I’m writing up a post on sweet potato-corn chowder, but I couldn’t let this sandwich go unheralded. So here’s a short intermission: If I ate this every day until I died, I’d be happy. Red or white onions are fine. I used a toasted English muffin, but I’ve yet to put this on any kind of bread that didn’t work.
It’s half a sliced avocado, an ounce of cream cheese, a few thin slices of onion, and mango chutney.
Categories: sandwiches · snacks · under 5 ingredients
One of the first Bulgarian language sessions we ever had was on food. We learned how to say, “I like honey” and “I don’t like honey.” We learned the words for butter (краве масло), milk (прясно мляко), tomatoes (домати), apples (ябълки). Before long, we were reading menus with aplomb and bumbling through restaurant orders like true expats. We learned that you don’t much use conditional tenses to be polite - none of this, “Could I get…?” It’s just “For me, the fish.” If you’re really sweet, you say please. My Bulgarian friends would laugh at us Americans who would always emphasize the wrong syllable in “banitsa” and who had to be trained in toning down on the thank yous. (Lots of places think that “thank you” should be reserved for cases of extreme gratitude.)
My Bulgarian food vocabulary god to be pretty good, especially after working on a cookbook that circulated among volunteers, with a glossary of food terms at the back. For example, I’ll never be able to dislodge from my poor brain the translation of fenugreek. (Сминдух.) Think of the useful fact that could take the place of сминдух! Quantum physics? Sorry, out of room. Сминдух stays.
One word that always tripped me up, though, was кьопоолу. I’d see it on a menu and frankly, it terrified me. As soon as I opened my mouth in front of any waitress I was at a disadvantage because she’d hear my accent and know I needed her careful ear; I didn’t want the added emotional expense of having these unctuous syllables piling up around my tongue. Pointing to the fatal word on the menu and asking the simple question, “What is this?” No! Too much to bear! Could I please have the fries please please? Thank you. Insert giant American smile of flustered confusion.
Finally, a year in, I was talking with a Bulgarian friend and asked him what he’d done that weekend.
“I made кьопоолу,” he said.
“Huh?” I said.
“Кьопоолу.” he said. Then he pronounced it very patiently and carefully for me. KYO-po-loo. Then - then! - he told me what it was. And I’ve ordered it from every menu I’ve seen it on since. You can tell it’s going to be good when you smell the eggplants being grilled as you walk in the restaurant.
Кьопоолу - kyopolu - is considered a salad to Bulgarians, but it’s more of a chunky sauce in the American lexicon, great on crostini. It’s really just roasted vegetable heaven, is all, but without any of that slime that one may consider at the thought of room-temperature roasted veggies. Don’t go overboard with fresh garlic - it only needs the kick of one clove. (Don’t worry; you’re putting a whole head of roasted garlic in there, so you won’t be lacking.) You can’t eat just one bite of this stuff. It’s addictive. Mediterranean crack, I like to call it.
You might want to make double.
Roasted Eggplant-Pepper Salad (Кьопоолу)
makes about 1 1/2 cups
1 red bell pepper, roasted and peeled
6 finger-sized eggplants, roasted and peeled
1 head garlic, roasted and peeled, plus one fresh clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup minced parsley
2 tablespoons olive oil
Put everything but the olive oil down on a big cutting board and chop it up together pretty finely. (See picture.) Put in a bowl, add olive oil and stir gently, then let sit for at least 30 minutes. Serve at room temperature on bread spread with soft goat cheese, or maybe a little tofutti cream cheese.
Categories: appetizers · neo-bulgo · salads · snacks · summer · under 5 ingredients · vegan
Well, it’s been quite a rowdy couple of weeks! For some reason, I didn’t expect to be that stressed out during the week that I both started a new career and moved into my apartment in a new town. Total blood pressure rocket! Who knew?
So I cook now for a living. I’m definitely at the bottom of the totem pole, but I’m at a good place, with good people around me who are patient and encouraging, so while the job is far from easy, it’s feeling right so far. And right is all I need. I’m still having the occasional “What on earth am I doing in this country?” but I’ve been finding ways to get through those moments, and things are rolling along.
I’ve got the weekend off, and so far, I haven’t really left the house. Not even for the farmers’ market eight blocks away. This morning I slept in, read a magazine that told me how to organize every facet of my sorry existence, and put garlic, beets, and squash in the oven to roast for later eats. I also threw some white beans in to soak and thought about how I never would have had the patience to soak dry beans before I left for Peace Corps. Tonight I cooked the beans through and tossed them together with the odds and ends of jars left over from a wedding shower my roommate had thrown for her sister last weekend.
