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Recipe: How to make harira

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When you learn to make traditional Moroccan harira from Meme Suissa, you're not learning to make harira from Meme Suissa. You're learning to make harira from her mother, from her grandmother, and so on. You're learning a recipe that goes back centuries.

But of course Meme uses no recipe. Her daughter Kathy Shapiro stood by and wrote down the amounts for ingredients that have never before been quantified. Meanwhile, I stood across from Meme and watched her cook — watched her measure onions in the palm of her hand and spices between her three fingers. Many times, she didn't even look at what she was picking up; she just knew the feel and the weight by the experience of her 84 years.

Harira is a traditional Moroccan soup. In the Suissa home in Casablanca, and then in Montreal, it was served at festive meals as well as everyday dinners. What makes the soup special is the slurry of flour and water added for thickening, followed by fresh-squeezed lemon juice beaten with egg. The jolt of acid brightens the flavors of the vegetables and chicken and puts the soup squarely into the tradition of Greek avgolemono and Persian stews and soups that rely on sour limes, sumac and other such flavorings. Make it correctly, and every bite will reveal new flavors.

It's a one-dish meal, complete with garbanzo beans, lentils, noodles, egg, many vegetables and, if you like, chicken. You could eat a salad with it, but you won't have room for much more.

Harira, gentle and nourishing, belongs to both Muslim and Jews in Morocco. The Jews eat it to break the Yom Kippur fast (well, that and a shot of fig liquor). The Muslims serve it during Ramadan. 

More after video.

When I first asked Meme to show me how she makes the harira, it was the dead of winter — and I can't imagine a better soup to have on a cold day. But made with the first vegetables of spring or the ripe tomatoes of summer, the soup is adaptable to any season.

As for spicing, Meme told me people in Morocco like the soup with fresh or dried chili. But her family, she lamented, never likes it spicy.

Making the harira couldn't be easier. Meme sautéed carrots, onions and celery, added her spices, her stock and tomatoes and let it simmer. Then she mixed together and added flour and water to thicken, then the egg and lemon juice, along with some noodles. She boiled it for a short while longer, and it was ready.

While it was cooking, we sat down — and maybe it was the smell of the soup suffusing a kitchen near Pico Boulevard that sparked her memory  — but Meme began to reminisce about life in Casablanca.  

Everyone lived together, joined by private courtyards, shaded by lemon and orange trees. The men returned from work for long lunches, the children played together, the women had help.

“We had a very good life,” she said.

After the Six-Day War caused a backlash against Jews in Arab countries, the Suissa family left for Montreal, and Meme’s life changed drastically. She and her husband worked long hours, scrimping to raise children without help, the extended family dispersed across a cold, snowy city.  

The one constant was the food, brought from Morocco, unchanged. In her son David’s kitchen, Meme conjured up the memory of Casablanca again, hot and (gently) spiced, in a bowl.

Meme Suissa's Moroccan Harira Soup

This is Meme Suissa’s recipe as written down by her daughter, Kathy Shapiro. For a vegetarian version, you may substitute vegetable broth and omit the chicken.  That’s our suggestion, not Meme’s.

  • 2 cups diced onions

  • 2 cups diced celery

  • 1 cup chopped parsley

  • 1 cup chopped cilantro

  • 1/4 cup olive or vegetable oil

  • 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric

  • 1/2 teaspoon dried red chili (optional)

  • 1-2 teaspoon salt

  • 1 teaspoon pepper

  • 1 cup green lentils, rinsed

  • 1 can (15 ounce) garbanzo beans, peeled

  • 1 can (15 ounce) crushed tomatoes or 4 medium chopped fresh tomatoes

  • 2 quarts or more good chicken broth*

  • 1 egg

  • 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

  • 1/4 cup flour

  • 4 cups cold water

  • 3/4 cup extra fine egg noodles

  • Half of a cooked chicken, cubed or shredded, white and dark meat (from chicken used to make broth)

  • 1/4 cup chopped cilantro

 

Whisk together flour and water, set aside.

Beat egg and lemon juice, set aside.

Heat oil and add onion, celery, cilantro, parsley, turmeric, chili (if desired) and 1 teaspoon salt.

Sauté over medium/high heat until well-cooked and blended, about 10 minutes.

Add 1 quart of the stock, lentils, garbanzos and tomatoes, bring to a boil.

Reduce heat and simmer until lentils are tender but not too mushy, about 20-25 minutes.

Add remaining stock, chicken, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon pepper and continue to simmer another 5 minutes.

While stirring slowly, stream in egg/lemon mixture, followed by half of the flour/water mixture.

Bring to a low boil. Stir in noodles.

At any point, add a bit of stock, water or flour mixture to desired consistency. The soup should be hearty and somewhat thick.

Stir in remaining 1/4 cup cilantro. Add salt to taste.

*Meme makes hers with a whole chicken, water and onion, salt and pepper, simmered for a couple of hours.

