Arabesque: Earnest Summation

We had friends over -- he's for McCain, she's for Obama, don't know how that possibly works but they seem happy and we successfully avoided the topic for the entire meal which was a small/ENORMOUS miracle -- and finished the Arabesque experiment last night. 

The highlight: Turkish layered cheese pie, a crispy-soft-salty-cheesy fillo dish, unbearably delicious, which I cut into diamonds and served as an appetizer. Followed by tagine, about which I have nothing new to say so will say nothing.

I made 52 recipes out of Arabesque over the last month.

Worth the Price of the Book: 6

Great: 7

Good: 26

So-So: 10

Flat-out bad: 3

A terrific cookbook, but I have a gripe.

Claudia Roden first became famous for her encyclopedic 1968 Book of Middle Eastern Food, which was reissued a few years ago. A few minutes of cross-referencing reveals that a lot of my favorite recipes from Arabesque previously appeared in that first book. The lamb tagine with dates, gum mastic ice cream, chickpeas with turmeric, spicy shrimp, harira. Granted there are new recipes and some minor revisions of old ones -- but enough to justify buying Arabesque if you already have the Book of Middle Eastern Food?

Short answer: No. 

Quick Update

Tomorrow night  I'm going to pull out Claudia Roden's Arabesque for one last cinnamony, eggplanty dinner. 

I was going to "do" an Italian cookbook next, reflecting the wishes expressed in Isabel's poll. But after a minor altercation the other night, decided that Mark should choose the next book. And so he has. No, it's not Great Recipes of the NFL.

Mark's pick: Charleston Cuisine by Louis Osteen. I've studied some of the recipes, examined Osteen's photograph ("jolly"), and will be fasting today in preparation for this new chapter.

Arabesque: Lesbian Food

Lesbian food. That's what Mark calls everything I've cooked out of Arabesque, whether or not it's even LEBANESE.

Totally bugs me. 

I need a new family or I need a new cookbook. Probably both, but one is easier to replace than the other so I guess these are the death throes of Arabesque.

I'm in a terrible mood.

I made another Claudia Roden/Middle Eastern dinner last night:

-Moroccan chickpeas

-Eggplant pilaf

-Cucumber and yogurt salad

-Sauteed escarole with caramelized onions. 

Nothing spicy, nothing gross (unless you count eggplant and leafy greens, which you shouldn't), nothing smelly, nothing visceral.

Owen sits down and lets out a wail. He pokes at the microscopic pile of chickpeas I have placed on his plate.

 

Owen: Chickpeas? You made chickpeas? You know I don't like chickpeas.

Tipsy Baker: You just have to taste one chickpea. Just one. (This is how low my standards have sunk. I, who was forced as a child to eat everything from liver to frozen peas.)

 

Owen: What?? Chickpeas are bitter. You know I hate chickpeas.

Tipsy Baker: Why are you staring at me, Mark?

Mark waves to the array of food I have placed on the table with a thin smile.

Mark: You've set up some pretty harsh tests, here.

Tipsy Baker: What are you talking about? I asked him to eat a single chickpea.

Mark: I mean, this is challenging food.  I object to that stuff in the rice.

I'm not sure how I maintained my famous madonna-like composure. I'm sure the second goblet of wine helped. 

I know Mark would rather be dining on PastaRoni, upon which he subsisted before we married. And he has often said he wishes that food came in a pill. I can see that for a man of simple tastes, living with my cooking style might be a monumental drag. And I guess I should appreciate his patience, tolerance, sense of humor, willingness to eat Lesbian food when what he really wants is a bag of Fritos, etc. etc. etc. 

Is he a saint, or what?

But I do wish he would restrain  from offering critiques of our meal while Owen is listening, and I wish he would cover me as I fight the battle of the freaking chickpea. And I don't think he should have made Owen toast with jelly as soon as dinner was over.

Anyway, the eggplant pilaf was fabulous, and it was all that "stuff" -- roasted eggplant, pinenuts, currants -- that made it so. Isabel ate a lot of chickpeas, and had seconds of cucumber salad. So that's something.

I'm still in a terrible mood.

Arabesque: Kataifi

That's kataifi, a vermicelli-like pastry I found in the freezer at Haig's grocery, right next to the fillo dough. 

Following Claudia Roden's instructions, we tossed it with a half pound of melted butter, spread half of it in a big cake pan so it resembled a bird's nest. Filled the nest with milk pudding and 

topped with the rest of the kataifi. Baked. Unmolded. Drenched with a syrup flavored with orange flower water. 

