Kebabs: 101 and Cooking Challenge

I recently resumed my sojourn through all the episodes of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations by watching the Berlin episode. I expected to see footage of beer, sausages, and quirky art explorations, but I wasn’t prepared to see a segment on Turkish food.

I learned from the episode that there has been a sizable Turkish population in Germany for decades. After showing locals play a Turkish domino game in a men’s club, there was a lengthy homage to kebabs.

I learned from the episode and some Internet sleuthing that there are three classes of kebabs (also spelled “kabobs” or “kebobs”): kebabs on a  skewer, called shish kebabs (“shish” means “skewer”), doner kebab, which is sliced meat, and kebabs made of ground meat fashioned into sausage shapes; they can be grilled off or on a skewer, or sauteed in a pan. The meat in the various kinds of kebabs can be worked over with a wet marinade or a tantalizing combo of dry spices. (Interesting trivia: Wikipedia spins a fable of shish kebabs being created by Persian soldiers who roasted meat on their swords, but this 1995 Ocala Star-Banner article disagrees–and provides some kebab recipes, to boot.)

I am a big proponent of grilling, and what better time of year to make kebabs than now?

Here are some kebabs I’ve made in the past. Not a lengthy list:

• Chicken breast or lean beef (marinated in a Mediterranean herb blend, a little olive oil and red wine vinegar), onions and red and green peppers
• This kofta kebab recipe, with lean ground beef. It was delicious, and it comes with a recipe for tzatziki sauce, the cucumber-based sauce that often comes with Greek food.

But I have a set of skewers, and I’m willing to learn and experiment. This inspires me to set up another cooking challenge for myself: a kebab recipe a week this summer. Check this space to see what’s up on the menu! (And if you decide to take up the challenge on your own, let me know what you come up with!)

A Valentine’s Day Whirlwind Romance…With Flavor!

Everyone likes to have a good meal for Valentine’s Day, and I’m no exception. In years past, I have cooked something special–most notably, the year I made coq au vin (starting with rotisserie chicken to save on time and effort)–but lately my husband and I have let others do the cooking, having gotten Jamaican take-out in recent years.

This past week we had our Valentine’s celebration on Friday, at a restaurant in Philadelphia called Zahav, which serves primarily Israeli cuisine but also items inspired by other locales, including Hungary, Morocco and Yemen. The restaurant was recently given a prestigious 4-bell designation by the Philadelphia Inquirer’s food critic. My husband and I fell in love with the food.

First, we were served laffa bread and hummus (we compared the laffa to Indian naan, but thinner and not as crispy), and then out came a towering salad tray. When I heard we would be given salad with our tasting menu choice, I assumed it would be tossed greens in a bowl, but what we got were about 10 small dishes of various kinds of vegetables, each prepared and spiced in a completely unique way.

Following the salads were mezze–small plates–and we chose fried cauliflower, fish served over a crispy hunk of bread enclosing an egg, grilled chicken livers over Israeli couscous, and an incredibly tender lamb stew. Next came grilled meats, and we went with kabobs that were a combination of duck and foie gras, served over rice, and then kofte, meatballs made of lamb and beef, served over a mixture of vegetables that was dominated by red peppers.

To end the night: I had a caramel semifreddo (basically ice cream served between two cookies), and my husband had kataifi–a bird’s nest of pastry with a chocolate center that was topped with mango ice cream.

This incredibly indulgent meal was eye-opening for me. Not just for the quality of the food (I’d easily place it in the top 3 of my eating experiences), but in the way the meal was organized and how the dishes were cooked.

I’m used to loading up my plate with a protein, a starch and a vegetable, but experiencing multiple courses of small servings was a nice change of pace. It’s the norm in many cultures to eat this way, and it makes sense–you get to try a little of everything, breaks are built in, so the focus isn’t just on eating as much food as you can at once, and some of the richer foods come in portion sizes that won’t overwhelm calorically.

