Fast Food - Jamaican Me Hungry for More (well almost)

Being back in New York, I feel compelled to stop by all of my old favorite haunts as well as to try some new places.

Given my recent piece for Black Book on food carts in San Francisco, I thought that I needed to visit at least one here in the city. So when I found myself in midtown the other day, I debated between two carts that I'd read about on Midtown Lunch for the past couple of years, both of which have been nominated for some Vendy Awards over the years.

I was closer to the Biryani Cart and thought I'd try one of their Kati rolls since I'm a sucker for a spicy chicken sandwich, but when they were out, I decided against going for one of their chicken in a pita sandwiches, and hiked uptown a few blocks to the Jamaican Dutchy cart, which sells its wares on 51st and 7th.




While the cart made its name for jerk chicken, oxtails, and patties, I wanted to try one of its new sandwiches, served on soft, pillowy Jamaican style coco bread (this bread has no coconut nor cocoa in it, but it's a cute name nonetheless.) I'd read on Midtown Lunch that the vegetarian version of this sandwich was actually more tender and moist than the jerk chicken breast offering, so I took his advice and ordered the vegetarian.

I had to wait a while for my order to come up, as I understand is often the case at Jamaican Dutchy. It was very hot and I'll admit I felt a little cranky, especially as others who had ordered after me received their heaping plates of jerk and rice. But when my five dollar sandwich arrived, I was not disappointed. It was a good-sized baked tofu steak, marinated in a spicy jerk sauce, topped with lettuce and tomato and hot sauce, and served on the aforementioned coco bread. Very simple, but really incredibly satisfying. The tofu was tender and appropriately chewy. The bread nicely soaked up the sauce, and the veggies supplied some good crunch and tang. It was a lovely lunch, indeed. If only I had more time here, I'd go and get another. But even a sandwich this good is not going to send me back to the Times Square area in this heat.

Fast Food- B&H (of the dairy persuasion)

H must be a lucky initial here in this city that I love so. After all, how else could you explain the success of B&H cameras? Or H&H bagels? Or the ubiquity of H&M? (I know it's an import, but still...)

Another H-staple of this city is B&H Dairy Restaurant on 2nd Avenue. I'd been once many years ago, but in spite of his proximity the year he lived on 12th street, Daniel had never partaken, so on the insistence of our friends Ben and Dorit, we made the trek, right before closing, to sample a little good old fashioned comfort food, Lower East Side style.

Sitting at the counter, watching all the food go by

The menu at B&H is a like a siren's song of carby Old Country temptation, with matzoh brie, challah French toast, and blintzes all competing for your attention. Because it's a meat-free zone, the savory options run the gamut from the traditional fish salads, vegetable based soups, and potato knishes to something that sounded surprisingly enticing - veggie balls and spaghetti.

Having been told it was some of the best in the city, Daniel went the white fish salad sandwich route, served with a bowl of matzoh ball soup.

The soup was very good, with big chunk of carrots and the disconcerting but very welcome presence of noodles.

New York delis are famous for their overstuffed Pastrami sandwiches, but this overstuffed white fish, put all of those to shame. It was enormous -


This picture really doesn't do it justice. It was so big that our man Daniel had to go open-face on a few bites, splitting each half of the sandwich an additional time because he couldn't manage its girth. The sandwich was served on B&H's famous, non-braided challah, which has a texture quite unlike any challah I've had. It was light and airy, reminding me almost of angel food cake in its ethereal delicacy. The white fish salad itself was also unique, less of the kind that you get at an appetizing store like Russ and Daughters, but rather more akin to something like a lunchtime tuna salad, with pieces of celery interspersed throughout. It was very good, and our white fish salad lover was pleased, but it did not sate our need for the kind of white fishy goodness to which we are more accustomed.

Whenever I see kasha varnishkas on a menu, I am hard pressed to order anything else. When said kasha varnishkas can be ordered with steamed vegetables, I am in heaven, especially when I can drench both in a side of mushroom gravy.


While the varnishkas were a bit overcooked and gummy for my taste, for me there is little more comforting than pasta with my beloved nutty, hearty buckwheat groats, and so I was perfectly pleased. Plus, Daniel had a few cast off pieces of challah from his behemoth, so I dipped those in some of my thick brown gravy. And in that moment, with the sweetness of the light bread intermingling with the viscous, savory sauce, I realized what is perhaps the meaning of the H in B&H - heaven!

We Want Food - Oh little lamb who made thee?

I've been so busy eating my way through NY that I never got around to posting about the lamb and eggplant dish that I made while in SC to accompany the lahukh that I wrote about last week.

Before I arrived in old Cola, SC, my mother informed me that she had purchased some beautiful ground lamb from the local greenmarket (from the same guy who made the goat sausage that we so enjoyed last Christmas) and that I needed to figure out what to do with it. I contemplated a couple of Indian dishes and a lamb ragu, but when I stumbled across a recipe for Albondigas (spicy meatballs on pureed roasted eggplant), I knew I'd found a winner.

