Six on History: Food

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Six on History: Food

1)  In Ramadan, fasting is followed by feasting — and traditional dishes, LA Times

"Ramadan is the ninth and most sacred month in the Muslim calendar, a time of reflection, piety and charity for Muslims (even for those who are not particularly religious) when they fast from sunrise to sunset without even a drop of water going through their lips. It is said that the prophet Muhammad first received the Quran during Ramadan — and it is the only month mentioned in the Holy Book.

The dates change every year because Muslims follow the lunar calendar (this year Ramadan starts on April 12). The first day occurs with the sighting of the new moon and the last when the moon has reached its full cycle. The end of the month is marked by Eid al-Fitr (the feast of breaking the fast), which runs over three days when families and friends gather to celebrate.

Throughout the Islamic world, people break their daily fast as soon as the muezzin (the man who gives the call to daily prayers in the mosque) announces the setting of the sun. They ease back into eating and drinking by first sipping water, or they might select a sweet drink made by soaking apricot leather in water (in the Levant) or coconut milk-based drinks packed with jellied sweets (in Indonesia). Many will then follow with a few dates — always an odd number (one, three or five) and never too many — to follow the example of the prophet, who is said to have broken his fast with three dates. The faithful then retire to say the Maghrib (sunset) prayer before sitting down to their first meal of the day, known as iftar in the Arab world."

https://www.latimes.com/food/story/2021-04-09/in-ramadan-fasting-is-followed-by-feasting-and-traditional-dishes

2) UNESCO Announces Couscous Now Inscribed On Intangible Cultural                 Heritage Of Humanity List, Forbes

"The knowledge, method and practices associated with the preparation and consumption of couscous is now one of the latest culinary traditions to be inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural List. Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia presented the joint bid last year, marking the first time that the four countries worked together on a gastronomic cultural project.

“Originally a Berber dish, couscous can be found all over North Africa, but many countries claim it as their national dish,” said Abduljelil Ben Rabeh, Deputy Chief of Staff at the Tunisian mission in Washington D.C. “To this day, many households still prepare it once a week.” 

The four countries argued that the preparation of the dish can be experienced in all layers of society, from a simple Friday lunch to the special event extravaganza; within nomadic and sedentary populations; in the cities and in the countryside. Couscous starts with the farmers but involves the millers, the merchants and the cooks.

First recorded in an anonymous 13th Century Moorish Andalusian cookbook, both the stew itself and the pasta granules made from crushed semolina are called couscous. The grains are hand-rolled with oil and salt then steamed over a simmering stew, so they can absorb the flavor. Once fluffed up, they serve as a delicious base for braised meats and vegetables. That said, there are possibly as many recipes as there are cooks. In her seminal 1973 cookbook, Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco (Quill, An Imprint of Harper Collins Publishers), author and chef Paula Wolfert dedicates more than 30 pages to, “A thousand tiny pellets of grain, light, separate and tender…” 

New York Restaurateur Yann N’Diaye remembers the many different couscous his Moroccan mother’s prepared for midday special occasions.

“She cooked it in what we called a couscoussier,” he said. “A battered metallic two-compartment container with a stewing pot on the bottom and an uncovered perforated steamer on top.” 

There was couscous with stewed lamb, chickpeas, pumpkin, carrots and turnips sprinkled with ras-el-ranout, the perfumed and fiery blend of spices that sometimes contains as many as 50 individual spices. From time to time, Mr. N’Diaye’s mother cooked couscous with a mutton head she grilled on the BBQ, but his all-time favorite was the sweet version with cinnamon, butter and sugar.

Designer Marion Sultan whose Jewish Tunisian grandmother, Claire Sultan, prepared couscous for about 15 people every Friday, reminisces,” Until her last Friday at age 99, she cooked, with the help of her daughter and granddaughter, what we called couscous ‘boulettes,’ a kind of beef meatballs she deep-fried and then simmered in tomato sauce and vegetables.” 

In fact, the reach of couscous is universal. In Trapani, Sicily, it is served with a fish stew, in Brazil, it is called cuscuz and made with cornmeal.  Over the last twenty years, couscous has become a staple of Western cuisine everywhere but thanks to Unesco’s efforts, food lovers will remember where it came from and the customs associated with this great dish."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sylviebigar/2020/12/17/unesco-announces-couscous-now-inscribed-on-intangible-cultural-heritage-of-humanity-list/?sh=d4afb22afed0

3) Brooklyn: Bibimbap, Branzino, and Beef Yaroa - Bklyner.

