an open cupboard

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.)

• Pour the couscous into a large, shallow bowl and soak in 1/2 cup very cold water for 20 minutes.
• Chop the vegetables into coarse chunks.
• If using whole spices, place in a clean coffee grinder and grind to a powder.
• Heat some butter and olive oil in a pot and add in the onions. Season with salt and stir. You don’t want the onions to turn transluscent without browning.
• Press the garlic cloves into the onions, then add the fenugreek and half the ground spice mixture. Stir to distribute evenly.
• Add chopped vegetables to pot, along with garbanzo beans, and cover with water.
• Drain the couscous and rake it with your fingers.
• Place steamer, sieve, or couscousiere steaming insert above vegetables and place drained couscous in steamer.
• Bring vegetables to the boil, uncovered.
• Keep the vegetables on a low simmer and turn the couscous into a bowl.
• Rake the couscous with your fingers, sprinkle it with 1/4 cup cold water, and season with salt and butter to taste.
• Let stand, and then steam again over the simmering vegetables.
• You can repeat the raking-sprinkling-seasoning-sitting process, as recommended on the Ya Rayi site. I was lazy and hungry, so I steamed the couscous twice, rather than three times. It was still delicious.

Serves 3-4

I certainly am! Check out my first post for Well Fed Network’s Well Fed on the Town.

Hanging out with your 3 and 5 year old nephew and niece while trying to prepare a Thanksgiving meal is exhausting. Ask me how I know. Tonight’s post will be minimalist in nature, as I’m about to pass out. Just thinking about all the cooking I’ll be doing tomorrow makes me question my sanity.

To those of you who feel as though they too have been passed through a salad spinner one too many times, I have a suggestion. Sometime between now and tomorrow afternoon, take 10 minutes and meditate. Or do yoga. Take a cat nap. Daydream. Draw a picture with crayons. Eat some chocolate while lying on the grass and staring at the clouds (or lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling, if the grass is too wet and the sky is too gray). Just take a few minutes for yourself, breathe deeply, and smile. It’ll help you panic that much less later on.

Here are my food photos for today. You can fill in the blanks.

Yes, my afternoon snack was pie dough scraps. What? Like you’ve never eaten raw cookie dough?

This post is day two of documenting all you can eat, a blogging event hosted by Sam of Becks and Posh.

I spent the day at the de Young Museum with my family visiting from out of town. We had lunch at the museum cafeteria, which is actually pretty good.

breakfast

Breakfast was a strawberry, almond milk shake with half a banana, coconut butter, ground flax seeds, and cinnamon. Yes, it’s exactly the same as yesterday. I like a simple breakfast—one that requires little to no thought this early in the morning. My five-year-old niece would be overjoyed to eat a pink breakfast.

My French butter with fleur de sel sits quietly in the background, just waiting to be spread on some crusty bread.

lunch

The lovely salad was baby spinach and arugula with goat cheese and fresh sliced beets. The beets were rather mild, but tasty. The burger was medium rare Niman Ranch with provolone cheese on an Acme bun. Pretty good burger (although not rare as I ordered it), with a rich, beefy flavor. The bread was several notches above typical burger buns, with a pleasantly firm texture that withstood the meaty juices.

snacks

My mid-morning snack was eggplant spread samples with crisp flatbread chips at the Ferry Building farmers market. The smoky fire-roasted eggplant spread was my favorite. Sadly, I don’t remember the name of the producer.

For an afternoon snack I had about a quarter of a large shortbread cookie with nuts from Bakesale Betty (purchased at the Temescal farmers market on Sunday). These are some buttery cookies, and not too sweet. The nuts add both flavor and texture, rounding out the cookie.

dinner

My brother-in-law cooked a great dinner tonight! We had barbecued burgers with barbecued bacon and aged cheddar cheese on English muffins. I put together some home made ketchup by cooking down overripe heirloom tomatoes with apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, salt and pepper. There was also a garden salad with a balsamic vinegar dressing and oven baked potato wedges. I took the opportunity to finish up my broccoli, bok choy, and seaweed from yesterday.

