Meal 130: Palestine

Palestine isn’t a full UN member, but has been a “non-member observer state” since 2012, which is good enough for us. Politics aside, Palestinian food is distinctive in its own right. Particularly notably for a region where much of what’s eaten is characterized by regional variations on a theme — note how it’s common to refer to a restaurant as “Middle Eastern” — the West Bank claims a distinctive dish as the core of their culinary corpus, a layered dish of bread, oily onions, chicken and sumac called musakhan.

While the food of the West Bank gets the lion’s share of attention among those looking, there’s an argument to be made that the million-plus people of the Gaza Strip have perhaps even more to distinguish their style of cooking, particularly with their particular use of spices. Online information on Gazan food is very slim, but fortunately the library had the one book I found that’s focused on it.

Unfortunately, by trying to cook two cuisines at once, I made about one dish too many and the attention to detail suffered, in particular with the grape leaves and the upside-down rice. I think if we’d skipped the labor-intensive flatbread and instead stuck to store-bought pita, we’d have had a better meal even with the slight decline in bread quality.

Our guests for this culinary expedition to the holy land, on a fine summer evening, were Dita, Levi, Julie Mary, Kalah, Justin, Melia, Mike, Marty, Alley, Tim, Conor, and Chelsea.

Salata arabiya | Arabic salad | Recipe

This salad is hardly unique to Palestine, but it’s super common and delicious. You hardly need a recipe: chop up tomatoes and cucumbers and parsley, throw on some lemon juice and olive oil and salt, toss and serve. (For excitement, add onion and/or mint.) As we were in the height of summer, the tomatoes were juicy, the cucumber crisp, the flavors alive.

Duqqa | Grain and spice blend | Recipe

From the Western culinary perspective, duqqa has come on the scene like a latter-day zaatar, a more complex spice blend that adds complex base tones from the spices, and a toastiness from nuts. But that’s the Egyptian version. This Gazan duqqa is more than simply a seasoning, it’s actually mostly roasted grain and legume by volume, intended in large part as a way to add substance to olive oil when you dip your bread. Or, in this case, to oranges.

I love the concept, but wasn’t thrilled with our execution. As the recipe notes, you can use all sorts of spices in various permutations, perhaps I hit the wrong blend. I also can’t decide if I like the texture and bulk from the non-spice parts, or if they got in the way. But I can’t deny that orange segments are a fantastic vehicle for spices!

Waraq inab | Stuffed grape leaves

Grape leaves are stuffed all over this region, and while you can find them preserved in brine in a jar, we had the good fortune of an abundant grape vine spilling over from the neighbor. The leaves were just on the tail end of proper tenderness about two weeks before the meal, so I picked, blanched, and froze them at that time to keep them at their best.

I decided to try to follow a Gazan recipe with flavors like allspice. Kalah and Justin spent a good long time carefully filling and rolling each leaf with the mixture of rice and ground beef and whatnot, and it took a good long time to simmer. Then we were disappointed by two major factors: the filling was bland and underspiced, and our diligent laborers are vegetarian! I think in my haste I forgot to double the spices while doubling the recipe.

Musakhan | Sumac-roasted chicken with oil-poached onions on bread | Recipe

A few ingredients, a ton of olive oil, a bunch of steps, and it’s all worth it. The chicken part is easy, just get it cooked somehow. The onion part is like nothing I’ve ever seen, you cover chopped onions entirely with olive oil and then cook gently, so brown but get super soft rather than crispy. And the sumac with a hint of cardamom makes it feel like you’re in the right part of the world. It’s a bit of a to-do to assemble it just in time for eating, with a two-step bake, so keep that in mind when pacing out the meal.

If you chafe at using a few cups of oil for this dish, keep in mind that you don’t come close to eating it all (thank goodness), and you can reserve the remaining onion-scented oil in the fridge for several months. Keep it in a wide-mouthed jar because it’ll become semi-solid and you’ll need to spoon it out, and use for just about any sautéeing. You’re welcome.

Maqluba | Upside-down rice and eggplant casserole | Recipe

If you’ve ever seen a properly executed maqluba, you’ll be aghast at this soupy mess in a bowl. I must have gotten the liquid ratio wrong, because I was aiming for something that in the best case emerges as a cake-shaped masterpiece, or at least something mostly solid with some chunks of rice crumbling off. I at least got it true to its name, though: because the veggies were on the bottom of the pan, upon inversion they ended up on top, and maqluba means upside-down.