Koreatown Lunch

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At night Koreatown is Manhattan– packed restaurants, backed up valet stands, lines out the doors to even the diviest BBqs.  By day, it's a different story.  You might be the only customer. You'll see the families behind these family-run places.  You'll see the servers plucking the stems off a haystack of sweet peas piled on a dining table. Or you'll see this: the daughter sitting alone in a place that by midnite wll  be crammed full of hipsters.  She'll be watching educational cartoons in English.  Her immigrant parents will be peeling a pile of fishy-smelling brown roots, getting ready for the dinner rush.  And the girl?  She'll be going to medical school.

I took this picture when I had a lunch meeting at Yan Bian on 3rd and Western Friday afternoon.  We were the only customers. We let the owner bring us three of her favoirte Korean-Chinese dishes, all of them spiked with pointy red chilis.  My favorite things: Spicy chicken. Beef with mushrooms and chili.  And this picture.

The Kosher Bacon Donut

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Harry Ben-Zvi, the founder and owner of something called The Glazed Donut Bistro, had a problem.  He opened a new donut shop, and as a strongly-identified Jew, he wanted to post a mezuzah, the ritual amulet marking the entrance to a  Jewish home or business, on his door.

The problem was … well, I should let him explain, in an email he sent me a couple of weeks ago.

And yes, that really is a glazed donut bacon sandwich:

Being a proud yet fairly secular Jewish man opening up an artisan donut shop, I found myself facing a religious dilemma.

I wanted to hang a big, beautiful Mezuzah on the front door so everyone would know who owned this great looking shop.

Earning some extra points with the man upstairs couldn't hurt the new venture either.

Problem being, the donut shop is not Kosher…not even close.

Could I still have my Mezuzah? Yes

Should I still have my Mezuzah? On the front door?

As the Maimonides has long since passed to answer this most monumental of questions, I asked my old Rabbi.

The big hearted orthodox Rabbi asked about the shop being open on the Sabbath.

I replied; “This location, these rents, not much choice”

The Rabbi understood.

Ever the faithful solider, the Rabbi moved on to the menu.

“Are the donuts kosher?” asked the Rabbi.

I said no.

“You know, making donuts kosher is easy” the Rabbi followed up .

I smiled and told him; “Not these donuts”.

“What do you mean” asked the Rabbi.

I pointed to a picture of our Maple Bacon Glazed Donut and explained

(I didn't have the heart to mention our Glazed Pulled Pork Donut Sliders).

“So Rabbi, what's the call? Can I put up my Mezuzah on the front door?”

The Rabbi contemplated and thoughtfully replied:

The mitzvah of hanging a Mezuzah on the front door would be nullified the moment a  Jewish patron unwittingly eats treif.

The compromise; Forgo the Mezuzah on the front door and hang a Mezuzah on the office door.

So what is a Jew to do?

It's a free country and I could hang my Mezuzah on the front door…or I could split the baby (or in this case, the donut) in half and temper my Jewish pride with some Judaic humility.

The Mezuzah will go up on my office door, and I will sell maple bacon glazed donuts and pulled pork sliders on the Sabbath.

As I am a G-d fearing man, I hope the big guy upstairs understands.

People of the Vine: Rob Eshman talks Jews, wine and history with Jeff Morgan

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Jeff Morgan is winemaker and co-owner of Covenant Wines, based in Napa Valley, where he makes kosher wine under the Covenant, RED C and Landsman labels.

Rob Eshman: To start, let’s put aside, for a moment, the distinction between kosher and non-kosher wine and pose a more fundamental question: Why is wine so critical to Jewish life and celebration?

Jeff Morgan: In every ancient Mediterranean grape-growing community, wine was an integral part of the dietary regimen as well as religious practice. The Greeks and Romans ultimately lost faith in Dionysus and Bacchus, but they kept their vineyards. And their modern-day progeny continue to grow grapes and drink wine daily. 

History led the Jews down a different path. In ancient Israel, viticulture was also an essential part of Jewish life. This is reflected in the Torah, where wine is regularly alluded to, beginning with Noah. We lost our land after the Roman destruction of the Temple 2,000 years ago. Still, our ancestors managed to maintain their customs and religion throughout the ensuing millennia. For much of this time, Jews could not plant vineyards, and wine production was problematic.

 

RE: If you accept modern historical thinking that the Bible was composed around 500 B.C.E. by exiles returning from Babylon to Persian-controlled Palestine, did the wine rituals and customs reflect surrounding customs or were they passed-down ancient traditions, or both? Were they unique to Jews or common to other religions and peoples of that time? Is there scholarship on the roots of Judaism’s wine customs?

JM: Whatever your theory on the Bible’s origins, its stories bear witness to our people’s long history. Whether written or oral, Jewish wine tradition is the result of longstanding cultural practice. 

Still, the Jewish relationship to wine has remained rooted in religious practice. Despite challenges in simply finding a bottle [or an amphora] of wine, our ancestors were able to maintain their wine traditions. I would venture to say that we Jews have the oldest codified relationship to wine of any people on earth. In this light, how could wine be anything but critical to Jewish life?

[Jews and wine: A timeline]

RE: Is wine seen as a gateway to God in the way some tribes use hallucinogenics? Or was it simply a common beverage elevated by religious authorities?

JM: There’s some truth to both. You don’t need to be a talmudic scholar or have a Ph.D. in anthropology to understand that the mind-altering effects of [too much] alcohol might have caused early Jews to suspect that wine could open the door to an alternative reality. 

