Curried Kidney Beans, and the Mobile Food Chain

I didn’t study science in school and do not work in a scientific field – maybe that’s why I so admire books that make science accessible to us commoners. Jared Diamond can work this magic, as can Natalie Angier. I am currently reading Feast: Why Humans Share Food by Martin Jones, a bio-archaeologist. Jones’ prose isn’t as approachable as Diamond’s or Angier’s, but his topic – the history of the meal – is so fascinating that I am willing to read, and then re-read, as many paragraphs as necessary.

In each chapter of Feast, Jones describes a particular archaeological dig and, drawing upon the dig’s findings, envisions and narrates a typical meal-time scene. I just finished reading his exploration of a meal near a lake in Israel 23,000 years ago and a feast 11,000 years ago in the Euphrates Valley of Syria.

There are signs of weaving at the site in Israel – a new invention that allowed us humans to capture fish, small mammals and birds and to gather seeds, grains, legumes and nuts more effectively. As a result, we became much less dependent on men hunting large animals for our survival. By the time the scene in Syria happened, there were basically no men left whose main occupation was hunter.

(I promise all of this background will get to a recipe, eventually!)

Many things struck me about the meal Jones describes in Syria – the huge variety of grains, legumes and nuts consumed, including a cake flavored with ground mustard seeds, and the fact that the seeds had been cracked and soaked – similar to the preparation of tabouleh in the Middle East today. The meal takes place in a permanent settlement, something novel for us humans at this point in our history.

The climate was changing like crazy 11,000 years ago at the time of the meal in Syria, forcing plants and animals to continually chase their preferred habitats. In the past, people would have moved with them. But now, after constructing their permanent settlements, they didn’t want to move. Nor did they want to give up eating their favorite things. So, humans began modifying the environment around their favorite plants in order to mimic the places where these plants thrived – an early step towards agriculture.

(Really – a recipe is on its way….)

Another interesting feature of that meal 11,000 years ago is that it was prepared in a new physical human space – the kitchen. Instead of food being cooked and eaten around a fire, the meal in Syria was prepared in an area separate from the dining location. And there is evidence that all of this cooking – grinding, pounding, soaking, washing – was done by women.

Says Jones: “The meticulous study of the bones…indicates that in the ancient Euphrates at least, a very significant role in food preparation was played by women. All this evidence of back-breaking women’s work raises the question of what the men were up to.”

So, what were the men up to, especially since their hunting skills were not being called into action? Jones argues that the “surplus” men in the community became travelers, visiting settlements near and far. There emerged a tradition of welcoming these visitors into settlements with food and shelter, and of the visitor himself offering gifts of thanks, which included cultural artifacts, plants and animals. Soon, the number of migrants, and the number of new permanent settlements, began to grow.

(I know you don’t believe me, but a recipe is coming!)

Jones describes this movement of people as creating a “mobile food chain.” “It [the mobile food chain] did not spread by bulldozing flat the competition, but by leapfrogging from favored site to favored site…each new settlement taking with it many elements of the food chain, the styles and the beliefs of its parent communities.”

It would seem, then, that for many thousands of years we have had a tendency to prefer the foods and preparations we are accustomed to, and to take these customs with us wherever we go. I know I do this. Every time I travel to the States, I bring back with me black beans, pine nuts, granola bars, and walnuts. I can live without these items, of course, but I don’t want to. On the weekend before Christmas, I made minestrone soup, just like my mom does, even though I had to make a couple substitutions. With these actions, I am mimicking a human tendency that has spanned millennia – migrants bringing their favorite foods with them, and modifying their cooking to fit their new environments.

As I’ve mentioned before, there are many people of Indian descent in South Africa, and they’ve brought with them styles and ingredients of cooking that have, over time, become just as South African as they are Indian. It is this combination of people developing cuisines in their “permanent” settlements and migrants sharing their favorite foods with new neighbors that has contributed to the amazing variety of dishes we humans have created.

One of these dishes is Natal Red Kidney Bean Curry. The red kidney bean comes from South America, but is now quite common in South African cuisine. Take this traveling bean, combine it with Indian migrants, and you have a curry prepared in a Gujarati style, with a South America bean, in a southern African country.

Do like your ancestors would and share this meal with friends and family. Feast!

(And, finally, the recipe!)

Natal Red Kidney Bean Curry
From From Curries to Kebabs: Recipes from the Indian Spice Trail
Serves 6

1½ cups / 300 grams dried red kidney beans
3 tablespoons / 45 milliliters vegetable oil
3 whole dried hot red chilies
½ teaspoon / 2.5 milliliters whole brown mustard seeds
½ teaspoon / 2.5 milliliters whole cumin seeds
Generous pinch of ground asafetida
10-15 fresh curry leaves, if available
3 medium tomatoes, grated
¼ teaspoon / 1.25 milliliters turmeric
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters ground coriander
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters ground cumin
1-2 fresh hot green chilies, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters grated fresh ginger
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters sugar
1½ teaspoons / 7.5 milliliters salt

Cover the beans generously in water and leave to soak overnight. Drain the next day, put in a medium-size pan, add 6 cups of water, and bring to a boil. Partially cover with a lid, reduce the heat to low, and cook gently for 2-2 ½ hours, or until the beans are tender.

Meanwhile, pour the oil into a medium pan and set over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, put in the red chilies, mustard seeds, cumin seeds, and asafetida. As soon as the mustard seeds begin to pop, add the curry leaves and tomatoes. Stir once, and then add the turmeric, coriander, cumin, green chilies, garlic, ginger, sugar, and salt. Stir and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer gently for 5 minutes.