Openings and Closings: Bibimbap, Branzino, and Beef Yaroa - Bklyner

This week we welcome a new Italian eatery with a great happy hour, a coffee shop with a cause, and...

4) Von Diaz’s Puerto Rican Recipes

"Good morning. The journalist, historian and cookbook author Von Diaz brought together her essential Puerto Rican recipes for us this week, dishes that she calls foundational to her understanding of flavor, “a culinary mejunje, or mix, of Indigenous, African, Spanish and American ingredients and techniques.”

Her essay on the subject is itself essential reading, and I think you’ll want to get into the recipes in your kitchen this week, building on her sazón and sofrito to make all manner of deliciousness.

You might start with pollo en fricasé, braised chicken thighs in a rich, oniony, tomato-based sauce with garlic, white wine and vinegar, set off by briny olives and capers. Or sancocho, the rustic stew you can make with root vegetables and just about any meat. Or, if you’re feeling celebratory, you might try your hand at pernil (above), the crackly-tender roast pork that is probably the best-known dish of the Puerto Rican diaspora.

Von has a beautiful recipe for pescado frito, whole red snapper marinated in adobo, then fried and served with tostones, avocado salad and white rice. And another one for yuca con mojo, boiled yuca doused in a garlic-and-citrus mojo dressing, her grandmother’s recipe.

There’s the stewed beef known as carne guisada as well as arroz mamposteao, mixed rice with beans, and a marvelous vegetarian situation with gandules con bolitos de plátano, pigeon peas with plantain dumplings. Alcapurrias de jueyes, crab-stuffed fritters? Them, too — with pastelillos de guayaba, guava cheese pastries, for dessert."

Von Diaz's Essential Puerto Rican Recipes

Von Diaz's Essential Puerto Rican Recipes is a group of recipes collected by the editors of NYT Cooking

5) Russian Fast Food in Moscow and St. Petersburg, InTravel Magazine

"One of the best plain meals I found in Russia was at a chain called Kroshka Kartoshka, which looks something like KPOWKA KAPTOWKA in Cyrillic. On the logo, those letters appear in a circle around a cartoon chef hoisting a giant potato, which is what’s served, baked, with your choice of sauces in stainless-steel bowls you can point at through Plexiglas: mushrooms, greens, fish, and meat. I pointed to green-and-brown, pink-and-yellow, and another I forget, all flavorful beyond the chili and broccoli-and-Kraft I’ve had at similar establishments here (though it’s a great idea anywhere, isn’t it?). Maybe the scenery helped the flavor: in the lively Sennaya Plochad (Haymarket Square) location where I first noticed these in St. Petersburg, I took my dressed potato outside on a tray with a draft Boshkarov beer to eat at pine-green plastic furniture (pine green is the color of Kroshka Kartoshka) set out under umbrellas just across from the wishful new monument to international peace, a column made of a metal that looks like ice."

https://www.intravelmag.com/intravel/in-good-taste/russian-fast-food-in-moscow-and-st-petersburg

6) From China’s Far North, a Paradoxical Noodle Lands in Queens, NYTimes

The roasted cold noodles at Followsoshi in Flushing aren’t cold and don’t look much like other noodles.

"After you place your order at the counter, one of the cooks pulls a single “noodle” — a translucent whitish sheet, about six by eight inches — from a stack submerged in a bowl of water. It is ridged like a corn husk, which has occasionally led people to compare roasted cold noodles, not very aptly, to tamales. The indentations in the dough are stamped by a press. The idea seems to be to imitate the effect you would get if you left rows of wet, starchy noodles sitting side by side until they got cold and reattached themselves into a single, striated piece.

This sheet is slapped down on a crepe griddle and quickly oiled. Immediately, an egg is cracked over it and spread across the surface. Before the egg sets, it is spread with roasted chiles in oil and sprinkled with black and white sesame seeds and cilantro that embed themselves in the surface.

Then comes one of a number of fillings: soft braised pork with matchsticks of vinegared potato; or chopped crayfish in a garlic-forward seasoning of Sino-Cajun origins; or hot dogs, a standard filling in Harbin and other cities of Heilongjiang. In Flushing, the wieners are on the skinny side and go by the name “sausage king.” This aspiring monarch also features in “meat lover cold noodles,” together with sweet diced bacon, crab stick and a white sauce that Followsoshi calls simply “Parmesan.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/dining/roasted-cold-noodles-followsoshi-queens.html