Starting from scratch

Once you start making foods from scratch, it gets a little addictive. It’s amazing how many every day foods aren’t really that hard to make yourself. But even I have limits (or at least I thought I did). I was talking to my mother the other day and mentioned how I had a great sandwich. The bread was homemade (we’ve stopped buying bread because ours is finally satisfying enough). The pickles were homemade too, and some of my best yet. “Soon,” I joked, “I’ll be making my own cheese.” I was really really kidding though.

And then Deb over at smitten kitchen had to go and post this ricotta cheese recipe. There are only 4 ingredients, all of which I generally have around. It looks too simple not to try. Once I do that, I know it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to mozzarella. I’m not sure when I’ll get around to doing this, but when I do, I’ll be sure to let you all know how it went.

(Homemade peanut butter is also on the to do list, and since it doesn’t require a the heat of a stove, it might happen first.)

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Tangy Bulgur Salad and New Foods

We were recently invited to a potluck lunch with an ingenious theme: “New Foods.” The host wanted guests to bring foods that would most likely be new to him, and hopefully the other guests. I gave the challenge a lot of thought. I eat a lot of weird things, so I had plenty of options. But I wanted the food to be new to me as well, at least in preparation if not in flavor. So my thoughts immediately turned to Syrian food, which contains many familiar elements of other Middle Eastern cooking, but often goes a little more savory and tangy than sweet.

While most people are familiar with some Middle Eastern flavors, I often find that Syrian food, especially the cuisine originating in Aleppo, is really unknown outside of that ethnicity. That probably has to do with the fact that most Jewish Syrians live in the New York area, and there are very few Syrian restaurants. In my family, all the best cooks cook for family functions and their homes are like exclusive restaurants, though none of them cook professionally. I think this has to do with the way that cooking for people you love might be different than cooking for customers. What it amounts to though, is that unless you have a Syrian friend, you probably won’t get to taste a lot of the more unique Syrian dishes.

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