Behemoth

Lucy, a beautiful job with the turkey. I love the idea of sealing it up with caul fat. There is a pretty strong chance we will be moving to Germany in the next couple of years, and I have already been informed by our family and friends that they are very curious about this Thanksgiving thing we celebrate. Dread.... (I have experienced the joy of trying to improvise mexican food in Hamburg. Avocados and limes, yes. Masa, chilis, pinto beans...no way. Cilantro, substitutable cheese, yes, but go to a turkish grocer. Sort of fun if you give yourself enough time for it. I am supposed to cook a dinner for 10 there this year on Dec 25th (they celebrate Christmas on the 24th.) Maybe I can bring a bag of masa & dried chilis in my luggage...?

We had the sort of meal a well-trained chimp could easily reproduce. However, the quality of the ingredients was so good, it really tasted above and beyond the everyday meal... lamb chops (grass fed raised by local farm kids for 4-H) salt & pepper, rubbed with garlic, seared 3 minutes a side, pan deglazed with shallots, wine & a little mustard. Incredibly tender, great flavor. organic arugula, organic goat cheese & thin-sliced red onion salad, with light red wine vinegar & eeov dressing. moroccan oil-cured black olives really great crusty french boule from a local bakery minimum effort, maximum reward.

ARGHHHHHH!!! The horror, The horror!! Thankfully I do not think I encountered those last time I was there, this past May. Yeesh, what next? Using casio keyboards in arabic music?

Some standards chez behemoth: Two from Diana Kennedy: tortilla soup and tarsacan bean soup Two from Marcella: pasta e fagioli and chickpea with pasta Two from Madhur Jaffrey: mulligatawny and cream of tomato with indian spices Harira, for when I have a bunch of lamb bones... This winter I want to try my hand at a few Korean ones. Clams with hand-cut noodles especially... Oh, and I love pureed beet soup, seasoned with a little vinegar and topped with sour cream whipped with dill

I have the Shun Chef's knife. I got it as a gift last XMas and I love it love it love it love it love it. I too have small hands. It has a great grip, looks great, stays sharp, great blade. With the damascus steel on the sides I was nervous about sharpening, I am really careful -- and to be honest it barely ever needs much more than honing, like once so far with heavy use (!) -- and it came out of the box perfect. I never thought it would replace my beloved German chef's knife (high quality WMF), but for the most part it is now the one I grab first. The German knife has the advantage of being heavier, which is nice for certain tasks, but less nice for others IMO...But knives are a very personal thing. The best advice I can give you is to go to a kitchen supply place and hold a bunch of them, see how they feel in your hand before choosing one.

Ha, I thought of that as I was going to bed yesterday. I love the ones at IKEA, BTW -- they have cool abstract designs but work really well and last forever. Also at IKEA -- I love those glass food storage containers -- they stack, they look great, plus the lids double as little condiment plates. My other favorite IKEA purchases are the stacking steel canisters. If you know a tea drinker, IKEA also has a cool little "stove" that holds two tea lights. I use it to keep my bodum teapot (the one with the plunger) warm. I bought that thing in Germany before they carried it here but saw it last year at the Chicago IKEA. Bodum teapots also really rock, the smaller ones would fit your price range, too. I can't imagine saying no to extra wooden spoons, tongs, paring knives... One final idea: I like to keep some verbena-scented liquid soap in a nice looking dispenser near the sink. (I am a semi-compulsive handwasher, esp. after handling chicken etc). Its a nice little sensory hit whenever I'm working in the kitchen. Most fancy houseware stores carry nice brands -- I think Thyme is one, there are lots of others...

Does yours leak all over the sink? Mine did. But it looked really really cool when filled with orange palmolive. Okay, clearly I am gadget obsessed, and this thread is like crack. Need. to. tear. myself. away....

I need the shrimp peeler! I don't know how many hours of my life have been wasted on that task... Oxo is the best. My SIL is getting the vegetable peeler as a hostess gift this year. I always assume any sane cook in the U.S. already has one, but she is in Germany. Last christmas I had to peel the potatoes with her thing and ended up nearly amputating myself.

I love all little gadgets made by WMF, a German company. Amazon sells some of their stuff, many pieces are at or under $10. (Look under WMF in Kitchen & Housewares, under Tools & Gadgets). Sadly, they don't carry my favorite piece, the phenominally well constructed WMF cherry pitter. But their ball whisks are tha bomb. edited to add: These guys have it -- with pics. link And: microplane is life-changing. Or in any case, "what I cook" changing.

