Making the Road...

Nablus cheese, a Palestinian farmers cheese

2011-09-03T05:19:00.001-07:00

This is a quick post but i wanted to share one of my new favorite things. This cheese comes in squares and is heavily salted. I think one of the reasons I like it is because it is almost inedible straight from the package. I rinsed it and tossed it with the juice of half a lemon, always a foil for oversalting. Delicious with crackers or as a topping on soups or stews.

Lebanese style dandelion greens

2011-08-22T18:55:00.000-07:00

Another great summertime Lebanese dish...hindbeh! Dandelion greens are occasionally available at farmers markets or even supermarkets. Cultivated, they are longer and scarier looking than there wild, puff-bearing cousins. In fact, if I had another blog, it would be one about plants that give me the creeps. The first post would be the Ailanthus tree. The second would be large dandelion leaves. I think I watched Kurosawa's "Dreams" one too many times on one too many drugs in college.

Regardless, dandelion green are surely a superfood, and their bitterness is tempered by a million onions and generous glugs of olive oil. Boiling them in salted water softens the greens and helps with their strong flavor.

Recipe:

1 bunch dandelion greens

2 onions, sliced into strips

1/2 c. olive oil

3 cloves garlic, macerated with salt in a mortar and pestle

lemon juice

Boil greens in salt water for 5 minutes or until bright. Drain. Heat olive oil and fry half the onions until brown and crispy. Set aside, and in the same oil, heat the garlic until just fragrant, then sautee the remaining onions until they are translucent. Toss in your chopped, drained greens and sautee for 10 minutes or so. Finish with plenty of lemon and top with the crispy onions. Serve with pita or rice.

Loubieh b'zeit

2011-08-08T08:35:00.000-07:00

Loubieh (LOO-bee, rhymes with Ruby) b'zeit are green beans stewed with tomatoes, onions, and olive oil.

This is one of my favorite things to cook in the summer. Juicy, dripping "bathtub" tomatoes that muck up your salads are exactly what you want for Loubieh and exactly what a good tomato looks like in August. Piles of green beans should be snipped and snapped whilst sitting in a rocking chair on your front porch chatting with your elderly neighbors. Maybe chewing hay, if you have some on hand.

This recipe, like many Lebanese dishes, is so simple it is hardly worth writing down. But with so much fruit and veg available this time of year, it is easy to run out of ideas. Come home from work, spend 15 minutes on the prep, go weed your garden while it simmers, and come back for a steaming, delicious pot of beans.

Loubieh b'zeit

1 pound fresh green beans, trimmed and cut
2 whole, ripe tomatoes, diced with juice
1 large onion, chopped
1/2 cup olive oil, plus a drizzle for finishing
Salt
Pepper
Allspice
Cumin

Fry onion in olive oil and a bit of salt until fragrant and translucent. Add green beans and saute until tender, about 7-8 minutes. Add tomatoes, salt and spices and stew for 20-30 minutes on low heat. Serve drizzled with olive oil over rice or with pita bread.

Free Market and Obesity

2011-01-18T06:17:00.000-08:00

Well, it's a new year, new moon and my 30th birthday and, given my love for ceremonial fresh starts, the right time to breathe a little life into this broken and discarded thing. My actual resolutions, those that are sane and measurable, are nothing without my anti-resolutions, those that will drive me crazy for the next 365 days no matter how hard I resolve not to obsess over them. My anti-resolutions include eating healthy and keeping up with this blog, both of which I know are doomed to imminent failure if I try too hard to make them happen.

The confluence of the aforementioned subjects, however, is too rich not to share, given my morning meditations on food, wellness and money spurred by this article and corresponding blog post. The article cites a study linking obesity to free market economies. Leaders in the fat acceptance movement are not buying it--the last paragraph of the post sums up their point of view:

This article is Diet Season incendiary crap meant to do little more than advance an agenda by taking advantage of a vulnerable population. It doesn't even touch upon the relationship between size and socioeconomic status, and if it did it would still ignore the elephant in the room---genetics---in its attempt to frame fatness as a social problem to be 'fixed.' It's time to take back our fat identities---we aren't problems, we aren't symptoms of a broken economic system, or a broken planet, or broken health, or a broken morality.

While my allegiance with the fat acceptance movement typically trumps my trust in professional academics, my personal experience has led me to believe that this broken economic system has much to do with obesity, though maybe not in the ways the researchers suggest.

Food, weight, and overeating are part of a complex web of individual, interpersonal, and societal influences. Genetics plays a role, as do psychological well being and socioeconomic status. The parallel obsessions of obesity and nutrition are two sides of the same coin: the free market doesn't care if you are buying vitamins or cheeseburgers, as long as you are buying.

Obesity is the cause celebre of many a politician and academic. It's made the City of Philadelphia $25 million, and scores of public health researchers are employed by grants to tackle the underlying causes of the "public health nightmare". Weight, diet, obesity, health, wellness and nutrition, when lumped together, is certainly multi-trillion dollar industry, one that profits greatly off people hating themselves. Profit is generated by people buying low-cost, high-calorie food, and profit is made off the same people working to lose the weight those foods cause. In a system who's entire purpose is maximized profit, the "obesity crisis" is a perfect storm.

Genetics can and does play a role, but reducing obesity to genetics leaves out people who legitimately suffer from the more insidious aspects of the free market economy: loneliness, desperation, and the self-reinforcing cycles of punishment and reward, best aided by consumption of consumer products (shoes or twinkies, choose your poison). Advanced free-market societies are rarely champions of human dignity, unless of course, human dignity is profitable.

THE BRIDESMAID DRESS

2010-08-29T14:03:00.000-07:00

If you are wondering why I haven't been blogging lately, it's because I've been SEWING! Typical to my tendency toward unrealistic ambition, I decided that my first real sewing project since the 7th grade should be a dress for my best friends wedding. Thanks to some beautiful and forgiving fabric, and a little help from my mom (though not without excessive rolling of the eyes), it turned out okay! Maybe, even in fact, a little bit cute!

The pattern is adapted from McCall's M5752 View B.

I should say loosly based on, which is partly the cause of my mother's excessive eye rolling. She also hounded me for cutting off all my notches, which after sewing the midriff on completely sideways, I will never forget again.

Overall, despite the headache, it was such a fun project. Dressmaking is a terribly logical process, not like pants, which confound me every time. There are many, many more in my future and I'm eternally grateful that I have a friend that trusts me enough to let me make my dress for her wedding!

Zucchini Ricotta Toasts

2010-03-01T20:15:00.000-08:00

Ricotta cheese is the latest addition to my ever-growing list of products I will never buy again. Like most suburbanites, I grew up with the notion that homemade treats are great fun if you are retired or independently wealthy, but the rest of us schleps will buy our ketchup and pancake mix, thank you very much. There was a time in my life where I did not believe it possible to make baked beans from scratch. I wish I was kidding.

There exists a vast conspiracy, perpetuated by the General Mills and Krafts of the world, to convince the public that home cooking is tedious, difficult and tiresome, and that the survival of the human race is dependent on a pantry full of mixes, cans and boxes. I am here to tell you that it's not true: this week I made my own jam, spaghetti sauce, hot sauce, yogurt and ricotta cheese. Yes, I am employed full-time. Yes, I have friends. Sometimes, I even watch movies.

Ricotta is incredibly easy and fun to make. True, the fact that I enjoy watching milk curdle makes me a very cheap date, but the two minutes it takes to boil milk, yogurt, vinegar and salt makes a $4 tub of cheese seem mighty silly. I could eat Ricotta with everything, as it has the salty tang of hard cheese, but lacks the often overwhelming goo. I made these toasts for dinner, but I imagine they would be great on a brunch menu, next to peppery bloody marys and a bean salad. Once this cursed city starts to thaw, these will grace the table of many an outdoor breakfast.

Check out David Lebowitz's post on homemade Ricotta

Zucchini Ricotta Toasts

4 English Muffins, sliced open
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1 whole zucchini, grated
2 plum tomatoes, sliced
1/4 cup Parmesan
2 cups homemade Ricotta cheese
1 egg
salt and peppa

Salt grated zucchini and let sit for 30 minutes in a colander. Wring out as much water as possible. Sweat onion with garlic and parsley until fragrant. Toss in zucchini and saute all together until soft. Mix ricotta, Parmesan and egg in a separate bowl. Add in vegetable mixture. Layer sliced tomatoes on english muffins, and spoon over the cheese and veggie mixture. Top with fresh ground pepper and bake for 15 minutes. Brown in the broiler for 1-2 minutes.

Crochet Hipster Hat

2010-02-22T21:19:00.000-08:00

It has been a long time since I've been to an indie rock concert. Last week's Tegan and Sara show was one incredible power-hour of girl rock, and made me realize how much I miss, well, music. The scene surrounding the music, however, is another story entirely. I once belonged to the cult of flannel shirts, and going to this concert was a bit like attending a high school football game after two years of college and wondering how it was possible that I felt so incredibly cool back then.

It was slightly dispiriting to be one of the oldest people in the room. My hangups, however, were short lived and K. and I entertained ourselves during the mediocre opening act by composing an ethnography of haircuts, tattoos and fashions inspired by Williamsburg on a Saturday night. We were surrounded by pale 22-year old girls in ankle boots and tight jeans, many of whom were wearing some variety of the hat pictured above. Like an indie-rock grandma, I found some comfort in knowing that that the half-crocheted hat I was making for my sister had the widespread approval of hipster fashionistas, but I mostly felt sad for these girls, who seemed to be engaged in some perverse "American Apparel" ad look-alike contest. Despite my best efforts (halter top!), K. and I both felt judged and out of place.

I'm certainly not exempt from my own era of snobbery, be it music, craft or otherwise. In my own early twenties, I subscribed to the belief that any music that wasn't indie music was trash, and if it wasn't sung by breathy, whining white people, it wasn't worth my time. Likewise, there was a time I considered crochet to be a lesser art form, about the same time I scoffed at anyone who listened to pop music. An aspiring knitter, I thought crochet was one step-up from macrame; maybe something to try while at summer camp, but not worth $15/skien. None of the fancy knitting stores I loved to browse had anything nice to say about crochet, and I think I absorbed this crafty form of false hierarchy.

But, if my post-modern, cultural relativist Antioch education taught me anything, it's that no one form of art, music,or literature can be elevated above another: as such, I've adopted a Margaret Mead approach to craft. Assata Shakur learned to crochet in prison, and if I ever needed a reason to take up a new hobby, that is one. I have seen some beautiful crochet work, mostly by an old colleague of mine, but it took a couple of years to get over my bout of elitism.

The instant gratification factor is huge. Last year, I knitted a double-thickness cap on size 2 needles, and people, it took me a YEAR. This cap is warm, pretty, and came together in a week, rosette and all. I like the durability of crocheted fabric and will keep it in mind for textile projects that require a bit of heft. Best of all, the pattern is hardly a pattern at all, and requires no counting, gauging, or measuring, making this the perfect hat to make while on a road trip or while in the midst of delicious conversations.

Pattern:

Chain 5. Join in ring with slip stitch. Single crochet for 5 rounds. Double crochet until hat reaches desired length. That's it!

For a great tutorial on how to make a little crochet flower, visit Little Birdie Secrets.

Yuca with Radish and Parmesan

2010-02-17T06:19:00.000-08:00

I generally appreciate the large selection of Latin American foods my local Dominican-owned grocery store offers, but I have to admit that I am slightly wary of the ever-present crate of unidentifiable produce. I am a fairly adventurous food-lover, but I also subscribe to the belief that "ethnic" doesn't necessarily mean delicious, at least to the untrained tongue. There is such thing as an acquired taste, and I believe that aloe vera leaf might just be one.

So, I can't really blame K. for looking horrified when I produced this gnarled tree root from my shopping bag and announced that it was dinner. Yuca, also known as Cassava or Manioc, is not winning any beauty contests in its raw form. Thankfully, the dish ended so much prettier than it began

Yuca is not only a mildly sweet alternative to the potato, it is one fascinating form of foodstuff. This plant is what makes Bubble Tea bubbly, and is the third largest source of carbohydrates for humans on the planet. Tropical cultures the world over cook it sweet or savory, despite the fact that it is completely POISONOUS! Some varieties must be soaked and dried for as long as 5 days to get rid of the paralyzing neurotoxins. I would like to think that my man Fernando (owner of Supreme) would not risk the health of his loyal customers by selling them poisonous roots! Based on the fact that I am still alive and functioning, I am led to believe that most varieties sold in the US are alright as long as you cook them.

Having never made Yuca before, I had no idea how it would behave. My initial idea was to cut it like thick french fries or potato wedges, but my wedges fell apart into neat little cubes after I boiled them. Oh well! Bite sized is the right size. Ghee is my cooking oil of choice these days, and I thought radish would go especially nice because they taste so good with butter.

Yuca with Radish and Parmesan

1 whole yuca root (I have no idea if frozen yuca would work in this, but presumably so!)
1/4 cup ghee
1/4 cup cooking oil
5-6 radishes, sliced thin
handful Parmesan
2-3 cloves garlic
1/2 bunch chopped parsley
zest of lemon
squeeze of lemon

Boil chopped yuca first to soften. Then, fry in ghee and vegetable oil mixture until golden. Set aside. Saute garlic for 30 seconds or so in remaining cooking fat and add in sliced radish. Let them brown a little bit, add in fried yuca and toss in Parmesan, parsley, lemon zest, lemon juice, and if you are not on a diet, melt a teaspoon of ghee on top. Stir in and enjoy!

I served this over orzo. It's a bit heavy on its own and I think would also be great over brown rice or couscous.

Origami Vagina Valentines

2010-02-15T22:47:00.000-08:00

Well, what would YOU do with an extra large pack of pink origami paper-make hearts??

While not in the least bit appropriate for colleagues or acquaintances, there might be no finer way to celebrate this Hallmark holiday than paper genatalia. Without a loyal crew of lesbian feminist friends, finding an audience for this gift might be challenging, but, if you belong to say, an all-woman's book club, or maybe Delta Tau Delta, origami vagina's might be a fun way to celebrate everyone's favorite organ.

I was up late and folding paper, trying to be inspired, when I got the idea. I immediately ran to the computer to hesitantly google "origami vagina", and lo and behold, I found a perfectly reasonable, presumably clothed man offering measured, humorless instructions from the book "Pornogami".

Check out the tutorial here: Happy folding!

Easy No-Bake Cheesecake

2009-12-30T20:49:00.000-08:00

Please, for a moment, forget that this recipe sounds like it came straight off the back of a graham cracker box. Admittedly, "Easy No-Bake Cheesecake" bears some resemblance to back issues of Better Homes and Gardens, contains 3 different kinds of diary products and a jarful of marshmallow fluff. This holiday cheesecake, however, was not parked in between the Santa Hat Jello Jigglers and 7-Layer Dip. I was on the East Coast this Christmas, and had to measure up. This would-be fruit dip put on its dancing shoes and made a really lovely holiday dessert.

Heidi Swanson at 101 Cookbooks continues to inspire, and posted her recipe for sparkling cranberries just as I was deciding what to bring to K.'s parent's house for the holidays. The first batch of berries looked as if they had been rolled through old snow, but the second batch was much improved thanks to K's willingness to help me bounce each individual berry off a cookie sheet. It was worth the weird looks and the late departure to New Jersey, as giving them a hefty thud caused the excess sugar to fall off, allowing the light to catch the light and twinkle properly.

The Christmas loot was particularly good this year, and I got LOTS of food and cooking related presents. Before my office cleared out for the holidays, my colleague graced my desk with a small ribboned jar of homemade dulce de leche. This was not slip-shod affair, this was the real deal, made from fresh, whole milk from a local CSA. The jar barely made it one day in my fridge before half of it went into a cheesecake [the other half into my mouth]. This was quality stuff, and the end product had a pronounced caramel flavor despite the generous layer of ganache on top.

The genius of this recipe is that you can make a large batch of the base, divide into smaller cake-sized portions and flavor as you like. This would make it ideal for cheesecake cupcakes, of which I am already dreaming about.

Other flavor ideas include:

Pecan-bourbon [this is probably going to be for New Years Day]
Coconut-Pineapple
Meyer lemon [sub sugar cookies for the graham crackers, oh my!]
Apple Cinnamon with crumb topping
Coffee

cheesecake crust

Crush 1 package of graham crackers and mix with enough butter to coat. Press into pan and bake for 10 minutes at 350.

cheesecake base

1 block Cream Cheese

2 cups heavy cream, whipped [ends up being 2-3 cups]

1/2 jar marshmallow fluff

1 package gelatin [mix into about 1/4 c. cream and let stand 2 minutes, then heat cream in microwave for a few to dissolve. Allow a few minutes to cool.]

Cream ingredients together using mixer or brute force. Add in flavorings and pour into cheesecake crusts. Cool overnight in the fridge.

cranberry cheesecake

Mix in half a can of whole berry cranberry sauce into the cheesecake base. For the cranberry topping, soak them for a couple of hours in a simple syrup, drain and coat in sugar. Allow to dry on cookie sheet, and coat again in sugar, if possible, a bit of a smaller grain. Top cheesecake.

dulce de leche cheesecake

Stir in 1 cup Dulce De Leche [find out how to make your own from David Lebowitz] into the cheesecake base. Top with a chocolate ganache by heating 2 cups heavy cream with 2 tbsp butter, and, once its just boiling, pouring the hot mixture over 8oz quality chopped chocolate. Wisk rapidly to melt the chocolate. Make sure to let the ganache cool before pouring it over the cake so it doesn't melt!

Eating through the Levant: A Photo Essay

2009-12-30T19:07:00.000-08:00

After 3 weeks of travel throughout Lebanon and Palestine [and one day in Syria, 4 hours of which were spent on the border waiting for a visa], I have returned 10 pounds heavier and 20 times happier. Here is a glimpse of what life is like for a food lover in the Arab world.