The bacon-burger-cheddar combination is brilliant, I highly recommend it. Barbecuing the bacon gives it a smokier taste, which complements the burgers very well. The cheddar adds a tangy flavor and a creamy texture (I didn’t melt the cheese). The ketchup was quite good, if I do say so myself. I threw in the tomatoes, seeds, skin and all, which produced a chunky, more natural tasting ketchup.

afterward

Looking over these photos, I’m a little shocked at today’s menu. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten that much beef in a day. I think tomorrow will be a vegetarian day, otherwise I might start growing horns and udders. And blimey, I’ve been eating a lot of junky snacks. Shall I eat more fruits and vegetables tomorrow? Will I abstain from meat? Stay tuned to find out.

Las Palmeras is our current favorite place to eat in San Francisco’s Mission district. Offering both Mexican and Salvadoran food, Las Palmeras is a simple, inexpensive restaurant. This is not the sort of place you go to for the decor, although the Frida Kahlo prints are nice to look at (I always have to fight the urge to straighten the crooked one on the center wall). On the weekend, the clientele is mostly local families out for a meal while strolling musicians strum traditional tunes on a guitar. The service is casual but effective. There’s no hovering, but the food arrives promptly and a server stops by periodically to make sure everything is OK.

But service and ambience are, frankly, irrelevant. The food is the draw. My favorite dish so far is the yuca frita con chicharron, or fried cassava root with pork, a typical Salvadoran dish, according to the menu. This dish is a perfect marriage of flavors and textures. Chunks of yuca are deep fried, leaving them soft yet firm on the inside, and crisp and golden on the outside. The pork pieces are similarly deep-fried a crisp brown, remaining tender on the inside. While the pork is salty, the yuca is slightly sweet with a potato-like texture that offsets the density of the pork. A slightly piquant red sauce complements the dish perfectly, as does a mound of pickled cabbage salad that cuts the fat in the dish and refreshes the palate. When fried to perfection, yuca frita con chicharron is great fun to eat and not very greasy at all. Of the three times I’ve eaten this dish at Las Palmeras, I was disappointed once when the pork was dry on the inside and the yuca was greasy. I don’t know whether this was a result of a problem with the fryer, or an inexperienced replacement cook. In any case, it seems to have been a one-off occurrence. Yuca frita con chicharron remains my favorite item on the menu.

Another dish I’ve enjoyed at Las Palmeras is salpicon, a kind of salad made of shredded beef with chopped mint, onions, and radishes served with rice and lime. This dish is a joy. The combination of mint and beef is a vibrant delight, the mint enlivens the entire dish and the onions and radish add a bit of crunch and bite. A good squeeze of lime brings the dish together, adding tanginess and that distinctive lime flavor. Simple rice is a good foil for this complex combination of tastes. The only thing I found missing was a bit of heat, green or red chilis would have added another layer of complexity to this lovely dish. I don’t know whether this version of salpicon was adjusted to the relatively mild tastebuds of most gringos, or if that’s just the way they make salpicon in El Salvador. On the other hand, my favorite Thai dish is a salad made of very similar ingredients, so I may have been projecting southeast Asian sensibilities onto an entirely different cuisine. Still, the salpicon was very tasty.

A hot mug of corn starch atole is a fine finale to the meal, especially on a cold, windy San Francisco night. This is a thick, sweet, warming drink that sticks to your ribs. Las Palmeras serves atole with corn kernels and a spoon so you can eat it like a pudding or sip it slowly.

Finally, the bill is very reasonable. Our dinner for two, including salpicon, chili relleno, a pupusa, warm tortillas, and a mug of atole came out to $28, including a 20% tip (plus a tip for the musician). Las Palmeras is a good place to go for a simple, tasty Salvadoran meal.

