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 128: Pakistan

Pakistan was, until 1947, part of India. While the intention was to create a new country for Muslims, the dividing line was in many ways arbitrary, ill-informed, or simply doomed, given that religious communities intermixed plenty. In particular, the huge state of Punjab was split in two. Then, millions of people moved across the lines in both directions (or died in the attempt) to the country that reflected their religion. Both of these factors explain why Pakistani food seems so similar to the North Indian food we know: they were once the same country — in fact, much of the Indian food in the US is Punjabi style — and many immigrants brought foods from other parts of what's now the Republic of India.

This meal fell during Ramadan, which posed both an opportunity and a challenge. I was excited to have a guiding principle, since the food after the fast is often ritualized. But the challenge was the risk of offense by indulging in all the post-fast treats without observing the fast itself. Several Muslims assured me not to worry, and in fact a Pakistani member of the US Embassy's staff in Islamabad graciously gave me plenty of advice on what to prepare. (Thank you Erin for the connection!) In addition to the below recipes, we began the meal with the traditional fast-breaking food: dates.

Our guest of honor was Kal, a previous Nosher, who was born in Afghanistan but spent a decade as a refugee in Pakistan before coming to the US. We also had Katherine, Carlo, Marsha, Robert, Chie, Lyall, Eileen, and friends.

Rooh Afza | Sweet drink

This is the fast-breaking drink of Pakistan. It's a commercial syrup that's mixed with water — what's known in British English as a squash — and much improved with lime. (Some mix it with milk.) It's was a completely unfamiliar flavor sensation, a blend of all sorts of fruits, herbs, and spices with the most recognizable note being rose. It wasn't really my thing but I can see this sugary drink being extremely quenching after a hot day with nothing touching your lips after sunrise.

Fruit chaat | Spiced fruit salad | Recipe

Some cultures have figured out that bold spices are a fantastic complement for fruit. A shake of Tajín, a Mexican blend of chili, dried lime juice and salt, perks up mango, pineapple, and just about any other fruit or raw vegetable. In Morocco, they often serve orange slices with cinnamon. And now we here have Pakistan's contribution to the genre. The blend is more complex than the others I've seen before, with elements of sour, salty, pungent, and minerally. It would certainly perk up less-than-perfect fruit, but when it's really good and in season like here, it's pretty tasty and addictive and a failsafe appetite stimulant. 

Dahi bhallay | Black gram fritters in yogurt sauce | Recipe

From a Western perspective, what's curious about this dish is how the fritters are soaked in water after frying. Why let all that great crisp go? So they can absorb the yogurt and tamarind dressing that makes them oh so tasty. This dish is quite a bit of effort with the frying, so it's not the sort of thing I'd just go about making on a weeknight, but it was a flavorsome treat.

Sai bhaji | Spinach and legume stew | Recipe

This straightforward curry is a staple of Sindh, the province of southeastern Pakistan. It's pretty straightforward to make, a stew of greens, tomatoes, a mild amount of spice, and lentils or split chickpeas. Unfortunately, I felt like what came out was kind of what went in: it was perfectly edible, but just not terribly exciting, and it's unclear to me if I did something wrong or it's simply meant to be that way. There's no doubt, however, that this is one of the most nutritious dishes I have cooked for a Nosh!

Karahi gosht | Goat simmered in tomato sauce | Recipe

This recipe calls for mutton, and in the Subcontinent, mutton means goat. (Not the meat of mature sheep, as in the UK.) I like goat, and good goat can be hard to find, so I ended up buying an entire goat from a small-scale butcher. I used two legs for this meal; the rest is in the chest freezer.

Now, to the dish. This one was a winner! A really straightforward, low effort technique — simmer the meat until it's cooked, then put in sauce stuff and let it cook until tasty. You don't even have to toast spices or do any other tedious prep, just dump and simmer. Even though it ended up more liquidy than pasty like it should have (was my yogurt too runny, or tomatoes too watery?), the flavors were excellent and bright and I oughtta make this one again.

Mutton nihari | Goat stew | Recipe

I couldn't decide which goat dish to cook, so I made both. If you're only cooking one, choose the other. The nihari was totally fine, but despite all the spices, turned out sorta plain, which was a disappointment after cooking for half a day. As with the saibhaji, I'm not sure if there was an error along the way, or that's just how it's meant to be.

