Followers of my previous blogging efforts might remember a summary of food I was eating in Egypt and a particularly appetizing picture of the Egyptian delicacy known as kushari. To refresh your memory:

I haven’t had kushari since I was in Egypt, which was in the summer of 2006. It is not something I have ever tried to make at home since it involves making rice and pasta and lentils and chickpeas and tomato sauce and fried onions and is nowhere near good enough to justify the effort. Plus, in Egypt, a bucketful could be had for about 50 american cents.  So imagine my joy when I walked into the Lyndale Grill & Grocery for a gyro but saw on the specials board “koushary”. Here it is, hot out of the microwave:

This was an especially felicitous discovery since I was working through a daunting hangover all day and there’s nothing better for it. Here’s a detail shot so you can see all the delicious ingredients:

So, how does Minneapolis kushari compare with the real thing? You can see that the only pasta here is rigatoni, whereas in the Egyptian version there were two kinds of vermicelli and something like ditalini. The smaller pasta shapes give the kushari a more cohesive texture. Also, one of my favorite things about kushari in Egypt was the vinegary hot sauces that came on the side and could be applied liberally. The tomato sauce on the Minneapolis kushari was very good and nicely spicy so hot sauce wasn’t strictly necessary but it would have been nice. On the other hand, the use of yellow (probably too much to call it saffron rice) instead of the plain white used in Egypt added flavor to a dish that is so heavy on starch that it leans to the bland side. Eating kushari out of a foam tray rather than a plastic bucket was not really the same, and a metal fork was no improvement over a plastic spoon but, such are the trials one must endure. In any case, kushari is not something to be analyzed, it is something to be shoveled down the hatch.

I saw this in the Brooklyn Museum’s online shop and thought it was rather timely…

You may recall my mentioning a desire to post these pictures here. This stuff is good. It’s so good I wrote them a letter about it (I used to write companies a lot when I was 8. Then they sent me free stuff. So far no free gelato by mail.). The “Lisbon Lemon” is still the favorite after trying “Roman Raspberry” (below) and “Malaysian Mango.” Here’s a link to their website. Don’t try to order it online—it costs about a billion dollars to ship. Instead, come visit. We’ll pick up a pint for dessert.

Talenti Gelato e Sorbetto :: Available at Kowalski’s Markets :: Open 24-hours

Ever since I noticed it opening in the old My-T-Fine (great name for a tea shop, why did it close?) on my way to work, I have wanted to try Cafe Agri. I think I was mostly drawn in by their logo and their slogan “from field to fork”. At the time I was under the sway of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (I still am, but it was fresh) and excited by the idea of another restaurant based on local and seasonal food close to my home. 

Reviewing the menu that was posted a couple of weeks later gave me pause. The food did appear to be local, but what was all this tempeh nonsense? As it turns out, Agri focuses not only on local and sustainable food, but also on vegetarians and vegans. Fair enough, but not the kind of place that calls my name. Still, I was intrigued and, after a few months, decided it was time to give it a try.

On entering the place, we couldn’t help but be impressed by the decor, particularly the many interesting light fixtures. Martha could probably say more about this but she’s not here so hah.  Anyway, Agri gets high marks for atmosphere.

They also have a very good selection of interesting wine and beer, mostly organic. You might miss this while trying to decipher their inexplicably centered drink menu, but there really are a lot of good, reasonably-priced choices. We both went beer.

And then there was the menu itself. Reviewing the six entrees, I began to despair. There was plenty offered to make the vegetarian, vegan or celiac sufferer happy: very limited meat (one entree with trout), tempeh and tofu aplenty, and as little gluten as possible. But, since I am none of those things, I wondered what exactly I wanted to order and pay $16 for. Butternut squash ravioli? Now where have I seen that before? Tempeh terrine? With pork or goose liver? Penne Primavera? In inverno? In the end we decided to just have a couple of appetizers and head for greener (well, less green) pastures. So keep in mind that this is in no way a fair review.

We ordered two dishes: the yam crisps with fresh guacamole, described as “baked—not fried!” which I assume was meant to be a recommendation rather than an apology, and the falafel (also baked) with cucumber salad and yogurt dill sauce.

The yam crisps themselves were good. Besides having beautifully curled edges, they were, in fact, crisp with a pleasant, not overwhelming sweetness. The guacamole, on the other hand, could not be described as good. It was severely underseasoned, resembling those awful supermarket guacamoles made with sour cream or mayonnaise. I suspect, had the lighting been bighter, its color would have been closer to brown than green, but I have no way of proving this. I also wondered from which farm in Minnesota they had obtained the fresh avocados, especially in winter. 