Yeah, see, this is what I'm thinking as I'm reading upthread. Boiled crabs in shell served on newpapers and pork with saurkraut are perfectly decent meals (and I would have loved to try your pig trotters) that people wrote upthread as their horror stories. I am positive that my midwestern guests still roll their eyes with horror at the fact that I've served lamb (lamb!!), or a pork roast that measured a mere 150 degree (!) internal temperature when taken out of the oven. Meh. It makes me want to invite a bunch of people over and serve tripe. With pig ears. Cooking for people in the Midwest is really f****g boring. No scratch that, when we lived in the city everyone was vegan/lactose intolerant/raw foodist etc., which was just as irritating. Americans are weird. I was trying to think of truly bad meals I've been invited to. I have to admit I've more or less liked all of 'em, even the hot dogs and baked beans. I can tolerate mistakes (for there but for the grace of god...) and if it's something properly prepared that I find gross then it's my problem, not theirs. I guess the only thing I hate is when people declare themselves to be foodies and then serve angel hair pasta with jar marinara, bagged salad and a bottle of thousand island. And mainly because they declared themselves to be foodies & got my hopes up. (Yeah, this actually happened...) The couple is half chinese and talks about making chinese food etc. Part of me thought maybe the meal was some sort of insult... but then we've been invited back a few times, with various other people and it's always like that. Weird.

Oh my gosh, those dishes look great! I just got home and I am really really hungry. The sumac will be mailed to you tomorrow or Monday (based on when I wake up )

Smithy, just spotted this pot. Mine has an adjustable thickness dial, a bunch of different blade inserts, and works like a charm. I was really close to buying the Oxo, but this one was $20, and I used the $50 I saved to buy an All-Clad Masterchef 12-inch skillet (also at TJMaxx...)

I'm currently in Florida visiting Grandmother Behemoth. The food situation is rather dire. Yesterday afternoon I made a stealth run to publix for some sushi. Shh... Elie, I must complement you on the "Laban Ummo". The onlt versions I ever had involved greyish overstewed mutton and curdled yogurt, so I never bothered to try it at home. Your version looks complelling enough to make me want to give it a shot. Did you ever do a CGI or post about shish barak? That is a great dish. I was making raviolis a while back and was thinking it might be fun to do this dish as an alternative. The only thing is I really love it at room temperature, over cold rice mujadarra -- might be too weird for western company. The again, I'm not sure I'd be willing to share. Now I must plot a way to steal the car and make a pizza run or something

Fresh mint is nice, but dried mint is very traditional. It tastes a little different but it has its own purpose. (I've eaten it in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan over the course of the 17 years I lived there if we're arguing about authenticity ) Dried mint is also commonly used in the tomato sauce made to accompany stuffed kousa squash or eggplant. The reason they use it is that dried mint gives you a much larger hit of mint flavor than fresh per volume -- to get the same flavor from fresh you would have to use a lot of leaves, which would affect the texture of the dish. Especially in a cooked sauce, fresh mint would just get soggy & gross and there would just be too much of it. Either way is fine, but try the dried stuff sometime when you have it and you'll see what I mean. I always tie up and dry a little of my fresh mint because I use both kinds.

Dejah, you can definitely use Pita. If you can get thinner bigger rounds, all the better, but any pita will basically work...(again, indian stores seem to carry products that are wquite similar to the real stuff). The bread is used to soak up the juices on the bottom, and to keep the chicken warm on the top (the versions I've had, at least). Bits of chicken are usually tucked into pieces of pita and eaten by hand. (the bottom layer gets a bit soggy, so mostly the top layer is the eating utensil). The typical accompaniment is a chopped salad made with red onion, tomato, cucumber with a dressing of lemon juice, a little mashed garlic, salt and olive oil. If you can get some, dried mint rubbed between your palms to break up & then sprinkled over the salad is also very typical and very good. I would also think a salad made with cucumber, rubbed dried mint, garlic and yogurt would work very nicely as a counterpoint. Or any basic raita probably... This dish is not native to Lebanon, but I have had it many times in homes of Jordanian and Syrian friends and it is really delicious. It is tart and, well... sumac-y

These things definitely deserve their own thread. I think the danger comes from the fact that you were supposed to use raw milk. Since I have no idea where I could buy raw milk (well, I could probably find a source, but I'm lazy/time challenged...and risk averse.) I also found a recipe that uses a mixture of whole milk and cream. Haven't tried it yet. When I was in England, clotted cream tasted very similar to me -- any idea if they are similar? I also figured I could try it with mascarpone or something. It would be okay in kataif since you don't need that much, but it seems like with znoud-el-sit they would end up being major stomach bombs.

