My first Falafel - success!

Inspired by this recipe, I decided to try making my own falafels.

I made a few changes, as usual.  On the whole, a resounding success.


1 cup of dry chickpeas
1 cup fava beans (lightly crushed and skins winnowed)

• Soak at least 24 hours with several changes of water.

1 leek
1 small onion
3 cloves garlic
2 teaspoons salt
2 Tbs flour
1 tsp cayenne pepper
pinch cardamom

Toasted whole then ground spices
3 pepper corns
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander

• Drain the beans, mash them up with all the other ingredients
• form into falafel shapes (which happens to be the same shape as a large spoon) and deep fry medium heat

Affordable?  Yep.  I can buy three falafels for a dollar in the shop, or I can make this huge pile of falafels for the same amount.

Kechk Stew

I've been playing around more with Kechk lately, making stews and soups and random stuff.  I quite like it.  It's easy to digest, and seems to make meat easier to digest too.  

To make the kechk stew, I do the usual fry the onions, brown the meat (or forget it if you are going vegetarian), add the vegi and some salt and pepper, don't forget the garlic, stir some more.  Mix a few Tbs of kechk powder into some water, add it to the stew with more water, boil it down till everything's cooked through.  Add more kechk a bit before serving to thicken it, cook ten minutes then serve.  

Adding the kechk twice means that I can get both the flavour and the texture I like.  Kechk is a fantastic thickener, and I am eager to try it in gravy next time we have a roast.

The only issue I have with kechk stew is that there is no possible way to photograph it that displays how incredibly delicious it is.  

Kechk is traditionally not vegan friendly, however there is a recipe in Wild Fermentation that explains how you could make a vegan version of this.

Chard Wraps Recipe

Over the last 6 weeks or so, I've had some of the oddest food cravings.  It's not the kind of craving like the intense desire for eating that last piece of cake, or chocolate brownies.  It's more extreme than that.

No, I do not have a bun in the oven.

Often hard to pin down exactly what the food is my body wants, the craving can last for months or years until I eat what it demands.  Whereas a regular sweet tooth craving will go away in a few hours/days.  Usually these extreme cravings are for foods I don't even like.  For example, last spring it was for oysters.

Right now, my body is demanding several things:  Almonds top the list, followed closely by anchovies.  Also high on the list are milk products (but surprisingly not cheese), swiss chard, oats, fish sauce and chickpeas.  I'm sure there must be some diagnostic element to all these strange cravings.  Most of these foods are high in calcium and the kind of oils that I don't normally get in my diet.  None of them are particularly unhealthy, so I've added them into my diet, in moderation.

As much as I want to eat chard, I only know a few recipes and they are getting a bit repetitive.  So I asked my friend for ideas.  Here's what his family makes with chard.

Chard Wraps

1 cup rice, soaked but not cooked
chard leaves (quantity depends on size of leaves)
onion, tomato, herbs, meat... whatever you think goes well with this.  I used shallots, dried tomatoes and thyme.
potato
3 cups of broth of your choosing, I like chicken broth.

• Wash and soak the rice for at least an hour (upto 24 hours).  Rinse and drain.
• chop up the onion, tomato, whatever you want in the filler, very fine.  Combine with the rice, put to one side.
• If you haven't already, trim off the stocks from the chard, reserve the stocks for soup or something else.  If the leaves are very large, chop them into two or four pieces.  Blanch for about 1 minute by boiling some water in a very large pot, submerge the leaves, remove from water and drain.
• slice a potato and put it in the bottom of a large pan.
• Wrap about 1 Tbs of rice mix in each leaf.

• Place each wrapped chard leaf in the pan on top of the potatoes.  Make certain they are tightly packed together or it will all fall apart.

• Place a plate on top of the wraps to hold them down and add broth.
• Bring to boil and cook for about 20 to 30 minutes (depending on kind of rice, brown rice usually takes longer).  Serve hot or cold.

