Meet Jabba the Hut’s little known third cousin, Sheba the Shack. This is quite possibly the worst photo of our otherwise beautiful cat. It was taken at a rather undignified moment, when A spontaneously scooped her up in his arms and held her like a baby. She hates that. I don’t think she likes the camera, either. Hence, this is one displeased little Sheba, making faces and looking scary. I think she’d make a good mafiosa if she had a few thugs at her disposal.
Falafel’s lesser known little sister is sabikh. Sabikh is a pita sandwich with fried eggplant, a sliced boiled egg, chunks of steamed potatoes, salad, hummus, tahini sauce, and amba, a sort of sour mango pickle sauce. Traditionally, sabikh was eaten by Iraqi Jews on Saturday morning. According to lore, the sandwich didn’t really have a name back in Iraq. It was named sabikh by the Iraqi immgrants who opened the first kiosk in Israel to sell the sandwich. Filling, tasty, and messy, sabikh is a favorite street food among Israelis today.
Sabikh is inherently fun to eat. With its abundance of ingredients, it’s an everything but the kitchen sink type of sandwich. Every bite yields a combination of flavors and textures, and often a dribble of tahini down your chin. Keeping the full-to-bursting pita in one piece is always a delicate balance. (The trick here is to use slightly thick, soft, pliable pita, not the sort of thin cardboardy stuff you find at the supermarket).
Sabikh was one of A‘s favorite street foods when we lived in Israel. So on the morning of his recent birthday, I made sabikh with homemade pita. Sabikh makes a tasty breakfast served with Middle Eastern cucumber and tomato salad. And pita is much easier to make than you’d think. You can finish the meal with a small glass of strong Turkish coffee, or sweet mint tea.
sabikh with middle eastern cucumber and tomato salad
Hanit has a recipe for pita here, which you can halve. Or you could make the entire recipe and freeze the remainder for later.
1 small or medium eggplant, preferably the multi-cleft heirloom variety known in the Middle East as “baladi”
2 hard boiled eggs, sliced or coarsely chopped
good quality plain hummus, such as Sabra brand, or homemade
prepared tahini sauce (prepare according to instructions on the jar of tahini paste)
2 steamed potatoes coarsely chopped, or several bite-sized steamed potatoes
amba (optional)
2 good quality pitas
Middle Eastern cucumber and tomato salad (recipe below)
Serves 2
middle eastern cucumber and tomato salad
Middle Eastern cucumber and tomato salad resembles salsa in that its ingredients are diced very small, creating a cohesive cross between a salad and a chunky sauce. The tartness of the lemon juice, the bite of the olive oil, and the freshness of the parsley meld with the sweet juices of the tomatoes and the crispness of the cucumbers. It just isn’t the same if you chop the vegetables any other way except a tiny dice. A salsa style salad is made to be eaten in a pita.
2 Mediterranean, Persian, or small pickling cucumbers
2 medium sized very fresh tomatoes
parsley
1 lemon, sliced
good olive oil, preferably Middle Eastern or Greek
salt and pepper to taste
Serves 2
N.B. If you’re in NYC, you can get sabikh at Taïm. If you’re in the San Francisco bay area, you’re out of luck. But you can get Sabra hummus at Berkeley Bowl, and baladi eggplants at the Ferry Building farmer’s market. Check the farm stand across from Point Reyes Preserves.
beurre d’isigny sainte-mère
I recently bought a tub of fancy French butter from the local high-falutin’ shop. It was on sale for three dollars, so I picked it up (kind of a bargain for fancy butter, and I couldn’t resist the cute wooden basket in which it was packaged). I hadn’t realized that butter can have its own AOC, but apparently it can in France. I took it home, intending to have a little schmear on a slice of sourdough. I ended up eating several schmears, and even tasting it plain. It’s that good. Naturally, the butter disappeared pretty quickly, as I used it on bread as well as in every meal I cooked until it was gone. There’s nothing quite so heavenly as spinach, chicken, anything at all cooked in really good butter.
where to get it: your local gourmet food shop, Todaro Bros., Wally’s, Amazon, Sainsbury’s (U.K.)
wine grapes
While shopping at Berkeley Bowl one day, I happened upon some pinot noir and cabernet grapes. These grapes are smaller, darker, and much more intensely flavored than ordinary table grapes. They also have seeds, which you may not mind eating as they have a slightly acidic taste that complements the natural sweetness of the fruit. Wine grapes have tremendous culinary potential. You could stuff a chicken with grapes and garlic cloves for a roast. You could use them with lamb in a tagine. You could dry them outdoors or in the oven for some really flavorful homemade raisins. Or you could just snack on them along with some almonds.
where to get it: If you live near an area featuring vineyards, you can look for wine grapes at the local farmer’s market or perhaps at the vintner’s.
broccoli with butter and grapes
This is more of a non-recipe, as it’s so easy to prepare. The butter and grapes really make the dish (and the garlic doesn’t hurt). You could substitute spinach, asparagus, or even artichoke hearts for the broccoli. Remember, the grapes do have seeds. You can discard them while eating or just eat them along with the fruit.
