And re: the book title, I am crushed we didn’t think of Ducking Felicious in time. This is why I need Josh and Larra on speed dial. (I was explaining the dilemma to a British couple in Spain, and that was their first suggestion. The Brits–they are a little wittier.)
Forking Fantastic it is, and I got the galleys a couple of days ago. The cute factor with the new title is a little high. Somehow, Forking Fantastic thong underwear does not have quite the same appeal as F-ing Delicious underwear. A whole marketing angle lost…
Off to Spain today, to work on the LP Spain walking guide–basically the same turf as my April trip, but an enforced slower pace.
As I leave for the airport, there is still a kerfuffle over the title of mine and Tamara’s cookbook, which some of you may’ve heard about via Facebook last week. I am still deep-down appalled at the idea that American book-buyers allegedly can’t handle seeing the letters “f-ing” on the cover of a book (let me be clear: nowhere on the cover would “the fuck-word,” as the witty Joanna calls it, actually have appeared), and yet many much broader social indecencies seem to be no problem at all. Also, that plenty of men have books with bad words in the title, but apparently it’s just too shocking over in the girly cookbook stacks.
Also, though, I live in New York City, where expletives hang in the air thick as smog. So what do I know?
But crisis = opportunity, and all that. So the boss of a friend of ours suggested Forking Delicious. Dorktastic! We went with that.
Alas. Some ladies in Philadelphia have been using the phrase for many years, and even though I don’t see any step toward copyrighting or trademarking on their website, well, I guess it wouldn’t be fair. Plus, they only live in Philly, so it’s just a train ride away to rough us up in a dark alley. There are more of them than there are of us.
So, now. Leaving for airport in one hour. Title still up in the air. Fucking, arg, I mean Forking Fantastic is the top choice.
The one nice thing about this whole process (have I mentioned, the title had been settled for more than a year? and the last time we got nervous about it, three months ago, they assured us it would be totally fine?) is a friend of mine dug up this book, while searching for other obscene titles:
Premise is that “fuck it” is the Western equivalent of Eastern Buddhist detachment, etc. I feel so enlightened already! I’ll be breathing deep and saying “fuck it” all the way to the airport.
Probably not too much posting in Spain. We’ll be in the ass of nowhere most of the time, getting sunburned and eating ham.
Just entertain yourself by answering this poll, please. I’m curious…
Ooh, very promising: Fellow Lonely Planet writer, native New Yorker and generally perceptive gal Conner Gorry has finally started a blog about daily life in Havana:
Peter and I and a few other friends went to Cuba in 1996, I think it was. (Surely it’s OK to say this, and the statute of limitations has run out by now?) We were so mentally unprepared, it’s comical in retrospect. At the time, though, it was an extremely rough trip.
We didn’t fully grasp, for instance, that it would be impossible to get more money once there…and we didn’t know quite how expensive it would be. It was very difficult to get off the “official” tourist track, and the attendant 1-to-1 exchange rate. But even if we had, well, there wasn’t anything to buy with Cuban money anyhow. Our second week, we got by on one meal a day, and we rolled up to the airport with nothing but our exit tax in our pockets.
The situation was grimmest when it came to food. I still shudder when I think about the creepy, greasy fish we were served at the one restaurant we found where we could pay in Cuban pesos. My sentimental attachment to Communism was pretty well chipped away on that trip, when I realized that the system truly just failed at feeding people, much less giving them the real, simple pleasure that can come from delicious things to eat every day.
I hope this has changed a bit in years since. When we visited, farmer’s markets were just starting up, as a very controlled experiment. The few times we got fresh produce, it was fantastic. But, whoa, that was so not a trip about kicking back on the beach and eating fresh pineapple. Still, when I returned to the Dominican Republic, I was appalled at the slums and the advertising everywhere…and I really appreciated the pineapple on the beach.
So, looking forward to reading Conner’s reports, as it sounds like various policies have changed since I visited. I especially want to know about the food!
I’ve lived in Astoria for 11 years. There are lots of grocery stores here, and new foodstuffs all the time. But it’s been a long time since I’ve found something I’ve never even heard of: oxymeli. It was just sitting there, all innocent, on the shelf at my usual Greek grocery, Greek House on 30th Avenue. I love this guy because it’s the best kind of tiny store–the kind where the more you look, the more you see things you need. Also because he stocks a lot of Turkish items, despite this neighborhood’s prejudice against. He also has good bulk chocolate and bulk spices, even mahleb, the sour cherry pits that I needed when I got on my Syrian cooking kick last year.
