Chana Daal: Trust Me You'll Love This

Not actually hard to make! 

I never actually meal plan before I go to the store. Shopping with a mission tends to drive me crazy since there's always one semi-obscure ingredient that goes missing or is too expensive to justify buying and stashing it in our tiny cabinets, where all manner of novelty spices and legumes lurk, awaiting release.

Because of this, I occasionally buy things simply because they fascinate me. I've got at least 5 types of wheat product, 5 types of rice, 3 types of lentils and various peas - some of which I own simply because I was too anxious to try something new. I'll not even touch on my spice fetish.

I have a special curiosity for South Asian food, which is why I wound up bringing home a bag of Chana Daal a few months ago. Unfortunately, nobody in my immediate family will touch anything spicy or leguminous, so until today I had no reason to cook it, except perhaps to hear the sweet gnashing of my lovely family's teeth. It actually only came out today because Tam has sworn off high FODMAP foods and I needed to dispense with some garlic and onions.

Needless to say, I'm happy I tried it.

Chana Daal is one of the may varieties of lentil and pea that bear the surname daal. The Chana variety is a yellow spit pea, which takes forever to cook, but which has a delightful taste and texture when you prepare it right. Daals are quite popular in Indian cuisine since there is a general aversion to sattvic (corrupting) foods in Hindu and Jain culture and a rejection of violence (ahinsa) in Jain eating in particular. I should note that this dish would not make the cut for Jain eaters since it contains both things that grow beneath the ground, which are bad, and tomatoes, which are ambivalently naughty. The long and the short of it is that Indian cuisine from all over the subcontinent is rich in amazing vegetarian and vegan dishes, many of which are founded on daals.

Chana Daal was called Bengal Gram by the British, possibly because they encountered it in Bengal,  but the version I'm making is based more on a cross between Delhi and  Punjabi recipes (which are not all that different, to be frank).

You'll want to wash and soak your daal overnight and maybe even microwave them in a bowl of water several times because they take FOREVER to cook. Pressure cookers are apparently highly recommended.

The daal is served with a seasoned oil garnish that you pour on top, but which I accidentally cooked into the dish. It was delicious either way.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups chana daal (yellow split peas)
1 tomato + 2 stewed tomatoes chopped
1/2 small onion chopped
1/4 cup green pepper
4-5 cloves garlic, grated or crushed
1 inch ginger grated
1 1/2 tsp sugar
salt to taste
oil

Spice mix
1 tsp Kashmiri chili powder (or another chili powder)
1 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp garam masala
1 tsp plus kasuri methi leaves (fenugreek) or fenugreek powder

Spiced oil mix (tadka, or tempering)
2 tbsp-ish oil or butter ghee
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
5-6 curry leaves

Step 1: Prep your daal
Wash, Drain and soak your daal for a day, then microwave it or pressure cook it to soften

Step 2: Make your masala
Heat oil in a pan, then sweat your onions and pepper until the onion goes clear, then add the ginger and garlic and cook for a minute, then throw in the tomatoes. Cook until the moisture evaporates off, then add your spices and stir about a bit. The volatile aromatics in the spices get along great with the oil, so doing this will help you get the most flavor out of your food.

Step 3: Mix it together
Add the daal to the masala mix and then enough water to cover everything (and then some). You'll have to cook this down a bit. Add the salt, sugar and kasuri methi leaves here if you've got 'em.

Step 4: Cook for a long time
Self explanatory, I hope. When it starts to get soft (after an hour or so, you're on the right track)

Step 5: Prep the tadka
Add the oil to a pan and  heat on high, then add the spices. You'll want to have a pan cover to hover over the spices after the mustard seeds start to pop. This step harnesses the aromatics in the spices and gives them an exciting new flavor. You can pour this over the top at the end of the dish (as you're supposed to do), or, like me, dump it in early and let the whole spices release into the mix. Curry leaves smell quite pungent, but are really good.

The Daal is done when the onions disintegrate and the peas are mushy.