You refer to wine as a “common” beverage. I would counter that it is a thoroughly “uncommon” one. The early rabbis recognized wine’s unique qualities and so incorporated wine into Jewish religious life. But I would hardly say they elevated it. It was a natural development. 

 

RE: Was wine limited to ceremonial, ritual and festive use, or did it play a role in daily Jewish life?

JM: The people of every wine-growing nation drink wine daily. In this respect, why should the Jews in ancient Israel have been different? Wine aided in digestion by stimulating salivary glands. It also provided significant amounts of vitamin B, along with manganese and iron. Anyone who has ever enjoyed a glass of fine wine knows that it also can soothe mind and body at the end of a hard workday. In short, a daily dose of wine is and was a no-brainer!

 

RE: Islam bans alcohol and many Christian sects oppose it. Did Judaism ever give rise to a “temperance” movement?

JM: Not that I know of. How can you make Kiddush with “temperance”? Let’s remember that Kiddush [with wine] was legal even during the United States’ misguided experiment with Prohibition.

Rudd Vineyard. Photos by Steve Goldfinger

RE: So you’re saying the relationship of Jews and wine was codified in our holy books and customs. How did it translate to real world Jews in history? If the surrounding cultures opposed alcohol, did Jews follow suit? I noticed in Morocco, Jews owned the vineyards around Mogador.

JM: Well, we weren’t always so successful in maintaining our tradition. I believe the Muslims ripped out most of the vineyards in Israel once they took over back in the eighth century. I would hope that we benefited from a “benign neglect” attitude. During many of these historical periods, the “abstainers” were probably happy to know where they could find a good bottle of wine! 

RE: And in Eastern Europe?

JM: It’s unlikely that the Jews in the shtetl had enough wine stashed away for daily enjoyment. It was easier to grow good wine grapes in Morocco than Poland. Their priority was to make certain enough Kiddush wine was available for Shabbat and other holy or festive occasions. 

 

RE: And in the United States, how did the idea of sweet kosher wine come about?

JM: I guess Concord grapes are the culprits. New World Jewish immigrants adopted them 150 years ago; they were the only grapes around. A native American member of the species vitis labrusca, Concords, in my opinion, were never meant for wine. They are better for eating. Fermented, they have a “foxy” quality — that is, an earthy, musky flavor — that needs to be disguised with sugar. The wines of Israel and Europe traditionally were made with grapes from the species vitis vinifera, like Cabernet and Chardonnay, for example. Unlike Concords, these vinifera grapes are delicious when fermented dry.

 

RE: Passover is a holiday structured around wine — was that a Jewish innovation?

JM: I don’t believe so. As I’ve already said, most ancient Mediterranean cultures were celebrating important occasions with wine. Nonetheless, the Hebrew term for feast or banquet — mishteh — comes from the word lishtot, to drink. For me, this is further confirmation that wine has long held a pivotal place in Jewish celebration. 

 

RE: Was there ever a strain in Judaism that opposed wine and alcohol consumption?

JM: I hope not.

 

RE: I think the Nazirites did. That didn’t last long.

JM: And Maimonides, no less, castigated the Nazirites for abstaining from wine, rather than just drinking in moderation. 

 

RE: For all the embrace of wine in the Bible, there’s clear condemnation of drunkenness. “Do not drink wine nor strong drink, you, nor your sons with you, when you go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest you die: It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations” (Leviticus 10:9). The message is: Enjoy wine, but not too much?

JM: There is a lot of common sense in the Bible. That message should be right up there with the Ten Commandments!

 

RE:  Christianity uses wine as a sacrament — it is the blood of their savior. Does that idea have Jewish roots?

JM: Aside from some poetic license that might associate the color of wine with blood — and this is common to all wine-drinking cultures — I really have no sense of a wine and blood connection in Judaism. Sure, Christianity borrowed from Jewish tradition regarding wine, but I have no idea who came up with the blood thing. For the record, you can make Kiddush on white wine! 

Rudd Vineyard is owned by Leslie Rudd, business partner of Jeff Morgan.

RE: The blessing of the wine does not use the word for wine. It simply refers to it as “the fruit of the vine.” But wine is so much more than that — the result of technique, fermentation, yeasts, sugars and other ingredients. Do you find a spiritual lesson in referring to it simply as “the fruit of the vine”?

JM: Wine is naturally blessed, or holy. Kiddush helps us experience or recognize the holy nature of special moments such as Shabbat. In the same way, we don’t bless just “the bread,” we bless “the bread brought forth from the earth.” Our prayers always make the connection between God, man and earth.

Maybe the wording of our blessing has to do with the fact that grapes are purely a creation of God, but wine requires human intervention. As a winemaker, I can tell you I pray a lot during the harvest. Sure, we humans make the wine. But we are not totally in control. I set things up as best as I can for success, but someone else is driving the wine train.

 

RE: What percentage of Jews will drink only kosher wine?

JM: That number probably coincides with the number of Jews that are “Sabbath-observant” or [in this country] Orthodox. My guess is, maybe, 10 to 15 percent.

 

RE: How do you explain the boom in quality kosher wine — of which, truth be told, Covenant stands as a shining example?