Las Palmeras
2723 Mission Street
(between 23rd & 24th streets)
San Francisco, CA 94110

415-285-7796
Open daily, 8:30am-9:30pm
Cash only

Allow me to introduce you to my dealer: Bittersweet Café, readers, readers, Bittersweet Café. Bittersweet is a chocolate shop and café in Oakland and San Francisco. It’s a cozy place to have a cup of coffee, or satiate your chocolate craving.

While many chocolate shops concentrate on truffles and confections, Bittersweet offers a wide selection of high quality chocolate bars. The bars at Bittersweet are displayed on shelves, according to category and ascending levels of cocoa solids. First the white chocolate bars (really just vanilla-flavored cocoa butter), then the milk chocolate, the flavored chocolates (Mayan style, ginger, lavender, etc.), the dark chocolates, and the hardcore baking chocolates. I like a good dark chocolate truffle now and then, but I prefer a bar with a high percentage of cocoa solids for everyday consumption. I like my chocolate intense and flavorful, not necessarily sweet, so I usually head straight for the dark and baking sections.

Among my favorite bars:

• Hachez Premier Cru, 88%—A creamy-textured, slightly berry-like chocolate that’s fun to eat.
• Domori Puro, 100%—Very intense, dark and strong, almost coffee-like in flavor. A little goes a long way, half a square is usually enough for me. Although this bar has no sugar, it’s still a little sweet and delicious on its own. This is the kind of chocolate you want to eat slowly while sitting in your favorite chair and maybe sipping a cognac. Actually, skip the cognac. Who needs cognac when you have chocolate this good?
• Santander Dark, 70%—A smooth, creamy bar that tastes of kahlua, but contains no coffee liqueur.
• Dolfin Noir 88% de Cacao—An intense, yet smooth bar. I particularly like the tobacco pouch packaging, no fiddly foil to gently open only to rip to shreds when you try to re-package the rest to save for later.

In addition to bars, Bittersweet offers all manner of chocolate goods and knick-knacks, such as wooden gift boxes filled with a variety of chocolates, books about chocolate, CDs by a band called the Bittersweets, drinking chocolate and cocoa, and cocoa butter chapstick (”chocolate for your lips”).

Of course the requisite t-shirts bearing the store’s logo are fetchingly displayed as well.

Once you’ve picked out your take-home goods, you can order a hot drink and a little something to go with it.

My favorite drink is the Bittersweet:a hot drinking chocolate prepared without milk. Rich, smooth, and not too sweet, the Bittersweet is truly a balm for the soul on a cold day. I can never finish it at one go, as it’s so intense. I often refrigerate the remainder and eat it later as a sort of chocolate pudding.

Bittersweet’s excellence in all things chocolate is only exceeded by their friendly, knowledgeable staff. Every employee I’ve spoken to at Bittersweet knows their chocolate, and is thoughtful enough to consult a fellow staff-member if they don’t. Most employees enjoy sampling the goods, so they can guide you in choosing a bar that suits your tastes. One staffer once took the time to explain the rules of thumb in finding chocolates produced without the abominable use of slavery (cocoa grown on family-owned plantations, cocoa grown in South America as opposed to certain regions of West Africa).

I especially appreciate the staff’s accommodation of my picture-snapping today. I really do try to be unobtrusive, but people eventually notice that you’re the only idiot in the shop taking pictures of chocolate. They were enthusiastic when I told them about the Food Destinations chocolate blogging event and we started talking a bit about foodblogging. When I commented on both baristas’ lovely henna-painted hands, I got into an interesting conversation about the ancient Egyptian art of henna hand painting with new employee and henna artist Silvana. That’s just the kind of place Bittersweet is.

