Persian Pomegranate Walnut Chicken Stew and Spiced Rice

Even with the crazily broad range of things we experiment with  in our kitchen, such as letting an 18 month old beat his own scrambled eggs, there are times when we hit ruts. "Doro Wat again?!" Tam will pout sadly into her plate. For the  most part, we fall back on certain recipes because they are easy, cheap, delicious, or in season (which is a matter of special concern in the winter time in Beirut), or just because we were thinking of the country in which they are popular.

It's on this last point that we've sadly been neglecting Persian food. (Sidenote: thanks to our awesome landlord, we are also now curling our toes on a freshly lent old Persian carpet).  Though one tends to hear a lot about Iran in the news here in Beirut, the non-political aspects of Persian culture tend to slip one's mind due to the fact that there is a real paucity of actual Persian people here. I'll not speculate on the reasons behind this, but suffice to say that many Persians and Turks still seem to hold rather unflattering views about the lands of "Arabistan" that are more bound to stereotype than reality.

Of course, at times through history, Persia was roughly equivalent to the Asian version of 18th century France. Their smooth, rather cutesy language was the patois of the obnoxiously cultured, their luxurious artisanal goods ubiquitous, and their fine dining contagious. The meze consisting of small dishes of vegetable and pulse appetizers so closely associated with Eastern Mediterranean cuisine nowadays had their origins in the Persian east, and were readily adopted by the Farsophile Turkish tribes in Anatolia, the Arab Mediterranean, and even Greece and Cyprus. Tapas? The thought at least owes some credit to the guys who sat on their stolen Peacock Throne, but  not much, because Tapas are terrible.

Because this is so different from anything I usually cook, I have to give credit where it's due. However, I've made a few improvements on the recipe to give it some richness, so I feel less bad about posting my version.

Be sure to check out the aromatic "pilau" recipe linked in the original recipe, which is a nice starch pairing that this obscenely rich dish desperately needs. (That's the first time I've used "aromatic" unironically in a long time). I'll give my own version as well, but just because I know some of you don't know how to operate hyperlinks. I cannot claim that this is in any way authentic, because, you know, I'm not Persian, but it's damn good. And pretty terrible for you. .

If you have good Lebneh or Greek yogurt that isn't just regular yogurt with thickeners added to it, try that as a garnish with a sprig of cilantro. If you don't have pomegranate molasses, try melting down grape jelly and cutting it with pomegranate juice to get the sweet/tanginess of the "Dibs Roman."

Persian Pomegranate Chicken "Fesenjan"

Ingredients:

1 tbsp butter
3 tbsp olive oil
3 chicken quarters
2 big onions - finely cut in the food processor
2 cups walnuts, finely chopped in the food processor (seriously, make 'em like flour)
3 cloves garlic, crushed
2 cups water or broth
2 tbsp brown sugar or sugar in the raw
5 tbsp pomegranate molasses
1 tsp cinnamon
1 1/4 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp pepper
salt

Step 1:
Toast the walnuts in a pan on medium low heat until they start to smell nice. Don't burn them. I don't even have to tell you why that's bad. When they're done, dump them on a plate or in a bowl and set aside. When they're cool, blend them into a fine powder and set aside.

Step 2:
Blend up 2 onions finely in the food processor and set aside. Now mix the spices and the sugar into a bowl, and set that aside too.

Step 3:
Brown the chicken in a deep pan with the olive oil, searing the outside and making sure to leave some of the delectable little brown chunks in the bottom of the pan for the onion frying. Take them out when the outsides are nicely browned and set aside. Notice a pattern here? You'll be doing dishes for days.

Step 4:
Add the butter and 2 tbsp of oil to the pan, allow it to heat, then add the onions. Cook them until they're clear and most of the moisture has evaporated off of them (much like you'd do for a curry), then add the chicken and water, bring to a boil and then cover and simmer for about 20 minutes.

Step 5:
At this stage, the pot looks really gross. Pull the chicken for a moment to help you mix better, then suppress your gag reflex and add the ground walnuts, garlic spices, pomegranate molasses and sugar. Stir well and put the chicken back in. The resulting glop will remind you of when you forgot to wash your lettuce when in Mexico, but as I always say, if it looks about the same going in as it does coming out, you've probably made the right choice. Cover and turn heat to low and slow cook for another hour, stirring occasionally and salting frequently (this needs a lot of salt to balance the sweet).

Step 6:
If you'd like, pick the meat from the bones with about 15 minutes to go, which should make for easier eating.

Serve with the rice recipe below, perhaps a daub of lebneh (strained yogurt) and a sprig of cilantro.

Aromatic Rice Recipe

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups Jasmine or Basmati Rice
3 tbsp oil
3 cups water or broth
1 tbsp safflower
1 bay leaf
1 cinnamon stick
6 cardamom pods
8 cloves
1/4 tsp coriander seeds
1.4 cup raisins (yellow preferably)
salt
lemon juice

Step 1:
Fry your spices in the oil to release their flavors, then add the rice and sautee until it turns white-tan. Many people screw up their flavored rice dishes, and it's usually because they didn't fry it up first to neutralize all the starch.

Step 2:
Add water, bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Cover and let it sit for about 5 minutes. Then fish out the sticks, pods, leaves and other offal that would otherwise cause a major dental catastrophe for the smartass who thinks it's cute to eat the whole spices or the clueless neophyte who doesn't know any better and who will never try anything more exotic than scalloped potatoes because of you.

Step 3:
Add the raisins and recover (adding more water if you need it), letting it cook until the steam starts to ebb. Check the firmness of the rice, adding water if needed or uncovering if it's a bit soft.

Step 4:
Taste for salt, then add a squeeze of lemon juice and let sit covered for 10 minutes, then fluff and serve.

Filipino Adobo Chicken and Fake Filipino Veggies

Since my more exotic recipes tend to get the most views, today I've decided to whore myself out to he mob and provide something from my southeast Asian repertoire. For those of you who flunked 5th grade geography, that's where the Philippines are located.

Shredded from the bone for Tam

Americans seem to know tragically little about the Philippines and their culture outside of Manny Pacquiao and Imelda Marcos' collection of between 2700 and 3000 pairs of shoes. This is especially unfortunate since we actually colonized them at one point - and isn't that how we know most of our obscure geography in the states? The Spanish-American war was actually largely started by U.S. naval actions in the Philippines, when Theodore Roosevelt, while filling in as Secretary of the Navy while his boss was gone on leave, unilaterally moved the U.S. fleet to the Philippines to attack once war was drummed up, pretty much instigating the ensuing American conquest of the Spanish colony. The upside (for the U.S.) is that Spanish fort was apparently armed with nerf weapons and the naval fleet lost only one person to heat stroke in the battle of Manila Bay.

Apart from the proliferation of Filipina nannies raising 30% of Lebanon's children, our little country has ties to the islands as well. Not surprisingly, of course, since Lebanese people wind up everywhere. Three of the Salibi (of Kamal fame) brothers made their way to the Philippines following the conquest of Cuba, where they made names for themselves as part of the U.S. medical and cultural projects in the islands. One of them actually served as an emissary to a group of Muslim Filipinos, who had resisted dealing with the conquerors, eventually winning them over AND translating the Quran into their native dialect. One of the brothers died in a Japanese internment camp, and another was carried at his funeral by General Douglas MacArthur.

Anyway, back on topic. Filipino food is an interesting mix of its cultural heritage (notably the its centuries of Spanish subjugation) and its local ingredients, which combine to form a truly vibrant and fascinating cuisine. It's got a lot of similarities to other regional fare, but lacks the flamboyance of Thai food or the measured elegance of Vietnamese. Some will love it, others despise it - Filipino food is a party in your mouth, but not everyone may be invited. I was only recently introduced to it by my parents when I was back in the states, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Today's recipe is for Chicken Adobo, which some faker on the internet claims gives it a Mexican origin. This is riotously incorrect, as Mexican Adobo (or adobado, as it's usually called) is made with red chiles and is nothing like the Filipino version apart from the fact that they're both stewed, which is where the damn word came from in the first place (etymology anyone?). So today's first lesson is don't believe everything you read online.

As a bonus, I'm including a recipe for a vegetable dish that I used as a side for this that I invented completely on the spot because I thought we needed something other than rice. It's delicious, but by no means authentic. And it's yours, so you're welcome.

ADOBO CHICKEN
oil
4 chicken quarters (skin on you pansy)
8 bay leaves
12 black peppercorns
1/2 cup low sodium soy sauce
1 cup apple cider vinegar
3 tbsp raw sugar
10 garlic cloves

That's it.

A warning, the smell of this will peel paint while it's cooking, but it miraculously condenses into a delicious, not overly acidic dish at the end with a nice sauce. Don't taste it while cooking and recoil in disgust, it's always that gross until it reduces.

1. Your one prep duty is to husk, crush and sliver your garlic and put it aside. You can crush the whole cloves against the knife blade, pull away the paper/skin, and loosely dice.

2. Heat then oil a large deep pan that you can throw a lid on, then deposit your chicken quarters face down once the pan is hot. Brown them a bit to release the flavor.

3. Unceremoniously dump the rest of the ingredients into the pot and stir to combine. Bring to a simmer then reduce heat to low and cover. Cook for about 30 minutes until the vinegar and heat make the chicken tremendously tender, then uncover and cook for about 20 minutes until the sauce reduces down to a thick goo. Adjust sugar levels according to your preference, at this stage, and voila.