Finding locally grown food is pretty easy in Jerusalem. It's everywhere.

DATES! GET YER DATES RIGHT HEREEEEE!!!!

I ate about 15 clementines EVERY DAY. And it made me as happy as this guy.

white bean asparagus gratin with saffron

2009-10-27T03:53:00.000-07:00

It's late October, and I'm casserole-ing like an aproned housewife. Minus, of course, the large quantities of cream of mushroom soup that so defined my childhood. Ew.

Dinners on Walnut Street pose a special, satisfying challenge. I'm a vegetarian, she's iffy on cheese. I need protein, she hates tofu. I will cook meat as long as I don't have to cut it, look at it or smell it.

So we eat a lot of vegetables.

I am a goddess of stir fries. I have sauteed so many vegetables with so much garlic. My cast iron wok is old and tired. I boil white rice, black rice, green rice, short grain, long grain, couscous, quinoa, freekeh, wheat berries, kasha, farrow. There are infinite combinations of grains and greens, and they are all somewhat boring.

I crave interesting and well-rounded dishes that can stand alone, because lord knows I don't have time for side dishes (when you're a vegetarian, everything is a side dish!). In the summer, I love grain and bean salads, but crunchy red onions are incongruous with these blustery evenings. I want something warm, oozing and piled high with woodsy carbohydrates. The combination of honeyed wheat bread, ricotta cheese and saffron made this casserole subtly sweet and spicy, indulgent, but no surprises.

Recipes that fill my apartment with the smell of earth and buttered bread are in high demand this season. Fall 2009 has been one of startling and disturbing surprises, where the universe has taken my need for measured, gradual transition and blown big, spity raspberries all over it. Amid the sudden change of weather, the sudden death of my grandfather, a sudden car accident and a host of other "suddens", I am finding my self gratefully reminded that my various frets and frowns are largely useless given the frailty of life, and through it all, I'm desperately craving casseroles.

I'm not sure if gratin is truly a casserole, but I'm calling it that because I feel like gratin deserves to be served in something that is flawless, elegant and porcelain, and not my mom's ancient pyrex pan flecked with baked-on remnants of lasagna. This dish was cooked and served in the latter, and is, as such, a casserole.

white bean asparagus gratin with saffron

1 onion, chopped
1 bunch asparagus, cut into 1 inch pieces
2 cups canned or cooked white beans (of your choice)
2 cloves garlic, mashed
several threads saffron
several dollops ricotta cheese
salt and pepper
4 slices honey wheat bread
butter
olive oil

Preheat oven to 350. Soak saffron in hot water for 20-30 minutes. Saute half of the chopped onion and garlic in olive oil until tender. Add in chopped asparagus, and season with salt and pepper. Stir in beans and set aside. Toast 4 slices of bread and crumble in to bread crumbs. Saute the other half of the onion in a good amount of butter, then add bread crumbs. Place bean and asparagus mixture in a buttered baking dish and top with soaked saffron threads. Nestle small amounts of ricotta in the mixture and top with bread crumbs. Bake for 15 minutes, or until bread is brown and crusty.

sweet potato wraps

2009-09-20T18:55:00.000-07:00

One might term this dish "weeknight" dosa.

One might think of flour tortillas as dosa's fat, balding cousin.

Subbing tortillas for the delicate, lacy crepes of which dosa are traditionally made is, without a doubt, cheating. I happen to know, however, that a similar shortcut is practiced by a certain Indian restaurant that sells fantastic samosas to my dad's store, which, on cold market Saturdays, are snatched off the shelves by noon. Customers clamor for the pockets of potatoes and curried peas, the deep fried tortilla crusts go unnoticed, if not adored.

Somehow, knowing this secret makes me feel less dirty.

Tortillas brushed with a cumin-infused roux will hardly offer the crisp crack of an authentic dosa. The tortillas were a little gummy, and lacking that satisfying give a properly browned crepe offers. But having neither fermented rice flour, nor any real knowledge of South Indian cooking, these wraps were a hearty, tasty weeknight substitute for a meal normally reserved for special occasions. [Like Christmas 2008. My dad doesn't know a christmas turkey from a christmas tagine, and so we ate rice cakes at Udupi Cafe in Cincinnati with the Indians and Jews on December 25th of last year].

Provided that you can stomach a little cultural inauthenticity, these wraps are complex, flavorful and fast.

masala sweet potato wraps

1 large sweet potato, cubed
2 large leeks
2 cloves garlic
2 tbsp. ginger
turmeric
mustard seeds, toasted
2 tortillas
a small bowl of water combined with 2 tbsp of flour, a bit of cumin, tumeric and mustard seeds, mixed to a thin paste

Parboil sweet potatoes for 5-7 minutes, or until tender. Heat oil in a pan, saute garlic and ginger, and when garlic sizzles, add leeks. Add in cooked sweet potatoes, and top with turmeric and mustard seeds. Set aside.

Brush tortillas with paste. Heat a large skillet with a good amount of oil until sizzles when a drop of water is added. Fry tortillas until they are browned on both sides. Spread with coconut chutney and add sweet potato filling.

lazy american coconut chutney

2 tbsp grated coconut, chopped fine
1 tbsp coconut milk
1 tsp mustard seeds, toasted and popped
dash curry powder
dash red pepper flakes
bit of salt

mix ingredients together until they are a thick paste, and spread on dosas before adding filling.

Cakey Plum Cobbler

2009-07-28T18:24:00.000-07:00

This one is for my mom.

The running joke in my family is that my mother is a less-than-stellar cook because she recklessly substitutes ingredients in what are otherwise recipes followed with precision and care. Writing this now, I can't actually recall a specific instance when this wanton replacing took place, proof positive that if you ever make a mistake in my family, you can expect it to follow you around for the rest of your natural life. One time, one dash of tarragon in place of oregano, and she's forever marked as the nutty professor in the kitchen.

And so, in solidarity, I baked this cake for her. This cake that began as a clafouti.

Having never made clafouti, I didn't have a very good understanding of what it actually was. This was made clear by the fact that I only had about 4 tablespoons of milk left--I misread the recipe, and thought it said 1/3 cup instead of 3/4 cup. It was 9:30am and my hungry family would be knocking at my door in an hour. There was going to be no custard in my house that morning.

I did a quick search for plum + brunch and found a recipe for plum bread, which, thanks to my lack of ingredients and ancestral ingeuity, turned into this moist, sweet cakey plum cobbler. The plums oozed and bubbled their way to the top of the cake, giving it a tart and shiny crust. The inside was just barely done, not doughy, but juicy.

My experience is that playing with cake can be dangerous business, especially when folks are counting on you for a meal. But I also knew that the worse case scenario was that we pick up some cruellers from Donuts Plus if it didn't work. That, and I would be forever marked by my family as a kitchen disaster, of which I would be in good company.

Cakey Plum Cobbler

Adapted from Diana's Desserts

1 cup butter

2 cups sugar

1tsp vanilla

3 eggs

2 cups flour

1 cup almond meal

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 cup mashed bananna

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour cake pan.

Dice plums.

Cream butter, sugar and vanilla until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time.

Sift flour, salt, and baking powder

Blend in banannas and almond meal

Pour in cake pan and bake 55 minutes or until knife comes out clean.

Dust with powdered sugar and serve warm!

Inspiration

2009-07-23T06:21:00.001-07:00

If I needed an excuse to get back into blogging, this is it. Three boxes of groceries from Mediterranean Imports arrived at my door yesterday [thanks to Mama Z's long haul from Cincinnati]. My kitchen is now fully stocked with a dizzying array of grains, beans, nuts, olives, pastes, dried fruits, and rices.

My dad's care packages explain a lot about the origins of my neuroses, such as my tendency for excess and my inability to throw anything away. Much hilarity ensued when I opened one of the boxes to find an ENTIRE CASE of almond meal. Other weirdly wonderful items included several packages of dense, cinnamon dusted muffins suitable for passover, about a pound of aleppo pepper, 192 boullion cubes, and an unlabled, unidentifiable can. Does anyone have ideas for what to do with two boxes of Jordanian cream soup stock?

So, back to blogging it is. It will have to fit it in somewhere between working, biking, reading, sewing, cooking, hanging out, snuggling and watching the second season of The Wire. But, my motto is, with cranberry beans, all things are possible.

green peppers stuffed with lemon-mint couscous

2009-06-01T20:00:00.000-07:00

The first meal on Walnut Street.

I decided that I wanted to live with K. while riding home on an Amtrak train from a conference in Harrisburg, on an unseasonably warm and terrifically rainy November Saturday. I miscalculated the distance from the conference site to the train station, and had to walk three miles through our post-industrial capital city, cheered on by flocks of crows congregated on the smokestacks. I walked for hours, plodding but purposeful, thinking, thinking, thinking.

Encouraged by a weirdly red and glowy sky, I felt a budding, firey intensity building up inside me. K. and I had been together for about 6 months. It was no longer new. It was no longer easy. But it felt solid, sustainable, as if it were in no danger of wilting. Living together suddenly seemed like the only option. I sat on the idea for as long as I could, but finally caved, and asked her in December, and she was, thankfully, excited by the idea of co-habitation.

And so, the second half of our one year together has been spent planning, and dreaming, and searching. And, to be perfectly honest, worrying, negotiating, and compromising. All culminating last weekend, when we moved in and started building our home together.

I guess technically, this is not a big move. I am literally two blocks away from my old apartment: I take the same bus to work, I shop at the same grocery store, I fall asleep to the same comforting roar of traffic barreling down Walnut Street. It feels, however, earth-shatteringly different, and wholly new. K. noted last night, over our dinner of stuffed peppers and Victory beer, that this apartment is exactly how she wanted it, and a little bit better. Which is kind of how I feel about my life right now.

This apartment is perfect for basking in my favorite season; the windows face due east, and the early morning sunlight glints through the open windows, bathing everything in gold. For our first meal, I wanted to cook something that had summer spilling over the edges, that crunched and popped with freshness.

These peppers were sturdy and perfect for filling. I thought of this dish as a fresh, contemporary spin on koosa mashi, or Lebanese stuffed squash. The lemon, mint and olive oil dressing lent a familiar and upbeat tang, and the peas helped wake up the heavy grains. I swear I did not cook this because it matched our kitchen decor, but it did help in making our first dinner together feel really special.

green peppers stuffed with lemon- mint couscous

4 large green peppers

3 cups whole wheat couscous

1.5 cup of fresh or frozen peas

enough fresh or dry mint to make it tasty

juice and zest of one lemon

salt

glug of olive oil

handful of parmesean cheese

Cook couscous as directed. Once cooked, stir in oil, lemon, mint, peas, salt and cheese. Cut and hollow peppers. Stuff, and bake at 350 for 15 minutes. Top with cheese while still warm.

Vegetarian Buckwheat Korokke

2009-05-04T04:22:00.000-07:00

Laziness is the mother of invention.

Sunday was day six of rainy and cloudy weather in Philadelphia. I had perfectly no desire to leave my house. After six days of rain, I can barely bring myself to leave my slippers.

But my lunch club obligation called, so I made do with what I had, which was 3 potatoes, an odd assortment of grains, and some frozen peas.

Oh, and PANKO!

See, I'm also moving in less than a month (!), and this process of purging the two years of accumulated crap in my apartment certainly applies to my pantry. It provides a fun challenge; I pick one ingredient and build a meal around it, like the Iron Chef minus the pressure of competition. Though I'm not sure even the Iron Chef's would know what to do with a large box of stale dates or 3lbs of flax seeds.

Panko are Japanese bread crumbs, and are airier than their midwestern counterparts. While regular bread crumbs add density to casseroles and meatloaf, a panko crust assists heavy meats and starches with a light and satisfying crunch. They fry up to an elegant golden-brown, and don't seem to absorb too much fat, though that might be a willfull illusion on my part.

Finding a vegetarian use for panko proved to be more challenging than I thought, especially in the absense of any mushrooms, squash, tomatoes, and as previously noted, a complete unwillingness to leave my house. I thought about making my own seitan, but couldn't stomach the 3 hours of washing and boiling flour, as well as the unfortunate association with militant vegan counter-culture that diy seitan will always carry in my mind.

Thanks to the internet, there exists a world of culinary invention at my finger tips, and I found recipes for the japanese version of croquettes that proved to be just what I needed. Most of them called for meat, but I substituted buckwheat and peas. I was a little worried that they wouldn't stick together as well without the added fat of beef, so I threw in a glug of truffle oil, and they held together magically.

They turned out a little bit bland, so I indulged my obsession with emulsification, and did a quick yogurt-based dressing, with more truffle oil and a splash of champagne vinegar, spiked with garam masala and cayanne pepper.

Vegetarian Buckwheat Korokke

3 potatoes, chopped
1 1/2 cups cooked buckwheat [kasha]
bullion cube
1 cup peas
1 small onion, minced
curry powder
salt
cayanne
panko
truffel, olive, walnut or some other flavorful oil
2 eggs [1 for buckwheat, 1 for frying]
flour
neutral oil for frying

Boil potatoes until they are tender, remove from water with slotted spoon, reserving cooking liquid. Mash while hot. Chuck a bullion cube into the cooking liquid.

Cook kasha as directed on the package, which will probably involve coating it with a beaten egg and toasting it in a skillet. Add about a cup of cooking liquid to the skillet, and cook until the buckwheat is tender and all the liquid has been absorbed.

In another skillet, fry the onion in truffel oil until golden. Add garam masala, cayanne, and salt to taste. Toss in the frozen peas and sautee until they are tender and uhh...no longer frozen.

Stir buckwheat into potatoes, and then add the peas and onions, including the oil. Mix it up real good and form into patties about the size and shape of a hockey puck.

Coat the patties first in flour, then dip in beaten egg, and coat in panko. Fry in high heat until each side is golden brown.

Note: I had some trouble with frying the sides. These might work better deep fried instead of pan fried, but pan frying works just as well. I just had to awkwardly stand them on their sides to let them brown. Awkward, but do-able.

Cupcake delivery, West Philly

2009-05-01T20:51:00.000-07:00

It's real, people.

Chestnut Diner Restaurant, that strikingly unpopular pizza joint on 41st and Chestnut, will deliver gigantic, oddly flavored cupcakes to your door until 3am.

Occupying the building that was formerly College Pizza, Chestnut Diner Restaurant is clearly an attempt to differentiate from the 20 other pizza and hoagie shops in my hood. It worked: while the tri-fold paper menu is a leftover from CDR's previsous incarnation, the upgrade to orange, dim lighting and green pleather booths was a smart one. Chestnut Diner Restaurant has decent food, pleasant atmosphere, and more importantly, cupmakes.

The cupmakes [they are spelled cupmakes on the menu. Typo or trademark, I'm not sure] are not exactly good. They are something more complex than good. Cupmakes are probably exactly what you wanted. Huge amounts of baked and whipped fat and sugar and probably a few chemicals that you couln't pronoune. They are the baked good equivalent of a Dairy Queen Blizzard.

I've had the pleasure of dining on the Slammin' Samoa, the Classic Chocolate, and the Peanut Butter x3 both at the restaurant and in the comfort of my own home. The cupmakes get added to the list of cheap, a la carte food oddities that West Philly has to offer. The quintesential punk rock West Philly experience is now a tofu hoagie from Fu Wah, a samosa from Internatioal Foods, and a cupmake from the Chestnut Diner Restaurant.

I rarely see anyone inside the Chestnut Diner Restaurant, and it makes me very sad. Undoubtedly, it is owned by hard working immigrants who [not unlike my father and uncle] sunk their entire life savings into a secondhand pizza oven, endured divorce and health department violations so that they could avoid the humiliation of a boss who cheats them because they say their p's like b's. One block away is the hip multi-story neon light atrocity that boasts a famous chef multi-story food. It will inevitably propagate more of its kind, and the fate of the Chestnut Diner is anything but certain.

So, do your part for humanity and the entreprenuerial class of West Philadelphia. Order a cupmake. Since you might have a hard time tracking them down on the internet, here is the number and the cupcake selection:

215-386-6000, or order online at www.grubhub.com

Peanut Butter x3-with reeses cups!
Rainbow Classic-sprinkles and m&ms
Cocunut Island Breeze-marshmallow, caramel and coconut
Pink and Fluffy-pink lemonade and marshmallow
Chocolate Classic-with m&ms
Chocolate Wedding Cake-fluffy icing
Cookie Monster-"submissive" choclate chip cookie [that's what the menu says!?!]
Just Broke Up-the works: cookie, peanut butter cups, m&ms and butterfinger
Slammin Samoas -coconut and caramel

Don't worry...I'm still cooking! I've had a few interesting experiences with marzipan that I will be posting shortly.

Cristo's Falafel, 20th and Market

2009-04-19T11:04:00.000-07:00

It is rare that I encounter restaurant or prepared food with personality. I find home cooking to be infinitely interesting because I am privy to the back story of my meals; I know that tomato was the only one in the pile without a bruise, I know that the lemony flavor is there to correct an oversalting. I don't like to cook anything twice, and delight in obscure ingredients and oddly paired flavors. I love eating in restaurants, but character, artistry and risk are almost always sacrificed for mass appeal.

So naturally, my curiosity was piqued when I passed a smoking food cart on 20th and Market, the rim of which was lined with hundreds of heads of garlic, decorated with flowers and hanging baskets. That, combined with an exceptionally long line and jazz music blaring from the inside, told me that this cart had quirk. I didn't need to take one step closer to realize that this is the famous falafel cart.