I also was intrigued and inspired by the many, many different flavors we experienced during the night out. My husband commented toward the end of the meal that it was almost overwhelming, and a review I read mentioned a close encounter with sensory overload, and it’s true, especially with the salad course. But it was a good lesson in the many ways that vegetables can be prepared. My favorite of the salads had to be the Moroccan carrot salad, of cooked carrots most dominantly tasting of cumin. Also good was a salad of twice-cooked eggplant, that had a rich, smoky taste and a silky texture. I was amazed to see celery, a much-maligned vegetable, transformed into a flavorful salad. And my husband fell in love with a beet salad that was subtly spiced and slightly creamy thanks to tahini.

A work colleague told me about the cauliflower, and I see why she loved it so much–it was intensely spiced (but not spicy) and crisp on the outside, tender on the inside. It was a refreshing take on a vegetable that can be unfairly profiled as bland and mushy.

My dessert also was a wake-up call. If you go to a chain family restaurant, desserts are usually gigantic affairs that several people can eat. But my dessert, though it was generous for one person, was much smaller than I’ve typically seen at a restaurant. It was a good reminder that you don’t have to eat a lot of something for it to be an enjoyable experience.

Will I have time regularly to serve up mini salad dishes, mezze, and desserts resting on top of piped pureed fruit designs? No, but I can certainly explore the wide world of food options even more, bringing new spices and techniques to familiar ingredients. I am also committed to trying out new dessert recipes. I’m focusing on lighter recipes, but if needed, I can always eat half of a heavier item with tea.

I’ve mentioned that I have been bored with my eating lately. My salad experiment helped, as has viewing others’ carefully curated pages on Pinterest, but this Valentine’s Day whirlwind of flavors is another inspiration. Food can be prepared simply, with bold ingredients, in small portions, and be unbelievably satisfying.

The Artsy Meal

One thing I’ve noticed on my recent jaunts on Pinterest is that other people’s dishes look so beautiful! Vibrant bursts of color in a simple Israeli salad of chopped cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers. The bold red of ripe strawberries that will never show the typical signs of decay, because they have been slow-baked into a delicious snack. The functional presentation of a pork and vegetable melange served in hollowed-out eggplant halves. I’m sure some of the artistry is for the composition of the photos, but it makes me look at my own drab winter plates with envy.

Yesterday, I reclaimed a bit of the art for myself, assembling a plate of leftovers from a function at work. Alongside the stuffed chicken breast half and meatball I had, I loaded up on grilled vegetables–large chunks of yellow and green zucchini and carrots, asparagus, and one of my favorites, grilled eggplant. The brightness of the vegetables were muted a bit by the stripes from their turn on the grill, but it was infinitely more aesthetically pleasing than dumping some steamed broccoli out of a microwaveable bag into a Tupperware container.

Seeing others’ meals, and having a few moments of Zen (word to Jon Stewart) looking at the salads I ate in January make me long for more times when I can stare at a plate with same intense admiration and awe that Matthew Broderick had when looking at the hanging picture in his recent Ferris Bueller-spoofing Superbowl ad.

Being able to behold the beauty of a meal also means not scarfing it down in five minutes flat. My day can hurtle along at warp speed sometimes; I think I need to find better ways to carve out some moments of solitude and focus just on the food. (Sorry, Big Bang Theory and HTC Amaze…)

Another idea I have, from a book that I haven’t finished yet, is to make the meal accoutrements more appealing as well. Marianne Williamson recommends in A Course in Weight Loss to pick out special flatware, plates and glasses for eating your meals, so the experience is more pleasant and memorable, and shows more respect for you meeting your daily nutrition needs, rather than just scarfing down something portable and moving on to putting out the next fire in your life. Others talk about consciously eating; this shoots for the same goal of allowing yourself to fully experience the food.

I tend to ignore doing these things a lot, but I think they would be helpful. This weekend, I think I’ll be envisioning my kitchen as an art studio!

Are you creative with food, or just eating whatever you can get your hands on to keep hunger at bay? If you put some thought into the aesthetics of your food, how do you go about doing that? Drop a line in the comments.