Sit for 5 minutes and serve with jasmine rice. Some like to strain the sauce, but this is absurd. It's delicious with all of the flotsam, just don't eat the bay leaves, which haven't become edible since my last post.

FILIPINOISH COCONUT VEGETABLES

Again, this was inspired by whatever I had lying around in the fridge and an investigation of other Filipino recipes, so it's in no way authentic. But it's damn good.
oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 green onion, minced
1 tomato, cored, seeded and chopped
1 potato cut into steaks
1 carrot cubed
1 cup shredded cabbage
thumb sized piece of ginger cut in thin slices
6 garlic cloves, crushed and slivered
1 tbsp sweet chili sauce
1 tbsp raw sugar
1/8 cup shredded coconut
1 tsp ginger
salt
pepper
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp fish sauce
1/2 c coconut cream (or 2 tbsp powder and a half cup water)

Step 1:
Prep vegetables according to their description above and mix the raw sugar, coconut and ginger together in a bowl to dump in. Keep the onion and raw ginger aside and put the tomato, green onion and garlic in a bowl to add at the same time. Everything else can go in together.

Step 2.
Heat a deep pan, add the oil and then the onion and ginger and let 'em soften a bit. After a few minutes, add the tomato/green onion/garlic mixture and cook until the tomatoes start to break up and lose their liquid. Finally, add the rest of the veggies and stir fry for about 2 minutes.

Step 3
Add the sauces, coconut cream and the sugar/coconut/ginger combination, stirring to combine, then cover and simmer for about 20 minutes or until the cabbage is soft and the potatoes are done. If you need, add more coconut cream or water to prevent it from drying out and adjust the salt, sugar and pepper as needed. In lieu of salt, you can also add more fish sauce.

It should smell gloriously coconutty, be sweet and savory and go well with rice. 

How Not to Ruin Scrambled Eggs: For Sara

Here's a quick post that's more a "for dummies" instructional guide than a real recipe, but since almost everyone I know makes eggs and a lot of them make huge messes in the process, I thought I might do some charity work on this fine Saturday morning.

Whether you know it or not, eggs are a vital part of your alimentary experience. They allow your baked goods to bake properly. When mixed with milk they do magical things (which is why you must never substitute out milk in a recipe that has eggs. It's chemistry, don't fight it). They contain protein, vital amino acids and zinc, which aid in muscle development and immune function. Plus, new research has emerged suggesting that they won't cause you to have immediate heart attacks, though new research emerges all the time purporting to prove all sorts of dubious claims, so perhaps you shouldn't go crazy with this newfound freedom.

Historically, eggs were one of the most important elements of daily life. Since most of the peasantry in Europe couldn't afford meat, or to buy new chickens, they substituted in "white meats" like cheese and eggs, which were free if you were lucky enough to own a cow or chickens. Chickens were especially important since they basically wander around consuming things and befouling their environment, much like common street gangs, but more edible. Though ownership has decreased significantly in recent years, especially with the increase in apartment living (the mess would be appalling), eggs themselves are generally still a highly affordable protein that even brain damaged monkeys could figure out how to cook adequately.

But, of course, there are tricks to that.

These tips are for those cooking with stainless steel or cast iron - if you use nonstick pans you could do whatever you wanted and the egg would come out basically okay.

Ingredients:
olive oil
2 eggs
1-2 tbsp milk
salt

other potential seasonings: pepper, thyme/zaatar, paprika, vegetables, cheese, truffle salt - the latter two should go in after the cooking process.

Steps:

1. Crack eggs into a bowl (practice doing it one handed - you'll get all the ladies/dudes) and mix in the milk and herbs (if you're using them). Beat the hell out of them with a fork or a whisk.

2. THE IMPORTANT STEP. DO NOT SKIM THIS. Heat a small pan on low-medium heat until it's actually hot (this makes the egg solidify quickly, makes cleanup a snap and shortens cooking time). Add a bit of oil to the pan and coat the bottom and the edges of the sides. If it's too hot, you'll get a singed crust on your egg and/or weird bubbles, which might taste just fine but isn't as nice to eat. If it's not hot enough, you get a mess.

3. Wait until oil heats up forming a barrier between the pan and the egg, then dump the well beaten mixture in. If you cover it, it'll fluff up faster.

4. Cook about 30 seconds until the egg starts to rise and the amount of liquid egg has decreased, flip, turn off the heat, wait 5 seconds and you're done. If you want cheese, add it now, cover to melt then serve.

If you follow my directions, you'll find I've changed your life forever. If you get different results, it's your fault. Try again.

Baked Provençal Whitefish: the Laziest of Dinners

Living in Arizona, where there is no sea, and then in Beirut, where there is a sea but no fish, it took a long time for me to develop a taste for seafood. If purchased thawed from the store, you could be assured that it had been a chunk of ice not 48 hours before, leaving you mere seconds to throw it in a pan or a marinade before it began to smell and taste of unlaundered underpants. I considered crustaceans like shrimp and crab even worse since freezing them turns them rubbery and malodorous, plus they are basically large aquatic bugs that nibble on garbage and dead things all day.

So I didn't eat much of it, and if I did, I rarely enjoyed it as much as I would have something hooved or winged.

However, since my wife somehow managed to develop a near maniacal obsession with seafood in the wilds of Minnesota, I've had to sacrifice my body a number of times in the service of her dark addiction. In Cyprus we once ordered the fish meze - 18 dishes of fish to share - in spite of the facts that 1) she was pregnant and could only have 3 servings a WEEK and 2) most of the dishes involved tiny fish that one ate whole, which she hated. I had to stagger 1/4 mile back to the hotel, distended, weeping and trying to clear mullet bones from my throat.

Somehow, amid all the suffering, I actually started to develop a taste for fish, in no small part because it's so damn easy to cook when you don't really feel like cooking. I first started dabbling in white fish in college when I discovered the discount frozen fish bin at Safeway, where I could acquire fluffy lumps of frozen Vietnamese catfish for something like $2.00 a package. These "Basa" fillets were a surprisingly neutral meat that cooked well on the stovetop, in soups and the oven, and while I had never really enjoyed eating them,  I was nevertheless delighted to find them here in Lebanon at prices far below that of chicken, which retails for something like $6 a pound for breastmeat.

Since I keep a handy supply of breadcrumbs in my freezer, it's no chore to thaw a few fillets while I'm gone, then dress and bake them - requiring a grand total of 10 minutes of very mild effort. Since you probably don't have homemade breadcrumbs on hand, I'll include a basic recipe for them as well - I called them "Provençal" this time since I included a few nifty herbs of that persuasion that matched nicely with the fish.

A note: "whitefish" is a catchall for white fleshed fish of various origins. I'd recommend Basa, Roughy or something that's not excessively flaky and dry. Cod is awful, Haddock worse, and Tilapia is fishy and texturally repulsive. Please don't use storebought crumbs, it's easy enough to make your own.

The Recipe
olive oil
2 fillets of whitefish
juice of 1/4 lemon
1/4 cup mayonnaise
bread crumbs (recipe follows)
2 tbsp flour for crumbs
2 tbsp crushed roasted almonds
salt

Step 1: Crumbs.
Ingredients:
1/2 baguette (or 6 or so pieces of bread)
1 1/2 tsp oregano
1 1/2 tsp basil
1 tsp marjoram
1 tsp thyme
1/8 tsp rosemary (ground)
1/8 tsp lavender (ground in a mortar and pestle)
1/8 tsp anise seed (ground)
salt
pepper

Take a few pieces of bread, tear them up and toss them in a food processor. Baguettes are ideal, but really any bread that doesn't contain bits of wood, birdseed and other unnecessary fibrous detritus will do. When they are crumb sized, stop.

Heat a pan, toss them into it (dry) and toss them around until they start to turn golden, then remove them to a bowl. Try not to burn them or melt anything. Mix in your herbs, salt and pepper, taste, and add whatever herbs you feel they are lacking.

Step 2:
Oil a glass pan and place your thawed, pat-dried fish onto it. If one of the ends is really thin, you can curl it up so it will cook on itself and not get all leathery by overcooking on the pan. Preheat the oven to 375.

Step 3:
Mix the mayo and the lemon juice together and slather on to coat the fish generously. It sounds gross, but it keeps the meat moist and gives it a great flavor. Salt lightly when finished.

Step 4.
Mix breadcrumbs, almonds and flour together and apply liberally to the fillets, which should look dry when you are done.

Step 5:
Insert into the oven for 25-30 minutes, then pull and rest for a minute and serve.

Sauteed vegetables and rice are nice sides for this, just keep 'em light. 

Intestinal Casings of the gods: German Apple Cabbage with Potato and Sausage

Few today would consider cabbage to be an underused ingredient. In fact, few probably think of cabbage at all these days unless they are German, Korean or particularly Kentuckian, who consider coleslaw to be an acceptable accompaniment to everything but dessert. Typically cabbage is used as either a vehicle for other, “better” food (as in cabbage wraps here in Lebanon), a side, or a textural addition to a dish intended to stretch and flavor it a bit. But even this is often done somewhat apologetically, with the cabbage shredded and hidden away like some sort of denatured hunchback child. In the states, supermarkets cram them in the back of the produce aisles next to the esoteric tubers and leeks to keep them out of sight of the more respectable customers and to protect clueless husbands who might mistake the green ones for lettuces.