Knafeh | Syrup-soaked cheese-filled sheet pastry | Recipe

None of our guests reported any adverse affects, so we can confess the story of why we didn’t have enough of this really tasty dessert.

First, to explain what it is, it’s like a baklava but instead of flat filo dough you have a similar pastry called kataifa that’s shredded, and instead of a sweet walnut filling you have a bland, kinda squeaky cheese that’s sweetened up. Upon baking, the kataifa crisps up, the cheese softens, and like a baklava, after cooling it’s doused in a warm scented syrup and then topped with finely ground nuts. Then it’s cut into diamonds, and left to sit and cool.

After the main course, Laura asked me if I’d already plated the dessert, which I’d left to cool in the living room while we dined outside. I hadn’t, so I walked in to see why she’d asked. Half of the tray was missing! Then we remembered that just a few minutes ago we’d been wondering why our mutt Reba was so gleefully rolling around in the grass…

We swore the other guests who were inside to secrecy, put one modest piece on each plate — thankfully we had just enough — and meekly apologized when guests asked for seconds. Which they did, because it was so tasty

Meal 116: Morocco

I love spices. I love meats cooked with sweet flavors. I love Moroccan food. This was one of our very most anticipated meals, and I went pretty overboard with all the dishes and condiments. But with all the meats and flavors, how could I have cut back? The house smelled fantastic, we all got super full, and there was so much food going on that I even left one whole dish uncooked to be enjoyed later. Thank goodness for mint tea that helped our digestion.

Our guests for a lovely summer evening were Andrew, Laura, Craig, Laura, Tennessee, Alley, Amos, Nik, Deena, Bengt, Tim, Kristine, Haley and Mary.

Baghrir | Pancakes | Recipe

A semolina-heavy pancake that puffs up quite similarly to an American-style pancake, but this one you don't flip over. We had it with two toppings: goat cheese with honey (yumm) and fermented butter (yumm to some).

Smen | Fermented butter | Article

I've read that in some families, it's tradition to bury a container of smen when a daughter is born, to be unearthed and eaten for her wedding. By comparison, the version I made hung out in my cupboard for about a month. Even still, it had a distinctive, but not unpleasant, funkiness, which made for a really intense sensation in combination with all that butterfat. If you're intrigued, read the article! And if you make some, enjoy it with those pancakes.

Harira | Lentil stew | Recipe

This stew is classically made with lamb, but I went the vegan route due to some guests' dietary needs, as well as the abundance of meat on offer in other dishes. We hardly missed the meat, as it was plenty rich in terms of flavor, heft, and mouthfeel, but also bright with fresh herbs and a squeeze of lemon. A great simple, healthy dish for a cold evening.

Seafood bisteeya | Savory seafood pie | Recipe

Bisteeya is Morocco's contribution to that great list of foods that includes empanadas, pierogi, bao, and börek best summarized as savory pies. The crust is fillo dough, the filling is typically based around poultry, and it's topped off with powdered sugar. Sugar with chicken? You bet.

Anyway, as with the harira, to make the meal more accessible to more people I went with this seafood-based version. I made the rookie mistake of not defrosting the fillo overnight, and my rushed method led to the sheets breaking in half. Worry not, because I just made two smaller ones.

In the rush of all the cooking and the huge excess of food, I didn't end up baking off these pies for the dinner. But my goodness, they were so delicious later! Also, they freeze really well, just throw them straight into the oven without defrosting.

Couscous | Preparation

That little pasta's really easy to cook, right? Just a bit of boiling water, a few minutes, and ready to go? Sure, but how about adding a lot more effort and an hour more for a moderately improved texture? If you want to do it right, which involves three separate rounds of steaming interspersed with breaking up clumps by hand, then follow the link above. The cool thing is that this is efficient with energy and stovetop space: you do it right on top of the tagine!

I suppose if I were from the region and grew up with couscous made this way, I'd appreciate it being done right. But frankly, I didn't feel like the improvement was worth all the effort. Unless somehow we messed up.

