North Africa!

Here are the recipes for my suggested menu for this week, all from Vegetarian Table: North Africa, one of the best of the "Vegetarian Table" cookbook series.

Hlelem
Bean, Chard, and Noodle Soup (Tunisia)

2T olive oil
1 small onion, finely diced
1/2c chopped celery leaves
4c vegetable broth (you can get decent veggie broth powder in the WF or CM bulk -- BHS)
One 6oz can tomato paste
One 15oz can butter beans with their liquid
One 15oz can garbanzo beans with their liquid
1lb Swiss chard, stems included, finely chopped
20 fresh flat-leaf parsley sprigs, minced
1/2c crushed dried capellini (angel hair) pasta or thin egg noodles
Salt and freshly-ground black pepper to taste
2t harissa (I'll bring mine to Kate's and we can add it there -- BHS)
Lemon wedges for garnish

In a large saucepan or soup pot over medium-high heat, heat the oil and cook the onion, stirring occasionally, until tender, 6 to 8 minutes. Add the celery leaves and stir until wilted. Add the broth and the tomato paste and stir to blend. Bring to a low boil. Add the butter beans, garbanzo beans, chard, parsley, and crushed pasta or noodles. Cook, covered, until the vegetables are tender, 10 to 15 minutes. Season with salt, pepper, and harissa. Serve with lemon wedges on the side.

Ommok Houria
Mother Houria's Carrot Salad (Tunisia)

1lb carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
2c water
12 fresh flat-leaf parsley sprigs, minced
1t ground caraway
2T olive oil
3T red wine vinegar
2 garlic cloves, minced
Salt and freshly-ground black pepper to taste
Harissa to taste (I'll bring mine to Kate's and we can add it there -- BHS)
12 Kalamata or nicoise olives
2 hard-cooked eggs, quartered

In a medium saucepan, bring the water to a boil. Add the carrots, reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook until the carrots are tender, 10 to 15 minutes. Drain. Transfer them to a medium bowl. Add the parsley, caraway, olive oil, vinegar, garlic, salt, pepper, and harissa. Stir well to blend.

To serve, make a mound of the Ommok Houria on a plate. Stud it with the olives and garnish it with the hard-cooked eggs. Serve at room temperature.

Couscous Belboula
Barley Grit Couscous (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia)

2T olive oil
1 onion, sliced
2 large tomatoes, quartered
24 fresh cilantro sprigs, tied with cotton string
4c vegetable broth (you can get decent veggie broth powder in the WF or CM bulk -- BHS)
1t ground turmeric
1t black pepper
1/2t ground cinnamon
3 carrots, peeled and cut into sticks
2 rutabagas, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 globe eggplant, peeled and cut into large chunks
2 zucchini, cut into 1/2-inch-thick sticks
Salt to taste
2T unsalted butter
1c barley grits
1T smen or olive oil (smen is apparently an African butter, spiced and aged 6 weeks, so probably go with the olive oil -- BHS)

Preheat the oven to 200F. In a large soup pot over medium-high heat, heat the oil and cook the onion, stirring occasionally, until tender, 6 to 8 minutes. Add the tomatoes, cilantro, broth, turmeric, pepper, and cinnamon. Cover and bring to a rolling boil. Add the carrots and rutabagas and lower the heat to medium. Cover and cook until the vegetables are crisp-tender, 15-20 minutes.

Add the eggplant and zucchini and cook until tender, 10 to 12 minutes. To prevent the vegatables from overcooking, with a slotted spoon, transfer them to an ovenproof dish and keep them warm in the oven until ready to serve. Keep the broth simmering in the pot. Discard the cilantro and season with salt.

In a medium saucepan, place 1 cup of the broth and 2T of butter, and bring to a low boil. Remove from the heat and add the barley grits. Stir to blend. Cover and let stand for 5 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl. Fluff the barley grits with a fork to break up any lumps. Sprinkle lightly with 1/2c of the broth to moisten. Add the smen or olive oil and mix well.

Arrange the barley grits around the perimeter of a serving platter. Place the vegetables in the center. Serve with some of the remaining broth on the side.

