Kat on Thyme

Slick as a Brick

I have always wondered why books on North African cookery didn’t have more recipes focused on Tunisian food. There is always a recipe for harissa, the spicy condiment that goes on EVERYthing, and perhaps a recipe for a bread or simple fish dish, but rarely is the cuisine of Tunisia featured in any significant way. I’m beginning to understand why. It is not that the ingredients here aren’t of good quality, or that the dishes aren’t tasty. Quite the opposite. But I hear over and over again, “This is good, but oh, you should taste the couscous in Morocco!” Or the vegetables, or breads, or whatever the dish may be; the culinary traditions in Morocco seem to have dominated the North African culinary landscape.

But here I am in Tunisia, and I’m interested in finding out what the Tunisians do well. My favorite thing so far has been the general category of dishes called brick. I’ve made a few loaves of bread over the years that could have been used as bricks, but this version of brick is far more palatable, needs no mortar, and is exciting for all of its possibilities. This is what it is: brick is a savory pastry (it could certainly be made into a sweet preparation, but I haven’t seen it) that uses a special type of dough called Feuilles de Brick. The dough is wrapped around a filling and pan fried and served with a squirt of lemon. The dough comes packaged sort of like tortillas but with a thin sheet of waxed paper between each. Unlike phyllo dough, it’s quite easy to work with, is somewhat elastic, and does not need to be brushed delicately with butter in between each layer. It reminds me most of the thin little pancakes served with Peking roast duck. The feuilles de brick are thinner, but otherwise very similar.

The brick pastry package

After doing a little research online, I found that chefs all over the world are doing fun things with brick pastry, both sweet and savory, and the thread of conversation I was reading was from 2005! Where have I been? Not in Tunisia, that’s for sure.

But here I am, and Aisha, the helper at Nada’s house, gave me a fantastic brick lesson. First we made the filling, which was a lovely sauté of poached chicken, steamed Yukon gold potatoes, and finely minced onion, flavored with parsley, salt and pepper. To this, she added a couple of eggs, lightly beaten and grated cheese (we used an Italian blend).

Rolling the filling in the 1/2 sheet of pastry.

The flavor was simple and certainly could be spiced up a bit with harissa, or changed completely to be made vegetarian. Really, any tasty combination of sautéed meats or vegetables would work nicely.

Next we rolled the filling burrito-style into the pastry rounds that had been cut in half, and pan fried them. No sealing the edges, no fussing with it at all. It was the easiest convenience pastry product I have ever used. We had a bit of extra filling, so Aisha showed me another traditional preparation which was to add the filling to the pastry, just as before but with a well in the center. She carefully cracked an egg into the well, and instead of rolling up the pastry as before, she simply folded it as a triangle to enclose the filling and gently lowered it into the hot oil.

Brick with filling and egg, ready to fold and fry.

The egg cooks with the pastry, but the yolk stays soft, like a poached egg. She folded the circular edges of the pastry to the center to make a square so that the pastry would have more body at the edges and would have enough thickness not to burn while the rest of the pastry browned.

It seems that the pastry could be folded in any manner in which other types of pastries are shaped, such as beggar’s purses, wontons, muffin tin cups, cigars, or any of the various filled pasta shapes. And some of the recipes baked the dough rather than frying it, which would certainly be healthier, but I think some of the crunch factor would be lost. Worth experimenting, none the less! I am excited to see whether I can find the feuilles de brick pastry in Sacramento. I’m guessing Mediterranean Market would have it, or could order it. And there’s always Amazon. I’m thinking of so many fun possibilities for summer produce pastries, and fruit filled turnovers. Brick is a fantastic new building material for my culinary toolbox.

Frying the egg brick pastry.

Veni Vidi Vizzini

I came, I saw, and I ate ricotta cheese at Vizzini’s 38^th annual ricotta cheese festival. I’m not a huge fan of ricotta in general, but when there’s a food festival in Italy it’s usually not to be missed. There are festivals (called sagre) almost every weekend from spring through the fall, celebrating everything from artichokes to zucce (pumpkins) and just about everything in between.

