Tuna salad with tahini

Slate, the online magazine, recently published an article called Mayo-phobia: Why Do Some People Hate Mayonnaise So Much?  Even more compelling was the tagline on their home page:  "Why do Jews have a problem with mayonnaise?  It begins with Milton Berle."  As this article makes clear, aversion to mayonnaise is not confined to Jews.  About 10 years ago, an article in The New Yorker discussing Pret-a-Manger  (subscriber access only) thought it was an American phenomenon, and noted that sandwiches sold in the chains British stores were far more mayo-heavy than what would sell in the US.

Be that as it may, my son, Harry, hates mayonnaise and avoids most foods that contain it.  This meant that he would not eat tuna salad or sandwiches.  While this is not necessarily a great tragedy, given the state of the fisheries and levels of mercury in tuna it is still a convenient quick lunch on occasion.  Fortunately, he discovered an acceptable way to eat tuna while spending much of the winter of 2010-2011 hiking in the Negev -- tahini.  Tahini is relatively indestructible, so it is better and safer to hike with container of tahini than an open jar of mayonnaise.  With canned tuna, some water and lemon, you have a pretty good sandwich filling.  I have adapted it a bit more, and we have it all the time now:

Tuna salad with tahini

Ingredients

• 1 generous tablespoon tahini paste
• 1/2 small lemon
• water, about 1/4 cup
• 2 cans tuna, preferably packed in olive oil and drained well (or even vegetable oil;  oil packed tuna is less fishy and dry than water packed)
• optional additions: 1-2 hard boiled eggs, chopped; 1 rib celery,  chopped fine; 1/4 green pepper, chopped fine; chopped scallion or 1 tablespoon finely chopped red onion; tablespoon capers well rinsed; 1/2 preserved lemon peel, rinsed well and chopped
• salt and pepper (white, red or black) to taste 

Method

1. To make the tahini dressing, put the tahini in a one quart or larger bowl; squeeze the lemon through a sieve or your fingers into the tahini.  Stir together with a fork, and you will notice that the tahini will stiffen.
2. Begin to dribble in the water very slowly, stirring all the while.  The tahini will continue to stiffen, and will then loosen and turn into a creamy texture.  You will use about 1/4 cup of water, though the quantity varies with the tahini and the solid/oil ratio in what you scooped out.  The texture should be like a thick sauce.  (If you have ever had prepared tahini, you will know what to expect.)  The process will probably take less than a minute.
3. Mix in the tuna, add whatever optional ingredients you want, bearing in mind that you will need less salt if you use things like capers. We generally make it with eggs, celery, red onion and green pepper.  I also like it with parsley.  The capers and preserved lemon make for a more special salad.
4. Serves about 4 -- use as you would any standard tuna salad, but you will probably enjoy this a lot more.

Merguez and maturity

Our usual New Year's Eve routine is a movie at Film Forum or IFC, dinner in Chinatown, maybe an espresso in Little Italy or Soho, and finally (watching) the Midnight Run and Fireworks in Central Park.  But this year it fell on Shabbat, and my friends and family indulged my belief that our acknowledgement of weekly rest by the cosmos took precedence the secular New Year, and everyone agreed to have dinner at our house. (We still promised the midnight run afterward for those who were still mobile, and many of us made it.)

Besides, we (I) had big plans for dinner.  My original plans were for a North African dinner, starting with 11 Moroccan and Tunisian salads in honor of 2011, to be followed by a fish tagine with preserved lemons, a brisket with merguez, dates and oranges, some kind of vegetable tagine for the vegetarians, and couscous, to be followed most likely by an olive-oil based chocolate mousse for dessert.  I had picked up some merguez, a North African lamb sausage which is not always available, at Kosher Marketplace for the occasion.

There were of course problems with this.  It was hard for me to think of 11 appetizers that would be sufficiently varied.  My friend Chris convinced me that rather than holding strictly to the North African theme,  I could sneak in a few Middle Eastern appetizers and no one would know the difference. This seemed cheesy, but he was persuasive.  My wife Amy said "Are you kidding, what do we need so much food for?" So, I scaled back my ambitions, and agreed to substitute a chicken with lemon and olives for the fish and the brisket, and along with a smaller number of salads, I would get to make a fusion Tunisian-Humgarian merguez with peppers that I cooked up a few years ago. (The genesis of this dish is below.)  We agreed that accepting these limits was a sign of maturity on my part.