As for the falafel, I should never have expected to like it in the first place since it was billed as “Baked Falafel” and I don’t like baked falafel. This certainly was baked falafel, in all its sandy-textured mediocrity. It was topped by a tasteless tomato slice (did I mention it’s winter?) and yogurt sauce, which deserves neither praise nor blame. The cucumber salad was really a quick pickle of thick-cut, seeded cucumber slices and onion. Serving pickles with falafel makes good sense since pickles are very popular in the Middle East, but this was a sweet pickle rather than a sour-hot pickle as you might expect with Middle Eastern cuisine. Inauthenticity is of course not a fault per se, but I didn’t think the sweet pickles really did anything for the falafel. In any case I would have preferred fresh cucumber.

And that was all we tried. Hardly enough to base a review upon, even in these troubled economic times. But I think our reaction to the menu points to a problem with Agri and other restaurants like it. Local, organic and sustainable food are all good things. We really need more restaurants to make such food a priority; indeed, it should be the default. For that future to happen, however, food that is local, organic and sustainable has to appeal to the public: it should be relatively inexpensive (which should happen anyway because of reduced fertilizer, equipment, and transportation costs) but more importantly it should be delicious. Instead of seeing these things when he goes to a restaurant like Agri, average, closed-minded John Q. Public just has his presuppositions about this kind of food confirmed: bean curd compressed to various textures and shapes prepared in thin sauces by ascetic health nuts. Not for me. Organic and sustainable does not have to mean soybeans, and maybe it shouldn’t at all. Of course, Agri might not even want these customers. They may have intended to primarily serve vegans and vegetarians (god knows they could use a few more places) and not to be the ambassador of local/organic/seasonable/sustainable that I had made them in my mind. If Agri’s content to preach to the choir, that’s fine, but I won’t be in the pews.

WOW! My place of work became the most exciting place to be ever today. Look who visited me at my window…

Can you identify my new friend?

UPDATE: This is indeed a saw-whet owl. Here’s what I found out from Dr. Phillips, a favorite professor and friend, about our little guy here…

“I think what you’ve got there is a Saw-Whet Owl, a pretty uncommon sighting (although my Peterson’s Bird Guide lists this species as “a very tame little owl”). The last time I saw one it was about 1979…. What were the circumstances when you took this photo?”

Now that I’m not at work, I can write a little more about what happened. I was on the telephone talking to one of the Swedish instructors when a *thump* little owl hit the window. I was already looking out the window and saw it hit “The Posten Window” which is at a right angle to the original glass that the owl hit around maybe 3:30 in the afternoon? At this point, it sort of floated down onto the snow pile gathered around the Christmas tree decorated with lights for the holidays. Still on the phone, the first thing out of my mouth was “Hur säger man ‘owl’ på svenska?” (Turns out the word is uggla.) After finishing the conversation and promising to take pictures for her, I hung up. In the only way I know how, I started to freak out and try to take pictures, alerting lots of colleagues in the meantime. Still, I was walking slowly so that I didn’t startle my new friend. I didn’t want him to leave! I got more daring and starting opening our double-wooden doors just a crack to get pictures without a pane of glass in the way. At some point I decided to call another person on the staff who has helped to rescue birds in my window in the past. Seeing the owl so still, we wanted to make sure he was okay. Our rescuer arrived with gloves etc. to check out the situation. I was able to capture the above photo just before the rescuer got too close with a cellphone camera and scared the little guy away. At least we knew he could still fly! My last sighting of the saw-whet was after his flight into another nearby evergreen. Can you find him?

Inauguration Day was Tuesday and with it the world, particularly the blog world, was predictably awash in Obamania. Witness: a very impressive Obama pizza. And what Inauguration party would be complete without the Baracktail? My humble (and not very timely) addition? Obamaburgers!

“Obamaburger” is actually a poor choice of name since these burgers don’t have any connection to Obama specifically. They were just patriotic hamburgers in honor of Inauguration Day. But if they weren’t called Obamaburgers, it wouldn’t be a shameless tie-in.

For two burgers:

• Two buns (I used ptoato-rosemary rolls)
• Butter
• 2/3# Ground Bison, made into two patties
• Blue Cheese (Rogue Creamery Smokey Blue)
• Mixed greens
• 3 T Buttermilk
• 3 T Yogurt
• 2 T Mayo
• 2 t Champagne Vinegar
• 1/4 t sugar
• 1/8 t garlic powder
• salt and peppa

Assembly is pretty straightforward (these are burgers). Mash a 1/2 c of blue cheese with the buttermilk until they are pretty well mixed and then stir in the ingredients that follow, seasoning to taste with salt and pepper (that means a lot of fresh-cracked black pepper). You now have blue cheese dressing. Spread some butter on the (split) buns and broil them to desired burnedness. Take down your smoke alarm* and get a cast iron pan really, really hot. Introduce the bison flesh to the metal and allow them to mingle for a minute and a half, then flip. Crumble on some blue cheese and cook another 90 seconds. Then the burgers go on the buns, the blue cheese dressing goes over the burgers, the lettuce goes on top, and then the other half of the bun. Put your smoke alarm back.

And now the part where I explain through the highly tenuous connections to Inauguration Day! First of all, the meat is bison, and there’s nothing more patriotic than eating native species. You might say the potato-rosemary roll is a tribute to two very important waves of immigration that shaped who we are as a nation, those being Irish and Italian (and, in so doing, completely ignore every other group). Finally, we have the colors of the American flag: blue from the blue cheese, white from the creamy dressing, and, as for red:

Yeah, that’s the best I’ve got. See you in ‘16!

*I assume no responsibility for any injuries or deaths caused due to smoke inhalation, fire, or other damages related to following the instructions in this recipe.

Emmer is an ancient strain of wheat with only 28 chromosomes.  It was one of the first wheats cultivated by man. Nowadays, you can find it online from Bluebird Grain Farms. It makes a great substitute for bulghur wheat in a tabouli-like salad. The whole wheat berries are very toothsome, almost like very small beans.

Dressing:

• Juice of one or two lemons
• Olive Oil
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• Sumac!

Whisk this all together. It has to sit and soak a while for the sumac to open up. A crushed clove of garlic would also be good but I had enough garlic going on in this meal so I left it out. 

Salad:

• 1 1/2 cups whole emmer berries
• Half a cucumber, quartered, seeded and sliced thin
• A bunch of parsley, chopped
• A bland hot house tomato, regretfully purchased and loathingly chopped
• Half a bunch of scallions, chopped

Put the emmer in a small saucepan with 4 odd cups of water and bring to a boil. Let it boil violently for five minutes and then reduce the heat so it simmers gently for about an hour. After this time the emmer will become toothsome but not mushy (if it’s getting mushy and exploding, for the love of god turn off the heat) and most of the water will be absorbed or evaporated. Drain whatever water is left and then toss the emmer with the dressing. Leave this to marinate for as long as you want. Before serving, toss in the rest of the ingredients.

I served this with fresh pita, hummus, and awesome lamb sausages from The Wedge.

While walking from our place to a new favorite coffee shop, I spotted a crop of kids just out of school enjoying the warm weather. This is how winter was meant to be! If only we had our own ice skates…

A friend recently asked me how I choose items for the apartment. I didn’t have a very good answer—and I still don’t, but part of one is this: As most people are with clothing, etc. I am drawn to certain brands and more broadly to certain countries’ aesthetics. After making a mental list, I realize you could probably describe my tastes as very Eurocentric. I’m also drawn to a wholelottathings that are all very much out of my reach because of their cost. Let’s just say I have a long list of bookmarks in my web browser of the *sale* sections of various modern housewares companies. Sometimes a purchase is knee-jerk—this is true particularly for estate-sale or thrift-store finds for obvious reasons. Other times I have admired an item for a long time before finally going for it (and/or saving for it). Much of the time though, I want something or I get something because it just goes nicely with something else that I already own. This is why I get myself into color ruts. Many of you know of my love for red. There was a black phase (over. so over). Here is an instance where two lovely greens were brought together:

While at the Lansing Volunteers of America Thrift Store as a Michigan State student, I discovered a set of four green enamelware bowls. 

These are a great size; each fits in the palm of your hand. I love to serve sorbet in them. Made of metal, they can be placed in the freezer to chill which makes for an even better treat. I wish I had a picture of the raspberry sorbet (Talenti’s Roman Raspberry) we ate in them the other day. The color combination was amazing.

From what I have found, they are either actual Cathrineholm bowls or decent enough knockoffs; they lack any imprint on the underside as many pieces from the actual line would have. This is not that important though—I didn’t buy them for resale purposes. I think I paid somewhere between $0.25 and $1 per bowl… a bargain either way. You can see more examples of Cathrineholm designs on Flickr. An older post from H is for Home also details a bit more about enamelware, its Norwegian origins, and offers more photos of Cathrineholm pieces.

