Spiced Seeded Cabbage

Thank you all for your lovely well wishes! We had an amazing trip to California, but I'm going to wait to tell you about that because I think it's time we got back to some cooking! I have to say, I didn't miss my kitchen one bit while we were on our 3 week vacation, but it's nice to be back. It's a good thing I had a break too, since our workplace cafeteria is closed for five (five!!) weeks, so I'm making all our breakfasts, lunches, and dinners at home now. Oy.

I love a good vegetable dish. Vegetables to me are so much fun to cook - they're challenging, you have to add in texture and dimension and the oomph that meat gives to a dish. I like the seasonality, the care taken in preparation, that vegetable cooking brings. Just when I think that X is my go-to favorite way to cook eggplant, I come across Y, and my whole world is changed.

I was nodding in agreement when I read Luisa's post about a head of cabbage being a meal in itself. It's a philosophy I've long stood-by. Whether braised with apples and cider vinegar, flash-cooked with hot pepper and black bean sauce in a wok, shredded and added to a slaw, cabbage is my jam. So, when I cam across this new technique for a spicy cabbage that takes just minutes to prep, well obviously I was on board.

This recipe is great - I love the crunch and mix of flavors of all those whole spices, the easy and fast preparation. This is a great side dish to a pork chop or some grilled chicken, but it's also great on its own or with a fried egg on top.



Spiced Seeded Cabbage
Adapted from Madhur Jaffrey.

half a large head of green cabbage 
1/4 cup vegetable oil 
1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds 
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds 
1 teaspoon sesame seeds 
1 medium onion, peeled and cut lengthwise into fine half rings 
1 teaspoon salt 
smidge cayenne pepper or hot sauce 
squeeze of lemon juice 
1 teaspoon garam masala

1. Cut the cabbage lengthwise into very fine, long shreds. Discard any thick inner core. A bread knife or chef's knife is ideal for this.
2. Place oil in a wok over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, put in the cumin, fennel, and sesame seeds. As soon as the sesame seeds begin to pop, put in the onion. Stir and fry for 3 to 4 minutes or until the onion has browned a bit.
3. Put in the cabbage. Stir and fry for about 6 minutes or until the cabbage has browned somewhat. Put in the salt, garam masala, and cayenne. Turn down the heat to medium-low and cook, stirring now and then, for another 7 to 8 minutes or until the onions appear caramelized and soft. Note: you may need to do this in a couple batches.
4. Add the lemon juice, stir, and taste for seasoning. Serve warm. 

And then we had a wedding.

We did! We flew all the way from Algeria to New York and had a wedding. I still can't believe we pulled it off, that it wasn't just one long dream, that all those people showed up and ate cheese and danced their socks off. I would very much like to go back and repeat the whole thing all over again, only in very slow motion, so that I could nestle myself into every little corner of the whole weekend.

I was never one of those girls who had a dream image of what their wedding would look like, perhaps a fleeting image here or there, but as I've grown up places and their meaning to me have changed. If circumstances could have been different, perhaps it would have been in a big backyard somewhere, with flowers picked by our friends and homemade pie for dessert. A little bit crafty, but not over-the-top burlap cliche. But the reality was we live in Algeria, and our friends live all over the world. I thought, briefly, that a kind of home-grown wedding wouldn't have been right without my mother, but the truth is no wedding would be, or was, complete without her.

So New York, my home for so long, Paul's grad school years, was right in so many ways. On the Thursday before the wedding we went out to the site to look things over, and there, in the bright sunlight between the bridges, I was shocked at how beautiful it was.



Paul and I debated having a wedding at all, after all it's quite expensive and neither of us are terribly traditional. But the thing that swayed me was the memory of my mother telling me about her wedding to my father, that despite the fact that the marriage did not last very long, she was so glad to have had the party. She always reminded me that it was the last time her whole family was together, that in the subsequent Christmases since one family member always missed one holiday or another, and five years later my grandfather died, and that was it. The last time they had been together. Clearly my mother told me that story enough times that it stuck, because how could I not have a wedding after that?

So we told everyone we worked with that the reason we were having a wedding was to see all the people we loved together in one place. And it was true. The wedding, to me, wasn't really about us, after all if you're willing to move to Algeria with someone I don't think there's too much question of marriage cold-feet. It was about getting to spend time with people we don't get to see very often, and my only regret is that we didn't get to see more of everyone. 