But things got complicated.  Our dinner for 6 grew to a dinner for 15, which made the formal sit-down thing a bit unwieldy. Harry was in from Israel for a week and leaving New Years Eve day, and we had to bring him to the airport.  (The maximum amount of family togetherness won out over strict Shabbat observance in planning his travel -- we are much more of a zachor [remember] than a shamor [guard] type of family anyway.)  Trying to pull an elaborate dinner together when you get home after 4 p.m. was a little daunting.  My desire to be the center of attention in the kitchen conflicted with my desire to be a good father.    Amy suggested vegetarian chili, and a new dinner took shape. We would serve bought appetizers (something I almost never do): hummus, baba ganough, olives, feta cheese, and Galil grape leaves and fried eggplant in tomato sauce straight from the can.  For the main course, vegetarian chili with all the fixings, including complementary carbs: rice, macaroni, toasted tortilla strips, and corn bread with cheese.  When I protested that this was more of a low testosterone Super Bowl Party than a New Year's Dinner, Amy gave me a look that just said, "Grow Up!"  And, as one of our cousins who was there, Susan remarked "As if you would ever make a Super Bowl Party."  (BTW Susan, condolences on the Patriots.  Go Jets!)

This may look like any generic dish with peppers, but it is merguez with lecso

But I still had some merguez in the freezer, and it does not have an infinite shelf life, and I didn't know when I would have the opportunity to make the brisket.  So tonight for dinner we had the Tunsian-Hungarian merguez. This dish came about a few years ago when Chris and his wife Melissa came for Shabbat dinner, and asked if he could bring along a colleague, Zoltan, and his girlfriend Esther,  who were in from Budapest.  To try to impress them, I worked out an appetizer of merguez, a North African lamb sausage cooked with lecso (pronounced leksho) an all-purpose Hungarian concoction of peppers, onions and tomatoes often served with sausages or eggs.  I seasoned it with ground caraway, which is something common to both Tunisian and Hungarian cuisine.  I am not sure if I prepared the lecso properly, and I think that the cross cultural culinary references may have been lost, especially on Esther, who did not have what I generally think of as a Magyar figure,  nourished for many decades on lard, sausages and dumplings.  (Things really changed after the end of the cold war.  For an interesting take on on the transformation of the Eastern European female physique see this article by Anne Applebaum from Slate in 2008.)  In any case, the dish was very popular.  It is a cinch to prepare, very forgiving and open to variations, provided you can get fresh merguez.

Here is also a shout out to Harry, Zach and Seth, now on Kibbutz Keturah.  They eat in the communal dining hall on the kibbutz, but they will be in their own apartments when they are in Jerusalem, beginning in March.  I am sure that it is easier to get good kosher merguez in Jerusalem than in NYC, and this dish is easy to make for yourselves:

Merguez with lecso

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound merguez (not pre-cooked, see below)
• 1 teaspoon - 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 medium onion, halved and sliced
• 1 pound frying peppers, seeded deribbed, halved and sliced;  mix of green and red (if fry peppers are not available, bells are acceptable)
• 3 cloves garlic, sliced
• 1 jalapeno chili, halved and sliced (optional, seed and derib if you don't want it milder)
• 1 teaspoon ground caraway
• 1 tablespoon sweet paprika
• salt and pepper
• 6 canned plum  tomatoes, halved and sliced lengthwise (about a 14 ounce can), with juice from the can reserved
• handful of chopped fresh coriander

Method

1. Cut the merguez into 2 inch lengths (frozen is fine) and put in a large nonstick skillet.  Turn the heat to medium high and cook until well browned on all sides.  They should be just about cooked through.
2. Depending on both your fat tolerance and how much rendered out of the merguez, add up to 2 tablespoons olive oil to the pan, and turn heat to medium.  Add onions and a bit of salt and saute until golden.
3. Turn heat to high, add peppers and saute until they begin to soften, about 5 minutes.  Add sliced garlic and jalapeno, turn heat down, and saute for about 2 minutes.  Add the caraway and paprika, salt and pepper to taste, and saute on medium low for a few minutes until you smell the fragrance of the spices.
4. Add the tomatoes and their juices, turn heat to high, and cook for about 10 minutes until it thickens into a sauce.  Correct seasonings, return merguez to the pan and heat through.  Stir in coriander before serving.
5. Serve with harissa and pita bread or couscous (see below).  Serves 2 for dinner, or 4-6 as an appetizer.
6. A nice variation is to poach eggs in the sauce after you add the merguez, or to serve it with fried eggs.