And I won’t even mention red cabbages. Okay, just one thing. Apparently pregnant women used to make broth of the juice and then micturate into it to see if they were having a boy or a girl since one or the other was supposed to make your pee more acidic. According to whatever witchcraft devised this notion, the pH of the pee would affect the color of the broth, making it slightly more purple… or less, I never remember which. Regardless, it all sounds like a load of micturition to me.

When properly done, cabbage is a thing of beauty. It conveys flavors and richens food like few other vegetables can, and it’s mercifully cheap for those eating on a budget. This almost makes up for the gaseous side effects which probably contributed to cabbage’s exile in the first place, which actually makes a lot of sense since the cultures that feature it most prominently also tend to be the ones that also cook with large volumes of vinegar and onion.

In Lebanon, cooking with cabbage presents its own unique challenges. Namely getting the damn things home. Because the Lebanese usually use them for wraps, they favor the larger varieties, which often reach about 2 feet in diameter and a few kilos in weight. You can often see the sympathy in the eyes of the vendors when you desperately ask them if they have anything smaller. But they do not.

Since we can’t get the German sausage that would go most naturally with these dishes, I’ve decided to use the aromatic Lebanese maqanaq sausages, which my wife hates, but which are oddly apt for the task with their cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and caraway seasonings. Plus, they’re cheap, like sausage is supposed to be.

The preparation requires a few steps that I like to keep separate. If you’re going to throw everything in a crock pot and ruin the individual flavors, you may as well stop reading now and go onto pinterest, you animal. You’ll need a big stockpot for the initial stewing, a frying pan and a baking pan.

Ingredients:

Oil

2 potatoes

2 apples

2 onions

1 pound of sausage

1 cabbage (red would be best, it’s milder and richer)

1/3 cup raw sugar

1/3 cup apple cider vinegar

1/2 cup dark beer

1 tsp grainy mustard
1 tsp caraway

2 bay leaves

Salt 

Pepper

Step 1: Preparation

Shred the cabbage and put it in a big bowl. Slice the onions in half and then into thin rings, put them in another bowl. Peel the apples and slice them thinly, put aside. Slice the potatoes as you would steak fries, rinse and put aside in their own bowl.

Step 2: The Stew

Mix the sugar, vinegar, beer, bay leaves, mustard and caraway in a bowl and set aside.

Heat a pan, then add a few tablespoons of oil to it. When it’s hot, toss in the onions and caramelize them halfway, then remove ¼ of them for future use on a page. Add the apples and cook for a few minutes, then dump in the sweet, vinegary mix you’ve made in the first step above. (Rinse the bowl with beer to ensure you get all the sugar in. Plus, more beer!).

Add the cabbage, mix to coat and cover. As it cooks down begin to salt and test it. You’ll want to do this several times since the cooking cabbage will change the flavor over time and you'll end up needing quite a bit to tame the sweetness.  Stew for about an hour while attempting to manage your irrepressible impulse to idly stir it every few minutes.

Step 3-4ish

Heat a pan and then add the sausages, browning them on their sides. Remove and reserve.

Add oil to the pan, salt it, then dump in your potatoes. Fry them up until they darken a bit on the sides but aren’t necessarily cooked through. Remove, drain and reserve for later.

Step 5: Baking.

Preheat the oven to 400. Add the cabbage and remaining liquid to the bottom of the glass pan, top with the reserved caramelized onions  then the potatoes and sausage. Cover with foil and bake for 20 minutes, then 20 minutes uncovered. The oils will seep down into the cabbage and the flavors will meld nicely. 

Serve in a big pile on a plate, fishing out bay leaves so that the ignorant don't try to eat them. Sour cream or lebneh (strained yogurt) is actually a nice accompaniment. 

The Cheapest, Best Side Dish: The Carrot and Zucchini Sautée

When making a complicated main dish, it's often helpful if your sides take little to no effort to assemble, can be  largely cobbled together from crap you have lying around anyway, actually taste better slightly burned and can be sacrificed in small portions as peace offerings to your small child to prevent him from gnawing on electrical wires or eating the scum around the base of the trash can. If they're also relatively good for you and make you look more awesome in the kitchen than you actually are, so much the better.

This is my go-to on all of these counts. It's especially effective here in Lebanon since the country is blessed with some of the best carrots on the planet and an overabundance of stubby little zucchini squash that they call "koosa" which is a word that still kind of makes me giggle. For a very phallic squash, the term is counterintuitively close to the pronunciation of the Arabic term for a lady's naughty bits. This is a fun bit of trivia, especially since the word "courgette" is one of the most obscene borrowed terms in the English language. But I digress. 

The trick to this recipe is twofold: 1. Slice your vegetables paper thin, and 2. Overcook them. And I mean the second. You want your carrots limp, your zucchinis browned nicely and your onions gooey and caramelized. 

Ingredients:

2 small carrots

1 large zucchini (3 small koosas)

1/2 yellow or spring onion

olive oil

salt

pepper

a squeeze of lemon juice

1. Thinly slice your carrots, zucchini and onions and combine in a large bowl. I like to cut the carrots at a 45 degree angle to the core to make them oval shaped. This doesn't improve the flavor, but it impresses the simple minded and is a nice aesthetic touch. (My motto: creatively sliced carrots say "Hey, I give a damn")

2. Sautéeing means cooking in a small amount of oil at a high temperature, so do that. Heat some olive oil in the bottom of a large, flat bottomed pan on high medium heat and toss the veggies all in together, poking them about in the pan to coat with oil. Let them cook for a bit before you flip or stir them. You should get some heat marks on the zucchini, but no burn marks. But really, the onions will be your guide - if you turn them black right away, you're a bit too hot. 

3. When everything is looking close to cooked, give a quick squeeze of a lemon slice, stir it in with some salt and pepper, then cover and cut the heat. Let it stand for about three minutes and serve. You'll be surprised at how good this is. 

It goes especially well with white rice and fish since it makes its own sauce. 

Chicken Kievon Bleu with Lavender Honey Mustard

For those of you who actually used to frequent this blog, apologies for the hiatus. Actually, I don't apologize. I was in Nice for about a week on business/pleasure and had a wonderful time and you're not going to ruin it for me now.

Nice is actually a charming city that deserves its own post (forthcoming), if only for the fact that it wouldn't exist were it not for the fact that in the 18th century, wealthy British people with tuberculosis needed somewhere to go to die (apparently they don't just go into the back yard and face north). I'm just kidding, wealthy British people aren't actually like dogs. Okay, maybe SOME of them are, but all of my British friends are great.

Why is France even remotely related to Chicken Kiev? Because, like pretty much all Russian cuisine that people pay attention to, aside from borscht, it's derived from the French. In this particular case, a Frenchman named Nicholas Appert, who all amateur food historians on the internet clamor to note also invented canning. This latter contribution is currently pretty awesome for those of us too lazy to boil our own beans, but at the time they could only use glass, so it was more like "jarring." They later developed tin cans that were soldered together with lead, which had some pretty nasty consequences for those who had to subsist on them for a long duration. So basically, he invented a stuffed chicken dish and indirectly killed lots of people. It was actually named "cotelettes de voaille" for quite some time until some smartass in New York in the late 19th century decided to use the name "Chicken Kiev" to prey upon the Russian immigrants in the city. (See this creepy looking dude for the source) 

How did I know it was French without the aid of Google? Come on, it's stuffed chicken. The French have a compulsive urge to stuff things with other, often inappropriate things (there's a joke there somewhere, I'll let you have at it). While in Nice, we bought some truffle-stuffed Brie because it sounded interesting and elegant (it was, but it was not) and saw all manner of beasts that had been hammered flat and rolled together in butchers' windows. It was like peeking into the gates of heaven. 

Chicken Kiev is known for its herbed butter filling, but because I don't consider butter to be a stuffing per se, I've modified the recipe to include cheese and pork to be less gross, just as fattening and a bit more substantial. Basically, mixing the nice parts of Chicken Kiev and Chicken Cordon Bleu. You'll appreciate it, trust me. You can add tarragon to it as well, but since I've added a honey mustard sauce for the top, I didn't want to risk my flavors clashing. 

Warning: prep the filling beforehand since it needs to congeal a bit. Also, you need toothpicks and standard stuff for breading. 

Ingredients: 

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (halves of the butterflied whole) 

1/3 cup green onion, finely minced

1 tbsp parsley, finely minced

1/4 cup ham

2 tbsp softened butter 

1/2 cup light, white cheese (mozarella or jack - we use Keshkaval) 

salt

pepper

Also: 

oil for frying

1/2 cup bread crumbs

flour

oil

1 egg

milk

for the Honey Mustard Sauce (approximations, you go by taste)

2 tbsp mustard

2 tbsp mayonnaise (if you want it creamier, add more mayo)

1.5  tbsp honey

1/2 tsp lemon juice

1 tsp lavender, ground

salt

pepper

Preparations: 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. 

1. Soften the butter and mix in the herbs and cheese, salt and pepper. Chill it and prepare the other stuff. 

2. Place your chicken breasts (one at a time) on a cutting board between two pieces of plastic wrap that is ideally not cling wrap, since it will stick to itself and completely defeat the purpose. Take a mallet, pestle, hammer, smooth rock, or whatever and hammer the chicken flesh until it's thin and spread out rather evenly. 