It's great on its own, but is typically served with bread or rice and some raita (yogurt sauce). Your house will smell like the spices for days, which is glorious, and frankly probably better than what it usually smells like (probably dog). 

Soy Ginger Nile Perch

I'll admit that I lied about increasing the frequency of my posts, or at least that while my spirit was willing, my flesh was weak. Let's ignore the usual prurient reference of that quote for a moment and just move on to my new recipe...

Nice sauce smear there Chief :p

So one of the great finds since we've moved here to the Emirates has been the Nile Perch, a monstrous abomination of a fish that can grow as long as an adult human and probably could eat a baby if you fed it one - not that you would even think of doing that, dear reader. But despite the possibly high content of human baby flesh in its diet, (or perhaps because of it...?) the flesh of the fish is surprisingly tender and flavorful. Imagine the leathery blandness of a piece of cod, and then imagine the opposite, and you've got the Nile Perch. Since the Perch is a freshwater fish, I'd say the flavor and texture are actually kind of a combination of bass and walleye. It takes well to pretty much anything  you throw at it. I've breaded and fried it, baked it and pan-seared it with a mustard cream sauce.

Its flesh has been compared to Chilean Seabass (aka Patagonian Toothfish), though it's likely none of us really knows what that is like. Apparently, the Patagonian Toothfish has been fished to near extinction, so if you order it in a high end joint you're likely just eating its cousin, the Antarctic Toothfish and paying way too much for the privilege. The Seabass actually got its name when a guy named Lee Lantz correctly deemed "Patagonian Toothfish" to be a shitty marketing tag, so he changed it to something more palatable - much as how Goosefish are now Monkfish and apparently Sea Urchins used to be called "whore's eggs."

Freshwater fish have actually played an incredibly important role in the history of food among the upper classes of a number of societies. The Chinese kept lakes in some of their larger estates to provide a steady supply of fresh fish in landlocked areas, and in Europe fish ponds were kept as early as Roman times. European nobles were especially keen on maintaining fish ponds on their properties, in part because they were attractive, but also because they had to refrain from their usual fare of meat (oh so much meat) on Fridays and during fasts, lest they risk angering the Lord, or at least the Papacy. The fish could either be consumed locally or sold at a premium in local markets, where merchants in towns were able to pay high prices for relatively rare fish meat (getting actual seafood even 20 miles from the coast usually meant getting it old, smelly and pricey).

The recipe is criminally easy, but quite tasty. Since acquiring Nile Perch will be tough for most of you, you can use firm fleshed white fish like Goosefish (Monkfish!), Grouper, or even Halibut, but try to avoid tough stuff like Snappers or  Cod. And stay away from the whore's eggs.

Marinade Ingredients:
2 cloves garlic, smashed
1/2 inch of ginger thinly sliced
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 tsp sesame oil
1/8 cup honey or maple syrup
juice of 1 orange
1 tsp canola oil

For Sauce: combine Marinade with
2 tbsp sugar
2 star anise

2 fillets of Nile Perch

Step 1:
Marinate the Perch in the ingredients for an hour or so

Step 2:
Preheat the Oven to about 375. I imagine that my oven is preheated to 375, but the stove we currently suffer only increases in 50 degree C increments, so you have to jockey between way too hot and too cool, and even then it's a crapshoot.

Step 3:
Put both fillets on baking paper and bake for about 25 minutes, or until the flesh flakes away. Don't overcook it, for God's sake.

Step 4:
Take the remaining marinade and make a sauce out of it. I know this is going to sound weird, because you just soaked fish in it, but you want the flavors of the fish in the sauce for richness. Add the marinade and the two tablespoons of sugar and the star anise to a small saucepan and reduce until you have a thick consistency. Cool a bit and fish out the chunky stuff.

Serve over rice with some sort of green. I usually use steamed broccoli or pak choi. 

Khaleej by Belly?

Dear Reader (hi mom),

I apologize for neglecting you for so long. It's not that I haven't been cooking or engaging in fringe professional historical work for the past year, it's that I was too lazy to document it for the rest of you. I'll admit that this is because I'm lazy and selfish and terrible and understand that there are no actual consequences for being lazy and selfish and terrible on the internet. Come to think of it, those may actually be prerequisites for its use.