Basically, that's the m.o. with all these Middle Eastern dessert: you sweeten after baking. I like. I like too much. And this one, a recipe from Claudia Roden's mother, was my favorite. 

Sometimes those nutty baklava-like pastries are too sweet, and the fillo gets soggy, like damp paper towel. But this was creamy -- the pudding absorbs the syrup better than nuts -- and the kataifi stayed crispy, like shredded wheat before you add milk. But, well obviously, better.

Arabesque: Less Steak, More Beans

Those are the last pistachios I'm going to buy for a while. Extravagant!

Lean times coming to our house. I'll leave it at that. Yesterday I considered brushing the mold off the pita bread and serving it. I also considered using some rancid walnuts instead of opening a fresh pack.

Didn't. But that's where we're at, and I think it's going to get a lot worse, no matter who is elected. (In case you were wondering, the Baker is voting for Barack Hussein Obama. This terrorist food is so doggone good!)

Meanwhile, I bought new pita and opened a fresh pack of walnuts and here's what I made, all of it out of Claudia Roden's Arabesque:

Chicken Fattet. You poach chicken, remove meat from bones, and pour the chicken and some of its broth over a bed of toasted pita, bake, and top with mint-spiked yogurt. Kids wiped off the yogurt, refused to touch the pita, liked the chicken. Resembled last night's fabulous chickpea dish, but not as delicious. And more expensive. And harder.

Muhamarra: Walnuts, pomegranate molasses, and moist bread pureed to a paste and spiced. Serve on a plate as a "salad." It tastes wonderful but there's something disgusting about the texture. Something .  .  . masticated.

 

Eggplant with Pomegranate Molasses. Roasted eggplant coarsely chopped and tossed in a sweet-tart dressing. Not great.

Pistachio cake. See photograph. A souffle-type pastry -- nubbly and green -- over which you pour rose water/sugar syrup. Damp and sweet and lovely and reviled by children.

Tonight: Leftovers.

Tomorrow: Stone soup.

Arabesque: Chickpeas & Zucchini Pancakes

That was one of the strangest, most fantastic things I've ever made: Chickpeas with Toasted Bread and Yogurt (Fattet Hummus Bi Laban) from Claudia Roden's Arabesque. 

You cook chickpeas until tender and toast some pita. Mix yogurt with tahini and fry a handful of pine nuts. Then spread the pita on the bottom of a dish, pour over the hot chickpeas along with some of their liquid, and top with the yogurt and pine nuts. 

I was struggling to describe this myself, but I'll quote Roden: It "may sound heavy but it is surprisingly light and delicate in the eating, and the mix of textures, temperatures, and flavors is a joy."

Beautifully put. An incredible dish. 

Also: easy.

On the side we had zucchini pancakes. My mother used to make zucchini pancakes that were just egg and shredded zucchini, and after we got over being fooled by the word "pancake" my sister and I turned against them. 

It would be hard to turn against Roden's messy, delicious zucchini pancakes because of all the mashed feta cheese and herbs (dill and mint) which, to quote Roden again, "lift what is an otherwise bland vegetable."

Having said that, I'm not sure my children even tried them, but I am trying to avoid screaming fights and dinner table power struggles. So I let it go.

For dessert: Milk Ice Cream with Gum Mastic and Rose Water.

Here's Roden's headnote: "A brilliant white milk ice cream with a chewy texture made with sahlab, the ground-up root tuber of  a member of the orchid family, is very difficult to make successfully at home, so here is a modern version that I also love. It is without sahlab, so not chewy, but the traditional flavoring of mastic and rose water give it a special appeal."

I saw gum mastic at the Spanish Table the other day, bought a little jar to make this ice cream. I was hoping for something exotic, rosy, and maybe just a tiny bit chewy. This wasn't it. This was a "brilliant white," superrich ice cream with no discernible flavor of rose or gum mastic (whatever that tastes like.) And it was wonderful.

I still wish it had been chewy, but for that I may have to go to Beirut.

Arabesque: The Falling Down Drunk Baker

Actually, I didn't fall down, but I did fail to make a photographic record of the Middle Eastern banquet -- all cooked from Claudia Roden's Arabesque -- that I served at our first Office party. You can see it sloppily arrayed on the table there, but when I checked my camera this afternoon, I discovered, to my horror, that in my merry inebriation I took no decent pictures of: 

-hummus (delicious, the usual)

-baba ghanouj (delicious, the usual) 

-stuffed grape leaves (more delicious than the Trader Joe's usual. Not difficult to make.)

