid of anchovies, though I’m not sure why. I was surprised by how much I liked them. I’m glad Chat likes them too.

I’ve made preserved lemons several times; they’re easy to prepare and a fun ingredient to keep around. Add a few and a dish suddenly becomes fancy. I use tahini—sesame seed butter—mostly for hummus and sometimes in salad dressings. I also mix it with honey for a delicious snack eaten just plain.

I don’t yet have fish sauce in my kitchen, but I recently read about it. It’s one of those low/high ingredients: buy the best version you can, because quality matters. Fish sauce adds that deep umami, savory flavor to foods, much the way anchovies do.

So it turns out that Chat and I have something in common. One of the only two cookbooks I own is titled The Essential Mediterranean Cookbook. Perhaps Chat and I could cook together sometime.

I finally recuperated from the episode of AI shock I wrote about last week. But just after my psyche had fully absorbed the news, I got hit again. It took another few days to let the jolt sink in, since I think much slower than AI, which seems to process information at the speed of light.

I had just hung up the phone after talking with my friend Marge about a book I thought she might like to read. Since writing is my pastime — I don’t quilt, crochet, or watch TV — I decided to write her a book report. When I finished my one-page essay, I uploaded it to the AI and asked it to edit my work.

In less than a hundredth of a second (the AI could definitely win gold in the Olympics), it had completed the task. I expected my usual outcome: a polished version with corrected spelling and grammar and bulky sentences streamlined.

What I got this time electrocuted me again. Instead of the usual copyediting, the AI had completely rewritten my essay — and here is the alarming part — it added content: words and ideas I had not used. It completely rearranged what I wrote; the paragraphs were in a different order.

My first reaction was a slightly defensive, “Wait a minute, you just butted in!” After I calmed down and read it through, I realized the essay was more complete and read much better. Then I had my usual gamut of extreme, polarized feelings — utter awe and amazement, followed by terror about what this means for the long-term societal picture. I tried to push thoughts of The Matrix and The Terminator out of my mind, almost breaking into a sweat. Then I remembered Star Wars, where humans and robots work together in such a beautiful way.

The thing that was different this time, though, was AI’s agency. The AI decided my essay could be better and just went ahead and bulldozed it with precision and force. Next time, I will be careful to say “please copyedit” instead of simply “edit.” Maybe that will limit its range. But do I really want that, when the end result can be so stellar?

Next week, I will go back to writing about food. I will write about how lovely it is to live in a “warm, soft animal body” (a quote from poet Mary Oliver) and to experience the sensory joys of eating food that tastes and feels so wonderful a person could get goosebumps.

Maybe that’s where we have a leg up on AI. Despite its awesome intellect, savoring a ripe, juicy pear is something it will probably never do — no matter how fast it tries.

Whoa!!!! Last week I heard something that rattled me and a week later, I’m still reeling. Sometimes, if you can see what’s coming down the pike, you can brace yourself so the impact won’t shatter you.

So what happened? I don’t watch much TV, but I did see the CBS morning show on Tuesday, February 17. The program featured a young man by the name of Matt Shumer, a 26-year-old entrepreneur with an AI startup. He was getting frustrated trying to explain AI to friends and family, so he wrote an essay in plain English that laid everything out with no candy coating. He shared the essay with his parents, some friends and a few colleagues and within one week, it had gone viral with over 80 million views. The articulate young man was modest, humble, and sincere and . . . most importantly, believable. I couldn’t wait to read the essay so I immediately tracked it down.

But let me back up for a moment. A couple of years ago, right after ChatGPT became available to the public, I tried using it to edit this column and I wasn’t impressed at all. The edits were verbose and didn’t sound like me. I abandoned AI until around six months ago. Had it evolved? I uploaded a column to find out. I was filled with shock and awe; the suggested changes were sharp, insightful and instant. Now I have an amazing tool and a sophisticated assistant at my fingertips 24/7. I seldom use my “real” editor anymore because . . . AI does the work better and faster. And working with AI is genuinely delightful and fun. That’s the best part.

