One of the lovely folks I met in Sweden recently pointed me to some great Swedish music. There’s a lively electronic music scene over there, which he’s into, and naturally the music that he recommends tends to lean in that direction.
I got a big kick out of this song in particular. Does it sound familiar? Here’s a Youtube video to refresh your memory.
Here’s another Swedish electronic song I’ve been listening to non-stop.
Links:
Enjoy!
Couscous is a marvelous dish when prepared properly. I don’t mean the kind of couscous you make by soaking it in hot water for ten minutes. I mean the kind of couscous you steam forever, smother in butter, steam forever again, etc. OK, I admit, this type of couscous comes in a box too. (Most of us don’t have the time to painstakingly prepare the tiny pasta from scratch.) But when served with traditionally cooked vegetables and meat, couscous is a pleasure to eat—deeply satisfying and soulful.
Traditionally, couscocus is served on Tuesdays, laundry day in certain North African communities. While waiting for their laundry to dry, North African women would prepare the pasta and dry it in the sun. Thus laundry day became a social event, an opportunity to get together with friends and neighbors to gossip and exchange recipes.
The Tuesday couscous tradition persists in Israel at North African mom and pop eateries. Traditionally, couscous is served with a soup of vegetables and meat, eather chicken or beef. The types of vegetables and the spices used vary depending on the regional extraction of the cook.
The couscous joint I frequented in Israel was run by a family of Tripolitan extraction. Their couscous included carrots, potatoes, turnips, and zucchini, as well as chicken. Effie, the owner, always had a full house on Tuesdays, when all the high tech employees in the neighborhood would converge on his place for a plate of some down home couscous and little complimentary plates of mezze and pita. Effie’s has no menu.
Instead, Effie would greet everyone with a smile and some friendly banter, and proceed to rattle off the specials of the day. He’d then take everyone’s order faster than any waiter I’ve seen before or since, and pass them on to his wife in the kitchen. One of his sons would cover the table with simple sheet of butcher paper, and another son would arrive with plates and cutlery. The first son would return with a basket of fresh, warm pita bread and small mezze plates, including hummus with olive oil, olives, a Tunisian pumpkin spread, and two types of eggplant salad. It was always a challenge to eat all the mezzeh and still have room for couscous.
Couscous veMafroum
(That’s the official name, but everyone calls it Effie’s)
12 Yehezkel Kazaz St.
Or Yehuda, Israel
03-5339252
couscous with vegetables
Here’s my vegetarian version of couscous with vegetables, loosely based on my memories of Effie’s couscous.
for the vegetables:
1 onion, chopped, or 3 shallots, chopped
2 cloves garlic
3 small carrots, peeled
1 large turnip, peeled
1 large potato, peeled
1 cup garbanzo beans, soaked and cooked
1 bunch chard, spinach, or other greens, washed and coarsely chopped
1/2 tsp whole fenugreek
spice mixture: 1/2 tsp each whole fennel and coriander seeds, 2 tsp whole cumin seeds
(If you don’t have whole spices, use pre-ground. Just spice the vegetables a little more cautiously, reserving any leftover spice mixture for a later use. It is best, however, to use whole spices.)
salt to taste
for the couscous:
250 gr coucous
butter
salt to taste
equipment:
couscousiere, or a medium sized pot with a steamer or sieve
(I used a small pot and a vegetable steamer for the couscous, and a separate pot for the vegetables. Ideally, the couscous should steam above the vegetables to as to absorb their flavors.)
Serves 3-4
What’s a meyer lemon and how does it differ from an ordinary lemon? That’s what Sophie asked in the comments of my meyer lemon fettuccine post (Hi Sophie!).
The meyer lemon is a cross between an ordinary lemon and a mandarin orange, originating in China and imported to the United States by a guy named Frank Meyer. The meyer is a smallish, thin-skinned lemon that’s sweeter than than other lemons. The zest is more aromatic and easier to work with than an ordinary lemon, as the pith is quite thin. Meyer lemons are thus good for pickling, canning, and candying. Their thin, supple skins also make them easier to squeeze for juice. Given a choice between the thick-skinned lemons off the tree in the back yard and store bought meyers, I’ll take the meyers.
Ever go bobbing for apples in a huge plastic crate? How about filtering out bad oranges, revving up your pitching arm to toss them into a giant composting container? Last Saturday, thirty-odd foodbloggers got together at the San Francisco Food Bank to do just that. The San Francisco Food Bank is an enormous clearing house for food that is distributed to charitable organizations throughout San Francisco and the Bay Area. Huge amounts of food come through the food bank every day, all of which needs to be sorted and packaged into cardboard boxes. These boxes are then stacked on a flat, wrapped in plastic to keep them in place, and finally loaded onto trucks for distribution. The whole operation is run by a combination of employees, part-time volunteers, and sporadic volunteers. It’s remarkable to see such a dedicated, hard-working staff process and sort all those massive crates of food.