When the beans are tender, pour the spiced tomato mixture into the pan with the beans. Bring to a simmer, and cook, uncovered, on a very low heat, for 20 minutes.

Good, Simple, Filling

Cookbooks are filled with gussied up classics – cheesecakes transformed by lite makeovers, chocolate chip cookies enriched by whole grains, grill-side marinades renewed with pomegranate molasses, macaroni and cheese gourmet-ed with gruyere, and mashed potatoes, anointed by truffle oil, baptized into 2007. When I first made kushary, a sturdy Egyptian dish built around lentils, rice and pasta, I, too, was tempted to play. What if I added some a cinnamon stick to the stewing lentils, or mixed in some roasted garlic? There, in that pan of simmering tomato sauce, couldn’t I toss in a dried chili and some fresh herbs? And wouldn’t using spinach pasta just brighten up the whole dish?

Why, yes, it probably would. But sometimes cheesecake is supposed to be fattening; mashed potatoes need to be, well, just mashed potatoes; and kushary should be left as the simple, stick-to-your-ribs, working-class meal that it is.

Even on the night just before you go grocery shopping, you will be able to make kushary. Pasta, rice, lentils, tomato paste, onions – is this not a concise list of staples? I’ll admit, the current food shortages in Zimbabwe and recent multi-day power outages at my house have created some challenges for a food blogger. (Did I mention I haven’t had a dial tone at my house for a month and, yes, I use a modem?) All the more reason to keep it simple, be happy that your refrigerator is reasonably full (although where oh where can I find real butter?), and remember that food is for sustenance. When it tastes good, even better.

Kushary tastes good. Not phenomenal or awe-inspiring. It is not the type of food you eat slowly because you are pausing every half-second to gush with praise. But it is good. The recipe I use comes from Clifford Wright, who has an excellent site you should explore when you have the time. The whole compilation – pasta on the bottom, rice and lentils in the middle, sauce poured on top, garnished with browned onions – improves the next day.

Rather than rewrite the recipes, here are the links:

Here for the kushary,

And here for dim’a musabika, the thin tomato sauce it must be made with.

I left my onions caramelized instead of crispy, mostly because I find the line between crispy and burnt very hard to master. And, yes, I did use ghee – I found an old container crammed into a dark recess of my fridge. The serving numbers are accurate – it fed my husband and me exactly three meals. Three good, simple, filling meals.

With an Egg on Top

Sometimes you learn a new recipe. And sometimes a recipe teaches you a whole new strategy for composing a meal.

As a fish-a-tarian who rarely cooks fish, my dinners usually fall into one of the following categories: Indian curry; risotto; pasta; veggie or legume-based soup; frittata/quiche; polenta. Until now. Welcome – the vegetable sauté with poached eggs on top.

The inspirational dish was chakchouka, an Algerian/Tunisian creation that, I discovered through a little online searching, was brought by North African immigrants to Israel and is also quite popular there (spelled shakshouka), especially during Passover. Chakchouka is basically eggs poached in a sauté of tomato, onion, green pepper and North African spices. It is so easy to put together – and so warming and flavorful – that you’ll start inventing many other vegetables sautés that could cushion an egg. I’m thinking tomatoes and zucchini with some fresh basil; mushrooms, leeks, parsley and thyme; veggies with Indian spices and a handful of brown lentils; and morshan. In my humble opinion, just like pasta, risotto, or quiche, chakchouka is a brilliant dinner template.

The other reason I love this dish is that I adore poached eggs, but am a failure at poaching eggs myself. (Here is where my husband would say: and you have the audacity to call yourself a food blogger? Yes, I know, I should be able to poach an egg.) I’ve even used those special poaching pans with the ready-made indents, and I still screw things up. Chakchouka is a foolproof way of producing lovely poached eggs, and it even comes with a bonus stew.

The recipe below calls for chickpeas, which are a North Africa ingredient, but are not traditional to chakchouka. To me, the chickpeas are what make this a dinner dish. (Chakchouka is traditionally eaten for breakfast or lunch.) For an added Tunisian touch, and some more heat, stir in a dollop of harissa when you add in the tomatoes.

North African Pepper and Tomato Stew (Chakchouka)
Adapted from The Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook
Serves 4

2 teaspoons / 10 milliliters olive oil
1 tablespoon paprika
½ large onion, cut in half widthwise and then into fine slivers
1 large green bell pepper, cut into 2-inch/5-centimeter long slivers
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 green chilies, seeded and cut into 2-inch/5-centimeter long slivers
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters ground cumin
2 medium tomatoes, coarsely chopped
1 15-ounce/425-gram can of chickpeas, rinsed and drained
½ cup/125 milliliters vegetable broth or water (more, if needed)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
4 large eggs

Heat the olive oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Stir in the paprika, and cook 10 seconds. Add the onions and cook, stirring often, until they are lightly golden – about 2-3 minutes. Add the bell pepper, garlic, chilies and ground cumin, and cook, stirring often, for 3-5 minutes until the vegetables have softened. Add the tomatoes and chickpeas and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium and cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes have broken down into a sauce, about 10 minutes. If, as the tomato cooks, the stew is getting too dry, add some vegetable broth (I used ½ cup). Season the stew with salt and pepper to taste.

Make four small indentations in each quadrant of the stew. One at a time, crack each egg and drop it into an indentation, taking care not to break the yolk. Cover the skillet and cook over medium-low heat until the eggs are set, about 5-7 minutes. Transfer one egg with stew to each plate, and serve immediately.

