Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Middle Eastern Cooking at Home

"It's all in the presentation" is a phrase that oft comes to mind when thinking of a great meal out or an elaborate meal prepared at home. For me, this is true even before the food hits the plate. There's something about certain containers that get me especially in the mood to cook. Perhaps being able to see the potential for food inside and being able to gauge its freshness at a glance is the quality that most draws me to the mason and pickling jars.

This past weekend I finally fulfilled my months-long goal of acquiring some jars of my own thanks to an afternoon stop in ps coffee tea n spices post brunch at Juventino.

My new collection of 2 baby jars, a medium-size mason jar, and a large metal tin with snappy closure is just the beginning of what I hope to be a beautiful friendship with food preservation/storage. The first occupant of the two baby jars was an Afghan cilantro chutney I prepared from a not-too-involved recipe in a new cookbook that is all Middle Eastern, all vegetarian (in other words, the best thing ever). The cookbook promised this stash would keep for 2 weeks, but I'm already 1.5 bottles in so I'm not able to confirm this timeline at this juncture, but what a great first foray into the use of these wonderfully cute devices!

This next part doesn't have so much to do with containers so much as the wonderful surprise of an elaborate, slightly time-consuming meal actually turning out really good. I'm not sure I've been this surprised at such a feat since my early years as a vegetarian attempting to make elaborate Indian and Thai dishes for holidays and family member's birthdays.

If you're a tomato lover, you will love this dish...sundried and fresh tomatoes (cherry, beefsteak, Roma--you choose), basil, scallions, and some other stuff rolled into balls or kufteh in a tomato pastey sauce. I thought I'd defy the recipe's suggestion and serve over couscous but Campanelle pasta was definitely the better choice. This foray turned out to be one of those dishes with the potential of being light yet filling. It only turned out to be heavy and filling because it was so surprisingly tasty, I had trouble putting my fork down.


The best lesson from this experience was actually something Ms. Frizzle told me many moons ago (my fellow former Magic School Bus fans, you know what I'm talking about): "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!" What a motto to live by in the kitchen.

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