This is an affordable dish and healthy dish.  You can add different fillers to the rice to accommodate allergies.  If you use vegetable broth and no meat in the filling, this is Vegan Friendly. 

I deliberately left the instructions vague as to how much of what you put in the filling.  I think the joy of this meal is that you use what is on hand, and adapt it to different dietary needs.

Viili culture 72 hours in

Now my Viili has well and truly curdled.  It no longer smells like yoghurt and is starting to sour.  When I touch it with my finger, a long gooey strand comes away with it, but for the most part, it's just like curdled cream - still pourable, not set at all.  The taste is like sour milk with a strong chalky aftertaste.  Not nice at all.

I read in The Art of Fermentation, and the people of Wells of Health confirmed, that when the yoghurt curdles it means that it has cultured too long.  The advice Wells of Health people gave is to put it in the fridge (keeping the cotton ball in the culture) for 6 hours, then remove the ball and take a bit of the thickest part of the curdled yoghurt and use that to culture a new batch.

I thought that maybe there was something wrong with the milk I chose for the first batch, so I went to the shop in order to buy some organic whole milk.  But when I was there, they had something called cereal cream on sale (it expires in a few days, thus the sale).  It's organic, and what's more it comes in this fantastic glass bottle!  I had a taste, and it's yummy stuff.

Not certain how this cereal cream is made, but it's one of the few cows milk products I've tried that doesn't upset my stomach.  It's strange that only organic cows milk (and not all of it) sits well with me.  This leads me to wonder if it's something in the diet or medication they give the cattle that I'm reacting to, and not the milk itself.  These days I also react badly to beef, most beef, but not all of it... something to wonder about anyway.

I have two cups of cereal cream left, so I will have to find something else to make with this today.  I wonder if I can make butter from it?  However, if it works as yoghurt, I may not have any of it left to experiment with.

The runny goo that comes off the curdled yoghurt,
a bit like a snot booger sorry to say.

Viili culture 68 hours later

68 hours into culturing
Can you see the upper left side,where the cream cracks
and there is something like way?

The viili yoghurt culture is more challenging than expected.  It's gotten to this clotted cream stage, and no further. I think it's stuck.

Although, I must say, I really like the smell.  It has all the best qualities of a yoghurt smell - sweet, enticing, smooth - without any of the aroma I don't like - sour, milky, acrid.

The people at Wells of Health got back to me quickly and said, just keep waiting and whatever I do, don't put it into the fridge until it is set.  It's reassuring to know that I'm doing the right thing as I'm always so nervous when I make things from milk.

I can definitely see that the culture is doing something to the milk, so wait a bit and check on the culture, will be my rhythm for today.  With hopefully a trip to the store to see if I can pick up some Koji and chickpeas for miso making.



The Kombucha isn't changing much, maybe a bit more cloudy, like mist raising up from a valley at dawn.  No daughter (or new mother) is forming yet, but I think the house may be a bit cool for it.

The Kombucha tea getting quite beautiful in the jar, but difficult to photograph because of the reflection in the glass.  I bet there is some sort of trick for getting around that, one day I'll learn it.


As it is, I'm still learning how to photograph food without it coming out like this...

...steamed up camera lense!  Photographing hot food is harder than you think.


Here's a random thought:  If this yoghurt cultures at room temperature, is it a chance this will be more bento friendly than regular store bought yoghurt?  If I pack it in my lunch will it stay yummy longer at room temp than the store bought stuff?

Kechk Dip Recipe. What is this Kechk stuff anyway?

Kechk is a traditional Lebanese food made from yoghurt and wheat, that is fermented, dried, and ground into a shelf-stable powder that can be used for all sorts of different things.  According to one person I talked to, it doesn't have to be made from yoghurt, his mother in Lebanon, makes it from raw goats milk.  Either way, it looks like a great way to preserve excess milk and/or yoghurt.

