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Keema

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I did not use Swasthi’s Recipes for my own keema recipe, but I chose the picture because it kind of looks like my own recipe. Generally speaking, Martine does not like the dishes I cook to please myself, probably because hot chiles are involved; and her digestion is too delicate to admit any hot peppers to the mix.

So, from time to time, I cook what looks and sort of tastes like an Indian curry, but without any of the hot stuff. This is one such recipe, and it’s actually good enough for me to like it. On my personal serving, however, I add red pepper flakes to give it some heat.

Turn the flame on your range to high. I begin with about a quarter cup of sunflower seed oil into which I have dropped some black mustard seeds and some coriander seeds (jeera) when the oil is hot enough to sizzle.

I slice one large or two small onions and add them to the oil.

For meat, I use one pound of Kroger’s ground turkey, preferably 80% fat free. (If it’s 90%+ fat free, it doesn’t taste as good.) Break up the ground turkey.

Salt to taste. At this point, I add a couple of large dollops of combined Indian garlic and ginger paste. Also: several tablespoons of turmeric, ground cumin, ground coriander, and Hungarian Szeged paprika.

While that mix is cooking, I wash a cup of Thai Jasmine long-grained rice from Trader Joe and drain, repeating the process until the water is clear. Dump the rice into the meat and onion mixture and add 2 to 2½ cups of water. Stir well.

Cut up a few ripe tomatoes and chop them coarsely.

The rest of the ingredients are frozen: I like to add several handfuls of frozen mixed vegetables, frozen peas, frozen lima beans, and frozen Potatoes O’Brien.

Cover, lower the flame, and stir every few minutes to keep the mix from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

The Future of Restaurants?

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A Hawker Center in Singapore

The last few years have been tough on independent restaurants. It seems there are fewer every year. In a way, I can understand it. To work at running a full-service restaurant means surrendering to a life of drudgery. Managing a staff of cooks, waiters, busboys, cashiers, and maintenance personnel requires the skills of a military leader plus that of a chief executive officer, or CEO.

This last week, I have been studying a Lonely Planet guide to Singapore, which gave me some ideas. There are, of course, full service restaurants on the island; but they are mostly for the well-to-do who are likely to order a variety of dishes accompanied by wine or liquor. A certain number of these will continue to exist.

But for most people in Singapore, all the excitement is in the various “hawker centers” scattered throughout the city-state. These are largish dining halls with booths specializing in one or more dishes. An effort is made to have a variety of dishes represented. It wouldn’t work if everyone were selling pizza or hamburgers. To see how this might work, check out this influencer video on YouTube:

In it, you will visit a number of hawker centers to find the best purveyors of typical Singaporean dishes. The video is about an hour long, but you’ll get the idea in the first fifteen minutes.

Imagine an American hawker centers where you might have the following food stalls: hamburgers, pizza, tacos, desserts, sub sandwiches, soups, salads, pasta, chicken, hot dogs, barbecue, deli sandwiches, omelets, pancakes, souvlaki, Indian curries, hummus and moutabal, Greek mezze, gyro sandwiches, vegetarian and vegan foods, Korean foods, teriyaki, and so on ad infinitum.

In a space the size of a shopping mall food court, you could have a larger variety of foods. No longer would friends and families dining out have to sacrifice their tastes because the the loudest, most insistent member of the party insisted on having his/her way.

With Pitsa and Akrevoe

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Pitsa Captain and Akrevoe Emmanouilides at South Bay Greek Festival (2008)

This afternoon, Martine and I drove down to Redondo Beach to visit the South Bay Greek Festival at St. Katherine Greek Orthodox Church. Although it was incredibly crowded, we got there before the crowds did; so we had a tasty Greek meal and enjoyed the church tool with Father Michael Courey, a lecture on Greek Orthodox icons, and a concert of Byzantine church music.