Bittersweet Chocolate Café
5427 College Avenue (two blocks south of Rockridge BART Station)
Oakland, CA 94618
(510) 654-7159

Opening Hours:
Sunday through Thursday 9am to 7pm
Friday 9am to 9pm
Saturday 9am to 9pm

Food destinations #3: My Favorite Chocolate Shop

On my way back from New York, I found myself wandering around aimlessly during a stopover at the Dallas airport. It was one of those stopovers that is long enough to drive a person to boredom but not quite long enough to actually exit the airport and walk around the city. Having experienced the hydrogenated plastic that is domestic US airline food—the pleasure of which you are often required to pay extra—I decided to look around the airport for something a little more appetizing that I could take with me on the flight. Sandwiches aren’t yet seen as a security threat in the world of airport security, so I figured I could safely carry on a little bite of something or other.

The Dallas Fort Worth International Airport is an interesting place. Every five minutes a stern, yet friendly recording announces that “any jokes about security may result in your arrest.” And nowhere, but nowhere, can you find a fresh vegetable of any kind. Sure, there is the prerequisite smoothie stand selling half gallon sugary fruit drinks that could sustain an African village for a month. But there is not a single leafy green to be found, and believe me, I checked the sandwiches at Starbuck’s. Nada.

So I looked over my options. Starbuck’s, Popeye’s, Chilli’s, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell. Given a choice of boring franchise food, what do you eat? Why, whatever’s local, of course! And what’s local in Texas? Barbecue! Off I went to Dickey’s BBQ, just left of Popeye’s in Terminal C.

In keeping with what I can only assume is a Texas tradition, Dickey’s offers no vegetables to speak of, unless they’re doused in mayonnaise, deep-fried, or battered and deep-fried. But then, you don’t go to a barbecue joint for a salad.

I bought two barbecue sandwiches: the slow-cooked brisket and the spare ribs. The brisket sandwich consisted of an ordinary hamburger bun with a big ol’ honkin’ slab of meat bathed in barbecue sauce. For the second sandwich, two large sets of ribs were placed in a bun, forming an enormous pork seesaw with a flimsy bun fulcrum. Eegads! Naturally, Dickey’s packs a substantial wad of napkins along with your foil-wrapped sandwich.

I ate the brisket sandwich on the plane. The sauce was pretty good, with a nice balance of sweetness, tanginess, and spice. The meat was tasty, and still somewhat red on the inside, but it was missing something. A little too dry, perhaps. Still, I was grateful to eat a decent lunch, considering that the airline’s “chicken BBQ” meal was pretty much inedible (and since when do Texans barbecue chicken?). I saved the rib sandwich for my arrival at home, to be shared with A. Naturally, A was pleased. The sandwich was very good, best enjoyed at home where you can eat large, messy barbecued ribs that leave your taste buds happy and your face shiny with fat and sauce. Barbecue is an impolite food by definition. You may as well embrace the chaos, just use the napkins when you’re done.

I must have some sort of weird magnetic aura that attracts Israeli Knesset members. The other day I walked right past Silvan Shalom—former Israeli Foreign Minister—in the crowded theater district after seeing “The History Boys.” It’s pretty common to spot celebrities casually walking the crowded streets of New York, but I would sooner have expected to run into David Bowie buying a carton of milk than an Israeli MK looking anonymous among the post-theater throngs.

On the food front, I ate dinner at Four Food Studio and Cocktail Salon last night (no seriously, that’s the actual name of the place). Contrary to what you might think, the wait staff does not cut and style guests’ hair before, during, or after dinner. Rather, Four specializes in fusion style cuisine based on the seasonal foods of Long Island, a laudable concept for a local restaurant.

We started our meal with a basket of warm country style bread with soft butter, followed by the fairly pleasant house cheese fondue. The market salad, punctuated by kernels of fresh corn, and bits of chevre and bacon, was quite good.
For the main course, I had cappuccino dusted rare ahi tuna with jasmine rice pilaf and a sweet eggplant concoction consisting of small, meltingly soft chunks of eggplant. The tuna steak was perfectly seared a thin pale beige on top and bottom, remaining dark pink within. The steak, beautifully speckled with cappuccino (finely ground espresso?), was both delightfully meaty and soft, as you might expect a tuna steak to be.