Lamb with prunes | Recipe

As far as I'm concerned, this is the Platonic ideal of Moroccan food. Rich meat, sweet fruit, haunting spices, and a long slow simmer combine to make the sort of food that you just can't stop eating. I'm practically smelling the dish as I type. You should cook it so you can smell it too. Make a lot, freeze the leftovers, and enjoy them many times.

Chicken tagine with preserved lemon and olives | Recipe

This dish covers the other direction of Moroccan meats: brighter and tangy. The meal will still be great if you make it with fresh lemons, but it just won't convey the appropriate depth and intrigue unless you use preserved lemons. (I anticipated the meal several months prior, and made them myself from Meyer lemons from my parents' tree. It takes like five minutes to make them, but you do have to wait at least a few weeks for them to mature.)

Vegetable tagine with tfaya | Stewed vegetables with caramelized onion and raisins | Recipes: Tagine andsauce

We made this the vegetarian way, and it was still quite tasty. Make sure to cut the veggies big enough that they hold up, both for presentation and texture.

The real star of the dish was the topping. It has nearly as much of that rich savory-sweet-aromatic as the lamb tagine, but to me the real high point is the floral note from the sprinkle of orange blossom water at the end. I'd really better make this tfaya again.

Khobs kesra | Bread | Recipe

It looks pretty, but was kind of disappointing, just not very flavorful and a weak crumb. I'm going to assume it was our own failure, but all the same I'd maybe seek out a different recipe, or just buy the fluffiest pita you can find.

Harissa | Spicy paste | Recipe

There are many harissa recipes in English, but it's worth running this obnoxious all-caps Courier-font French one through Google Translate for this one. The secret is the mint, which adds a lovely second sort of tingle to the predominant fiery chili one. (Also, consider cutting this recipe in half or even a quarter, unless you plan on going through a lot of it in a month or two.

Ghoriba | Almond cookies cake | Recipe

An accident that turned out great! These are intended to be cookies, but when we put everything together the batter was just too slack. So instead of dolloping

Meal 115: Montenegro

While the language, culture, and some of the food of this little seaside country are definitely Slavic, the food of Montenegro evinces a strong Italian influence. It's the consequence of centuries under Venetian rule and influence, plus the lingering effect of being a hop across the Adriatic from the boot of Italy. The result is a cuisine that is both high in milkfat but that also has a place for delicate flavors. Really, it was quite delicious. Ellenby Ellenby Ellenby Ellenby Elizabeth Elizabeth +1 Tink Tink +1 Kristin Winslow Ana DLR Ana DLR +1 Anna Marti Anna Marti +1 Anna Sagatelova

Our guests were the Ellenby family, Elizabeth, Tink, Kristin, Miguel, Ana, Anna, Anna, and friends.

Sok od Šipka | Pomegranate juice

Across much of Montenegro, wild pomegranates grow abundantly, and families press the juice and boil it down to syrup for use all year long.

Pomegranate juice is a fantastic example of the huge price differential you can find when shopping at an ethnic market. I found a three liter jar of the pure juice for $9 at the Russian market; you’d be lucky to buy a liter for that price at your local supermarket. Since it was already at drinking strength, it seemed silly to boil it down just to reconstitute it, so we enjoyed it straight.

Appetizer spread

In browsing various descriptions of Montenegrin food, just about all of them talked of a good meal starting with preserved meats and various cheeses. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t find the specific meat items they called for (in particular, a local variation of prosciutto), and the descriptions of the cheeses were quite vague. So I did my best and bought some stuff that looked good from the counter of the Russian market. Surprisingly, the most popular component was a generic-looking cheese that was sliced as a wedge from a hefty round; it was kind of in the direction of a queso fresco, but a bit firmer, and a bit squeaky on the tongue.

Pogača | Rustic bread | Recipe

A rich bread for a rich meal! Note how all the liquid comes from animal products, there’s not a drop of water in the dough. With all that lactose, it’s a quick riser, so there’s not a ton of flavor development from the yeast. But this bread has a solid crumb that’s equally good with cold cuts as well as soup.

Raštan | Collards | Recipe

With all the heavy meat and dairy in the rest of the meal, thank goodness there's a common dish of greens to provide a bit of balance. I made them without the pork because we had some non-red-meat eaters, but it was still nice. I like the bit of flour in there to make it a bit saucy, too.