Chicken sajji | Slow-roasted chicken with spiced rice | Recipe

This recipe represents Balochistan, a mostly arid province bordering Afghanistan and Iran. This dish is a whole lot more like what I know of Gulf cuisine, with the animal roasted rather than cooked in a sauce. What's more, the rice is parboiled, which is a technique I associate with Persian food. (A stickler will note that rice in biryani, a pinnacle of Indian cuisine, is similarly boiled hard until nearly done. I will rejoinder that, in fact. biryani is of Persian origin.) Anyway, I loved this. Cardamom, vinegar, dried pomegranate, and even dates all feature, and make for one scrumptious whole.

Meal 119: Nepal

The core of Nepalese food can be summed up in one very simply named dish: daal bhat, meaning "legumes [and] rice." Along with tarkari — a spiced dish we'd probably call a curry — and achar (pickles), this is the dish that many people in Nepal eat pretty much every single day. Fortunately, there's variety to be found in the type and preparation of the dal and the tarkari, and a wide variety of achars can bring all sorts of flavors. Characteristically, I tried to capture as much of that variety as possible with two daals, three tarkaris, and four achars! Now, Nepal is a geographically and ethnically diverse country, ranging from river plains to the highest mountain in the world, and with a whole wide variety of distinct cultures (Nepali is the home language of less than half of the population.). Accordingly, there are indeed other kinds of foods eaten, such as a variety of grilled meats, and perhaps most famously dumplings.

We took advantage of fine weather for a late-September outdoor meal. It was convenient that we could use the new outdoor wok burner, because we needed all the cooking devices we could get to cook so many dishes. Apologies in advance about the photos, our good camera was being repaired so we had to rely on an iPhone in far less than ideal lighting conditions!

Momo | Dumplings | Recipes: chicken momo, sauce

Pretty similar to dumplings you see in many Asian countries, though rather than the half-moon shape typical of potstickers, they're made into round purses and also tend to have more filling per piece. There are at least as many filling recipes as there are people who make momo, ranging across just about every type of meat and vegetable you can find in the area; we chose to go with a chicken version to accommodate dietary preferences. Frankly, vegetables made up the bulk of the filling anyway, and I'm glad we had a milder meat so the flavor of the curry and the electric zing of the Szechuan peppercorn could come through.

Daal | Legume stew | Recipes: black gram, pigeon peas

Daal is a whole lot more than that kinda soupy yellow thing you push to the side in favor of the tastier stuff at the Indian restaurant. (Well, at least that's what I tend to do with it.) There's a whole lot of lentils, peas, and beans that can be gently simmered — more often than not they're split, so the cooking time is reduced —and flavored into a protein-packed stew that's just begging to be paired with rice. Amidst a whole lot of options, I chose the pigeon-pea version, rahar ko daal, because it's apparently the "king of daals" in Nepal, and maas ko daal made with what's known as black gram because it looked pretty and seemed to offer a richer flavor.

I was a bit surprised to find that I preferred the more pedestrian-seeming pigeon-pea one, which had a brighter flavor with warm spice from the cinnamon and cumin. The dark one was fine too, but I felt like it was a bit too heavy, perhaps if it had a personality I'd call it "brooding." (To be fair, I didn't have the jimbu herb the recipe called for, but since it's in the same family as onion I don't think my concern would have been addressed).

Tarkari | Vegetable curry | Recipes: mustard green, bottle gourd

Nepali vegetable curries aren't quite as richly spiced as many Indian ones, rather the flavors of the individual spices seem to me to come through more: the maple-like nuttiness of fenugreek, the sharp whiff of mustard oil, the zing of the Szechuan peppercorn. It's a nice contrast with the more harmonious flavors of the daal, and crisp or firm vegetables like the bottle gourd also make for a flavor contrast.

Achar | Pickles |ginger, onion, tomato, gundruk

I shoulda thought to start the achars earlier. I knew that some of them take a good long while to get all good and funky, yet I really didn't get to it until a few days before. Fortunately, there was plenty I still could do, and jars from the store took care of the rest.

The ginger achar was not only the tastiest and most versatile, but the recipe ends with perhaps one of the best declarations I've read in a recipe: "This is the best thing to eat during lazy hours." The gundruk was really intense and funky, I only made it because I shockingly found a container of this salty, fermented, dried vegetable at the store, and whoo-boy, that's a bold one. Tomato achar is a really nice one that's found throughout the Subcontinent but surprisingly hasn't made its way onto restaurant tables like mint and coriander chutneys. I think the condiment, which is like a chunkier, more spiced, less sweet version of ketchup, would go over well.