JM: Thank you for the compliment. It’s all about demand and supply. A more sophisticated public wants to drink better. And wines the world over — kosher or not — are better than they used to be. Better viticulture; better winemaking across the board.

RE: As a winemaker, how do you explain the laws of kosher wine: Are they there to make wine better, or to keep Jews separate, or what?

JM: I really don’t presume to able to explain the laws of kashrut. But my guess is that they are linked more to religious practice and societal control than wine quality. 

 

RE: Kosher wine gets a bad rap because people assume the process of pasteurization, what is called in Hebrew mevushal, degrades the wine. Do you agree?

JM: If so-called wine experts knew just a little bit about kosher wine, they would know that it doesn’t have to be pasteurized at all. In fact, most of the fine kosher wine coming from the 300-plus wineries in Israel today is not pasteurized (or mevushal, in Hebrew). The same goes for the best French and Spanish kosher wines. Our kosher Covenant wines from California have never been pasteurized either. In fact, they are not even filtered, as are so many other wines — both kosher and not kosher — today. 

In the old days, they really boiled the wine. That probably made it undrinkable. Today flash pasteurization — which rapidly heats and cools the juice or wine — has far less negative effect. In fact, sometimes heating can enhance aromas, making them more fruit forward. There is nothing simple about wine — except drinking it. Let’s just say flash pasteurization involves complex technology that, when used properly, can produce excellent wine. 

 

RE: So if you could tell contemporary Jews one thing about wine, that would be?

JM: Wine, as our heritage demonstrates, is for every day — not only the Sabbath and holy days. If you are not drinking good wine in moderation at most meals, you’re missing out on one of the great joys of life. 

5 Steps to the Best Nicoise Salad

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This story by Judy Zeidler about cooking for an empty nest really hit me hard.   Judy is a glass-half-full bundle of enthusiasm, and I suppose her children follow suit. Their brood departs, they adjust their recipes, move on.  I find myself not so… adjustable.

Our son left for college two years ago and I still haven't got used to cooking for three.  Now our daughter is on the cusp of college, and I'm facing cooking for two.  It just…sucks.  A big part of the joy of cooking is the joy of feeding– at least feeding the people you love.  That's what gives me the energy to look forward to shopping and cooking after a full day at work.  That's often been my recreation after a full day at work.

Long before we had kids, I loved to cook dinner for just the two of us.  Aren't I just going back to that?  Yes, and no.  Ever since we filled those two seats at the dinner table, anything less than four feels a bit empty.  I find myself making faster, simpler things, the kind of dishes that scale down from four servings to two but still feel like a meal.

Nicoise salad is one of those dishes.  Almost every week, when the kids filled the table, I'd make one with whatever vegetables were freshest.  Now I'm pushing to make a slighty smaller version– though I still find myself making enough at least four, out of habit.

Nicoise is easy because we always have a can of tuna or a hunk of wild cold-smoked salmon, and eggs.  You open, arrange with whatever good vegetables are around (lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, green beans, peppers, avocado), add capers and olives, lemon and olive oil– done. Easy– but not perfect.

To make it even better, here are five tips I've learned over the years:

1. Use olive-oil packed tuna or use a lot of oilive oil and lemon directly on your tuna.  Dry clumps or shreds of tuna in the salad feel like eraser in your mouth.  Tuna needs moisture.  

2. Make a simple dressing. Make a dressing of 1 part fresh-squeezed lemon juice, three parts great olive oil, salt, pepper and a lump Dijon mustard.  Keep it simple but strong.

3. Warm potatoes, warm eggs, cold dressing.  Boil potatoes and slice while still warm.  I scrub but don't peel them if the skins are thin. Place them still warm onto the salad, and pour the cool dressing directly onto them.  It absorbs and each potato becomes a small salad in itself.

4. Don't skimp on capers, or olives.  Capers and olives are the salt of your salad.  Rinse the capers briefly to get rid of excess salt or vinegar, then scatter like salt across the surface.  Use whatever good olives you have, not the canned California type.  I prefer kalamata olives in my Nicoise. Saltier and meatier.  If they're not pitted, warn your guests.

5. Eggs slightly undercooked, beans slightly overcooked. Soft eggs with bright yolks taste better and separate ypur salad from the stuff they serve at the cafe in your office building.  And green beans that are one smidge softer than al dente soak up the dressing better, melt in with the rest. Place your eggs in cold water and bring to boil.  Reduce heat a bit and continue on a gentle boil for two and a half minutes.  Drain and let sit.  When ready to serve peel and slice in half.   As for the beans, blanch in boiling water until very tender, just past bright green.  Immediately plunge into cold water, drain and add to sald.

I'll put the recipe below. It serves four.  Or, with a bit of melancholy, two.

 

[RECIPE]

Nicoise Salad

1 head butter lettuce or other green (arugula, spring mix, etc)

1 handful green beans, trimmed

3 ripe tomatoes, diced

1 avocado, peeled, seeded, cubed

1 yellow , red or orange pepper, cored and diced

1/2 pounds potatoes, scrubbed.