3. Place a wad of filling along one of the long edges of the chicken, then tightly roll it until it's in a nice, greasy little log. If it's loose and ugly looking, it's entirely your fault and you should either redo it or feel ashamed when you serve it. Pin it together at the ends and in the middle with toothpicks. 

4. You need 3 dishes: the first with with flour seasoned with salt and pepper, a second deep middle dish with egg and milk mixture, and a third with seasoned bread crumbs mixed with a bit of flour and salt. Did you see that? I hyperlinked myself up there. 

Coat the roll in flour, transfer to the egg bath and coat in egg (use a spoon if the toothpicks get in the way), then finish by coating the whole thing in bread crumbs until nicely covered. 

5. Heat some butter in a pan and sear the Kievs on both sides briefly, then transfer to a pan covered in baking paper. Use baking paper. 

6. Bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes

7. Let rest 3-4 minutes, then remove the toothpicks and serve with the sauce (below). This is great with sauteed zucchini, carrots and onion.  

Making the Lavender Honey Mustard Sauce (I capitalized it because that's its proper name)

1. Hammer the lavender blossoms in your mortar and pestle. 

2. Mix all ingredients together until smooth and tastes the way you like it, then put in the fridge to marry. 

3. Serve on chicken or alongside as a dip. 

Roasted Artichokes with Balsamic Aioli: Eating Weeds Never Tasted So Good

Most people I know don't eat artichokes.

I can understand the superficial aversion that most people must feel towards things that look, on a good day, like things that fell out of giant porcupine butts (fact check: Porcupines do not lay eggs. Also, eggs come out of vaginas. Also, this is a gross digression). However, as ugly as they are, the primary blame for their lack of popularity probably has more to do with the fact that they're expensive, spiny enigmas that are too easily ruined by people who haven't eaten them before. Even people who claim to like them screw them up by carving off most of the edible leaves for aesthetics or simply dipping them in melted butter.

To be fair, artichokes were probably never meant to be eaten anyways. They're actually members of the thistle family and grow on exceedingly unattractive little bushes with pale, spiky leaves and look perfectly hideous if they're left to die on the plant. Whatever desperate bastard first boiled up one of those things must have been in some pretty dire straits, which is not unlikely since their homeland, the Mediterranean, has a long history of killing famines that drove people to eat everything from orange pith to children.

Clearly, though, they caught on in the region. And much like the eggplant, everyone has their own manners of preparing them, many of which are stupid. The Lebanese cut off everything but the heart, then boil and bake them filled with fragrant savory meat and pine nuts (which is amazing). The Italians apparently also stuff them or boil them with a bit of mint. The French have quite a few variations using various bits and pieces. The Moroccans for some reason eat them raw (according to my wife EDIT: according to my reliable friend Emily, they steam them). This fellow is a bit too excited about them, but has collected quite a few good ideas as well.

As for me, I roast 'em. Well, boil and roast, but you'll see about that later.

In America we pretty much just get boring old Globes. Not that there's anything wrong with them - in fact they're nice and sweet and a bit creamy, not to mention a decent size for boiling. Since most of them are probably thrown out by stores anyways, there's probably no incentive to stock the many exciting varieties that others enjoy.

My personal favorites are the enormous "big heart" chokes we get in Beirut on occasion, which are the size of a large baby's head and have enormous, buttery hearts and sweet meat on their leaves. Better still, since their leaves tend to be tighter, they don't pick up dirt as easily as the globes - and nothing ruins an artichoke like getting a toothful of gravel.

My process of cooking them is simple. Boil, roast, and dip. Because of the aioli dip, they're probably not the best things for you, but they're damn tasty nonetheless. Also, I'm not sure what to do with the water once I've boiled the chokes. It seems like it'd have some value as a broth, but I've never heard of anyone trying anything with it, and I'm frankly too chicken to give it a go. If someone has a use for it, I'm all ears.

Make the aioli up in advance so it has a chance for the flavors to meld. You can use lemon juice if you don't like purple food.

The Aioli

Ingredients:
1/4 c mayonnaise
1 tsp balsamic vinegar (GOOD balsamic) (adjust to taste)
1 clove garlic, crushed

Step 1:
Mix ingredients together, cover, and put in the fridge.

Step 2:
There is no step 2.

The Artichokes

Ingredients:
2 artichokes
a bunch of water
olive oil
salt

For the baste:
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp safflower
1/2 tsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp salt
truffle oil (if you've got it - or try sesame oil for the toasted taste and leave out the safflower)

Mix the ingredients of the baste first, then move on to the chokes themselves.

Step 1:
Cut off the crown of the artichokes and as much of the stem as you can manage. You'll need a large, very sharp knife for this, or you'll likely be missing a couple of fingers pretty quickly. Wash them thoroughly (including between the leaves) and make sure you've gotten any dirt, rocks, dead bugs, spiders, etc. out of them before you boil.

Step 2:
Bring a good size pot of water to boil with salt and a bit of olive oil and put them in. Cover and leave them in for at least 20 minutes. You'll know they're done when they've changed colors and you can stick a fork in the bottom and it goes in with little resistance. Don't undercook them, they'll be gross. The water should look like pond scum. I've never tasted it, but it might conceivably make a great broth. (Homework: try to make broth from it).

Step 3:
Drain the pot and squeeze out the water using tongs. Let them cool a bit.

Step 4:
Flip them crown down (upside down) and cut them in half carefully so you don't crush the heart. You'll see a nice cross section of the artichoke, including a lot of little spikey inedible bits covering the top of the heart. Take a paring knife and remove this layer and the spikey purple leaves. Leave the tender gray and green ones for eating. This forms a nice little bowl for roasting.

Step 5:
Turn on the Broiler or a grill pretty high and put the halves on a pan, face up. Brush the baste onto the open halves of the artichokes, letting it seep between the leaves if you can. Put them in the broiler and let them cook for a minute or two until the tips of the leaves are lightly singed.

Serve them with the aioli dip and a large bowl for the leaves.

To eat them, peel off the outer leaves and dip the bottom in the aioli, then scrape the pulp from the inside of the leaves with your teeth. The deeper you go, the more you'll be able to eat of the leaves. The heart is all edible and tastes amazing. Enjoy.

Vietnamese Meatball Vermicelli: Because They Don't Have Pork Here

Vietnamese and good Mexican food are really the two things I miss most from the states, even though they sit at pretty much the opposite ends of the food spectrum. The delicate, elegant flavors of the fresh vegetables and the slightly sweet richness of the meat contrast delightfully with the savory sweet tang of the fish sauce. If I had to pick out a flaw in the cuisine it's that it makes you smell like an unlicensed brothel after you eat it - but it's definitely worth it.

Several of the most popular Vietnamese dishes served in America today were actually relatively recent imports into the cuisine from the French colonial occupation - Pho for instance, which is basically a French beef soup with Vietnamese refinements (it is also a huge pain in the ass to make, and you should just buy it at a restaurant). The "Bun" dishes are not one of them, though you might think so. The term vermicelli (Italian for little worms, if that makes you ever want to eat it again) is borrowed from the Italian to give meaning to the Vietnamese transliterations on the menus, but the Vietnamese version is a closer relative to the other regional rice or mung bean varieties of thin noodle than the Italian one.

Because everything I make currently has to be done on the stove or in the oven, I've begun gravitating towards ground beef for a lot of things that I'd normally just use chuck steak or pork shoulder for in the states. In part, this is because the quality of much of the meat you get at the big supermarkets in Beirut is so low that vendors are frequently arrested for even conspiring to sell it to people. But really, the upside to ground beef is that you can make it taste like whatever you want - though the Brazilian ground "beef" is sometimes still a bit gamey, likely due to its high monkey content. This lets you be a bit more creative with your meals, hence today's recipe.

A word of warning: you've got to anticipate this recipe a bit because the fish sauce (Nuoc Mam) should sit for a while to let the flavors marry. Otherwise it'll taste like crap and you'll never trust me again. So don't say I didn't warn you.

Ingredients for the Fish Sauce (Nuoc Mam)
1 cup warm water
4 tbsp rice wine vinegar
4 heaping tbsp sugar
5 tbsp fish sauce
1/2 tbsp sesame oil (my own addition)
1 tbsp sweet pepper sauce or some minced red bell pepper
1-2 tbsp lime juice
1-2 cloves garlic

Step 1:
Heat the water on low-medium in a small saucepan and then add in everything but the garlic and lime juice. Stir it up until the sugar melts and let it cook together for a couple of minutes.

Step 2:
Trying your damndest not to burn yourself, pour the liquid into a glass jar (for storage).

Step 2.5 (if necessary):
Treat the second degree burns on your palms if you've forgotten that pouring hot liquid into a glass jar while you hold it is a dumb idea. Run cool water over your wounds, curse your fate, and move on.

Step 3:
Crush the garlic and add it in with the lime juice, then put a lid on the jar and give it a good shake. The heat will lightly cook the garlic, as will the acid in the vinegar, which should mellow the flavor a bit while also taming the botulinum that may or may not be living on your garlic. If the lid was not secured properly before shaking, you should probably shower before interacting with anyone.