But things have changed. (Oh how they've changed!)

Our adventure in Beirut ended not in the fiery cataclysm that so many of you had hoped for, but, rather anticlimactically, in an actual job. WHICH, I turned into a real professional historical temp at the AUB, then parlayed my success there into a sparkly new gig in the Gulf. Remarkably, my new employers actually read this blog and still decided I was the sort of individual they wanted to have around them for the foreseeable future.

Though we've only been here a month and a half, the Emirates has already demonstrated itself to be an oasis of sorts (Ha ha. No more puns) for the fledgling epicure. If you want something, it's available somewhere for a price. And usually that price is oddly less than you'd expect to pay.

As they are forced to cater to at least five continents worth of expats in addition to the needs of the local population, supermarkets here are really the first I've seen to truly deserve the epithet. Imagine Best Buy grafted onto Walmart with a top notch seafood section, a bakery serving everything from turnovers to Persian flatbread, a cheese cooler that stretches for miles and a produce selection that occupies an acre and has a section dedicated to South Asian foods, which include terrifying gourds that appear to be in the terminal stages of an advanced sexually transmitted disease (don't ask how they got it).

The sheer opportunity presented by this has already crippled me. I've swapped one cooking rut for another but shall work through it, dear reader, with your help.

Next up: I take on the Nile Perch, a fish that could swallow a toddler and would gladly do it for the sheer hell of it, but which tastes delightful in a soy glaze. (It's gotta be from all the toddlers).

Oh my God! Why are they in the water with it?!
Photo taken from Google Images http://www.ventureco-worldwide.com/africa/uganda/fishing-for-nile-perch-at-murchison-falls-uganda/

Chorizo - the Mexican Variety, Not the Little Snausage Links

I really miss Mexican food here. Unfortunately, because my wife is from Minnesota, she regards Mexican cuisine warily, if at all. I can forgive this, because of course this is a segment of America that, among other forms of individual and collective lunacy, stubbornly clings to "duck, duck, gray duck" (ha ha!) and fries anything that it can catch and impale on a stick at its reprehensible state fair. Though I love her still, her pepper phobia really limits the frequency with which I can crack into the vast hoard of Mexican spices that I smuggle back here each summer.

Now that the family is safely in Arizona, (a glorious land with Mexican restaurants on almost every corner and streets paved with masa), I can actually begin using this stuff. Since I'm cooking for myself, and thereby feeling lazy, I'll just make chorizo.

This is really, really easy and can be tweaked however you like. If you have adobo from chipotles, you should definitely add it.

The Chorizo itself
1 pound ground beef or pork or whatever (not people, you monster!)
1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp chili powder
1/2 tsp cumin
1 tsp Mexican oregano (grind or crumble it up)
1 tsp garlic powder
2 cloves fresh garlic
1/2 tsp cinnamon
salt, lots of salt
1 1/2 to 2 tbsp (or to taste) apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 tbsp chopped cilantro
pepper

Preparation
1/4 cup minced onion
1/4 cup red bell pepper/jalapeno/whatever (again, not people, you monster!)
oil
4 eggs
dash of milk
paprika
salt
pepper

Step 1: Prepping the Sausage (yes, chorizo is sausage)
Flatten out the meat in a non-reactive bowl (that's glass or plastic, the vinegar is an acid and will leetch out metal) and sprinkle the dry spices, salt, herbs, cilantro and garlic, mix together, then add the vinegar and mix again. Let sit for about 15 minutes to an hour or so. You can add too little vinegar and salt here, so you will have to guesstimate. If necessary, you can taste the meat after it's cooked a bit and add some more later.

Step 2: The Veggies
Mince up the onion and pepper and set aside. Easy, right? Think again! No, actually it's pretty easy.

Step 3: Eggs
Crack the eggs and add them to a bowl, then add the milk, spices, salt and pepper and beat them all together. Bonus points for not getting shell in the mix. Extra bonus points if you can crack the eggs with one hand!

