Spice (78 page)

To Make the Sauce

1.
Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. After a minute, add the mushrooms and leek and stir to coat them with the oil. Cook for 3 minutes or until the leek just begins to get limp.

2.
Add the wine and bring to a boil, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer the wine and vegetables for about 10 minutes, until the wine has reduced and thickened to coat the vegetables with a syrupy glaze.

3.
Stir in the garlic, tomatoes, and water and continue to simmer for another 30 minutes. The mixture should thicken and reduce by one quarter.

4.
Stir in the greens and continue to cook them until soft and tender, about 10 more minutes.

5.
Season the sauce with salt and pepper and whisk in the butter. Set aside on very low heat to keep the sauce warm.

6.
Preheat the oven to 350°F.

7.
Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter with 1 teaspoon of the olive oil in a large, nonstick skillet over medium-high heat, until the butter begins to brown. Add about 12 dumplings, depending on the size of your pan, being careful not to crowd the pan too much. Cook the dumplings for 2 to 3 minutes on each side or until they have an even golden brown crust on both sides. Remove the dumplings onto a baking sheet and repeat the process, browning the remaining dumplings in the remaining tablespoon of butter and teaspoon of olive oil.

8.
Bake the dumplings to warm the centers all the way through, for about 10 minutes.

9.
Place 4 dumplings on each plate and spoon ½ cup of sauce over them. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese over the tops and serve immediately.

CHEESE

Italian and French cheeses such as brie, camembert, robiola, and the triple creams like St. Andre and mascarpone are high in butterfat, which means it’s better to eat them by themselves rather than cook with them. Mediterranean-style cheese, such as feta, on the other hand, contains less butterfat, and lean cheeses are better suited for cooking.

Feta, the famous Greek curd cheese, is still made in the mountains of Greece by shepherds who use unpasteurized milk, much the way it was made thousands of years ago. Originally, feta was made with goat’s or sheep’s milk, but today much of it is made commercially with pasteurized cow’s milk, which is firmer and easier to transport.

The milk, which is curdled with rennet, separates and drains in a special mold or cloth bag. The feta is then cut into large slices (
feta
means “slice”), which are salted and then packed in barrels filled with whey or brine. The feta cures in the brine or whey solution for a week to several months, which is why it is sometimes called “pickled cheese.” Feta dries out rapidly when removed from its brine.

Feta cheese is white, usually formed into square cakes, and ranges in consistency from soft to semihard. It has a tangy, salty flavor that ranges from mild to sharp. Its fat content can range from 30 to 60 percent; most is around 45 percent milk fat.

Haloumi,
a specialty cheese from Cyprus, is slightly firmer than feta; it’s brined after it’s folded with dried mint and cooked.

The breed of cow and the cow’s diet—purple flowers and thistles or grain and plain old hay—dramatically affect the taste of cheese. Sheep’s, goat’s, and cow’s milk all taste different and have varying amounts of butterfat, which also affects flavor.

I like to bring friends to the Middle Eastern and Armenian markets in Watertown, Massachusetts, to sample the fetas. Greek, domestic, Bulgarian, Turkish, and French—they’re all delicious, and picking a favorite just comes down to a matter of taste.

It’s worth seeking out imported or handcrafted cheeses; commercial varieties available at the grocery store are usually overprocessed, too salty, and dry. If you have a specialty cheese shop in your area, ask to taste the different fetas, ricottas, and kasseri cheeses.

I like to use cheese to enrich a dish instead of butter or heavy cream. I often use feta to bind spinach in making spinach pies, I whip ricotta with feta and kasseri cheese to stuff pancakes, I blend feta into sauces to make them rich and creamy, and I use ricotta as a binder in dumplings. Aged hard cheeses such as Parmesan can be finely grated and added to custards or milk-based sauces as well as sprinkled over pastas to season and enrich them.

Palace Pilav: Bulgur with Pine Nuts, Almonds, Pistachios, and Mulberries

In
The Ottoman Kitchen,
Sarah Woodward describes the kitchens in Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace, where the Ottoman sultans reigned for four centuries. The palace was famous for its remarkable kitchens, the splendor of its banquets, and the massive amounts of food presented at them. She writes: “[The kitchens] give a clue to the excesses that marked the latter days of the Ottoman empire. The chimneys on their ten-domed buildings sit squatly above the second courtyard, opposite the harem. In the kitchens there are huge cauldrons being used to make this type of richly scented pilav that the sultans were reputedly so fond of.” The cauldrons were so large that it took four men to lift them.

Such luxurious pilavs as this one may well have been made in palace cauldrons. There are many versions of elaborate pilavs. This is mine. It is considered a special-occasion or fancy pilav because it is packed with nuts and berries and is enriched by the hazelnut aroma of brown butter. The addition of crushed toasted pasta is a typical addition to eastern Mediterranean pilavs.

Mulberries, which look like dried brown raspberries but taste like figs, are available at most Middle Eastern markets. You can also substitute chopped dried figs or golden raisins if you can’t find mulberries.

I like to use coarsely ground bulgur in this recipe, which is different from the fine bulgur used in the
kibbeh
and
köfte
recipes in this book. Fine bulgur gets mushy and doesn’t hold up well in a rice dish; it is better suited for binding.

It’s important to toast the nuts in this recipe to draw out the oils and make the pilav taste rich. See Toasting Nuts on page 91.

This versatile pilav is marvelous with chicken, beef, or lamb. You can also add some white rice to the bulgur for yet another variation. Kids love this pilav because of the sweet mulberries, which makes it easy to slip them a serving of whole grain.

S
ERVES
6

1½ cups coarse bulgur

2 teaspoons olive oil

2 coils or nests of De Cecco brand angel hair pasta, crushed into ¼ -inch small piecesmeasuring about ¼ cup

½ onion, finely chopped

4 tablespoons brown butter (page 106)

2¼ cups chicken broth or water

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons pine nuts, lightly toasted

3 tablespoons lightly toasted, roughly chopped almonds

2 tablespoons lightly toasted, roughly chopped pistachios

¼ cup dried mulberries or chopped, dried figs

6 tablespoons plain whole-milk yogurt, preferably Greek-style

1.
Soak the bulgur in warm water for 15 minutes and drain.

2.
Meanwhile, in a large saucepan, heat the olive oil over high heat and add the pasta after a minute. Stir the pasta to coat it with oil, and immediately reduce the heat to medium. Continue to stir the pasta for 3 to 4 minutes, until it turns a caramel-brown color. This will happen very quickly.

3.
Stir in the onion and continue to cook for another 5 to 7 minutes, stirring from time to time, until the onion has softened.

4.
Stir the bulgur into the onion and pasta, adding 2 tablespoons of the brown butter.

5.
Add the chicken broth and season lightly with about a teaspoon of salt and some pepper to taste.

6.
Increase the heat to high and bring the liquid to a boil. Then reduce the heat to medium and cook vigorously for 5 minutes, then reduce the heat to low and simmer until almost all the liquid is absorbed, 7 to 10 minutes.

7.
Remove the pan from the heat, place a clean, dry dishtowel over it, and press the lid down tightly on top. Leave the pilav to steam for 20 minutes. The cloth will absorb all the moisture, which will make bulgur fluffier and lighter.

8.
Fluff the pilav with a fork, add the nuts and mulberries, and reseason with salt and pepper to taste.

9.
Serve hot with a drizzle more of brown butter on each serving. You can add a dollop of yogurt on the side or you can make a well in the center of each serving and spoon some yogurt in the middle.

Fried Mussels with Turkish Tarator Sauce

Fried mussels, served on skewers and smothered with garlicky sauce, are plentiful on the streets of Istanbul. At the market near Taxim Square, vendors shuck mussels, drop them in batter, and then fry them with olive oil in large steel drums.

This dish is an Oleana staple. We serve the mussels with tarator sauce, an eggless version of mayonnaise, made by puréeing raw, blanched almonds with olive oil, lemon, and garlic. We make an extra-thick version, though, which coats the mussels better than traditional tarator sauce.

The blender is crucial in making this sauce smooth and creamy; the blade pulls the ingredients in, which creates a tighter, smoother sauce. A food processor, which has blades that push food out, is better used for chopping.

I like to cook with Prince Edward Island mussels that are farmed on poles. They are never sandy because they don’t touch the bottom of the ocean, and they don’t have much of a beard to remove either.

I also love to eat these mussels and tarator sauce in a po’ boy sandwich between chunks of baguette. This dish is superb with a glass of well-chilled Spanish Cava, a sparkling wine from Spain.

S
ERVES
8