Tags: recipe, chakchouka, eggs, vegetables, Algeria, Tunisia, North Africa, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

Dinner, Now Now

Once upon a time, Mark and I had a friend from Tonga. One day he invited us to his church for a special celebration. He said the festivities started at 11. Mark and I took the train from Brisbane to the suburb where the Tongan church was located, arriving just before the scheduled hour. We spotted our friend sitting in the shade of a tree, eating oranges. He invited us to sit with him, and handed us each an orange. There was no other activity on the church grounds; Mark and I were slightly baffled. But, we were enjoying the shade, the oranges and the company, so we lazily let time pass.

About 45 minutes later, our friend said, “I bet you’re wondering where all the people are and when the service will start.” Why, yes, we said, that question did cross our minds. “Well,” he said, “We are on Tongan time. Which means it doesn’t matter when we start. All that matters is that the service happens.” People began trickling in a few minutes later, and after another half an hour there was a boisterous crowd. The service, indeed, did happen. (And was followed by a feast that involved five whole spit-roasted pigs, but that is another story.)

In Zimbabwe, time is not quite so loosely conceived as in Tonga. However, we are certainly not on German time, or New York time, or even Southern U.S. time. It took me a while to get the hang of what exactly time here means:

Zimbabwean English: U.S. translation

Let’s go now: Let’s go sometime in the next couple of hours.

Let’s go just now: Let’s go sometime in the next hour.

Let’s go now now: Let’s go now.

After a day of meetings that started “just now” and e-mail replies that came, belatedly, “now,” sometimes I want dinner now now. If you find yourself in a similar situation, then you can prepare Chickpeas and Swiss Chard in the Style of the Tunisian Sahel. The recipe comes straight from Paula Wolfert, the doyenne of Moroccan and Tunisian cuisine. I am reprinting it here only so I can provide the metric equivalents – I didn’t change the recipe one bit. It makes for a quick, light nutritious meal, or a vibrant side. I love the different textures, the spicy kick and the fact that you can eat this dish warm or cold. The one question your dinner-mates will ask, of course, is where, oh where is the Tunisian Sahel? “Sahel” means coast or margin in Arabic; in Tunisia, the Sahel refers to the central part of the country’s eastern shoreline.

Time to go eat – now now!

Chickpeas and Swiss Chard in the Style of the Tunisian Sahel (Morshan)
From Mediterranean Cooking
Makes 2 servings (4 as a side)

¾ pound / 340 grams Swiss chard leaves, stemmed, rinsed and torn into large pieces
2 large cloves of garlic, peeled
½ teaspoon / 2.5 milliliters coarse salt
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters ground coriander
1 small dried red chili
30 milliliters / 2 tablespoons olive oil
½ cup / 80 grams minced onion
2 teaspoons / 10 milliliters tomato paste
1 cup / 165 grams cooked chickpeas, with ¾ cup / 190 milliliters cooking liquid*
1 lemon, cut in wedges (optional)

Steam, parboil or microwave the chard leaves until tender, about 5 minutes. Set leaves in colander to drain. Squeeze out excess moisture and shred coarsely.

Crush garlic in mortar with salt, coriander and chili until a thick, crumbly paste forms.

Heat olive oil in large skillet and sauté the onion until pale-golden. Add the garlic paste and tomato paste and stir into oil until sizzling. Add chard, cooked chickpeas and cooking liquid and cook, stirring occasionally, 10 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand until ready to serve. (Contents of skillet should be very moist but not soupy. For a looser texture, stir in more chickpea cooking liquid. Serve warm, at room temperature or cold with lemon wedges.

Note: Broccoli rabe, dandelion leaves, mustard greens, kale or turnip tops may be substituted for Swiss chard. Discard any yellow or damaged leaves and cook like chard. Cooking time will vary.

*Okay, I lied, I realized as I was typing that I didn’t follow this recipe to the letter! I actually used two tins of canned chickpeas, drained, and water instead of the freshly cooked beans and their cooking water. I wanted dinner now now, remember?

Tags: recipe, Tunisia, main dish, side dish, chickpeas, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

Home-Baked Beans

About seven years ago, I worked at a global education museum, where I helped develop exhibits that introduced U.S. schoolchildren to the world outside their country’s borders. One of the exhibits encouraged kids to think about how people around the world are connected by international trade. In an effort to make these connections, sometimes I’d talk with groups of children about where their favorite foods came from. Here is the start of a typical discussion:

Me: Today, let’s talk about some of your very favorite foods and think about where they come from. Who wants to tell us their favorite food? Let’s hear from you [pointing to the 8-year-old in the blue sweatshirt jumping up and down with his hand raised].

Boy: Hot dogs!

Me [thinking, oh dear, I really don’t want to get in a discussion about where hot dogs come from]: Great, that’s a great favorite food. Let’s hear from someone else, too. How about you [pointing to the girl in the purple shirt]?

Girl: Macaroni and cheese!

Me: What kind of macaroni and cheese, the kind you make at home, or the kind you buy in a box?

Girl [screwing up her face as if confused]: Well, we make it at home but it comes from a box!

Me: Oh, right, of course. Now, where does that macaroni and cheese come from?

All the kids in unison: THE SUPERMARKET!

Me: But, how did the box get to the supermarket?

Children [blank stares, silence].

Me: And how did the noodles and cheese get into the box?

Children [blank stares, silence].

Me: And where did the noodles and cheese come from?

Children [blank stares, silence].

Me: Do you think that boxes of macaroni and cheese grow on supermarket shelves?