A friend of mine loved this falafel so much, she could not justify spending her out-to-eat food budget on anything else. Christo's on 20th and Market has no menu, no beverages [you don't need beverages with quality, he boasts to the woman in front of me who requests a diet coke], and you can't order more than one sandwich or platter, because each one takes at least 10 minutes to make. Multiple orders would create a line that rivals I-76 on a Friday. Each sandwich costs an outrageous $10, and mine was topped with a flesh-colored pasta salad, grapes and bananas, among other things. It's weirder than the Tiberino Museum and Rodeo Kareoke combined.

My happenstance was opportune, as this clip from VendorTV [a cute show about street food that is not as good as Al Jezerra's series.] premiered last month featuring Cristo's Falafel.

So, does Cristo's taste live up to its reputation? Well, yes and no. Cristo's Cart gets points for ingenuity, and the sandwiches are great, if not exceptionally greasy. My major complaint is that these sandwiches have very little to do with falafel. While I'm unclear about the ethnic origins of Gus, the owner, I'm pretty sure he must be one of the few lunch cart owners in Philadelphia who is not from somewhere in the Arabic-speaking world.

Falafel topped with different types of salads is distinctively Israeli-style, and is so popular that it is known as Israeli's national snack. In a story that is classically Israeli, it is said that the salad toppings started as fierce competition between falafel shop owners in Tel Aviv, with each shop adding offering a new topping to their customers, until a veritable salad bar of condiments were made available to top your already flavorful falafel patty, presumably to outsell their Arab competitors in East Jeruselem.

We Lebanese are miffed. And rightly so! Israeli's can't just eat falafel, they have to "one-up" the recipe and sell it at a higher price. Cultural co-optation is not simply about one culture adopting the practice of another--it is about a dominant culture using another to make a buck. To some extent, food and culture are to be shared by all, but it is impossible to ignore the fact that Israeli co-optation of Arab cuisine is intimately intertwined with the inhumanity of the occupation.

Cristo's certainly falls prey to the bastardization of the falafel sandwich, but that doesn't mean it's not delicious. And it's not Mr. Cristo's fault that Palestinians are subjugated by a colonial regime. Mr. Cristo has figured out that in a world or mass production and hegemony, people are willing to wait a little longer, and pay a little extra for food that is fun and idiosyncratic. As far as I'm concerned, as long as I can suspend any pretense that I am eating a proper Beiruti falafel, I will certainly be a returning customer.

baba ghanouj, also known as mtabal

2009-03-26T03:54:00.000-07:00

Every great chef [as well as every mediocre home cook] has a signature dish.

Baba Ghanouj is mine.

I learned how to make it properly from my Aunt Nada, who chars the eggplant directly on the stovetop. Made this way, Baba Ghanouj is messy, messy. The eggplant drains brown juice all over the stovetop, and the blackend skin sticks to everything. I was obsessed with baba ghanouj and french fry pita wraps for most of 2006, and the last day in our apartment on Baltimore Ave, I was scraping hardened, black bits of eggplant off the backsplash so we could get our security deposit back.

But oven roasting, while much neater, will fail to give that ultra smoky flavor that even avowed eggplant haters embrace. Mtabal, as it is typically called in the Arab world, has wide appeal, and is ideal for picnics and potlucks.

I made some last weekend, when Ann and I successfully held our first joint social gathering, a picnic in Cobbs Creek welcoming the first days of spring. My sister and I have lived together in Philadelphia for 3 years, and in that time, nothing has proven more difficult than merging our social groups and taste in appetizers. We've been planning our housewarming party since 2006, with the last attempt ending in a fight over Swedish Meatballs.

The picnic was fun, and the baba was a hit, as always. It appeals to my bohemian hipster crowd and Ann's art school rock star buds.

I'll be moving come summertime, this time without little Annie bug, and as excited as I am to embark on a new adventure, I will miss sharing sandwiches with her.

Baba Gannouj

2 large Italian eggplants, charred until black on a stovetop

1 ½ cloves garlic, mashed or chopped

¼ cup lemon

½ cup tahini

Salt to taste

Char eggplant directly on a medium flame, or grill on a gas or charcoal grill until it is soft and pulpy. When it is totally flaccid, take the eggplants off the stove and run them under cold water, removing all the burnt skin. Careful not to burn yourself!

Mash eggplants with a fork until it is soft. Add tahini, garlic, lemon and salt, and continue to mash until it is basically pureed. A mortar works well for this task.

Served garnished with olives and parsley.

sweet squash couscous with brown butter

2009-03-17T19:57:00.000-07:00

not my picture. Thanks Creative Commons!

I was reminded today of a particularly desperate time in my personal gastro-chronology by a friend who, having just returned from Morocco, had perfectly nothing good to say about couscous.

I balked for a moment when she told me, having just recently rediscovered my love for the tiny bits of grain. But then remembered that I ate the stuff every single day for close to a year my first year of college, and I was pretty over it after repeat doses.

Freshman year was a tough one. I have these repressed memories of my dad loading 3 cases of "Near East" individual serving-size boxes into the back of his Volkswagon. We'd make our way up I-75, from Cincinnati to Dayton, and I would pray to "Cheese-us" that we would get into a terrible accident and I would be spared from lonley nights eating microwaved couscous with it's mysterious green-flecked "seasoning"and watching 10 Things I Hate About You for the fortieth time.

Sophomore year I wisened up, got a credit card and a boyfriend, and we stuffed our faces at every indian buffet in Southwest Ohio. And now that I'm on the other side of massive credit defaults, I'm tempted to say it was worth it. Couscous has been restored to a perfectly delightful, quick and frugal way to enjoy a Sunday.

This dish requires a lot of pans and a good bit of time, most of which, however, is patiently waiting for the squash to cook and the onions to caramelize. I wrote some postcards to friends in the meantime. The payoff comes in quantity...you could make this for 40 people or 40 lunches pretty easily.

sweet squash couscous with brown butter

3 cups couscous
1 bunch spinach, washed and chopped
1 butternut squash, cooked and cubed
1.5 onions
handful of chopped walnuts
handful of golden raisins
bit of brown sugar
salt

First, put the squash in the oven and allow to bake for about 45 minutes. Take .5 of an onion and chop it into strips. Carmalize in a pan on low heat for about 30-45 minutes. Chop the rest of the onion small, and fry until translucent in a large pan. Add couscous, water, and steam until tender. In another pan, sautee spinach. When the onions are almost done carmalizing, toss in the raisins and walnuts and top with brown sugar, allowing all the ingredients to get kind of bubbling and clustery.

Brown butter in a pan until it is golden and smells nutty. Mix all ingredients in a large pot, including cubed squash, with the heat on low, toss with the brown butter.

Sesame Tea Biscuits

2009-03-08T20:41:00.000-07:00

Regular readers of this blog know that I am not a terribly accomplished baker.

I prefer to think of recipes as a guide, a series of suggestions that one may or may not choose to follow. In cooking, this approach yields mixed results. I suffer through some disasters, but most my inventions turn out alright, or at least salvageable.

However, the "Jackson Pollock" approach is not well suited for baking.

Take, for example, the pistachio madelines attempted at Christmas. I didn't have madeline molds, so I used a cookie sheet. I didn't have baking powder, so I used baking soda and 3 spoons of greek yogurt. And instead of sticking to the pistachio meal and sugar like christmascookie.com insisted, I heaped in lemon zest, nutmeg and a splish splash of rose water, so much, in fact, that my poor father's kitchen smelled like a syrian baklava factory.

The end result was a single merged sheet of cratered green sponge cake that tasted strangely akin to sour patch kids, those movie theater gummies that burn your mouth with citric acid and red 40.

I tried to ruin these sesame tea biscuits. I really did. I almost used whole wheat flour [hard as rocks and impossible to chew]. I almost substituted the sugar for an anise-infused simple syrup [sticky and cloying]. I almost used tahini instead of butter [heaavvvyy].

But these were a housewarming present for some friends and I couldn't risk a cookie catastrophe. I looked up every sesame cookie recipe I could find, weighed the options, and chose a simple, no-fuss, Italian recipe. I followed it almost exactly. And the results were quite successful!

These were a lot of fun to make, and I think they look adorable. They are exactly what I wanted, not too sweet, not quite as crispy as biscotti, but stand up to a dunk in a cuppa tea.

Sesame Tea Biscuits
Adapted ever so slightly from Paula Laurita

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla
3 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 cup milk
flour for kneading dough
oil for cookie sheets

Mix the flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl, Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl. Add the eggs and vanilla to the sugar-butter and mix well until fluffy. Add the flour 1/2 cup at a time to the egg-butter mixture. Mix well after each addition.

Place the dough on a floured surface and knead until smooth. Take small amounts of dough (about 1 Tbs) and shape into little loaves. Dip each cookie loaf into the milk and then roll in sesame seeds until well coated. Place on oiled cookie sheet and bake at 350F for 15 minutes or until browned. Remove from the tray and allow to cool.

Cooking Co-ops

2009-03-04T04:45:00.001-08:00

I've been resistant to post about Lunch Club on this blog, which is odd, considering Lunch Club is the primary outlet where food obsession manifests. Lunch Club is genius; I cook lunch for 4 friends on Sunday nights, and deliver it to their doorstep for Monday morning. Then, each friend makes lunch on their assigned evening and delivers it for the next days lunch. It's cheap, healthy, and perhaps most importantly, a laid-back, no-pressure approach to a cooking co-op.

I am afraid that making too much noise about Lunch Club will disturb its magical, harmonic simplicity. It's worked for over a year, I think mostly because we've been very relaxed about it. It is so tempting to turn it into more than what it is. I love food, and I spend a lot of time working toward a society that is community-based and mutually supportive. So of course, the logical conclusion is that Lunch Club is the revolution and I should probably write a book about it and start a non-profit that will replicate the model large-scale in at least 9 major metropolitan areas. Right?

Well, no, and besides, someone already beat me to the punch.

This book on dinner cooperatives has sparked some chatter on The Ethicurean and Bitten at the NYT.

The book is about starting a dinner co-op that sounds a lot like Lunch Club. A dinner co-op would be infinitely more complicated than lunch, particularly if you are feeding a family. Maybe you really would need to buy 88 pyrex pans in order to make it work. But the checklists, spreadsheets and trust-building exercises seem like its over-thinking it.

An ideal co-op is flexible and forgiving [say, if you decide to invent a recipe involving aduki beans and two different kinds of beer, or if your pizza dough turns out so tough that you have to maul it with your molars to eat it.] It's cool, baby. There is always lunch cart cheese sandwiches for a buck fifty. No big whoop.

Mark Bittman is pretty cynical about the feasibility of cooking co-ops. Like Bittman, I too have been subject to the failed collective house cooking arrangements and gluten-free, vegan potlucks with 6 different kinds of spelt muffins [living in West Philly is a little like living in Berkley in the 70's]. But Lunch Club has made me into a believer, with the caveat that cooking co-ops should be low-key and fun, and should lessen the stress in your life, not increase it.

Lentil Firecrackers

2009-03-02T17:01:00.000-08:00

Back to blogging with a bang!

Note: These are not actually my firecrackers, because I stupidly did not take a picture. But these are pretty much what they looked like, thanks to Harris Gaber and the flickr creative commons license.

These lovely lentil dumplings were inspired, both in name and flavah by the excellent Rangoon Burmese restaurant in Philly's Chinatown. It has probably been a year since I've eaten there, but they were remarkable. So remarkable, in fact, that I had one of those socially-awkward foodie moments, where I had every intention of making witty and intelligent dinner conversation with Ann's out of town guests, but spent the entire time talking about how impressed I was that the appetizers were simultaneously crispy and chewy. I really did want to be able to add in some hilarious and insightful comment about the legitimacy of 9-11 conspiracies, but was reduced to "mmmmmm....fried bean mush".

I'm committed to using up the odd assortment of legumes and grains that I have apparently stockpiled in my apartment for nuclear winter, so when I had to think of something to do with my 10 lbs of red lentils other than make mjeddera, some sort of lentil dumpling or samosa creation came to mind immediately. While Rangoon's firecrackers are more like samosas, my hesitancy to deep fry had me thinking that a pan friend wonton purse might provide the perfect home for a simple but tasty red lentil pottage.

I'm slowly developing a list of healthy-ish food items that can be assembled ahead of time and frozen for quick weeknight meals when I literally have 15 minutes to eat before I run to one meeting or another. These fit the bill perfectly! Which is good, because the only other thing I could think of was burritos, and was feeling discouraged by my lack of imagination. Leave ideas for me in the comments!

Lentil Firecrackers

4 cups red lentils

1 c. coconut milk

1 bunch scallions, chopped

1 bunch cilantro

3 cloves garlic, chopped

hot pepper to taste [cayanne or jamaican red]

curry powder

cumin

salt pepper

wonton wrappers

canola or grape seed oil for frying

Boil lentils in water until soft. While they are cooking, saute garlic, then onion and cilantro in a pretty big pan or wok and sweat with spices. When lentils are done, add them to the pan, pour in coconut milk, give it a stir and let simmer until it is a thick porridge. Taste it, see if it needs more of a kick, then add more spices as necessary.

Put about 1 tablespoon in each wrapper and fold over, sealing with a flour and water paste. Pan fry in about 1/4 inch of hot oil.

The Miracle of Marshmallow Fondant

2008-11-06T21:30:00.000-08:00

Who knew fondant was so simple?

Simple. As in, very few ingredients. Not to be confused with easy, as in, whips up in a flash. This very special cake was made for a very special baby. Until 3am the night before her party, at which point I took great satisfaction in smashing the wobbly-legged ewes that were supposed to adorn the corners. The inside is a dense, moist and oddly pale chocolate buttermilk cake

I had a bunch of fondant left over, so I made another for our election party.

Lest we forget....presidents don't change the world, people do.

Marshmallow Fondant [This is a great tutorial, complete with corny pictures!]

Chocolate Buttermilk Cake

1 stick butter

1 cup water

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1/2 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup cooking oil

2 cups flour

1 1/4 cups baking soda

4 tablespoons cocoa

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon cinnamn

Pour oil, margarine and water in a saucepan, bring to a boil . Set aside.

Mix flour, sugar and cocoa in a mixing bowl. Add boiled mixture and the rest of the ingredients together. Mix well and pour into a greased 9 x 9 pan.

Bake at 350º for 30 minutes.

Holding on to summer

2008-09-13T10:43:00.001-07:00

Not really a recipe, just a pretty picture of the black plums, yogurt and granola I had for breakfast.
Sigh...I will miss you, stone fruit.

hot sardine pita toasts and 'adas

2008-09-09T18:07:00.000-07:00

I love my neighborhood. There, I said it....I. Love. West. Philly.

It's not a very popular position in my circle. Conscious West Philly-ites are not supposed to love West Philly. We are supposed to feel guilty about the gentrification, we are supposed to resent the "scene" and hate the Penn kids. I feel all of those things in varying degrees, But, it doesn't change a thing...I still love my neighborhood. Or, perhaps more accurately, I love the 1/2 square mile stretch of Walnut Street that I inhabit, aka "food-topia".

Take last weekend, for example. It a rare thing, but sometimes I feel uninspired to cook. It feels a lot like writers block; I try to dream up something delicious, but all I get is the equivalent of that terrifying blank sheet of paper in my brain. These bouts are normally cured by a trip to Mecca Market or the produce truck. I'll find something that is on sale and looks interesting and the rest of the meal will gracefully fall into place.

Last weekend, though, I was stumped. Tired and pre-occupied with Saturday nights adventure, I needed something simple for lunch club, and I didn't have time to go to 10 different stores gathering ingredients. I hit up the little Laotian corner store on 43rd and Locust and walked out with two green papayas, homemade tofu, palm sugar and a bag of tiny dried shrimp. You know, just a little jaunt to the corner store, a full 3 minutes away. And at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon, I'm busting my knuckles on the grater, remembering how they taught me to make green papaya salad at the cooking class I took in Chaing Mai, Thailand.

And then, yesterday. I pop into the inconspicuous Super 7 corner store, directly across the street from my apartment. This is where I end up when my diet soda/chocolate cravings get the best of me. And I see khubz! Pita bread! Not grocery store-style, puffy, pasty disgusting pita bread, but proper Arabic pita. I nearly wet my pants. And then, I look around...tahini, sumac, haleweh, simsim, freekeh, cans of foul, cans of 'adas bil hamoud.

Someone went and dropped half an Arabic grocery store into the fake seven 11 across the street.

I wanted a quick dinner tonight, and I also wanted to send a clear message of appreciation to the owners of Super 7, letting them know that the Arabic food was a welcome and profitable decision.

It was so rainy and cold today that even I gave into the fact that it is getting to be time for soups and root vegetables. I made a big pot of 'adas, a super simple Lebanese lentil soup and rationalized that it was still summery because of all the fresh garlic stirred in. I wanted a hearty and interesting sandwich to go with the soup, so I popped into Super 7 and spent a full $4 on a can of sardines, some ultra-creamy buffalo milk feta, and a a few loaves of pita.

I have something of a fascination with preserved fish, and have been wanting to try sardines for a while. I loved the idea of a salty, oily fish spiced with harissa [incidentally, I think I've been obsessed with the idea of spicy fish dishes ever since I read Cereus Blooms at Night, a novel by Shani Mootoo. It is the most elegant and powerful use of food as a story telling tool that I've ever read.]

The result was a smoky, salty, toasty, crispy, chewy, pungent grilled cheese sandwich. Perfect with the homely lentil soup.

The whole ordeal took 20 minutes max and I have enough left overs for the rest of the week.

Hot Sardine Pita Toasts

1/2 block Buffalo Milk Feta
1 can Sardines
2 tbsp harissa spice paste
1/2 chopped onion
1/2 chopped parsley

Mix all the ingredients together, stir until it becomes sort of a chunky paste. Spread the mixture between pita loaves and cut into quarters. Heat a griddle or cast iron skillet and char them with the heat. Leave them on for as long as you like. I liked the burnt, crispy bits, but you may like them better when they are chewy and tender.