Kaju barfi | Cashew fudge | Recipe

A lovely, gentle way to end an intense meal after all those spices and textures. A just-barely-holding-together fudge of ground cashews with a judicious dosing of cardamom.

Meal 117: Myanmar

Burmese food is intense. Funky, fiery, crunchy, soupy, tangy, herby…a full meal is a real workout for your palate. It bears some resemblance to Thai food, but with more crispy bits, more turmeric, and a lot more fermentation.

It’s also a good amount of work to prepare! A birthday gift of an outdoor street-vendor-style wok was extremely well timed, as there were several smelly, splattery things to be fried up. I’m never going to claim my cooking is authentic, but as I squatted next to the wok in the driveway in the mid-afternoon mid-summer heat, I felt like my approach was a bit closer to the on-the-ground reality than my normal induction-range cooking.

I’m also super lucky that there is a Burmese market in town. I’ve sung the praises of the highly global selection at Mingala before, but man, they really came through with every last ingredient I was looking for! I was the most grateful to find the fermented tea leaves, so I wouldn’t have to ferment them myself from scratch. (Though maybe I should have, as you'll see.)

(To address the Burma/Myanmar confusion: according to the BBC, they're essentially the common and literary version of saying the same word: "B" and "M" are both voiced consonants made with closed lips, for instance. The former is both the British colonial name as well as the democracy movement's preferred name, while the latter was instituted by the military junta and codified via its UN membership.)

It was a loverly summer evening so we enjoyed it outside with Pat, Debbie, Jeff, Denise, Chelsea, Al, Pan, Quinn, Lisa, Trish, Douglas, Kristen and friends.

Mohinga | Breakfast fish noodle soup | Recipe

The phrase “breakfast of champions” is overused, but a bowl of this rich, intense stuff is a pretty powerful way to get a day going — I certainly wouldn’t have conceived of it as a breakfast food were I not told it was. Yet this was a dinner, not a breakfast, but I cooked it anyway because pretty much everyone says it's the national dish.

You make a base from simmered catfish, aromatics like ginger and lemongrass, and shrimp paste, and then when it’s time for soup you simmer some of that paste with fish stock and then throw in some noodles. (I left out banana stem because I couldn't find any, and frankly I've never knowingly had it so I'm not sure what if anything we missed.) But arguably the best part is the crispy topping and tangy lime on top — I made beans and shallots, but there's a whole sub-cuisine just of of toppings you could do!

There's no question that there's a number of ingredients and several steps involved in making these soupy noodles. But if you're inspired and have the time, it's a great blend of flavors and textures.

Ohn-No Khao Swè | Coconut chicken noodle soup | Recipe

A different sort of noodle soup, more similar to Thai, with egg noodles and a coconut-curry base. (Though some Burmese might say that it's the Thai who got this dish from them and renamed it "khao soi"!)

Yes, I made two noodle soups. But they're so different! And I'm so glad I didn't let the first one get in the way of making this second one. It's a totally different type, with toothsome egg-wheat rather than soft rice noodles, and a rich, creamy, and subtler flavor rather than the much more punch-in-the-face mohinga. You could definitely make this with ingredients available at any Western supermarket: if you can't find gram flour just use a bit of wheat flour (preferably pan-toasted), and if you can't even find Asian egg noodles, any egg noodle (even the dry kind) would make for a decent substitute. In any event, I hope I remember this next time I'm jonesing for a chicken noodle soup with a twist, because it's pretty easy to make yet so satisfying to eat.

Pork curry | Recipe

Even after nearly 120 meals, I'm still finding novel cooking techniques. In this case, it's to separate the juice and the solids of the aromatics (onion, garlic, ginger) by blending and straining, using the liquid for simmering the meat, while separately frying the solids. For a curry, this has few seasonings — really, the only spices are turmeric and chili — and also requires quite a bit of attention to avoid browning the solids. I've never met a dish made with pork shoulder I didn't like, and this one was for sure tasty with that caramel-y depth from solid-sauteeing, though it didn't bring quite enough punch to make me want to make it again.

Lahpet thoke | Tea leaf salad | Recipe

If you’ve had the tea leaf salad at a place like Burma Superstar in San Francisco, with intriguingly tangy strands mixed in with cabbage and crunchy beans, apparently you were served the Westerner-friendly version. From what I’m led to understand, a true tea leaf salad in Myanmar is deconstructed, with a little pile of spicy, fermented tea leaves in the middle and surrounded by all sorts of other things to mix in.