Children [laughter, followed by blank stares].

Me: Okay, let’s try to work backwards and figure out how this box got to your supermarket….

This story brings me, somehow, to baked beans. Because, not too long ago, if you had asked me how a can of baked beans got to my house, I would probably stutter and stumble and say something like: well, obviously, the beans need to be baked, probably in big batches in a very big oven. Hmm, I’m not sure what type of beans they are, though – maybe a special baking bean? And then there is the sweet and salty sauce that goes on them, or maybe that is what they are baked in – I’m not sure. And then the whole mixture gets poured into a can and goes by truck to the supermarket where I buy it!

Being from Boston, the home of Boston baked beans, I feel I should definitely know more about baked beans and where they come from. Lucky for me, food writers and bloggers have been quite interested in baked beans lately.

While seeking out an African version of baked beans, I found Madhur Jaffrey’s recipe for Baked Beans with Nigerian Seasonings. These beans are warmth itself, satisfying and hearty with a hint of spice. They work well as a light dinner or side dish – just remember that the recipe takes two hours to bake, so its not something you want to start preparing at 7:30 on a weeknight! If you have leftovers, try a breakfast of whole-wheat toast topped with the beans.

The main seasoning in these beans is curry powder, which I more closely associate with the East African coastal cooking of Kenya and Tanzania and the Cape Malay cuisine of South Africa rather than with Nigerian cooking. But Jaffrey is one of my favorite chefs, so who I am to question her? After all, the recipe does ask for a hefty amount of black pepper – a very Nigerian touch. The other interesting ingredient in these baked beans is peanut butter, an item used in many dishes in sub-Saharan Africa (including this stew and this snack). In fact, to my mind, these beans are better named “Africa-inspired baked beans.”

I’ve prepared Jaffrey’s baked beans several times now, and I like to make them even more Africa-inspired (and a bit more colorful) by adding a locally-grown green leafy vegetable (such as rape, covo or pumpkin leaves). I’ve added greens both before and after the baking stage. I think “after” works better, although this is not how I did things on the day my husband took the photo above. The recipe works best with delicate cannellini beans, but any small-to-medium white bean will do. When I can’t find white beans at the store, I use local sugar beans instead. Finally, note that you can modify the proportion of hot versus mild curry powder depending on your heat preferences. Enjoy!

Baked Beans with Nigerian Seasonings
Slightly adapted from World Vegetarian
Serves 4-6

180 grams / 1 cup dried cannellini beans
62 milliliters / ¼ cup peanut or canola oil
1 medium onion, peeled, halved and thinly sliced
4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
5 milliliters / 1 teaspoon hot curry powder
10 milliliters / 2 teaspoons mild curry powder
2 large tomatoes, peeled and finely chopped
22.5 milliliters / 1½ tablespoons smooth peanut butter
6.2 milliliters / 1¼ teaspoons salt
Very generous grind of black pepper
45 grams / 1½ cups of your favorite green leafy vegetable, finely chopped

Soak the beans overnight in plenty of water. Drain.

Put the beans in a pot with 875 milliliters / 3½ cups of water and bring to a boil, skimming off the foam that rises to the top. Cover partially, turn the heat down to medium-low, and simmer gently for 40-60 minutes until the beans are just tender.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large fry pan over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook for 1-2 minutes until the onion has just wilted, stirring almost constantly to ensure it doesn’t burn. Add the garlic, stir, and cook for another 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the curry powders and stir, then add the tomatoes and stir again. Cook for 7-10 minutes, until the tomatoes have softened. Transfer this mixture into a medium casserole dish.

Pre-heat the oven to 162°C / 325°F while you wait for the beans to finish cooking.

Spoon the peanut butter into a small bowl. When the beans are ready, remove 6 tablespoons of the cooking water from the pot and slowly add it to the peanut butter, stirring as you go. Pour the beans and their remaining liquid into the casserole dish. Stir in the peanut butter mixture, salt and pepper.

Bake, uncovered, for two hours until much of the liquid has evaporated and the beans are very tender. Add the greens just after you remove the dish from the oven, and stir them around until they wilt. Serve hot.

Tags: recipe, beans, baked beans, Nigeria, West Africa, peanut butter, main dish, side dish, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

Cooking Stew, Reminiscing Too

You cannot read Colette Rossant’s Apricots on the Nile: A Memoir with Recipes without envying the stunning array of Egyptian and French food – from simple street food to elaborate wedding-day specialties – that she enjoyed as a child. Nor can you help admiring Rossant’s vivid memories of how these favorite dishes wove themselves in and out of her daily life. You also can’t avoid pondering what recipes might form the culinary unpinning of your own memoir.

Today, as I prepared Soeur Leila’s Red Lentil Stew – one of the book’s 43 recipes – I reflected on just this question: what recipes might help me tell the story of my childhood? Surely, this was too big a question to fully answer on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Even so, a rush of scents and flavors and recollections flooded into my head. In fact, I’m lucky Rossant’s lentil stew recipe is so effortless – anything more complicated would have been too much for my distracted brain to handle.

