Tabbouleh

Tabbouleh is a meal unto itself. It contains grain, vegetables and, if you add feta, plenty of protein. Tabbouleh without feta bores me. In fact, most boring things in life would probably be made better by feta. Bad date? Just add feta. That documentary your grandma wants you to watch? Suddenly, it's more exciting than Spiderman 3. (Note that I did not say Spiderman 2. Feta does have its limits.) For a real party, I offer a recipe that is tabbouleh for twelve.

Ingredients:
1 C bulgur wheat (Usually found in the Middle Eastern section of your grocery store.)
1/2 red onion, finely diced
1 bunch flat leaf parsley, chopped
1 bunch mint, chopped
2 med. tomatoes, chopped
2 cucumbers, chopped and seeded (If you are going to eat this right away, peel the cucumbers. They taste better peeled. However, if it has to last a bit longer, don't peel them, as the cucumbers retain their shape and water better when left unpeeled. Soggy cucumbers = absolute grossness.)
2 green onions, fineley chopped
1/3 C extra virgin olive oil
1/4 C lemon juice
4 oz. feta cheese, or to taste

Pour 2 C boiling water over the bulgur wheat with 1/2 tsp of salt. Let it stand until the bulgur is tender, 20-30 minutes. Press the wheat and drain excess liquid.

Toss bulgur with remaining ingredients. Salt and pepper to taste.

POP QUIZ: WHAT IS MISSING FROM THIS PICTURE?

Sesame Noodles with Peanuts and Basil

This is perfect buffet food. It is tasty, filling, cheap, and served at room temperature. Makes a nice accompaniment to any meal, but could be the main dish if you sauteed some meat and threw it in.

The flavors are not strong but refreshing. I find this dish rather addicting. Me in a room with these noodles looks a helluva lot like me with goldfish crackers circa 1998. Even after I had put it into serving bowls, I kept pulling back the saran wrap and stealing noodles for myself. (Speaking of thievery, this recipe was stolen from Epicurious.)

Ingredients:

Peanut oil, for frying purposes
1/4 c minced fresh ginger
4 garlic cloves, minced

Sauce:
1/3 C sesame oil
1/4 C soy sauce
1/4 C balsalmic vinegar
3 tbsp granulated sugar
optional: 2 tbsp hot chili oil or red pepper flakes if you want it spicy. If you are making this for a crowd, I suggest skipping this part.

1 lb. (2 lbs if fresh) angel hair pasta or chinese egg noodles, cooked, drained and brought to room temperature in a large bowl.

12 green onions, pale parts thinly sliced
1 c coarsely chopped, roasted, salted peanuts
1/2 C chopped Thai (or normal) basil

1) Saute ginger and garlic in peanut oil for a minute. My garlic started to overcook before the ginger was finished, so I would start with the ginger and throw in the garlic at the last minute. Dump them in the bowl with the noodles.

2) Mix the sauce and pour over the noodles.

3) Throw in the green onions, peanuts, basil and mix thoroughly. The easiest way to do this is to use your hands. I put on some disposable latex gloves and tossed the noodles for a minute. If you don't have latex gloves you might smell like a Korean restaurant for the next 24 hours. Anyhow, let the noodles sit with all of the ingredients for a half an hour so that the flavors can meld.

Serve at room temperature.

Things Not To Do: Tip #1

If you have to make something for a large group that includes dicing carrots. DO NOT DICE THE CARROTS. It takes far too long for such a boring outcome. If possible, throw the carrots in a food processor using the thin slicing attachment. Otherwise, leave them out of the recipe and use celery or some more easily choppable vegetable.



Note that only the blade of the knife is pictured. This is because the hand is blistered and almost falling off. My hand is not blistered, but this is because I stopped after five carrots.

Mary Tolbert's Apple Dapple Cake

I spent a weekend in North Carolina, at the home of a friend of a friend. This secondhand friend - who quickly moved beyond that moniker into the more respectable first name basis of Catherine - had very friendly, hospitable, southern parents. (Was that last adjective redundant?) Her mother, Mary, made us one of the largest breakfasts I have ever seen. Bacon, sausage, grits, dried apple pies, fruit, etc. But the stunner was the apple cake. She got it out of her church cookbook. Her life advice to me was "Buy a church cookbook." I would probably follow that advice if I went to her church. Everyone at my home church brought Popeye's chicken and grocery-store potato salad to our potlucks.