For many years, I considered a bean salad something to be avoided at potlucks. They were canned kidney beans mixed with overcooked green beans, saturated with Italian dressing. It kept on showing up in buffets everywhere I went, and it continued to win only an averted gaze from my roving eyes. It wasn’t until I lived in Bulgaria that I finally gave in and tried cold tart white beans (which, in Bulgarian, are called “bob”. That was one of the first Bulgarian words that I learned, and still one of my favorites) - and, lo and behold, they were tasty! Not mush, not loaded with chemically-thickened dressing or, heaven forbid, ketchup. Ever since, I’ve been a big fan, and whenever I put beans on to soak, I expect that I’ll end up making a little salad with at least a few of them.
So here’s a great fridge dump white bean salad. No, you don’t get measurements. Trust yourself. If you don’t have some of the ingredients, use something else. Root through the chill chest. Brazenly. If you’ve got a balance between mellow, fresh, and tart, you’ll be safe.
In a bowl combine a few handfuls of cooked white beans with some diced red onion, the cloves of a head of roasted garlic (squeeze ‘em out like toothpaste), a few capers, some chopped canned artichoke hearts, a handful of halved cherry tomatoes, five or six quartered mini mozzarella balls (bocconcini), six or seven trimmed halved green beans, a little chiffonaded basil, a little chopped parsley, and a couple of glugs each of rice wine vinegar and decent olive oil. Salt and pepper to taste. Eat - with bread, if you’ve got it.
There’s a scene in Kissing Jessica Stein when the two main characters are discussing the phenomenon known as Sexy Ugly. Famous men falling into this category include: Mick Jagger, Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel, and Alan Rickman. (I’m adding Alton Brown to the list as well.) Upon doing some more research into this descriptor, I found only one woman who is commonly considered for the prize - Sarah Jessica Parker. We could talk about this at length, taking any one of the several levels offered up for discussion, but this is a food blog, not my gender studies thesis. Which was excellent, by the way. (And what about Janeane Garofalo?)
Yesterday I made a pie. I screwed it up in several ways, but oh my heavens is it still delicious. This, friends, is the Lyle Lovett of pies - the ugliest sexiest pie I’ve ever made.
My biggest mistake was overbeating the egg whites. I’d never done that before, and I always figured that you’d have to try awfully hard to actually get them to such a point. Turns out, not so much with the trying.
Another stellar move: after cooking the mango curd, I rinsed out a bowl to store it in the fridge for a bit, and I didn’t toss out every last drop of the rinse water, so when I poured in the curd, there appeared little pockets of non-curd liquid that I cursed at and mopped up with a paper towel. This was a Sunday afternoon full of pitfalls. I’m sure I avoided a few of them by cheating on the pie crust. (Store bought! I refuse to feel guilty. I have made hundreds of great pie crusts. Well, maybe tens. But I’ve put in my time. I can buy a frozen pie crust from Whole Foods now and again. So can you. It’s okay.)
In the end, after all my fussin’ and cussin’, when the pie came out of the oven, it was ugly as sin and just as good. The mango curd was strained not once but twice, making it super silky and light. The meringue has just a bit of sugar, and while I would recommend not overbeating the egg whites, this is proof that life goes on even when the albumen disagrees with you. I served this on a plate that’s seen five too many dishwasher cycles - it seems only fitting. And I’m eating it with ginger chips from Trader Joe’s. You could throw some powdered ginger in the meringue and/or the curd for the same effect. Or maybe crystallized ginger in the crust, if you eschew the frozen foods section and make your own crust. Ooh, that’d be good. You’d also do well to serve it with some toasted coconut. But don’t go makin’ it too pretty.
Lyle Lovett Sexy Ugly Pie
aka Mango Meringue Pie
makes 1 pie
1 good quality pie crust
2 large dead-ripe mangoes, peeled and roughly diced
quick squeeze of lemon or lime juice
1/2 cup plus 2 teaspoons sugar
pinch of salt
8 eggs, separated
2 tablespoons butter
Preheat to 400F. Prick holes in the pie crust with a fork and put in the oven to prebake until very lightly done, about 30 minutes. Set aside.
While crust prebakes, combine mango, lemon juice, 1/2 cup sugar, and salt in the blender, and puree until smooth. Add egg yolks and buzz it again. (We’ll use the egg whites in a little while.) Strain mixture through a sieve, discarding remaining pulp, and put it in either a very thick-bottomed saucepan or the top of a double boiler, with the butter.