The trip was planned through the base at Sigonella and almost 40 of us made the 1 ½ hour trip. The bus made a brief stop in Vizzini’s main piazza, and we were told to be back at quarter to 3, don’t be late. Looking around at the very tiny little town, I couldn’t imagine what would keep me busy until almost 3, since my ricotta limit is about two spoonfuls, and one can only eat so many cannoli.

The festival was just getting going as we arrived and vendors were setting up their various wares. A funny Sicilian guy named Sebastiano told me there was a city tour at 10 and that it might be a good way to start the day since the ricotta wasn’t quite ready. The tour was in Italian so I gleaned what I could from it, with help from Sebastiano who spoke English well. The highlights: a sea of nopales cactus growing on the hillside as well as on the roofs of the lesser used churches, a church that is open only once a year (not our day!) and a gorgeous kitchen garden with fave and pomegranates growing in what once was once a little palazzo.

And to the main event! Waiting to taste the freshly made ricotta turned out to be a brilliant idea, since when we arrived for our sample (a 20 ounce vat of steaming ricotta and whey) the line had disappeared. Somehow nobody wanted to eat molten ricotta in the sun on an 80 degree day. We persevered. We found a table in the shade and did like the locals, breaking the stale bread into bite sized portions, and scooping it up with a spoon.  I can’t say I really liked it, as dairy has never been my thing, but I can say it was the best and most interesting ricotta I have ever tasted. It was creamy, and salty, with the full flavor of the sheep’s milk, but without any gaminess.

I asked the man at copper cauldron, who was stoking the wood fire and ladling out bowls of soupy ricotta, how the cheese is made. He told me that they boil the milk and add some portion of the sheep intestine to curdle it. Then they cook it slowly for about an hour to thicken it and to develop the flavor. That’s it! Simple, but so unlike the tasteless, gritty white cheese that passes for ricotta in the states.

By the time I had eaten my requisite 2 spoonfuls of ricotta it was almost 2 o'clock


and I’d yet to really explore the food vendors and their offerings, nor buy the cannoli that I had promised to Nick and his roommate, Ryan. The food vendors offered incredible sweets, pastries (both sweet and savory) and interesting things from the grill. Horsemeat is a local specialty, but after all of the cheese tasting, I didn’t have room for any carne di cavallo. I would like to try it though. I wonder which village hosts the sagra di horsemeat?

I had to hurry to get back to the bus, buying a 2 euro grocery sack full of mandarins on the way, which were taken care of by Nick’s marines upon my return. Nick, Ryan, and I took care of the cannoli. Delicious!

Slippery Slope

The Dover tarmac must be slathered in Vaseline. Flights keep slipping right off the schedule, including the 8:40 the 10:40 and the wee hours flight. After calling this morning at 3 am to check on our 5:15 show time, I caught a ride from the hotel only to find out the flight had been delayed until 12:55, then 1:55, then I got a boarding pass, and now it’s maybe leaving at midnight, or later, or tomorrow. I’ll likely be too late to catch any of the flights from Rota, Spain to Sigonella, Italy and there aren’t any more flights until Sunday. Sunday is officially a week after I started on this Space Available adventure. As much as I’ve been chomping at the bit to get moving and there has been one frustrating delay after another, I’m not sure I’m willing to call it wasted time. Sure, I’d rather be in Spain, or in Sicily, or at home for that matter, but I don’t regret my travel decision. Not if I get to see Nick.

My poor parents had to make three trips to Travis before I ever made a flight. Although I wasted lots of their time, I enjoyed our time together driving, and talking, and having an early breakfast in Davis, and cruising the back roads through the farm fields of Dixon, Sammy sleeping in the sun on the back seat. How is that wasting time? Wasting gas, maybe, but time, not at all. And I met lots of interesting people along the way. Dan and Will, two retired military guys became my travel buddies. We got food for each other, watched bags while the other napped, or took a walk, or relaxed in the USO lounge. We could all be tired and miserable and bored together. It made the waiting easier.