Brav u Mlijeku | Lamb in milk | Recipe

What a happy accident! Since I ran out of stovetop space, I put the pot of lamb chunks in a milk bath into a low oven, left it uncovered, and then kinda forgot about it until the smell was irresistible. The milk got really thick, and the lamb got really soft, so it was all one great, smooth mess of a really dense and spectacularly tasty dish. Delicious as it was, I'm not confident I actually made it Montenegrin-style — while I heard many mentions of lamb in milk, details on the preparation were few, so I turned to this recipe from nearby Italy instead. Any leads, my friends?

Riblja čorba | Fish soup | Recipe

So simple, so tasty. It hardly requires a recipe: simmer fish with some vegetables and garlic, strain it and remove fish, cook rice with olive oil in the broth, put fish back in. Despite the lack of any exotic ingredients or flavor combinations, as long as you’ve got good fish (in this case, rockfish and black cod from the farmers market), you’ve got a great soup.

Smočani kačamak | Fatty porridge | Recipe

Can’t decide between polenta and mashed potatoes? Well, how about both, mixed with a hefty dose of sour cream plus some cheese! It was really tasty and extremely unnecessary given how much other rich food we had. Everyone ate it anyway, because it’s as yummy as it sounds.

Pomegranate sorbet | Recipe

Probably the most appropriate way to enjoy Montenegro’s most representative fruit would have been to simply peel and eat, but they were out of season. Given the Italian culinary influence, I figured a sorbet would be appropriate. It’s hard to tell if this is something they’d actually eat in Montenegro, but it was a delicious and light conclusion to an otherwise heavy meal.

Meal 114: Mozambique

Wherever the Portuguese colonized, the exchange of ingredients and dishes was intense. Mozambique's spicy grilled chicken spread throughout the empire, becoming beloved from Lisbon to Goa, while bread is still baked everywhere throughout the Southern African country. I was also struck by how, even though the country is halfway around the world, this was one of the easiest meals to shop for, as every ingredient is available at a standard American supermarket. This was our second Nosh at Laura's parents' place on Anderson Island in Washington's South Puget Sound. Friends from around the island joined the table.

Pão | Rolls | Recipe

A fairly simple, moderately crusty, hamburger-bun-sized roll with a generous dusting of flour. If I'd had access to a wood-burning oven I imagine there'd have been a nice faintly smoky flavor, but as it was these were nice enough. There were many varieties of the recipe, and on a whim I went with the one that has you make a sponge with a bit of molasses before building up the bulk of the dough. We enjoyed them, but frankly I probably could have let them rise a tad longer (perhaps an extra 20 minutes after shaping), and the insides were a tad bit gummy so I should have baked them an extra few minutes.

Salada de abacate e pêssago | Avocado and peach salad

It surprised me to learn that stone fruit from deciduous trees, like peaches, can grow in tropical climates. What's more, it turns out that peaches pair quite nicely with avocados. Especially with the help of a little lemon juice, there's a nice blend of flavors and textures. I don't have a recipe to link to since I threw this together at the last minute based on what I kind of remembered from other recipes, and then right before serving I decided to toss on top some cooked shrimp left over from the matapa.

Molho de piri-piri | Hot sauce

Piri-piri is the name of a particularly fiery small chili pepper also known as the African bird's eye chili. It's best known as the core ingredient of a hot sauce of the same name. While there are as many recipes as people who make it, I followed the basic instructions at the bottom of the matapa recipe: chili, lemon, garlic, olive oil, and salt. It's an infinitely flexible sauce, just add more or less of any ingredient as you like.

I was kicking myself because I bought powdered piri-piri pepper in South Africa with the express purpose of using it for this meal, but left it right by the front door at home. But I used plain ol' cayenne pepper, and it worked great, which bodes well for everyday home cooks.

Galinha á cafreal | Spicy grilled chicken | Recipe

The recipe's simple enough to write in a tweet: break apart a chicken; marinate with oil, salt, pepper, and piri-piri sauce; grill; baste every so often; eat. You can spatchcock the chicken, which looks super impressive but takes a good while to cook (keep your thermometer handy and check that thigh joint); for faster grilling, use pieces.

My friends, this was just delicious. Thanks to a few hours of marinating, plus being cooked just about whole, it was so succulent. The hot sauce contributed a fantastic medley of flavors, and the long cooking led it to caramelize a bit and just wow.