Step 4: Cooking
Add oil and then sweat the onions and peppers in large pan until soft, then turn up the heat to medium high, heat a bit, then add the meat. LET IT BE. If you move it around, it'll break up into the little mouse turds that you see at Taco Bell, and I assume that you'd not want that if you're bothering to read a blog about cooking. Allow it to brown and form the meat into larger clumps. After 5 minutes, flip the meat. The moisture will run out and boil away - let it. You can taste some of the meat at this stage to confirm salt content. Add more salt or spices as needed (probably paprika and chili powder)

Step 5: Eggs
When the pan is pretty dry, add the egg mix to the pan. Let it cook for 30 seconds, then flip. them over to ensure the eggs are done on both sides. Turn off the heat and cover the pan for a few minutes. You can add cheese here if that's your thing.

Serving:
I like to add a bit of labneh on the side of this, but Mexican crema or sour cream works too. Eat with tortillas or in a burrito, garnishing as you please. 

Potato Leek Soup. With Bacon.

A few nights ago I sent my wife and son back to America for good.

The feeling of leaving a place that has become home to you is unsettling, and not a little disorienting. The uncertainty of the future and the transience of the present make for bad times in general, so I thought a bit of comfort food was in order. And what is more comforting than bacon? Thanks to Salah, we had a few extra slips crammed in the back of the fridge that we had to use anyways before they went slimy, so I decided to kick up  my usual potato leek soup with a bit of porcine bliss.

Leeks are generally neglected in American cooking, probably because they're hazardous to break down if you're not used to them. Much like spinach, if you're careless about your leeks, you'll get a big mouthful of grit, which is sure to ruin dinner for all but the most hardened Pica sufferers.

Until a few centuries ago, leeks had a pretty ignominious history. Though they taste heavenly, they were generally regarded as peasant food in the classical era, the Roman elites preferring a ghastly array of beasts encrusted with expensive spices and doused with garam - a seasoning made by fermenting fish, much like Worchestershire sauce or the process of isolating MSG. The poor, knowing better, and being too poor to acquire spices anyway, seasoned their food with herbs they grew in their gardens, including leeks.

Their delicate flavor is a great pairing with potatoes and butter, which makes them ideal for soups, which generally taste fantastic with both. I add carrots to mine to jazz up the broth a bit, and a bit of nutmeg for kicks.

Chilled and blended, this is called vichyssoise, which seems like it should be French but was apparently first popularized by the chef at the Ritz in New York in 1917. Being ridiculously simple, I'm sure it existed in some form or another before that.

Some notes: This soup tastes great with bacon as a garnish, but any sort of smoky flavor addition would work for those who don't dig on swine. To make it halal, simply remove the wine, which is just an enhancer here.

Ingredients

3 tbsp butter
1 large potato
1 medium carrot
2 large leeks
1/4 white onion
4 cloves garlic
2 strips bacon
1/2 c white wine
3 cups broth (or water)
2 bay leaves
1 tbsp fresh thyme, minced
1 tsp dried thyme
1/2 cup cream
a touch of freshly grated nutmeg
salt
pepper

Step 1: Prep
Wash and finely chop the leeks. You'll cut off most of the green ends and the base, then cut them along the length. This will allow you to wash the internal leaves, but don't disassemble them since you'll need them together to cut them efficiently. (see this link for a guide) Finely chop the onion and add it to the pile of leek. Mince the garlic and set aside. Cube the carrots and potatoes and set aside in another bowl.

Start to bake the bacon at 375 degrees, checking on it frequently to ensure that it's not overdone.

Step 2: Cooking
Melt the butter in a pot and add the onions and leeks. Sweat them on low medium heat until they're soft, then add the garlic. Add the roots, herbs, wine and broth, cover and let it cook down for a while.

Step 3: Blending
Remove the bay leaves and partially whip the soup with a stick blender, leaving some chunks for texture. Salt it, return the bay leaves and add the dry spices (except pepper, which goes in last) and the cream. Chop the bacon when it's done and add it as well. The texture should be somewhat smooth and thick, but not like oatmeal.

