Kak: a cookie with barakah

Disclaimer: the directions below are useless...

The Bentounes family lives in what is considered by thousands a sacred place. It is the mother zawiyya to the Alawiyya tariqat. Both the group and the place have continued to grow in number and in square meters since the sheikh Alawi founded both the early 1900s. Almost 100 family members live in various apartments in the house now and hundreds more come regularly for religious ceremonies or on pilgrimage to the burial place of the 3 generations of sheikhs. As this is the subject of my masters thesis, which I am currently doing my best to avoid, lets skip to the food.  

Tasks are shared in the community, especially the most important ones. Making Kak, for example. Think of a british cookie: sweet but crunchy and best with tea. We made hundreds. They made hundreds, I should say. Everyone giggled and said I must be tired and should go... and eventually I went... and they were still at it when I came back hours later.

Ingredients for infinite Kak

(do not, under any circumstances, try to make a full recipe!)

2 kilos flour

4 eggs
500g sugar (2 1/3 c)
1/2 liter vegetable oil
6 tsp baking powder
1-2 cups sesame seeds
l'eau de fleur

Directions
In a blender the size of your little sister, mix the flour, sugar, sesame seeds and baking soda.

With the blender going, add one egg at a time, then the oil progressively till it looks a bit like sand, working it all the while as needed to keep it even.

Slowly add the flour water (its a north african ingredient that tastes like the drop of juice you pull out of honeysuckles as a child) until the dough just sticks together in a big ball. It should be a fairly heavy dough, slightly sticky but firm and not stretchy.

Let the dough sit for about 10 minutes, then start breaking into chunks about the size of said little sister's fist.

It seems the key to Kek is this mysterious machine through which the women forced the dough, but hats off to whoever figures that one out because they immediately rolled it back out into a rope.

There is a perfect ratio of length to thickness as you roll. I know because I was corrected many, many times. What is that ratio? I'm pretty sure it is part of the mystical secret that one only receives upon initiation into the tariqat. Something like "here is the prayer you should recite 100 times every morning to get closer to god, and the perfect ratio for kak is 2:13."

Once the dough is rolled back into tubes, cut regularly around the edges, connect into a circle and place on oiled cookie sheets. Note: there is also a perfect distance for each cut. best of luck to you.

Bake. Can't tell you how hot or how long, but don't let them brown or generally overcook, they will get too dry. I would guess 175C for 12 minutes. Do a few batches and find your right ratio.

Share with hundreds of friends and send them around the globe in suitcases destined for distant relatives. Thankfully, they keep fresh for weeks on end. Its probably the Barakah.

Clafoutis: when in Texas, do like the French

This is not a cake, but something divinely just above a cake. And as classically French as it might be, I discovered it on a business trip to Houston, affirming my belief that one should never, ever decline an invitation to a meal.

A friend of a colleague invited us to a BBQ on the sunday afternoon that our team arrived in Houston, which sounds normal, except that the invitation was in french. A BBQ in French? To my eternal delight, this Houston BBQ was classically français by way of fresh, quality ingredients and complete with the classic entree-main course-cheese plate procession with this beauty of a desert to finish things off.

Coming back to the clafouti, if you use a deep pan, the batter separates a bit as it cooks, so you almost get two layers, as if it was a custard or a flan cooked in a crust. I like using a small, deep pan so that it stays thick and you get a full delicious of flan nestled into a light crust. In my second clafouti this week, I discovered that overcooking makes the flan almost grainy. I prefer it undercooked...

Sour Cherry Clafoutis:

For six (generous) portions

5 eggs

a pinch of salt

130g sugar

60g melted butter, plus a bit to butter the pan

80g flour

30cl milk

a dash of vanilla or a pack of vanilla sugar

300-500g cherries

note: I used frozen cherries, following the example of my generous host, which worked great. I just let them thaw in the fridge and then left out most of the juice. Hey, if they're not in season frozen is an acceptable alternative for staying 'from scratch!'

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF.

Hint: to make life easy on yourself, use a blender! You wont even need to dirty a single bowl. Just start with the eggs in the blender and add the other ingredients one at a time, pulsing between additions until it is finished and pour it straight into the mold that already has the cherries scattered.