Even though I am somewhat familiar with AI’s capabilities, Matt Shumer’s essay still blew me away. AI can analyze, reason, solve problems and even exercise judgement. And now – this is scary – AI can improve itself. The number of jobs and professions it could upend within the next one to five years is staggering. Since technology accelerates exponentially, we’ll have precious little time to prepare for or adapt to the wild-card changes heading toward us.

I have many questions. Will AI accelerate so fast and furiously that it cracks, and like Humpy Dumpty, has a great fall? Should we shout a loud, primal scream at regulators to slow this thing down until we can get a handle on it? Are computers on the cusp of becoming sentient beings? Are they starting their own branch of evolution? Will this technology liberate or torment us?

I encourage you to Google “Something Big is Happening” and read the essay for yourself. This situation is real, not artificial. It’s time to wake up. Fast.

After I finished last week’s column, I reminisced about the incredible bottle of aged sherry vinegar my friend Bill gave me years ago. I remembered the huge flavor a little splash added, a mysterious extra something that elevated food and made it memorable. I used it sparingly in pan sauces, lentils, bean dishes, greens and roasted vegetables. Even though it was vinegar, it didn’t taste vinegary, just delicious and tangy. The bottle in my cupboard was a lovely kitchen luxury and I felt wealthy just looking at it. I wondered why, in all these years, I had never replaced it.

My memory was a bit rusty, so I read up on sherry vinegar. Authentic sherry vinegar, Vinagre de Jerez, comes from the province of Cadiz in southern Spain. Vinagre de Jerez is made from either Palomino or Pedro Ximenez grapes, some grown in renowned vineyards hundreds of years old. It is a European Protected Designation of Origin product, meaning it is carefully regulated and can only be made in a specific region. Sherry vinegar is in the same protected league as Roquefort cheese, Champagne, Parmigiano-Reggiano (fancy parmesan cheese) and many others.

The main aging categories are Vinagre de Jerez, aged six months; Vinagre de Jerez Reserva, aged a minimum of two years and Vinagre de Jerez Gran Reserva, aged a minimum of ten years. The tasting profile is a combination of nuts, oak, spice, caramel and dried fruit. Bill gave me the Gran Reserva type, and it was more like thin syrup than ordinary vinegar. I have also bought the Reserva variety and used it in salad dressings. This vinegar comes in an everyday version, and then one for dress-up.

My recipe for a walnut oil and sherry vinegar salad dressing kept crossing my mind, so I ordered a bottle of Reserva on-line along with my favorite walnut oil, La Tourangelle roasted walnut oil. When the package arrived, I whipped up a batch. Fortunately I had memorized the recipe from years ago.

Sherry Vinegar and Walnut Oil Dressing

¼ cup Vinagre de Jerez Reserva
l small shallot
1 tbsp sugar (I use raw sugar)
2 tsp Dijon or stone ground mustard
pinch salt
¾ cup walnut oil

Blend the first five ingredients, and then slowly add in the oil. This dressing may taste tart and sharp on the spoon, but will be perfect on greens. I love this dressing on a salad of baby greens, pears or apples, walnuts and blue cheese and topped with homemade croutons. Refrigerate the walnut oil, as it goes rancid quickly when stored at room temperature.

There you have it – a lesson in food and geography all in one column!

For Valentine’s Day, I wanted to give some friends chocolate chip cookies. My plan was to make the classic Toll House cookie using the recipe that’s been on the back of the Nestle chocolate chip bag for decades. Then it occurred to me: why not ask the AI for the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe? After all, I’ve used the AI before and been quite awe struck about the great recipes it spits out. Once, after giving me a recipe for black bean soup, it said it liked black beans. You do?