So I did finally make it to Spain on that flight from Dover- we took off only 13 hours after receiving our boarding passes, and 7 hours after going through security. We were indeed very late to Rota but lucky enough, the last flight to Sigonella was still on the tarmac. The Spanish terminal employees, civilians all of them, whirled into a flurry of bureaucratic activity and after running through a perfunctory security (unzip the bag, zip it again- no time to let the scanners warm up!) they whisked me off to the waiting bus and out to the plane, where I ran up the stairs, sat down and burst into tears. I didn’t even have time to thank anyone except for the man who took me to the plane. He said it was the fastest anyone had ever changed planes and that it was my lucky day that they hadn’t already left, which was true of course. But as my luck has gone so far this trip, it went, swiftly and completely. After an hour of flight we turned around and headed back to Rota which is where I sit as I write this, three days later. The ill-fated C-9 is still broken and I’ve given up calling every two hours to see if it’s fixed. Chained to the hotel phone is no way to experience a beach town on the Spanish Mediterranean. Flights to Sigonella last week were more than one a day, but somehow, not one plane has left for Sigonella since I arrived on Friday. Every day I pack my luggage, just in case. Today I even checked out of the hotel, only to check back in again a few hours later. Así es la vida! 

 

Lesson Learned

We've been back from China for almost a week now, but I've yet to leave on my trip to Italy. I am flying space available from Travis AFB, and when they said on the recording what flight schedules are subject to change without notice, they aren't kidding! Mom, Dad, and I did a dress rehearsal at 5 a.m. this morning, and drove to Travis for a flight that had been changed the evening before to a military only flight- no European vacationers! Should have called again before we left. Lesson learned. So it looks like my 3 days on the beach in the Spanish Mediterranean, tan and all, will have to be scrapped as I scramble to try again on Tuesday to get there to see Nick before he heads back to Africa on his mission. Sammy took the news well, and I did find the time to publish the following blog post that I had written in Shanghai. Wish me luck for my flight on Tuesday! This time I'll be calling ahead.

Sucking the Marrow

So far we’ve had fantastic luck at finding great food everywhere in China. It’s not always an easy process asking for what we’d like, and it feels like Christmas when the dishes arrive at our table, since we’re never sure what we’re going to get (because we’re never sure what we’ve ordered)! Mongolian Hot Pot didn’t prove to be any different in that respect. I’ve been wanting to try the hot pot, which translates roughly from the Chinese into Fire Pot. It’s sort of like the European broth fondues- there is a central pot of broth into which diners place items to cook and eat. Like everything else in China, the Mongolian hot pot is a little more free form and chaotic, at least as practiced by us.

Arriving at the restaurant, we couldn’t find any sort of menu, as this restaurant usually doesn’t deal with rookies like us. Since I suggested we try it, I figured it was up to me to make some sort of food appear at our table. Our waitress handed me a light green form covered in Chinese writing, which was how we were supposed to be deciding just what items we wanted in our hot pot. Not very helpful. The sweet young girl then took my over to the kitchen window and pointed to a large, pocked metal bowl filled with bones, broth, some other aromatics, and some things that looked like noodles. Now we were getting somewhere. Within minutes a similar bowl arrived at our table and the waitress lit the burner in the center of the table to get our broth boiling. Then we toured the restaurant’s other tables, her with pen in hand and me, pointing at food items other people were eating. Baby bok choy, cilantro, mushrooms, lotus root, thinly shaved rolls of meat, romaine, and the “noodles” which turned out to be tofu skins- all arrived on a little bookshelf, each in its own little plastic basket. In another plastic basket were drinking straws and disposable gloves, but that would be for later! Once our broth boiled, we started carefully adding our embellishments. When that method proved too slow to keep up with our appetites, we just turned the baskets of food over into the boiling broth. We added some fiery chile oil to the mix and had at it. Yum! As the vegetables began to disappear and the soup bones started to poke up through the broth, our waitress came by for a demonstration of just how those gloves and straws should be employed. She donned the gloves and pantomimed chewing on the bones. OK, that was more or less a no-brainer, but the straws? I was stumped. So our waitress transferred all of the soup bones to plates, let them cool, and then used the straw to poke at the bone marrow to loosen it. Then she spooned some broth into the cavity with the marrow, and the straw was for sucking that fatty concoction out! Not my cuppa jasmine green tea. Claudina, intrepid eater that she is, chewed the soup bones dry, pumped that broth and marrow until it was juicy, and slurped it right up. Impressive! Claudina 1, Kat 0.