Step 4:
Put in the fridge and store for at least a day before serving. (this is good for up to a month)

Ingredients for the Meatballs:
1 lb ground beef or pork
1 egg
1/2 onion, minced and caramelized
1 tbsp cilantro (coriander)
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp rice vinegar
1 tsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp sesame oil
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 cup of crushed crackers or bread crumbs
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 tbsp chilies for heat, or sweet chili sauce
salt

Step 1:
Mince half an onion and caramelize on the stove top.

Step 2:
Make a bowl out of the ground beef and add in the wet ingredients, cilantro, sugar, caramelized onion and garlic. Mix together and then stir in the crackers to stretch it. You can let this sit for a half hour in the fridge to blend the flavors a bit.

Step 3:
Preheat oven to 425. Line a pan with baking paper and grease a bit with vegetable oil. Form small meatballs and line 'em up on the pan, then stick them in and cook for about 20 minutes.

Assembly and Vegetable ingredients:
cucumber
lettuce
shredded carrot
cilantro
mint
crushed peanuts

Cooked and cooled rice vermicelli

Step 1:
Make a salad of the vegetables, heavy on cucumber, cilantro and mint.

Step 2:
Place a layer of vermicelli on the bottom of each person's bowl, then a layer of salad, then several meatballs, then dust it all with crushed peanut and a generous dosing of the fish sauce. If you're allergic to peanuts, too bad, you've got to eat them anyways, just keep your epipen ready.

Near Moussaka: Because Nobody Really Likes Bechamel Anyways

As I seem to have been largely skirting the Mediterranean with most of my postings so far, I thought it'd be appropriate to throw out a moussaka recipe that I've been kicking around for the past three years or so.

I've had a total of three memorable moussakas in my life, which is something you don't usually say in public, let alone on the internet for fear of a lifetime of ridicule. However, as I feel indebted to the dish, I think it's a risk I'd be happy to take. But before we get into this, a word of advice: Never eat before you go to Cairo. Eating in Cairo is fine, if not particularly rewarding, but it's the transit that'll make you pay (especially if you fly Egypt Air).

Explanation: Prior to my visit in 2008, I unfortunately chose to eat a Caesar salad at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix before leaving for Egypt and somewhere over the Atlantic was struck by the 8th and least dignified plague of Egypt, causing me to expel whatever entered my body through the nearest orifice for roughly 3 days straight. I managed to horrify two entire transcontinental flights with my retching and sobbing in the bathrooms, and was for some reason allowed out of the Heathrow Airport looking like I'd contracted zombieism. After 3 days of moaning and sipping water on a tile floor, I was dragged off to the historically impressive Cafe Riche in downtown Cairo, which is dead around midday for you tourist types, where the first food I managed to keep down in days was moussaka. It probably kept me from dying, hence my fondness.

Since eggplant is ubiquitous to the Mediterranean region, most areas have some variation on the tomato + eggplant + onion theme, and most taste just fine. The fruit itself is kind of an interesting character. Over here they call them either betanjan or aubergine, which I think is a much sexier name for such an obscene looking fruit. It's technically related to both the tomato and potato, which are all variations on the nightshade, which is a delightfully effective poison. In fact, when they first made their appearance in the Near East, tomatoes were referred to as "Frankish eggplants," to indicate their origins and to make the locals suspicious.

Since moussaka is already a labor intensive dish, I never make the bechamel sauce that it calls for since it's just easier to shred cheese on it. I think it's actually an improvement, but if you want to waste 30 minutes of your life, be my guest. This requires several stages, so get ready:

To be honest, this is closer to an eggplant lasagna than a moussaka since I don't use potato or bechamel, but it tastes nice and is in the same ballpark, so let's not get hung up on details.

Ingredients:
a lot of olive and vegetable oil
1 large eggplant
1 lb ground beef
1 onion, finely minced
4 tomatoes, stewed, skinned and blended
1/4 c tomato paste, blended with the stewed tomatoes
6 cloves garlic, blended with the tomato
1 cup shredded mild white cheese (like mozzarella)
2 bay leaves
1 1/2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
splash of red wine
8 whole cloves
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp thyme
salt
pepper

Step 1:
Thinly slice your eggplant (maybe 1/4 inch thick) then layer in a strainer, sprinkling salt over each slice. This draws out the water in the fruit, which is allegedly bitter, though I've never had problems.

Step 2:
The sauce. You can do this ahead of time to allow the spices to combine with the sauce better. Clove is especially shy unless it's been given time to steep. Cook the minced onion in a few tablespoons of olive oil until it's clear, then add in the ground beef and brown. Drain off the fat, then add in the tomatoes, bay leaves, garlic and spices. Cover and let it cook for about 15 minutes. Add the wine, balsamic, salt and pepper and cover. Turn down heat to very low to keep warm.

Step 3:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (Fahrenheit, for you foreign folks, Celsius would be disastrous).

Thoroughly wash off your eggplant slices to remove the salt and pat them dry on paper towels. Since this country doesn't have paper towels for some ungoldly reason, I just used old kitchen towels. Fill the bottom of a large frying pan with vegetable oil and heat it to medium high, putting a bit of salt in the bottom. Fry up your eggplant slices and reserve them on pieces of paper towel (alas.) to remove some of the oil. These little bastards will suck up oil like crazy, so make sure you squeeze them out on the pan with a spatula every now and then. You'll know they're done when they're a beautiful brown on both sides, look withered and smell sweet.

Step 4:
Put one layer of your meat sauce on the bottom of the pan, layer eggplant over the top of it, then a layer of cheese. Now... add one more layer of sauce, a layer of eggplant, then a layer of sauce and a layer of cheese. Stay with me here.

Step 5:
Pop in the oven for 30 minutes. Then, and I can't emphasize how important this is, LEAVE IT ALONE for 10 minutes. It'll cool slightly and keep your sauce from flooding out everywhere immediately. You'll thank me, I assure you.

Moroccan Chicken Pie: Pastilla... that's Arabic right?

Wrong.

My poor little wife spent a year in Morocco gaining a proficiency in what she thought was Arabic, only to discover that the dialect was actually just Spanish with all of the vowels removed. This is consistent with much of her experience in Morocco, which she thought was fantastic, but which typically leaves me aghast. A typical story ends something like this:

Tam: "... so I kicked away his knife and threatened to tell their mothers on them and they scattered."
Me: "Good Lord!"

or

Tam: "... and it was the best Fourth of July ever. Except we ate watermelon and got bloody diarrhea for 3 months."
Me: "Good Lord!"

or

Tam: "... Yeah! right there in the internet cafe!"
Me: "Good Lord!"

You get the picture.

She keeps threatening to take me there, and I'm sure I'll like it, but she clearly needs to work on her propaganda angle if she plans to do it without drugging me like B.A. Baracus from the popular, if highly predictable TV classic "The A-Team."

One thing that I do like about Morocco is the food, or at least the concept of the food since I've never eaten at any "authentic" Moroccan restaurant. Morocco would also be the perfect location to test my stomach, which has developed either an excellent defense against or a symbiotic relationship with the various parasites that are teeming in our food here in Beirut. And anyways, what better way is there to experience an exciting, exotic locale than a strapping case of dysentery?

Today's dish is called "Pastilla," which probably does not suggest its origins. This is a toughie since phyllo dishes are popular across the Middle East, primarily in the Eastern Med (it was invented by the Greeks), but it contains some characteristics that suggest European origins as well. The name, amusingly enough, means "pill" in Spanish, in reference to the fact that it's typically cooked to look like a big, fatty, aromatic tablet. Depending on where you are in Morocco, you can get this filled with squab, lamb, chicken or even fish, if you dare. Consider it Viagra for your belly.

Note on ingredients: Use flat leaf parsley, not the weird tiny leafed crap they sell in the states. Also, chicken thighs are far better for this than breasts, but if you're one of those assholes who only eats white meat, go right ahead. Golden raisins are best for this, if only because black ones would look like you baked beetles into your pastilla.

Ingredients:
3 tbsp olive oil
1 pound boneless skinless chicken thighs
1 large onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tbsp cilantro (coriander), chopped
2 tbsp flat leaf parsley, chopped
1/3 cup golden raisins
2 cups water
1 tsp sugar
lemon juice
pepper

Spices (combine together in a bowl to add all at once)
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp safflower
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tbsp flour
1 tbsp salt (more to taste)

The Crust:
8-10 phyllo dough leaves (if you need two to cover the bottom of the dish, make it 10)
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup crushed roasted almonds
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp powdered sugar

Step 1:
Chop an onion and cook it on medium heat in the olive oil for about 10 minutes until it's soft, then add in the chicken and cook on both sides for a a few minutes.

Step 2:
Add in the spices and stir to cover and combine with the oil. The flour will mix with the oil and won't clump when you add the water like it would if you just dumped it in after it was cooking. Add the water, sugar and raisins, then reduce the heat and cover, letting this simmer for 20 minutes. It should make your kitchen smell like you're making oatmeal cookies. Fun fact, cinnamon used to be insanely expensive, but so beloved by rich Romans that they would import it at astronomical costs and either give it out to people to eat at parties, cook with it to excess, or simply burn it in pyres during their tupperware parties or orgies or whatever.

Step 3:
Add in the lemon juice, cilantro, parsley and garlic. Stir and taste after a few minutes, adjusting salt levels as you see fit. Cook uncovered until the mixture thickens a bit (but not too much, you still have to bake it), then shred the chicken with two forks. When it's the proper consistency, turn off the heat and stir in some fresh cracked pepper. You can do this in advance to give the flavors time to meld.