'Adas
Lebanese Lentil Soup

1 onion, chopped
1/4 cup olive oil
3 c. red lentils
5 or 6 c. water, depending how thick you want it
1/4 lemon juice
salt, pepper
fresh garlic, mashed

Rinse lentils. Fry the onion with a little of the olive oil in a medium saucepan. Once they are yellow and translucent, add the lentils, stir, and add the water. Bring to a boil, cover and let simmer for 20 minutes or until its soupy. stir in a whole bunch of salt and pepper, add the lemon juice and garlic, taste it, keep adding that stuff until it is yummy. Finish off with the rest of the olive oil.

Ramadan is as much about the food...

2008-09-02T20:06:00.000-07:00

As it is about the fast.

Ramadan Kareem to all that celebrate!

Back in the game

2008-08-23T12:42:00.000-07:00

Much like most things in my life, the time, energy and inspiration it takes to keep up with this blog waxes and wanes. I promised myself that I would quit apologizing all the time, but I can't help it. Sorry its been so long since I've posted! Nothing but summer vay-cay to blame it on.

I've got a lot up my sleeve, though. Here are two Lebanese recipes for quick, summer snacks

Badounis bil Tahini
Parsley and Tahini dip

Tahini acts bizarr-o when you mix it slowly with water and lemon. Initially, it becomes tough like putty, so tough you can hardly stir it. But when you add a little bit more, it magically thins out to a lovely, creamy puree.

Remember, the only way to make parsley taste good is to cut it small. First cut it as small as you can. Then, take a breather, shake out your aching knuckles, and cut it again. A lot of recipes call for like, a tablespoon of parsley, and this is a good recipe to use up the leftover bunch [especially if you are like me, and you always have tahini on hand].

I know a lot of people prefer precise recipes, but this one is "arab style", meaning I totally winged it. Adjust to your liking!

Badounis bil Tahini
Parsley and Tahini dip

two or two and a half cups tahini
chopped parsley [ you do want to add enough so there is a fresh, green taste to lighten the tahini, so at least half a bunch, chopped SMALL!]
water
lemon juice
salt
1 clove garlic, crushed

Thin the tahini with small amounts of liquid, alternating the water and lemon juice. Like I said, it will be very tough to stir at first, and you will think you did something wrong, but keep adding the liquid and it will break and fluff up. [Its a beautiful process, really].

Stir in the salt, parsley, and crushed garlic, and then thin to desired consistency. Use as a dip or spread on pita as a sandwich. It holds up well in the fridge, and good to have on hand for surprise guests and midnight snacks!

Lentil and Yogurt Salad
'adas bil laban

The yogurt-mint-lemon-garlic-salt sauce is a summer mainstay, and tastes good on the chickpea, the fava, the white bean, the this lentil, the that lentil. In other words, essential.

2 cups brown lentils, cooked [al dente, not mushy] and chilled to room temperature
1.5 cup or so of plain yogurt, Greek, if you can find it
3 tbsp fresh mint, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
salt
lemon

Mix the mint, garlic, salt and lemon in with the yogurt, and then stir into lentils. Eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. :)

2008-08-17T20:10:00.000-07:00

A fun food quiz from Very Good Taste...I know I'm not really an omnivore, and that really takes a lot of the fun out of the quiz, but there is a difference between meat that I would eat if offered [and it would be impolite for me to refuse, if I was really really hungry, ect], and meat that I really don't think I could touch. It was a fun exercise to figure out what my meat eating boundaries are and why [for example, I would eat horse, but not snake. Why? The snake might be endangered].

I always thought of myself as a pretty adventurous eater, but this list makes me think that I may have some work to do. I didn't know what half of these things were!

These were the instructions:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating. [mine are italicized]
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

And my list...

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Panegyri Greek Festival

2008-06-29T21:30:00.000-07:00

I forgot how much I missed church festivals in Cincinnati. The Greek Festival, at one of the local Greek Orthodox churches, is particularly special, because we have such a large Greek community here, and so much of the culture is reminiscent of Lebanese food, dancing, and dress.

It was a festival, so I wasn't expecting gourmet or anything, but this mezethes plate was very...canned. The fact that it was served on a styrofoam platter by the employees of a local Greek real estate company made it tolerable, maybe even adorable.

The dolls: Russian

The beer: German

The chili: Authentically Greek-lish

Because Ann asked for it, and it fits in with the Greek Festival theme [greek immigrants introduced it here in the 20's] , here is the uncontested, most official, up to date and accurate recipe for Cincinnati chili. Black Beans or TVP can be substituted for the beef with no problem.

This recipe is courtesey of WhatsCookingAmerica.net. I have never made the stuff from scratch, I prefer to hit up a Skyline at least once when I am in town.

Cincinnati Chili Recipe

1 large onion chopped

1 pound extra-lean ground beef

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tablespoon chili powder

1 teaspoon ground allspice

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon red (cayenne) pepper

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa or 1/2 ounce grated unsweetened chocolate

1 (15-ounce) can tomato sauce

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 tablespoon cider vinegar

1/2 cup water

1 (16-ounce) package uncooked dried spaghetti pasta

Toppings (see below)

In a large frying pan over medium-high heat, saute onion, ground beef, garlic, and chili powder until ground beef is slightly cooked. Add allspice, cinnamon, cumin, cayene pepper, salt, unsweetened cocoa or chocolate, tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, cider vinegar, and water. Reduce heat to low and simmer, uncovered, 1 1/2 hours. Remove from heat.

Cook spaghetti according to package directions and transfer onto individual serving plates (small oval plates are traditional).

Ladle chili over spaghetti and serve with toppings of your choice. Oyster crackers are served in a separate container on the side.

Cincinnati chili lovers order their chili by number. Two, Three, Four, or Five Way. Let your guest create their own final product.

Two-Way Chili: Chili served on spaghetti

Three-Way Chili: Additionally topped with shredded Cheddar cheese

Four-Way Chili: Additionally topped with chopped onions

Five-Way Chili: Additionally topped with kidney beans

Home

2008-06-27T19:41:00.000-07:00

spanish pine nuts
olive oil
walnuts
almonds
pistachios, turkish ground
red lentils
madagascar vanilla
hungarian paprika
tomato paste in a tube
local honey

quinoa

wild rice
black rice
za'atar
dill
dried chives
dried parsley
ak-mak crackers
dried shitakes
bulgur
semolina
dried cranberry beans
almond butter
ahweh
bay leaves
good mustard
mortar [to match my pestle]
capers
aleppo pepper
truffle oil

This grocery list has been the substance of my daydreams for the last 3 days.

This constitutes the list of goodies I hope to acquire my dads store on my trip home [my bus leaves in exactly 24 hours and I should be packing instead of blogging]. Anyway, I'm not trying to break his bank or anything, and a lot of this is insanely expensive, so if I end up with half of it, I'll be happy. I learned my lesson, and plan to pack nothing heavy or breakable [except the olive oil, which I may have to forgo]. No jars of tapenade exploding in the bottom of my suitcase in the middle of the Pittsburgh Greyhound station this time.

Next week I'll be blogging from my hometown of Cincinnati. If its a good trip, I'll have a lot to say. Findlay market, cooking with Rissa, Udipi, Graeters, and Aunt Cindy's grilled cheese and many more posts and possibility from porkopolis, coming soon.

roasted brussels sprouts with egg and brown butter

2008-06-18T17:58:00.000-07:00

First of all, can I just say "go, me" for taking this picture? I know it might not stand out against the works of art that some of my favorite food bloggers compose daily, but for being taken with my Odd Lots point and shoot, I don't think its half bad!

I admit it. I have a little bit of food blog insecurity. The fact that there are so many hundreds people in the world who excel at cooking, writing and photography makes me a little ill. While I don't think I excel at any of the aforementioned, I do try really really hard! So the fact that I took a half-decent photo makes me pretty proud, especially considering I had exactly 45 minutes between work and my meeting to make this meal, which left little time for futzing with light and angles, ect.

Last week, my lunchtime jaunt to Iovines landed me with dollar bags of both persimmons and brussels sprouts. For a moment, everything was right with the world. The produce selection at my local grocery ain't all that, and there are some vegetables that I just forget about because they are rarely stocked. Brussels sprouts are one of them. I've loved them ever since I was five, and my baby sitter told me that I might find a cabbage patch kid inside one. I still eat them gingerly.

This recipe was pieced together from a number of different recipes, including this one at Smitten Kitchen and this one from French Kitchen in America, with help from this really good article in the San Francisco Gate on brown butter.

The eggs were not supposed to be eggs. They were supposed to be fish. I bought the fish, defrosted it, tried to cut it and...I couldn't do it. I felt sick, like I wanted to cry or puke or both. And then I felt silly. I put them in the microwave and encouraged the roommates to have at 'em, while I continued to balk at the fact that they still had their skin.

roasted brussels sprouts with egg and brown butter

1 bunch brussels sprouts
1/2 stick of butter
1/2 onion, sliced thinly
2 cloves garlic, mashed with salt
2 tbsp. white wine vinegar [or wine, I debated for a very long time but ultimately went with the vinegar]
little bit of olive oil
sea salt
3 hard boiled eggs, quartered

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Chop bottoms off brussesls sprouts and remove outer leaves. coat lightly in olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt and roast for 30 minutes.

While they are roasting, start your brown butter. Heat slowly until it starts to bubble, add onions and garlic and heat until the butter turns golden and it smells like childhood, christmas, or an ice cream parlor. And your onions are translucent and tender. Stir in the vinegar and set aside.

Arrange eggs on plate. When the brussels sprouts are done, scatter them onto the plate over the eggs, and pour brown butter over the whole concoction.

divine.

Southwest Tuna Salad

2008-06-09T21:19:00.000-07:00

In 1991, when I was 10 years old, I had a profound and clarifying moment in the Krogers on Kenwood Road in Cincinnati, while accompanying my mom on a trip to the store. I got separated from her and spent several minutes gazing into the live lobster tank, saddened by their inevitable demise, wishing I would some day win the lottery and be able to buy all the lobsters and bring them home with me to live in my bathtub.

That day I became a vegetarian. I spent the next several years of middle school heckling the kids eating their baloney sandwiches, muttering" poor little piggy" under my breath, just loud enough for them to hear, and people like my grandpa would pick fights with me and tell me that plants scream when you cook them.

My dad was just getting his store going and marketing his hummus and stuffed grape leaves to the local vegetarian potluck group. I became something of a celebrity in the local vegetarian scene, the cute kid at the Earthsave potlucks and Audubon society lectures. My dad even quoted me a local fundraising cookbook saying "daddy, I don't want to eat anything with a face".

My philosophy on vegetarianism has evolved over time. What started out as a very simple equation [animals = cute, meat = animals, food ≠ animals] grew into a genuine and politicized concern about animal rights and welfare [I think I joined PETA in the 8th grade], into a growing concern for the environment and social justice, one in which I found a community of support in college. Throughout the years, as I've done more organizing work, I've come to believe that my dietary decisions mean very little in the grand scheme of things.

It is only in the last 8 months that I started occasionally eating fish. It wasn't any ceremonial decision; it happened slowly. someone offered me a tuna fish sandwich at an airport and I was like, it sure beats $8 panini, why the hell not. Despite the fact that it is mostly illogical, seeing as how fish have faces and all, pescetarianism was starting to feel like a good fit to me.

I rarely cook with fish, but cans of tuna have saved my lunch on several occasions. I'm still pretty squeamish when it comes to eating anything too fleshy. In fact, the last time I made fish, Ann had to cut it for me, while I stood cringing behind her crying "ew barf eww eww gross". But the cans of tuna require little in the way of "dealing", are cheap, healthy and non-perishable, and can be used creatively in so many different things.

This tuna salad is mayo free, and as such will stand up to the 100 degree temperatures so typical of....June [?!?]. Lime+Cilantro+Chili+Corn+Tomato. I don't know what else to call it except "southwest" which makes it sound like some dumb thing at T.G.I. Fridays, but whatever. It tasted good!

Southwest Tuna Salad

3 cans chunch light tuna, drained and pressed with a paper towel
1 can corn
1 tomato, chopped
1 bunch chopped scallions
1 bunch finely chopped cilantro
2 cloves garlic, smashed
hot pepper of your choice [I used Birdseye chilies]
juice of 1 lime
touch of olive oil
lotsa sea salt

There isn't much too this...just mix all the ingredients and enjoy on a wrap, bun or with crackers.

p.s. hope you like my new look!

Rachel Ray's Intifada

2008-05-26T06:09:00.001-07:00

So great that the Palestinians have an ally in Rachel Ray. What a courageous and bold statement to make, wearing a Kuffiyeh while she's peddling Dunkin Donuts .

Maybe Rachel could do a benefit cooking show, for the children of Gaza and cook with fair trade Palestinian EVOO. Dunkin Donuts should sell Awamat and donate the proceeds. The possibilities are endless...I have a renewed hope for a just solution to the conflict.

Right. Dunkin Donuts got complaints and pulled the ad immediately, claiming that it was paisley pattered and not a Kaffieyh....hipsters everywhere are protesting, claiming that the anti-war scarf is pertinent in the struggle to look edgy yet accessible.

How to eat for a week....

2008-05-24T21:48:00.000-07:00

On two boxes of grape tomatoes, and a hunk of cheap mozzarella

You may have noticed that I haven't yet posted my supposedly fabulous recipe for vegetarian kibbeh. Yeah, it needs a little work. The end result was a delicate touch of parsley and mushroom sauté [actually leftover filling from stuffed mushrooms] sandwiched between two think layers of a gummy, grey mass. My lousy rendition of kibbeh used barley couscous mashed with a potato and half a jar of cumin and coriander each, to make it taste like something. Whole-grain barley couscous was not a hit at my dad's store, and as such, I have about 15 boxes on my shelf. As much as I wanted couscous and bulgar to be the same thing, they clearly are not.

My kibbeh was...heavy. I ate it, of course, but it wasn't very good.

And then there was "fun with indoor grilling" adventure I had last week. Thinking that I could fashion my own inexpensive grill pan by placing the teensy rack from our toaster oven directly on our gas stove gives me points for ingenuity, but I was not winning any cooking contests. I brushed corn on the cob and red peppers with a spicy yogurt based marinade and chard them until they were black. And they tasted, well, burnt. And chewy. And boring. My roomates were also not thrilled that I f-ed up the toaster oven rack, and it took a full week until the kitchen was restored to full usability.

It was time, I decided, to do something simple. There are whole books written about how to cook with three ingredients and a drizzle of olive oil. As fun as it is to invent new combinations of flavors and textures, its important to honor the old standbys, the tried and trues. And so, here is one weeks worth of tomato basil ideas, all of which were fabulous and satisfying.

For all of these, I used quality Lebanese olive oil and generous sprinklings of course sea salt. Good olive oil is key. If you wouldn't take a shot of it straight, its probably not worth your time.

Monday: Tomato Basil Mozzarella Salad
Ann took the reigns on this one, diced the tomatoes and mozzarella, and chopped the heck outta some basil. It was almost as fine as being run through the food processor. My original vision was a chunkier salad, but this turned out to be really great, almost like a salsa that you can eat on its own, or spooned on a cracker.

Tuesday: Tomato Basil Sandwich
Just like it sounds, with a smear of mayo and some salt and pepper.

Wednesday: Tomato Basil Omelet
What a little light cream can do. I wisked 3 eggs with about 2 tbsp light cream and my eggs were rich and fluffy. I considered sauteeing the filling before I put it in the omelet, but I decided on putting them in fresh instead. It was a good choice-the tomatoes were tender in the omelet, but still had some shape and the basil was fragrant and pungent.

Thursday: Bruschetta
On rosemary bread,and diced tomatoes again, but I just tore the basil and sliced the mozzarella because I was short on time. The key with this was to drizzle the bread with olive oil before and after adding the tomatoes and basil and sticking it under the broiler until the cheese melted and the bread got crispy. Oh my, was it a treat.

Friday: Tomato Basil Pasta

Olive oil. Salt. Spaghetti. Thats it!

Saturday: Tomato Basil Couscous
I used fresh tomatoes, but it would be particularly tasty with sundried tomatoes.

Sunday: Stuffed Tomatoes
The last of my basil will get mixed with breadcrumbs and cilantro and set stuffed into the hollowed out shell of a tomato. Recipe to follow [provided that all goes well].

Kibbeh

2008-05-09T21:48:00.000-07:00

--
Its so weird how shit happens.

Just last week, I swear, I was overcome by a somewhat inexplicable surge of anxiety about my Lebanese-ness. There was a time in my life [like, last year], where obsessing about my Arab identity was how I spent most of my mental energy, but these days, I would like to think I'm a little more grounded. But, out of nowhere, I am suddenly wishing I had been more proactive about making plans to visit over the summer, regretting dropping out of Arabic class, missing my aunties and cousins, and wondering why it had been so long since I ate foul beans for breakfast.

And then I wake up yesterday morning and gunmen are roaming Beirut. And fighting on the Cornish Mazraa, the street where noor and mahar sleep at night, where 3 generations of my family have lived and watched war through their windows. What the hell is going on?

Its 2006 all over again, and I'm having the same existential crisis that I did then. Halfway across the world, people I love are stuck in their homes and afraid to leave. And I am here, playing pool and drinking beer with my friends, half glad that the tv is playing Rocky 3 and not the news, but unable to dissolve the pit of worry and in my stomach.

And my inexplicable surge of Lebanese-ness suddenly makes more sense.

I'm normally not so esoteric, but I totally believe that families find a way to communicate. If we don't have the luxury of words, some other way will have to do. What else can I do in these situations but send positive and optimistic thoughts their way?