Otherwise: With a pinch of salt, beat the eggs 'into an omelet,' which means really getting some air into them, making the eggs puff up, literally growing in volume. Add the sugar and keep beating.

Melt the butter and add, making sure to continue beating if the butter is not (to not cook the eggs). Add flour. mix. add milk. mix. add vanilla... you get the point.

If you're using fresh cherries, wash and dry them and then heat a spoon of butter and a spoon of sugar in a small pan, adding the cherries and enjoying the smell and sound for five minutes as they sauté and caramelize a bit in the butter and sugar.

Butter your pan and spread the cherries in the pan. Keep the juice - which is not only pretty but delicious, too - unless its just a ton. Pour the batter over top.

Bake for about 25 minutes. Serve warm.

Taglatelle aux cepes: Porcini mushroom pasta

Dinner in a Parisian apartment with two twenty something foodies is always fun, and I always mean to share more of it with you all. Here is a jewel from the Jacqueline file.

The French have a love affair with fresh mushrooms. There is a season vaguely in early fall when the world goes crazy for cepes, which are hunted and found and sold and eaten all over the land.

Jacqueline missed that season this year and I benefited from it because she was forced to buy insanely expensive dried mushrooms to satisfy her cravings, which then sat in the cabinet until this blessed monday night when she graced me with a recreation of her italian-chef-exboyfriend's Tagliatelle aux cepes.

Hunting mushrooms would be a whole new level of from scratch cooking, and oh i do plan to get there, but this recipe will hold you over until I break out of this city livin to frolick in the forest.

Also, I highly recommend the chapter in Omnivore's Delima on foraging!

Serves two
Ingredients:
- a handful or two of dried porcini mushrooms. More is better, aaand more expensive
- enough pasta for the two
note: Tagliatelle is like a flattened linguini, but better because it is better at grasping onto the sauce that it is served with so both arrive on your palate at the same time
- a small onion, or even better, a couple shallots
- 2 tbsp butter
- 1 small clove garlic
- a few spoons of cream or yogurt
- the water the mushrooms were soaked in

Soak dried cepes for 30 minutes ahead of time. Keep this liquid.

This is a story of pasta and sauce. So boil the pasta of your choice, in the amount of your choice, with a splash of olive oil and drain just as it reaches al dente. The pasta will be cooked a bit longer with the finished sauce, and you want it to stay al dente, meaning a bit firmer and not overdone so that it keep some substance.

Squeeze out all the water out of the mushrooms, conserving the soaking liquid.

In a large flat pan, sauté the chopped onion/shallots in a generous amount of butter with a dash of olive oil. Just do it. when butter and olive oil are together, dont question it too much.

Add the chopped garlic when the onions are almost done.

Add mushrooms and let sauté a couple minutes.


Pour in one ladle of the mushroom's soaking liquid and let this simmer. When the liquid is reduced and thickened, add another ladle. Do this for about 10 minutes then stir in the cream or yogurt.

It should be a fairly generous sauce at this point, creamy enough to coat the pasta.

Salt and pepper the sauce, some parsley is pretty and a shake of muscade takes it over the top.

... as would toasted pine nuts...

Toss the cooked pasta with the sauce, let warm on the stove to meld the flavors and coat the pasta. and serve.

Felfela

I've been feeling overwhelmed by all the recipes and photos and favors that I have accrued over the last few months and owe in posts. So going with the theme that has been working wonders in my personal life, I am starting with baby steps.

And here you are, a very simple and very different recipe that I was taught at least five different times during my two weeks in Algeria last fall. Each cook had their own take on the dish, as can be expected with something so ubiquitous. Felfela. The word actually just means bell pepper, or even just pepper and can be all the different colors possible, which says something about its permanence of the dish on the dinner tables at which I sat. No proper name even necessary; it's just the requisite vegetable dish.

One technique that american cooks - and I would venture to say european cooks as well - use very little is grating. We grate cheese, sure, and the French even grate carrots to use on salads, but in lots of Persian, Turkish and Algerian cooking to which I have been privy, grating things such as garlic and onion is a first step to most dishes and wholly replaces the concept of chopping, dicing or any specific julien technique. Perhaps there is a whole study of the different effects of the technique, but I'm going to skip straight to the recipe. This recipe includes grating the tomato garlic as a first step.