Step 4:
Mix the sugar, crushed almonds and spices in a bowl, then melt the butter in its own bowl for brushing. (You should buy a brush if you don't own one)

Step 5:
Grease a small glass bottomed pan and start layering the phyllo dough. Put down one layer, paint it with melted butter, sprinkle with the sugar/almond/spice mixture, and then add another layer of dough, repeat until you have about 5 or 6 layers. Make sure you leave enough dough hanging over the edges of the pan to fold over your pie to create a top crust (if you screw this up, just add a few extra layers on top after the pie is filled).

Step 6:
Add the filling and fold the dough over the top. Paint the top with butter and sprinkle the remaining sugar/almond/spice mix over it. Finally, cut 4 slits in the top so steam can vent a bit while cooking. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, checking towards the end to ensure you're not burning it. The top should be toasty brown.

Serve with a nice salad or some vegetable sides. This is rich and heavy, but quite good.

Spanishish Albondigas Chilindron with Creamy Polenta: An Excuse to Write "Balls" a Lot

A word on the title: this recipe is loosely based on 3 different things that I do on occasion that happened to coincide in one dish tonight. The sauce is a smooth red pepper sauce that usually goes with my Spanish Chicken Chilindron dish and the meatballs are a combination of my homemade Italian sausage recipe and my Albondigas. The polenta was something I had thrown together the day before with some hake (a word of advice: don't try hake - it's dry, fishy and unpleasant) but which I thought might be pretty underneath my meatballs. The end product was like if Spanish food and Italian food got really drunk one night and had a really pretty little bastard. This meal is that bastard.

Fun fact: Spanish words that begin with "Al" almost always have Arabic roots since "al" is the Arabic definite article "the." The dish traces back to a nifty little 12th century source called Kitab al-Tabakh fi al-Maghreb wa al-Andalus, or The Book of Cooking In the Maghreb (Morocco) and Andalusia, meaning it's older than that, though it undoubtedly appeared in different forms than we now know them given the lack of tomato in the pre-Columbian Iberian Peninsula. It was probably more akin to the kofta in laban (yogurt sauce) that we have here in Lebanon. The name itself has roots in the word "al-bunduq," or hazelnuts, either in reference to the shape or size of the balls.

The tomato sauce that one typically finds these little gems bathing in nowadays had its roots in the American conquests, which provided us with the tomatoes, peppers and paprika that make this dish so pleasant.

A word on ingredients. The meatballs can either be beef or pork or a combination of the two. If I could get it, this would be pork all the way. I typically use imported Brazilian beef, which the Lebanese seem to regard as little more than minced Amazonian bush meat. It's not really that bad, but I'm happy to overpower the gaminess of the monkey flesh with spices. I'm probably joking about that. If you can find Spanish/Portuguese style chorizo to add to this, do it. It's delicious. If not, Some good smoky ham or bacon will do nicely.

A word of warning: this is a filthy, though not really time consuming process. You will ruin your kitchen. But it will be glorious.

The order of operations goes like this : 1. meatballs, 2. sauce while meatballs are cooking, 3. the baking, 4. polenta.

Meatball Ingredients:
1 pound of ground pork/beef/human/guinea pig/whatever
2 eggs
1/2 sleeve of Ritz style crackers crushed into tiny chunks
1 1/2 tbsp paprika
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup finely diced onion
2-3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 1/2 tbsp fennel or anise seed
2 tbsp chopped cilantro (coriander)
2 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley
2 tsp salt
pepper

Step 1:
Preheat oven to 425 and then mix everything together in a big bowl. That's about it...

Step 2:
Lube up a big glass baking dish with a decent amount of olive oil then form and place the balls in the pan, whatever size you like really. Insert into oven for 20 minutes for big balls, 15 for smaller ones. Don't giggle! You should be ashamed of yourselves! What would your mother think?

Ingredients for the red pepper sauce:
4 tbsp olive oil
1 large red bell peppper or two regular sized ones
3 very red tomatoes (4 Romas)
1 large yellow onion
1/3 cup chopped Spanish/Portuguese chorizo, ham or bacon (cured, smoky pork is best)
5 garlic cloves
3 bay leaves
1/2 cup water
1 tsp safflower
2 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp coriander/cilantro chopped (don't add this or the parsley until the end)
1 tbsp flat leaf parsley chopped
1/2 tsp sugar
salt

Step 1:
Chop up the vegetables - place the peppers and onions together in one bowl, the tomatoes and garlic in another.

Step 2:
Heat the olive oil in a pot on medium and add in the onions and peppers, allowing to soften until clear, then toss in the tomatoes and garlic and cover the pot. Lower the heat, then add in the water, paprika, safflower, bay leaves, sugar and salt, cover again and cook for about 10 minutes.

Step 3:
Mix in the lemon juice and the chopped herbs, let cool for 5 minutes, then fish out the 3 bay leaves and set aside for later. I cannot stress enough how gross it is to accidentally blend up bay leaves.

Step 4:
Hit the ingredients with the blender until smooth, then add in the bay leaves and chorizo and keep aside until the meatballs are done.

Step 5:
When meatballs are finished, remove from the oven, and pour over with the sauce, making sure the bottom of the pan is covered. Lower the heat to 350 and reinsert into the oven for another 20 minutes.

Polenta Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup finely ground corn meal
4 cups water
1/2 cup cream
4 tbsp butter
1/4 cup honey
salt

Step 1:
Heat your water to a boil, then whisk in the corn meal. Mine soaked up the water in about 10 seconds, which was terrifying. Results may vary, so keep an eye on things. When the polenta is of a relatively smooth consistency (like very wet mashed potatoes), pull it from the heat and add the butter, cream, honey and salt. It should be moist but not runny, sweet but slightly savory. A tiny squeeze of lemon juice is actually quite nice.

Serve the meatballs on top of a polenta puddle with a good dose of the sauce, which you can drip over the plate for the visual effect and general tastiness. A sprig of cilantro is a nice touch if it's a date, as it's also functional.

Borscht: the Soup That Makes Your Kitchen Look Like You Killed Someone

There is clearly a problem with food writers, particularly food bloggers, and their habit of lying maliciously about the recipes they post. A fine example is the crowd who post on allrecipes who, without shame, claim that a recipe wherein four out of five ingredients are dumped out of cans is actually tasty.

But more insidious are those who fabricate stories about the origins or history of their recipes or food. Sometimes this can be a simple mistake, sometimes poor research, or, as in the case of Moghrabieh, which I've heard referred to as "Israeli couscous," in spite of the fact that it has definitely been in the region far longer than Israel has, nationalist pish posh.

The reason I bring this up is that while researching how to make borscht, I came across a pretty excellent recipe (which I have long since lost) that claimed that it was the personal script of the Russian Romanov imperial family's cook. Although the recipe had a few very elegant elements missing from most other recipes, I'm tempted to call B.S. on this one for a few reasons.

1. Borscht was par excellence the food of the poor. Roots and vegetables were cheap and, for much of European history, seen as little better than peasant and pig fodder. Even the now venerable potato wasn't popular in Germany until the 18th century when it was encouraged as famine food, and only in the 19th century did it pick up some fans in France and elsewhere. The Romanovs were also known to harbor some real porkers, like Catherine the Great, who is apocryphally said to have died trying to acquaint herself in the biblical sense with a horse (also lies, probably spread by the British). What I'm trying to say is that the dynasty was known primarily for spending ridiculous sums on bedazzled Easter eggs and being riddled with bullets by a number of poor folk in an revolution that was started because they did things like spend ridiculous sums on the aforementioned Easter eggs - eating peasant food was probably out of the question for them.

2. The recipe listed was clearly a Russian style borscht recipe (distinct in several ingredients, notably using beef, beets, cabbage and potatoes) - many Romanovs were of German lineage and liked French food, as one can tell from other French inspired recipes like Muscovy Duck. I'm pretty sure they ate differently from their peasant "countrymen".

I'll have to keep an eye out on research proving the contrary, but until then, I'll just say this was a nice recipe.

Actually, borscht (root soup) is a pretty basic element in a lot of cuisines from Russia and Eastern Europe to Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan, all the way to China, where they use tomato paste instead of beets for the flavor (I use both!). This should come as no surprise since roots are cheap and easy to grow, aren't as easily harmed by inclement weather as wheat, and are less likely to be scooped up by invading armies trying to provision themselves since they are heavy and can be left underground, undiscovered, until the troops have passed. Also, since drinking water was often a problem in poorer areas of Europe and Asia, soups came into popularity as supplements to meals since it allowed people to get water without actually having to drink water (one might question whether they traced their bowel issues to the local watering hole, but this is getting long as it is, so we'll treat that some other time).

So Borscht. This is my own adaptation of the classic sweet soup that utilizes stuff I have handy, but it tastes wonderful and is cheap, so enjoy. You can do this with meat or without - it tastes fine either way. A warning: there is an assload of ingredients, but you just throw them into a pot pretty much, so deal with it.

Also, cutting up beets is a secret pleasure of mine. They look so pretty inside, and when you're done, it looks like you've been dismembering corpses on your cutting board, and probably your clothes from wiping your beet-blood soaked hands on them.