Our task last Saturday was to sort and package green apples, oranges, and frozen corn cobs. This involved putting together and taping the boxes, sorting the good fruit from the bad, packaging the fruit, taping the boxes shut, and stacking the boxes neatly on a wodden flat.
We foodbloggers spread around the crates of fruit and went straight to work. Some people taped boxes, others lifted and arranged the boxes. Some were especially adept at picking out the bad fruit and throwing them dodgeball-style into the composting crate—I nearly got nailed three times. Our efficient work paid off: the kind folks at the Food Bank said we managed our task much faster than they had expected.
Afterwards, we headed off to Yield Wine Bar for some great nibbles and wine served by Sam—barmaid for a day—looking cool in her officer’s cap. Organizers Amy and Sam provided delicious cheeses and baguette slices, the Fatted Calf gave fed us thin-sliced ham, and Poco Dolce brought us their little sweet/salty wafers of chocolate. (As both Fatted Calf and Poco Dolce are right down the road from Yield, this was micro-local cuisine, as someone pointed out.)
But the stars of the show were the sunny chutneys and spicy Spanish chorizo courtesy of Alison McQuade and Ore Dagan of Fra’Mani Salumi, respectively. I’m not usually a great fan of chutneys as I tend to find them too sweet. But McQuade’s Celtic chutneys are something else entirely. These are complex chutneys brimming with taste and texture. You can’t pick out any one individual flavor–there’s the zing of vinegar, a ginger kick, and a warm, brown sugar sweetness. But there’s so much more, and damned if you can figure out exactly what else is in that chutney. All you know is it tastes fresh and alive, and goes very well with cheese and bread.
The Spanish chorizo was brought to us from Fra’Mani salumi, by way of Ore Dagan, chef and Responsabile Produzione. I could not get enough of it, but sadly, this particular salumi is not yet available in stores. I’ll wager that a small popular movement will soon begin protesting the absence of this chorizo from local shops. Slogans like “Chorizo now!” and “Fra’Mani, not war!” will become ubiquitous. So please, Ore, bring on the chorizo before you have an angry mob of hungry foodbloggers bearing poultry forks and carving knives.
You can find McQuade’s chutneys at the Cowgirl Creamery retail shop in San Francisco, and other fine shops (how about some East Bay locations, Alison? Market Hall, perhaps?). Fra’Mani salumi is sold at the Berkeley Bowl and the Pasta Shop in the East Bay.
Many, many thanks to Amy Sherman and Sam Breach for having organized this wonderful event. It was great fun getting together with other foodbloggers, particularly for a worthy cause.
Soda for yuppies? Yup. Read all about it on my latest post at the Cook’s Kitchen.
I certainly am! Check out my first post for Well Fed Network’s Well Fed on the Town.
The mystery green is…
This versatile Chinese green tastes like a cross between spinach and bok choy. It’s delicious cooked in a stir-fry, or raw in its baby form. Baby tatsoi look like little green roses. They make a beautiful salad with sliced kumquats and a lemon juice olive oil vinaigrette.
What do you suppose this mysterious flower-like vegetable is? To me it looks like the Jolly Green Giant’s wedding bouquet, or maybe the flower he pinned to the lapel of his giant green tuxedo.
I bought this emerald beauty from the Mariquita Farms stand at the Ferry Building farmers Market.
Can you guess what it is?
It’s that time of year again. I’m not referring to one of those over the top shopping days when people trample each other to buy all sorts of junk at obscenely low prices. Rather, it’s the time of year when people trample each other to purchase vast amounts of chips, buffalo wings, and beer. All this in preparation for the Superbowl, the big American game pitting the greatest American football teams against each other.
Historically, men have been the primary spectators of the Superbowl. American football is a very aggressive sport, requiring players to wear helmets and heavy padding. This is a game for manly men. Men who mercilessly tackle their opponents. Men who brave the dangers of broken bones and concussions. Men who pat their colleagues on the rear on national TV.
But Superbowl Sunday is for women too. Who else refills the chip bowl, restocks the beer, and orders the chicken wings? And who cleans up the spills that invariably result from enthusiastic cheering and angry shouting? Superbowl Sunday turns the most modern American woman into Donna Reed.
This year, I’d like to suggest a different way to celebrate Superbowl Sunday.
Men and/or Superbowl enthusiasts: Make your own football party snacks. There’s a whole world of food beyond the kind that’s delivered to your home in less than thirty minutes. Make tapas. Pop some popcorn. Drink some decent beer. Most people own a vaccuum cleaner. Use it. You may feel like your life has ended if your team loses, but it hasn’t. It is, after all, only a game.
Women and/or Superbowl victims: Introduce your partner to the refrigerator, stove, and local grocery store, or better yet, the farmers market. Open epicurious.com on your partner’s favorite web browser. Bid your partner adieu and go out for the day. See a movie. Go shopping. Go to your favorite museum. Do anything you can to get away from drunken football fans screaming for more Cheetos. Have fun. It is, after all, only a game—one that interests you less than Paris Hilton’s views on race relations.
shelly is frahnkenshteen at
gmail dot com