Merguez:  Merguez is a lamb sausage from North Africa. It is available in many kosher meat markets, as well as in halal butchers.  The seasonings include pepper, paprika, garlic, cumin and caraway and the flavor varies depending on whether it is Tunisian or Moroccan.  If you have a choice, use the Tunisian, but anything will be good. Merguez also makes a great sandwich.  Just fry whatever you want in a nonstick skillet.  One quarter pound makes a very generous sandwich.   When it is browned and cooked through, serve it on a baguette or roll that has been lightly toasted, rubbed with a raw garlic clove, and spread with mayo and harissa.  Top with onion, lettuce and tomato if you want.

Couscous:  The best easy method for regular (not instant) couscous is to mix even quantities of couscous and boiling salted water in an oven proof dish.  Cover and leave sit for 20 minutes.   Fluff with your fingers or a fork, drizzle with a little oil or dot with butter or pareve margarine, cover, and bake in a preheated 400 degree oven for 20 minutes.  Allow 1/4 to 1/2 cup raw couscous per person.  Get in the habit of buying couscous in large containers or in bulk.  The small boxes of instant couscous are one of the great ripoffs in the market.

Nut case: cashew butter and banana sandwich

Is he nuts? Why bother posting this as a "recipe?" Because it is good, not to mention easy.

One of the advantages of working at home is not having to go out to lunch. One of the disadvantages of working at home is there may be nothing to eat, even in our kitchen, so sometimes I find myself scraping the bottom of the barrel. This leads to eating things like the sardine and avocado sandwich that I posted about a few days ago, and to rigorous experimentation with banana and nut butter sandwiches.

I have never been a peanut butter and jelly fan. I hate the way the bread absorbs the jelly and turns squishy and purple-ish or red-ish. So decades went by between elementary school and fatherhood when I didn't eat peanut butter sandwiches at all. Then my kids would eat them, with jelly, honey or banana, and I found that I kind of liked nut butter and banana.

Over the past week or two I decided to try a variety of nut butters : peanut, almond and cashew. We usually don't stock cashew butter, but we had a jar hanging around from Pesach, and it won hands down. There is something about it that brings out the inherent sweetness of the banana. So here is the recipe (is this a bit excessive?):

Cashew butter and banana sandwich

Ingredients:

• 2 slices bread, preferably whole-grain
• 1 small, ripe banana (it should have at least a few brown spots)
• cashew butter

Method:

1. Toast the bread.
2. Smear one or both pieces of bread with the cashew butter.
3. Slice banana about 1/4 inch thick and put on the toast.
4. Put the two pieces of bread together, and cut sandwich in half.

Serves one.

Chicken Adobo and the 59th Street Bridge Song

We had our friends Chris, Melissa and their eight-year old son Gabe over to Friday dinner last week, and served Chicken Adobo, a Filipino chicken dish which will be familiar to frequent readers of this blog since I have adopted some of the method to other cuisines. (Stew the chicken without browning, and then broil at the end. You get crisp skin and less mess.)

Both of my kids have been sleepaway counselors for eight-year olds, and there is a particular endearing goofiness to that demographic. My daughter's campers would wake up in the morning and ask "Is it time for dinner yet?" We lit candles and Gabe asked "Is it Hanukah?" When we uncovered the challah, he wanted to know "Where's the matzah?" Perhaps a better analogy than my daughter's campers would be our Russian cousins, who immigrated to the US a few days before Pesach in 1993 and wanted to bring a challah to our seder. (Not that I should talk. We discussed, and avoided discussing, lighting Shabbat candles for 12 years before actually doing it.) Anyway, we spare our guests and never sing on Shabbat, other than kiddush, not zemirot (after dinner songs), not even Shalom Aleichem before dinner. But Gabe treated us to a rousing performance of Simon and Garfunkel's 59th Street Bridge song ("Feeling groovy") after dinner, which actually struck me as the sweetest of all possible zemirot, and perfectly descriptive of the purpose of the day.