The tower of hot dumplings!

Forbidden KFC
6 hours in the car, 4 hours at the airport, 12 hours on the plane, miles of Beijing Airport moving sidewalk, a long bus ride and where do we end up? We end up at the only restaurant that is open at 7:30 in the morning that is able to accommodate 36 very hungry American tourists: KFC. I wasn’t that hungry. The menu was interesting- no actual fried chicken, but they had congee (a sort of savory porridge made of rice) and various sorts of egg sandwiches, all with ketchup. Not a chicken to be had, at least for breakfast. As delicious as the hamburger patty, eggs and ketchup sandwich sounded (blaakh!) I decided to munch down the little bag of Annie’s organic graham cracker bunnies that I had in my pocket and call breakfast a done deal.
I asked Richard, our Chinese tour guide, what he liked to eat for breakfast and if there might be something a little more authentic nearby the KFC. McDonalds was open, and some in our group opted for the golden arches, but Richard and I walked around the corner into a steamy ramen noodle shop and I ordered the soup from the picture on the menu that was speckled with the most vegetables. I had to feel a little sorry for the folks at the KFC (my family included!) as I dug into that molten hot bowl of slippery noodles. A little noodle etiquette I learned from Richard- slurping is o.k. with soup and noodles and you can eat like a farmer or eat like a princess and enjoy them just the same. I did just that, like a princess, of course.

LAX and holding…
The great wall of Chinese luggage has been checked, security conquered (my first body scan!) and we’re sitting 6 in a row waiting to board our flight to Beijing. It’s midnight. Our China line-up includes mom, dad, Aunt Peggy, Bill, Claudina and me. Bill and Claudina are friends of my parents (the most adventurous ones) and as easily swayed by a good deal as my dad. He’s a groupon groupie. But I can’t complain. I’ve eaten groupon pizza, drank groupon wine, and now I’m visiting groupon China. With a group. We met one of our entourage in the check-in line. I’m not sure how many are in the group but the number that sticks in my head is 36. Big group. Everybody loves a bargain. I’m so curious about the others who might be traveling in our group. Where will they be from? Will any of them speak Chinese (supremely helpful) or be from Sacramento? Will I make any new friends?
Most of all I’m excited about the food. Aunt Peggy is wondering if there will be forks to use. My mother has vowed not to eat any meat, worried perhaps about what kind of meat she might be ingesting. I promised Sammy not to eat any of his Chinese cousins, but I don’t suppose that sort of thing isn’t a worry on the tourist trail. When I visited China before, we named the streets by what was being sold on them since we couldn’t read the signs. Optimistically, we called the street that sold the puppies, kittens, songbirds, and crickets “Pet Street.” No one was selling leashes or catnip, but one has to hope.
It’s been so many years since I last travelled to China, I’m excited to see how it has changed. It is the most different and interesting place I’ve ever been. Surely our accommodations will be a big improvement over the Tianjin Middle School #1 dorm room that I stayed in last time. I was a chaperone (not a very good one) for an AFS group of high school students studying Chinese. That was a long time ago. And surely not only China has changed.

Two Days and a Wake-up

I can count the days on one hand now. And I’m more than half way to San Diego, geographically speaking. Nick comes home from his six month deployment on Tuesday, around 10:45. Or 1045, if you do military time, which even after all of my years of sailing, I’ve never mastered. And sailing I’ve been, which proved a godsend for passing the time.

