caper time again

Its caper-picking season in May and early June in Palestine. Capers grow all over Palestine as a wild and persistent ‘weed’. While you can venture out to the mountainside to forage for capers, you can also find them near by along the roadside coming out of cracks in stonewalls.   Last year, I wrote a piece on wild capers for This Week in Palestine. The link is below:

http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=4049&ed=220&edid=220

This year, after doing a bit of research online, I have decided to preserve my capers through the salting method instead of the brining method. Rather than tarnish my capers with a brine that will impose a vinegary smell, the salting method will maintain their floral essence.

How to preserve capers by salting:

1. Place your capers in a bowl and cover with water for two days, changing the water each day.

2. Drain the water.

3. Add sea salt to the capers and mix.

4. Allow to sit for 24 hours.

5. Drain any liquid that results from the capers and the sea salt.

6. Add more sea salt to the capers and mix.

7. Allow to sit for 24 hours.

8. Drain liquid.

9. Repeat the salting and the draining of the liquid for one week or until there is no liquid.

10. Place in glass jars and seal.

Capers should be ready to eat in one month.

backyard chickens – are they worth it?

I’ve had my three baladi Palestinian chickens and one rooster for a few weeks. I’m enjoying getting 5-6 eggs each week. I got 9 eggs the first week. This was easy, right? I feed them twice a day and make sure they have clean water and I get an egg or two on most days. Not a bad deal. The carpenter who built my chicken coop told me to keep the chickens in their coop for a full week. They need to learn that this is their home and their food source, he explained. Otherwise, they may fly away and not come back. Thank God my carpenter is also a fallahee.

After having my chickens for one week plus one day, I decided to let them out. After a few minutes of hesitation, they hopped out and flew over the chicken wire and over my cement wall. I ran after them but they were small and much quicker. They hid under the branches. I was too big to get under those branches. And they flew way up high. I did not know chickens could fly. It took me five hours to get all four birds back into the coop. I caught two during the first two hours. The other two flew away and I thought that I would never see them again. But when I came back at sunset after giving my dog his walk, the two fugitive birds had returned. I found them waiting at their coop wanting to go in and join the other two. I was exhausted but comforted that my chicken family was back together.

Lesson learned – baladi chickens wander off during the day, but they always come home just before sunset. I’ve let my birds out several times after that day, and they have always come back to snuggle in their coop before dark.

So is all this work worth it for a few free-range eggs? Definitely. Eggs produced by free-range (semi-free range in my case) chickens that eat food scraps including vegetables and fruit are delicious. So far, I have eaten the eggs hard-boiled, soft-boiled, poached, and just tonight –fried with the yolk in place.

Poached

The first time I had a poached egg, I was in Lyon, France, the culinary capital of the world. They served a poached egg on top of the salad. As soon as you stick your fork in the egg, the warm creamy yolk pours all over the salad. Poaching an egg is extremely simple. In a small pan, gently crack an egg into boiling water and allow to cook for 2 minutes. I topped my purslane salad with two poached eggs.

Fried

In my cast iron pan, I heated olive oil over low heat and added a cup of chopped chard and kale from my garden. I allowed the greens to cook for a few minutes, stirring periodically. I then cracked two eggs over the greens, mixing the whites, but leaving the yolk in place. I sprinkled sea salt over the yolks. Once the egg whites were cooked, I gently scooped the greens and eggs onto my plate and immediately (while still standing at the kitchen counter) dunk my sour dough toast into the yolk.

Pure bliss!

Mahshi

My mother scolded me every time I poked a hole in the kusa (zucchini). She chided me when I didn’t scrape enough of the insides of the kusa. I hated helping with the tedious preparation of mahshi (stuffed zucchini). I wasn’t good at it. But my mother forced me to help her.

The process was grueling.

1. Remove the top stump from the kusa.
2. Carefully scrape out the inner flesh of the kusa only leaving the outer shell.
3. Soak the kusa shells in salt water.
4. Prepare a spiced rice and ground meat mixture.
5. Fill each kusa shell with the rice/meat mixture leaving a bit of empty space at the top for the rice to expand.
6. Line a large pot with slices of lemon, and carefully stack the stuffed kusa in the pot. Stack so as to prevent any possible movement of the stuffed kusa while cooking.
7. Fill the pot with water and tomato sauce covering all the stuffed kusa.
8. Cook on the stovetop on medium to low heat for about two to two and half hours or until liquid is evaporated.