Logistically, of course, a wedding is a bit like putting on a show, and I have to say I'm not bad at that myself. I also believe that my time is valuable to me, and that there are some things worth hiring professionals for. We were lucky to work with the awesomest wedding planner (florist/stationer/coordinator/extraordinaire) around, the nicest caterers, the raddest photographer, and of course some great family and friends who helped usher, errand, escort, and fulfill necessary odd tasks, such as sharpening seventy #2 pencils.

Having planned everything from abroad, while I certainly had a picture in my head of what it would look like, we didn't know how things would turn out. Would the room be pretty? Would the food be good? Would it rain? Would people dance? And I have to say, every single element turned out better than we even imagined it could. From the absolutely gorgeous space (again: see awesome wedding planner), to the perfect weather, the joy at seeing so many people coming to the ceremony site. The food shocked us at how delicious it was (food was actually one of the things that we didn't pay much attention to during the wedding planning), including the most tender brisket I have ever had, and pecan pie so good that when we did our "pie cutting" I actually exclaimed, "this is amazing." There were so many other fun elements that we didn't even know would happen, like all the random Brooklynites in the park that day that got to "attend" our ceremony, the spontaneous and perfectly executed electric slide on the dance floor, Paul's dad dancing, conducting our wedding rehearsal on the street in front of the Bowery Hotel, the ice cream sandwich truck we hired for the end of the night, etc.

At the end of it all, I could not be more lucky. Lucky to share such an amazing weekend with so many special people, lucky to have a job where I get to travel all over the world so that I can come back to America and appreciate all that it is, lucky to be able to go on 3 weeks of vacation. But mostly lucky to have a husband who is sitting in the other room playing Bach on his cello while I write. 



Snapshots courtesy of awesome friends and family.








 

Reading Material

For some long flights ahead. I highly recommend the latest Lucky Peach, great interviews, funny writing, good recipes, and the graphics for their apocalyptic-theme are awesome. Kinfolk is too hiperstery for me to subscribe to, but splurging on pretty magazines is one of my travel treats.

Good Greens Salad

This salad came from a craving for a good green salad, something with a mix of crunchy elements (scallions, fennel), buttery things (avocado, pine nuts), lots of herbs and bold flavors (my homegrown mizuna!). Basically, I went to the market and bought anything green that looked good, and the result was delicious. The quantities here are reminiscent of the way I think most of us cook at home, a bit of this, a pinch of that. You could scale this up for a larger crowd.

Good Greens Salad

2 handfuls small sharp lettuces like mizuna or baby arugula
1 large avocado
1 large fennel bulb, bottom trimmed
a few fennel fronds
1 handful cilantro
1 handful parsley
a few sprigs mint
3 scallions
1/4 cup pine nuts
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
fresh lemon juice, olive oil, and salt, for dressing

 1. Trim the large center core from the bottom of the fennel bulb. Slice the fennel bulb very thinly on a mandoline, then place the fennel in a medium bowl. Chop the fennel fronds, cilantro, parsley, and mint and add to the bowl. Slice the scallions, both white and green parts, on the bias and add to the bowl. Dice the avocado, add to the bowl. Add in the lettuce. Drizzle the lemon, olive oil, and salt over the bowl and toss everything to combine. Toast the pine nuts and add to the bowl with the sesame seeds, toss to combine. Serve.

What We've Been Cooking

We are off to America - the first time in nearly a year, I fear I may have culture shock - for a much needed vacation. Over the past month or so, our cooking hasn't been too exciting. Revisiting old favorites, lots of vegetables dishes, enjoying spring fava beans, making up recipes for banana cookies. Paul made a delicious chicken with grapes and apples from Claudia Roden's The Food of Spain. Here are some snapshots of what we've been up to.

Making this classic orange-almond cake for a party. (Stencil from Martha Stewart, and yes it's Christmas themed in May, I know.)




Growing lettuce


Making hummus


Julia Child's Zucchini Tian - who knew zucchini juice was so green!



Brunch - Spinach and smoked bacon frittata, orange/mint salad, (unpictured) Algerian baghir pancakes with honey butter


Making Pie! An old favorite.


Local spring strawberries marinated in honey and vanilla bean paste!

Paris Recommendations Vol. XII

Paris. It is the city I probably know best of any foreign city, but I will admit I can at times find it exhausting. I'm not sure why exactly, maybe because we were there with a list of errands to complete (yes, when you live in Algiers, sometime you run errands in Paris over the weekend), but on this trip Paris just wore me out. I took only 3 photos, a record low. Don't get me wrong - walking around, eating delicious food, stopping in cafes, shoe shopping, it was a great change of pace. But mentally, I wasn't really in vacation mode. Luckily for you, reader, we discovered a few new places along the way to share here.