Before I set out to make Kechk, a project that takes a few weeks I'm told, I decided to try some of the commercial variety.  It comes as a fairly fine off-white powder, and smells exactly like what I use to put on popcorn when I went to the movies as a child.

For my first experience with Kechk, I made a dip.

Kechk Dip

2 Tbs Kechk powder
water
few drops olive oil
herbs like mint, chives, sage, thyme, &c.  Fresh or dry is fine.

• Combine the Kechk powder with enough water to make a thick paste. Mix in a few drops of olive oil.
• Finely chop the herbs and add them to the mix.
• Let it sit for about 20 min or so before eating with crackers, vegetables, or a spoon.

At first it has a grainy texture, but after it sits for a little while, it becomes smooth like hummus.

Kechk isn't always easy to find in these parts, or affordable when you can find it, but it looks like fun to make.  I can see myself making this in future.  According to the book The Art of Fermentation, you can make a vegan version using the same method (but different ingredients), but not drying it all the way, forming the paste into small balls and store covered with olive oil.  Apparently it makes a shelf stable vegan cheese substitute which is also good for flavouring and thickening soups.

Making Pastirma at home - plus recipe

I'm intrigued by stories of food from the Old Country.  Traditional recipes that combine preservation and deliciousness are always up my alley.

A friend of mine from Lebanon was telling me about this cured meat he knew as a youth.  Back in the old country, it was made from goat or mutton, coated with a spicy paste, and dried for ages before enjoying as a breakfast meat of all things.  In North America it's easier to get beef, so when I saw an Eye of Round Roast on sale, I picked it up and set to work.

Pastirma has several different names depending on the region, and different variation on the spice mix.  But what they do all seem to share in common are that the meat is pressed and the spice mix includes fenugreek and garlic.  Legend has it that in past days nomadic tribes would press the meat between the thy and the horse as they road along.  The salt from horse and rider sweat would help cure the meat, then it would be coated in spice and hung from the saddle as they road from place to place - how much of this is true, I don't know (I wasn't there).

Pastirma is also the ancestor of several different cured meats.  You can see how it travels West across Europe   There is Bresaola, and even Pastrami and Corned Beef are very similar to this style.  Interesting how more sedentary cultures use a brine cure, where as more mobile cultures use a dry cure.  If I was still an anthropology student, I would write a paper on this.

The modern method does not require a horse.  After much questioning of my friend and research (both in books online) I found two recipes for pastirma that I liked best: Middle East and Africa Cooking & Baking recipe for Basturma and TheArmenianKitchen.com Homemade Basterma.  I ended up combining Folklore with these two recipes.

I adore how this turned out and can easily see why it is so popular in the middle east.  I just want to gobble it all down, but it's so rich that only a few shaved slices is enough for me.  I can also see why it's so expensive to buy in the shops; it took over 5 weeks to make.  If I had a better set up for curing my meat, I think I could have done a better job, but even with my limited resources  it makes a very friendly start to dry curing meat.  It's also very forgiving about timing, humidity, temperature, &c.... which in my opinion are the best qualities of any long-term, farmhouse, homemade, foodstuff.


You can use any lean cut of red meat: lamb, goat, horse (if you are into that kind of thing), moose, dear, antelope, beef, or well, just about anything.  My understanding is that the better quality the meat, the better the finished product, so for my next go at this recipe I'll be using some goat that was raised on this farm.  Then again, it turned out this good with some commercial feed lot beef, so I can't imagine how good it will be with some real meat!

