There's Poison in the Pot

Culinary Poisons - a DELICIOUS history, with recipes

“Is it time to bring back sun-dried tomatoes?” My friend Victoria Flexner and I were discussing foods that had lost their mojo from overexposure.

Funny you should mention that. I’d recently found some sun-dried tomatoes hiding behind a large stash of Turkish isot my friend Buj had given me; They’d been plump and sweet but had now begun to ferment and smell boozy, but in a half-ass, haven’t quite committed to it kind of way. I put them in a larger jar, added water and the butt end of a loaf of bread, tied a paper coffee filter over the top and left them in a dark corner for a few weeks to see what would happen. That morning I’d checked their progress and now they smelled acidic - like vinegar, with a layer of white stuff on top and a floating raft of something jiggly in the center. “Do you think it could be a vinegar mother?” I asked The Other Victoria.

“Or poison”, she replied. And then she brought up the Death of Socrates and how when Claire Booth Luce was the ambassador to Italy, she was poisoned from lead paint powder falling into her coffee from the rococo roses painted on her bedroom ceiling.

The Other Victoria is a food historian, whereas I am from the school of “I don’t know for certain but I know it’s true”. We both seem to know a lot about poison and food and foods that are poison but my knowledge is largely anecdotal while hers is academic. As a kid in L.A., every time we’d drive on the freeway my mother would caution us against eating oleander leaves, which she said could kill you. Is that real? Under what circumstances would we be faced with the decision of whether to eat or not to eat oleander leaves on the freeway? I read somewhere that custard made with cherry laurel leaves steeped in milk took out large swaths of college kids in 1700’s Britain (cherry laurel leaves allegedly taste like almond and vanilla), but I’ve never heard of anyone eating oleander, unless it was some young chef straight out of culinary school trying to make a sensation with oleander panna cotta or some such thing.

I don’t know for certain, but I know it’s true.

I think I became fascinated with dangerous food from reading an Agatha Christie novel where the scent of bitter almonds lingered around the mouth of the corpse. I adore the taste of bitter almonds but it’s fairly common knowledge that they contain amygdalin, which is metabolized in the body as cyanide. So do the kernels in cherry and apricot pits but unlike bitter almonds which are illegal, they’re fair game. That’s why you can find what are called “almond seeds” or “dried almond” at Chinese herbalists.

They’re apricot kernels, made into tea for suppressing coughs. The first time I bought them, the herbalist drilled me on what I was going to make (Sicilian almond cookies), then cautioned against ingesting more than twenty-seven at any one time, as she made a gesture that looked like she was choking to death, very slowly.

In Sicily, everyone eats bitter almonds in the pastries but no more than 10% bitter to 90% sweet are ever used. You can find the recipe for these fior di mandorla and lots of other almond cookies in my book, Sicily, My Sweet. Just remember to stay with the 10% bitter + 90% sweet almonds.

Fior di Mandorla - Sicilian almond cookies

I go to a Russian naturopath who recommends mustard plasters for congestion and arthritic knees. You make a paste with water and equal parts powdered mustard and flour and slather it on but not for long because it can burn and blister your skin like mustard gas, which coincidentally is derived from the oil of black mustard seeds and is used - or used to be - in chemical warfare.

Fun with mustard powder, seeds and tiny army men.

That oil, like bitter almonds, is illegal in the U.S., so what to do if you’re making Mostarda di Frutta - preserved fruits in a sweet and pungent mustard syrup - in Brooklyn? There’s a pharmacy in Rome that sells it but I wasn’t going there any time soon. I managed to find a vendor on eBay who sent me a minuscule vial of essential oil of brassica nigra from somewhere in India, with a note saying NOT BREATHE THIS. It came wrapped in multiple layers of newspaper, foam, bubble wrap and gauze like the left hand of my fifth grade teacher whose brand new wedding ring got stuck in the ski lift on her honeymoon and stayed there even after the rest of her jumped off.

Here’s how I make mostarda di frutta:

3 lbs ripe but not mushy fruit: thin-skin clementines, cherries, kiwi, cantaloupe, peaches, plums, apricots, pineapple, pears, quince, figs - in any combination.

1 lb. sugar

juice of 2 lemons

7 or 8 drops essential oil of mustard

Prep the fruit: Keep clementines whole but poke in several places with a toothpick; Peel and slice kiwi 1” thick; keep figs whole; remove stem and pit from cherries but keep whole; quarter and remove pit from peaches, apricots or plums; peel and cut pineapple into large chunks.

Combine the prepared fruit, sugar and lemon juice in a shallow, non-reactive pot or dutch oven. Cover and set aside at room temperature for 24 hours.

Remove the fruit from the liquid and transfer to a large glass bowl. Bring the liquid to a boil and continue to boil and stir for 2 minutes. Return the fruit to the liquid and simmer together for 1 minute, NO MORE. Let it cool, cover with a towel and set aside at room temp. For the next three days, repeat straining out the liquid, boiling it for 2 minutes without the fruit and 1 minute with the fruit, cool cover with a towel and set aside at room temperature. On the fifth day, repeat the process but instead of cooling it, add the mustard oil - BE CAREFUL not to inhale it or let it touch your skin - stir gently, and transfer the fruit and syrup to sterilized jars, seal and immediately turn the jars upside down and cool completely. They should be vacuum sealed and may be stored at room temperature.

Mostarda di Frutta

So far, I had made amaretti with poison almonds and mostarda with lethal mustard oil; what other poisons can be made into delicious things? (not intended to kill) The answer was under my sink.

Lye. Yes, DRAIN CLEANER. Get a drop in your eye and bye bye cornea. It’ll eat right through your skin in no time. DO NOT INHALE THE FUMES. But boil your bagels and pretzels in it? Yummy.

An essential ingredient in ramen noodles, lye takes the form of a powder called kansui in Japanese. Kansui. Sounds so lovely and innocent, doesn’t it? It’s what makes them springy, chewy and…yellow. I won’t be making ramen noodles anytime soon but I will make - olives.

I learned to cure black olives by putting them in a cotton pillowcase with coarse sea salt and hanging them from a tree. Green olives get bashed with a rock and submerged in water with enough salt in it to float an egg. Either way, it takes a biblical 40 days at least. Unless you kickstart the process with lye. Here’s Hank Shaw again with the method for lye-cured olives.

Last on my list of delicious poisons is ammonium carbonate. While it may not be lethal, it IS on the D.O.H. Right To Know Hazardous Substance List and absolutely reeks of cat piss. But what it does do is make the lightest, crispest biscotti al latte and petit beurre; you just have to hold your breath when you open the oven. The gas - and the odor - burn off during baking. I didn’t know this the first time I baked with it; I binned the first two batches of biscotti before thinking to Google. Find the recipe for biscotti al latte in my book, Sicily, My Sweet:

Biscotti al Latte

Are tonka beans still poisonous? Illegal? It’s on my list of things to casually research but for now, I hope Llama San in Brooklyn has a solid connection because their tonka bean tres leches cake is to DIE for. But not literally.

The last four photos are from a collaboration with photographer Noah Fecks for Compound Butter magazine.