4 eggs

olives

capers

1 lemon

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

1/2 c. olive oil

salt and pepper

 

Make the dressing:  squeeze lemon juice into a small powl.  Add mustard and stir well.  Add olive oil, salt and pepper and whisk, shake or stir briskly.  Taste and adjust with more lemon or oil.

Fill a 2 quart saucepan with water.  Bring to a boil. Add green beans and boil until very tender, remove and plunge into cold water. Drain and dry.

Add eggs  to boiling water.  Boil for ten minutes, remove and place in cold water.

Add potatoes to the boiling water and cook until very tender.

In the meantime, in a large rather flat bowl, place lettuce, then arrange the vegetables in groups on top.  Place tuna in center, sliced potatoes and eggs around that.  Sprinkle with capers and olives. Pour dressing over all.  Serve.

Katsuji Tanabe takes 'Chopped!'

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Katsuji Tanabe is the onion of kosher chefs– every time you think you've figured him out, you find there;'s a whole other layer.

Tonight Katsuji held a party at the Mexican Consulate near downtown Los Angeles to screen the episode of the Food Network show, “Chopped!” on which he appears as a contestant.

I first met Katsuji when he was the chef at the kosher steakhouse Shilo on Pico.   He stood out.  Katsuji grew up in Mexico to Japanese and Mexican parents.  He came to America at age 19 with no money, and worked his way into some of the finest restaurants. He isn't Jewish, but he was intrigued by the challenge of cooking kosher.  It was clear he was cooking at a level that went unappreciated by many patrons.  Katsuji was working up hand-chopped aged burgers with cashew milk blue cheese and authentic Baja style tacos with homemade habenero salsa.  The clientele just wanted well-done steak.

Katsuji moved on to open his own place, Mexikosher, also on Pico, where those homemade salsas are center stage.  It's inexpensive, delicious, and maybe the most inadvertantly healthy Mexican food in LA– no cheese, sour cream, lard.  “99 percent of Mexican restaurants aren't kosher,” is the place's motto. “We are the 1 percent. Occupy Mexikosher.”

Katsuji's  first on screen appearance on a food show was in a web series on jewishjournal.com, The Chosen Dish.  He made Thai Tuna Tempura Matzoh Balls. The Food Ntework heard of him and made him a contestant on “Chopped.”

About 60 friends, family and colleagues gathered in a function room at the Consulate to watch the show with him.  Katsuji was his ebullient self– dressed in fancier street clothes, his hair slicked back, he rushed to hug people and introduce friends to one another.   The crowd was as eclectric as the chef. I met an attorney named Ottavio Olivas who moonlighted as the creator/chef of a pop-up called Ceviche Project.   I met a producer from the Travel Channel who worked with Katsuji on his next top secret TV project.  I met a guy who plays hockey with Katsuji.

Hockey?

“Oh, he's crazy competitive,” the guy said.  “He plays in a league, like four times a week.”

Before the show started we ate hors d'oeuvres, including one based on something Katsuji invented for the show– schwarma mole.  A mixologist poured a drink of tequila, pear liquor, ginger liquor, lime, soda and mint, with– as a nod to Mexikosher– a Manischewitz floater.  There was also lots of beer– Katsuji likes to party.

Once we sat to watch the show, the Mexican Japanese Christian kosher cooking hockey playing chef's competitive streak really became apparent.

He trash-talked his opponents (“His plate looks like dog food.”).  He got in their heads. (“I'm crazy enough to open a Mexican kosher restaurant, what can't I do?”)  He talked smack. (“You look tired,” he said to one chef. “You should just quit.”)

But what he really did was cook like a demon.  The gimmick of “Chopped!” is you have to make three different courses from three different sets of bizarre ingredients.  You have 10 seconds once the ingredients are revelaed to start cooking, and 20 minutes to cook.  The completed food sits for 45 minutes before the three-judge panel tastes it.  The day goes from 5:30 am – 11 pm.  

“They have you meet at a Starbucks in the morning. They want to get you hyped,” said Katsuji.  Beforehand a friend had tipped him off that he should just drink water all day, no coffee.   He said that helped him stay calm as the other chefs got more and more wired.

The results were three inventive dishes that drew less on his kosher knowledge and more on his mad Mexican cooking skills.  If the hockey game in handy it was in being able to survive and long slog of competitition.

And when the onscreen announcer declared Katsuji the winner, the crowd in the Consulate erupted in applause.  Katsuji stood in front of the screen, cradling his toddler daughter, beaming.

“Do you think you'll get first place?” the TV announcer had asked the chef.

“Is there anything else?” he asked right back.

World of Flavor

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Every two years, the Culinary Institute of America hosts its World of Flavors conference in its castle-like Napa Valley compound.

Some of the planet’s best chefs show up, along with food purveyors from across the globe, and the endless meals, spread out in a massive hall lined with wine casks the size of Spanish galleons, each revolve around a single educational theme, so that the attendees — institutional food vendors, manufacturers, restaurant chains, journalists — can deepen their understanding about one aspect of food, and in turn use that knowledge to impress, entice and engorge you, the ever-hungry consumer.

Last year’s subject: spices.