Scraping out all the flesh without poking a hole at the bottom was nearly impossible for me. My frustrated mother would ask me to watch her as if that would guide me to do it the right way.

I love mahshi, but I have been traumatized. I’ve ignored this dish from my cooking repertoire for over 20 years. But I cannot ignore it any longer, especially when all the fallahat (peasant women) are selling their petite baladi kusa at the market. I bought a couple of kilos from a fallaha wearing the traditional embroidered dress of the Ramallah area. Making mahshi is not so painful anymore since I have created my own ground rules.

My Ground Rules for Mahshi Preparation:

1. Select the medium sized kusa. They are much easier to scrape out than the small ones.
2. Slow and steady prevents poking a hole. Remove the insides starting at the top and slowly working your way down to the bottom.
3. It’s ok to leave some of the insides in the kusa. Fiber. No need to leave a completely hollow shell.
4. If you poke a hole, so what. I still poke holes in a few of my kusa. I still stuff them and cook them. And once their cooked, I can’t even tell which ones had the holes.

The process is still tedious, but less painful. And if you have good music or a podcast playing, the process may actually be enjoyable.

If you do decide to make mahshi, don’t throw away the insides. Save them in the fridge. I use the insides to make a kusa omelet or a stir fry or the traditional kusa and bandoora (tamato) sauté mix. I give some to my chickens. Add some fresh herbs when cooking the kusa insides. I’ve discovered that dill is especially delicious with kusa.

 

 

 

 

Stuffed Grape Leaves

I finally did it. I made stuffed grape leaves. Despite the tedious monotony of rolling every individual grape leaf, I’ve learned to enjoy the process. My friend told me that women would gather to gossip as they rolled the grape leaves creating a fun atmosphere. But I loathe large female gossiping assemblies. I prefer to spend my evenings in quiet solitude. So when I prepared myself to stuff and roll the grape leaves (I was desperately craving them!), I decided to listen to my favorite podcasts. Within one hour, I listened to a full podcast, managed to roll enough grape leaves to fill half a pot (enough for a week), and surprisingly emerged in a relaxed state of mind. Since it is grape leaf picking season, I’ve already prepared two batches of stuffed grape leaves over the last two weeks. Both times, I rolled while standing at the kitchen counter listening to my favorite podcasts. And both times left me in a state of calm. The boring repetitive motion of laying the grape leaf flat on a plate, placing a bit of the rice/meat/spice mixture in the center of the leaf, and rolling it up like a cigar lends itself to a feeling of accomplishment and relaxation. As a teenager, I was impatient. My mother would stare as I stuffed and rolled complaining that my stuffed grape leaves were too big or too loose. Did it really matter? As an adult, I use the grape leaf stuffing exercise to catch up on my podcasts and ‘me’ time.

My Nostalgia while Picking the Grape Leaves

I picked my own grape leaves from the remnants that still remain from my grandfather’s vineyard. I’m not sure when my grandfather decided to transform the vineyard to an olive tree orchard. He died in 1968 so I never got to meet him. But my mom told me that the entire hillside was full of grapevines. The olive trees came later. She explained that my grandfather and his sister would harvest the grapes and take them by foot and donkey to sell by the Damascus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem. A friend told me that a disease hit the grapevines sometime in the 1950’s. My grandfather must have lost a fortune and decided to transform his livelihood into a safer harvest.

As I picked the grape leaves, I thought of my grandfather. Even though I never met him, we were connected through this land. As he picked and harvested over fifty years ago, I am picking and harvesting today.

As I picked the grape leaves, I also thought of my mother who moved to the States in 1972 after marrying my father. She longed for her peasant life in Palestine. She longed to harvest the end of summer bounties in the mountains and hills of Al Sbahiya (called Sateh Marhaba today). But she found herself in a working class suburb of DC living in a two bedroom apartment. I was surrounded by walls, she would tell my sister and me. On occasion, my mom would find wild grapevines growing on the sides of streets or in public parks. She packed her bra with plastic bags and dragged my sister and me to help. I was so embarrassed as passers by stared at the foreign lady in her foreign Palestinian embroidered dress. The women of Al Beirh take pride in their traditional dress and my mom continued to wear her thob (traditional dress) in the US. My fallaha (peasant) mother never assimilated in urban America.

As I picked the grape leaves of my grandfather’s past vineyard, I chuckled as I remembered the time my mom stepped in poison ivy while picking from a grape vine in a public park. We don’t have poison ivy in Palestine. But there was plenty in the US as my mom learned the hard and itchy lesson. My mom suffered for weeks as she lathered ointment on her feet and ankles. The continuous feeling of itch made her moan. My sister and I could not help but giggle at my poor mom’s misery. We were relieved that there would be no more grape leaf picking…at least for a while.

Vegan Gluten-Free Sugar-Free Carob Brownies without the Chocolate

I volunteered to make something for the next sharaka meeting.  I found a gluten-free almond cookie recipe.  Perfect, I thought, for my gluten intolerant comrades.  Half way into the recipe, already in the midst of mixing my concoction, I realize that the gluten-free recipe includes an egg and some honey.  No honey in the pantry.  And one of my comrades is on a 21 day cleansing that calls for no gluten, no sugar, and no dairy (including eggs).  I had to improvise quickly.  It was already 9pm – nearing bedtime. 

 Instead of honey, I used carob molasses purchased from a small-scale producer lady (fallaha) from Azzoun. 

 Then the egg replacement…I had flax seeds in the freezer.  I added one teaspoon of flax seeds to two tablespoons of water.  I stirred until the liquid transformed into an ‘eggy’ texture. 

 I mixed all the ingredients in the food processor creating a homogenous brown goop.  I stuck my clean finger into the batter for a taste.  Yum!  But the batter was too loose.  There is no way that I could roll cookie balls out this batter.  So I baked the mixture in an eight-inch round greased cake pan.

 I peaked as I baked.  The batter was rising.  Success!  But then…as I began to smell the carob-almost-but-not-quite-yet-burnt smell, the cake had collapsed.  Too late to start over.  It was already past 10pm – past my bedtime. 

 To my surprise, these vegan gluten-free sugar-free carob brownies were a hit at the meeting.  Every last morsel, even the stuff stuck to the pan, was scraped up and devoured.  The consistency was loose, kind of like a Mississippi mud pie, but without the crust to keep it together. 

 

Vegan Gluten-Free Sugar-Free Carob Brownies

¼ kilo raw almonds

¼ cup olive oil

1 cup carob molasses

pinch of vanilla

pinch of sea salt – or a bit more if you like that salty sweet taste

1 tsp flax seed mixed with 2 tbl of water

 

Preheat your oven to 190 degrees Celsius.  Grind the almonds in a heavy-duty food processor, adding the olive oil to create a paste/butter consistency.  Add the remaining ingredients and mix.  Grease a cake pan with olive oil.  Add mixture to greased cake pan.  Bake for about 25 minutes.  Stay alert and smell!  Never let the cake bake to the point of already-too-late-burnt-carob-smell.  Let the cake cool.  Dig in! 

 

 

 

 

braised goat tongue and spinach soup

My friend is on a 21 day detox.  No coffee, or dairy, or sugar, or gluten…  I can’t do it.  I need my coffee.  But the detox formula calls for meat, especially organs.  Mmmm…I haven’t had organs in a while.  So I bought two goat tongues embedded in the jaw along with the adjoining face meat and two bunches of spinach.  I braised the goat tongues/jaws for a few hours in water spiced with dried lemons, dried ginger, a dash of vinegar and salt.  When cooled, I removed the tongue and face meat from the jaw bone, chopped the meat and returned to the liquid in the pot.  I saved the jaw bones for my dog.  I added the chopped spinach to the pot.  And simmered for another hour.  So satisfying.  And totally compliant with the detox cleanse.

What do you think of organ meat?  

soup and salad this winter

It’s January – and despite the unseasonably arid and warm weather over the last few days, it is winter and I nearly forgot to indulge in a bounty of hearty soups and green salads that make Palestine’s winter comfortable and manageable.  I was invited to two birthday parties over the last week, and both party hosts served a warm hearty soup and a winter green salad.   At one, we sat around a kitchen table sipping spiced chicken broth and munching fresh winter greens, and the other, we stood around a bonfire under a full moon, swallowing mouthfuls of barley soup and nibbling on parsley. 

Why haven’t I made a pot of soup this winter?  I remembered my mom’s orange lentil soup.  There is no orange in my mom’s orange lentil soup, but we always called the orange colored lentils, orange lentils, to differentiate them from the other green lentils.  As a teenager arriving home late and famished after soccer practice, I was always pleased to find orange lentil soup with all the fixings.  The table was dressed with tiny dishes of sliced radishes, green onion, olives, pickled turnips, and my mom’s homemade flat bread. 

Inspired by my friends’ simple and warm birthday soups, and nostalgic for my mom’s orange lentil soup, I embarked on a winter diet of soup and salad using Palestine’s winter harvest to nourish my body and my friends.

I never measure when making soup and salad.  Eyeball it.  Taste.  Adjust.  Taste until you reach YOUR perfection.  

I also make my own spice mixture made mostly of turmeric, with a bit of these- hot paprika, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, and clove. 

 

orange lentil soup

1 mug of orange colored lentils

2 medium onions, chopped

salt and pepper to taste

My spice mixture (optional)

3 tablespoons of olive oil

 In a large pot, sauté onions in olive oil over medium to low heat.  Add salt and pepper.  Add the spice mixture (optional).  Add the lentils continuing to stir.  Add the water (about 1.5 liters).  Cook for approximately one hour until lentils are soft.  Serve with your favorite sides – olives, radishes, arugula, parsley, pickles, and green onion.   Squeeze half a lemon into your bowl of orange lentil soup and top with a few slices of avocado.  Eat.

 

green lentil, potato, sweet potato soup

½ mug of green lentils

1 medium onion, chopped

1 large sweet potato, chopped

2 medium potatoes, chopped

salt and pepper to taste

My spice mixture (optional)

Olive oil – be generous

 

Put all ingredients into a large pot, and sauté over medium to low heat.  Stir periodically for 7 minutes.  Add 1 liter of water – all ingredients should be underwater.  Allow soup to cook over medium-low heat for about an hour, until lentils are soft.  Squeeze half a lemon or add a few drops of your favorite vinegar into your bowl of green lentil, potato, sweet potato soup.  Eat. 

I usually enjoy a green winter salad with my bowl of soup.  I always have arugula and lettuce growing in my winter garden.  And I dress my winter greens with an almost 100% local salad dressing that meets my tangy and sweet cravings.

 

winter green salad

arugula leaves

lettuce leaves

avocado, sliced

lemon, sliced and cubed

sunflower seeds (optional)

 

Place all ingredients into a large bowl and proceed to making your dressing.

 

almost totally local salad dressing

grainy mustard (imported)

grape molasses (local-I have a bottle from Shifa/Bethlehem area)

red vinegar (local – I have a bottle from Deir Ghassana/Ramallah)

olive oil (very local – my backyard olives)

a pinch of salt and pepper

 

In a small jar (I use the baby food jars), add all ingredients and shake to mix.  The quantity of each item is up to your taste desires, but I usually add 1 tablespoon of mustard, 2-3 tablespoons of grape molasses, 5 tablespoons of vinegar, and fill the rest of the jar with olive oil.    Shake contents of jar to mix.  Pour the dressing over the salad and toss just before eating.

 Savor the winter’s warmth.

 

American Fast Food in Palestine

We now have real American fast food in Palestine…not the fake wannabes, but the actual KFC, Pizza Hut, and Dominoes….check out my commentary on the link below.

 

http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=4099&ed=222&edid=222

 

 

 

Post-Eid Vegan

Lightening up after Ramadan and Eid

Ramadan and Eid are over and I am ready to get back to lighter summer eating.  Fasting Ramadan summers for 17+ hours, despite the heat, requires a lavish production for the break fast table.  I need a hardy dish to satiate my fasting belly and face another day of fasting.  And when the month of fasting is over, Eid begins with its deluge of kaak (date filled cookies).  My body is craving summer’s light.  Hardy is for the winter…except during Ramadan.

Simple Baqla Salad

Baqla is available during the summer in Palestine.  It’s thick oval leaves and stem are tart and delicious.  And I learned from my nutritionist friend that baqla contains omega 3 oils, an added bonus.