First things first, I'm gonna make a batch of kibbeh.

I haven't made it yet, so I will post the vegetarian recipe once I've cooked it. In the meantime, here is an adorable recipe for kibbeh from my adorable arabic cookbook [the one my mom bought in Oman when she was in the Peace Corp in the 70's].

Also, check out The Kibbeh Equation over at Desert Candy...its a very good post about what makes Kibbeh kibbeh.

Kibbeh

2 1/2 cups cubed tender lamb
2 cups burghul (crushed wheat)
2 medium sized onions
2 tsp. salt (or to taste)
1/2 tsp. pepper
Ice water

--
Kibbeh is virtually the national dish of Lebanon and to call it a meat loaf does not quite raise it to the heights it deserves. Its traditional preparation is dramatic. It requires a stone mortar and a heavy pestle called the jorn and modaqqa. The meat is pounded with rhythmic motions until it is smooth and pasty. All the neighborhood knows the sound of kibbeh in the making.

Select lamb from loin of the animal. Pound the cubed meat with a teaspoon of salt in a stone mortar with a wooden mallet. Remove meat from mortar when it becomes pasty. Now pound onion with a teaspoon of salt and the pepper until it is reduced to a pulp. Combine meat and onion and pound together until very smooth. Wash burghul well in running water but do this quickly so that it does not soften. Press to remove water. Knead burghul and meat with the hands. Pound together in mortar. Add salt to taste. Dip mallet in ice water occasionally to keep meat moist and smooth. Properly prepared kibbeh must be pounded at least an hour. Then it is ready to be eaten as it is, or cooked in a variety of ways.

Preparation time may be shortened considerably by grinding meat several times through fine blade of meat grinder. Grind onion twice. Grind onions with meat once. Combine washed burghul with meat-onion mixture. Knead well, seasoning with salt and pepper. Grind this mixture three times adding a tablespoon of ice water to keep it smooth.

(From Food from the Arab World Marie Karam Khayat and Margaret Clark Keatinge, Khayat's, Beirut 1959)

Mushroom and Asparagus Egg Salad with Tarragon Aioli

2008-04-30T18:58:00.001-07:00

Back from a short blogging hiatus.

I have no excuses, other than life gets hectic sometimes and something has to go. Sadly, blogging gets easily swept under meetings, events and spending time with friends. Though, rest assured, even in my busiest weeks, I manage to use all the produce in my fridge. I would feel like a failure otherwise. In the weeks that have gone by undocumented, I made falafel from scratch for the first time, learned a lot about balsamic vinegar and the art of cutting veggies on a bias, ate an entire artichoke unabashedly alone, and made the first batch of tabbouleh for the spring.

My foray back into blogging had to be something yummy.The funny thing about this recipe is that it sounds sort of fancy, like it would go for $8 on the menu of a trendy vegetarian hippy cafe in Yellow Springs, OH where I went to school [tear...goodbye antioch!]. But it came together out of pure economic necessity. The veg was on sale, eggs are cheaper than fake chicken nuggets and are a decent source of protein, and aoili is really a code word for thinned out mayo. F-you skyrocketing food prices!

This egg salad is really, really good. I tend to avoid recipes that are heavy in fat, not because I'm particularly health conscious, but because I think its too easy to make anything taste good by adding a half a pound of cheese or butter. The aioli is perfect....it has the tang of mayo, but isn't all goopy and globular. Lightening up the dressing lets the asparagus and herbs shine.

BTW, I owe a cred to Mark Bittman's blog, where Ed extoles the virtues of "the great duo of asparagus and eggs". I have been drooling over ideas for asparagus egg combo and I think I found "the one"for me.

Mushroom and Asparagus Egg Salad with Tarragon Aioli

6 eggs
1 package fresh mushrooms, sliced thinly and chopped [I just used button. cause they were cheap. Use your favorite! God...can you imagine morels in this?]
1 bunch asparagus, chopped into 1 inch pieces
salt
pepper
dash tumeric

For aioli
2 tbsp. mayo
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
a splash of water
1 tsp dried tarragon
sea salt
1/2 clove garlic
fresh mint

boil the 6 eggs. Sautee the asparagus and mushrooms together in a little olive oil or butter until asparagus are tender. Peel the eggs and mash and mix with the veggies [let the veg cool a bit].

For the aioli, whisk together mayo, vinegar and desired amount of water until smooth. If you have a masher [I always forget if its called a morter or a pestle, but it is by far my favorite kitchen tool], mash up the tarragon, garlic and sea salt together to make like an herby paste. This is my new favorite way to use dried herbs like basil, oregano, especially rosemary. It brings out the flavor and crushes them so they are not so "tree bark" like. chop a couple of fresh mint springs finely and add everything to the aioli. mix it all up until smooth, and then pour over the egg and veggie mixture. stir.

The mushrooms gave the whole thing a kind of brown unpleasant color, and to spruce it up a bit, a tried a little bit of tumeric. Actually I tried a lot of tumeric. For some reason I was under the impression that tumeric only added color, not flavor. That is not the case, as it really stands out in this recipe. Not in a bad way though....

Easter Eggplant

2008-03-31T10:51:00.000-07:00

I’m a week late posting about my very cute “Easter Eggplant” recipe, but having just devoured a microwaved version of the buttery stuffing mixed with brown rice for lunch, I’m reminded how good and…purple they were.

Growing up Catholic, Easter was kind of a big deal, and we had some pretty steadfast traditions that were not to be disturbed. There is NO WAY, no way no way no way, that our Easter baskets would be filled with whatever mis-shapen chocolate bunny happened to be on sale at CVS. We take our chocolate very seriously, and Cincinnati’s Aglamesis Brothers cream eggs were pretty much my reason for living through February

The past two years I’ve lived with Ann in Philly, I’ve tried to be a good big sister and use Easter as an excuse to buy quality chocolate. Leave it to my procrastinating self, there was nothing left at the chocolate shop in the Reading Terminal. I settled on some flowers and a Sunday dinner.

There is so much Easter in my Easter Eggplants. First of all, they were mini. Like baby chickens! Second, like I said, they were purple, like my Easter bonnet was in second grade. Third, they were stuffed with dates and pine nuts, which for some reason make me think of Jesus [??]. He was, after all, from the Levant, and I’m sure was a fan of the stuffed vegetables like any Israelite worth their salt. J

Baby Eggplants stuffed with Red Cabbage, Dates and Pine Nuts

I used 10 baby eggplants and had plenty of stuffing left over, which I mixed with brown rice and froze for lunch.

To make the stuffing:

Sautee a whole, chopped onion with a little bit of cinnamon, salt, pepper and allspice. Stir in about 5 cups of chopped red cabbage, sauté for a minute, and then add a little water, a little wine, and about a table spoon of tomato paste. Stir and let simmer. Once it is soft, stir in about 5-7 chopped dates and a handful of toasted pine nuts. Finish it off with a pat of butter and set aside.

Cut the tops off your eggplants and set aside in a place where your sister won’t accidentally throw them away [my eggplants were topless this time]. Scoop out the insides with a spoon or whatever that tool Arab grandmas use to hollow out squash is called. Coat the hollowed out babies in olive oil and stuff them with the filling. Roast for about 20 minutes or until they’re soft.

This recipe could use a little figuring out. My eggplants actually were kind of tough. I wondered if instead of roasting them, I let them broil in some of the water, wine and tomato paste juice?

Maple braised turnips with cabbage pear slaw

2008-03-21T10:02:00.000-07:00

In my undying quest to try cooking as many different kinds vegetables as I possibly can, I took the plunge and tried to do up some turnips. I've never cooked with them before and the only thing I know about turnips is that when they are pickled, they turn hot pink and taste good on falafel.

So I guess its not surprising that even in my attempt to do something other than submerge them in brine, they still turned out hot pink and stinking of vinegar, thanks to the red cabbage slaw I topped them with.

I owe my inspiration to this Iraqi recipe posted on Desert Candy last week. Short on molasses, I substitued an entire mini-bottle of pure maple syrup, plundered from Cracker Barrel on a family vacation last year. I sliced the turnips into 1/2 inch thick rounds, and simmered them in about 1 and a half cups of juice with equal amounts of syrup, lemon juice and water. I cooked them on low-medium heat until the liquid was absorbed and they looked glazed and translucent, about 35 minutes. I kept their pretty purple skins on, which I think lent a spicy radish flavor but may have also them bitter-er. When they were done, I sprinkled them with a little crushed red pepper, but I think I overdid it just a smidge. Just use a little bit.

The red cabbage slaw was partially motivated by an inexplicable craving for vinegar I've had as of late. I can't stop daydreaming about salt and vinegar potato chips..its very weird. The slaw was easy...I made Ann shred the cabbage because my cabbage shreds were more like chunks. I cut up a pear and tossed the salad with some white wine vinegar, a little olive oil, a little sugar, and some powdered horseradish that we've had since god knows when, but I've never used.

What I wished I would have done:

let the turnips crisp a little bit in the pan after all the juice had been absorbed

used less hot pepper

used sesame oil instead of olive oil on the slaw

Salmon with veggie couscous and harrissa sauce

2008-03-18T10:48:00.001-07:00

Tuesday afternoon lunches are starting to become a fixture as I adjust to my new part-time work schedule. I think they might be my new favorite meal.

Ann and I have about an hour of overlap at home, and I usually manage to carve out about 45 minutes for a decent lunch in between running to meetings and franticly checking off things from my to-do list. Its a perfect chance for Ann and I to catch up about our weekend gossip, and presents a fun challenge to be efficient and concise in both our cooking and story-telling. Its a good thing, because Ann has the tendency to week-long stories with multiple tangents, and I have the tendency to overcook things.

This week's lunch was nothing short of glam. It took 20 minutes to cook and 3 minutes to eat. And ironically enough, despite its elegant facade, came together out of sheer economic necessity. Poor Ann is so broke she can't pay attention, and had eaten nothing more than pasta and rice with butter for a week straight. She was in serious need of protein, and when she asked if she could cook up the two salmon steaks I had scored for free from my part time catering gig, I didn't have the heart to ask her to save them for a special occasion. Tuesday afternoon would just have to be a good enough reason.

The sauce is one that I've been wanting to try. It's vaguely Egyptian, the base of which my aunt taught me as a fantastic topping to mjeddera. I two-upped her version with sundried tomatoes and harissa, a Moraccan spice paste.

Ann, ever the culinary school student, plated it like this for the picture. 2.2 seconds after a satisfactory shot had been taken, I was back at the sauce pan, dousing my fish with a few more tablespoons. The vinegar-y tang brought the whole thing together marvelously, I dare say that it was exciting to eat because of it.

For the couscous, we first sauteed two green peppers and half an onion until they were soft-ish, then toasted the grain for a hot minute with the veggies. We covered it with enough water that the that it rose to one and a half knuckles above the layer of couscous [Lebanese weights and measures] and steamed until it ran out of water, or the pot started to burn, whichever came first.

Cooking the salmon was as easy as a little salt, pepper, garlic and olive oil. Ann said it was overcooked, but I didn't notice. Its such a recent thing, this eating fish business, so I have no point of reference to judge what is good or bad.

The sauce was an afterthought, built off of my desire to include sun-dried tomatoes in some fashion. I chopped a few dried tomatoes and heated them with some vinegar, mashed garlic, harissa from a tube, and tomato paste. In my mind, it was the star of the show.

Cheesy Peas and Rice

2008-03-13T11:57:00.000-07:00

I have been steadily trying to avoid both processed foods, because they are stupidly expensive, and anything overly cheesy, because I am trying to overcome something of an addiction. [If I had my druthers, my diet could easily consist of cheesy bread, cheese sauce, cheese cubes, and cheesecake. I love cheese! But moderation is key, and I take pride in the fact that every time I go to the doctor, they tell me I have impeccable blood pressure. I don't want to ruin my track record. ] And bastardized versions of "ethnic" cuisine, because I get so annoyed when people try and mess with Lebanese food.

Anyway, this recipe includes all three, but it came together so magically,I just had to post about it. My sister, between rushing from pastry school to her job at an asbestos law firm, made a quick lunch of Campbell's tomato soup and a grilled cream cheese sandwich. She left about a half of cup of tomato soup sitting in the pot, and I, feeling both resistant to throwing it out or keeping it, decided to jazz it up into something special.

With literally three flicks of the wrist, I ended up with a vaguely-Indian inspired tomato rice pea cheese risotto thing. And it was delicious! Requiring virtually nothing in the way of preparation, I chucked it on the stove, cleaned the rest of the kitchen, organized my hallway closet and when I came back, lunch was ready. It was perfectly sweet and salty and spicy, with the consistency of homemade mac and cheese, and smelling like an Indian buffet in an Ohio strip mall. Delightful!

It was as simple as heating the cold and rapidly congealing leftover soup, adding 1/2 cup of milk, a bit of water, a generous hunk of butter, a bit of flour and about 1/4 of a package of cream cheese, cubed, bringing it all to boil and then simmering for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Once it was starting to look melty and saucy, I stirred in a can of sweet peas and about a 1/4 cup of rice. Rooted in my spice drawer and came up with cumin, cayanne, and tumeric [I almost added saffron but decided it would add unnecessary elegance]. No salt, cause I figured that my boy Campbell probably had enough sodium to give Lance Armstrong a heart attack. I brung it all to a boil and let simmer for 20 minutes or so and I had my Cheesy Peas and Rice [I wouldn't dare call it Mutter Paneer, but it is certainly where I owe my inspiration].

What I wished I would have done:

Added the flour and cheese slower...I did end up with some clumps and I really wanted a smooth, creamy sauce.

How mushrooms will save the world

2008-03-12T11:13:00.000-07:00

A Salon article on my three favorite subjects...food, bioremediation, and politics.

Wil-Mart

2008-03-03T21:34:00.000-08:00

Not doing too much cooking this week cause I'm in sunny San Diego for a work meeting [not to say I haven't been eating, though. Much posting about San Diego restaurants to ensue] I did stumble across this article on the Newsweek website that I found interesting.

As America changes, so does the store where America shops. In Dearborn this week, the world's largest retailer opens a store like no other among its 3,500 U.S. outlets. Walk through the front door of the 200,000-square-foot supercenter and instead of rows of checkout counters, you find a scene akin to a farmers market in Beirut. Twenty-two tables are stacked high with fresh produce like kusa and batenjan, squash and eggplant used in Middle Eastern dishes. Rimming the produce department are shelves filled with Arab favorites like mango juice from Egypt and vine leaves from Turkey used to make mehshi, or stuffed grape leaves.

My extended family loves Wal-Mart, much to my dads chagrin. My Aunt Sana's broken english is the subject of many of our family jokes, and calls it Wil-Mart. We crack up every time.

Believe you me, if Wal-Mart sold fresh fava beans or green almonds in Philly, I would be there in a minute. But rest assured, Wal-Mart and this article are full of bullshit. There is no shortage of kusa in Dearborn. Every corner is either an arabic bakery or produce vendor...their schpiel about not wanting to put out the small businesses is complete crap. Its also nice that they are hiring Arabs at $5.50/hr to stock shelves. Its like saying that Taco Bell is hiring Mexicans to make soft tacos...great!

Freekeh with chickpeas and mushrooms

2008-02-25T21:27:00.000-08:00

I will forever remember freekeh as the best meal that I've ever eaten in a Greyhound Bus station.

I guess I'm something of an anomaly. I seriously love the Greyhound Bus system. You can't beat the price, you meet interesting people, and you are granted hours upon hours to do nothing but read, knit and think. Heaven. But the Greyhound is seriously lacking in one very important thing: anything to eat in the stations. They can't even put in a Taco Bell or a Burger King ...they have their own brand of pitifully cheap "restaurants" If you're a vegetarian or like food that is not corn meal + corn oil + corn syrup + artificial flavoring, fuggettaboutit. The only options are limp grilled cheese, nachos, and brown salads with fat free italian dressing. Greyhound bus food is why god invented Tupperware.

I'm generally a poor planner and don't have the foresight to pack food with me on long trips. But whenever I leave Ohio, my dad makes sure I have at least two backpacks filled with food, often extremely perishable, in glass containers, or melting. [I'll save the story about the 6 jars of expired olive tapenede that exploded in the bottom of my suitcase for another time].

All this is to say that one time, I think last winter, he packed me up a big bowl of Freekeh, cooked with tender peas and mushrooms. And it was exactly, EXACTLY what one would want to eat cold, with a plastic fork, as they sit on top of their suitcase in Wheeling, WV. The wheatberries had a subtle pop and the mushrooms played with the earthy undertones of the toasted wheat. Comfort food to the X-Tream!

I'm gonna cred the Palestinian Fair Trade website for the description of Freekeh [in hopes that any readers will cruise on over to that site, because they're doing good things!]

Freekeh is a delicious, highly nutritious grain made from roasted green grains. It is free from any chemicals. Because the grains are harvested while still young, Freekeh contains more protein, vitamins, and minerals than the same mature grain and other grains. It is high in fiber (up to four times the fiber of brown rice).

I scored some from my dads store this Christmas and finally got around to making it.

This recipe for freekeh is very much in tune with a certain niche I have been working to carve out for myself. Every cook has their specialty. A baker I am not, as has been made clear on numerous occasions, most recently my failed banana cupcakes. I suck at soups... I tend to make GIGANTIC pots that are mostly inedible due to oversalting, lifeless vegetables, and a flat-out refusal to bust out my food processor. Appetizers often require too many pans and seem like a waste of time.

My favorite recipes, the ones that give me the most joy, are the big, one pot recipes that involve a whole grain, a full serving of vegetables, and a protein source. Oh and that taste divine...Like, you could eat it at least once a week and not get sick of it good. Not like, wow, look at me I'm so healthy and yet so bland. Not like that at all. I like the challenge of a creating a healthy meal that tastes good, one that can be carted to work in my handy dandy lunch jar, frozen into ziplock bags for when I'm running out the door, or reheated after a long night of meetings. DIY convenience food.

