Wolfert

it is called gateau a la broche and it is baked over the fire on a slow turning spit with a cone mold set in place. A very liquid pate a choux is applied slowly in layers. It is served when all the batter has been applied, cooked, and cooled. Usually, it is about 2 feet high and a few flowers are stuck in the top. do tell us where one can be ordered. I haven't tasted it in 25 years.

I agree with chef Klc. Plus , a few things I'd like to add: a lawyer from the author's guild once told me "you don't own a recipe, you can only own the language." Just think about a simple dish like chicken with 40 cloves of garlic or huevos rancheros. They are in food literature or oral lore and belong to no one. On the other hand, I think it is polite to tip your hat if you in fact did get an idea from another food writer. I have my own way of assigning credit, a system that I use in all my books.When I develop a recipe, I base it on various tastings of the dish, the literature and oral lore that surrounds it, and my own amalgam of methods and techniques, most taught to me by someone. I usually just run a tiny italicised line thanking the person, or stating it in the intro in some way. If a chef gives me a recipe, and i write it up with some changes, having tested it and adjusted it to my taste I still try to place hte chef's name in the title or at least in the first line of the intro.

The flavor of canned or jarred piquillo peppers from Navarre (marked DOC on the label), slowly roasted over wood, is so extraordinary that even Alain Ducasse recommends them for stuffing in his book, Mediterranees, cuisine de l'essential. My personal favorite way to cook these luscious peppers is in a cazuela (Spanish shallow clay pot). I simply cook them slowly in a few teaspoons olive oil until they release their juices, making an unctuous garnish for roast beef.

Try Messermeister's serrated vegetable peeler. It is my "new" fav kitchen tool for fast peeling tomatoes and peppers.

I'll look for your posting.

Just be careful about purchasing coarse semolina at this time of the year. Summer bugs like it alot.

Suvir: I used to write my comments under the name of hedgehog until I was "outed" by Russ Parsons. note the comments above I added about smen.

Actually it is very simple to roll your own....couscous. it's certainly easier than making your own pasta. Problem is the mess of the little grains getting all over the floor. If you have a handly dust buster you're in business. I always make my own couscous using medium grain semolina and pasta flour. It only takes 5 minutes to roll and sieve enough to feed 8. Steaming takes about 45 minutes but then I'm in the kitchen anyways making the sauce. Do you have my mediterranean grains and greens cookbook? I explain how to roll your own step by step. I know I'm bragging now, so please forgive me: I've taught a lot of professional cooks around the country. Once they've tasted the real thing they switch over to hand rolling.

I don't think it is a cheat. The word tabouli is certainly borrowed from the middle east, but a type of couscous salad is made with freshly steamed couscous during the early summer when the women get together to roll couscous for year-long storage. At least in Tunisia it is. I've never seen a cold savory couscous in Morocco but a lot of things have changed in the 25 years since I left. I have think the pied noirs in Marseille are more apt to make "couscous tabooli"

right on!

I used to buy herbed smen when I lived in Morocco. Nowadays, I only make it when I'm planning a Moroccan dinner party or teaching a cooking class. It really makes a difference in flavor.

yes, it is dried again. But there are many Middle dishes that then use the bulgur with just a simple wet down. Tabouli and kisir being the most famous.

Chef Fowke: I tried your stretched chicken last night I stuffed the bird with some flavorings, pulled down the legs, tied them together and roasted it. I must say i worked perfectly and provided more crisp skin than usual. Thanks so much for sharing your wonderful truc.

there are two reasons they put it in the smen: it smells good as the butter 'turns,' and it preserves it. Fassis claim they can keep their butter 7 years. Seven crops up everywhere----in couscous, in that beany soup I told you about yesterday and alot of other stuff.

the only fault with this turkish folk tale being part of a learning experience is that bulgur is already cooked!

