Za’atar Pita

Za’atar is a Middle Eastern spice blend. I can’t even describe how to pronounce it because I don’t really know what the right way is myself. Growing up, it was this mysterious mixture we put on top of pita and microwaved, sometimes with mozzarrella cheese on top as well, wafting this strong unique scent throughout the house. It wasn’t until I tasted that familiar flavor in a dipping oil at the upper west side restaurant Vareli (where they also crust a pork chop with it) that I even thought to bring it into my adult life.

I never really gave much thought to what it was made of when I was younger. It was just za’atar. But once I tasted it outside of a family context, I just had to figure it out. Many spice stores sell something called za’atar, but pretty much every blend of it is unique. It seems every Middle Eastern locale, or even every household has their own exact proportion of flavors that make up za’atar. Generally, they can include ground thyme, oregano, marjoram, hyssop, sumac, and whole sesame seeds. The more sumac there is, the redder the mixture will be. I grew up with a dark green kind, but I’ve also seen it in a pistachio color that most likely had no sumac at all.

Every variety is delicious as far as I’m concerned. To make za’atar pita, you simply mix the spice mix with olive oil and salt to taste (I like it to be rather salty), and paint it on top of a pita, or pita wedges. Thin it with oil as much or as little as you like. Some people even just mix the spice with salt and dip soft bits of bread into it and eat it like that. The following mix is a bit mild. I think it is the hyssop (which I’ve never seen in a store) that gives it the characteristic sharp, burns-the-back-of-your-throat taste.

Recipe: Za’atar spice mix

Makes about 3.5 tablespoons – multiply or divide as needed. Store leftovers in an airtight container.

• 2 tbs dried thyme
• 1 tbs dried oregano or marjoram
• 1 tbs ground sumac
• 1 tsp sesame seeds
• 1/2 tsp salt

Mix or grind together, and enjoy on anything that tastes good. Mix with oil to paint onto other foods, or use as a dry rub. Heat brings out the aroma, but be careful not to burn it or it may become bitter.

Have you ever had za’atar before? What did you eat it with? What do you think it had in it?

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Shiitake Mushroom “Bacon” Crumbles

Last year, Jen and I decided to increase the vegetarianism in our diets. We didn’t cut out animal products entirely, but we stopped buying meat and most of our meals were vegetarian or vegan. Among many other reasons for making this change, we really want to shake our cooking up. While we have gone back to eating meat this year, the time we spent without it taught us a lot about what sates our appetites.

I don’t find meat to be an essential part of a meal, in general. But if you are used to cooking with it regularly, it can be a challenge creating balanced meals without it. That’s probably why so many “meat” substitutes exist. Don’t get me wrong, protein is an important nutritional element, and many touted meat substitutes such as tofu (soy), seitan (made of wheat gluten) or tempeh (another soy product) provide that nutrient in abundance. But I do find that some people (mostly non-vegetarians) get much more worked up over getting enough than the average person really needs to worry about. Grains, legumes, and many vegetables can provide just as much protein when included regularly in a diet.

Meat substitutes can be great, and I plan on talking more about them in future weeks. If you’ve read much of this blog, you have probably gathered that I prefer food to be processed as little as possible when I begin cooking with it. So I knew that no matter what we were going to be eating we would be making much of it ourselves. And that points out another problem with relying on most meat substitutes for the bulk of a vegetarian diet – they are often heavily processed and expensive.

In my new diet, I wanted to focus on fresh food, that I knew as much about as possible, and that would keep me interested and coming back for more. I also had to combat with no longer having some of my favorite foods, which was less about nutrition or cost cutting and more about giving my taste buds what they wanted. After going without bacon for some time, I did begin to crave it quite a bit. That’s when I remembered this recipe that I had come across when following a recipe for seitan bourguignon (also amazing, but we’ll get to that later).

Fresh (undried) shiitake mushrooms are used here, roasted with a bit of oil and salt, until they are crispy. It’s not just the crisping that makes them wonderful – though the texture is quite addictive. The musky, sulfuric flavor of shiitake mushrooms turns into magic when they are cooked. They take on a remarkable similarity to the meaty, salty, umami of bacon. It’s not an exact match, for sure, but it’s so close, I’d wager that someone might be fooled in a blind taste test.

I couldn’t believe how good they turned out, I made them over and over again. This is a recipe any person who avoids bacon, or meat, should have in their repertoire. The only downside is that a pound of mushrooms, once the stems are removed, and the caps are cooked, turn into maybe a cup of crunchies. At the lowest price I’ve found for fresh shiitake, that’s much steeper than the price of even good bacon.

Recipe: Roasted Shiitake Bacon

Recipe originally found on WholeLiving.com

• 1/2 to 1lb fresh shiitake mushroom caps, sliced
• 1 tbs olive oil
• light sprinkle of course salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degress. 
2. Spread mushroom slices on an oiled pan. A glass or pyrex pan cooks more slowly, a metal pan cooks more quickly. I found I liked the way they came out better on the glass pan, but they took a lot more time to crisp. 
3. Allow to roast uncovered, tossing every 10 minutes, until dry, crisp, and not burnt. The first few times you check on them, they may not seem like they will ever become crispy, but have patience. The process can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour depending on the amount of mushrooms, and the kind of pan. 
4. Once removed from the oven, allow to cool. 

Enjoy anywhere you might include bacon. And even more places. Since these were more like crumbles than slices, we put them on salads, wraps, on pizza, in macaroni and cheese, and crunched as a snack. The only place they didn’t really work was as a soup topping, as they became soggy pretty quickly.