I went — first, because I knew I would get to eat some of the world’s best food and wine in the company of great chefs over two crisp fall days in Napa, and second, because the World of Flavors is a stealth United Nations.  It quietly, consistently, draws chefs from countries and cultures that otherwise are in conflict, if not active warfare.  I scanned the roster and found chefs straight from, or originally from, Iran, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, and, yes, Israel. 

World of Flavors is a kind of chefs sans frontiers, where cooks come to cook and learn from other cooks—and they bat away questions about politics from people like me.   It’s a cliché—but one that I never get tired of– that food can break barriers.  But in  Napa, I actually began to see how, and it had exactly to do with the subject of this particular conference.

Chefs from Italy, Sri Lanka, Iran and Israel, divided by culture, religion, distance, and even by cuisine, nevertheless all share a common language — spices.

It turns out those fragrant ingredients haven’t just inspired cooks, they have shaped history and culture. We are the beneficiaries of an ancient spice trade that started millennia ago, with no concern for modern borders.  The arc of flavor began in the far-off, exotic spice-producing countries and spread to Europe, China and the New World.

Not that the process was always pretty.  The Dutch decided to take over the West Indies clove and nutmeg trade, and in doing so massacred entire islands full of people. The Spaniards plundered tropical America and returned to Europe with chilis and chocolate. 

But the upshot was the beginnings of Tom Friedman’s flat world.  Most of the world’s basil, which is indigenous to India, now comes from Egypt’s Nile River valley.  Most herbs come from the Mediterranean, home to 17 species of oregano. Dutch food is inflected with Indonesian spices.

“The ramifications of the spice trade are that the world came together through food,” according to Michael Krondl, author of “The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice,” who was a featured speaker at the conference.

On the second floor of the CIA’s Greystone headquarters, a historic castle-like property in St. Helena, chefs from around world took over the stations of a gleaming, cavernous kitchen and proved Krondl’s point, dish by dish.

I was most curious, for obvious reasons, about the Middle Eastern chefs. I wandered over to demonstrations by cookbook author Joan Nathan and the Israeli chef Erez Komarovsky.

“From Thailand to Israel every dish begins with onion, garlic, and chili,”Komarovsky said.

For a dish of baby cauliflower stuffed with lamb, he added spoonfuls of cumin, cinnamon and clove, all of which he ground by hand.  The room filled with fragrance.

Fragrance, rare and familiar, was everywhere.   Singaporean Indian chef/author Devagi Sanmugam brought kapok blossoms and stone flower, a lichen that grows inside wells, from Singapore. Musa Dagdeviren—the Turkish Emeril Lagasse– made a lamb and eggplant dish flavored with cumin, lamb fat—loads of it — a slab of butter and a sun-dried Turkish chili called marash.  Marash, mark my words, will be the chipotle of 2014.

In another room,  Khulood Atiq, one of the first professional female chefs in the United Arab Emirates, was preparing a typical Emirati spice blend:  dried lemon, cumin, coriander, and fennel.  Outside, Moroccan chef Mourad Lahlou prepared a rub for lamb shoulder: saffron and cumin blended with soft butter.

“In Morocco,” he said, “food and cooking is about memories, looking back more than looking forward.”

Back inside, Yotam Ottolenghi, chef and author of the best-selling “Jerusalem: A Cookbook,” made a kind of shakshouka with ground lamb and harissa — yes, there was a lot of lamb everywhere — while chef Greg Malouf, whose family is Lebanese, looked on, and traded notes.

As the dishes piled up, the conflicts that bedevil cultures seemed to whither under the relentless sensual assault of fragrance and flavor.  The chefs ran from their own classes to taste dishes prepared by their fellow chefs.

I stood beside a Thai chef as we  sampled ‪Djerba chef Abderrazak Haouari’s chickpea sous vide egg, harissa, olives, capers and croutons.  It was the best breakfast dish you’ve never heard of. “I want to hug him,” the Thai chef said.

Spices, so often acquired in conflict, now serve as a bridge among cultures.   If only we all understood what chefs do:  It would be a dull world, indeed, without the strange, the new, the different.

“You almost think,” Ottolenghi said, “a little lemon juice would solve all the world’s problems.”

 

Read my last column on the 2009 conference here.

There is a ridiculously small fee ($7.99) to watch the videos from the conference.  They are 1000 times more educational than the Food Network.  The link is here.

[RECIPE]

Harous

Chef Abderrazak Haouari uses this Djerban version of harissa on sous vide eggs, served with chickpeas, capers, croutons and olives.   It is brick red and warmly hot:  great with fish, eggplant, chicken.

Makes 1/2 cup.

1 medium onion, very thinly sliced

Pinch of turmeric

2 tablespoons kosher salt

4 ancho chiles, stemmed and seeded

3 dried chipotle chiles, stemmed and seeded

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon ground caraway seeds

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Pinch of cinnamon

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

In a shallow bowl, toss the onion slices with the turmeric and salt. Cover the onion with plastic wrap and let stand overnight at room temperature.

Meanwhile, heat a cast-iron skillet until hot to the touch. Add the anchos and chipotles and toast over moderate heat, pressing lightly with a spatula until the chiles are very pliable and fragrant, about 1 minute. Transfer the chiles to a work surface and let cool completely, then tear them into 1-inch pieces. In a spice grinder, coarsely grind the chiles.