I think it is ventreche in most of France, and in the Languedoc or wherever Catalans live, cansalada.

that is far more beautiful than the southeastern turkish folk tale I know. In the tale rice and bulgur fight it out for first place at the table. One day the two grains are chatting. I’m royal, says Rice, they eat me with yogurt at their feasts, they always cook me with love and offer me on silver platters. What about you, Bulgur? Humble Bulgur responds: They eat me whenever they like because I don’t have to be cooked first like you.

Suvir: check out the darwinian gastronomy papers from Cornell on the internet. YOu'll see that chillies and oregano are both high up on the list of foods used to prevent street food tummy aches.

Adam: I'm really sorry you got sick in Morocco. More often than not, you can pretty much count on the concept of 'Darwinian gastronomy' kicking in.[Developed at Cornell, it is a theory that cooking methods and use of certain spices and herbs evolved in response to food borne illnesses protect you.] You can count on za'atar, a type of oregano, one of the best Moroccan herbs to protect you in many of the savory dishes due to its strong antibacteria strength. It is even stronger than hot chilies. I wonder if it was the dish itself which might not have been washed with soap.Or in the case of bread or dried fruits, flies are a big problem if you don't have a place to dust them off or in the case of dried fruit, a good washing.

you're right that white beans are less popular than chickpeas, lentils, favas and black eyed peas. It is very popular to combine beans of all sorts in soups and stews in north africa. There is one soup --a heavy one--prepared by the berbers of the Tassaout plain in Southern Morocco called urkimen, a soup combining seven grains and beans: chick-peas, white beans, favas, lentils, barley, corn, and millet. That soup is guaranteed to keep you going all day!

a narrow top does the same thing as the shoulders. I cook beans in a chinese sand pot in my clay-lined oven in the smallest amount of water. By the way, you don't have to cook beans in a large amount of water. In fact, it's actually better if you use less. As Harold McGee writes in his On Food and Cooking, Science and Lore of the Kitchen: "And it turns out, contrary to what we would expect, that seeds will actually absorb more water in a smaller volume of water: the less cooking water, the fewer carbohydrates are leached out, and the carbohydrates will take up about 10 times their own weight in water. This means, then, that seeds will seem softer in a given time if cooked in a minimal amount of liquid. So give the seeds enough water both to soak up and to cook in (many a pan bottom has been charred because the cook forgot that beans imbibe), but don't drown them.".

"From the look of the Tangia vessel it looks very similar to the French 'Daubiere' and also the 'Tuscan' bean pot (developed from the shape of the wine bottles I believe). I have also eaten a stewfood stew in Liguria that was cooking in an Amphora (baked in a bread oven), but I'm not sure that this is a traditional method." I think the shoulders on the amphora (bean) pot keep the liquid from evaporating.

Sounds fantastic. And I want to learn more about this. .But you are right! Tangia is a pot that is used by men to cook food for men: soldiers, sheepherders, etc. The top is covered with oiled parchment and tied down with string. the whole pot is pressed into the hot ashes (usually acorns). I was wrong to suggest gastra in the grouping in my earlier posting. I should have mentioned the French dofeu which uses ice cubes to keep the moisture circulating. Thank you very much for your time and information

about 10 years ago I did research on the stuffing of leafy greens in the Mediterranean. Here are some of my findings: The list included the leaves of quince, mulberry, green bean,fava bean, beet, hazelnut, cherry, grape or vine, chard, collard, mallow, fig, sorrel, and even the stinging nettle! (You rub the fresh leaves with coarse salt and wash under running water wearing rubber gloves to remove the sting) The grain of choice despends upon the region: rice in France, Cy;prus, Spain, Greece, and the Middle East; corn around the Black sea; bulgur in southeastern Turkey; cracked shelled wheat in central Turkey. Sometimes too a combination of rice with bugur or green wheat is used---one of my favorites. You can get green wheat called frika at a middle eastern grocery.

In answer to your query on what kind of tea is used..... it is usually made with green tea, fresh spearmint leaves, and lots of sugar. In February some fresh orange blossoms are added.