So what recipes did I think of? To describe an everyday weeknight in my home, the memoir would have to include pepperoni pie – a dense quiche studded with spicy nibs of pepperoni. I don’t eat meat anymore, but if you put a slice of this beloved childhood dish in front of me, I’d find it hard to resist. Another weeknight favorite was a salad made solely from lightly-dressed chicory – a frilly, bitter-tasting green that, I suspect, no other sibling team in history has loved as much. Armed with think slabs of Italian bread, my brother and I would dive right in, elbowing each other over who got to soak up the leftover vinaigrette at the bottom of the bowl. (My dad calls soaking up sauce or dressing with bread “mojuring” – I have no idea if this is an English word, and Italian word, or a made-up word. But that is the word we use.). And, of course, I’d feature my grandmother’s molasses cookies, mature versions of the brown sugar spoonfuls she gave me when I had the hiccups, and tell the story of how, later in her life, her cookies tasted different every time depending on which ingredient she had forgotten to add.

Growing up, I remember contributing to the preparation of many dishes, although my parents might have different perspective on whether I was helping or hindering their efforts. On long weekends, my dad would labor over Italian specialties passed down through his ancestors’ kitchens. Lasagna made with a layer of sliced braciole was a favorite, and it was my job to help him tie strings around the rolls of breaded meat. When my mom prepared her meatloaf, she would beckon me from my homework spot at the dining room table so that I could squish the ingredients together with my hands. I also liked to make an appearance during the most exciting part of chicken cutlet preparation – the assembly line production of dipping each piece of meat in egg, then breadcrumbs.

Other food memories are inexorably linked to holidays. When I was in school, the weeks approaching Christmastime were a time for accumulating huge quantities of candy canes from friends and teachers. Taking advantage of this bounty, my family and I would crush the canes and make peppermint stick ice cream. And, to this day, Christmas parties feature my mom’s minestrone soup, a dish that, amazingly, she has never tasted because she doesn’t like beans, but which has gained acclaim from even the most vociferous vegetable-haters. If my mom doesn’t make minestrone soup at Christmastime, she risks an insurrection.

Another soup recipe would also have to make the memoir – pasta fagiole. I love this soup so much that, during my sophomore year in college, my parents made the valiant (and slightly nutty) attempt to send me a few servings in a care package. At my university (and, I would assume, all universities), whenever care packages arrived, you would accumulate an ever-growing troop of observers (a.k.a. aspiring package-sharers) as you carried your box from the post office, into your dorm, and up to your room. How disappointed my bystanders were to discover that my package contained no candy, no cookies – only spoiled soup that had leaked out of its Tupperware container.

Although my food memories are quite different from Rossant’s, they, too, are blessed with the warming combination of family, celebrations and the daily bread of everyday life. The red lentil stew recipe Rossant shares is a hearty, wholesome dish she was served on Fridays at her convent school. Like many a favorite childhood food, it is, she says, a recipe she continues to make today.

Soeur Leila’s Red Lentil Stew
Slightly adapted from Apricots on the Nile
Serves 4 as a main course

500 milliliters / 2 cups split red lentils, picked over and rinsed
1 liter/ 4 cups vegetable broth
2 large onions, chopped (divided)
1 large tomato, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
2 small zucchini, chopped
1 teaspoon ground cumin
150 grams / 1/3 pound angel hair or vermicelli pasta, broken into small pieces
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
30 milliliters / 2 tablespoons olive oil
30 milliliters / 2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped

Place the lentils, broth, 1 onion, tomato, carrot and zucchini in a medium saucepan, and bring to a boil. Skim off any foam that bubbles up. Then lower the heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Purée the mixture using a hand blender. Stir in the ground cumin, pasta, salt and pepper. Simmer, uncovered for ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Add additional vegetable broth if you would like a slightly thinner stew.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a small fry pan over medium heat. Add the remaining one onion and sauté for 8-10 minutes, or until golden. Add the onion and any remaining drops of oil to the lentils and simmer for five minutes. Serve in bowls with a sprinkling of parsley. Rossant recommends garnishing with croutons made from pita bread.

Tags: recipe, Egypt, lentils, lentil stew, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

Media, Meat, Mushrooms

Last Wednesday, The New York Times published an excellent article about Zimbabwe, written by Michael Wines. If you read this blog and wonder about the deteriorating economic and political situation in the country where I live, this balanced, perceptive and accurate article is a great place to gain an overview.

In contrast to Wines’ report, many articles written about Zimbabwe are exaggerated, inflammatory or downright deceitful. The state-run newspaper, The Herald, is well-known for serving up government propaganda, and will go to outrageous lengths to blame the country’s ills on outside forces, while discrediting the political opposition and heaping praise upon the ruling party. I once read a Herald article which claimed that the U.S. and the U.K. had created space-based technology that could change the weather, and that they were using this innovation to inflict drought upon southern Africa. I would have laughed if I had read this report in The Onion; it was not so funny to see it published as serious news in the country’s most widely read paper. (Note to The Herald: Next time, try substituting “technology” with “global warming” and I might believe you.)

The foreign media (which faces restrictions) and the independent national press (which faces persecution) has a more laudable raison d’etre – to expose the true causes of Zimbabwe’s economic and political crises and highlight the real suffering of people. But their work is also prone to an occasional bout of hyperbole. Two months ago the Institute for War and Peace Reporting published a story that said Zimbabweans had resorted to eating pet food because they could no longer afford to buy meat fit for human consumption. While I don’t doubt that some people have faced this predicament, the article portrayed pet-food eating as a widespread, national phenomenon, which it is not.