Matapa | Greens and ground peanuts with prawns | Recipe

I've made a lot of African green sauce. Until now, it's been tolerable at best. This time it was so good people were taking home leftovers.

The most notable difference was that instead of using frozen cassava leaves, I used fresh kale. The cassava leaves from the African market come in a solid block, and are bitter and dry. Having never seen or tasted the fresh version, I don't know how much of that is the nature of the leaves and how much was the consequence of being shipped frozen from another continent.

Anyway, this preparation, with fresh greens, was really pretty good. The most clever part is making a broth from the shrimp shells, which you then use to cook the blended kale before adding the ground peanuts. Make sure to have a food processor on hand, doing the pureeing and grinding with a blender is really tedious as I discovered.

Bolo polana | Cashew and potato cake | Recipe

This is the first potato-based dessert I've ever seen! It works, and is rich and tasty, but man, is it dense. And between the cashew, butter, and all those egg yolks, it's quite a fatty marvel. This would work plenty well as a gluten-free cake, the flour in the recipe is an almost insignificant amount and could surely be replaced by any GF flour. Note that it took way longer than the specified 30–45 minutes for the middle of this cake to cook through for me.

Vinho | Wine

If you're a Mozambican wealthy enough to afford it, you might have a taste for Portuguese wine. So that's what we drank. Otherwise, (decent light) beer and (apparently low-quality) rum are the preferred alcoholic drinks.

Meal 112: Monaco

Another beachside birthday party, another meal from a tiny, rich European country! The principality of Monaco is a Central Park–sized nugget on the French Riviera, whose Italian-sounding name is a giveaway of a linguistic, cultural, and culinary heritage that’s more closely connected to northern Italy than southern France.

For such a small place, there’s a surprisingly thorough culinary heritage, which is far better documented online than those of countries several orders of magnitude larger. Of course, it’s squarely within the Mediterranean flavor realm, though with its own twist.

Barbagiuan | Chard turnovers | Recipe

Nobody knows why these are called “Uncle John” in the Monégasque language, but these tasty, stuffed-dough, fried nuggets are the national dish. They’re stuffed with chard, which almost makes you think they’re healthy. Quite tasty, a great accompaniment to sparkling wine or rosé. Thanks to Ellen for prepping and folding the dough!

Oignons monégasques | Stewed baby onions | Recipe

This one was the crowd favorite. Small onions — you should probably use pearl onions but all I could find were little cipollini, which seemed to work too — are first sautéed, then gussied up with tomato paste, vinegar, and, intriguingly, raisins. A delicious sweet-and-sour appetizer.

Socca | Chickpea flatbread | Recipe

I’m figuring it’s a North African influence that brought chickpea flour to this corner of the world. With it,street vendors in the area whip up a sort of crêpe that’s eaten as a snack. Frankly, I found it pretty bland and thin, and I clearly did something wrong because I then had it at a restaurant and it was thicker and fluffier and a whole lot better. Also, I left the big heavy round skillet I used to bake them at the rental house, so it was frankly a doubly disappointing dish. (Maybe choose a different recipe to avoid my fate, but even that won't help you keep track of your cookware.)

Fougasse | Focaccia bread | Recipe

The fougasse for which Monaco is known is actually a dessert covered with sprinkles and studded with various dried fruits and spices like fennel. I didn't make that. Instead, I made this lovely herb-y bread, which all went very quickly toward sopping up the onion sauce.

Stocafi | Salt cod stew | Recipe (scroll to "Le Stockfish")

I saw a few different variations on the name, but all are local adaptations of the English work stockfish, which itself is a misinterpretation of the Scandinavian term for white fish dried on a stick. It’s not even true stockfish that’s used, but rather bacalao, or salt cod. (Stockfish traditionally has no salt, it’s purely the passing wind that dries the fish-on-a-stick into eternal preservation.)

Anyway, stocafi is a seafood stew with a very Provençal assortment of ingredients: tomatoes, olives, potatoes, plenty of garlic, and a generous dose of olive oil. The dish was nice, though nothing special. We didn’t do the optional anchovy-garlic-basil puree at the end, perhaps we ought to have.

Pogne au fruits | Fruit cake | Recipe (scroll to "Le pogne au fruits")

Laura wanted cherries, so cherries she got. This is a fairly simple dessert, just fruits pressed into a fairly rich flat yeasted dough. And tasty!