This recipe for Freekeh is a perfect candidate. Its quick and nourishing, goes down easy but delightfully complex.

What I wish I had done:

Measured out the Freekeh and the water [I used too much water so my freekeh had a little bit of pasty going on.]
Used a wild mushroom mixture instead of the portobellos
Added a bay leaf, a sprig of fresh thyme and a cinnamon stick to the water

Freekeh with chickpeas and mushrooms

2 c. Freekeh
2 1/2c. Water
bullion cube
mushrooms [I used 1 box of baby portobellos and they worked fine. Oysters and shitakes would be geat], chopped
1 onion
1 can chickpeas
cinnamon
allspice
cumin
salt
black pepper
**I added a dab of harissa, because it is my favorite way to make things spicy these days. You can use crushed red pepper or a teensy bit of cayenne].

Wash Freekeh thouroughly. Chop onion and sautee in large pot with olive oil. Add Freekeh and cook until Freekeh is toasted. Add water, bring to boil and then let simmer for 40 minutes or so. Oh, if you want you can dissolve a bullion cube in some of the water and add that. But if you do, go easy on the salt cause its real salty. In a large skillet, sautee mushrooms in butter or oil. Add can of chickpeas. Season with spices. When Freekeh is done cooking, stir in the mushroom mixture. Add more seasonings to taste.

Cannelloni bean salad with roasted garlic and thyme

2008-02-20T20:20:00.000-08:00

Thank you, Progresso, for putting your wide variety of beans and soups on super-sale at the Supreme grocery in West Philly. Without you, I may never have thought to buy two cans of white beans, because all I know about white beans I learned from my days as a server at the Olive Garden,where I had to recite the pasta y fagoli ingredients over and over again to tables of suburban housewives and there drooling, obnoxious children. In an effort to get over my food service industry hang-ups [beets, anyone?], I wanted to do up a nice Cannelloni bean salad.

I acquired two large heads of red-leaf lettuce from an event I helped to pull together two weeks ago . Because its February and not exactly salad season, and I was tossing around the idea of sauteeing it, mostly for the laughs. Lettuce? You can cook lettuce?? Oh Kate...you are such a jokester! I did find a few Chinese-inspired recipes for cooked lettuce, but couldn't bring myself to do it...all due respect my Asian friends! :)

My compromise was a warmish salad, with roasted garlic and red pepper. I have been wanting to try more roasted garlic recipes because I've never had much luck with it. Maybe its because I'm Lebanese and I like my garlic loud and proud, but it is always too subtle to be detected. This salad was still lacking a pronounced garlic flavor, and I wished I used two heads instead of one. Plus, as I scolded my sister who was dousing her bowl with garlic powder and lemon juice, not every salad has to taste like fattouch, difficult as it is for us to understand.

I braved the snow and bounced over to the Reading Terminal after work to pick up some herbs and fancy cheese. Now, as far as cooking goes, I am generally an outside-the-box kind of person. I am first in line to try foods I've never had before, and my idea of adventure sport is hiking to the store to buy fennel bulbs. But when it comes to fancy cheese, I can never bring myself to buy anything but manouri, a rich, creamy sheeps milk cheese from Greece. I know that there is a world of cheeses out there that I'm missing, but I love manouri so much I can't justify spending money on anything that isn't manouri. I only had my credit card, and there was a $10 minimum. I bought a full pound of the stuff without blinking an eye [though now I'm feeling a little guilty about it, because I really can't afford to spend $10 on cheese].

On the other hand, I had no idea that the fresh herbs at Iovines were only a dollar!! I hardly ever use fresh herbs cause I just assume they were expensive [and my dad owns a spice store. Dried herbs are never in short supply]. This is one of those discoveries that will forever change my life. I thought thyme would be nice with the beans, and a chance for my blog to live up to its name.

The salad was great, and got six thumbs up from me and my roommates, which says something because Ann doesn't like beans and Hannah doesn't like peppers.

What I wished I had done:

less lettuce, more beans
another head of garlic
toasting the thyme to give it more flavor? Does anyone know if this works?

Cannelloni bean salad with roasted garlic and thyme

1 large head Red Leaf lettuce
1 large can of Cannelloni beans
2 red peppers, cut into long, meaty strips
2 heads of garlic
1/2 cup red onion
a few marinated artichokes, chopped
fresh thyme to taste
goat cheese, cut into wedges or medallions
sea salt
olive oil
lemon juice

Coat garlic heads in oil and wrap in foil. Roast in the oven at 450. Wash and chop lettuce, combine with onion, artichokes and set aside. Coat the peppers in oil and put them in the oven with the garlic. Drink some wine while you're waiting for them to roast [garlic needs about an hour, peppers need about 40 minutes]. Dip the cheese in a mixture of thyme and sea salt. Once your garlic is done, mix it with the beans and a bunch of finely chopped thyme, douse with a good amount of olive oil and lemon and pour dressed beans onto the salad. Toss well, top with cheese and roasted peppers.

Spinach Fatayer

2008-02-18T23:34:00.001-08:00

Not with filo dough, with pizza dough. Think calzone, not spanakopita.

Ohh…making these guys made me ache for my grandmother. She lived with us for several years, and the language barrier was such that food was essentially our only means of communication…she cooked, we ate, all was right with the world. She didn’t make fatayer often, mostly only if my cousins were in town and she had my Aunt Sana to help her. They are pretty labor intensive and bang out much quicker when you working with your daughter.

My dad's house had had a massive oak dining room table, so big that it didn’t really fit in the living room. My tata would spend an entire Sunday rolling out homemade pizza dough, cutting enough circles out with the base of a glass cup to cover the entire humongous table, filling them quickly with spinach or lamb and folding them neatly and quickly into adorable pies. The whole house would smell yeasty and warm, and we would eat them hot, several at a time, while we were playing Nintendo. This is when my dads house still had wood paneling and times were simpler.

Of course, mine didn’t turn out as well as my grandmas. I wished I had used entirely white flour, at least for the first time. I used mostly wheat, and the density of dough took away from the pillowy comfort food texture I was craving.

The real bonus is that I had some sumac in my freezer from my trip to Lebanon in 2006…I’m presuming its still good cause it was frozen, but it did remind me that I want to try and acquire some more next time I have a buddy in the Middle East. Sumac, IMHO, gives life to spinach fatayer. Nothing else would substitute.

I got this recipe from an adorable cookbook, which I actually think is one of my most prized possessions. It was my mom’s, from when she was living in Oman. There are little notes next to some of the recipes that indicate whether or not my dad liked the dish or not…touching in that it is probably the only evidence that my mom actually loved my father at one point. It’s a very cute cookbook and the recipes are like, perfect. I don’t think you can buy this puppy on amazon, or at least I’d like to think that you can’t.

Spinach Fatayer
Apparently, fatayer make great gifts. I was able to pass some along to a friend who is recovering from surgery and a friend who has intensive nutritional needs and may be struggling to keep them met. That, and they go nicely in my freezer, ready for a day when I wake up too late to make my lunch and I don't want to drop six bucks at the friggin' Green Village deli across the street from my work.

2 pounds fresh spinach
1 finely chopped onion
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil
1/3 cup pine nuts or walnuts, browned
2 tbsp Sumac, where available

Basic Savory Pie Dough (Aajeen)
5 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon salt
2 teaspoons dry yeast
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
1/4 cup lukewarm water
2 cups lukewarm water or milk
1/4 cup olive oil

(makes 25 four inch or 40 three inch pies)

Combine flour and salt in large bowl. In another bowl, dissolve yeast and sugar in 1/4 cup lukewarm water. Let sit 5 minutes. Stir yeast mixture into remaining water, or milk and add to flour mixture. Mix well with wooden spoon and turn onto floured board. Knead well for 8-10 minutes, until dough is very elastic and smooth. Place in greased bowl and cover with dry towel. Set dough in warm spot until it has doubled. Punch down and form into a ball. Let dough rest 10 minutes. Divide dough into 25 or 40 pieces. Coat hands with oil and form each piece into a ball. Cover dough with dry towel and let rise 30 minutes. Roll balls into circles 1/4 inch thick for fatayer or fill and form into meat or spinach pies.

Divide pie dough into 12-15 balls and roll into 4 inch circles about 1/8-1/4 inch thick.

Wash, Drain and chop fresh spinach drain and chop. Lightly squeeze out moisture and place in large bowl. Add onion, salt and pepper to spinach. Mix well and let stand a few minutes. Stir in lemon juice and oil. Add browned pine nuts if desired. It should taste like a good salad.

Place a small amount of spinach mixture in center of each round of dough. Form a triangular pie by drawing two sides of dough to the center and pinching shut a seam from center to the corner. Then draw up the remaining flap of dough and pinch shut the remaining seams, leaving a small opening to vent the pie in the center. Or make vertical pleats of dough around the filling to form a round open tart. (The former method is more traditional). Brush with olive oil.

Bake at 375 to 400 degrees F for 15 minutes , until brown on top and bottom. Serve warm or cool with lemon wedges.

My blogs rebirth!

2008-02-11T17:33:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to Wild Thyme Kitchen! I hope you didn't miss me too much.

I'm celebrating my return to blogging with a facelift for this blog, as well as some nifty new features!

Click here for a categorized list of recipes on this blog.

My favorite feature, however, is my new "living" post of tips, tricks and reminders. This is mostly for my own purposes, because most of the things I cook could have been a little bit better if I had just not made that one mistake that I always make. So after I ruin a dish by using too much sea salt, burning the onions, ect, I can at least document my mistakes in hopes that I won't make them again.

Needless to say, the tips will almost always end in a self-deprecating insult. "wash the cilantro so your curry's not gritty, dumbass" and "cut the baklava BEFORE you cook it, idiot!", "1 cup of olive oil is almost always too much in almost every situation, olive oil junkie!"

Anyway, look forward this week to spinach fatayer, mjeddera for 50, and a valentines treat, yet to be determined.

Tahini dressed salad with spicy sweet potato croutons

2007-12-11T19:43:00.000-08:00

Today. I. Cooked.

It wasn't much of anything really. Just an excuse to save what was left of the wilting Romain lettuce in the fridge and use up the sweet potatoes that we've had since Thanksgiving. Aside from roasting the 'taters, it took all of 15 minutes to prepare, and I didn't even use a cutting board. Tahini dressing....it's the soul food of the Arab world, comforting, but not particularly glamorous. Nothin' special, really.

But perhaps one of the best meals I've ever eaten [topped only by the fattouch and mjeddera dinner that immediately followed a drug-study induced fruit fast].

It's been a while since I've spent some quality time in my kitchen. I went to Wisconsin for a week, only to return and discover that myself and the rest of the staff at my job were laid off effective January, subsequently locked out out of the office after a hostile showdown with our ED, and and I ,somehow had been appointed shop steward for my orgs union. Needless to say, its been a stressful week, and stealing a few minutes away to dabble in my fridge and scour my shelves for ideas was precisely what I needed.

This didn't turn out exactly like I imagined, but the end result was a good one. I think I was subconsciously inspired by Heidi Swanson's potato crouton recipe over at 101 Cookbooks, though my original vision was a soft, almost mashed potato on top of the salad.

I chopped the potatoes into small cubes, sprinkled cumin and a dash of Jamaican red pepper over the top, and roasted them in the over for about 45 minutes. The result was a crispy, smoked outside and a creamy inside. The nuttiness of tahini was a perfect match for the sweet potatoes and the chickpeas rounded this out into a filling main course.

Tahini dressed salad with Spicy Sweet Potato Croutons

Potatoes:
5 smallish sweet potatoes
1/4 c. olive oil
1 tbsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. Jamaican Red Pepper [can substitute cayenne]
salt

Salad:
2 heads romaine lettuce, chopped into strips
1 12-oz can chickpeas
1/2 c. minced fresh parsley
1/2 c. minced onion
1 c. tahini
1/4 c. lemon
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp salt

Prepare potatoes by chopping into 1 inch cubes, and arrange on baking sheet so that they are one potato deep. Drizzle with olive oil, stir to coat each side, and sprinkle cumin and pepper over potatoes. Give 'em another stir, and roast them in the oven at 450 degrees for about 45 minutes, or until they are brown and crispy.

Chop lettuce into thin strips, like fattouch you see in arabic restaurants. Add chickpeas, parsley, onion. Mash together garlic and salt with a morter and pestle, and add to mixture. Drizzle tahini and lemon over salad, and mix well.

Allow potatoes to cool and layer them on top of the salad. Do not mix. Potatoes will incorporate as you serve the salad.

As with all my recipes, these amounts are approximations, so add and subtract what you need to make it look and taste good! I'm working on getting a decent camera so I can start posting pretty pictures like all the cool food bloggers.

Thanksgiving

2007-11-21T07:43:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving.

In my college days, I would spend the day before Thanksgiving looking for articles on the internet about the genocidal legacy of the colonialists, so I can be ready to show up for dinner all righteous and indignant about this mockery of a holiday. I would get my Midwestern family heated by asking God for reparations for indigenous people and a little help in overthrowing the government during the Thanksgiving prayer, instigate charged and uncomfortable political conversations over dinner, eat until I pop, cry because my mom supports the war, and take a nap.

I'd like to think that I've cooled my jets a little. I do think that Thanksgiving offers a good time to reflect on the 500 year struggle of native people in this country, but less publicly, and less annoying-ly.

This year, my sis is coming up from Ohio and all I can think about is the amazing food that we will be cooking together. My new found love of cooking has taken the edge off this usually tense holiday, and I'm focused on asparagus and being a tourist in Philly with Nadia.

Thanksgiving Menu

Appetizer
Asparagus with roasted garlic aoli
Cranberry-champagne cocktail

Dinner
Chicken [portobellos for me] stuffed with havarti, artichoke and spinach
Aunt Cindy's mashed potatoes
Herbed Shallot Stuffing
Roasted fall veggies in balsamic glaze
Fattouch

Dessert
Pumpkin Cheesecake with bourbon sour cream topping
homemade chocolate truffles

Here is how it turned out:

Champagne cocktail

Asparagus with Aoli

The Chicken!

The Whole Shebang...

Moroccan Couscous

2007-11-19T20:19:00.000-08:00

My Christmas list is growing. I was determined to preempt the inevitable scented lotions and the way-too-femme-for-me handbags by having a simple, reasonable list of essential and inexpensive cooking supplies to guide friends and family through the process buying me a Christmas present.

My list started out as a simple cast iron skillet and a decent chef knife.

It has quickly blossomed into luxuries that are both expensive and hardly necessary. Amid the Williams and Sonoma glass spice jars, the microplane zesters, and baking stones, there is the tagine. My Moroccan Couscous has allowed my shameless consumerism to get the best of me, and I truly believe that owning a tagine will fundamentally change my life.

A tagine is both a dish and the clay vessel that it is cooked in. It's generally a meat thing, because the shape of the bowl allows the meat to get ridiculously tender. But I happen to love the thought of a bubbling eggplant and mushroom ragout, with the juices seeping into to a lemon or fruit scented couscous, all inside an earthy, red pot.

My Moroccan-style couscous was hardly that. It was, however, warm, hearty, and cooked up in one big pot. The generous amounts of Syrian mix and orange juice saved the day, because it started out terribly bland, all because I was too lazy to toast the almonds. Will I ever learn?

This is may be more onion-y that some would like, but I found that they polished off the dish so well. It was on the verge of being too sweet, and the onions reminded me that I was eating dinner, not dessert.

Moroccan-style couscous

5cups couscous
1 cup toasted almond slivers
2 cups golden raisins
2 large onions
1/4 c. olive oil
1 oranged, halved
2 bay leaves
1 large cinnamon stick
salt
water
a little bit of crushed red pepper
lots of syrian mix aka 7 spice

[Arabic 7 spice (bokharat) is mixture of spices you can buy ready at any Middle Eastern grocery. basically everything you would find in a pumpkin pie, plus black pepper, cumin and coriander. Basically, love in a spice jar.]

Heat olive oil in a large soup pot. Toss in the almonds and push em around until they are browned. Add onions, and sauté until translucent. Add in couscous and raisins and cover with water until there is about 1 inch of water above the couscous. Cover and bring to a boil. Once water is boiling, squeeze in the juice of 1 orange, scoop out all the seeds, and put the orange halves in the pot. Add lots of syrian mix, the cinnamon stick, the bay leaves, the red pepper and salt, give it a swirl, and cover until couscous is steamed. Fluff with a fork, incorporating all the spices.

Top with a pat of butter while still hot.

Loubieh bi Zeit

2007-10-25T21:39:00.000-07:00

I'm back! Much apologies to my readers [if I have any readers?] for my month long hiatus. A nasty virus attacked my computer and I have been without internet access for 4 long weeks. I seem to have resolved the problem all by myself, an accomplishment for which I am very proud.

Just because I haven't been blogging doesn't mean I haven't been cooking, though. I have been busy with many other things [hence the 4 weeks it took me to fix my computer], but I've managed to eek out a few gems from my kitchen, even without the motivation of future publication on the internet.

One such recipe was a jazzed up version of loubieh bi zeit, a classic Lebanese dish of tender green beans sauteed in tomatoes and olive oil.

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, one thing you may know about me is that I am generally disgusted with bastardized versions of Arabic food. I'm no snob when it comes to coffee or wine, but I seriously turn my nose up to roasted pepper pesto aoli hummus and other abominations.

The beauty of Lebanese food lies in its simplicity. Most dishes are flavored with some combination of garlic, lemon, and salt. There is much skill involved in determining the perfect perportions of each, and there are probably as many recipes for hummus as I have cousins, but the reality is that most Arabic food is quite basic, and quite perfect the way that it is.

