Foods from Elsewhere

I hope I never lose my curiousity about what people eat in other parts of the world. Tonight I tried the most unlikely-sounding combination from the Claudia Roden book: meatballs, spinach, and garbanzos (our variation included buffalo meatballs and swiss chard), browned and simmered together for half an hour, with fried garlic and coriander added at the end. It tasted wonderful.

With it I served a salad of grated carrots from the garden, and a plate of sliced tomatoes with olives, feta, green onions, and basil. Here is the salad recipe.

Indian Carrot Salad

2 cups grated carrots

1/4 teaspoon salt

Toss carrots with salt.

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 tablespoon black mustard seeds

Heat oil in a small skillet, toss in mustard seeds, and remove from heat as soon as seeds begin to pop. Pour over carrots.

2 teaspoons lemon juice

Add lemon juice and toss. Serve cold or at room temperature.

Oh by the way, I bought a small electric skillet for cooking outside and have made several things out there next to the toaster oven, saving the house from cooking heat. It works pretty well.

Pantries

It's 100 degrees here at dinnertime, so my thoughts turned again to Middle Eastern food.

I accompanied Grandma to another cooking class by the Turkish women's group on Saturday. They made "Turkish cigarettes," which are filo-type pastries stuffed with cheese or potato fillings and rolled into thin cylinders and then deep fried, and usually served for breakfast. Very tasty. There was also a general potluck involved, ranging from banana bread to green chile burritos, but it was served at 3:00 p.m. and I couldn't get into a full meal thing at that time of day. It was a lovely cross-cultural event, though.

Tonight I made a Greek salad with garbanzo beans, corn bread, and Claudia Roden fish. I was getting the garbanzo beans out of the pantry and musing about how important it is to have a stockpile of ingredients.

Here is a picture of our pantry before remodeling a few years ago, and then after. It takes up the same space! I think my system of organization is brilliant: booze on top shelf; then cans; then jars and bottles; then boxes. In the three drawers below are: things in bags (nuts, prunes, elbow macaroni); pet food and dishes; paper goods such as napkins, and miscellany.

Lamb Meatballs and Red Quinoa

This was a reality-based menu: no ideal recipes, just making a meal of what was on hand.

I had a pound of frozen ground lamb, so that meant I should go in a Middle Eastern direction. Claudia Roden's New Book of Middle Eastern Food listed a recipe for lamb meatballs baked in tomato sauce, very interesting because the lamb was bound with ground onion rather than breadcrumbs. They were light and flavorful, baked rather than fried. The tomato sauce was mixed raw and poured over the meatballs and baked another half hour, so the preparation was wonderfully simple.

I roasted some vegetables, including a fennel bulb, and mixed in a lot of fresh herbs at the end.

The red quinoa was exciting. Russell served this to us, and it is so much more interesting than the pale tan variety I've seen up until now. It had a little more texture, too.

Grilled Lamb Meatballs

Last night we drank too much and experimented with ground lamb.

Lawson made some Middle Eastern meatballs out of ground lamb, onion, coriander and cumin seeds (toasted and ground), parsley, almonds, salt and pepper, and a touch of cinnamon. But we couldn't agree on whether he should use the food processor or not, so he tried both and we compared them.

Verdict: The food-processed meatballs were much gooier, much harder to thread onto skewers, but the flavor and texture were far superior to the coarser, hand-chopped balls.

The food processor gave us a much more authentically fine, blended texture. I finally understand why Claudia Roden's lamb and beef recipes call for further mincing or processing of already ground meat -- it's a whole different thing. Unlike burgers, where the whole point is the uniform pieces of fat that melt and tenderize, or meatloaf, where excess handling makes the meat tough, lamb meatballs and other spiced Middle Eastern meats really do need to be finely minced or processed.

How convenient: the superior method is way, way easier!

The processed balls are much lighter in color because the onion was processed and distributed throughout instead of in small minced pieces.

To go with the meatballs I made some excellent Jasmati rice; a raita of chopped mint, cilantro, salt, and yogurt; and roasted eggplant slices marinated in basil, garlic, and wine vinegar from the Viana La Place cookbook you sent me a while back. So nothing really matched in country of origin but it all went together perfectly.

North African Fish Fillets

This is a wonderfully simple and flavorful way to cook fish from Claudia Roden's Middle Eastern cookbook. I have used it with other fillets, but last night I used cod.

Fish in North African Sauce

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 jalapeno or red chile, seeded and chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

Saute the garlic and chile until they begin to soften. Then add:

1 pound diced tomatoes, canned or fresh

Salt and pepper

1 teaspoon sugar

1/4 teaspoon saffron threads

1 1/4 inches ginger root, grated

Cook the sauce at a simmer for about 10 minutes.

1 pound fish fillets (roughy, cod, etc.)

Add the fish to the sauce and cook, covered, until just done, turning once. It only takes five minutes or so. This is best served on couscous, I think.