December 13, 2009
You wouldn’t think that bechamel would be a culinary essential in Egyptian cuisine, but it is. Egyptians use bechamel sauce to bind vegetable casseroles and pasta dishes and use it as an accompaniment to meat.
My cousin-in-law Sharif taught me how to make macarona bechamel recently — which, I guess would be the equivalent of American baked ziti. It’s just layers of penne pasta and bolognese sauce with bechamel sauce ladled on top and baked in the oven. It’s super simple, but it’s an Egyptian classic.
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December 13, 2009
I decided to make labne cheese on a whim the other day, and while I’m pretty sure this isn’t the exact recipe, what I concocted was mighty good. Labne is a strained yogurt cheese recipe from Lebanon and is really good on toasted pita bread.
1/2 container of 0 percent Fage Greek yogurt
salt to taste
2 tbs lemon juice
a dash of paprika
olive oil
Using a cheesecloth (or any thin cloth — I used a handkerchief), squeeze all the liquid out of the Greek yogurt. I do it over a fine mesh strainer and I let it sit for an additional 20 minutes to drain. Take the squeezed out yogurt and transfer it into a bowl. Stir in lemon juice and add salt to taste. Pour a thin layer of olive oil over the whole thing and sprinkle with a dash of paprika. Serve with bread! Or I used mine as a condiment to kebab.
December 13, 2009
OK, I’ve reported my lunchcapades from the National Geographic building, the Conde Nast building, and to add to it…here’s some pictures from my lunch at the New York Times building a couple of weeks ago. The great thing is that the food was subsidized so we got all this food for like…$12. Not too bad for New York City, right?
Thai noodle salad, build-your-own-salad with chicken, chickpeas and caesar dressing, and three pieces of dill havarti...I think.
Chocolate chip cookie, ham and cheese sandwich on a baguette, Caesar salad
Grilled chicken, polenta, pasta with cream sauce
December 13, 2009
Me and Claire finally sold our Little Bitties (look at the sidebar to the right) at a real craft fair. Usually we just make a whole bunch and keep them for ourselves or give them away to our friends, haha. Here’s a little sampling of the cute ones we made for the craft fair…we sold 11 charms at $5 and we have lots left over, so if you want some, comment below and let us know!
So much icing and sprinkles on these cupcakes...
A shiny Granny Smith apple and petit fours too pretty to eat...well, you can't eat them, it's made of clay.
Berry chocolate petit four...with a mint leaf
November 8, 2009
Garnishes that you can put on your bun (pronounced "boon")
I know that nobody wants to eat cold noodle salad now that it’s fall, but I figured, it’s never too late for people to embrace bun tom nuong.
Bun is exactly like pho, but without the soup broth over the rice noodles. The garnishes are the same, too: cucumbers, carrots, coriander, peanuts, bean sprouts, eggs, lime and whatever meat you have on hand. In this case, we’ll use shrimp.
The refreshing dressing that marries all the flavors together would be nuoc cham, a fish sauce-lime concoction that seems scary-pungent at first, but once it’s tossed with all the other ingredients, it transforms into something so addictive that you’ll want to drink the leftovers from the bowl once all the noodles are gone.
Recipe after the jump.
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October 18, 2009
I drew this diagram for you so you know where everything goes.
Fetta is my favorite Egyptian food. Like most Egyptian dishes, it’s economical and makes use of a lot of extra leftover ingredients laying around the house. You basically layer bread, rice and meat in a casserole dish and smother the whole thing with a tangy, garlicky tomato sauce. It takes a bit of time to make, but the results are fabulous.
There are two kinds of fetta you can make: fetta hamra or fetta abyad. “Hamra” means red in Arabic, and “abyad” means white — so one version has a tomato based sauce on top and the white one well, doesn’t.
Recipe after the jump.
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October 17, 2009
I also drew this picture for you to show you what the garnishes on arroz caldo should look like. If you don't have calamansi, Philippine native lime, you can use lime or lemon.
On cold winter days, my Tito Maro — who used to pick my sister and me up after school — would surprise us with a big pot of arroz caldo waiting for us in the kitchen.
Min Min and I would eat about three bowls each and absolutely ruin our appetites for dinner, but we couldn’t stop.
Arroz caldo, a fragrant rice porridge with chicken, saffron and ginger, garnished with lime, fried garlic, scallions and fish sauce, just really hits the spot, no matter who you are or what culture you come from.
A little about the history of arroz caldo: it’s originally derived from the Chinese rice porridge dish, congee — and in Tagalog, it’s called lugau. But the Spanish settlers adapted it to their taste by adding saffron and renamed it something that they could understand — hence, arroz caldo — rice broth.
Recipe after the jump.
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