My Pastrima Experience

About 4lb meat (I used eye of round cut in half lengthwise)  no more than two inches thick.

eye of round

less than 1 cup kosher salt

• Trim as much fat and silverskin as you can from the meat, slice it in half longwise if it's more than 2 inches thick, and rub the salt into the meat.  Put into a ziplock bag, remove the air from the bag the best you can, and leave in the fridge for 4 to 6 days.  It will be firm to the touch when it's ready.
• Rinse off and soak in cool water for 1 to 3 hours.  Rinse and dry before moving onto the next step.
• Wrap the meat in cheesecloth and press.  I used an old crock and some boards and rocks (bleached with H2O2, both before and after).  Press in the fridge for about 2 days.

getting ready to press the meat

meat wrapped in cheese cloth and a board for pressing.

pressing the meat in the fridge

• Take some kitchen or butcher twine and place in boiling water to sterilize.  A darning needle too.
• Thread the string through the narrow end of the meat, tie in a loop so you can hang the meat by this.
• Unwrap the meat, and wrap again in clean cheesecloth. Hang for 10 days for 2 weeks (I hung in the fridge, but anything below about 10 degrees C should be fine if you salted it enough in the first step.

hanging in the fridge

meat after hanging in the fridge

spices ready to mix

• Prepare the spice mix.  I used:

1/3 cup Paprika

1/4 cup Fenugreek

1 Tbs Alspice

1 Tbs Black Pepper Corns

1 Tbs Cumin Seeds

1 tsp Cayanne

1 Bud (not clove, the entire bud) of Garlic

1 Tbs salt

about 1/2 to 1 cup cool water

• I ground any spices that needed grinding, then mixed in the cool water a little at a time to make a thick paste.
• I unwrapped the meat and carefully coated it with the spice mix.  It smelled amazing!  I was very careful to get every bit of surface area covered, it took a while.



at first I hung it near the hearth,
then I remembered fire makes heat,
so I moved it to the cupboard

• Hang to dry somewhere out of the way.  Ideal would be about 60 degrees F, and moderately humid.  Ours was decidedly less humid and warmer (but don't tell the experts, it still turned out amazing).

freshly sauced meat

• The spices are mega bug repellents so don't worry about that.  But you probably want to avoid somewhere with drastic changes of temperature or too much sunlight.  After the outer coating started to dry, my final hanging place was in the bottom of the pantry, next to the sauerkraut.
• Hang for 2 weeks.
• If there is black or fuzzy mould, worry.  Or if it smells rotten, then you worry. Otherwise, so long as you didn't skimp in the salt on the first step, then there shouldn't be any reason to worry.
• When the time is up, grab a beer, have a party, and enjoy your Pastirma (ps, beer intensifies the spicy flavour, not calms it like with a curry).

Lunch!

If you get that far, you can see why it's traditionally shaved off with a hatchet.  It's very firm and the knife needs to be very sharp and strong to slice into it.

Shave thinly as you intend to eat it.  Don't cut up too much before hand because it won't keep as long.  You can store at room temperature in a pinch, but it will continue to dry out, so best to wrap in some butcher paper and put in the fridge.

I'm very impressed how delicious this is.  I'm going back for seconds now, and I might try putting some in a pasta dish tonight for dinner.

Affordable Cooking: It cost me $15 for the meat, another $3 for the spices and salt (probably less) so that's $18 for 2.5lb.  A brief look at the internet says that it runs about $20 a pound to buy ready made Pastirma (plus shipping), but I haven't found any sellers that will ship to Canada, so I think you would have to find a speciality shop for that.  I think there's one fellow in Vancouver that makes it on a large scale, but you have to be a friend to buy it off him.  So to buy this much Pastirma retail, it would be at least $45 plus shipping.... I'm happy with how little it cost me and (provided I can get the meat for a good price) will make this again.


Cooking with Allergies:  This is pretty good.  You can choose the meat and to some extent modify the spices (just be sure to keep the salt, fenugreek and garlic the same) and it does not contain nitrites/nitrates which can cause a reaction in some people.  However, it does have a high salt content.  It needs it to kill off the evil bacteria, so if you are on a low salt diet, only have one or two slices.  The current recommendation is that you have no more than one ounce of cured meat a day, so it's a good aim to um,. well to aim for.