Informal recipes for fava beans, wild salmon

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Ful mudammas is an Egyptian breakfast of seasoned fava beans topped with a mashed, hard-boiled egg. 

Food writer Clifford A. Wright says: "'The rich man's breakfast, the shopkeeper's lunch, the poor man's supper.' This Arabic saying captures what fūl mudammas is." Ful is pronounced "fool," but my variation on this breakfast will make you feel anything but foolish.

I start with frozen fava beans from Portugal that are sold at Jerry's Gourmet & More in Englewood. 

The beans are actually inside the skin shown in the photo above. I boiled the whole thing for five to seven minutes or until tender (I eat skin and beans). Meanwhile, I chopped up half of a small to medium onion and fresh garlic to taste, and sauteed them in extra-virgin olive oil until they are translucent.

In goes the whole beans, with seasonings: salt, cumin, allspice and Aleppo red pepper. Then, after the beans, onions and garlic are combined, I pour in egg whites in equal proportion, add a little more salt and scramble. You can stuff the eggs and beans into warm pocket bread and add hummus or tahini sauce.

Thanks to Kano, author of Syrian Foodie in London, for inspiration. He is  listed in my Blog Roll.

Wild-salmon festival at home

I picked up a fillet of fresh, wild sockeye salmon at Costco in Hackensack on Monday, and prepared it Tuesday night, ensuring four or five meals that revolve around this wonderful fish ($8.99 a pound).

I cut the 1.55-pound fillet into six pieces, from about two ounces to six ounces each. I placed them in a pan I lined with aluminum foil (spray cooking oil on the foil so the skin won't stick.)

I splashed fresh lemon juice over the pieces, salted them a bit, then rubbed them with Aleppo red pepper and topped them with chopped herbs from the garden. I baked the fish in a 350-degree oven, and watched it carefully until it was medium rare (around 12 minutes for the bigger pieces, less for others.)

I ate the fish with organic spinach that I had blanched quickly, drained and returned to the same pan with olive oil, salt and garlic powder, and a warm pocket bread.

This morning, I made a beautiful wild-salmon sandwich with tomato slices sprinkled with za'atar thyme mixture, romaine lettuce, Dijon mustard and hummus. I could have added a slice of low-fat Swiss cheese. There's no need to heat up the fish. Kimchi makes a great side dish.

Leftovers will be eaten over salads or in other sandwiches.

Cooking to music

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Kano, author of "Syrian Foodie in London," a food blog you'll find listed at right, recommends an unusual site with Arabic music accompanying video recipes.

Here is the link to one recipe:  http://syrianfoodie.blogspot.com/2010/02/7aki7aki-cooking-videos.html

Here is the link to the cooking video site itself: 7aki7aki

OK. The site is in French and Arabic, neither of which I read, but I love it it because it reminds me of when Grace Sasson, my mother, used to play Arabic music in our Brooklyn home, where she would entertain guests, serving them Turkish coffee (photo) and her homemade pastries,  or prepare her Sephardic specialties for dinner.

Tourists return to Aleppo, Syria

I just came across this travel piece on Aleppo, Syria, at The New York Times' Web site:
Tourists return to Aleppo

This will make you hungry

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Image by seier+seier+seier via Flickr

With the opening of Aleppo Restaurant at Main and Thomas streets in Paterson, I have  more opportunity than ever to get in touch with my culinary roots. My parents were Sephardic Jews born in the northern Syrian city --  he the son of a pastry maker and she a rabbi's daughter who would go on to self-publish the first cookbook in Brooklyn's Syrian Jewish community.

Now, I have come across a food blog called "Syrian Foodie in London," lovingly written by a doctor, and this video of a falafel stand in Aleppo. If this doesn't make you hungry, I don't know what will. The metal bowls you'll see are filled with sprigs of mint, a nice accent for the yogurt sauce you can have on your falafel. I visited my parents' birthplace briefly in the late 1970s and ate lots of terrific food, but didn't get a chance to try the falafel.

http://syrianfoodie.blogspot.com/2009/09/worlds-fastest-falafel-maker.html