I always go in for one thing, and come out without about eight (it helps that there’s a 99-cent ATM in there too). This time, I was waiting for my feta to get bundled up when I saw the oxymeli.
I say “the oxymeli” as though I knew what it was. But no. It was in with the vinegars. The label says it’s a combination of sweet wine, currant vinegar, figgy stuff and honey. There are actual little chunks of fruit in it too. There’s not too much on the Web about it–it seems like it’s a modern reinvention of an ancient recipe, made by just one company, Liostrofi. (Classicists, help me out!)
I fed some to our visiting genius-bartender friend, who promptly declared, “It’s shrub!” It does taste a little like something a spry 95-year-old man has been drinking every morning his whole life, and credits with keeping him fit. And I’m not surprised that a lot of the other info about it online seems to come from SCA types (a slippery slope, food history…).
Anyhoo, it’s delicious! I used it instead of balsamic vinegar to macerate some strawberries, and it was lighter but more complex. I heartily recommend it…if you can find it.
And because our pantry is overstuffed, I have to manage it the same way I do my clothes, tossing old to make room for new. The victim this time was a bottle of Rooh Afza, appealingly billed as “The Summer Drink of the East,” and smelling of rose and “fragrant screwpine.” Alas, it didn’t taste like much but sugar, and even its pretty label and ridiculous bright-pinkness couldn’t save it. Buh-bye, Rooh, and thanks anyway to Hamdafd Laboratories of Pakistan (though I love the sound of a drink made by Something Laboratories, don’t you?). According to Wikipedia, Rooh Afza used to be something more elaborate. It’s a mild understatement to call this version “less complex.”
Oh, but I lie. I snuck in another new thing, without quite purging something else. It’s a bottle of mulberry syrup from Syria. It was a risky thing to bring back, considering it could have made a horrific mess in my luggage. But it’s intact (if now even already a third consumed), and in a drink-mixing frenzy over the last few days, I found it goes well with gin, and with bananas in a smoothie. Now that’s versatile–a real keeper.
My mother has this saying, “It’s hell having a good time.” Best uttered near the tail end of a party, when exhausted, or when the logistics of entertaining oneself prove very challenging.
Also, to oneself when lying in bed, bloated with delicious food.
I signed up for a culinary tour of Syria because I love Syria and I love Syrian food. Makes sense, right? Let’s just say I didn’t really think through the implications of the phrase “group trip”–ie, that we did everything as a group. And that was a lot of things, and never really included naps.
Maybe I do more stuff in a day when I’m on a research trip, but, hey, that’s work. Syria was my big vacation. So when I had to roll out of bed the first day after just five hours of sleep, it felt a little rough. Actually, it felt like karmic payback for nearly wrecking my mother during my research trip to Spain.
Granted, I’m inherently lazy, and there’s something to be said for making me do stuff. But, ohhh, I never thought I would complain about having to eat so much in such a short time. But here I am.
What we ate was remarkable. It happened to be the season for rose-petal jam, so there was quite a lot of that. Also, of artichokes–though I think the Syrians are so into sour that they sometimes forget salty, and artichokes need a lot of salt; some we ate were quite bland and didn’t have that special zing.
It was also the season for desert truffles, or kama’. I’d never had them before, and I started to get worried that we wouldn’t get any, because it was supposedly near the end of the season. Not to worry–at a massive dinner at the Club d’Alep, they were served two ways. I could only muster a couple of bites, though, because yet again, I’d managed to eat too much that day, and each bite of that dinner felt like it might be my last, before a Monty Python-esque explosion.
They were intriguing. Nice dense mushroomy texture, with a mellow, kind of all-purpose spring-vegetable taste that lasted a surprisingly long time. Nothing at all like European truffles, of course, but then neither are Mexican truffles, or huitlacoche. “Truffle” is the new “Riviera,” in terms of creative naming.
We also tasted quite a lot of varieties of kibbeh. I rarely order it myself, because it just doesn’t seem all that interesting. But we had a very nice grilled rendition, filled with a molten center of pomegranate molasses and nut paste, and the more I looked around, the more varieties I saw and tasted.