Ingredients
4 tbsp oil (olive is okay for this)
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 tomatoes, finely chopped
2 medium beets cubed
3 garlic cloves minced
1 carrot cubed
1 stalk celery finely minced
1 potato cubed
1 cup cabbage, shredded
2 tbsp minced green bell pepper
1/2 cup red wine (I used Khoury's cheap red table wine, which contains a lot of pinot noir)
5 cups water or broth (enough to fill over ingredients)
2 tsp dried dill
2 tsp safflower (not the same as saffron!)
2 tbsp tomato paste
squeeze of lemon juice
1-2 tbsp sugar
a lot of salt to balance the sugar
pepper

Steps:
1. Chop up everything appropriately and putting it all in one bowl since you add it all together, except the onion, which you add in first and should keep aside.

2. Heat the oil in a large stockpot on medium and dump in the onions, cooking them down until they start to get dark (this is the beginnings of caramelization, which will make them taste a bit sweeter).

3. At this point, dump in the rest of the vegetables and then the water/broth. You can add the tomatoes first and cook them, but don't bother, they'll dissolve away in the broth. Cover, increase the heat until it's at a boil. Then add the wine, sugar, spices and tomato paste - but not the salt. For those of you keeping Halal, a smaller amount of balsamic vinegar works nicely too without giving you the alcohol, which is pretty much negligible anyways.

4. Lower to a simmer and cover. After 10 minutes, return and taste it, adding salt to balance out the sweetness and squeeze some lemon juice over it.

5. Cover and let it cook for another 20 minutes until the beets and carrots are no longer hard chunks of raw root and have leaked out their delicious sweetness into the broth.

6. Turn off heat, add cracked pepper, and rest it for 15 minutes. When it's a bit cool, serve in a bowl with a spoon of lebneh or sour cream, which you then mix into the broth, turning what once looked like a bowl of blood into an obscene pink nightmare. It's tasty though.

Ginger Carrot Soup: Where'd That Come From?

In Beirut, February brings cold, dampness, illness, and unreasoned arguments from otherwise bright people that the cold and damp are alone responsible for the aforementioned illness. However stupid this idea is, I do feel a strange sense of camaraderie with these boobs since, almost in spite of myself, I still think that eating soup when sick or cold is kind of therapeutic.

I also get little thrills from stumbling onto soups that I would never have thought possible or at least advisable - as in the case of today's subject. In theory, this soup makes little sense. Who uses carrot as a base, for Christ's sake? But it not only works, it's easy and probably kind of good for you if you go easy on the fatty stuff.

Since I'm nursing a sinus infection that makes my head feel like a moldy, stomped-in pumpkin three weeks after Halloween, I'll keep this short and relatively civil. Also in spite of myself.

A word on ingredients: if you use withered little carroty wraiths, the soup will suck. Make sure your roots are turgid, virile and sweet. I use lebneh (Greek Yogurt) because it is always in my fridge and is cheap here. You might want to use something else, like a splash of heavy cream or maybe some half and half. You're a smart kid, I trust your decision on that one. You can add more of the spices if you want, I didn't want to scare you.

Ingredients:
5 large carrots
1 medium sized potato
1 large onion
2 tbsp grated fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves
3 tbsp butter plus 1 of olive oil
2-3 cups water
3/4 cup lebneh (greek yogurt) or some sort of creaming agent
2 bay leaves
1 tsp ground dried ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg (fresh grate it for nerd points)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp safflower
1 tsp celery salt
salt and pepper to taste

The Process:
1. Cut up your onion and garlic, grind your ginger and put it in a bowl, then peel and cube the carrots and potatoes and put them together in a bowl. Mix the spices together in a little bowl for a quick toss in.

2. Melt the butter on medium heat with some olive oil - when it's hot, add in the onions, garlic and ginger. Let it cook down for a bit, making sure the garlic isn't burning. I know you're not supposed to add the garlic just yet, but it's not going to cook for long.

3. When the onions are sweaty and clear, toss in the spices and bay leaves and stir in, followed quickly by the carrots and potatoes. Stir it together, then add the water (just to the top of the vegetables). Cover and cook for about 15 minutes until the potatoes are soft.

4. Put about 4/5 of the soup in a blender with the lebneh, reserving some of the carrot and potato chunks in the pot for texture. REMOVE THE BAY LEAVES, but reserve them to add in again later. Blend it up, then transfer it back into the pot, adding the bay leaves and salt to taste. Cook it on low for about ten minutes.

5. Turn off the heat and let it rest a bit (never serve soup scalding hot, you miss out on so many flavors), then add fresh pepper to each bowl as you spoon them out.

Serve this as an appetizer, a main course, or whatever. It's delightful leftover and tastes really good with chunks of fresh bread dipped in it.

Mexican Rice: Not Actually Brain Surgery (also Mexican base recipe)

Thus begins a Mexican food trilogy. As I'm cooking this in Beirut, I'm not shooting for accuracy here, so let's not get snooty about this - it tastes good, which is all that matters.

Mexican cooking typically takes more attention than effort. In fact, like all good peasant cooking, it basically involves chopping a combination of tomatoes, onion and garlic, putting them in a pot at various times with fat, other condiments and spices, and letting them stew until they form a delicious mush. It's a proven fact that the closer Mexican food looks to something that has already exited your body, the better it will likely taste going into it.

The roots of Mexican rice go back to the Spanish conquest and importation of Spanish rice into Veracruz in the 1520s. Fortunately for the bloodthirsty Spanish hordes, the climate was ideal for the cultivation of this particularly thirsty plant, which, of all the grains, is definitely the biggest pain in the ass to grow. Since the Spaniards couldn't get Saffron for their meals, they used local ingredients like tomatoes to make the rice taste less unappetizing. From this blossomed the most popular side dish to leave untouched on your plate in the history of Mexican cuisine.

Contrary to popular opinion, this is actually easy to make. But allow me to offer three tips:

1. Make your base beforehand
2. Fry your rice
3. Don't fiddle with it.

So what's this "base" of which I speak? Basically, it's blended salsa, which you can make in quantity and freeze or eat like salsa. Here's what I do:

Ingredients:
1 large onion
4 tomatoes
1/2 red bell pepper
1-2 jalapenos (serranos also have a nice flavor if you like heat)
5 cloves garlic
2 tbsp chili powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tbsp Mexican oregano
2 tbsp minced cilantro
2 tbsp olive oil
lime juice
salt to taste

Process:
1. Chop up the vegetables, seeding your peppers and tomatoes. Combine the onion and peppers and putting the tomatoes and garlic in separate bowls.

2. Soften the onion and pepper mix on medium heat in some olive oil, then dump in your spices. Stir up a bit in the oil to free up your little aromatic molecules then add the tomatoes. Cover and let cook down a bit.

3. After 15 minutes, turn off the heat and let it cool, then toss it into a blender, adding the cilantro, garlic and lime juice and puree it all. Taste it for proper saltiness, and put it aside - the flavors will change as everything mixes together. Use it for salsa, in guacamole, or as a base for your Mexican dishes. It's quite tasty.

Now onto the Rice. At this point it's really freaking easy.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups short grain rice (as sold in creepy bins constantly touched by unwashed child hands in Food City, or use Basmati. Definitely not Uncle Ben's style parboiled rice)
1 1/2 cups of Mexican base
1 small carrot, finely cubed
1/4 cup of canned corn plus a little of the juice
<2 cups of good chicken broth or water if you're boring. Just kidding. I use water usually.
3-4 tbsp vegetable oil or lard (coat bottom of pan)
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1.5 tbsp chili powder
salt
a squeeze of lime juice

Steps:
1. Heat oil in a pot on medium heat and throw in the rice. This will prevent it from getting all gooey and starchy when you cook it down. If you don't do this step, your rice will suck and dingoes will carry off your first born, no matter how old he or she is.

2. Add in the base, carrots and chili powder and stir it around to mix. It'll start bubbling a bit, at which point add in the water or broth, corn and the vinegar. Stir it, wait for it to come to a boil, then cover and turn down to a simmer. It should cook for about 15 minutes this way. If the heat is too high, you'll boil off the water and have hard rice. If this happens, add more water. If the heat is too low, you'll get mush. So try to keep an eye on things.

3. Now leave it alone.

4. When the water boils down to where you can't see it on top of the rice anymore, grab a few grains from the top and taste them. If they're still pretty uncooked, add a splash of water and cover again. If not, cover it and let it cook until it stops steaming under the lid - for extra flavor, let it cook a bit longer to slightly burn the bottom. Trust me.

5. Cover for 10 minutes, then squeeze some lime juice on it and fluff it (stop it, I know what you're thinking) with a fork and use a spoon to scrape the bottom of char and congealed tomatoes. This is flavor, don't fear it. Cover again for a few minutes.

Serve with beans, tortillas and a main dish. It's delightful.

That, sir, is no tortilla

Is what I would say to the stack of wretched flour tortillas that pollute the 1 square foot "Mexican" section of our local supermarket - if I was a crazy person who talked out loud to food items in public, rather than merely cursing them in private. Which is totally sane, right?

Tortillas are by far the most maddening things to buy in Beirut since it costs roughly $4 to obtain 6 bland, crumbly tortillaesque discs that in the end are mostly ornamental since actually trying to eat them would ruin the delightful Mexican dinner that had taken two hours to prepare. I actually threw out one of these 70 cent disgraces after I decided that the quality was even too poor for use in a breakfast burrito.