What we missed were the cooking classes in the church demonstration kitchen formerly given by Pitsa Captain and Akrevoe Emmanouilides. Akrevoe was the author of an excellent 2002 cookbook published by the St. Katherine Greek Orthodox Church Philoptochos Society entitled A Greek Kitchen.

Unfortunately, Akrevoe passed away in 2018. For several years, however, Martine and I enjoyed the lectures of the duo—and their cooking—at both St. Katherine and Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in downtown Los Angeles. They were funny, helpful, and their cooking was stellar.

Here, from a handout from their 2008 appearance at Saint Sophia, is their recipe for Imam Bayildi:

EGGPLANT – IMAM BAYILDI

Legend says that when the stingy Imam tasted this, he fainted either because it was so delicious or because his wife had used so much oil!

6 to 9 med. Japanese eggplants
1 large onion, chopped
1 can diced tomatoes or 3-4 chopped fresh tomatoes
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. pepper
1 tsp. sugar
¼ c. fresh parsley, chopped
1 tsp. oregano
1 c. olive oil

Remove stems of eggplants and cut lengthwise. If using globe eggplants, slice into wedges, slashing skin at 3 or 4 spots.

In a bowl, mix all other ingredients. Then lightly oil a glass baking dish. Place eggplant pieces close to one another. Cover with the tomato mixture. Cover with aluminum foil. Bake at 400º for 40 to 50 minutes.

Check to see if eggplant is tender. If necessary, bake a bit longer.

This dish can be served hot or at room temperature.

Spices and Seasonings

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When I first started cooking in the late 1960s, I didn’t know much about spices and seasonings. If I wanted my dish to be spicy, I sprinkled some powdered cayenne pepper in it. Garlic was such a pain in the butt that I frequently went with powdered garlic or garlic salt. Parsley? I used the dried stuff and wondered why it didn’t have any flavor.

I am a bit more sophisticated now. In my freezer, I have bags of frozen fire-roasted Hatch chiles. Now I take my time with garlic, slicing each clove thinly with a single-edged razor blade. On my counter are all the spices I need to make curry, including black mustard seeds, coriander seeds (jeera), turmeric, ground cumin and coriander, and fenugreek seeds, to name just a few.

When I look around me to see what most of the people I know eat, I am appalled by how few spices and seasonings are used. Unfortunately, most people can’t tolerate strong flavors. Martine, for instance, complains that most of what I cook for myself makes her mouth burn, even when I don’t use many chiles.

The older I get, the more I realize that good cooking requires time and care. That becomes more of an issue when I am cooking for myself. Martine rarely cooks anything for herself except maybe scrambled eggs or Quaker oatmeal.

So I am resigned to alternating one dish for the both of us and, next time, something for myself alone. When I am making one of my chile-infused meals, Martine frequently finds it necessary to open doors and windows. Fortunately, that seems to work out well for both of us. I suspect that what I cook is more nutritious, but Martine manages to thrive on her bland dishes.

Treat Garlic With Love

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Garlic Bulbs and Cloves

Until relatively recently, I found garlic to be very annoying to handle. It didn’t peel easily, and it was too much of a pain to mince the peeled cloves. Then, quite suddenly, I underwent a change a few months ago. I said to myself, “I love the taste of garlic, so I should change the way I work with it.”

A few months ago, I purchased a hollow rubber tube from an Italian food store. I would put one unpeeled clove of garlic into it and apply pressure while rolling it on a cutting board. After pressure has been applied, it’s easy to strip off the outer papery protective skin with my fingers.

The next step was suggested to me by Martin Scorsese’s film Goodfellas (1990), in which we see the imprisoned mafiosi slicing the cloves of garlic with a single-edged razor blade. Then, I read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, in which he comes out against using a garlic crusher, recommending instead slicing the cloves fine. Now this is what I do. In my favorite Spanish rice dish, I use eight cloves of garlic prepared this way. (BTW, I now use eight cloves of garlic in my recipe, and I don’t crush the cloves.)