The recipe, which I adapted from The Food of Israel: Authentic Recipes from the Land of Milk and Honey, calls for ground beef. But, let's face it, anything beef can do lamb can do better, so we gave it a try.


Albondigas are small meatballs that are present in lots of Spanish-speaking cultures, but they enter Israeli cuisine through Sephardic Jews who spoke Ladino in around the 15th century. These little guys turn up in a lot of Sephardic/Ladino dishes, often in soups, because using these bits of less-expensive ground beef et. al was a good way of making precious meat last longer, while giving dishes the benefit of the flavor that just a few orbs of good fatty flesh can offer.

In this version, the ground meat is combined with onion, bread crumbs, an egg, and a bunch of salt and pepper. You simply combine said ingredients, fry 'em up, and then set them aside.


Then, using the same pan, you add three chopped up roasted eggplants, some crushed garlic, a little sugar, salt and pepper, and mush it up real good.


When you have a nice mushy puree, you throw the puree into an ovenproof dish, lay your crispy (thatsa spicy) meatballs on top and bake the whole thing at 400 degrees for about a half hour.

The results?



Truly delicious! Moistly succulent lamb, with its hint of satisfying gaminess. The slight bitterness of the eggplant, made more subtle with the sweetness of the sugar and the caramelized bits of pan juices. And of course the textures here of the smooth puree with the crispy bits of the charred meatballs.

To give it a bit more bite and character, we added some mango chutney and a little spicy Lebanese zhoug, which I had whipped up from some jalapenos...


The whole thing, when scooped up with bits of the savory flat lahukhs was a big hit, and we all scarfed in silence before sitting back in our chairs and marveling at the intense flavor that comes so easily when a little lamb is used.

Fast Food - Taim (it's for research folks)

If you see this sign, it means you're about to have something REAL good.


It means you're in the heart of the West Village (which, let's be honest, is a pretty good place to be on its own) AND you're at Taim, the Israeli falafel and smoothy bar that opened shortly before Daniel and I moved West. We had tried to go once before moving on one of our epic walk-and-eats, but by the time we got there, we were too full from other tasty treats.

But last night after visiting our friends Sam and Duncan and their adorable baby girl Izzy, we headed west and ordered a couple of these...


They're called sabich; and they entered Israeli hearts and bellies courtesy of Iraqi Jews who immigrated to Tel Aviv, bringing this heavenly sandwich with them. It is now the darling of New York sandwich lovers and the line for them (and their other Israeli standbys - falafel, hummus, etc) is long at Taim. This sandwich is well worth the wait.

It consists of fried eggplant, hummus, tahini, amba (a pickled mango spread scented with fenugreek), Israeli salad, a hard boiled egg, and marinated cabbage. I had mine on a whole wheat pita; Daniel went for white. We both opted to add pickles and hot sauce. The results? Well see for yourself...


Every bite was a mix of creamy (from the eggplant, the egg, the tahini, the hummus) and pungent acidity (the amba, the pickles, the cabbage, the hot sauce). The textures were also an incredible melange - crunchy, chewy, smooth, rough. The bread was soft and flavorful. The sandwich was sublime.

It was also an utter stomach bomb, so I made Daniel walk down to the Canal Street station as opposed to boarding to head home at West 4th. I didn't fully recover until the next day. BUT it's for research, and I am more than willing to keep have another for the sake of future generations.

The Bread Project - Lahukh (Yemenite Flatbread)

The experiments in Israeli cuisine continue.

This Yemenite flatbread is very simple and surprisingly flavorful. I would definitely eat them on their own, but when used to scoop up something delicious (like the amazing lamb Albondigas that I made to go with it - post soon to follow), they are delicious.

The recipe comes from Janna Gur's The New Book of Israeli Food. I made a few alterations and it worked just fine. My notes are in parentheses.

LAHUKH
(Makes about 20 pancake sized flatbreads)

Ingredients
3 1/2 cups flour
1 oz fresh yeast (I used a packet and a pinch of regular dry active yeast)
3 cups water (plus additional for soaking)
1 T salt
1/2 T sugar
3 slices white bread (I used 2 1/2 white French rolls)
Oil for frying (I used spray olive oil because you really only want a minimal amount of oil)


Directions
1. Put the flour, yeast, salt, and sugar in a deep bowl and mix with 3 cups of water to form a batter.

2. Soak the bread in water for about 5 minutes (I did about three), remove, squeeze off the excess water and mash in a blender. Add to the batter and mix well.


3. Cover the bowl, leave at room temperature for about two hours to allow the batter to rise to twice its size.


4. Heat a non-stick pan and oil it lightly. Wipe excess oil with a paper towel- no further oiling will be required during frying. (I used an electric skillet and olive oil spray. I resprayed a few times through the process. It worked great. Gur recommends cooling down the pan with cold water between batches if you're using a traditional frying pan.)