Drain the onion slices in a strainer, pressing hard to extract as much liquid as possible. Transfer the onions to a food processor and pulse until pureed. Add the ground chiles, coriander, caraway, pepper and cinnamon and process to a paste. With the machine on, gradually add the olive oil and puree until fairly smooth.

The harous can be refrigerated for up to 6 months.

Boulettes Larder: When Cool Chefs Serve Hot Food

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We didn’t know anything about Boulettes Larder when we stumbled upon it in a corner of San Francisco's Ferry Building last February. That in and of itself seems to be a faux pas in food-obsessed San Francisco, if not an actual Class B Felony.

The counter was filled with jars of exotic salts and spices with handwritten labels. Behind that was a large kitchen, full of working cooks. There was just one large farmhouse style table by the kitchen—either, I assumed, for setting out more products for sale, or for some kind of scheduled Williams and Sonoma-esque cooking demonstration.

“Do you serve food here?” I asked a young, pretty woman behind a counter.

“Yes, we do,” said the woman. And as she said it, two customers just ahead of us, a pair of middle aged women in Bay Area chic, audibly snickered. Oh—nothing makes a person feel more welcome, more embraced, in a restaurant than being immediately mocked.

The hostess covered quickly. “We just finished our breakfast service,” she said. “Our lunch service begins at 11:30.”

“Can we see a menu?” my wife asked. I checked over to Mrs and Mrs Snicker—they had already taken their seats at the farmhouse table.

“Chef doesn’t release the menu until 11:30,” she said.

It was 11:26. The hostess had to see our confusion– what was this menu, FedExed from Langley?

“But I think I have yesterday’s I can show you,” the hostess added.

There were seven dishes on the small printed menu from the previous Thursday. Example: Greens Soup with harissa. Vadouvan braised chicken legs. Lamb shank ragu braised with red wine and herbs (and creamy rice). Vegetarian Farmhouse (“Caramelized cauliflower, warm lentil hummus, our cows milk yogurt, toasted cumin crispy rusks, olive oil fried eggs, shallots). I turned to my wife. They could laugh at me all they wanted, but I was staying put. Attitude or not, somewhere here knew how to cook—or at least how to make food sound really good.

The place was mostly kitchen—seating seemed to be an afterthought. Gleaming copper and stainless steel pots and skillets surrounded a large central stove. Men and women in chef’s aprons tended to their chores with librarian-like quiet and surgical focus. A woman shaped macaroon dough into mounds. The pastry chef, I figured.

Our waiter was a man in his thirties with a well-trimmed beard and a friendly manner. He sat us at the head of the table, closest to the chef. I caught the eye of Mrs. Snarky, who now was smiling at me.

“You must be VIPs,” she said. 

At 11:34 the hostess handed us the menu. It was a single  8 ½ X 11 inch piece of cream-colored paper, hot off the laser printer, folded in half. We looked: Parsnip soup. Persian Salad (sweet lettuces, butter lettuce, mache, feta, citrus, herbs, dried persimmon, cucmber, radish, za’atar, pomegranate molasses) Seafood rice congee with braised shrimp, black cod, kampachi coriander and kaffir lime, warm roasted chicken breast salad (little gem lettuce, chicken broth vinaigrette, sibley squash puree, roasted baby carrots and marinated mushrooms). The Vegetarian Farmhouse was steamed barley and chickpeas with poached eggs nettle pesto and radicchio.  

At the center of the battery of cooks a stern woman, her black hair pulled back tight, worked at the stove. She never looked up to acknowledge us. Occasionally she broke from her cooking to direct or consult with the others. So she’s the chef, I thought. There were twelve diners around our table.  There were thirteen staff and cooks, including the chef.

The chef set to work on our meal. With one hand she cracked the eggs into a skillet of simmering water. With the other she centered a stainless steel bowl that she soon began filling with the tips of chervil, lettuces, madeleine-thin slices of radish and cucumber. She never once looked at us, her guests. She never smiled in welcome, or at anyone.

“Fire a parsnip” I heard her say.

Moments later the parsnip soup arrived, hot, drizzled with sharp olive oil. If she had asked I would have said it was one of the finest soups I’d ever tasted. But she didn’t ask.

She laid some raw wild white shrimp in a saute pan, let them seize up, then braised them in a broth. We were three feet from her hands as she fileted, in deft economical movements, a loin of sea bass and a side of hamachi, for the bowl of congee.

“Nice job,” I said, loud enough to warrant, at least, a grunt. Nothing. What’s the point of an open kitchen if you have a closed personality? I got the feeling she enjoyed every aspect of the restaurant, except for the part about feeding people. It made me begin to resent the whole place, except for two things:

The first is that the food she made was just superb. Her focus rewarded us first with that soup and the Persian salad— this ideal blending of za’atar and feta and dried persimmon. Then came the congee of deeply flavored seafood broth, bright with kaffir lime, along with its perfectly poached seafood and sterling fresh fish. Then for the kosher among us there was a dish of two eggs she poached in a pan so close to us its steam swirled past my daughter’s curls. The chef placed these eggs on a stew of grains and garbanzo beans and ladled a bright pesto sauce over it. At last came a persimmon pudding, dense and light and autumnal. All, perfect.