One thing I do not recommend is using garlic powder or bottled garlic cloves. Garlic is an amazing spice with numerous health benefits, and nowhere have I enjoyed the flavor of garlic as in the dishes I prepare using the s-l-o-w method described above.

Today’s Spanish rice was the best yet. I owe the taste to the way I process the garlic, and by using fire-roasted Hatch chiles from New Mexico for a good burn.

If you want a device to help you peel the garlic, check out these on Amazon.Com.

The Man Who Didn’t Like Chicken

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That man is me. I used to eat chicken every once in a while, but once I got into a relationship with Martine, who loves chicken more than any other meat, I decided to concentrate on being a part-time vegetarian who occasionally eats seafood and pork, and sometimes even beef.

Just to show you how un-American I am in my food tastes, I absolutely hate coffee. I will not touch coffee or anything that is coffee-flavored, including ice cream and tiramisu.

My dislike of chicken started with my father, who also hated chicken. I remember the look of dismay on his face when he had to eat one of his sister-in-law’s home-cooked meals, which usually featured chicken or turkey. (By the way, I also don’t care for turkey or any other feathered creature for that matter.)

Otherwise, my tastes in food are fairly normal. I make sure that Martine gets to eat chicken at her favorite restaurants from time to time. Her all-time favorite is an Armenian rotisserie chicken place in Glendale called Sevan Chicken. While she tears into her favorite legs and thighs, I just have some hummus or moutabal with a pita. It isn’t fair if I just eat what I liked without letting her have the same privilege.

Fortunately, there are some things that both of us like.

The Politics of Tea

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Antique Thomas J. Lipton Tea Tin

I am one of those strange people who don’t like coffee. Since early childhood, I have been addicted to tea. In my days, I have probably consumed over seventy-five pounds of tea leaves. At the present time, I begin every morning with one large cup of Ceylon, Darjeeling, or Assam tea sweetened with honey and with a squeeze of lime.

Until I read Roy Moxham’s Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire (2003), I had no idea that the history of the tea trade was so bloody. In the eighteenth century, it even figured in a war fought by the British East India Company and the Empire of China. The Chinese lost and were forced to take Indian opium in trade for their finest tea. (Read Maurice Collis’s Foreign Mud for a fascinating account of the “Opium War.”)

To avoid dealing with the Chinese, the British finally decided to grow their own tea. They began in the northeastern Indian state of Assam and eventually spread to other parts of the subcontinent, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and Africa.

I knew that both green tea and black tea come from the same plant, the Camellia sinensis, or Chinese camellia. It is only in the way they are processed that the resulting beverage is green or black.

Fortunately, the early planters found that the tea plant was also native to Assam, and that it was not really necessary to import plants or seeds from China. It is from these plants in Assam that most tea plantings outside of China were derived.

Where the tea trade became particularly bloody was during the nineteenth century. The native populations of the tea-growing areas in India and Ceylon did not care to become indentured agricultural workers at a tea plantation. The result was that the owners of tea plantations had to import coolies from outside the area. The way these coolies were treated by the British tea growers was shameful, resulting in many thousands of deaths.

All so that I could drink a nice cup of tea in the morning!

The Cafes of Buenos Aires

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Inside on Cafe Tortoni on Avenida de Mayo in Buenos Aires

In my library, I have an entire bookcase dedicated to works relating mostly to Mexico and South America. Today I picked up one of my favorite titles—Gabriela Kogan’s The Authentic Bars, Cafés and Restaurants of Buenos Aires—and felt waves of nostalgia breaking over me as I turned the pages.

I have been to Buenos Aires three times. The first time, even though I broke my right shoulder later in the trip, I fell in love with the country and its capital. One of the things that impressed me most was the café culture—and I don’t mean coffee, which I never drink.