5. Ladle a portion of batter into the pan. Fry on medium heat until the top of the lahukh fills with bubbles and the bottom turns brown (it's like making a pancake, and they took about 5 minutes to cook once I found the right temperature. However, for the record they taste pretty good with a little gooeyness in the middle too...)



They were delicious and I will make again. Also they freeze really well, so don't be thrown off by the bounteous quantity that this recipe produces. The day after we made them, I defrosted a couple in the toaster oven and used them for tuna sandwiches. Yum indeed.

We Want Food - Fish fry Israeli style

To go with the Israeli challah Friday night, I decided to extend the theme and cook a couple of dishes from Janna Gur's beautiful cookbook The Book of New Israeli Food.

I paged through the book, ogling the amazing looking options and mentally marking the things I want to try in the future (can you say halvah babka?!?!)

Ultimately, I decided on Chreime, which is a North African fish stew that is a typical Passover or Rosh Hashanah dinner among Jews from Moroco, Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia. It is meant to use a whole white fish (like grouper, amberjack, sea bass, carp) cut into steak style slices, but I just used sea bass fillets, and it worked very nicely.



Here's the recipe:

Chreime - North African Hot Fish Stew
(adapted slightly from Janna Gur's The New Book of Israeli Food)

Ingredients
-1.5 lb white fish fillets
-1/4 cup oil
-5 cloves garlic (plus a few dashes of garlic powder)
-2 T paprika
-1 T cayenne pepper or other chili powder
-1 t ground caraway (I used whole seeds)
-1 t ground cumin
-3 T tomato paste
-1 C water

Directions
1. Heat oil in saucepan, add garlic and spices and fry over high heat while stirring until oil becomes aromatic. Add tomato paste and stir until the paste blends with the oil. Add one cup of water and cook covered for 5 minutes.

2. Add the fish fillets to the sauce, bring to a boil, cover and lower the heat. Turn the fish once halfway through cooking.

3. Cook for 10 minutes or until fish is done but still firm and juicy.

It was really, really nice. Quite spicy actually, and very fragrant. To go with it, I made an Israeli salad. Usually I wouldn't use a recipe for this one, but since I had the book, I decided to see what Janna Gur's version looked like. And here it is...


It was basically just lemon juice, 4 tomatoes, 4 cucumbers, 1 red onion, 1 sweet red pepper, 1 crushed clove of garlic, 1/2 jalapeno, 1 t sumac (didn't use because I didn't have it at my mom's house), salt and pepper, 3 T olive oil, 2-3 T parsley and coriander. But the extra special secret delicious ingredient made all the difference. And what was that you ask? A dash of cinnamon. Delish!



Here's the table all ready for a delightful Shabbos dinner...

The Bread Project - Lender's Romanian Challah

As I have talked about before, I have been on a long search for a challah recipe that will create the kind of chewy, soft, non-cake-like loaves that one can purchase in certain stores in NY and that Daniel reminisces fondly over having eaten in Israel.

In digging through several Israeli cookbooks last week, I found pictures of a bakery in Jerusalem called Lenders. Now generally I have bad associations with bread products and the name Lenders (if you want a piece of bread with a whole in the middle, Lenders "bagels" are just fine. If you want a bagel, please look elsewhere.) However, I showed Daniel, the Israeli challah expert, a picture of Lenders bakery, and he thought that based on the image any recipe from them would be a-okay. So I decided to give the recipe in Joan Nathan's The Foods of Israel Today a try.

There were some interesting oddities about this recipe...



The dough, unlike every other challah recipe I've ever seen contains NO EGGS! The reason is that interestingly, most Israeli challot don't have eggs in them because as Mr. Lender explains, "In old Jerusalem people were poor and mostly dependent on outside contributions. Eggs and sugar were out of the question...It was already a luxury to have bread with white flour on the Sabbath." In spite of the lack of eggs, the dough adhered quite nicely and looked pretty darn good and smooth. (must have been the 4 T of vegetable shortening)


After two rises, it was time to braid.


The recipe makes the requisite two loaves, and Joan Nathan's instructions on how to do a four strand braid are much clearer than in her other cookbooks.




They really came out quite nicely.


I was feeling pretty good about things, until I got to the part where the braiding instructions throw a giant curveball - this challah is double decker. See my astonishment in the video below:



Woah indeed.

When fully braided, the challot were brushed with a mixture of cornstarch and water instead of the usual egg wash. Then another rise, another brush of the mix, a sprinkling of sesame seeds, 45 minutes in the oven, and voila-



The results? I definitely missed the egg wash on top, but the bread itself was really very, very good. It had that soft quality that good challah has, where you can almost see little tendrils as you pull it apart. The flavor was excellent, although the corn starch water combination gave it a slightly funny color.


If I were to do this again (which I think I will), I would break the rules slightly and add an egg wash. I really missed the sheen and the bottom egg goo that challah usually gets. Other than that, I highly recommend it. And for vegans everywhere, in its original form, this should definitely be the challah of choice. (Plus, it made a mean French toast the next day. I stuffed it with some Laughing Cow and pomegranate jelly. Delish.)