So… this brings me to my point. I own these bowls. Yesterday I found this at the downtown Minneapolis Salvation Army Thrift Store:

Having easily figured out the maker of my bowls, right away I wanted to learn of the possible origins of my new green pot. This has not been so easy (I haven’t found anything exactly like this), but I have a few clues. I think the wooden handle is teak. Scott Lindberg of sllabs studios identified a similar red enameled pot as a Jens Quistgaard design (1956) part of the Dansk Købenstyle line. He even found it in Bloomington, MN (to the immediate south of Minneapolis). This gentleman had one advantage over me… an actual manufacturer’s mark with designer’s initials. No such markings on mine. Plus, the lid bears no resemblance to the typical Købenstyle lids.

Will we actually cook with this pot? Another blog author is horrified by the idea. Enameled cast iron, of Le Creuset fame, is fantastic for cooking in because of the wonders of cast iron; enameled steel apparently wins no awards for even cooking, conduction, etc. The important question for the moment is: is it lovely and squatty and nice? Yes. I like to think we might at least serve food in it. Perhaps it would make a nice planter…

Oh! The price? $1 (that includes tax…). Can you identify this pot? What would you do with it?

Since I don’t have to work on the weekend I avoid that nagging pressure to interact with the other humans by baking bread. The rhythm of bread baking is such that it is both leisurely and consuming.

The first thing I did in the morning was cover 10 grain hot cereal mix with boiling water as the starter for the multigrain bread that was featured in Cook’s Illustrated a year or two ago. This is my go-to basic bread to have around the house, great for toast and sandwiches. The crumb is not so dense as a lot of multigrain breads thanks to copious amounts of white flour and instant yeast makes for a predictable rising schedule. The flavor is earthy, as multigrained breads should be, and tinged with honey. This recipe is simple, not very time consuming and reliably produces a pretty pair of loaves.

With that out of the way, I went to the store to get more flour (3 lbs was not going to cut it). I had refreshed my sourdough starter the day before and left it out all morning to bubble and grow. I needed to make pitas for dinner and I also wanted to make a couple of european-style breads. I like a loose crumb so I was aiming for about 66% hydration, and I wanted to use a pound of my starter, mostly to facilitate storing the rest of it in the fridge. I was figuring I wanted about 3# of final dough for my european breads and at least 2# to be able to make 8 four ounce pitas. Math time!

A pound of starter was 8oz water and 8oz flour. I wanted to end up with about 80 oz of dough and I was going to have 2/3 as much water as flour (and I like round numbers that my scale can handle) so I planned to add 40 oz of flour. That gave me 48 oz of flour total, 66% of which is 31.68, which I rounded to a nice even 32 (which meant I would add 24 additional ounces).

With my formula figured out, I proceeded to mix and knead the dough, adding a good amount of salt. With wild yeast rising times are pretty unpredictable, and salt inhibits rising, so I had no idea when the dough was going to double in size. I set out to work on some other things.

Around 5 p.m. I got tired of waiting and decided to weigh and shape my dough. I recently discovered that weighing individual dough pieces so they are the same really helps with the uniformity of the final product (durh) so I got out my scale. 1.5# of dough went to a boule which I left to proof in a heavily oiled and floured glass bowl. Three .5# pieces got rolled into baguettes and placed on my couche to grow. The remaining 8 4 oz pieces (plus a small leftover piece) I shaped into small boules to rest for pitas.

Mostly because we were hungry I rolled out the pitas within an hour of shaping the dough even though they had not grown much at all. Apparently, that is not very important with pitas. Here they are in the oven:

That is what we like to call pocket-city. Below you’ll see them in a nice little stack (wrapped in a towel to keep them warm and chewy):

After dinner I decided it did not make much sense to wait up till all hours for the rest of my breads to proof in the meantime wasting all that heat in the stone in my oven, so the baguettes were transferred to a floured peel, scored and baked. For the record, they were underproofed, but I think they turned out fine.

Lastly, the boule. I apparently did not flour my bowl enough because this bread stuck to the sides and did not want to land on the peel. When it finally did, it was horribly deformed. It is pretty annoying to spend this much time on a piece of bread only to have some stupid mistake destroy everything you worked and fought for; much can be learned about life from bread baking, evidently. I made a feeble attempt at scoring this bread artfully to make the mistakes look intentional and then slid it onto the stone. I was surprised by a good amount of oven spring, but upon eating the bread the next day found dense areas that suggested underproofing. Great crumb for the most part though thanks to the relatively high hydration!

And so passed another Saturday.