I typed in my question and was informed it had a recipe for a chocolate chip cookie that would have crisp edges, a chewy center, pools of molten chocolate, and a complex caramel flavor with a butterscotch undertone ‒ “guaranteed to make people go quiet when they take their first bite”. Wow, count me in! It also claimed there was a secret to achieving this perfection.

The secret? Brown the butter! Someone had told me this before – maybe it was Jennifer Mortimore ‒ but I had proceeded to forget about it, until now when the AI jogged my memory. Instead of creaming softened butter with the sugar, you melt the butter, let it brown, cool it slightly then whisk in the sugars. After another cool down, you add the eggs and vanilla then fold that into the flour mixture. Once the dough is made, it rests in the fridge for 24 hours. Sometimes the smallest, simplest tweak can change everything.

I hovered over the pan because butter can so easily burn. While it browned, it made a lot of crackling noises as the moisture evaporated. The moment the noise stopped, the butter turned a lovely deep amber color and released a lovely nutty aroma.  I love how cooking engages all the senses, even hearing. Melting butter and stirring in sugar was much easier than blending sugar into butter. I imagine this little browned butter secret would probably improve almost any cookie.

The AI offered other secrets: chop up chocolate bars into big chunks instead of using chips, use dark brown sugar and sprinkle a pinch of coarse sea salt on the tops just as they come out of the oven.

The batch I whipped up was indeed delicious. But they didn’t quite match the AI’s promised texture with crisp edges, a chewy center and no hush fell over the room as people took their first bite. So I will soon have a talk with the AI to figure out where I went wrong. I’ll let you know what it says. If the AI likes black beans, maybe it will like these chocolate chip cookies too!

The flu hit hard last December and almost everyone I knew came down with it, including me. As usual, I did the Zen thing and didn’t resist the fact I was sick, so I could enjoy what the experience had to offer. I liked being warm and cozy in my bed and having the opportunity to do nothing, just be.

When Theresa called and I told her I was under the weather, she mentioned a traditional folk remedy said to help with colds and flu. Since I’m somewhat of a kitchen witch, I jumped at the chance to concoct a healing elixir, especially one that had no exact recipe.

I gathered the ingredients ‒ garlic, ginger, lemon, honey, cayenne ‒ and made a batch. To my surprise, this pungent potion had a magically soothing effect, as if my body said a loud and resounding YES. The next day, I turned a corner and started to feel better. Of course, I’ll never know for sure if I would have improved anyway, but there was certainly no harm in trying this.

To make the elixir, I peeled and chopped the cloves from a whole head of garlic. Then I peeled a ginger root and cut it into small chunks. I put the garlic, ginger, lemon juice and raw honey in my Vitamix blender along with three of cups of spring water and gave it a whirl. I let the mixture sit on the counter overnight, then poured it into ice cube trays and froze it. The next day, I transferred the frozen cubes to a quart mason jar. This way, I will always have some on hand. For those who like measurements, I used around ⅓ cup each of garlic, ginger, lemon juice and honey.

A couple of tips: soaking the garlic in water for an hour makes the skins slip off easily. I read that letting the chopped garlic sit for ten minutes before adding the water helps activate its beneficial compounds.

When it came time to drink the elixir, I gently warmed a couple of cubes and added a pinch of cayenne. Don’t heat it over 104⁰ ‒ that can destroy the enzymes in the raw honey.

I was curious about this age-old folk remedy, so I looked it up. It’s been used all over the world for aeons. Some people add raw apple cider vinegar. I even read an analysis that speculated why the remedy worked. This elixir is often called “fire cider”.

The next time you feel a cold or flu coming on, you might give this folk remedy a try. And if you do, please drop me a line—I’d love to hear how it went.

I usually write about ingredients that are easily found at local grocery stores. But this time, I’m making an exception to write about an unusual pantry staple that’s worth tracking down. What is it? Smoked basmati rice, grown in the Himalaya Mountains. It’s been called the Cadillac of rice and I definitely agree.