There is something to be said for eating food cooked the same way your grandmom's mom made it. But, admittedly, there are days when I want to cook up something really special and I bend the rules a little. The key is keeping the recipe's integrity in tact. I try to preserve the essence of the recipe, using the same spices and ingredients, just adding extras to enhance the flavor.

Loubieh bi zeit is usually very tender and stew-like. My jazzed up Loubieh was heartier, as roasting the green beans gave them a very pronounced flavor and the pumpkin seeds, a popular snack in the middle east, added some crunch. I minced the onions and tomatoes instead of chopping them, inspired by Nigella Lawson's tendency to throw every vegetable possible into the food processor. Mincing produced the desired effect, and I only had to toss the glistening mixture of tomato and onion with the green beans for a few minutes.

Loubieh Mashwey bi bizr
Roasted Loubieh with Pumpkin Seeds

2lbs green beans
2 tomatoes, minced
1/4 c. pumpkin seeds
1 onion, minced
1tbsp cinnamon
1/4 olive oil
sea salt

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Wash and stem green beans, leaving them whole. Spread in a 9 X 13in pan so that they are one layer thin. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt, then roll them around a little so that they are evenly coated. Roast for 20-25 minutes. They will be spotted with brown and a little shriveled.

Toast the pumpkin seeds in a large wok or pan in the olive oil. Once brown, add in the tomatoes and onions, and sautee until onions are translucent. Add in roasted green beans and sautee for 5 more minutes. Serve with pita bread.

Night of 1000 Apples: Episode 3

2007-10-15T22:12:00.000-07:00

I spent many a drunken night in college hitting up the only 24 hour restaurant, the Waffle House in Springfield, Ohio. I'm used to my hash browns smothered, covered, chunked, diced, capped and topped.

But, if you want to really wow your brunch guests, do up your hash browns a couple of apples. The recipe says to microwave the potatoes, which proves to me that Rachel Ray is an incompetent floozy, but it is otherwise delicious!

After our Sunday dinner of the curry apple baked beans, apple hash browns, and collard apple salad, I have to say that I am DONE with the apple recipes. I'm so over it. Khalas, bas, enough already!

2 large Idaho potatoes
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, 1 turn of the pan
2 tablespoons butter
2 small, soft apples, such as McIntosh, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
Salt and pepper

Prick potatoes several times each with a fork and microwave on high for 10 to 12 minutes. Cool potatoes until you can handle them and chop.

Heat a medium nonstick skillet over medium-high heat with extra-virgin olive oil and butter. Add apples and onions and cook 5 minutes, add potatoes and season with salt and pepper, to taste. Crisp and brown the potatoes with apples and onions 5 minutes more, then serve.

Night of 1000 Apples: Episode 2

2007-10-13T13:12:00.000-07:00

They sounded so good. I even had a birthday party to share them with. Everyone was supposed to ooh and ahh and tell me how pretty they were, not to mention unique and delicious.

Such is the story of my apple, goat cheese and caramelized onion pizzettes.

They were not good. They were chewy, rubbery, and burnt. And ugly. Man, we're they ugly.

This is not to say that there is not hope. The combination of ingredients is a no-brainer, especially if you spend a couple of extra bucks on quality goat cheese [I used honey goat...ohhhhh honey goat]. I caramelized the onions like a pro, and the apples were delightfully soft but firm.

The problem was the crust. The problem was also that I didn't peel the apples so that the burnt skins stabbed you in the mouth, but that is an easy fix, as is my lack of a quality baking stone. But the crust...

The recipe I followed was for a white crust. I thought I could just substitute King Aurthur's whole wheat flour, thinking it was basically the same thing, only brown. Duh! Just because I have a food blog does not mean that I am an experienced cook.

So...my quest for the perfect whole wheat pizza crust begins. My friend Ya-Ping recommended the ready-made frozen crust from Trader Joes. Let me tell you, after I stayed up until 3am and spent all of my elbow grease rolling out the rigid, uncompromising dough only to come out with flattened disks that were best suited for trap shooting, this is tempting. She said it was delicious and made without preservatives, but I remain opposed because I hate pre-made food and Trader Joes [for taking over small businesses like my dad's].

My research suggests that the problem is multi-faceted. Whole wheat pizza crust is a tough old dog. It will not soften unless you are patient, kind and deliberate. I am by no means a whole grain purist, nor am I on the South Beach Diet, so for next time I see no reason not to mix it with white flour, which is what almost every recipe I find calls for.

The other answer is so obvious to me, and if I had any baking skills at all I would have known to do this, but it seems that my dough needed a soaker. Oh, water...the universal solvent.

The trick is to mix the white flour and wheat flour with all the water that the recipe calls for, mix it up until it is a thick batter, and then beat the heck out of it for 5 minutes. I also don't believe in kitchen appliances like Kitchen Aids, I will definitely do this by hand. Let the batter sit for several hours in the fridge to "develop the gluten". Then add all the yeast, salt, oil and sugar and let rise as directed.

I can't vouch for any of this as I have not tried it, nor will I for a very long time [I'm still catching up on sleep from my pizzette mishap]. But, it seems likely that adding some white flour and doing a soaker will help immensely. I will be spending the next several weeks daydreaming about pizza toppings, which is fi-ine with me.

Possibly Perfect Whole Wheat Pizza Dough

1 3/4 cup whole-wheat flour
1 package quick-rising yeast
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon sugar
3/4 cup water, room temp
2 teaspoons olive oil

Instructions for the Soaker, from Discuss Cooking.com

Measure out the 1-3/4 cup ww flour in a separate container. Put all 6 oz of water in the mixing bowl (it should not be hot; room temperature is fine) and, using the KA paddle, slowly beat in enough of the WW flour to make a very thick batter. Beat with the KA paddle for 5 minutes to develop the gluten. Let rest, covered, at room temperature for one to two hours to allow the WW flour to absorb water and for gluten development to continue. (You can do this several hours ahead if more convenient; just put the soaker in the 'frig if you're going to hold it over 2 hours.) After this resting period, add the salt, quick-rising yeast and oil to the batter and mix it in with the KA paddle. Switch to dough hook. Add the remaining whole wheat flour slowly and then knead, speed 2, for at least 5 minutes. The kneaded dough should be slightly tacky to the touch, not dry feeling. Cover and let rise as usual until doubled in bulk

Eid Mubarak

2007-10-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

Today is Eid Al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan.

No goat this year, though, as the 1.5 billion adherents of Islam are feeling the squeeze of economic globalization as food prices soar all over the world.

Prices of meat, chicken, vegetables and fruits sharply soared during Ramadan in Lebanon. Although prices of food and vegetables are usually higher in Ramadan than in other months of the year, this year people noticed "an unprecedented rise in prices of almost all consumer goods, including those produced locally," the Lebanese daily An-Nahar reported Thursday.

Night of 1000 Apples: Episode 1

2007-10-10T14:46:00.000-07:00

I'm back in the groove.

After a few disasters [I was too humiliated to post about my failed romance to hominy], last nights apple adventures went very well.

Not that anything I made was terribly difficult. But cooking is less about skill than it is imagination. Some times you imagine things that taste well together. Sometimes your imagination is wrong.

Sauteed Cabbage with apples was one such phantasm that worked.

The key is to slice the apples in their jackets very very thinly [think garlic with a razor blade]. It was quite the brain game to figure out what was denser: cabbage or apples, which would determine what would get cooked first. The spices were simple: salt, pepper and corriander. OH! and a teensy bit of chunk-ily sliced ginger. Half a tablespoon, max.

This was surprising filling. The butter made it very rich, and I didn't feel like I needed a pork chop to go with it [though my sister Ann would probably disagree.]

Apple Cloud Cake
I generally avoid processed foods, mostly for economical reasons. But I couldn't pass up the $.99 cake mixes on sale at Supreme. Seeing as how apples are literally rolling all over my kitchen [thanks to pushkin and jane], I broke down and got a box of french vanilla cake sans icing, which I wanted to make myself.

To make a very moist boxed cake, add two chopped, peeled apples to the mix, and follow the instructions on the box. It gives it a hint of flavor and a lot of texture.

I iced it with a yogurt icing that I've been wanting to make ever since I saw it on an English cooking show, waaaay back in 2001.

I was living in a coastal town in the northeast of England, where I discovered that the British actually eat a lot of delicious food, despite common misconceptions. That's what happens when your country controlled one quarter of the world's population. You get to steal all their food!

The yogurt icing came from Cyprus, which is why it was made with the tangy, thick leban that you can only buy in arabic grocery stores [a definite staple in my refrigerator]. I mixed about 3 cups of yogurt [enough for a glaze, not a thick, gloppy layer], with a generous squirt of maple syrup and a 1/2 cup of confectioners sugar.

I was so proud of myself for being patient and letting the cake cool before I iced it. Otherwise it would have been a runny mess.

Most of my failed recipes are a result of my laziness. Remember the cornbread bake? It would have been awesome if it wasn't on the verge of rotting. I didn't feel like rearranging the stuff in my fridge to put it away, so I covered it with paper towels and sat it on my countertop overnight. The beans and cheese congealed and even after I put it in the fridge, I couldn't get rid of the alcoholic taste and the stringy coating that covered the beans. Ew.

Of course, I ate it for lunch every day last week. But I didn't enjoy it.

Anyway, back to my cloud cake, I sprinkled the iced cake with some crushed walnuts and it became something delicious for Ann and I to giggle over [as is our custom] before we went to bed.

Savory Apple Recipes

2007-10-07T17:46:00.000-07:00

The Lord is Good to Me
And So I thank the Lord
For Giving Me The Things I Need The Sun and The Rain and The Appleseed
The Lord Is Good To Me

-Johnny Appleseed, Girl Scout song. Not to be sung unless you are hoping for rain.

Yeah, Hotober.

Thanks to the gumption of my sister Ann, a group of friends ventured out to suburbia to pick apples at Linvilla Orchards. An activity that is normally supposed to be enjoyed during crisp fall weather, this adventure was a sweaty affair, as temperatures in the northeast are hitting record highs. It was close to 90 and muggy as hell.

We still had an awesome time, despite the unseasonable weather. We filled two huge boxes with apples, picked pumpkins for carving, and I bought some chestnuts from the farmers market. I now have 30 pounds of apples to go through, and, in case you were nervous, I will be blogging my way through the box.

The whole experience was idyllic. It harkend memories of a childhood in Ohio, home of culinary colonizer Johnny Appleseed [side note: if you thought apples were indigenous to this country, you're wrong. They have their origins in Kazakhstan]. Fruit tress always remind me of my grandma. She would see them in someone's yard as we were driving by and insist that we stop. We'd all have to get out of the car and stand amongst the smelly, rotten fruit on the ground, trying not to get stung by bees or arrested. She was undaunted, and we always had a bowl of fruit with leaves still on the stem on our kitchen table.

Apples are sort of generic anyway, so I'd like to avoid the obvious. There will be at least one apple pie that comes of our apple picking adventure, but in my kitchen, apples are the new veg.

shredded collard greens with walnuts and pickled apples

Gourmet | September 2000

Note: this recipe doesn't say to cook the collards, but I am gonna blanch them because raw collards are pretty intense .

Active time: 30 min Start to finish: 1 1/2 hr

Servings: Makes 6 servings.
Ingredients
For pickled apples
2 red apples such as Gala or Idared
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pickling spice

1/2 cup walnut halves (3 oz)
1/4 cup olive oil
1 bunch collard greens (1 lb)
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Make pickled apples: Quarter and core apples, then cut each quarter lengthwise into 1/8-inch-thick slices. Boil vinegar, water, sugar, salt, and pickling spice in a saucepan, stirring, until sugar is dissolved. Add apples and return to a boil. Transfer to a heatproof bowl and cool. Chill, uncovered, until cold, about 1 hour.

Prepare nuts while apples chill: Toast walnuts in oil in a small skillet over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until a shade darker. Cool nuts in oil. Transfer nuts to a cutting board with a slotted spoon, reserving oil. Coarsely chop 1 tablespoon nuts and finely chop remaining nuts.

Prepare collard greens: Halve each collard leaf lengthwise with kitchen shears or a sharp knife, cutting out and discarding center ribs. Stack leaves and cut crosswise into 1/4-inch-wide strips. Transfer to a large bowl.

Just before serving: Transfer all nuts and oil from skillet to collards and toss with 1/2 teaspoon salt and pepper to taste. Add apple slices, discarding pickling liquid and spices, and toss again.

Apple Curry Baked Beans

This recipe calls for 1 golden delicious, but I find them to be not so delicious, so I will use two winesap.

1 28 ounce can baked beans
1 cup thinly sliced carrot
1/2 cup chopped sweet red pepper
1/2 cup sliced green onion
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 small Golden Delicious apple, chopped
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1/4 teaspoon dried red pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger

In a skillet sautee carrot, sweet red pepper, and onion in hot oil over medium-high heat until crisp-tender. Combine vegetable mixture, beans and remaining ingredients in a lightly greased 1 1/2-quart casserole dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes or until bubbly.

A few other ideas I have kicking around:

* cheese tortellini with apples and sage butter,
* a whole wheat pizza with brie, apples and caramelized onions,
* sauteed cabbage with apples,
* bread pudding with apples and sweet potatoes.

Cincinnati Cornbread Bake

2007-10-04T19:43:00.000-07:00

This one is a shoutout to my hometown. Both because the bean-y part of this cornbread bake is flavored with a spice mix that is distinctly cincinnati, and because of the hopelessly midwestern character the jiffy cornbread gives to this homely casserole.

Normally, I avoid baking. I don't like to be wedded to a recipe and I don't know enough about food chemistry to bake on the fly. Plus, our apartment is a little lopsided, so most things that come out of the oven are cracker-thin on one side and bloated and puffy on the other.

Jiffy cornbread hardly counts as baking, though. I made the mistake of reading the ingredients on the box. Don't do it, especially if you are a vegetarian.

Cincinnati Cornbread Bake

1 large onion, chopped
2 c. or 1 can black beans
1 c. corn kernels
2 cloves garlic
2tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. cocoa
1tsp. cumin
1tsp. black pepper
dash Jamaican red pepper
salt
2 chopped tomatoes
queso blanco or other spanish cheese, grated
2 boxes jiffy corn muffin mix, prepared as directed
1/2 c. chopped chives

Pre-heat oven to 350. sautee onions until translucent , add black beans and corn and stir fry for a few minutes. Spread bean mixture in a casserole dish and top with cheese and tomatoes. Spoon the cornbread mix over the top of the dish. Pop in the oven for about 30 minutes until golden brown.

Lesson Learned

2007-10-03T21:12:00.001-07:00

I learned an important lesson today that I think needs to be shared with the world, to ensure that no one ever makes the same mistake that I did.

Do not, under any circumstances, consume 1/2 a pound of sugar free candy in on sitting.

I'm trying to quit both smoking and procrastinating. I thought that munching on sweets during the day would help me focus. Not wanting all the sugar, I thought I was so clever and bought a bag of sorbitol-laden fruit gummies.

The only time I was ever this sick was when I got Giardia from drinking water out of drainage ditch in Lebanon [they told me it was a freshwater spring!]

As I am writing this, I can literally hear my gut gurggling. I've puked 3 times. I'm not going to write about the other stuff-it's inappropriate for a blog devoted to food.

Sweet Beet Roast

2007-09-24T21:27:00.001-07:00

I spent the weekend camping at Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada. I was in the midst of a Canadian Boreal forest, characterized by oak, maple, elm and birch scattered among handsome conifers. It was far enough north for the leaves on the trees to be glowing in full fall technicolor bloom, with hills of yellow, red, green and orange overlooking a crystal clear lake. September 23rd was the fall equinox, and I literally watched as the sun move from summer to fall.

I got to Philadelphia feeling refreshed, but a little bit sad about being back in civilization. Dangerously low on food, I hit the grocery store almost as soon as I got back into town. I decided that such a vacation calls for a celebration of color and earth. The fresh, local beets that happened to be on sale seemed more than appropriate.

I've had a fear of beets ever since my first job in the dietary department of a nursing home, where I had to puree massive amounts of the smelly, canned variety so the elderly could eat them with the straw. It was the worst part of the job, even worse than buttering 600 pieces of toast with a paintbrush.

But these beets looked straight out of Peter Rabbit's garden. A deep, rich purple root, still caked in mud. They still had their tops, and the economical girl that I am, was lured by their dual purpose of root vegetable + green. That is two meals for a buck forty nine. I quickly got over my fear.

My lunch for tomorrow is still roasting in the oven as I write this.

Sweet Beet Roast

2 large fresh beets, washed, peeled and cubed
2 large carrots, washed, peeled and cubed
2 large apples [I used Macintosh] peeled and cubed
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup apple juice
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp maple syrup
1 tsp herbs de Provence [rosemary, marjarom, basil, thyme and lavender]
dash salt and pepper

blanch the cut carrots and beets. Mix in with apples in 9 x 11 pan drizzle with olive oil, vinegar and a small amount of apple juice [reserve some for cooking]. Stir well. Add sugar, herbs, syrup and salt. Mix well again. Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Roast for 30-45 minutes, checking and adding apple juice as needed to prevent dryness.

I plan on eating this with rice or couscous, but will also make lunchtime pita wraps with a smear of cream cheese or lebne [yogurt cheese], topped with the beet roast.

As for the greens, my idea is to make a salad out of whole wheat pasta shells, kidney beans and sauteed beet greens. Send ideas for a dressing along my way.

my dad in food news

2007-09-12T11:53:00.000-07:00

My dad was featured in today's Cincinnati Enquirer.