Felfela
3-5 Green Peppers
1-2 juicy big tomatoes (if good ones are not available, I might suggest experimenting with ethnic tomato pastes, but not the yucky american canned ones)
olive oil... maybe 1/2 a cup, maybe just 1/4...
1-2 cloves garlic

The actual recipe is super easy. Once you have grilled and peeled the green peppers and tomatoes, grated the garlic and thrown all into a pot to simmer, you're there. But I'll start with grilling the bell peppers, which takes the most time.


In my roasted red pepper soup from grad school, I learned to coat peppers with oil before grilling- with detailed instructions about the burning points of different oils - but forget all of that. Turn your oven up to 400ºF (205ºC), wash and dry your veggies and toss them in a big cake pan. Any pan works, but this catches the juices and leads to easier cleanup.

Put them in the oven, turning them every 15 minutes or so when the top side starts to crisp and turn black. Once they are starting to sag and collapse with the poke of a knife, immediately throw them in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap until they cool. This will make them "sweat" and you can fairly easily peel of the skin. I say 'fairly' because it is still tedious and I highly suggest having a bowl of water at hand for getting skin off your hands and generally dealing with the seeds.

In traditional Algerian villages, I'm told, everyone sends their daily rising bread and veggies over to the neighborhood brick oven. Though not everyone did so where I was, I got to tag along once and see both the traditional oven and the daunting stainless steel newer version. Baklava and bread were stacked in pans around the ovens waiting to go in.

Meanwhile, grate your tomatoes and garlic into a large flat pan and drown in oil.

Once you have recuperated the flesh of the grilled bell peppers, cut into bitesize strips and throw them in a large flat pan with the tomatoes, a generous pour of olive oil, and using a grater grate in 1-2 cloves of garlic.

Turn this on low heat and stir as it melds. Each time I asked how you know when it is ready, the response was, "you'll be able to smell it." Though I believe this 100%, I bet it will take a lot of smelling to figure it out. I'd guess between 15 and 30 minutes.

Great warm, amazing cold as a 'mezze' after a night in the fridge, and ideally eaten by dipping fresh bread into the plate to extract the oil and a few bits of veggies.

Blood Red Soup: pumpkin and beets!

If you'll permit me to do so, I'd like to begin with a recipe that has the highest return-on-investment I've ever experienced. Pumpkin Beet Soup. The velvety consistency and the sweet/salty taste are wonderful, but there is something oh so decadent about watching the deep color as you stir the bowl!

As is often the case, thanks goes to Karen for the idea!

Ingredients:

*1-2 medium sized roasted beets

 - this is easy to do, but even easier to buy... Shall post soon!

*Pumpkin or Butternut Squash or Potimarron, about 2 large soup bowls worth after being peeled, seeded, and cut into 1-2 inch chunks. 

...This would be 3/4 of a medium pumpkin, all of a potimarron or butternut squash

*salt and water

1. As mentioned above, peel, de-seed and chop pumpkin/squash/potimarron into 1-2 inch chunks, being as regular as is practical.

2. Cover with water in a large casserole, salt, and set to bubbling until the flesh is easily pierced by a fork, or spoon, and definitely knife. 

2. Remove but KEEP some of the water to be added in slowly as you find the right pumpkin-beet-water ratio for your soup.

3. Starting with one beet, roughly chop make it easier to blend and throw into the pumpkin-water casserole.

4. Salt generously (but of course, not too much).

5. Blend the heck out of said soup until really simply velvety. Add more beet and water to taste.

6. As most soups, it is even better the next day.

I plan to serve this as a part of our Halloween dinner celebration along with severed finger rolls... you're all invited!

Long time no write: Pictures from Algeria

I apologize, my dear friends, for such an unfortunately long absence on my part... The good news is that in the last three months I have visited the US to steal recipes from my dear mother; Algeria, where Mostaganem, a small, saintly city where a family of over 100 live together in a traditional house and promptly stole my heart; London... where life is easy because everyone speaks English; and of course, I landed back here in Paris where my friends are equally obsessed with food and recipes abound. So I have lots to share!