Also, I found my street!




Verot Charcuterie
This place immediately caught me eye, with its pickled pigs ears and jellied pigs feet and most beautiful vegetable terrines in the window. It's a tiny place with a take-out section on one side and charcuterie on the other. I brought back an assortment of these tiny bite-sized saucissons that nearly caused a riot in my office. Close to the Luxembourg Gardens and would make a good pre-picnic stop.

E. Dehillerin
A cook in Paris really can't not go to this place. When my mother was a student in France, she bought a whole set of copper pots and pans from here. A couple years ago I had them retinned and they are as good as new, now almost 50 years later. I stopped in for some flexi-pan molds and grapefruit spoons.

Bones
Paul ate here in March - small plates with a set menu, light, fresh contemporary cooking, and not expensive. You have to book far ahead and call the day-of to confirm.

Rose Bakery
Good shopping has really extended up into the Northern Marais, we started at this classic Brit-owned place with brunch and some cookies to go.

Also, a Parisian friend asked us for rec's for a Moroccan place in Paris, if anyone know of one please let us know!

On Eating in Algiers

We were driving home two weeks ago when I noticed that all the flags on our route home were at half-mast and that every single radio station was playing Quranic mourning recitations. Concerned, I flipped the radio around until I found a news break where I was able to discern that a former President had died. Subsequently, eight days of national mourning were announced, which meant eight days of no music allowed on the radio, no dance concerts at the arts center. And if I'm going to be frank here- some old guy who was President for a few months decades ago, decamped to Switzerland nearly as many years ago, dies, and I get to practice my Quranic Arabic every morning on my commute? What a bizarre place. I thought I should write about some of Algiers' quirks, but we'll stick to food in this forum. I thought we'd start with eating out (or not, as you may figure by the end of this post).

There is not much of a restaurant culture here. During the civil war in the nineties, which one has to remind oneself is not that long ago since any physical damage to the city has long since been whitewashed over, restaurants were big targets for bombings. As little as ten years ago eating out was considered a dangerous proposition. As such, many restaurants here are done in true speak-easy style - knock on a darkened door, go up to the second floor, and you might find some delicious food and a cold beer. Other restaurants are tucked into hidden corners, down dimly lit allies or in the woods behind the Martyr's monument. Everything is word of mouth, and obviously finding these places can be a challenge. Even then, the selection of good restaurants can be limited.

As for street food, whatever is available in Algiers is pretty limited, only available in certain areas, and most things close up by 6 pm. I've heard there are more options in other cities like Oran. There's lots of "fast food" places, which serve omelets (never have I met a people so obsessed by eggs), sandwiches, salads, and pizza. The sandwiches will almost certainly contain french fries and mayonnaise, and a local favorite is the "sandwich complet viande" which involves scrambled eggs, ground beef, and fries stuffed into french bread. This is a variation on the "plat complet viande" which involves a plate with two ground beef patties, two fried eggs, a salad (often with lettuce and grated beets), and fries.

The other kind of fast food places are little grill stands, where you'll see skewers of the tiniest pieces of meat displayed out front. The skewers often contain things like liver with cubes of fat, or other offal-type cuts. Other streets foods involve croissants and pastries, and m'hjab, an Algerian bread stuffed with spicy tomato sauce (check out this video of mhjab being made, look at how easily the guy can stretch the dough so thinly). Schwarma is also available but is frankly not very good and is often made with that Algerian favorite- turkey. Boureks, the Algerian version of spring rolls, seem like an obvious street food but I know of only one place that runs such a business.

Another oddity of Algiers (as if there weren't enough already), is that despite the overwhelming number of local bread varieties, there are very few actual bread bakeries. Having lived in Syria where there was a bakery rolling pita off the conveyor belt at nearly every corner, I find this baffling. It seems the local subsidized baguettes are trucked in twice daily to your little superette, and then any other breads seem to be made by the shop owner's grandma, or by some other mystery source, which means quality varies greatly from store to store. There are bakeries for pastries but not nearly as many for bread. This would explain why when the other day we were driving and Paul spotted a bakery with the sign "pain traditional" I literally stopped the car in the middle of whirling traffic, pulled onto the side walk to park, and headed over. Once inside, and it was a tiny entryway with trays of freshly baked kesra bread, I gasped at Paul, "they make bread here!"

Towards the end of our time here, I'm planning to do a series of posts on where to actually eat (and visit real bakeries!) in Algiers. As you can imagine, we have quite a bit of recon to do, but hopefully you'll stay tuned.