melamed

Savouring the East Feast and Stories from Istanbul to Bali-David Burton 1996, its not very new and but its ok (his Felafel recipe calls for boiling the chickpeas first, don't do that)

Thank you for the welcome. What to say about butter and oil. Of course it seems intuitive that butter would be better; I tend to use a combination of the two. My Mom only ever uses oil, corn oil actually (you may recall the zero-cholesterol tolerance ) and her rice always has a lot of flavor. She also adds a fair amount of salt which no doubt brings out the flavors. How lucky for you that broadbeans are already out. I adore them, the kids do too - although I know that these can be dangerous for some kids as I believe middle easterners have some sort of strong allergy to them. I found this photo of my Mom's persian rice with broadbeans and dill. This is truly one of my favorites. Let us know how it turns out. Bagali Polow - Basmati with Favas and Dill, Topped with Zaferan ← I like that spiral of safron on the rice. About favism, this is an inherited condition, high amoung sephardic jews, in which broadbeans can't be eaten because of the lack of the G6PD enzyme. It causes anemia by red blood cell hemolysis. This is one of the reasons falafel stands use chickpeas in Israel, although in Egypt, for example, it is made with broadbeans. If I remember correctly all new borns are screened for G6PD deficiency.

Thanks for replying. What you have pictured there is Baamieh (what Melamed also refered to as Shabkia in Iraqi). Zoolbia looks like this: Actually this photo shows both delicacies but Zoolbia are the short, fat, oblong cylinders. It is the technique for making these that I am searching for. I understand making Baamieh because it is similar to other funnel cakes. ← aha! thanks for clarifying. 1 cup flour 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/4 tsp salt vegetable oil for deep frying hot sugar syrup The instructions just say to mix everything together and fry, not very specific. It looks like the zoolbia were made using a piping bag. An easy technique for making the balls is to tie a string above the hot oil (from one handle to another) so that it is taut. When you are piping the batter into the hot oil use the string to "cut" the segments into the size you want. that way you don't have to use a spoon for each fritter. I think this is a spanish technique but I am not sure.

What a wonderful thread! I love it and I noticed you make s'more chocolate a combination I have not tasted since girl scouts! All your chocolates look great. When you say you turned down several festivals, do you mean that you don't think you will cover the expense of renting a table? The backyard art fair sounds like lots of fun, I was thinking of doing something similar...

----- I enjoy dill, but I'm also very sensitive to cilantro. I definitely cannot handle eating whole cilantro leaves, although I find it's flavor necessary in things like guacamole - just not as much as most people use. I was once served a cilantro pesto, and couldn't finish it. I felt like I had a mouth-full of palmolive for the rest of the night! ←

oh my, who would have thought of a melba toast slicer. I guess once you have something like that it would be impossible to live without it

Welcome back! You are right that 10 minutes is too long to boil the rice (my son walked off with the stop watch!). You are a true egulleter! whipping out your camera in the middle of dinner to photograph tahdigs across the country, we all appreciate it! Is butter and oil better to use to form the tahdig than just butter? I would think that just butter is tastier. The broadbeans are in season now and what better way to use it than in Persian rice?

It doesn't save time but it has great showoffy potential and is a great conversation piece. andiesenji, since you collect kitchen gadgets I would love to know if you have something to rival this? I am not sure how you can obtain it (perhaps ask Sajzi) . My other favorite kitchen gadget is a semicircular knife which I bought for cutting melouchia leaves but this is not nearly as nifty, is it?

Do you have a giant rat recipe you would like to share with us? perhaps Nutria d'orange?

first of all you have to wet the fabric otherwise there isn't enough traction. Second, there is a switch/screw at one end which needs to be positioned according the size of the grape leaf. Position the grape leaf at the end and push the rice into the pouch which is formed by the fabric, don't overfill. I only used small to medium sized leaves on the machine. Big grape leaves would not work here because you would not be able to fill them properly and the machine would make a thickly wrapped roll, yuck. The size I used was the biggest, I didn't even try the smallest size which would be tiny, like you described. Perhaps this size is for forming industrial looking kabobs? It is pretty nifty but it doesn't save that much time at the end. good luck

in a seaside resort south of the Pyrenees I ordered grilled sardines which were delicious- just olive oil, garlic, parsley and lots of lemon juice.