As I am currently feeling overwhelmed by the detailed memory necessary to do so, I will begin with some promises of recipes to come from Algeria.

Kassera: an Algerian Bread

I will not pretend to be able to make this bread on my own. But with an Algerian grandmother on hand... it is heavenly, rich, and delightful bread. I plan to become an expert.

Flour of Semoule, generous oil, salt, water, baking powder. Knead, roll out, throw it on hot metal, pick it after flipping it.

Shortcut - and oh so good in its own rite - Lime Pie

This was originally introduced to me by Jacqueline as a 'shortcut' lime pie.  But it is so much more. I am finally posting this after having been hounded for three weeks by the handful of people to whom I served it who insisted they would die without the recipe. And so:

To make one small pie (4-6 thick servings in a 9x5 pan - can be 9x9 if you want a thinner tart or more servings!):

Graham Cracker-ish crust
(but better!!)

8 small, square, crunchy cracker/cookies of your choice
(I used gerblé here, petit beurres are perfect, sesame cookies are wonderful...)
125-150 g melted butter, give or take
2-3 tbsp coconut flakes
a few tbsp sugar, to taste

Preheat oven to 185ºC/350ºF.
Crush up the crackers, stir together with the coconut flakes and sugar, and pour in the melted butter.
This should give you a sandy consistency, and you may need more or less butter depending on how absorbant your cookies are and how finely they are mashed.

In the end, when you squeeze a fist of the crust in your hand, it should hold together.

Line a small baking dish or pie dish of your choice with tin foil, or if its shallow enough for easy removal, or just spring pan, butter it.

Press the crust firmly into the bottom and bake until lightly browned. Should be about 15-20 minutes.

Let cool completely.

Pie filling
Blend well with beater, immersion blender, or rather violently with a whisk the following:

1 can sweetened condensed milk
an equal amount heavy cream
the zest and juice of 2-3 limes
(the amount of this is flexible, depending on how thick you want the ratio of crust to filling, so just get a can about the size of your fist, a bit bigger, and go from there)

When it is well fluffed, pour it into the cooled crust and sprinkle with toasted coconut and zest for presentation (optional).

 Refrigerate for at least 3 hours before serving. The blending of the filling makes it oddly firm (think, whipped cream, but more firm) and after being chilled, it holds its form surprisingly well!

Even better the next day.

Lime Pie

Jacqueline inspired this pie. 

and then I realized I had a similar recipe from my grandmother

whose cooking I never really knew,

but whose recipe box I photographed extensively.

So I melded their recipes,

Then I added some of my own inspiration

and I must say

the product was QUITE delicious!

I divided it into two small pies

to serve to two different groups of friends

and everyone raved

even the 'I dont like lime tarts' naysayers

But I'd guess it could make 1 good 9x9in dish

Crust:

18 petit beurre cookies, crushed

or 5-6 graham crackers

stirred in with 4tbsp coconut flakes

and 2-3 tsp sugar

and finally, 125g/8-9tbsp melted butter

the crumbs should stick in a ball when squeezed in your fist

if not, add more butter!

Press firmly into the bottom of a spring release pan

or a tin lined baking sheet like I did

bake for 15-20 minutes at 185ºC/350ºF

or until lightly browned

let cool 

Lime layer:

2 eggs + 2 yolks (save the whites for next step)

plus 1/2c sugar

grate the zest of two limes

or three if you really like the tartness!

then squeeze in their juice

1/2 c crème légère

Whip all this together and place in your double boiler

Meaning, mix it in a metal bowl,

put a pot of water on to boil

and fit the metal bowl over top

but make sure no water gets in your batter

it should leave a film on a wooden spoon dipped in

cool, pour in crust

Meringue:

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºC

 put 2-3 egg whites in a very large bowl

add pinch of salt

and beat the heck out of it with a whisk.

Until you get stiff peaks, in fact

there are a million videos of this online, 

and it can be done easily with a mixer!

add 2-3 T sugar and beat just a minute more

 pour over top of the lime layer

sprinkle coconut and lime gratings over top

bake at 180 till just browned

Refrigerate for at least 5 hours!!!!

remove from pan, remove

Jacqueline's shortcut, but oh so good as an idea all on its own, version coming soon!