Sweets
One night mid-trip, I was lying in bed, again in some digestive misery, and it dawned on me that my money would probably have been better spent on, say, a trip to China, where I really do need someone to lead me around and translate, and to explain the food to me.
And then I woke up the next day, and we went to Pistache d’Alep, a fancy bakery, and visited the kitchens. Not being a huge sweets fan, I wasn’t expecting much. But, whoa. Words cannot begin to convey the complete niftiness of the industrial equipment at work, and the depth of craftsmanship in all the meticulous handwork. I put up a whole separate Flickr set just for the bakery trip. Don’t skip the videos.
After having my mind boggled by all the weird sweets-producing technology, we had coffee (and more sweets!) with Willy Wonka himself, who used to live on Long Island. His right-hand man, Hassan, expounded on food in a philosophical way that reminded me of Ali.
We absolutely must eat seasonally, he said, because our health comes from nature–not only is it wrong to eat oranges in the summer, he said, it’s bad for your health too. While he was saying this, however, this was going on outside the windows of the cafe:
I cannot explain…
Getting Schooled
The other really outstanding thing we did was go to the house of a woman chef for a cooking demonstration and big lunch. I could’ve sat there for days and watched her stuff eggplants. We occasionally were put to work, but kind of botched it. Here she is impatiently emptying out a mis-stuffed eggplant and refilling it the proper way.
I also learned the dirty secret to muhammara, the red-pepper-and-walnut paste: sugar. Loads of it. Also, citric acid. Apparently all the restaurants use citric acid instead of lemon juice, because the flavor doesn’t go off as fast. Of course purists frown on this, but still fascinating to know. Will mentally file with judicious use of MSG.
Solo in Damascus
After that was all over, and I bid fond adieu to my fellow travelers (the actual group part of the ‘group trip’ was excellent), I got on a train back to Damascus. On previous trips, I’ve spent just about all my time in Aleppo, so aside from a memorable nap in the Umayyad Mosque and some excellent blackberry juice just outside it, I had little impression of Damascus.
So it was a double treat to explore a new city, and to do it completely on my own terms with no schedule whatsoever. I really just wandered aimlessly for three days, eating street snacks and taking photos.
I did get a good scrub at a hammam, and drank myself nearly sick on frozen lemonades and mulberry juice. My last night in Damascus, after the one lemon slush I really didn’t need, I collapsed on my bed in a mild sugar shock.
Some random observations: Syrian men are exceedingly polite (I even witnessed a man chide his son for making flirtatious noises at me–export to Egypt, please!), but they are also giant hams. Some of the most fun I had was taking pictures of all the guys who begged me to. I was very glad to have a digital camera.
Syria seems like a notably less paranoid place than when I first visited 10 years ago. Change is happening. And here’s hoping the US doesn’t somehow screw it up with some ham-fisted negotiations.
It’s also a far less cheap place than when I first visited. That’s probably rough for Syrians, but OK by me–it used to be embarrassing how cheap it was. Now it’s on par with Egypt, roughly.
Syria is still the only place in the world I’ve gone back to just because I like it so much–if it’s possible to have a crush on a country, I suppose I do. And I’d still go back–maybe next time in the fall, for a whole range of different seasonal treats.
That, however, does not include the real highlight of the trip, which was a visit to the basement lair of Pistache d’Alep, a sweet shop in Aleppo, where we got to see how all the various thready, flaky, crispy, crunchy, nutty things were made. It kind of blew my mind. So there’s a separate Flickr set all for that, which includes this video:
I love the music that happens to be playing in the background of the first clip. It really set the tone for wacky sweet shop hijinks. Imagine that on endless loop, a battalion of sixteen-year-old boys running around, giant bubbling cauldrons, flour hanging in the air and bizarrely specific industrial machinery, and you have a small hint of what it was like down there. Oh, plus, add lots of butter.
We had one at Peter’s godmother’s place in Chicago for “real” Easter. Photos are here.
Man, we’ve been operating in the bush leagues. We still turn our crank by hand. Out in the Chicago suburbs, though, you just sit back and watch the spit turn itself, giving you more time to muse on man’s eternal connection with fire and meat.