There are dozens of neighborhood eating spots, many of which was been around since the late 19th century. In my visits to the city, I patronized the following traditional cafés:

  • La Puerto Rico in the Montserrat neighborhood
  • El Tortoni, also in Montserrat
  • El Preferido de Palermo in Palermo
  • El Rincon in Recoleta, right across from the famous cemetery

I cannot look at the book’s glossary without licking my lips:

  • Berenjenas en Escabeche: eggplant marinated in a sauce of vinegar, onions, carrots, and peppercorns
  • Conejito a la Cazadora: traditional preparation of rabbit, with garlic, vegetables, white wine, tomatoes and mushrooms
  • Choripán: spiced pork sausage sandwich (my favorite)
  • Fabada Asturiana: bean and bacon soup
  • Fugazetta Rellena: “folded” pizza with onion, filled with cheese
  • Matambre: meat roulade filled with vegetables and hard-boiled eggs (another favorite)
  • Pejerrey Gran Paraná: a white meat river fish from the Rio Paraná served with boiled potatoes
  • Suprema Maryland: a dish made with breaded chicken, fried banana, french fries, and corn custard

In 2011, I went to Argentina with Martine. She is an incredibly picky eater who eschews the slightest hint of spiciness. Yet she loved the food she ate at the Buenois Aires cafés.

The Decline and Fall of the American Meal

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Last night, Martine and I had dinner at a restaurant in Glendale that we have loved for twenty-five years. As soon as we walked in, we noticed some ominous signs. The waitstaff were all young, they were wearing bright new T-shirts imprinted with the name of the restaurant, and there was a brand new illuminated sign. Most seriously, the old owner was not there.

For the first time ever, both Martine and I left the restaurant feeling slightly ill. I almost didn’t make it back to my parked car. And it was lucky that there was a large Mobil gas station at the corner of Brand and Chevy Chase in Glendale, where I was able to dispose of some of the intestinal irritants.

Mind you, I can understand why restaurants are dropping like flies. It is no fun to own or work at a restaurant, especially after the Covid-19 lockdowns. And increasingly, there is more microwaving than cooking taking place in the kitchen—by people who don’t know much about food safety.

Not only in restaurants, but across the board the quality of the American meal has declined precipitously. Even supermarkets are moving away from serving customers who do their own cooking. Recently, I have had problems finding basic food items such as barley or peanut oil. What there is no lack of are frozen meals that taste like cardboard and various “helper” mixes for people afraid to make anything from scratch.

Increasingly, the foods that people eat at home or in restaurants are deficient in nutrition and flavor.

One thing that particularly bothers me is the disappearance of ethnic restaurants as the next generation takes charge. When I first came to Los Angeles, there were loads of great Italian, French, Hungarian, Greek, and other ethnic restaurants. And there were even good cheeseburgers that didn’t look like a 300-pound guy named Rufus sat on them.

Potato and Spinach Curry

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Vegetarian Potato and Spinach Curry

After cooking a bland mushy dish for Martine—at her request—I had a sudden urge to make something hot and spicy. A simple and tasty vegetarian dish is a potato and spinach curry. Here are my cooking instructions:

  1. Pour several tablespoons of sunflower oil into a cooking pot and light a medium fire under it.
  2. Add about 2 tablespoons of black mustard seeds when the oil gets hot.
  3. Add the same amount of cumin seeds (jira).
  4. After about a minute, add 2 peeled russet potatoes cut into 3/4 inch cubes. Stir frequently to avoid ticking to the pot.
  5. Add approx 1 tablespoon each of turmeric, ground cumin, ground coriander, and powdered chile pepper.
  6. Add salt to taste.
  7. While cooking potatoes, soak 1 bunch of spinach leaves in a large bowl, shake off any dirt, and chop and add to the potatoes after spices added..
  8. If you like your curry fiery, chop up and add a serrano chile.
  9. Cover and cook until potatoes sufficiently cooked.
  10. Serve with plain yogurt to cut the hotness of the chiles.