1-2 heads fresh broccoli or broccolini, chopped into longish florets
very good butter, copious amounts
wine grapes or ordinary grapes
1 clove garlic
salt and pepper to taste
This is a jar of tomato sauce I canned last night. It somehow escaped the shelf near the stove and took a scenic photo of itself in the garden. I don’t know how it managed to carry my camera.
Everyone’s been canning tomatoes lately, and I’ve been meaning to can some sauce for a couple of months now. It always seems like such a scary, convoluted, exhausting process such that the thought of home canning is much more attractive than the canning itself. Unlike ordinary cooking, there’s no instant gratification. In fact there’s a danger of no gratification at all. If you don’t seal and process everything just so, you may wind up with several jars of wildly partying bacteria. Let’s hear it for botulism!
But last Saturday I saw the most beautiful early girl tomatoes at the farmer’s market. Again. How could I pass them up? They smelled like summer, and tasted vaguely of honey. They were firm and bright and small. They were perfect. How could I not preserve some of these beauties for winter?
I bought about three pounds, which resulted in a little more than 1.5 pints of thick-ish sauce. I didn’t bother skinning or de-seeding the tomatoes. I like a chunky tomato sauce, and I find that the skin adds a little texture. The tomatoes are very sweet, so a little extra acidity from the seeds doesn’t make much difference.
Here is my recipe for a very simple tomato sauce, which is by no means definitive. My goal was to make a plain, yet flavorful, base sauce to which other ingredients may be added after opening a jar, such as fresh herbs, cheese, or ground meat.
very simple tomato sauce
2-3 TBS butter
5-6 cloves garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
3 lb quartered early girl tomatoes
salt and pepper to taste
dried herbs
That’s it. Once you’ve prepared the sauce, you’re halfway done. The canning part isn’t quite as complicated as it seems, especially considering that homemakers have been doing it for hundreds of years. That thought reassured me.
A few tips from a home canning novice:
I’ve decided to participate in NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month, the blogosphere’s answer to NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. As you can see from the official Seal of Yoda, this means I will post every day. I think I just had a very small panic attack as I wrote that last sentence. Post every day. Ack! Well, challenges aren’t supposed to be easy. A slight sense of dread is natural (gulp).
But I think the experience will be fun, and maybe I’ll get more comfortable with frequent posting. Frequent posting means setting aside a chunk of time on a frequent basis to actually write something coherent and interesting, in the case of this blog, generally about food. It also means doing food-related things like cooking and shopping at the farmer’s market so as to have the means to actually write about said food-related things. Once the food related activities are complete, said activities have been contemplated, and a post has been written, it’s time for editing, rewriting, re-editing, re-writing, proofing, and finally, posting. I haven’t even gone into the part where I take twenty photos with my horrid little digital camera from hell, none of which come out remotely the way I want. Then I edit the photos and cringe when I finally see them hanging there, looking like forlorn little children wearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters.
In some ways, frequent posting, and indeed, blogging itself goes against the way I’ve always written anything. I like to write, revise, write some more, revise, tweak, and write some more until I get more or less what I’m after. This is pretty much the antithesis of blogging, a spontaneous, idiomatic medium often replete with typos (ack!) and clichés (no!). But that’s the beauty of blogging as well, saying what you mean in the moment, in the simplest way, spellcheck be damned.
I think my goals for this month’s little experiment include finding some sort of happy medium between the way I like to write, and the way I’m sometimes afraid to write. I will try to find the middle ground between controlled, endless self-editing and spontaneous typo-laden stream-of-consciousness. And if it isn’t perfect, it isn’t perfect. At least it’s there for you to read, or not.
Another goal is to play around with my camera more. True, I do hate the little ogre. But some smart dude once said that good photos are taken by a good photographer, or something like that. A bad camera has its limitations, but if I keep working at it, I might get some good food photos out of it. I might also post photos of the back yard, if the pasta looks too glossy.
So do stay tuned for more spontaneous writing, photos, and possibly some unrelated notes and thoughts. As I will be posting on a daily basis, just about any topic is fair game. Oh, and please feel free to ask questions or request topics for posting. I’ll do my best to oblige.