I read about MexiCali in today's DP. One cart is at 38th and Walnut, and the other is on the 3600 block of Spruce. And there's a store at 40th and Sansom, sorta. The article has the details on why this store opened, then closed, and plans to reopen soonish. http://www.dailypennsylvanian.com/vnews/di...T/419c542a5a4c6 I'd also like to put in a good word for Kim's Vietnamese and Chinese food truck next to the Pottruck center (the food vendor plaza next to the gym). Even when it is crowded, you can get ginger chicken very quickly. It's got its own queue, and it's cheap and tasty. Take care. ← I love mexicali's food, but he is always so unreliable -- often not there, or opening late, or would just up and cancel certain things off the menu for no obvious reason. Its amazing to me he is still in business. And the lines! After a certain point I kinda gave up. Do they still have the place in Ardmore? I love kim's. The rice noodle with spring rolls is very very good, as is the chili chicken. But again, the lunch hour wait is nuts. I frequened jow's & sophies, but I don't go back much farther than that. I bought a lot of egg & cheese sandwiches from the lady in front of DRL...

I thought the saddest scene in the movie was when the school girl was telling Jared from Subway that she couldn't afford to go on the Subway diet so there was no way she could lose weight. Especially depressing is that Jared was apparently too much of a shill to just point out that she could buy bread and turkey breast at the supermarket and make her own freakin' sandwiches. Gah!

whether or not you agree with the book, it is a great read, I really recommend it highly.

Nessa, here is a link to a recipe: Moghrabieh (Sorry can't vouch for it, I don't think I cared for it as a kid.)

I've never heard of any restrictions as far as seafood, pots or dishes, Pan. I am familiar only with arab muslim behavior, maybe east asian muslims do things differently(?)

Last night was a laid back tapas/mezze for six: chorizo in white wine octopus stewed with onion shrimp with garlic, paprika and hot pepper white canelli beans stewed with garlic & olive oil, served over braised radiccio gratineed belgian endive halves salumi platter olives, black oil cured and spanish garlic stuffed eggplant caponata spread multiple cheeses roasted red peppers with anchovies red potatoes that were boiled, the tossed in very hot olive oil with sea salt and cracked black pepper, served with alioli a great portugese white wine, a great spanish red, and arak for those who wanted it lasted 7 hours (a feat in the midwest...)

I found sumac in my indian grocery. (I live in the middle of nowhere). If you like, PM me and I can mail you a ziplock-bag's worth. (I got enough to last me for years ) As far as substitutes, the lemon juice for sourness, but you need something for the color -- paprika would probably work well. But really, sumac is the stuff to use. edit: the garlic spread is probably the good old standard "thoum": garlic pounded with salt into a paste, thinned with olive oil and a small amount of lemon juice

All seafood is fine for Muslims. (I have a polaroid of my dad & a bunch of his buddies in Saudi Arabia in the 70s chowing down on a giant pile of crabs...) But Chris' suggestion of chicken w/ paprika is a good one -- that is a very typical dish. It is called musakhan. I may have a recipe lying around somewhere, and it should be easily found on the web. It is easy to make and very good.

Um, you do realize you now have to provide a recipe, right? Do you make your own cream? There was some deal about having to get rid of the leftover milk because it is poisonous so I've always hesitated to do it. Is this something you've heard of? We lived across the street from a Rifaat Hallab branch when I was a kid. I guess the only thing that kept me from becoming obese is the fact that Lebanese fruit is so good it manages to compete with the sweets... I was just informed by my folks that someone sent us a box of manna. I don't think people in the US realize it actually exists -- it is a sweet made (in Jordan and Iraq mainly, I think) from some sort of resin that gets blown off plants onto rocks in the desert or something. I won't get it until christmas, but I will try to post pictures then.