Articles that are heavy on shock value and light on analysis and perspective do a disservice to the Zimbabwean people by portraying them as hopelessly desperate rather than as people trying to live happy, peaceful lives enriched by friends and family. How much more useful would it be for an article to look at the reasons why meat and other foods have become so unaffordable, the variety of coping mechanisms people are using to deal with poverty and hunger, and the resulting implications for people’s health and nutrition? These coping mechanisms are much more diverse that simply eating pet food, and their impact can be much more tragic. Recently, for example, five family members from a Harare suburb died due to eating poisonous mushrooms. The father had picked the mushrooms, and said he was just trying to provide for his family. Other people cope by eating fewer meals. More nuanced and less obviously “shocking” articles can move the reader beyond a reaction of simply “oh, what desperate people,” to deeper reflection about how people like them, working hard to put food on the table, are living in a economic environment that gives people such limited choices that there are few good choices to be made.

Despite the recent tragedy, and although most Zimbabweans favor meat, eating mushrooms as a meat substitute is common, especially during the rainy season when wild mushrooms are relatively plentiful. There are several types of wild mushrooms that can be safety eaten. One type, called chihombiro, is a particularly substantial, chewy mushroom. Chihombiro are are most commonly sold by women and children along the road to and from Nyanga – a mountainous district that abuts Mozambique. If you are driving to Nyanga this time of year, your friends and colleagues will likely ask you to return with some mushrooms for them.

Mark and I don’t eat red meat, so we use mushrooms in place of meat as a personal choice rather than as a less preferable alterative. Last night, I used chihombiro as a substitute for meat in an Ethiopian-inspired recipe for Stir-Fried Beef Stew from Marcus Samuelsson’s The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa. This dish is Samuelsson’s version of the traditional Ethiopian dish, tibs w’et, a spicy stew made from beef or lamb. He notes that calling this dish a “stew” is a bit of a misnomer. I agree. Not only is it quick-cooking, but it contains little liquid and couldn’t possibly be eaten by the bowlful – it needs a grain-based accompaniment to temper its dark, rich flavors.

Tibs w’et is quite spicy – so be wary if you are spice-averse and be sure to reduce the amount of berbere and green chili. You can substitute chili powder for the berbere if you wish, or refer to my previous recipe for Ethiopian Lentil Stew to make your own. Traditionally, this dish is made with nir’ir quibe, or spiced clarified butter. I simply used clarified butter (a.k.a. ghee), and you could also substitute unsalted butter. In Ethiopia, tibs w’et would be served with the country’s famous injera bread and awase, a condiment created by making berbere into a paste. I spooned my mushroom version of Samuelsson’s tibs w’et over a simple scoop of rice. Next time I am going to try it as a filling for crêpes.

Make sure to use a meaty sort of mushroom as your beef/lamb substitute, such as porcini, shitake or crimini. If you would like to make Samuelsson’s beef version of this recipe, exchange 1½ pounds beef tenderloin, cut into ½-inch cubes, for the mushrooms. I suspect your dish might yield more servings this way.

Ethiopian-inspired Wild Mushroom Stir-Fry
Adapted from “Stir-fried Beef Stew” in The Soul of a New Cuisine
Serves 2

60 milliliters / 4 tablespoons ghee, or unsalted butter
75 grams / ¾ cup red onions, thinly sliced
300 grams / 3 cups “meaty” mushrooms, chopped
5 milliliters / 1 teaspoon salt
15 milliliters / 1 tablespoon berbere, or chili powder
2½ milliliters / ½ teaspoon ground cardamom
2½ milliliters /½ teaspoon ground ginger
1¼ milliliters / ¼ teaspoon ground cumin
Pinch ground cloves
1¼ milliliters / ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 400-gram / 14-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes, drained and roughly chopped
2 green chilies, seeds and ribs removed, thinly sliced
125 milliliters / ½ dry red wine

Melt the ghee in a wok or large skillet over high heat. Add the onions and cook, stirring constantly, until they begin to brown around the edges – about two minutes. Add the mushrooms and salt, and fry, stirring occasionally, for 6-7 minutes until the mushrooms are cooked. Stir in the berbere and all the ground spices. Add the tomatoes, chilies and wine, and stir. Simmer for one minute. Serve immediately.

Tags: recipe, Ethiopia, main dish, East Africa, mushrooms, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

Well-herbed Couscous from a Well-loved Cookbook

Like a child’s blanket, hugged until threadbare, my copy of Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian has been loved too, too much. Its spine is broken, its pages are oil-spattered, and its recipes accompanied by barely legible scribbles and flurries of exclamation points.

I was first introduced to Jaffrey by my friends Matt and Steph, hooked by a recipe for salmon curry. I copied a few pages from their edition of From Curries to Kebabs: Recipes from the Indian Spice Trail, and so began 2004, the Year of Curry. For me, Indian food presented a whole new way of cooking. The recipes made me breathless with their instructions to add ingredients mere seconds after one another, my spice rack became a spice cabinet, and my tolerance for hot chilies went through the roof. Another new discovery was curry leaves, an optional ingredient in what seemed like half of Spice Trail’s dishes. Serendipitously, my now-husband had just begun gardening for an elderly Indian woman with an out-of-control curry plant. He would return home, ever-chivalrous, with curry leaf bouquets.

I acquired World Vegetarian in 2005 and have been cooking my way through it ever since, adopting as dinner staples the Bengali squash curry, Italian chickpea flour pizzas and curried tomato soup. Over these two years, an ever-more-tattered green post-it has marked a recipe for Speckled Green Couscous with Red Potato Sauce. This recipe, a Tunisian dish, attracted my attention with its use of four fresh herbs – cilantro, dill, parsley and arugula – but it remained untried simply because I could never accumulate all of the ingredients at one time. My cilantro plant would be flourishing just when my dill plant had died. The supermarket would have arugula, but scallions were nowhere to be found, or perhaps the tomato paste was out of stock. Today, however, my stars aligned. In fact, even though I couldn’t find fresh dill at the store, I did discover and purchase a dill plant at the nursery (I hope it didn’t mind quickly losing half its leaves), and I compensated for my remaining dill shortfall with some feathery fennel tips, which, according to Jaffrey, are more traditional in Tunisia anyway.