Maybe I’ll stick to the Westernized version. The pre-prepared tea leaves were insanely intense: sour, spicy, and ferment-y in equal proportions. They were also were like spinach in how they make the back of your teeth feel. Really, it was more like an intense condiment than a salad. If anyone’s feeling adventurous, I’ve got one extra packet of these leaves that we didn’t end up opening… Though we didn't save you any of the crunchy fried-bean mix, that stuff was MSG-licious and went a long way in overcoming that intense tea-leaf flavor.

Many thanks to Emily for the advice on what to cook and buy!

Meal 113: Mongolia

To get one thing out of the way: Mongolian barbecue isn’t Mongolian. It was invented in Taiwan. So we didn’t make that.

Mongolia isn’t a good place for growing produce, so the cuisine barely has fruits or vegetables. For a bit of perspective, Mongolians following a traditional diet get their Vitamin C from organ meat, and at least one guidebook recommends that vegetarians bring whatever food they may need into the country. Instead, animals, especially sheep but also camels, yaks, cattle, horses and more, turn the grasslands into meat and milk, and grains and spices can be acquired through trade, and that’s the basis of the food of Mongolia.

While I was super excited about trying out a novel cooking technique (see below!), I didn’t have high hopes for how things would taste. Well, my low expectations were certainly exceeded!

Our guests included Kristen, Marcia, Jeffery, Jeremy and his parents visiting from France, Wayne, Robert, Anya, Laure, and Jonathan.

Airag | Fermented horse milk

The most distinctive component of Mongolian cuisine is a mildly alcoholic drink made of mare’s milk. The milk has to be fermented because in its pure state it has an indigestibly high amount of lactose. For months Wayne and I were keeping our eyes peeled for some raw milk to ferment, and even came close to finding sources on a few occasions, but then our mutual friend Deena reminded us that we ran an unquantifiable but certainly real risk of things going wrong and turning into poison. So we held off, and instead had the closest thing you can find in a supermarket: kefir.

Suutei tsai | Millet tea | Description

It’s kinda like a bizarro bubble tea, but with little millet grains taking the place of tapioca, green tea leaves just floating around as a hazard to avoid swallowing, and also a pinch of salt to make this a definitely savory concoction. Despite the challenge of filtering the leaves through teeth, it was surprisingly nice beverage-ish thing, and definitely comforting.

Horhog | Stone-boiled lamb stew | Recipe

https://www.instagram.com/p/BEkETT0NEBK/

Oh man, was this ever fun. I’ve read about various cultures around the world using fire-heated stones to boil water, and now I’ve done it!

The first step was to collect the river stones to be heated, which I did down near the mouth of the Sandy River. (Apparently this wasn’t the smartest thing to do, because volcanic rocks like these have air pockets that can lead to explosions. Thankfully that didn’t happen.) Then I got a roaring fire going in my barbecue, and let the rocks heat up for a whole hour until they got coated in ash and were nearly glowing. In the meantime I got a whole bunch of water boiling, since I had no idea if the rocks would provide enough heat to fully cook through many pounds of thick cuts of bone-on lamb.

Then the fun began, alternating meat and rocks in the pot. The water boiled violently and steamed abundantly with every rock I added, and as the amount of meat in the pot increased, so did the foam that erupted. I tossed a modest number of vegetables and seasonings on top, leaving the big ol’ pot sitting on the porch, and an hour and a half later everything was still very hot, and the meat cooked through and even a bit tender. Success!

Following the recipe, every guest held a rock in their hands to receive the warmth (and to get a good moisturizing from the residual lamb fat!). And then we tucked into the stew, which was really quite tasty. Did the rocks contribute any of the flavor? I’m not sure, but they sure made the dish memorable and fun.

Buuz | Dumplings | Recipe

Compared to the stew, the dumplings were fairly straightforward, but nonetheless delicious. While I could have used ground beef, I decided to follow the suggestion to chop it finely, which took a lot of time but afforded a much nicer texture. While the ingredients were again simple, this was another surprisingly tasty dish. Perhaps this was thanks to the high-quality lamb I bought!

A huge thanks to Kristen, who came early to roll out and stuff them!

Boortsog | Fried cookies | Recipe

This isn’t the first dessert I’ve had with animal fat — lard is a traditional component of pie crust, after all — but it’s certainly the first with lamb fat. I trimmed it from the meat from the other dishes, slowly rendered it in simmering water, and then used it as the medium for frying up lozenges of sweet dough. As an accompaniment we had jam and clotted cream, which went surprisingly well with the musty-sweet lamb-cookies. (I tried making a form of cheese, but I failed to get the milk to curd properly. Oh well.)