-Moroccan potato and olive salad (EXTRA delicious, unusual)

-bstilla (delicious -- but called for chicken thighs which I can barely look at, let alone eat.)

-Lebanese rose pancakes (EXTRA delicious! Very unusual. These are tiny yeasted pastries that you dip in orange water syrup then top with creme fraiche and rose petal jam. I ate fifty of these. Sadly, not an exaggeration.)

I did manage to photograph the guests, dressed up as characters from The Office. In the photo above, from left to right, we have Dwight, Angela, Toby, Kelly, and Michael. I was a middle-aged Pam. We ate a lot and watched the first episode of Season Five.

Then I staggered to bed, woke up at 4 a.m., and wanted to die.

Arabesque: Sorry Mom!

I just had to get that off my chest. I grew a little overheated in our final conversation last night, which happens when I hear the words S**** P**** and have drunk a couple of glasses of wine. Sorry, sorry, sorry! I am actually considering suspending my blog until we've solved this presidential election crisis. 

Kidding.

Otherwise, the evening was swell. We made my two favorite dishes from Arabesque thus far:

-Lamb Tagine with Dates and Almonds. The first time I read this recipe I knew I was going to love it: Rich, tender meat stewed with sticky dates and topped with crunchy fried almonds, all of it bound together with a honey-flavored sauce. Claudia Roden suggests omitting the traditional honey, as she thinks it makes the tagine too sweet, but I went for the full measure and did not regret it. This tagine is not just the best dish I've made from Arabesque, but one of the best I've made since starting Tipsy Baker, right up there with Niloufer Ichaporia King's cardamom cake. 

-Almond Pastries in Honey Syrup. Honey and almonds again, in a very different format. This was a baklava-style sweet, but instead of building up several dozen layers of nuts, butter and filo you roll your lovely nut filling -- which is flavored with orange flower water -- into a long filo tube, bake, slice, and drench in syrup. Not tricky at all, and wonderful.

 

Unfortunately, I was so distracted by our political argument that I forgot to send my mother home with any leftovers. Something else I'm sorry about.

Arabesque: Harira

"I'm actually glad I didn't go out to dinner with Juliet tonight because instead of missing something really gross I would have missed this," said Isabel, serving herself a second bowl of harira, the classic Moroccan Ramadan soup that contains (among other things) beef marrow, chopped meat, chickpeas, lentils, tomatoes, saffron, ginger, flour (!), and orzo.

I think that was a compliment. 

Arabesque: Lebanese Pizzas & Turkish Shampoo

A quickie this morning because, because, because. . . 

Those are Lebanese lamb pizzas, which looked ravishing in the photograph in Claudia Roden's Arabesque. Prepared and shot by me, they look a little untidy, but still kind of appetizing, no?

And so they were, though I'll not rush to make them again. My children were very unenthusiastic.

On the side, I made Roden's roasted red pepper, tomato, and apple salad, a Moroccan dish that sounded so strange I had to try it. It was actually not strange at all and very tasty, one of those cooked, relishy salads you might eat with pita bread.

And for dessert: Turkish rose water rice pudding. 

This was INTENSELY rosy, which according to Arab folklore will give you an INTENSELY rosy outlook on life. So that's something in its favor. Mark said this pudding tasted like "delicious shampoo," and though I generally love milky, aromatic desserts, I had to agree. 

Arabesque: Prawns & Fattoush

Isabel and Owen are slowly warming to shrimp. I think Isabel ate two of Claudia Roden's Prawns with Garlic and Coriander. 

I think she picked one piece of toasted pita out of the fattoush, which was a giant Lebanese salad of lettuce, purslane, tomato, cucumber, green pepper etc. etc. tossed with a sumac dressing. 

I think she ate a single grain of the raisin-and-pine nut pilaf, left over from the other night. 

I don't believe Owen ate anything at all. I'm a little tense these days, so I'm picking my battles. I let this one go.

After dinner we settled in on our new couch to watch four episodes in a row of The Office. We're trying to catch up with season 4 so we'll be ready for season 5 which premieres on Thursday. I know. I'm an awful parent rotting their brains this way instead of reading them Dickens by candlelight. But it's really fun.

In the first episode we screened, the dorky central character, played by Steve Carell, takes a job as a telemarketer and works alongside an Indian man who brings in a Tupperware full of golden rice pilaf for dinner in his cubicle.

Abruptly, Owen jumped up and said, "That really makes me want to eat the rice stuff you gave me tonight. Do we have any left?"

Tipsy Baker: "It's in the refrigerator, it's cold, and you have to get it yourself."

Owen raced off and prepared himself a bowl of cold Turkish pilaf, which he ate avidly. Then he got another. Then he told me he wanted me to serve pilaf again tomorrow. 

Suggestible boy. I think he has a future as an eater if I play it just right.

Arabesque: Chicken Soup for the Soul Sick?

Financial meltdown, that pitbull in lipstick, job anxiety.  .  .

Interesting times, these. And yes, I feel cursed.

I never read any of those Chicken Soup for the Soul books back when they were popular, and honestly, the Turkish chicken soup (official name: Barley Soup with Yogurt) I made last night did nothing for my soul. 

"This Anatolian peasant soup with the delicate flavor of mint and saffron is magnificent," Claudia Roden writes in one of her typically seductive Arabesque headnotes. 

Not quite magnificent, but tasty and very easy. You simmer the carcass of a roast chicken in water for an hour, strain off the stock, pick off any meat clinging to the bones, then add to a pot of sauteed onions with some barley and saffron. Cook gently for half an hour "until the barley is swollen and tender" (did she crib that from a Judith Krantz novel?) then add lots of chopped fresh mint and two cups of whole-milk yogurt.

I know the Greeks and the Turks hate each other, but I thought this hearty, tangy soup tasted a lot like Greek avgolemono. (If you ever need a recipe for avgolemono check out Diane Kochilas' outstanding Food and Wine of Greece -- or email me.)

Sadly, though, whether you call it avgolemono or yorgutlu corbasi or pho or Campbell's, chicken soup will never cure what's ailing the Tipsy Baker.

Arabesque: Turkish Delight

Night #2 of the Claudia Roden/Arabesque experience.

Prepared the Turkish roast chicken with pine nut and raisin pilaf. The chicken was, as always, chicken. But the pilaf was kind of exciting -- spicy, buttery, fluffy, profoundly delicious. I also made a lemony Moroccan pear-and-leaf salad (cute name) and tried to distract myself from pilaf by eating lots of salad. Didn't entirely work.

Dessert: milk-and-almond pudding which you make by gently simmering milk with sugar, ground almonds, and rice flour until it thickens into a delicate, ivory-colored porridge. Pour into pretty dishes and chill. Garnish with pistachios.

I am aware that many people do not share my ardor for this type of sweet, which tastes like a divine perfumed Junket. If you're a lover of molten chocolate cake, tiramisu, or brownies, you might want to skip the milk puddings. But if you like dainty, aromatic desserts, you will taste Roden's milk pudding and wish you'd been raised in Istanbul.

Arabesque: I Hope You Like Eggplant

The world is falling apart, but the Tipsy Baker will not blink. She will keep cooking. And when her bank fails and she loses her job and her country goes to war with Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and Spain all at once, she will not blink. She will keep cooking. She may not sleep, but she will never, ever blink. 

Last night I started a new book, the (so far) very alluring Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey & Lebanon by the legendary Claudia Roden. It's a handsome volume, despite a handful of unflattering lamb shank shots. We'll be eating a lot of lamb for the next couple of weeks. Also, dates, orange flower water, and eggplant. 

I launched our tour with a Moroccan dinner. The centerpiece was a plate of "deliciously aromatic" kefta kebabs, which are meant to be skewered and grilled over coals on the streets of Marrakech, but can also be formed into burgers and sauteed on a stove in the California suburbs. (Roden is relaxed about these adjustments, which I appreciate.) The kebabs are basically beef patties flavored with cinnamon, ginger, and bounteous chopped herbs, primarily mint, and they were a big hit with a 7-year-old American boy. Tolerated by an 11-year-old girl. Adults: very pleased.

On the side: the excellent, unfortunately named mashed eggplant-and-tomato salad (see above), which was untouched by children, much loved by everyone else.

Dessert: Fruit Salad with Honey and Orange Blossom Water. Good, but not as good as it sounds.

I have two small gripes with this book so far:

 

1. Roden goes on at length about the centrality of bread in these cultures, but offers no recipes. 

2. I absolutely HATE it when authors like Roden don't specify quantities of salt in ground meat recipes. With most foods -- stews, stir-fries, sauces -- you can taste as you go. But you can't "salt to taste" a meatball or kefta kebab before its cooked (unless you're crazy), nor can you effectively add salt once it's started cooking.

Fortunately, I have run into this problem before and have figured out my own ratio: A teaspoon or slightly more of salt per pound of ground meat. 

But I resent having to use it!