In the interest of health I made this apple cake sans glaze last night. It was good, but not spectacular like Mary's. So I suggest doing the glaze, even if it puts you into a diabetic coma.

Ingredients:
1.5 C sugar
1/2 C oil
3 eggs
3 C flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla

not so smooth:
1 C chopped nuts
3 C chopped raw apples (1 in. cubes)
1 C raisins

Glaze:
1/2 C butter
1 C brown sugar
1/4 C milk

Mix together all of the normal baking ingredients, and then throw in the not so smooth stuff. Bake at 325 for one hour in a 13x9 pan, or bake in two 8x8 cake pans.

Put the ingredients for a glaze in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil for three minutes. Pour over the cake while the cake is still hot. Let it cool and then experience deliciousness.

Peanut Butter Satay Time!

Today's Conflict
According to my cookbook, "satay" is the Indonesian word for “skewer.” But I don't have a grill, and even if I did, skewering thin pieces of meat for twenty people is far too time consuming. However, I still use the word 'satay' because not only does it involve skewered meat, it also implies a fragrant peanut sauce.


Here is how I made it for a crowd. If you follow normal cookbook instructions, it takes far too long. The normal way, you mix everything together except for the peanut butter, let the meat marinade in it, take the meat out of the marinade and grill it, heat up the marinade and add peanut butter. It’s one thing to get one pound of beef in and out of a marinade. It’s quite another to fish around for three or four pounds of beef, not to mention finding the refrigerator space. Oh, and did I mention time? I had no time to let it marinade, so I skipped the marinating part all together. I general I support marinades. Marinades are like PBS. Very good but everything seems to move slowly and take too long.

Ingredients
Serves 12-16

The Meat Group
3-4lbs. beef, thinly sliced
peanut oil
salt

The Onion Group
4 onions, peeled and cut into four pieces each, hairy parts discarded
1 standard grocery store size chunk of ginger, peeled
2 jalapeños, tops sliced off (if you don't have fresh hot peppers of some sort, use crushed red pepper)
12 cloves of garlic, peeled, ends chopped off

The Saucy Group
3/4 C sesame oil
3/4 C soy sauce
1 C ketchup
1/2 C brown sugar

Peanut Butter!
1.5 C peanut butter (natural - this is no time for Peter Pan or Jif)

1) Throw all the ingredients from the Onion Group into a food processor and pulse until finely chopped.

2) Mix all of the ingredients from the Saucy Group and then pour over the now finely chopped mess of the Onion Group. Stir with a fork.

3) Heat the peanut oil in a sauce pan and then add a reasonable amount of beef. Add a spoonful or two of the Saucy Onion stuff. Cook until not-pink, then remove from pan and place in separate bowl. Repeat until all the meat is cooked. You may want to sprinkle some kosher salt on the meat once you’ve removed it from a pan. I don’t like to sprinkle it on in the pan because it makes dishwashing a complete nightmare.

4) Pour remaining saucy onion stuff into a small pot and let simmer for 5 minutes. Add peanut butter to taste. Put peanut sauce in a bowl and serve while it’s hot!

Satay is served with rice. I cooked up some broccoli with turmeric, coconut milk and diced tomatoes, to continue the Indonesian theme. However, you could just as tastily (and much more easily) set out fresh spinach or steamed broccoli.

There Will Be Eggplant [Moussaka]

So what is the similarity between tonight's dinner and the Academy Award nominated film? Both left the main character covered in oil. Seriously. I've given up any hope I ever had of crafting a healthy eggplant dish. Healthy + eggplant = not so tasty and/or slightly charred. And yes, I am the main character in this drama.