So out of laziness and necessity - my two constant kitchen companions - I decided to make my own this week to save myself a trip of 100 yards to the store to buy real ingredients.

But frankly, I'll never go back. Once you learn what actually goes into tortillas, you'll likely never buy them again out of sheer indignation, unless you try this recipe and somehow suck at it (for shame).

Ingredients:
3 cups of flour plus more for rolling
1 1/2 teaspoons of salt
1/3 cup of oil (I use vegetable oil, you should use melted lard)
1 cup of very warm water

That's it.

Now check this out:

Instructions:
1. Combine the oil, water and salt in a big bowl.

2. Stir in flour to form a sticky dough.

3. Flour a flat surface and tear off 2-3 inch wads of dough, forming into a ball and coating with flour.

4. Smash down into a disk, and using a rolling pin for its intended purpose for probably the first time in your life, roll it out as round and thin as you can get it (it won't be very)

5. Set aside on a plate, repeat until the dough is gone.

6. Heat a large flat pan to high medium heat and put your first tortilla on. Wait until it starts to bubble nicely and flip after about 30 seconds more or less and repeat. Both sides should have nice, brownish to blackish contact marks where it touched the pan and look vaguely like a tortilla.

This makes about 8, and should take about 20 minutes unless you're a total spazz.

Kishik. No! I'm not insulting you, it's Lebanese Tomato Soup

I'll be honest about this, as I far too often have been in my blog postings. This isn't really a Lebanese thing as far as I know, except at the Byblos restaurant in Tempe, Arizona. In fact, when I talked to our friend Samia who runs a homestyle Lebanese food place in Beirut, she said she can't serve tomato soup because nobody will eat it. However, as an American, I have a primal need for soup and was curious about making my own tomato soup, so I threw this together a few years ago and have been happy with it since. Also, "kishik" is fun to say and it sounds very similar to a colloquial Arabic term meaning "your vagina."

The problem is, Kishik itself is a totally disgusting concept. In fact, it's so gross that I typically trick people into liking it by describing its amazing flavor before revealing that it's actually dried, fermented, strained yogurt ground up with bits of cracked wheat (called burghol). In the stores, it's sold in unfortunate little clear bags, and looks like something you'd scrape off the bottom of a parakeet cage. Though people across Mount Lebanon make it, it's typically associated with the Druze community in the Chouf region. It's actually a brilliant way to preserve milk, which was especially important in the long winters in the mountains when you couldn't easily get to warmer areas to buy food and had to stock up and wait for spring. The wheat provided carbohydrates and B vitamins, while the lebneh (strained yogurt) was good for protein and calcium - and since it was basically a powder, you could keep it in a jar under your bed and it'd do just fine, though it might make your bed smell kind of like sour cheese.

As appalling as it is, on manaeesh (soft, puffy breakfast flatbread) with cheese and olives, it's a thing of beauty. Granted, the manaeesh sit out on the baker's shelf all morning waiting for you to order them, at which point they put them back in the oven for a few seconds to freshen up, but they still generally taste amazing. The little bakeries mix it with oil, thyme, tomato and onion and cook it up a bit - producing a rich, creamy, slightly gamey tang that I'm going to miss in my bones every day I'm outside of Beirut.

Fortunately for those of you who couldn't get kishik if you really wanted it, my recipe doesn't actually call for it. I substitute Lebneh (Lebanese strained yogurt), which you might know as Greek yogurt, which also makes it creamier and more delicious. You can actually make Lebneh for a fraction of the price of the store stuff if you take a strainer and a paper towel filter, fill it with a good quality plain yogurt and let the whey drain out overnight into a bowl - which you then discard (the whey, not the bowl). Or, if you're impatient, just squeeze it out in a paper towel or cheesecloth.

You can buy zaatar, which is basically thyme mixed with sumac, salt and sesame seeds, at any Middle Eastern market worth its milh (little Arabic joke there) or just use regular thyme - though it won't be quite the same.

Kishk Soup
5 very ripe red tomatoes (6 if you're using little Romas)
1 large yellow onion
5 cloves garlic
1/4 c cracked wheat (bulghur)
1/4 c olive oil or butter
1/2-1 cup water
3 bay leaves
2 tsp zaatar or thyme
salt
3/4 cup lebneh (Greek yogurt)

Step 1:
Chop up your onions and tomatoes and put them in separate bowls. Make sure you remove the tomato seeds, which are gross and dopily called "roe" because they look kind of like fish eggs, though to my knowledge tomatoes don't have to spawn upstream to produce it. The easiest way to do this is dig out the core/stem head with a knife rather than just cutting off the top, then squeeze the guts out in the garbage. Smash and mince the garlic and put it with the tomatoes.

Step 2:
Put the olive oil or butter in a pot and turn it on medium heat. When your fat is hot, add the onion and let it soften and get clear, then add in the tomatoes and garlic. Let the tomatoes cook out their juices to form a nice broth, then add the spices, bay leaves, wheat and water. Cover it and let it cook on low heat for about 30 minutes, then turn off the heat and let it cool a bit.

Step 3:
When it's cool, add the lebneh (yogurt, if you've not caught on yet) to the blender REMOVE THE BAY LEAVES and then pour in your soup. Blend it until smooth, then transfer back into the pot, add back the bay leaves and cook on very low heat for about 5 minutes, salting it to taste.

The best way to serve it is with pieces of Italian bread sliced thin, drizzled with olive oil and toasted until slightly charred on the edges in the broiler.

Caramelized Onion, Brie and Bacon Turnovers

I'm not sure if people combine these ingredients regularly, but after eating this I think they should definitely start. The only reason I even attempted this was that 1) we had brie, bacon and phyllo dough, 2) Tam likes brie, 3) it seemed like a lazy thing I could make while holding Eli over a hot stove.

Of course I'm joking about that last part. He spent most of the time rooting around on our kitchen floor trying to find old bits of food, dead bugs, hair and other disgusting things to put in his mouth.

If I could pick one downside to this dish, it's that it's horribly fattening. If I could pick two, it's that it also has several steps that need to be done before you get started, so you can't be as lazy as I'd hoped. Alas.

Since I kind of made this up, I'll not go into the history of Brie or cheese, though noted dick Charles De Gaulle once quipped "How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?" More to the point, who would want to? Though France is famed for its culture, it seems to have congenitally poor taste, so I suppose it should be no surprise they wound up with the likes of De Gaulle, Chirac and Sarkozy, who looks kind of like an Oompah Loompah without the spray tan. But I digress.

On to the Recipe. Don't buy expensive Brie, nor should you buy "Farmer John's Brie and Party Spread." Use your head, and maybe shop at Trader Joe's or someplace like that where it's hard to buy bad cheese. Also, for my sake, use good, smokey bacon, which will make your toes curl in this recipe. TJ's has a good applewood smoked variety.

Ingredients
10-12 oz of Brie
phyllo dough or puff pastry sheets
3 strips of bacon
1 onion
1 some sweet brown beer or some moderate red wine (a Syrah or Cab would do nicely)
olive oil
an egg
a nice, sweet apple
a head of fresh roasted garlic (I'll show you how in a forthcoming post)
salt, pepper

You should have a brush and a baking pan with parchment paper. USE PARCHMENT PAPER.

Step 1:
Chop up the bacon into little squares and cook it on medium heat until done but soft, reserving some of the fat for your caramelization process, or chuck it all if you want to eat healthfully. But let's not kid ourselves, if you're making this, you've already resigned yourself to swinishness for at least one meal, so go for it. Remove from the pan and set aside for now.

Step 2:
Thinly slice the onion into half rings and then slice into smaller bits to make it easier to eat inside the pastry. I like to cut off the top and root of the onion, chop it in half longways and peel off the skin, then slice little rings from the head to the foot then chop from the right to the left to get a quick dice.

Cover the bottom of the a small saucepan in olive oil and/or bacon grease and turn the stove on to low-medium. Add the onions and let them slowly caramelize, only stirring every now and then (resist the urge to meddle!). When they're 3/4 the way done, pour in a good dose of the beer or red wine and let it reduce, which will give your onions a wonderful depth of flavor. Continue to caramelize until they're dry - if you want, douse them again with booze for a thicker reduction. Salt and pepper to taste.

When the onions are done, remove from heat, toss in the bacon, and set aside. They'll turn a gooey brown color and taste like angel farts, which is just what you want.

Step 3:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Take a double stacked sheet of phyllo dough and lay it out flat on a dry surface - it should look like a square. Slice up the brie and form a triangle of cheese in one of the halves of your phyllo square with it, leaving room at the edges. I say triangle, since you're going to fold the dough from corner to corner to form a triangular pocket - if you're having problems conceptualizing this, rotate your square of dough 45 degrees and smack yourself in the head with a pan, you dummy.

Pile your onion-bacon mix on top of the cheese and smash some of the roasted garlic cloves into it.

Step 4:
Take the egg and beat it thoroughly.

Brush egg on the inside edges of the dough to help seal your little turnover, then fold the empty side over the full one. I don't know why I had to explain that to you, but bear with me. Transfer your turnover carefully to the parchment covered baking pan and paint with egg until it's nicely covered, then slice a few slits in the top.

Bake on 400 for about 12 minutes, remove and serve immediately with sliced apples (which go great with it) and maybe a nice sweet potato puree.