waiting for the muse

As she said, OOPS, I did it again!  Im not usually in the habit of quoting Britney but since I did something so stupid I guess it's OK to quote someone of my intellectual equal here.  I hit the 'remove' button while trying to correct one of the badges I've been collecting over on the left.  Don't see any there?  It's because one errant key stroke I made thinking I was removing ONE ITEM took the whole list out.  And I can't get it back.  I even went to the Way Back Machine and the last they had done this site was back in April when, guess what...  that was the last time I took it all out by accident!  Anyway I am bummed at my stupidity yet again.  And so I get to start all over again collection links to things I'm interested in, things I belong to, good info sites, and all that.  There were things on that from 2004, probably obsolete links now but it was nice to keep them as a little memory box.  Aaarughhh.

Christmas is over for me, except the cooking part and there is quite a hunk of that to go.  I was planning on doing the Seven Fishes thing again on Christmas Eve, but since I've had my fishy fill lately after spending a fortune on fish for last weeks big dinner, I'm downgrading to lamb this year.  We are thinking of doing our old fashioned Middle Eastern spread since 2 of our guests are from the Netherlands and one is Greek, and the other one is plain vanilla who isn' very adventurous so I won't worry about. As long as I have enough bread she will be fine-  she is one of those fussy eaters and it will be her issue to pick through what she can eat, not mine.  So, today we are off to the Middle Eastern Bakery and Grocery to see what they have to work around- between them and the local butcher I think we can pull it off.

TY grew up in a family that was half Assyrian and half Armenian and his two parents were always at odds on how to cook every dish.  The cuisines of the Middle East are mostly from the same ingredients but there is a slight variation in preparation, or spices, or presentation that is the ONLY way according to both of them, and of course they only come from a small area.  If they went far afield to say, Lebanon for instance, we'd encounter a whole new set of rules because that area was revered as the 'Paris of the Middle East' and was 'very fancy' with lots of different influences.    There is also a different spelling from country to country but we're talking the same dish.  For instance Boerek (Boereg, Borek, and several other variations) is fillo dough encasing a cheese mixture (different cheeses in every recipe I see!).  Sometimes it's cut before baking, like baklava (also MANY variations and spellings according to region and culture and who conquered who), sometimes it's portioned out in huge slabs.  The current way of making it, in spite of learning years ago how to 'open the dough' (a required lesson for any young bride entering an Armenian family!) until it's thin enough to read a newspaper through, is to use packaged fillo (phyllo) and build up the layers.  Some bright guy now makes a 'country style' fillo which is a bit thicker and more like the old homestyle and therefore a bit closer to authentic.  Of course finding this in south Florida may be more of a challenge than I am up for, and I'll probably have to revert to the thinner sheets and just put in more layers.  And that's only the first course.

I have two great books about Middle Eastern foods that I follow as my current authorities:

SPICE, by Ana Sortun, and ARABESQUE, by Claudia Roden. I can't recommend one over the other because I love them both.  The Roden book covers Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon along with other areas.  She grew up in Egypt so has a broad range of knowledge. Sortun is a chef in Cambridge with an amazing restaurant.  Your call.  Advice-  get 'em both.