Chefcrash, Interesting, I have never used pickling lime for anything, how does it work and how much is a little?

that's what I do for authentic tasting Jewish home cooking of the Eastern European kind. I fry my kreplach in chicken fat, or schmaltz, also great for matza balls, as an addition to buckwheat (kasha), to fry onions. I never deep fry using it simply because I never accumulated that much. I store it in the freezer.

A rolling pin is more useful as fuel in the fire. Here's a short clip of how it's done. ←

Does she flip the dough in her hands or use a rolling pin to create the bread. I have a kurdish cookbook by a women from zakho and she does it the rollling pin way using the exact same little table.

In the backyard, as far away from the neighbor's clothesline as I could get, I have a great little setup with an improvised saj table, a hammock and of course saj heated with a woodfire. I am still perfecting my skills, but the deeper hole lined with stone helps with the temperature control.

Do you mean the spiral fried dough pastries? (also called shabkia in Iraq) I never made it but the recipe I have looks pretty easy, the batter is put in a squeeze bottle (or piping bag) and the shape is sqeezed out into hot shallow oil. Once it becomes golden brown it is dipped in sugar/honey syrup. The dough is 1:1 dough to water with a bit of yeast, sugar and salt added. hope this helps

something tells me that nutria just ain't gonna fly

thanks, The recipe called for parboiling long grain rice but I didn't because that didn't make sense to me. I also made changes as written above-drastically reducing herbs and onions and at the end the rolls were very good. I am glad to hear that Turkish housewives use the machine, when I first looked at it I could not figure out how in the world it would work, but it does beautifully.

thanks you (bought digital food photography-Lou Manna and doing a bit of photography learning) I actually wanted to post about the filling. I digressed from my usual green onion, dill and round rice stuffing (Kurdish) and tried to make something Syrian inspired. I used Aromas of Aleppo recipe but am not sure how this version is supposed to come out. The Aromas of Aleppo recipe didn't make any sense, the amounts seem way off (1 cup of parboiled long grain rice , 2 bunches of parsley, 4! onions, 3 tomatoes), From my experience, during cooking all the vegetables and herbs lose volume and I would get empty rolls. Before cooking my usual (kurdish) mixture contains about 1:1 ratio of rice to herbs. When done the round rice becomes very soft. This version was good but the rice was more separate which I didn't like and the stuffing sometimes didn't fill out (even after drastically cutting down on the herbs, perhaps I should use even less). Any better idea for a Syrian (or Lebanese vegetarian) stuffed grape leaf?

It is such a hopelessy silly gadget but it works perfectly! besides it has lots of showoffy potential. I have never come across grape leaf rollers around here but I know that in Turkey they have fun selling them to enthusiastic tourists. btw, you should add photographs of your gadgets on your homepage, I would love to see them.

My neighbor decided to organize her backyard shed and found this nifty gadget. she asked me "Do you want this piece of junk?", oh yeah! You put the leaf at the bottom of the machine, add the filling and press down on the lever and presto! it burps it out on the other side perfectly rolled! Although I do it faster without it I will never be able to achieve such uniformity. I want to ask my neighbor if she needs more help with cleaning out her shed, who knows what great gadget is lurking in there.

for Middle Eastern history, where (one area of) civilization began and the center of origin of many domesticated animal and plants: The Delights from the Garden of Eden, Nawal Nassrallah For more Mediterranean food history: The Mediterranean Feast, Clifford Wright The Taste of Thyme, edited by Richard Tapper and Sami Zubaida Medieval arab Cookery, Rodinson and Charles Perry More general history: Near a Thousand Tables, by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto There are also lots of about specific food products

read the tipping point (by Malcolm Gladwell) which although very simplified and repetitive gives some interesting points about how a trend begins. He writes that there are different personality types such as Maven (gatherer of information), marketer (can sell anything) and connecter (the ones who have thousands of friends on facebook) and that each type helps to contribute to trend setting. a trend is by definition novel (eggs have been out of style for years because of cholesterol phobia) and usually very easy to do (eggs and hotdogs!) and accessible (ditto). So if a well known connecter such as Jackie Chan (not sure why he popped up) endorses eggs than there are those that might want to emulate him, sort of like a status symbol More complicated foods might become trendy but to a much smaller circle of people.

Chefcrash, very nice setup!