He used to have huge, overflowing open boxes of dates in the back of his store. They were so beautiful! The stupid health department said it was illegal and now they're all packaged in plastic. Why is it that overseas, you can hang a bloody goat in the window of your store and no one gets sick, but we freak out over dried fruit if its left uncovered???

Anyway, happy Ramadan and Rosh Hashana. Maybe dates are the treats of peace?

"I sell a lot of dates at Ramadan," says Dean Zaidan, owner of Mediterranean Imports in Findlay Market. He welcomes shoppers who are stocking up for the holiday. "People buy boxes for gifts, or they buy whole boxes to last the month," indicating a five-pound box of plump brown dates from California.
His tightly packed store, where he sells nuts, olive oils, spices and unusual imported foods, has a small corner dedicated to dates.
"There are 40 kinds of dates, that I know about," he says. "But not all ship well." His Medjool dates come from California, while the smaller Deglet Noor varieties come from Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia.
He also sells chopped dates, coated with sugar to keep them from sticking together, and a paste of dates for baking. The Medjool dates are larger and more moist than the smaller Deglet Noors, but Zaidan prefers the latter. "They have a deep, almost molasses-like flavor that I love."

Avacado and Mango Salad with Tostones

2007-09-12T11:04:00.001-07:00

In the spirit of restaurant rip-offs, I'm posting this older recipe that I jotted down but never posted, mostly just to see if my RSS feeds are working.

Can I just say that writing "rss feeds" makes me feel like I am very tech savvy and smart.

Avacado and Mango Salad with Tostones

Admittedly, the idea for this meal with ripped off of an amazing restaurant in North Philly, Tierra Colombiana. As much satisfaction as it is to invent a recipe of your own devices, it is equally satisfying to make a meal that you know for sure will taste good. The restaurant is a favorite of my coworkers, and every time we go, I get this salad.

I didn't start out with food plagiarism in mind. I was mad at myself because I was too busy, lazy and tired to cook the night before, and my dinner consisted of a small box of chocolate covered sunflower seeds and a can of skunky beer. Vowing to never stoop to such low levels of food standards again, I spent my lunch break hunting the Reading Terminal for inspiration.

The Iovine Brothers produce stand, waaay in the back, was a gold mine. First, a mound of fifty cent Hass avocados, so ripe they were almost black. I've had so many blah unripe avocados that I pretty much won't settle for anything less these days. Then, the extra large blushing mangoes, also fifty cents. Finding one without too many bruises was a challenge, but the mango I finally picked turned out to be the star of the show.

Avacado and Mango Salad with Lime Jalapeño dressing
Serve over black beans [do 'em up with some sauteed onion and chili powder]

spinach, spring mix or arugula
2 avocados RIPE!
1 extra large mango, or two small ones. RIPE!
juice of one lime
3 tbsp olive oil
1/2 chopped Jalapeño

Toss mango, greens and avocado. Wisk together limejuice, olive oil and Jalapeno and dress salad.

Tostones

Green Plantain
Oil for frying
salt

Peel plantains by chopping off both ends, and slicing down the middle. Run under cold water and pull the skin away from the meat.

Chop into 5 or 6 pieces and fry in hot oil. When they are golden brown, take them out and drain on a paper towel.

When they are cool enough, smash with a tostone maker or heavy bottomed glass or plate and fry again for a minute or so. Sprinkle with salt.

Sorrel

2007-09-06T22:43:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'm totally in the dark and everyone knows what Sorrel is, but I heard of it for the first time last weekend at Red Bamboo in Brooklyn.

Apparently, everyone knows about this fabulous restaurant, too. I was completely in love.

For folks who don't know what Sorrel is, here are some excerpts from the Wikipedia entry:

Common sorrel is a perennial herb that is cultivated as a leaf vegetable. The leaves may be puréed in soups and sauces or added to salads and shav; they have a flavor that is similar to kiwifruit or sour wild strawberries. The plant's sharp taste is due to oxalic acid, and so may be contraindicated in people with rheumatic-type complaints, kidney or bladder stones. Sorrel is also a laxative.

I hear sorrel juice is great with rum.

I didn't try any at the restaurant, and I wish I had. It is now on my list of veggies to try someday.

p.s. What is shav???

wilted spinach with fresh cayenne

2007-09-05T05:15:00.000-07:00

This dish is my ultimate comfort food. Like all good recipes, it has a history.

During my days with the Student Environmental Action Coalition a few years back, my comrade Markio and I planned a field organizing trip visiting 8 different schools, without having access to a car. The first commandment of student organizing: make lofty, ridiculous plans with no means of implementation.

Our strategy: hop a Greyhound to Cincinnati and beg my mom until she let me use her old Dodge Caravan, a relic of her band mom era. The second commandment of student organizing: when in need, mooch off your parents.

Needless to say, it did not go over well. She refused to let me use her car and my life was over. We had an epic 24 hour screaming match. Not letting me use her car turned into not supporting my activism turned into not loving me for who I am, blah blah. From her perspective, I was a sponge, ungrateful, presumptuous, blah blah. It was one of the worst fight we ever had. And we've fought a lot.

My dad, ever the good guy, felt terrible about the whole ordeal. At 6am, before driving me to the rental car agency at the airport [only to discover that being under 25 made it impossibly expensive] he made me a huge breakfast. I couldn't really stomach the 'iggit el badounis or the strawberry yogurt parfait because I was so upset. It was so sweet of him to do, but it all tasted like cardboard, a terribly unusual phenomena for me. The best I could muster was mushing it all together with my fork to make it seem like I was enjoying them.

But I feasted on these soft, spicy greens with great enthusiasm. They calmed me down, mellowed me out. I ate three, maybe four servings. The nerves left my stomach and I was able to think us out of our predicament.

The moral of this story is not that my mom sucks and my dad rocks. The moral of this story is that your parents love you so you should love them back.

The fact that I made this yesterday has nothing to do with the state of my mental health. I just happened to have a bag of spinach in my fridge that had two days left, max, and some beautiful, waxy cayenne chilies, fresh from Hanako's friend's garden.

I'm certain my dad used Serrano peppers, but I was working with what I had. I used three peppers for one big bunch of spinach and I wish I used two. I also used too much oil...good olive oil is potent stuff and should be used sparingly.

Wilted spinach with fresh cayenne

1 bunch unwashed spinach [not the stuff in plastic bag]
2 fresh cayenne peppers
1tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic
salt
lemon

Mash garlic with a bit of salt. Saute in olive oil. Chop peppers into largish chunks, and saute with garlic. Turn heat down and let cook slowly for 30 minutes.

Get out another pan to wilt your spinach. To wilt spinach, wash the spinach leaves gently in cold water. You don't need to add water to the pan as the water clinging to the spinach is enough. Put the spinach in the pan and turn on the heat to high and shake the pan until the spinach has wilted.

Add the spinach to the peppers and saute for a few minutes. Put in bowl and toss with a bit of lemon and salt.

Hey There Khalilah

2007-09-03T07:11:00.001-07:00

Ohhh...its how you cook the meat..ohhh its how you cook the meat

Why eat when you can drink?

2007-09-02T21:23:00.000-07:00

Yeah Labor Day Weekend! I made sure to pour a drop for my fellow workers for the occasion.

Flower Child Fizz
Named for Hanako, my new drinking buddy, who's name means Flower Child in Japanese.

1 oz cold attar or simple syrup [boil 2c. sugar, 1c. water, a few drops of lemon and rosewater]
2 oz whiskey
1/2 tsp lemon juice
orange or raspberry flavored sparkling water

garnish with an orange or lemon slice.

Irish Pub

2007-08-31T17:28:00.001-07:00

NPR's The World aired this segment on the world wide appeal of Guinness beer, and credited The Irish Pub Company with the brew's globalized success. Boasting 1,800 bars in more than 50 countries, the company markets the "Irish brand" to consumers from Nigeria to Dubai.

Cool!

In classic NPR style, the spot congratulates the corporation for their remarkable ability to sell tasteless, high calorie beer to brown people all over the world.

The story piqued my interest because I spent a week in Santa Cruz, Bolivia this summer at a conference, and one of our Bolivian hosts took us to an Irish Pub for drinks. I saw particularly weirded out by this manifestation of culinary imperialism, because Santa Cruz seemed to have a pretty thriving local economy. Aside from a KFC and a Subway, most of the restaurants were owned and run by Bolivians.

The Irish Pub phenomena is disturbing to me a number of levels. Food and drink are fundamental elements of culture, and the proliferation of western food chains in the global south is one example of globalization causing systematic cultural genocide. Furthermore, if I was Irish, I'd be pretty f-en sick of my heritage sold as a "brand". Riverdance was bad enough, but decorating trashy bars with knick-knacks that were probably harvested from Irish yard sales, slapping a logo on it and calling it "authentically Irish" must be terribly insulting.

must-have accessory

2007-08-31T00:23:00.000-07:00

Please someone buy this for me...

3 heavenly popcorn recipes

2007-08-30T23:15:00.000-07:00

I hosted a craft night at my house last night [isn't that so bohemian of me?] and so agonized over what I would make, that I did zero to prepare ahead of time. I needed something snacky, but hearty, and fun to eat, but not messy.

So, I had a half hour after I got off work and $1.35 in my pocket. My fridge contained a bag of spinach and thawing pizza rolls, neither of which were getting me anywhere. I said a prayer to Saint Martha and, I'm not making this up, a bag of popcorn fell right off my shelf.

Ok..in truth, I was rummaging around the cupboard looking for ideas, and the bag ended up on the floor after I hit it with my elbow. It still seemed slightly miraculous.

Twenty minutes later, I had the following concoctions waiting on the table when the doorbell rang. Hungry crafters, yarn in tow, gobbled it up within moments of sitting down.

*******************
Popcorn: pop using a little bit of oil. I think I always burn it because I try and drench every kernel. Turn off the fire as soon as there is a two second gap in the pops. You really only need about 1/4 cup uncooked for a very large amount of popcorn.

Lemon-Pepper Popcorn

drizzle popped corn generously with olive oil [far superior to butter, in my opinion].
I used 4 capfuls of lemon juice for a medium-sized bowl of popcorn. Use lots of fresh ground pepper, enough to coat all the corn and enough salt to make it tasty. Mix well.

If I had more time to care about what it looked like, I would tossed in a few drops of yellow food coloring, spread it in a roasting pan, and dried the whole mixture out in the oven for about 3-5 minutes.

Honeyed Apricot and Pistachio Popcorn

This would be like if kettle corn and cracker jax got married on the shores of the Mediterranean....

I chopped up some amardine, apricot fruit leather. [I have vivid memories of elementary school, being totally embarrassed about this stuff packed away in my New Kids on the Block lunch box, failing to convince the inquiring children that it was a Fruit Roll-Up just like they had.]

Dried apricots would work, but soak them over night and chop them very small.

Crush the pistachios, not so much that they are mealy, but so they are not too chunky. Mix in the fruit and nuts so that there is enough of each ingredient to make small clumps.

Drizzle with honey, but don't mix it yet or you will have a big, sticky mess. Put a few big hunks of salted butter [for the kettle corn effect] on top and pop it in the microwave for 1 minute. Take it out and mix. Allow to cool. It's much better cold!

Za'atar Popcorn

This was not that creative, but it is very good. Just head to your favorite arabic grocery, pick up a bag of Za'atar, a spice mix made out of thyme, oregano, sumac, and sesame seeds. Coat your corn in olive oil and sprinkle enough za'atar to coat each piece. Balance is key...don't overdo it!

2007-08-28T19:29:00.000-07:00

My new apartment has no air conditioning. My sister and I moved in on July 31, on what was probably the hottest day of the year.

What better time to ignite a dormant cooking hobby! I figure while I'm at it, I might as well sit in my stuffy fan-less room and write about it on the internet. I am so that person who always gets their haircuts in the winter.

Thankfully, the no a/c thing is the only downside to this place, as far as my belly is concerned. I'm right down the street from Supreme [a Dominican-owned grocery store with a mind-boggling selection of spanish cheese], Mecca Market [arabic food], and the infamous produce truck. My kitchen is considerably bigger, and it's no longer in my living room. And the door to the balcony is right next to the stove, so when I burn something we no longer have to dismantle the fire alarm.

To resolve my internal contradiction regarding the hot food/hot weather situation, I've been surviving on a few summer staples that make me feel "chill".

Cucumber with mint yogurt sauce

Last week, I picked up a bunch of baby cukes from the produce truck for a dollar. Oh, they are as sweet as can be! I scored the peel a bit, because otherwise they give me the winds. Usually, this is made as a salad with the cucumber mixed in, but for my snacking purposes, I cut them into spears and use them as a vehicle for the dip.

Thanks to Mecca Market, I have easy access to Romi's lowfat yogurt, my favorite brand of arabic yogurt. It's tart, so you don't need to add as much lemon. The lemon I do add, about a half a cup, I add slowly and carefully, stirring vigorously. I once made the mistake of mixing milk and lemon in my tea and the curdles grossed me out so much, I have a lasting fear of mixing dairy and citrus.

I was feeling lazy, so I used granulated garlic instead up mashing up a clove with salt and lemon like I knew I should. I also used dry mint, though I could have easily swiped some fresh from my neighbor's front yard. No matter, as it is impossible for this dish to not be delicious. A generous sprinkle of salt and my cool cukes are done.

Frozen Canned Cranberry Sauce

What a friggin' concept. Thanks to Micky's mom, I've taken to freezing entire cans of cranberry sauce and eating them like sorbet. Yep, the tubular gelatinous glob that you only eat on Thanksgiving is actually quite the treat in the summer. It has the consistency of a jello pudding pop, and a rich plum color that makes it seem more glamorous than it is. I'm not wild about the high fructose corn syrup listed as the first ingredient, but I figure its better than Ben and Jerrys.

There are endless possibilities to be explored with this transformed bastion of midwest-ery.
I want to float small scoops of the cranberry in sweetened condensed milk, topped with crushed peanuts and lime zest. An attractive idea would be to alternate melon-balled scoops of cranberry and lemon sorbet in a crystal dish and top with a sprig of fresh mint. Or, top a dish with a shot of high-quality, chilled tequila. Its so pretty and refreshing, it seems ideal to serve it to guests. Its so bizarre that at least if they don't like it, you have something to talk about.

Fattouch

Fattouch is a Lebanese bread salad, generally made with Romaine lettuce. The good thing about Fattouch is that it can really be whatever the heck you want. I tend to be sort of a purist when it comes to arabic food [spare me your pesto hummus and tabbouleh with avocado...if it ain't broke, don't fix it!] But Fattouch really can include the kitchen sink.

The quintessential ingredients are the dressing [lemon, olive oil, salt, pepper, mint, garlic and sumac] and the pita chips. I even used stale, manufactured barbecue flavored pita chips and had no problem. [Note: normally, I would absolutely not waste my money on pre-fab pita chips, but they were one of the many gifts from my dads store].

My latest batch of Fattouch had base of arugula, spinach and purple lettuce leaves, chopped, not torn. I added roasted corn, cut off the cob, red pepper, chunks of cucumber, carrot, onion, and [this is the weird part] mandarin oranges, walnuts and strawberries. I wasn't sure how the sweet of the fruit would go with the potent garlic flavor of the dressing, but the mellow spiciness of the arugula leveled the flavors.

Sliced Grapefruit topped with Rosewater Cream

The sauce is:
1/2 cup lowfat sour cream
2 Tblsp rosewater
1/4 cup powdered sugar

mix until un-lumpy, adding a bit of milk to thin. drizzle onto sliced grapefruit.

This is good, but it would be amazing if I could figure out how to slice grapefruit in a way that did not make them look like mauled pulpy masses of fruit/skin mess.

Wild Thyme Kitchen Recipes

2007-08-27T06:34:00.000-07:00

Breakfast
Apple Hashbrowns

Arabic Recipes
Tahini Salad with Spicy Potato Croutons
Moroccan Style Couscous
Loubieh Bi Zeit bi bizr
Sabanakh Harra

Apple Recipes
Apple Cloud Cake
Shredded Collards with Pickled Apples
Apple Curry Baked Beans

Veggies, casseroles and main courses
Cincinnati Corn Bread Bake
Sweet Beet Roast

Breads
Whole Wheat Pizza Dough

Drinks
Flower Child Fizz

Snacks
Popcorn recipes

Mistakes I'll hopefully never make again

2007-08-01T20:46:00.000-07:00

It consistently amazes/disturbs me that an entire dish can be all ruined by one small mistake. A dash too much pepper or an extra large drizzle of oil can throw the whole thing off entirely of what would otherwise be a delightful meal.

Trial and error is a particularly useful method for cooks like myself. While bakers are bound by precision and accuracy, a cooks world is a veritable free-for-all, with endless possibilities of ingredients to combine. But the reality is that about 45% of the dishes that I make come out exactly like I wanted them to. While there is something to be said for recipes that surprise you, I'd like to try and bump that number up to 65% or so.

Whenever I encounter a problem in life, I like to invent a little “chart-based” solution of some kind…things that are often suggested in self-help and pop psychology audio books. Sometimes when I’m bored, I just browse the Franklin-Covey website, looking at all their different templates for enabling greatness through improved organization. This “living” post is one such attempt.

In an effort to advance my cooking skills beyond mediocre" to "pretty good", I will document common goofs, snafus and [my personal favorite] mushkilas (problems in arabic...quite possibly the worlds cutest word] in this post, not only for my personal reference, but for the collective good of the internet food writing community and all other interested parties…

Good luck! These are in no particular order, just as they arise:

If you want crispy asparagus, never blanche them. Sauté them. Any other method renders them to mush.
There is such a thing as too much olive oil, salt, onions and garlic. They set the stage, but are rarely star the show.
If you want to BAKE, you HAVE to MEASURE! Get that through your thick skull!