Jaffrey recommends mixing a ¼ cup of the red potato sauce with cayenne and serving it as an accompaniment to the dish in place of harissa, a hot, North African spice paste. My sauce did not produce enough liquid to spare, however, so next time I’ll prepare some of my own harissa beforehand. I also think I’ll double the sauce portion of recipe, as it had a satisfying richness that well-compliments the herb-lightened fluffiness of the couscous. I wanted more! Next time…if only my new dill plant will not die, and the stars that oversee ingredient availability once again align….

Speckled Green Couscous with Red Potato Sauce
Slightly adapted from Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian
Serves 4

Potato Sauce
3 tablespoons / 45 milliliters olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons / 30 milliliters tomato paste
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters ground cumin
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters ground coriander
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters paprika
¼ teaspoon ground cayenne
12 ounces / 340 grams boiling potatoes (about 5 medium), peeled and cut into 1 x ½ x ½-inch / 2½ x 1¼ x 1¼-centimeter pieces
1½ teaspoons / 7½ milliliters salt, or to taste

Couscous
1½ teaspoons / 7½ milliliters salt
1 tablespoon / 15 milliliters olive oil
½ cup / 125 milliliters parsley, finely chopped
4 tablespoons / 60 milliliters cilantro (a.k.a. coriander), finely chopped
3 tablespoons / 45 milliliters feathery fennel tips, finely chopped
1 tablespoon / 15 milliliters fresh dill, finely chopped
4 scallions, green parts only, finely sliced
½ cup / 125 milliliters arugula (a.k.a. rocket), finely chopped
2 cups instant couscous

To make the potato sauce, put the oil in a medium saucepan and set over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add the onion and fry it for a minute. Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds. Next, add the tomato paste, and stir it for a minute. Add the ground cumin, ground coriander, paprika and cayenne, and stir once more. Put in 4 cups of water, the potatoes and the salt. Stir and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce the heat to a rapid simmer and cook for 30 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender. Adjust the salt, if necessary.

To make the couscous, bring 2½ cups of water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add the salt, oil, parsley, cilantro, fennel tips, dill, scallions and arugula. Cover, turn the heat down to low, and simmer gently for 10 minutes. Add the couscous, stir and cover. Remove the pan from the heat and let it sit in a warm place for 5 minutes. Uncover, and fluff thoroughly with a fork.

Serve the couscous immediately, topped with the red potato sauce.

This post is an entry in Weekend Herb Blogging, a food blog event founded by Kalyn’s Kitchen and hosted, this week, by Tomato.

Tags: recipe, Weekend Herb Blogging, Tunisia, couscous, food blog event, main dish, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

One Perplexed Sous-Chef

Mark dutifully peeled, seeded and diced the butternut squash and cracked and whisked some eggs. After searching the countertop for other ingredients that needed to shed their skins, he quietly commenced paring a carrot. Like most nights, Mark had identified an ideal soundtrack for our dinner preparations – one of my favorite bands, Patty Hurst Shifter. As one song ended and another began, he looked up from his labor and asked, “So, what are we making anyway?”

My first thought: Oh, what a horrible cook (and wife) am I, putting my sous-chef/husband to work without the common courtesy of telling him what we are making!

My second thought (verbalized): “So, what do you think we are cooking?

Mark: “Squash pot pie?”

Me, nose crinkling: “Squash? Pot pie? With eggs?”

Mark: “A frittata?”

Me: “A more appetizing guess, but still no.”

Mark, spotting the curry powder, chickpeas and yogurt: “Chickpea and squash curry with raita?”

Me: “Hmm, not a bad idea.”

Mark: “I give up.”

So, what are we making?

We are making bobotie, a traditional Cape Malay casserole from South Africa. Its sweetly spiced flavor comes from mixing curry powder with raisins, apple and spoonfuls of jam. These ingredients are combined with crumbled pieces of milk-soaked bread and also, typically, minced meat. Since Mark and I don’t eat meat, the version I cook employs a golden trifecta of chickpeas, carrot and butternut squash. The entire wholesome, warming dish is topped with custard and speckles of paprika.

You can easily adjust bobotie to meet your preferences. So, for example, you could substitute lentils for the chickpeas, add slivered almonds, or trade the squash for more carrot. Just one warning, though: unless you want to risk making squash pot pie – I advise informing your sous-chef about your dinner plans!

Golden Bobotie
Adapted from Quiet Food: A Recipe for Sanity
Serves 6

3 slices wheat bread (soft crust, or no crust)
1 cup / 250 milliliters milk
2 tablespoons / 30 milliliters vegetable oil
2 onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 medium butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and diced
2 medium carrots, grated
1 tablespoon / 15 milliliters mild curry powder
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters ground turmeric
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters ground ginger
4 teaspoons / 20 milliliters white vinegar
1 green apple, grated (skin on or off)
2/3 cup / 80 grams raisins
1 14-ounce / 400-gram can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
2 eggs, plus 3 more eggs for the topping
2 tablespoons / 30 milliliters smooth apricot jam
2 teaspoons / 10 milliliters salt
Freshly ground pepper, to taste
4 bay leaves
1 cup / 250 milliliters yogurt
Paprika

Soak the bread in the milk. Pre-heat the oven to 350°F (180°C).

