A Levantine Treat - Sabih

The Levant, from the French meaning 'rising' and referring to the point where the sun rises or East in general, is the geographic and cultural area of the Eastern Mediterranean. This area consisting of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Cyprus and parts of southern Turkey is the geographic crossroads of Western Asia, Eastern Mediterranean and Africa. It is rich with history and, due to its location, it is a veritable treasure trove of ingredients and recipes.

Growing up in Central Texas, foods from this region were not a common occurrence. Italian food? yes. Chinese foods? (albeit very traditionally Americanized) check. Down-home favorites? yessiree. French food? mais oui. German specialties? Ja! Mexican? Claro, que si. But these Medi-Eastern foods were not widely known to me. Perhaps only at the Institute of Texan Cultures Folklife Festival each year could good samples from that region be found. 

When I married El Syd and moved to the Northeast, I was game to try as many different things as I could and he was ready to be my guide to foods that were commonplace to him as he grew up in Brooklyn and took trips into "The City"  My first foray into Middle Eastern cuisine was in a little shop called "Shawarma King" in Brookline, MA. An amazing plate of food was had there - tender grilled chicken, fattoush salad, flat bread, a garlic paste that was out of this world to smear on everything - just amazing. I was hooked. 

On a recent gift day, El Syd gave me "Jerusalem: A Cookbook" by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. This is one fabulous cookbook filled with not only amazing recipes, but also incredible photographs of the people, markets, restaurants and foods of this historic city.

Faced with quite a few eggplants in my biweekly CSA share, I started to search for a new way to use them. That's when I happened upon Sabih which was developed by Iraqi Jews in the 1950's, but epitomizes the melting pot of cultures that are in the area with bits and pieces that are Arab, Sephardic, Israeli, and Jewish Yemeni.

Sabih (adapted from Jerusalem: A Cookbook)

• 2 large eggplants (about 2 lbs total)
• 1 1/4 C canola oil
• 4 fresh pita bread/flat breads
• 1 C Tahini sauce (can be found canned on the shelf in the international section of many grocery stores; some fancier markets have it fresh in the cold case)
• 4 large eggs, hard boiled, peeled and cut into thick slices or quartered
• 4 Tbsp. zhoug (recipe to follow)
• 2 medium ripe tomatoes cut into 1/2 in. dice
• 2 cucumbers, peeled, seeded and cut into 1/2 in dice
• 2 green onions, thinly sliced
• 1 1/2 Tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley
• 2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 1 1/2 Tbsp olive oil

1. Using a vegetable peeler, peel away strips of the eggplant skins from stem to blossom end. (like a zebra). Leaving part of the skin on gives some structure but eliminates, what can sometimes be, the leatheriness of a solid ring of eggplant skin.
2. Cut both eggplants, cross-wise, into 1 in. thick slices. Sprinkle both sides with salt and allow to stand on a baking sheet for about 30 minutes to help leech out the moisture. Use paper towels to wipe them.
3. Heat oil in a wide frying pan. Carefully fry the eggplant slices in batches. You want them nice and dark. Turn them once, frying for a total of about 6 minutes. (You will need to add oil as you cook multiple batches. The eggplants are very spongelike and soak up quite a bit of the cooking oil.) Remove from the pan and drain on paper towels.
4. Make a chopped salad by mixing together the tomato, cucumber, green onions and parsley. Dress with lemon juice and oil and season with salt and pepper to your taste.
5. To serve: Place 1 pita on each plate. Spoon about 1 Tbsp of tahini over each slice, then arrange the eggplant slices on top. Drizzle with a bit more tahini. Add egg slices on top of eggplant. Drizzle with more tahini and add some zhoug. Serve with the chopped salad on the side or on top if you prefer.

Note: The eggplant, when fried, takes on a luxurious, silky texture. It is amazingly delicious. However, it takes a tanker truck full of oil to cook up all of the eggplant slices. We tested a grilled or broiled eggplant instead and, while it wasn't as perfect as the oil-fried eggplant, it was a serviceable and much more health conscious substitution. 

zhoug 

• 1 bunch of cilantro - stems and leaves, coarsely chopped
• 1/4 bunch flat-leafed parsley - stems and leaves, coarsely chopped
• 2 hot green chilies, coarsely chopped
• 1/2 tsp each of the following: 
• ground cumin
• ground cardamom
• ground cloves
• white sugar
• salt
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 2 Tbsp water

1. Toss all of the ingredients into a small food processor (of if using an immersion blender a deep cup that the blender will fit into)
2. Pulse a few times until mixture is a coarse paste.
3. Can be stored in a sterilized jar in the fridge for up to 5 weeks.

I love fried eggplant. I love hard-boiled eggs. I love tahini and I love chopped salad. I cannot adequately express how fabulous these thing are all put together into this meal. The eggplant is a creamy delicious base for the egg, tahini and that spicy zhoug. The brightness of the chopped salad dressed in lemon and oil is the perfect accompaniment and cuts some of the richness of the other elements of the dish. We really loved it and I'm already looking forward to my next "trip" to the Levant.

Happy Cooking!

sld

The Devil(ed egg) is in The Details

What to do with all of those hard-boiled, beautifully-dyed, eggs? An egg-salad is a predictable next step, but my favorite thing to do with these treasures is to devil them. Yup, Deviled eggs appear on many a pot-luck, holiday, or family-gathering table. And, for as many Aunts and Grandmas as there are in Texas, there are recipes. While our family gets serious about a lot of other recipes and very insistent on the methods of other dishes, deviled eggs have been a relatively stress-free item with no real recipe and no strong opinion about what is "right." These are so easy to make that, often times as a kid, I would take just one egg and devil it myself as a snack. I still do that on occasion when I am in need of a quick snack or lunch.

My standard quickie single deviled egg is as follows: 

• Peel egg and slice in half lengthwise.
• Reserve egg white for refilling
• Place yolk in a small bowl and mash with the tines of a fork.
• To the mashed yolk, add a sprinkle of garlic salt and pepper; a dollop of mayonnaise (a generous, rounded teaspoon for those who measure); a shot of plain ol' French's yellow mustard (about a tsp); mix well and then refill the whites with the egg yolk mixture.(if the mixture seems a little dry, add a bit more mayo)
• If you are feeling super fancy, sprinkle with a little paprika or even fancier a few snipped fresh chives.
• That's it - enjoy!

However, when thinking about how to change it up a bit, another fabulous treat popped into mind: Pimento Cheese - (or likely, for those of us with deep Texas roots, puh-men-nah cheese). This creamy, delicious, cheesy spread also appears at many (if not all) of the same meals as a deviled egg. I'm not talking about the stuff in the plastic tub at the grocery store that is a shade of orange not found in nature. But, instead, the real deal, homemade, pimento cheese that I grew up on.  A nice longhorn cheddar or colby, grated by hand mixed with a jar of pimiento peppers (diced), some grated onion, some grated tomato and then mixed with just the right proportion of mayo to make a spread that is divine on white bread for a sandwich, or spread on crackers or on occasion, rolled up in a leaf of ice cold, crispy iceberg lettuce.

So, why not kill two birds with one stone and do a mash-up?

Pimento Cheese Deviled Eggs

• 6 hard-boiled eggs - peeled, cut in half-lengthwise
• 3 Tbsp mayo (maybe a 4th if you like your filling uber creamy)
• 1 Tbsp yellow mustard (if you like more tang and zing, add more mustard than this)
• a few shakes of garlic salt & pepper - to your liking
• 1 Tbsp of grated sweet onion
• 1 Tbsp of grated fresh tomato
• 1/3 C of finely grated "Longhorn" cheddar or colby (or mix of cheeses if you prefer)
• 3 Tbsp of diced pimientos (jarred)
• a sprinkle of paprika (optional)
• a sprinkle of cayenne pepper (optional)

1. Scoop the yolks into a small mixing bowl and mash with the tines of a fork until relatively smooth. Stir in the mayo, mustard, garlic salt & pepper, grated onion and tomato, cheese, and pimientos. Stir/mix until well-combined and smooth-ish.
2. Scoop mixture into the wells of the egg whites (if you've got the talent to pipe it in, go on and do it. Me? I just scoop)
3. Top with a sprinkle of paprika and/or cayenne, if using.

Happy Cooking!

 sld

Hard-cooked Eggs a la Pinterest

Recently, I've been spending some time on Pinterest. I was an early adopter of the site, but then dropped off for a long time due to their copyright rules etc. Now, I've been back on the site peeking around here and there. I love the concept of the site, but the reality of it makes me feel like everyone in the world is crafting, sewing, cooking, building and repurposing things every waking moment and I'm not able to keep up. In many ways, it highlights the things I'll never get done. Also, many of the items on there make me nuts as they fall in the "I truly doubt that category" You know what I'm talking about - things like "Use your own body sweat to clean the counters" or "Cook your entire dinner using just your dishwasher" or this one: "Hard-cooked eggs in the oven"  Okay, so those first two were completely made-up by me, but that last one? It really is all over Pinterest. 

I have to admit, this egg thing piqued my interest. In advance of Easter, where the egg reigns supreme on the holiday buffet and has a whole entire event devoted to the finding of it, I decided to do you a favor, dear reader, and take one for the team. I tested this process. As is my usual M.O., I scoured the internet for methods, helpful hints, and failures. I also chatted it up with my mother who reminded me that Grandma Mary used to make shirred eggs, which entails baking eggs in a gratin dish, but not in their shells.

Many articles out there suggest putting the eggs directly on the oven rack. However, they also say that you'll see brown spots on those places of direct contact. To remedy this, and to eliminate what I see as a disaster in the making should something go awry, I placed my eggs in  the pockets of a mini-muffin tin. I placed the tin in my cold oven and turned it on to 325F and set the timer for 30 minutes. My oven takes about 6 minutes to come to 325, so I knew that I might need to add time for that. Then, I walked away and did other stuff for 30 minutes (namely, helped my daughter prep some bread dough for a school project - more on that to come.) Before the timer rang, I placed a bowl in my sink, filled it with cold water and some ice cubes so that I could put the eggs in there as soon as they were finished to stop the cooking.

The timer rang - I looked in and just by gut feeling, decided to add another 3 minutes to the cook time. After those 3 minutes, I took the eggs out, and, using silicone tongs, placed them in the cold water to stop the cooking process. There was only one Humpty Dumpty in the bunch and I figured that would be our tester to check for doneness. The yolk was perfectly cooked but the white was funky since it had been exposed to the dry oven by the cracks. Following the ice bath, I placed the eggs back into the fridge to chill completely before doing a final test.

Twenty-four hours later...

Time to check the eggs and see what's what with this method.  First note, the fridge does not reek of the tell-tale sign of hard boiled egg-y sulphur stench. I selected one at random and did my usual tappity tap tap on the edge of the sink to crack the shell. There was a different feel to this than with a traditionally boiled hard-cooked egg - not quite sure how to describe it, but there's a different quality to the shell - more brittle, maybe? The shell peels beautifully. Right off. Clean as a whistle. However, the egg does still have that pesky brown ring around it where the lip of the muffin pan met the egg. This was discussed in all of the descriptions I read and I found no solution available. So, there's that. Then upon cutting the egg, I found the green-ringed-yolk which signals overcooking. I'll chalk that up to not knowing what I was doing exactly with regards to timing (damned extra 3 minutes). Since the Humpty Dumpty egg from yesterday didn't have the ring, it could be wonky uneven heat in my oven or possibly differences in egg size. Final test: Taste - which I can say is remarkably(or unremarkably?) the same as a boiled egg - many sites reported "the eggs taste so much better" I can't say it was vastly different.

So, final verdict. It was a fun little eggsperiment (sorry, had to), but unless I was needing to cook a boat load of hard cooked eggs all at once, I think I'd stick to my regular, tried and true, bring a pot of water to a boil method....although, that no-smell thing is a pretty big plus.

Do you have a great method for hard-cooking eggs? If so, please share!

Happy Cooking!

 sld