The dessert menu included such whimsical offerings as “Chocolate Coca Cola Cake with Tahitian vanilla ice cream” and “Coffee and Donuts,” comprised of bread pudding made from donuts and Turkish coffee ice cream with caramel sauce. I don’t care for very sweet desserts, so I ordered a scoop of the vanilla and Turkish coffee ice creams. Both were excellent.

Service is attentive and generous. Our waiter Josh kindly arranged a vegetarian dish with the chef in order to accommodate my veggie brother. Be sure to take some money with you to the restroom, as there’s a nice person there whose job it is to open the tap for you and hand you a paper towel (a bit much for me, but hey, it’s a job). Similarly, several valets are available to park your car for you when you arrive, not that parking is particularly difficult in Melville.

Following dessert, Four serves a large, fluffy ball of pink cotton candy along with the check. The candy floss symbolizes the ethos of the place: deliberately silly, but fun, and pretty tasty, if a little sweet. That the giant wad of fluffy sugar arrives atop a large wine glass points to the restaurant’s ultra-trendy vibe. In all, a fun place to eat on Long Island.

Four Food Studio and Cocktail Salon
515 Broadhollow Road (Rte. 110)
Melville, NY 11747
631.577.4444

Úlfr Grímsson lumbers into the dark, noisy tavern. He is famished from a long day of seafaring and battle, and thirsty for a good jug of mead. Úlfr wearily lugs his Viking gear and sack into the tavern’s back room, carefully wipes the blood off the end of his spear, and hangs it on the wall along with his hatchet. (His wife has nagged him a thousand times about bringing dirty implements of battle into the house. He knows better than to raise the ire of the tavern keeper’s watchful wife.) He leans his shield against the wall. Úlfr heaves a sigh of relief as he lays down his load and takes a seat on the bench at his favorite table.

The tavern keeper quickly appears with a menu. He inquires about the welfare of Úlfr’s wife Tórfa, and about his travels at sea. Úlfr exchanges pleasantries and is soon perusing the menu.

Úlfr chooses the boar stew, a warm, satisfying meal at the end of a long day. The tavern keeper quickly brings him a mug of mead and a bowl of cabbage soup to start with. (The tavern keeper has learned from experience that Hungry Vikings tend to get peevish.) The soup is sweetened with honey and fortified with meat stock. The cabbage is buttery and warm.

Next comes the boar stew, along with warm, coarse bread and creamy farmer’s cheese. Úlfr hungrily digs into the stew with a spoon. The stew is a mess of flavors that mingle in his mouth. The boar is gamey and fresh, the prunes are soft and sweet, the mushrooms are earthy. The chunks of parsnip surprise him, their tuberous, grassy flavor deepening with each bite. Strong, dependable parsnips, rich, grounded, mushrooms, and sweet, plump prunes. “Like Tórfa,” says Úlfr, laughing to himself. He eats a big spoonful of stew with tangy sour cream and lingonberries, and thinks of home.

The tavern keeper appears and takes away the empty plates. He soon returns with dessert, prepared by the tavern keeper’s wife. A long board with three earthenware bowls is placed before Úlfr: forest berry compote, curd cake with nuts, and whipped cream. Úlfr wipes dribbled stew off his beard with the tablecloth and finishes his mead. The sight of the red berries and sweet whipped cream have piqued his hunger again. He scoops up a spoonful of soft, sweet berries, then crumbly, nutty cake, and airy whipped cream, and devours it. He closes his eyes as the textures and flavors blend in his mouth. Úlfr repeats the ritual while a minstrel plays a lute and sings.

Belching loudly, Úlfr stretches his arms and heaves himself off the bench, tossing his payment to the tavern keeper. He yawns and gathers his pack, then takes his hatchet and spear off their hanging place on the wall. He picks up his shield and makes his way towards the door. Stepping out into the cold night, Úlfr heads home to Tórfa.

Sjätte Tunnan
Stora Nygatan 43
111 27 Stockholm
Tel: 08-440 09 19