Cook on low heat, stirring almost constantly, until mixture starts to thicken, 10-15 minutes. Strain it again. Let cool at room temperature, then pour into a bowl and cover with plastic wrap - make sure the plastic wrap is touching the whole surface of the mango curd, so no condensation occurs. Refrigerate at least an hour.
Preheat to 350F. Pour mango curd into prebaked pie crust and bake 50-60 minutes or until curd is still just slightly wobbly in the middle. Turn off the convection heat and fire up the broiler to high. Whip egg whites with remaining 2 teaspoons sugar until peaks form, then pile it on top of the pie, making sure to spread the meringue enough that it covers the edges of the filling. Broil until it starts to brown, then remove from oven and use your superhuman strength to wait until it cools a bit before you slice into it.
ps. Yes, I saw the Keri Russell pie movie.
Yall have got to check out my friend Cedar’s garden.
Spanikopita a la Lauren coming up this weekend!
Categories: Uncategorized
New design! I’ll be working out the kinks in the next few days. Like the header picture?
Categories: Uncategorized
I first learned to eat with my hands from my 10th-grade history teacher. He had traveled in India during college and he had a few of us over one evening for some Indian food, which he taught us to eat properly. We got huge pieces of flatbread, which we were told to pile up with curries. I later learned that this is the South Indian way of doing things, food wrapped up in giant dosas - a flatbread that is more like a crepe, compared to what you’ll find as you head north, where batters become doughs and are fried with oil, (like parathas), cooked on a dry skillet (chapatis), or oven-baked (naan). All of these are part of the range of South Asian breads called roti.
Then he gave us rules for eating with our hands. First, of course, get rid of those pesky forks. Second, and most important, hygenically speaking: only use your right hand to touch food. (You’ll find this to be the case in any country without toilet paper, because your left hand takes care of that. This also means that you don’t pass food with your left hand, unless your right one is covered in vindaloo, don’t offer your left hand to shake, and don’t give money with your left hand unless you really want to insult someone.) Third, there is some etiquette involved in grabbing chunks of food with your bare mitts: it’s bad form for those spicy lentils to drip below your second knuckle, and bread really is used as a utensil, so it forms something of a barrier between you and that korma. Fourth, it’s okay to lick your fingers. Dig in.
It took me a stupidly long time to realize that not only could I cook a decent curry without having to call for takeout, but that making the bread to eat it with was also not rocket science. About a year ago, I started making my own flour tortillas (there is one Mexican restaurant in Sofia, and it’s awful, so I did what I had to do), and, after reading up on chapati recipes, I realized that Indian flatbread and Mexican flatbread were not really that different. To top it off, chapatis are just about the easiest thing ever to make. I don’t even measure anymore. The key is to cook them over really high heat: the lower the heat, the longer they have to cook, and the longer they cook, the crispier they get, and the crispier they get, the harder they are to wrap around your cumin potatoes. I use some oil in mine, although I have been reminded by Sid (thank you, Sid!) that traditionally, they are made without. The directions here are rather lax, because this is not a complicated process: flour, grease, and water, fried. So don’t stress about it. If you like, you can add some black mustard seeds, cumin seeds, finely choped onion, or finely chopped garlic (my favorite). Just stir them in with the flours, before you add the water.
Chapatis
makes about 12
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon oil, plus more for the pan
water
In a medium bowl sift together flours and salt. Add oil and mix well. Add just enough water to make the dough come together - this is not going to be flaky biscuit dough, but it won’t be a batter either, because you’ll have to roll it out. Once water has been incorporated, knead the dough a bit into a ball and let sit for a few minutes while the pan heats.
Heat a drizzle of oil in a frying pan over high heat. Take a knob of dough - say, 1/8 cup - and work it into a ball. On a well-floured surface, roll it out into a circle that’s as thin as you can make it, turning and flipping it often to keep it from sticking to the work surface. When you hold it up and can see light coming through it, it’s thin enough. Lay it in the hot pan and cook just long enough to brown nicely, then flip and cook the other side, just as quickly. Serve with your favorite curry, or just eat them as they come out of the pan - a highly probable scenario if you’ve put garlic in there. Yum.
Categories: pantry-dependent · under 5 ingredients · vegan
Well, I’ve got a camera, and I’ve got a kitchen, so I might as well start a food blog.
It’ll be vegetarian, it’ll be pretty seasonal. I’m an American living in Bulgaria and have been here for a year and a half but I’ll be going back to the U.S. in the summer. If you’re reading this, I’m excited, because it means that you’re interested in listening to my thoughts on food and cooking. Hopefully I’ll have some interesting ones.
Categories: Uncategorized