Today's Conflict
The previous chef stocked the freezer with lots of meat so that I wouldn't have to order any food for awhile. That was wonderful of her. Unfortunately, she ordered fifteen pounds of ground beef and I don't particularly care for ground beef. I had to search for an interesting way in which to use it. Interesting constitutes something that is neither 1) Hamburger helper 2) MSG laden Tacos or 3) Meatloaf. After some strenuous googling, I came up with Eggplant Mousakka. It's a Middle Eastern dish, although according to wikipedia, by definition it has tomatoes in it, and I didn't have a can opener so I didn't add any tomatoes.

WHAT I DID:
(These are the quantities for about four people)
1 large eggplant, peeled and chopped into 1.5 inch cubes
8 oz. ground beef
1 onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, sliced
1 red bell pepper, diced
kosher salt
2 green onions, sliced up

I sautéed the meat, and set it to the side. Next, sautéed the eggplant in a separate dish. The eggplant soaks up more oil than a used car salesman's hair. I put it on some paper towels, because I was afraid that if I let it drip on my cutting board for too long, it might seep through the counter and then the floor and then next thing you know, McCain would be drilling in my kitchen and I would be out of a job, even if it did boost the economy. Anyhow, I threw in the onion and sautéed it for a little while, then the garlic and red pepper. Added the oil-enhanced eggplant and stirred things up. It was sort of blah. No academy award nominations for this oily epic.

The house is inhabited by a stray vegetarian, so I made a vegetarian version which incorporated chickpeas in the place of beef. The chickpeas were much more interesting. Unlike ground beef and eggplant, chickpeas have a flavor of their own. Not to say the beef version was terrible, it’s just that the main tastiness of the meal came from the salt and oil. Salt and oil are not unfortunate things – heck, I went all the way to North Carolina for some of Arby’s curly fries – but I’d hope I know how to make things tasty without giving people heart attacks. I was afraid to add oregano or basil because I thought it might start tasting like Tuscany instead of Turkey, but I’d rather it actually taste like Tuscany than Flatland. And so here is the next version of the recipe.

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE
(serves 4-6 people)
1 large eggplant, peeled and chopped into 1.5 inch cubes
1 can chickpeas
4 oz. lean beef sliced thinly
1 onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, sliced
1 red bell pepper, diced
2 oz. sun-dried tomatoes, diced
¼ cup crushed or diced tomatoes
1 serrano pepper (any kind of fresh, hot pepper, really)
kosher salt
lots of olive oil
fresh basil, chopped
2 green onions, sliced up

1) Sautee the eggplant in copious amounts of oil and let drain on paper towels. Sprinkle with kosher salt. Wring out used paper towels into your car’s gasoline tank. Take the road trip you’ve always dreamed of.

2) Throw the beef and onions into a saucepan and stir around until the meat isn’t pink. Add chickpeas for a minute. Then add garlic cloves, red bell pepper, hot pepper, sun-dried tomatoes and other tomatoes. After another minute or two, throw in the eggplant. Stir until everything is one happy, fragrant mess.

3) Take off heat and stir in basil and green onions.

I don’t think that plain old canned tomatoes would add enough interest on their own. Sun-dried tomatoes always bring a richness to otherwise boring dishes. Whenever I’m bored I head for sun-dried tomatoes or roasted red peppers. They stave off culinary narcolepsy. I love hot peppers, though spiciness is not a good idea if you a serving things to a crowd. Learned that from the Lemongrass Pork.

Traditionally, moussaka is served with rice pilaf. I had already given the guys rice this week, so I served it with couscous.

The Drama of Food

Just to lay it out, here is the drama that will be playing out before you in the next few weeks and months.

Setting:
Boarding house for male international students



Cast:
Miriam - the chef (me!)
Twenty International Guys – they live at a boarding house, names will follow when they provide drama to follow
Amy and Chris – = couple who staff the house

Conflict:
I studied liberal arts, not culinary art, so this is all a very big adventure.

Whenever I get my camera fixed, I may actually post pictures of food. Although this is my first week at the house, I have already tried making several things I have never made before. It's like gambling. Never know whether I'll have to win the culinary lottery at the last minute in order to make things work. Tonight I made couscous, which is as foreign to me as the work of Tarkovsky. Well, not quite that foreign. I have previously tasted couscous. I have never seen a film by Tarkovsky.