Hey! When you’re chopping up the mushrooms, don’t throw away the stems! They are full of flavor, even if the texture is unpleasant. Clean them off and use them to make a mushroom or vegetable stock. I just save them in a large zip-top bag in the freezer until I have enough to make a large pot.

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Pumpkin Hummus

Between the CSA we joined this fall and all the great prices on squash at the markets, we ended up with a cache of winter squash to figure out what to do with this year. We ran through the basics pretty quickly, with pumpkin pie, butternut squash soup, and stuffed acorn squash; even a few out there experiments like curried butternut squash and an unfortunate black bean and pumpkin soup. But I find that I can only handle having squash as a main dish once or twice a week at most before I get sick of it, no matter how good the dish.

To remedy this issue, I thought it was high time to figure out how to use pumpkin as an appetizer instead of the main course. I did all kinds of googling to see how other people use pumpkin as an appetizer and found that it is much more commonly used as a dessert, which shouldn’t have been surprising. And as appetizers go, I’m pretty lazy, and I’d rather not have to make dozens of bite-sized anything if I can avoid it.

And then I stumbled upon a great idea: pumpkin hummus! I didn’t want to have to shop and get tahini though. And pumpkins aren’t really known for their protein content, so I didn’t think it fair to make a hummus without chickpeas. Either way, pumpkin as a dip is a great way to get that pumpkin flavor in before dessert without it taking over the whole meal. The flavor is bright and exciting and is a great addition to any holiday party.

As long as I have winter squashes in the house, I will also probably have pumpkin hummus.

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Brine-less vacuum pickles

After all these pickle experiments, I’ve noticed that there’s only so many pickles I can eat. When I started this summer, I only had a few jars, so in order to try a new recipe I had to hurry up and finish one of the jars I already had. Now, after I’ve collected jars for months, I’ve found a way to get around the jars completely.

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Half Sour Dill Cucumber Pickles

Half sour pickles, sometimes called “new pickles”, weren’t my favorite growing up. They were overlooked in the quest for the most lip-puckering sour garlic pickles. As my taste buds matured, however, I came to appreciate the more delicate saltiness of a good half sour pickle. From what I’ve noticed, half sours are made from very similar recipes to full sours, but are not left to ferment for as long.

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Deviled Egg Salad

I had a terrible craving for eggs this week. Not just any eggs though. I wanted deviled eggs… and a lot of them. A normal person would take that as a sign and just make them – I mean, why mess with a perfect thing, right? Not me. I’m far too lazy for that.

To make a good deviled egg, you’re supposed to lay the eggs on their sides overnight to get the yolk to sit nicely in the middle. You’re supposed to let them adjust to room temperature before boiling so they don’t crack when the water gets hot. You even have to worry about how old the eggs are, since fresher eggs don’t peel well after being boiled. You have to boil them perfectly and hope none of the them break. You have to rig up some kind of piping device and fill the egg whites up prettily, all the while losing a tiny bit of that deviled yolky goodness to every surface it comes into contact with. And after all of that work, you have to constrain yourself from eating all of them at once, for the sake of your health, and because you know it will be a long time before you muster up the patience for such a project again.

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Bread and Butter Pickles

Of the three kinds of cucumber pickles I experimented with since the summer, the most successful were the “bread and butter” pickles. Because of their sweetness, these usually aren’t on my crave list. When I think of bread and butter pickles, I think of almost-neon manufactured, sickly sweet, acidic spears that seem to last indefinitely on supermarket shelves not because of their pickled state, but because of a long, unpronounceable list of artificial preservatives and colors. I’ll eat them every once in a while, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a hankering for one.

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Pickles and Pickling

I’ve mentioned before how I have more of a salt-tooth than a sweet one. There’s no better example of this than my childhood favorite: garlic cucumber deli pickles. The saltier, the more sour and garlicky, the better. Ask my mom, she’ll tell you that pickles were pretty much a food group in my diet as a child. To this day, my family gives 1 gallon jars of kosher dills as gifts.

While briny cucumber pickles have always held a special place in my mouth, I am a huge fan of just about any pickled plant.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting about this summer’s pickling experiments. I’m still a beginner and I’m going more for taste than for long shelf life. Over this summer I’ve found some techniques I like better than others, though I’d love to hear from more experienced picklers as I go for their tips on how to make my various pickles even better.

I’ve already talked about Lemon Pickles, next I’ll delve into cucumbers.

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Bittersweet’s Chocolate Chickpea Spread

Move over Nutella, I’ve found a chocolate spread that’s richer, thicker, cheaper and easier to get my hands on. I’m not sure I’ll ever look back.

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Lemon Pickles

This post has been a long time coming. I really wanted to make sure I liked these little guys before posting them. Last night, we finished the jar of lemon pickles we made around the time we had Iron Chef Lemons at work. That’s how many lemons there were – it took over three months for the two of us to eat the whole batch.

When faced with an abundance of lemons, I remembered my mother pickling pretty round lemon slices as a child. I didn’t enjoy the acidic taste then. But then, there are many things I didn’t enjoy as a child that I enjoy now. I decided that I had to make them myself before completely ruling them out.

Before calling my mother, as I tend to do in these situations, I decided to pull out my copy of Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of Syrian Jews by Poopa Dweck. This book has saved me many a how-to phone call when it comes to family recipes. My mother heard of its existence a few years ago and went out and got one for every household in our family. The recipes are very close to the way my grandmother used to cook, and the pictures might as well be of my own family gatherings (right down to the dishes the author uses for olives!). I will say,  however, that since these recipes have been passed down so many generations without being written down, the instructions can often be confusing or include editing errors. I’ve learned to use this book as a guideline but not an exact set of instructions.

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