How did I learn about it? A couple of years ago, I was shopping at Barbur World Foods, a specialty store in Portland that sells Indo-European foods (that’s a fancy way of saying European and Middle Eastern). I can’t remember how exactly I stumbled across this rice. Maybe a shopkeeper pointed it out, or perhaps another customer did. Regardless, I splurged for a ten pound bag and lugged it home.

My senses lit up and filled with delight when I cooked my first pot. A heavenly smoky aroma escaped from the bag the moment I opened it and when it bubbled away on the stove, the intense, complex scent filled every corner of the kitchen. This rice was unlike any other rice I had ever eaten. The texture was slightly chewy, yet tender. The grains were long and plump and some stuck together in little clumps which felt good when I chewed them. It was fluffy yet substantial, earthy with a quiet sweetness. This rice tasted happy! In my imagination, I saw the rice growing on hillsides beneath majestic snow-capped peaks. I remember standing at the stove and eating it straight from the pot, not wanting to stop, like it was satisfying some weird craving.

It didn’t take long to use up that ten-pound bag because I gave a lot of it to friends. One time I ran out for a few months and my pantry felt like a piano with a flat middle C.

I was curious about this rice so I read up on it. The rice is grown on hand-cut terraces carved into the steep Himalayan hills. The terraces create shallow paddies that follow the contours of the land. Irrigation is gravity fed from mineral-rich snow melt and mountain streams that flow from one terrace to the next. Nothing is large scale; fields are small, irregular and intimate. The rice grows slowly which concentrates the flavors, a huge contrast to the high-yield lowland rice that is pushed to hurry up and grow.

The brand I buy is Khazana, available on-line and surprisingly affordable. I store mine in a half-gallon mason jar. If your container is 100% airtight, it will easily last a year. Sometimes, I make a big batch and freeze it in quart Ziploc bags. Once you try this humble yet regal pantry ingredient, you may never want to run out.

Tina Adams of Fossil is my baking soul sister and her baked goods always win first place at the Wheeler County fair. If I could make pies, cakes and muffins half as good as hers, I would be twice as happy! Some people just seem to have a knack.

So I was delighted when she offered to teach me how to bake perfect buttermilk biscuits. Tina and her husband, Greg, lived in the South years ago. And this is so funny – the folks down there scorn “Yankee biscuits”, those made with Gold Medal flour. To make a truly Southern buttermilk biscuit, I had to have the right flour. And that flour is White Lily self-rising flour made from 100% soft winter wheat.

When I arrived for my lesson, Tina handed me a bag of White Lily. The recipe is printed on the back – just add buttermilk and vegetable shortening (Tina uses butter). The leavening is already mixed into the flour.

She put the flour in a mixing bowl, cut in butter until it was the size of peas, poured in the buttermilk, and added a splash more when the dough seemed a bit too stiff. She blended it with a special fork that had been in her family since she was a little girl.

If you don’t have buttermilk, you can add white or apple cider vinegar or lemon juice to plain milk and let it sit for ten minutes. Or, if you have some buttermilk but not quite enough, you can top it off with plain milk and let it sit at room temperature for an hour or so.

Tina rolled the dough out on a vintage Tupperware pastry mat, cut them with a biscuit cutter and brushed the tops with melted butter. She says the secret to perfect biscuits is to bake them on cast iron. Her oblong cast iron griddle has been in her family for decades and she slid it into the oven while it was preheating.

I could hardly wait to eat hot biscuits smeared with butter and Tina’s homemade strawberry jam and apple butter. I just knew they’d be crunchy on the outside and soft, tender and flaky on the inside. We sat down to a table set with two plates and knives, a platter of biscuits, butter and jam. Ah, the joy of simple pleasures.

Later, I found myself thinking it would be fun to do a Yankee versus Southerner biscuit bake-off. Tina can use White Lily flour and I’ll use Gold Medal. Maybe we’ll enter our biscuits in the county fair and let the judges decide on the winner. Now that’s something fun to look forward to!