In a medium saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook for five minutes until the onion has begun to soften. Toss in the squash and carrot and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes. Stir in the curry powder, turmeric and ground ginger, and cook for another two minutes. Take the pan off of the heat.

Crumble the soaked bread and add it, along with the white vinegar, apple, raisins and chickpeas to the pan. In a small bowl, whisk together two eggs, the jam and the salt and pepper. Add this to the saucepan, too, and then thoroughly combine the contents of the saucepan. Spoon everything into a medium-size casserole dish with sides at least 3 inches / 7.5 centimeters high. Press the bay leaves down into your casserole.

In a small bowl, whisk together the remaining 3 eggs and the yogurt, and add a pinch (or grind) of salt and pepper. Pour this topping over the squash-carrot-chickpea mixture that is in the casserole dish. Sprinkle with paprika.

Bake, uncovered, for 35 minutes until the topping is set and very lightly golden. You can serve bobotie by itself or with rice. It is traditionally served with yellow rice.

For a meat-eater version of bobotie, accompanied by yellow rice, check out Cook Sisters’ recipe here.

P.S. A big thank you to everyone who voted for me as Best Food Blog – Rural in the 2006 Food Blog Awards. Your support was very, very appreciated! Congratulations to the winner – Farmgirl Fare. (An excellent blog it is!)

Tags: recipe, South Africa, bobotie, main dish, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

Pizza for the Adventurer

All right, Mr./Ms. Adventurous Eater: so, you think you’ve tried every type of pizza there is. You’ve ordered the egg and ham pizza in Australia, had slices of biltong grace your South African pie, and eaten just about every topping combination from yuppie vegetarian (organic rocket pesto accompanied by slow-roasted tomatoes, Thai basil and fresh, hormone-free ricotta) to redneck carnivore (name-your-meat slathered in ranch dressing).

But have you tried Zanzibar pizza? I didn’t think so.

When Mark and I visited Zanzibar last November, we discovered that one of the most popular food items at the night market was this stuffed bread dish. It’s not really pizza – there is no cheese or sauce to speak of – but, it somehow tastes strangely similar. The bread lies somewhere between a crêpe and a chapatti, the filling typically includes mince meat, onion, chili, egg, garlic and mayonnaise, and the whole shebang is topped with hot sauce.

Last night Mark and I made a vegetarian version that compensated for the meat with cabbage and tomato. I could have closed my eyes and told you that what I was eating was Zanzibar pizza. But, as I have previously written – it is impossible to separate a food from a place or an experience. Zanzibar pizza is no different. Without the sound of waves crashing and vendors hawking, the smell of fish grilling, and the sight of smoky fires and headscarf-clad women, Zanzibar pizza was Zanzibar pizza, but it wasn’t Zanzibar pizza. Does that make any sense?

If you’ve never eaten Zanzibar pizza on Zanzibar, then you won’t have this problem, and you will enjoy the dish for what it is – a tasty snack or light, casual main course that welcomes being washed down with a frosty glass of beer.

Zanzibar Pizza
Adapted from A Taste of Zanzibar: Chakula Kizuri
Serves 6

2 cups / 250 grams plain flour
½ teaspoon / 2.5 milliliters salt
½ cup / 125 milliliters water (plus more, if needed)
Vegetable oil, for coating dough and frying
1 medium onion, minced
2 small tomatoes, chopped
1 cup cabbage, finely shredded
3 fresh chilies, deseeded and minced (I used two green and one red, for color)
1 tablespoon / 15 milliliters fresh garlic, minced
1 tablespoon / 15 milliliters fresh ginger, grated
2 tablespoons / 30 milliliters cilantro (a.k.a. fresh coriander) stems and leaves, chopped
6 eggs
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Tomato chutney and/or hot sauce, for serving

Sift the flour into a medium bowl and add the salt. Pour in the water, adding more, if necessary, to create a smooth dough. Knead the dough for three minutes, and then divide it into six equally-sized balls. Place the dough balls in a shallow dish, rub plenty of vegetable oil over them, and cover the dish. Let the dough sit for two hours.

Stretch the dough into a very thin 10-inch / 25-centimeter circles, making sure that the edges are thinner than the centers. Place 1/6 of each topping (onion, tomato, cabbage, chili, garlic, ginger and cilantro) in the center of each circle. Now, here is where talented Zanzibari street vendors would effortlessly crack an egg over these toppings and seal the dough into a package without any egg sliding out. I am not this talented. So, I would recommend frying the eggs until they are just set, and then adding one to each pizza. Grind salt and pepper over everything, to taste. Then, fold the top and bottom sides of the dough to the center, and close the dough package by folding in the left and right sides. Make sure there are no holes in the dough or any cracks where egg or filling could escape.

Cook the pizza packages, using as little vegetable oil as possible, in a fry pan over medium-low heat. How many you can cook at one time depends on the size of your fry pan. (Note: If you need to make multiple batches, it is advisable to keep the dough balls covered until you are ready to use them.) You want to cook the pizzas until the dough is toasty-brown on both sides and the fillings are warmed through, all while making sure that runny egg doesn’t escape during the process of flipping the pizza. Acquiring such certainty requires about eight minutes of cooking on one side, and three on the other.

Serve hot, with a spoonful of tomato chutney or hot sauce on top and, if you desire, a garnish of extra cilantro and minced chilies.

Okay, maybe now you’ve tested every pizza possibility.

Tags: main dish, pizza, Zanzibar, Tanzania, Zanzibar pizza, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa