Eetch - Tabbouleh's Antithesis

Made of Bulgur, tomato paste, pomegranate syrup, onion, aleppo peppers, and a few leaves of parsley just for show, Eetch is an Armenian salad that stands in opposition to Lebanese Tabbouleh. Tabbouleh is a verdant salad of primaveral parsley and acidic tomatoes in a verjus (Sharab el Hosrom) dressing with merely a tablespoon of bulgur for texture, scooped up in tender lettuce or cabbage leaves. Eetch on the other hand is perfectly suited for winter: Soaked bulgur held by sweet-candied tomato puree and pomegranate molasses, it makes an earthy and autumnal side dish, to be scooped up in vine leaves.

What Have You Done to my Tootya? Delicious things.

I have already written about sea urchins. I was convinced there was only one way to eat them - raw, lightly seasoned. Until I tasted the Uni pudding at En in New York City' West Village. It treats the ingredient delicately, and distills it into an un-earthly, ethereal pudding. Not an easy feet given how subtle and fresh sea urchin is.

Freekeh Risotto with Giant Mussels

Freekeh risotto with chablis and a generous mantecare. The Giant Mussles are from New Zealand and were baked with fried sage and garlic flakes, finished with a sage-butter beurre blanc.

Buenos Aires Cured Meats

MEAT.

Ghammeh

Goat intestines stuffed with rice, seasoned ground meat and pine nuts. I have spent my childhood avoiding this meal only to find it in my plate at every family meeting. Because its making is quite involved as painstakingly detailed by Mrs Helou, it is made on special occasions, for example when emigrants are visiting... The champagne made it go down easy... It tastes quite good, although its appearance and its conception are maybe not quite as appetizing.

Cafe Habana - Corn on the cob with cheese and heat

New York City, SoHo

Kibbet Batata w Labneh

A dough of mashed potatoes and bulgur, stuffed with fried onions, thick labneh and almond slivers, is roasted on a stove top or on a grill. Another one of the Kibbeh Hiel ("fake" kibbeh, which is to say meatless) that provided vegetarian options for eating kibbeh during lent.

Living Things in Chinatown

Found these horseshoes crabs in a chinatown grocery store. Apparently they are used to make stock. I thought they were endangered and fishing them was restricted? I guess there is no price high enough to pay for good fish stock.

Tumbleweed Omlet - More Akkoub

Qors Aanneh Salad

Salad with wild shoots.

Braised Tumblweed with Sage Butter

The Gundelia tumbleweed, known in arabic as Akkoub, is a perennial choke native to the eastern mediterranean basin. In the early spring it shoots an edible rosette of tender leaves that toughen rapidly as the weather warms up and are cooked into a meaty stew eaten with rice - a preparation that does not do this plant justice.

Its taste lies somewhere between an artichoke and an endive, but the taste is rapidly overwhelmed in the heavy traditional stews it s used in.

I harvested and cleaned enough Akkoub to fill a small bowl. A word of caution must be said here, as the leaves are quite prickly and must be handled with gloves. I fried garlic and sage in butter, then sauteed the Akkoub in the butter, deglazed with white wine, and let it reduce until the Alkkoub shoots were soft and tender, about 20-30 minutes.

They came out delicious, rich and creamy, and made for a great side dish - here with a goose foie gras au torchon, kaak, and an onion confiture.

Somehow A'koub has managed to become an issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well - with Israelis labeling it as a protected species and forbidding its harvesting, and palestinians going to great lengths to obtain it. In a perverse coincidence of biology and geopolitics, both gundelia tournefortii and Israeli settlers grow on hilltops...

This video from Balata camp says it all.

Happy Easter!

Eggs boiled with onion skins stains them a deep, earthy red.

Fatayer for Lent - Slee'a

Another vegan foodstuff for lent. Early spring in the near east brings with it budding wild plants and, the tender leaves of which become a great addition on the lent table. Some plants, such as dandelion and watercress (Har'a), are well known in western diets and have been in cultivation for a long time. Others, such as Dardar, Qors-3anneh and Lsen-El-Tor are not, and have yet to be commercialized. Some of them have to be harvested before the leaves toughen as they are really very young Chokes.

Some, like Qors Anneh, are eaten raw in a simple salad dressed with red wine vinegar and olive oil. Other are blanched then sauteed with olive oil and eaten as a side dish, or used as stuffing for vegetarian kibbeh or in pastries - in this case, i sauteed them with walnuts and onions, seasoned them with sumac and used them as stuffing for whole wheat Fatayers.

Squash Kibbeh, in Time for Lent

Kibbeh is a mixture of bulgur held together by an interstitial medium that turns the bulgur into a workable dough, that can then be stuffed in balls or plated in a layered pie. Most traditional Kibbeh uses ground meat as that medium, and then stuffs the kibbeh balls or pies with ... more meat. It is the kind of dish that relies on fat - lots of it - to keep everything moist. Though I was never a big fan of it, it is immensely popular in the middle east.

Kibbeh is so popular that even during lent, christian villagers would make vegetarian versions of kibbeh, making the dough with fish, potatoes or pumpkins - it would be unthinkable for them not to have Kibbeh in one form or another.

So, it being lent and all, I made a butternut squash kibbeh and stuffed it with a mixture of caramelized onions, chickpeas, roasted almonds and corriander. the squash is sweet, the bulgur remains soft and moist, and it makes for a light appetizer or main dish when served with some yogurt.

Udderly Delicious: Shmandour, or Libeh

The NPRHealth Twitter feed reported today on bovine Colostrum as a health-adjuvant food item. When i showed the tweet to my friends, they reeled in horror and disgust at the very thought of it. I felt it was best I didn't share with them the fact i grew up on the stuff...

Springtime is awaited impatiently by many of us, for various reasons. One of the reasons I loved it as a child was because My grandfather's cows, having spent the winter growing more gravid by the day, were ready to bear down. This meant waking up early in the misty, cold march mornings (see pic) to adorable calves and the most delectable breakfast: Coagulated colostrum, called Libeh or Shmandour.

Colustrum is considered a delicacy in some parts of the middle east. Its availability is highly seasonal, and It really can only be eaten fresh . When eaten raw, it is very much a "live" food, a medium teaming with antibodies and bovine Treg cells - and sometimes, to the disfortune of some, mycobacterial organisms...

Despite My grandfather's every effort to have us drink it raw, my grandmother prepared it in a more palatable (and safe) way:

The colostrum is heated gently on a low fire. At some point, it will instantly thicken as the proteins coagulate. The Whey-protein ratio is very much different from regular milk, so there is no whey fraction that is generated as a supernatant, and it is also quite micellar and fatty (that's why it has to be heated gently, just enough to coagulate the protein but not so much that you disrupt the micelles.)

Take it off the heat and flavor it. Lemon or orange zest, cinnamon, orange blossom water or rose water are all fair game in moderation. Then sweeten it. I used honey here, although growing up I preferred sugar (it least distracts from the incredible galactic taste of it) and some prople use grape, apple, or carob molasses. You can then scoop up the preparation with markouk bread.