Mhalbi
Custard with Orange Flower Water (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia)

1/3c cornstarch
3c whole milk
1/4c sugar
1 cinnamon stick
2T orange flower, rose, or rose geranium water.
1/2c almonds, toasted pine nuts, or pistachio nuts, coarsely ground
2c fresh raspberries (optional)

In a small bowl, dilute the cornstarch with 1/2c of the milk. Set aside. In a heavy, medium saucepan, bring the remaining 2 1/2c milk, sugar, and cinnamon stick to a boil. Add the cornstarch mixture. Whisk continuously until the mixture thickens, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and remove the cinnamon stick. Stir in the orange flower, rose, or rose geranium water. Pour into 5 individual ramekins or parfait glasses. Let cool.

Sprinkle with the nuts and garnish with fresh raspberries, if using. Serve chilled or at room temperature.

Brussels Sprouts Poached in Cider with Onions and Apples

I have to be honest and admit that this is really not my favorite of all the things I've ever cooked. I prefer brussels sprouts steamed lightly and then sauteed in butter and salt, with smoked gruyere grated over them before they're done, but that's primarily because, hey, smoked gruyere, how can it be bad?

These were good and definitely more interesting & subtle than the gruyere variety, but I still pined for the richness missing with the... well, the missing fat. There's really not much in here.

This is from Georgeanne Brennan's France: The Vegetarian Table. You'll probably see a theme with my cooking night recipes: the Vegetarian Table books are a handy reference whenever I need an explicit ethnicity of food, since they have a good selection of all dishes (appetizers, soups, small plates, entrees, desserts, etc.) from each culture. That said, some are better than others. I have yet to make anything mind-blowing with Italy and France, but America (no surprise, since it's penned by Deborah Madison), Thailand, and North Africa are real gems.

Oh! One last thing about this recipe: when I made it, I doubled it for cooking night, and ended up having to cook it in my wok, so the ingredients were not all directly touching the bottom of the pan and I had to stir it a lot, so I expected the timings to be off, but they were way off. Seriously, scanning the recipe, the cooking times are, in order, 3-4 minutes, 3-4 minutes, and 10-15 minutes. For me it was--no exaggeration--more like 10-12 minutes, 10-12 minutes, and 50-60 minutes. No joke. The sprouts still were a tiny bit tougher than I wanted after that long, too. Don't let that discourage you, just beware that you will need to be confident in your eyeballing and tasting abilities to potentially make up your own timings.

Brussels Sprouts Poached in Cider with Onions and Apples

For me, this dish conjures up the Norman countryside in late autumn and early winter when the last fall apples are still on the ground beneath the trees, but the first cider has already been pressed. The rolling hills have mist hanging about them until late into the morning and you sense, as you drive along, that if you have the good fortune to be invited into the kitchen of one of the stone farmhouses that dot the countryside, you will surely be offered a small glass of warming homemade calvados.

1 lb brussels sprouts
2 Golden Delicious or other sweet apples
2T butter
2T olive oil
1 yellow or red onion, chopped
1 1/2c apple cider
1/2t salt
1/2t freshly ground black pepper
2 star anise
1/4c balsamic vinegar

Trim the stems from the sprouts and cut each sprout in half from the top through the stem end. Halve and core the apples, peel them if you wish, and cut them into 1/2-inch cubes.

In a skillet or heavy-bottomed saucepan large enough to hold all the ingredients eventually, melt the butter with the olive oil over low heat. When they begin to foam, increase the heat to medium and ad the onions and apples. Saute until the apples have softened and the onions are translucent, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the sprouts and saute, stirring gently, for 3 or 4 minutes. Add the apple cider, salt, pepper, and star anise. Cover and reduce the heat to low. Simmer until the sprouts are easily pierced with a fork, 10 to 15 minutes.

Using a slotted spoon, remove the contents of the pan to a warmed serving dish, discard the star anise and cover to keep warm. Increase the heat to medium-high and cook until the pan juices are reduced by half. Add the vinegar and cook for 2 to 3 minutes longer, stirring and scraping the pan to loosen any bits that may be stuck to it.