Chris wanted me to post the recipe for the Chicken Adobo. I had a few qualms about copyright infringement, since I didn't consider my recipe sufficiently original, but I really shouldn't since if you change an ingredient or the method it does qualify as a new recipe. This is also a good opportunity to plug the two cookbooks from which I derive the recipe: Reynaldo Alejandro's The Philippine Cookbook, and Amy Besa and Romy Dorotan's luminous Memories of Philippine Kitchens, which is travelogue, memoir and anthropology as well as a cookbook. Amy and Romy are also the owners of the late lamented Cendrillon which used to be our favorite restaurant, and current owners of Purple Yam, which might be if it were not in yenem velt (Ditmas Park). Beside, other than Chicken w Sumac (see my earlier blog entry) Chicken Adobo is one of the dishes with the highest satisfaction relative to cost and effort. Here is how I make it:

Chicken Adobo

Ingredients

• 1 chicken, cut into 10-12 pieces (the breasts of poor chickens are so overgrown nowadays that they take so long to cook so I cut them in half)
• 12-30 cloves of garlic (ideally fresh smashed and peeled, but pre-peeled are fine and that is what I used last week -- smash them a bit if it makes you feel better; I usually use about 25 for one chicken, depending on size of garlic and chicken)
• 1/2 to 1 tablespoons whole black peppercorns
• 2-4 bay leaves
• 1 teaspoons rosemary, crumbled a bit between your fingers
• 1 or two whole dried red chili peppers (omit if you are serving small children)
• 1/2 cup soy sauce (see below)
• 3/4 cup vinegar (see below)
• 1 can coconut milk (optional but nice; it smooths out some of the harsh edges of the vinegar. I used "lite" -- use full fat or make your own if you are up for it.)

Method

1. Put the chicken in a pot.
2. Add the seasonings.
3. Pour the liquids over the top. You can marinate it for a few hours or overnight but it really isn't necessary.
4. Bring to a simmer on top of the stove.
5. Cover and simmer for 30-45 minutes until the chicken in barely done.
6. Remove the chicken to an oven-safe serving dish, skin side up.
7. Broil 6 inches from the heat until the skin is crisp. (If you have time, you can broil skin side down, which will crisp the bones a bit, and then turn skin side up to finish. Be careful not to overcook.)
8. Meanwhile, boil the liquid down over high heat until reduced at least by half, and more if you have time.
9. Skim some fat off the gravy (I usually don't bother, pour it over the chicken and serve.
10. Ideally, serve at once, but it can keep for a while covered in a warm oven and reheats well too.
11. That's it. Serve with rice.

Soy Sauce: The better the soy sauce, the better the dish. (The same goes for the chicken.) A good aged soy would be wonderful, but frankly, I generally use Kikkoman. It is nice to substitute a tablespoon or two of Bragg's aminos' a soy-sauce like product with wonderful umami flavors for some of the soy sauce. IF you like the dish a bit sweet, substitute a tablespoon or so of kecap manis, Indonesian sweet soy sauce, or just add a spoon or two of brown sugar.

Vinegar: Some recipes call for plain white vinegar, which I think is boring. I have seem others which ask for balsamic, which is too much, and lots of balsamic doesn't taste all that good, and the good stuff might be overwhelmed in this dish. I tend to use apple cider vinegar, especially a fruity kind rather than supermarket standard. Again, Bragg's makes a wonderful cider vinegar. Sherry vinegar is also good in this, but expensive, so I used 1/2 cup of cider vinegar and 1/4 cup of sherry vinegar.

A nice treat with leftovers: This dish is great reheated and served with rice, and it will be very easy to remove the extra fat which will have hardened on top. For a real treat though, make a Filipino version of a torta, a Mexican sandwich. Since Mexicans also make their own chicken adobo, this seems like a nice thing to do. Take a crusty long roll or a section of French bread and toast it lightly. Meanwhile, warm some chicken and garlic cloves in a microwave for a minute or two. Mash the garlic cloves and spread on the bread. Put the chicken on top, add sliced avocado, red onion, and some cilantro if you want, and enjoy.