1 bunch baqla, chopped

3 medium tomatoes, thinly sliced

2 tablespoons raw sunflower seeds

juice from ½ lemon

2 tablespoons olive oil

salt for taste

Mix ingredients and enjoy.  The recipe can feed 1-2 people.

********************************************************************************

Baqla-Beet Salad

The beets in my garden are bulging out of the ground, ready for yanking out of the ground.  I love the delicate sweetness and the sharp color of fresh beets.

1 bunch baqla, chopped

2 large beets, roasted

½ cup walnuts

juice from ½ lemon

2 tablespoons olive oil

salt for taste

Roast the beets in the oven at 190 degrees Celsius for 1 – 1.5 hours.  Protect your fingers – Give the beets time to cool off.  Halve each beet, and slice thinly.

Mix all ingredients and enjoy.  Tart baqla and sweet beets.  I don’t think it can get better than this.

********************************************************************************

Baba Ghanoush

I bought the long, thin, light purply colored Battiri eggplant just before Eid.  The Battiri eggplant, named after the village Battir in which it is grown, is perfect for making mahshi (stuffed vegetable).  I thought that I would make a special meal over Eid.  But then Eid arrived.  And I could not bear to imagine spending half my holiday digging out the insides of each eggplant and stuffing them with spiced rice and meat.  So I removed the stems and tails and placed the eggplants in a baking dish.  I drizzled the vegetables with salt and olive oil and baked them at 200 degrees Celsius for an hour.  When they cooled, I placed them in the food processor along with lemon juice, tahini (sesame seed paste), salt, and olive oil.  I stored the thick paste to be used throughout my holiday to fill my lunch-time sandwiches or as a dip for my many snacking impulses.

2-3 medium eggplants

2 tablespoons olive oil

juice from ½ lemon

2 tablespoons tahini

salt for taste

Adjust the ingredients according to your taste preferences.

********************************************************************************

I truly enjoyed the meditative state of fasting during Ramadan.  Really.

But I am happy to move on so I can indulge in summer’s light.

Baladi Tomatoes Continue… Al Falaha

I grew up with Arabic salad (salata) and all other kinds of salads – taco, garden, bbq chicken, pasta, potato, Italian caprese, cole slaw, and so on.  My mom made salata  to go with any of our traditional dry, non-stewy dishes such as maklooba (an upside down stove top rice based casserole) and mjadara (rice and lentils).  We rated the salata by degree of finely chopped vegetables.  My salata barely passed; too chunky.  But my mom’s was finely chopped.  A definite A+.    I’m not sure how she obtained her technique.  She holds the vegetable in one hand and a knife in the other, and chisels away.  No cutting board.

While my mom got an A for her refined chopping skills, she definitely failed in diversity.  Salata to my mom was the traditional Arabic salad; a finely chopped salad made up of tomatoes and cucumbers, and flavored with salt, pepper, olive oil, and lemon juice.  Sometimes my mom would chop onion and garlic into the medley – when she was feeling like going all out.

And then I moved to Palestine, and realized that there were many types of salatas in Palestinian cuisine.  Fatoush. Grilled eggplant.  Grilled cauliflower.  Salata in tahini.  Grilled/smoked sweet pepper.  Tabouli.  Al falaha.  It turns out that Palestinian cuisine masters the art of pre-meal appetizers and salads.  The mezza; an array of salads and other starters including hummos, falafel, baba ghanoush, olives, pickles, and grilled or fried seasonal vegetables.  I can’t believe that I was missing out on all this for over 30 years.

I love them all, except the garlic paste.  I’m not a big fan of garlic.  But my favorite is al falaha.  The peasant salad.  I love it for its simplicity and wonderful flavor when prepared with seasonal heirloom tomatoes.  And now that it is Ramadan, I usually prepare an individual sized falaha to go on the table with my break fast.

 Salatat Al Falaha

1 large or 2 small heirloom tomatoes, finely chopped

1/8 onion, finely chopped

a small piece of spicy pepper, finely chopped

juice from ¼ lemon

salt for taste

1 teaspoon olive oil

Mix all ingredients and enjoy.  You can add fresh herbs such as peppermint leaves.  You can follow tradition and finley chop the vegetables.  But I’m lazy .  Most of my falaha salads consist of larger slices rather than finely chopped bits.  The flavor is equally good to me.