Ed: I actually found the vinegar to be too much, maybe because my completely different cooking times had already reduced the cooking liquids down substantially. I'd recommend not adding all the vinegar at once, but rather adding and tasting as you go. You do want it to be very vinegary, to be clear, since it is just a dressing, and not meant to be drank on its own, but not so vinegary it drowns the other flavors!

Pour the hot pan juices over the sprouts mixture and serve immediately.

Baked Beans

I promised a few people I'd post this recipe, and kept forgetting. My recipe for this week is sitting on the stove taking much longer than it's supposed to be for the brussels sprouts to soften up, so in the meantime I thought I'd write this one up.

This is from America: The Vegetarian Table by Deborah Madison. Generally all of the Vegetarian Table series cookbooks are excellent, although America is among the best. North Africa is also fantastic. France is currently proving a little off on the cooking times (at this very moment!)

I added powdered Lapsang Souchong tea to the recipe to give it a particular smokiness. Lapsang Souchong is a particular kind of black tea -- not expensive, and quite common at any tea shop -- that is smoked in woven baskets over pine fires. The tea itself smells like a camp fire. It is not subtle. Don't overdo it, or the tea can easily overpower the rest of the flavors.

Also, soybeans take longer to soak and cook than just about any other bean. They also expand more than most beans while soaking. I'd recommend putting them to soak the night before, and adding water over the course of the next two hours, eventually leaving them covered by a good 3 inches of water or more. I cooked them for 3 hours and they still could have used more. I guess the message is just this: err on the side of over-doing it with the beans. You can't really ruin beans by cooking them too much, but too little and they're tough and chewy.

Baked Beans, like Apple Pie, is a definitive American dish. There are a number of slow-cooked bean dishes throughout New England, all with their arguable differences, but they always include pork of some kind, a sweetener--first maple syrup, then molasses and brown sugar--and the bean itself, which might be a navy bean, marrow bean, yellow-eyed pea, or another. A splash of bourbon or rum finds its way into beans as they travel south. The slab of salt pork is what provides succulence for the beans. Since it's not used here, I've switched to the soybean, a creamy, fat little legume that gives the final dish the richness it needs. Soybeans can take up to 3 hours to cook until tender, so I prefer to cook them on top of the stove until they're done, then finish them in the oven, instead of tying up oven heat and space. Unsoaked soybeans take 35 to 40 minutes in a pressure cooker.

3c yellow soybeans, picked over and soaked for 12 hours in [filtered, not tap -- Ed.] water to cover
4 bay leaves
1 small yellow onion, peeled but left whole.
4 whole cloves
3T safflower oil
3c finely diced yellow onion
1/3c brown sugar [I used light -- Ed.]
1/2c molasses
1/3c tamari
2t salt
1 1/2t ground chipotle chile or pureed chipotle in adobo sauce
1-2t ground Lapsang Souchong black tea (my addition -- Ed.)

Put the beans in a heavy saucepan with 2 of the bay leaves and the onion stuck with the cloves. Add fresh water to cover by 6 inches and bring to a boil. Boil, uncovered, for 10 minutes. Scoop off any foam, then lower the heat and simmer, partially covered, until the beans are tender, about 3 hours. Check to make sure there's ample liquid covering the beans while they're cooking.

While the beans are cooking, heat the oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the diced onion and the remaining 2 bay leaves and cook until the onion is soft, stirring occasionally, about 12 minutes. Set aside.

When the beans are done, drain them, reserving the liquid, and place them in a bowl. Stir in the onion, brown sugar, molasses, soy sauce, salt, and chipotle chile [and powdered tea -- Ed.] Put the beans in a shallow baking dish and add the reserved liquid plus water, if needed, so that the mixture is a little soupy and the beans are just covered. Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F. Cover the dish with aluminum foil and bake for 1 hour. Remove the foil and continue baking until the beans brown on top, another 30 minutes or so.

Serve the beans on plates or in shallow bowls.