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Carol Goodman Kaufman

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Stuffed Sabich Sandwich Satisfies

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Sabich-6Although I had a boyfriend of Iraqi-Kurdish descent when I was young, and spent a fair amount of time at his family’s home, I had never heard of, much less eaten, a sabich. But on a recent visit to Israel I was introduced to this iconic sandwich made with fried eggplant, tehina, hummus, hardboiled egg, Israeli salad, pickles, sometimes a potato, and pickled mango sauce called amba– all stuffed into a pita or rolled into laffa. What was once a traditional Saturday morning breakfast for Iraqi Jews has become an Israeli street food almost as popular as falafel.
If that is true, then why hadn’t I ever had one before? After all, I’ve been to Israel numerous times, an even lived there for a while.
The situation had to be remedied.
So, on my day off from meetings, I wound my way down to Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, curious to try something new. I ordered myself a sabich at Moshiko. The guy behind the counter piled so many ingredients onto the large flat laffa that, when he rolled it up, it threatened to burst. Pieces of vegetable and egg fell onto the counter; he stuffed them back in and sent me on my way.
I found a seat outside at a high-top table, laid paper down and dug in. Now, I happen to have a very healthy appetite, but this particular sabich could have fed a small family. Vegetables slithered out, carrying with them dripping sauce and challenging both my balancing abilities and the dimensions of my mouth.
I got only about a quarter of the way through before deciding to focus my attention on the eggplant. It was luscious, if a bit oily, with crispy edges. After a few morsels I gave up, realizing that I probably would have been just as happy with a simple combination of eggplant, tehina, and some shredded cabbage – in a small pita.
Last night I prepared sabich for dinner using the recipe below, with a few changes, and it was very good. A very helpful hint for frying eggplant: toss it in a bowl with one or two beaten egg whites first. It reduces the amount of oil absorbed into the normally sponge-like fruit. Also, I prefer my eggplant cubed rather than sliced. It cooks faster and allows for more surfaces to be crispy.
 
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/03/sabich-sandwich-eggplant-egg-hummus-pita-recipe.html

Locavore or Faravore?

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Locavore. Locally grown. Farm-to-table. These terms have become ubiquitous among the health conscious, environmentally aware, and food-loving population. It sometimes seems that if you don’t know where that apple was grown, you don’t want it. Somewhat in this vein, my daughter once told me that if she were to eat chicken, she would want to know how it was raised, what it was fed, and that she would even want to visit the farm so that she could confirm its good upbringing. My response was that by the time she had done all that she would have known the bird too well – probably by name – and would never have taken a bite. After all, could she eat somebody whose home she had visited?

But, back to that apple. Where did it really come from? And what about the peanut in your PB&J? Or the eggplant in your parmigiana?

Fascinated almost to the point of obsession, I have spent the past few years researching the histories of some of my favorite foods: their origins, how they got to various points across the globe, and what the people of those places have done with them. I have found — and prepared — not only recipes that include the foods, but all manner of artifacts, literature, and rituals.

The research has been fun and sometimes even surprising. (Who knew that the tomato was the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court case?) And the variety of dishes is amazing. Take the grape. The French, Brazilians, Hungarians, and Mexicans all have different ways of incorporating it into their national cuisines, and all in different ways.

It’s time to make supper now. What shall it be tonight?

Around the Garden in 60 Days: A Jules Verne Vegetable

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Growing up in a small New England town, I never saw kohlrabi, but while volunteering on a kibbutz one year (breakfast and supper both featuring a cornucopia of super-fresh produce), I fell in love with the bulb. The flavor is mild with just a tiny bit of a kick. Not as spicy as a radish, but with the same wonderful crunch.

A member of the cabbage family and also known by the names turnip cabbage and German turnip, kohlrabi comes in both red and pale green color and, once the stems and leaves are removed, looks somewhat like an underwater vessel you might see in a Jules Verne novel.

I just knew it was a sign when I saw sets at the garden shop this spring. I had to try my hand at planting them. The challenge would be that my luck at growing vegetables is variable. Some plants produce bountifully – in my freezer I still have jalapeno and banana peppers from four years ago. Bell peppers, on the other hand, are stingy and kind of bitter. In fact, the grocery store varieties are better. Far better. When it comes to eggplant, the Ichiban variety is prolific for months, while the big fat Black Beauties grant me only two or three fruits at most.

So, hopeful but not delusional, I prepared the garden with the whole nine yards of stuff: organic fertilizer, compost, water, mulch. Just two months and a few prayers later, I returned from a week away from home to find that the kohlrabi was ready to harvest. Pretty fast by New England standards. Even better, the animals seem to be staying away, perhaps stymied by the obstacle course provided by so many stems and leaves surrounding the hard bulbs. (My tomatoes are being devoured by rabbits and chipmunks, necessitating better fencing.)IMG_4604

It was a good experiment but, in retrospect, since only one bulb comes from each plant, there may be better uses of the space in the garden. The farmer’s market is sure to have some, right?

Whipping up Meringues

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IMG_4430My good friend Lorrin listens to what people say. Really closely. I happened to mention – once, and many months ago – that in preparing for the Big Middle Eastern Feasts this past winter, I had found several recipes calling for rose water, including Ottolenghi’s famous meringues. I didn’t have rose water in the house and, it being the dead of one of the snowiest winters on record, I decided to prepare dessert with ingredients already on hand or those easily obtained.

Well, wouldn’t you know that when Lorrin came for dinner last Friday night, my very thoughtful friend brought me a bottle of rose water, an ingredient so important in cooking and baking around the world, and especially in Persian and Middle Eastern recipes.

So, what should I try first? Nougat, Turkish delight, baklava? Indian rice pudding or lassi? Malaysian bandung? So many choices, and those were just the sweets.

Or, perhaps those meringues that Ottolenghi developed while working as head pastry chef at London’s Baker & Spice?

Yes, those meringues. The ingredients are few: egg whites, caster sugar, and of course, rose water, all rolled in  chopped pistachios. And now that I had the rose water,  it was time to bake.

With the recipe calling for ten egg whites to make only a dozen meringues, you can just imagine how big each one is. Enough to share if you happen to be the sharing type.

As for caster sugar, this is simply superfine sugar, and there’s no need to angst over not being able to find it in the supermarket. Just zap some regular old table sugar in the food processor – but not so much zap that it turns to powder.

But, what was I to do with the ten egg yolks now sitting in a bowl on the counter? It would be terribly wasteful just to throw them out. This is where the internet came to the rescue. I found a website, http://www.fortysomething.ca/2010/04/recipes_to_use_up_extra_egg_yo.php, that lists recipes for dishes requiring anywhere from one to twelve egg yolks. What a brilliant idea, and well worth book-marking.

I decided on a Golden Butter Cake calling for eleven egg yolks, for a couple reasons. First, a very rich crème brûlée on top of meringues would be a serious sugar and fat overkill, especially if we aren’t expecting guests. Second, it’s simply practical to freeze the cake for future use. Invited to a pot luck dinner? I’ll bring dessert! If you do decide to try this cake recipe, make sure to add vanilla; I’m pretty sure that its absence from the list of ingredients was inadvertent.

Now, what to do with that one extra egg white? Maybe fortysomething.ca will see this and post a similar list for whites. In the meantime, breakfast will probably be an omelette.

Gettysburg 150 Years Later

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IMG_4149“Our days are as grass; we flourish as a flower in the field. The wind passes over it and it is gone, and no one can recognize where it grew.”

This stanza from a poem read at Yizkor,  Jewish memorial services, came to mind as we stood last week on the pastoral farmland on which the Battle of Gettysburg took place 150 years ago this July. The temperature had plunged 40 degrees, the wind blew, and the grass in the fields rippled with every gust.

Perhaps nobody would recognize where a flower once grew, but there is no danger that the tens of thousands of soldiers and the one civilian who perished in this Civil War battle will be forgotten.

Millions of people have made the pilgrimage to this tiny town in southeastern Pennsylvania to bear witness to the horror that took place here, in a war of brother against brother that nearly tore our nation apart. They reenact campaigns. They climb Little Round Top and gaze out at the positions held by Confederate troops. They look out from Cemetery Ridge and the Copse of Trees, trying to conjure the image of a mile-long phalanx of men in gray marching toward them during Pickett’s Charge.

The battlefield is studded with square white stones that mark the left and right flanks of every platoon —  from both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. And dozens of monuments — beautiful sculpture and even a tower from which to view that bucolic farmland — honor the regiments from every state that participated in the Battle.

They tour the David Wills House, where Abraham Lincoln spent the night before delivering his Gettysburg Address, an amazingly brief speech of only 272 words that has stayed with us for a century and a half.

And, they visit the first national military cemetery established in this country. Magnolias in full bloom and trees leafing out make it a beautiful place, silent but for the birdsong and distant hum of traffic. It is a most fitting resting place for the more than 3,500 Union troops who gave their lives to ensure that slavery be abolished.IMG_4245

The countryside around Gettysburg is spectacular, but it haunts me. That so much carnage took place in such an idyllic spot seems impossible. But it did.

May we never forget where the grass grew and where the people died.

The Scent of a Lemon

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This winter is really getting old. It’s been no higher than seventeen degrees for a couple days here, and there are still several feet of snow in the yard. Even the influx of garden catalogues isn’t enough to snap me out of my winter funk. What to do?

I have developed two main approaches to defeat the gray mood of this never-ending winter:

  1. To borrow a phrase from Lady Macbeth, “Hie thee hither” — to the sunroom. Basking in the fresh aroma of earth and chlorophyll infuses me with life-affirming hope.  And now, with my “Big Red” amaryllis, figs, and key limes all blooming and fruiting, I can actually believe that spring is around the corner.
  2. When life hands you lemons, put them on the table. There is nothing as cheerful as a bowl of sunny yellow lemons– unless it’s a bowl of lemons and oranges together. The height of the citrus season is one reason I can tolerate this months-long season of cold, gray, ice, and snow.

The scent of citrus is both energizing and romantic. Yes, romantic. Swaying palms in the moonlight, a  blossom pinned to my hair, slow-dancing on a patio with a tall, handsome man. Sigh.

And then, there’s the practical side of having a bowl of citrus fruit. After about a week, before the fruit begins to soften, remove the rind, extract the juice, and put it all into premeasured baggies and into the freezer for that inevitable situation in which you start a recipe and discover you have no fresh-squeezed juice or rind in the house. (That stuff in the plastic lemon? Oh, please.)

Life may indeed be a bowl of cherries, but for cheering there’s nothing like one of citrus.