Step 4: To serve
This goes great with fresh French bread. Crack some pepper over the top and it's good to go! 

Japanese Beef and Shiitake Mushroom Noodle Soup: The Musty Glory of Umami

I think I mentioned this on here before, but did you know that Umami has its own website? That's kind of like Brown having its own website, except slightly more understandable since "the fifth taste" was only recently accepted by whatever set of clowns accepts that sort of thing into official classifications. From an epistemological perspective, it's kind of jarring when this sort of things happen. You think you know that there are 9 planets, and then some cynical bastard nixes Pluto. You think you can live just knowing sweet, sour, salty and bitter, and then you meet umami.

This has to be extra traumatic for Americans, whose main encounters with the rich and undeniably prurient character of umami has until recently mainly centered around old garbage and unwashed undies (AA Gill's female companion incisively identified the scent/flavor as "bottom"). But man, were we missing out.

Umami is best eaten in mushroom form. For Europeans, this was traditionally in the form of truffles. My own personal favorite comes from farther east: shiitake mushrooms. You'll mainly find these little ordureous jewels dessicated and shrink wrapped in the Asian section of supermarkets (even in Lebanon). Reconstitute them beforehand in your broth or in a bowl of hot water, which  you should save for later use.

As a brief confession, I pieced this recipe together because Tam has walking pneumonia, which sounds far more dangerous than it actually is on account of the action verb they throw onto it. I had talked myself into the shiitakes the last time I was at the store and had been itching to do something fun with them, so I figured I'd take advantage of my wife's infirmity in the most constructive way possible.

You have four stages to this recipe:
1. Make the broth
2. Make the noodles
3. Make the meat
4. Combine

Ingredients:
5 shiitake mushroom caps (stems removed and saved for later use)
egg noodles (I was forced to use tagliatelli), if you like more broth use less, if you like it chunky use more

For soup:
1/3 cup thinly sliced carrot (plus one for broth)
1/3 cup shredded cabbage
1/3 cup thinly sliced onion
1/4 cup thinly sliced green onion whites and stems
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 1/2 tsp rice vinegar
1/2 tsp raw sugar

For beef
1/2 pound beef
1 tbsp oil
garlic cloves, knife-crushed and minced
1/4 tsp minced fresh ginger
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp raw sugar
pepper

Recipe Prestep:
You need to make your own broth for this, or at least you should. I usually scoff at those bastards who are always turning their nose up at those who don't want to waste dishes and minutes of their lives making stock for every single dish, but since the broth pretty much is the dish, just do it. You can do veggie, or like me, take the used chicken carcasses you've been collecting in the freezer for Christ knows how long and toss them in a pot with a few green onions, a roughly chopped carrot, a bay leaf and some salt. After you've boiled this down for a while until it's brothy, turn the stove off, scoop the detritus and throw it away, then add the mushrooms (caps only) and cover for a few hours to let them reconstitute and release their smutty goodness.

Soup Steps:
1. Let the mushroom caps sit in the broth for a few hours and avoid the temptation to keep tasting it. The flavors that they release over time are amazing. If my life had a tastetrack, I'd have that on repeat.

2. Prep your other ingredients in the meantime. Do the veggies first and toss them all together into a bowl, then mix the garlic, ginger, sugar and soy for the meat and put in another bowl large enough to handle it and the raw flesh you'll soon be adding to it.

3. Chill the meat in the freezer for about 30 minutes before cutting, or just don't unthaw it all the way, then carve off paper thin slices of it at about a 20 degree angle. The thinner the better. They retain flavor well and give a nice texture to the soup. Mix this with the aforementioned garlic marinade and let sit for a bit.

4. Prepare the noodles - When they are flexible but still undone, drain and put aside. You'll add this in the final step.

5. Remove the reconstituted mushroom caps, chop roughly. Heat the broth to a simmer, then add the mushrooms and cover for about 5 minutes.