The second reason I couldn’t resent her aloofness was because, well, I understand it. I love spending time cooking. When it’s over, when the guests arrive, I can feel loss, imposition. A couple glasses of wine later I bounce back. But for me, the really fun part is over. I learned, Googling, later, that we had lucked into one of the Bay Area’s best dining experiences. For all my food reading, I’d never heard of Boulettes Larder, or the Hungarian born chef,   Amaryll Schwertner. I read, too, that Mark Bittman declared her breakfast the single best breakfast he ever had– and that man has had a few good breakfasts.  Boulettes has since outgrown its space and is moving, in July, to a larger one, where Chef Schwertner, I assume, won't be so close to the mouths she must feed.

Sure, it’s nice for the chef—for someone—to make you feel at home., to welcome you into their restaurant like you’d welcome them into your home.  But that wasn’t going to happen with Amaryll Schwertner. Instead, she just put her feeling, her passion, her knowledge, onto the plate. As they say in sports, she left it all on the field. Which, in the end, was more than good enough for me.

 

Boulettes Larder

info@bouletteslarder.com

1 Ferry Building Marketplace

San Francisco, CA 94111

(415) 399-1155

 

Note: Boulettes Larder is not kosher, but it is a Foodaism favorite.

Passover at Malachy's Bar

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For years now I have had a pre-Passover ritual: I drink one last beer before the holiday starts. 

According to Jewish law, for the entire eight days of Passover, you're forbidden from eating or drinking foods made with wheat, barley, rye, spelt or oats.  Those of you into $10,000 Pyramid would by now have guessed the answer why:  these are “Things That Could Be Leavened.”  And at passover leavened bread is a no-no.

All year I have a, hmm, complex relationship with kosher, outside our home.  But during Passover,  for some reason, I'm scrupulou. I do avoid these foods.  Even though this means avoiding one of my favorite foods, beer.

Usually I just put a bottle aside as we’re cleaning the house in preparation for the holiday, and I make it the last grainy thing to toss out—and I toss it right down my throat.

But this year we celebrated Passover in New York City, and in the apartment where we stayed the only beer was a can of Bud Light, which doesn’t have enough beer flavor to last me through the eight day holiday.  Actually, it doesn't have any flavor at all.

I asked Naomi to join me on my quest for a local bar and a last beer and she was game.   Usually on the first night of Passover we are home, and I am so busy cooking I won’t see her until the seder starts.  Now we had a moment to enter the holiday peacefully, together.

It was cold and overcast and miserable—that is, spring in New York. We  soon decided the best bar was the closest one.   At 72nd and Columbus,  I pulled open the  door on the first storefront with with a beer sign in the window – the sign above the door said Malachy’s.  

An Irish bar at 4 pm on a Monday in New York City— now that’s some good people watching.

We sat at a small table. I ordered a Guinness, and Naomi nursed a coffee with milk she’d bought from a bakery across the street. Then we began a round of “What’s up with them?”

At the side of the bar closest to the front door sat a single woman, pretty, blonde, in her Anne Klein best, drinking alone.  Two musicians walked in, lugging a standup bass in a case.  At another table an older, bald man held a series of meetings with a steady stream of rough-hewn deliverymen who came in and out—we figured he was either the owner, or a bookie.

At the other end of the bar stood the bartender. He was a very solid Irishman with the face of former boxer and shiny head, and the older man and woman he talked and joked with seemed to all be on their second or third round.

An ancient black cook emerged from the kitchen with a plate of fried food. His white apron was tied around his rib cage, over a T shirt that said, “I’m the Cook.”

At the four-top beside us sat an odd family assortment—a little girl, an old man, maybe 80, eating fish and chips, and a woman, middle age, likely the mom.  After a while these people got up to leave.   The older man paid, and I heard him tell the bartender he was about to celebrate his 74th wedding anniversary.

Seventy-four?  I had to say something.

“How is that even possible?” I asked.

His granddaughter—the woman about our age— explained.  They were Jewish. Her grandfather had been coming to Malachy's every year just before the start of Passover  to have one last whiskey—a Seagrams VO, on the rocks.  He was 99 years old.  He'd been coming to Malachy's on the even of Passover, every Passover, for 30 years.

The man and his wife live in Baltimore, but they spend the seder nearby with their daughter and her family.

“One day he went out for a walk to get away from the craziness,” his granddaughter told me, “and he stopped at this bar for a drink, and he’s been coming back ever since.  When I was my daughter’s age, he would take me.”  she pointed to the little girl. ” And now he takes his great-granddaughter.”

“He just has a glass of whiskey each year before Passover?” I asked.

Oh, no, the daughter corrected me.   “He drinks two every night.  He's been doing that as long as I remember.”

The man was tall, straight-backed, and from overhearing their conversation, I could tell he was as sharp as anybody in the place.

I raised my glass to the man and said “L’chaim,” and we wished him a Happy Passover, there in Malachy’s Pub.

The man and his family walked out.   

I turned to the bartender and said, “I'll have what he's having.”

And I toasted Passover– and a 99 year old man named Albert– with my very first sip of Seagrams V.O.