Near the end of July, I left Seattle for my annual relief cooking trip aboard a beautiful historic yacht which my friend, Grant, captains. When guests are aboard it’s a busy job, filling my day from about 5:30 in the morning to around 9:30 at night. And as much work as it is, somehow it still feels like a vacation, to be with friends, in such a beautiful place, on such an amazing vessel. When no guests are aboard it’s easy to pretend that we belong around the long, polished teak dining table, eating our dinners and drinking the wine that’s been abandoned by the guests because of its inferior vintage. But the next day finds us cleaning, doing maintenance, provisioning, tidying, planning, phoning and faxing, and generally getting the boat and her gear ready to go.

My first year aboard, I thought so hard ahead of time about what I wanted to prepare for the guests. When I arrived on the boat and swung open the walk-ins I was greeted with every imaginable form of protein, and cupboards, bins, and stowage cubbies full of expensive, exciting, and ethnic ingredients. There were probably 10 different kinds of salt. All I needed was produce, and some fresh dairy products and we were ready to sail. So these past few years, I’ve been planning less and experimenting more. I bring a few trusty cookbooks and photocopied baking recipes and just wing it from there. Meticulous planning only proves frustrating on a boat, where weather, fishing, and the varied interests of the guests drive our daily schedule. Flexibility and a sense of humor are likely the most important traits of a boat chef, followed by creativity and a strong stomach, not necessarily in that order. This year the weather was dreary, and we had a few bumpy days at sea. I didn’t mind being below decks in such drizzle and took comfort in the warm galley, where I cooked and baked up my own little storm. The steward, Jill, and I had a bit of downtime to venture into Ketchikan in a downpour, Wrangle, on very tired feet, and into a tiny town called Thorton Creek, where we confounded the supersized locals in the hardware store, where we were looking for disposable latex gloves, sized small. They said their gloves weren’t too big for my hands, my hands were too small to be working in Alaska. Certainly Jill and I together, with a sack of flour under each arm, wouldn’t have made up one of those burly Alaskan giants.

Traveling with Jill is like traveling with a movie star. All week people asked if we were sisters, which I definitely never minded. Our last night in Alaska, we again donned the stupid yellow slickers, and wandered through the drizzle to Kito’s Kave- the local fishermen’s bar in Petersburg. We finished out trip in grand style, drinking whiskey and beer surrounded by crazy locals and barely legal Coast Guard cadets. The next morning didn’t feel so grand, but we rallied just in time for our taxi to the airport. Ten days down, in one fabulous swoop.

And now, I’m staying with my folks in Sacramento, seeing family and friends, until early Monday morning. Then, I fold myself back into the little yellow beetle convertible and hit the road again, this time with summer clothes, a few favorite cookbooks, too many pairs of shoes, and as always, an optimistic heart. Two more days and a wake-up.

I made this with last trip’s tired bananas and had it out for the guests when they arrived aboard.

Greet the Guests Banana Yogurt Coffeecake

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a large (9x13 inch) rectangular baking dish.

Whisk together the following ingredients in a large bowl:

2 cups unbleached flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
1 ½ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon Kosher salt

In another bowl, combine the following:

Heaping 1 ¾ cups yogurt
2 teaspoons vanilla
Zest of two small limes
6 Tablespoons melted butter
1 ¼ cups brown sugar
3 large eggs
3 very ripe bananas, pureed or mashed

Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold them together. Spread the batter into the prepared pan and smooth into the corners so that the level is even. Sprinkle with the streusel topping and bake for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. If the topping starts to brown too much, cover the top very loosely with foil. Cut into squares to serve.

Streusel Topping

3 Tablespoons melted butter
3 Tablespoons flour
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
About 2/3 cup finely chopped nuts or oatmeal (enough to give the mixture into a crumbly texture)

Mix the previous ingredients, except the nuts, with a fork to blend. Add the nuts and work into a crumbly state. Sprinkle onto the coffeecake evenly.

Makes 12 very large pieces.