Folks, thank you for reading!
P.S. Big tip o’ the hat to Jen from Life Begins at Thirty for posting about NaBloPoMo.
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:
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
Recnetly spotted at the local highfalutin’ fancy food shop: Organic light corn syrup by Wholesome Sweeteners. Let’s parse this disturbing phrase, shall we? Organic, meaning grown according to particular standards regulating the use of pesticides and artificial fertilizers, etc. Light corn syrup, meaning a highly processed liquid derived from corn, also linked to the global rise of diabetes and obesity. True, the scientific community is still debating whether or not corn syrup is any worse than ordinary sugar. Nonetheless, corn syrup is a highly refined sweetener with no nutritional value. It is anything but natural and wholesome:
Produced in large manufacturing facilities scattered mostly across the flat, golden expanse of the American corn belt, high-fructose corn syrup is not a product that anyone could cook up at home using a few ears of corn. The process starts with corn kernels and takes place in a series of stainless steel vats and tubes in which a dozen different mechanical processes and chemical reactions occur — including several rounds of high-velocity spinning and the introduction of three different enzymes to incite molecular rearrangements.
The enzymes turn most of the glucose molecules in corn into fructose, which makes the substance sweeter. This 90 percent fructose syrup mixture is then combined with regular corn syrup, which is 100 percent glucose molecules, to get the right percentage of fructose and glucose. The final product is a clear, goopy liquid that is roughly as sweet as sugar. (New York Times, July 2, 2006)
Sure, organic light corn syrup may be produced with no pesticides, artificial fertilizers, or GMO corn. But it’s so far removed from actual corn that its culinary and nutritional values are seriously suspect. As a general rule, highly processed foods tend to be either unhealthy or unsavory, or both. A cookie made with partially hydrogenated soybean oil does not compare to a cookie made with butter. One tastes of sawdust, and the other has a tender, buttery crumb.
What’s the point of manufacturing an organic sweetener from organic corn if the sweetener itself is at best, a highly processed non-food, and at worst a poison? Corn syrup has no business being organic.
This is Keiko, a Japanese fortune cat or maneki neko. Keiko lives on top of my computer monitor. She’s always pleased, as you can tell from the happy expression on her little cat face, and she’s always politely beckoning or waving, depending on how you look at it. Keiko does not shake off her cute little red collar, and doesn’t mind wearing a bell. In short, she’s the perfect cat.
This is Sheba—my living breathing cat—completely occupied by her favorite activity: eating. The photo is blurry because Sheba tends to move her head around so as to strategically position her mouth directly above the tastiest morsel of cat food. While noisily scarfing down her food, Sheba purrs loudly and talks (“mer!”). Being a cat, Sheba has no lips, but I swear I hear lip-smacking when she eats. After five to ten minutes of “purr-chomp-chomp-lip-smack-purr,” Sheba says “mrew?” and hastily dashes out the cat door. She comes back for dinner, announcing her presence with several dramatic, open-mouthed cries of “Mraaaaaaaw!” while she runs as fast as she can toward the food dish. The loud yet plaintive “Mraaaaaaaaaaw” also serves to remind her humans to fill replenish the bowl with fresh kibble, in case they’ve forgotten.
After dinner, if it’s cold outside, Sheba will stick around and allow her humans to pet her, but not to pick her up. When she’s had enough petting, Sheba grabs the petter’s hand with her teeth. This is her way of saying “you’re messing up my gorgeous, velvety fur, which I’ve just preened, by the way! I feel like hunting now and your hand reminds me of a mouse.” Any human who continues petting her does so at his own peril.
If it’s warm outside, Sheba will promptly leave the house in search of amusing outdoor activities such as claiming random yards as her territory, batting bugs with her paw, and possibly directing a pitiful “Mraaaaaaaaaw” at unsuspecting neighbors in search of handouts.
When she’s tired, Sheba comes back home for bedtime. She’ll curl up under the covers and pet her humans with her paw. She’ll snooze and purr for a few hours. Then she’ll make sure I’m asleep, and use my favorite upholstered chair as a scratching post. By the time we wake up, Sheba is gone. At least until breakfast.
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.
Here’s a little snack I put together the other day:
1 ginger biscuit or ginger snap
a shmear of almond butter
2 little squares of dark chocolate with ginger bits
It’s like an open-faced s’more, but not quite. This little number combines the best features of the dessert genre—it’s richly chocolatey, creamy, nutty, and crunchy. Sweet, but not too sweet, with a sharp bite of ginger that awakens the palate. In a word, delightful. You could use regular chocolate, particularly if you don’t like your chocolate to wear sexy footwear.