6. Heat a frying pan on medium high with about a tablespoon of vegetable oil and add the beef. Let it brown and stir a bit until it's dry. If you pull it too soon, you lose the caramelized soy-sugar-ginger-garlic that makes this all worth it. It'll only take about 3-5 minutes. Set aside. In case you missed that last part, DO NOT ADD IT TO THE BROTH.

7. Turn off the broth and add the noodles and veggies, then cover for 10-15 minutes.

8. To serve, spoon the soup into a bowl and add the meat to the top. Cashews are a nice topper, but they're not necessary. 

Mesir Wat: The Unexpected and Unexplained Glory of Ethiopian Lentils

I was first introduced to Ethiopian food at Zemam's in Tucson, a homey little place that, like many of the best Ethiopian experiences I've had, kept its kitchen literally right next to the dining room. My relationship with Zemam's was always somewhat equivocal. The food was usually adequate but occasionally amazing, and when my grandfather invited me there he always claimed to have shown it to me first, like it was some sort of state secret. I always had to point out that I had actually known about it before he showed me, and that I had actually invited him there first, and that I had also invited him to Gandhi's first, though he always denied it. He always paid, so I wasn't too obstinate. 

However, were I to pin down the best experience I've had with Ethiopian food, it was on our Dora trip, when after asking a random African person on the street where to get African food, he took us down a creepy side street and into someone's house. The two Ethiopian ladies who had been sitting and smoking argileh looked at us like we were crazy, but eventually rounded up a table and some chairs and dealt with us as their friends trickled in to listen to Bob Marley, drink giant al-Mazas and eye us suspiciously. Although the kitchen was right next to a smelly, poorly cleaned pit toilet, and although I'm pretty sure I saw at least one Lebanese pimp, the Mesir Wat that she served us was unlike anything I've ever had. I've been working to replicate it ever since, and tonight I may have come as close as I'll get. 

A fun cultural note: Mesir Wat is apparently quite popular during Lent and those times when people are forced to swear off meat. I'm pretty sure I'd eat this even if there was meat around. This is criminally inexpensive to make and goes well with rice if you can't find the spongy, sour teff flour bread, injera. 

So without further ado, here's the recipe (before I forget it). 

**** NOTE****

Before you start, you need to make your berbere paste. Berbere is technically just a delicious spice combination that gives many Ethiopian dishes their distinctive ruddy pepperiness, but it's extra awesome if you mulch it up in the blender into a paste with a bit of wine, onion and garlic. I'd post a recipe, but frankly I've not found it better than the one you can find here. I add extra fenugreek because I like smelling like maple syrup for days. 

Mesir Wat Ingredients

1 cup orange lentils - which are essentially red lentils split and without the skin

1 medium onion, minced

4 cloves garlic, crushed and minced

1 - 1.5 tsp fresh ginger root, minced

1 tomato, seeded, cored and minced (peeled too if you can)

2 tbsp berbere paste (see above)

2-3 tbsp oil or butter

1 tbsp paprika

1 tsp turmeric 

1 tsp fenugreek

1 tbsp tomato paste

1 tsp raw sugar

salt 

lots of water

Step 1: Prep

Soak your lentils in water for about an hour. Mince up your onion, garlic and ginger and throw them into a blender or food processor and spin them until they are pretty pasty. Get your tomato ready to go and set aside. 

Step 2: Onion Paste

Heat the oil in a pot on medium and add the onion paste until the water is cooked off. Then add the bebere paste and cook for about 3-5 minutes, stirring frequently  to prevent it from burning. When the onion is cooked, add the tomato and the spices and continue cooking until the tomato has begun to cook. Add the sugar and tomato paste. 

Step 3: The Lentils

Drain the lentils and toss them into the pot. Immediately cover them with water, bring to a boil, and then reduce the heat to low and simmer covered for about 30-40 minutes. Towards the end, you'll have to stir to keep the lentils from sticking to the bottom. The consistency should be very soft. If the water cooks off too fast, add a bit more and recover. Salt to taste.