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.