Really, the most illuminating thing to see was the fire: they build it on the ground, off to the side of the meat, in two separate piles of wood (no charcoal). This way you can control how much heat the shoulder and the leg are getting separately, and the center, with the loin, doesn’t get too cooked through.
Anyway, go see the pics. More illuminating than anything I can describe here.
Back from Syria, overstuffed, exhausted and happy. More on this in a bit, but in the meantime, I’m finally caught up with my previous trip, to Spain–the photos from all over Granada and Almeria are up here on Flickr.
Just a few phrases to get you excited about clicking over:
I mentioned it back in the fall, but then I was just guessing at how enjoyable it would be. Now I knowThe Upper East Side Cookbook, by the lovely Parsley Cresswell, is the next volume to add to your shelves.
Poor Miss Parsley. She feels herself losing her toehold in the society of the Upper East Side. And I think, in these troubled economic times, we can all relate to that. Just yesterday, downward mobility was the subject of breakfast conversation.
Miss Parsley is inventive, though, and cooks and forages to save money, as well as to cheer herself up. And the recipes in this book are all quite accessible and delicious. But that hardly does the book justice–it’s really a wonderful document of NYC life, and I feel proud to have had a very small hand in it. (I know Parsley’s alter ego, and provided light copy editing services.)
Maybe it’s just the thing for Mother’s Day? You know, just to show that even though you’re actually not doing quite so well as your parents, you’re still managing to feed yourself…
I leave for Syria on Wednesday, for a week of dining with Anissa Helou and a gang of other people who think this is a delicious idea. It is my third trip to Syria, and I cannot wait. I’m looking forward to green almonds, buttery sweets, passing kindnesses and maybe the elusive desert truffle. I will probably be too stuffed too blog regularly, but believe you me, I will let you know in the end.
In the meantime, you may content yourself with SALTS: The Society for the Appreciation of the Lowly Tinned Sardine. The helpful folks sent me a link months ago–I’m finally leaping into action. I’m a huge canned sardine fan, having been raised on them enthusiastically enough that I thought it was normal to take them for school lunch. No one ever wanted to swap with me, but their loss.
Also, if you need some more home-cooking inspiration, visit Cathy Erway at Not Eating Out in New York. If you’re not hopelessly out of the Brooklyn food loop like I am, you probably already know about her. But it is great to see someone take the leap to home cooking (especially in NYC), and rock it in such a short time. Totally coincidentally, she has a book coming out this fall, from the same publisher as ours and Tamara’s. And I like that a lot of her food skews Asian-y, because I don’t cook that way much.
And in that same vein, yowza, thanks Eric Gower, aka The Breakaway Cook! His food is the kick in the pants I need–I’ve got a pantry full of spices, condiments and assorted syrups, and a lot of days I do precious little with it. His blog might also be the way I break into Japanese food, which I’ve failed with before because I can’t get the underlying rules. I promptly ordered his cookbook, and am very excited to see it.
Between that and my Syria trip, this summer, it’s gonna be hot in my kitchen, for sure.
I’ve lived in Astoria for 11 years. There are lots of grocery stores here, and new foodstuffs all the time. But it’s been a long time since I’ve found something I’ve never even heard of: oxymeli. It was just sitting there, all innocent, on the shelf at my usual Greek grocery, Greek House on 30th Avenue. I love this guy because it’s the best kind of tiny store–the kind where the more you look, the more you see things you need. Also because he stocks a lot of 
And because our pantry is overstuffed, I have to manage it the same way I do my clothes, tossing old to make room for new. The victim this time was a bottle of Rooh Afza, appealingly billed as “The Summer Drink of the East,” and smelling of rose and “fragrant screwpine.” Alas, it didn’t taste like much but sugar, and even its pretty label and ridiculous bright-pinkness couldn’t save it. Buh-bye, Rooh, and thanks anyway to Hamdafd Laboratories of Pakistan (though I love the sound of a drink made by Something Laboratories, don’t you?). 
Oh, but I lie. I snuck in another new thing, without quite purging something else. It’s a bottle of mulberry syrup from Syria. It was a risky thing to bring back, considering it could have made a horrific mess in my luggage. But it’s intact (if now even already a third consumed), and in a drink-mixing frenzy over the last few days, I found it goes well with gin, and with bananas in a smoothie. Now that’s versatile–a real keeper.