Category: Shopping List

What is mujaddara?

• An Afghan guerrilla hiding in the crevices of the mountains.
• A dark polyester veil wrapped around the sweating brow of an observant Muslim woman.
  

No, it is neither of those things. But it's still a mystery to me -- green lentils, both pasty and firm, moist but not enough to make the bread soggy, topped with French's golden fried onions, or some natural equivalent. What else is in it? And why is it so freaking delicious with a little tahini and hot sauce?

Where's the old man? I want to watch him make my sandwich. You have never seen a man take so much pride in his sandwich creation.

---

The old man wears a paper cap, the kind that fattens into the shape of an eye when you squeeze the two edges together.

OLD MAN: What do you want?

ME: Mujaddara sandwich.

I wait for it.

OLD MAN: Mujaddara!

The word is magical from him. My coworker Jesse and I practice imitating the old man's mujaddara song. Mujaddara! MujaDRA! Mujjadddra!  It never gets old.

Try to order a combo, which is totally encouraged by the overhead menu, and the old man will look at you with disappointment in his filmy eyes.

OLD MAN: You don't want that. Your sandwich will fall apart.

He waits for the inevitable cave-in.

ME: Okay, just mujaddara, then.

OLD MAN: Mujaddara.

And then he turns back to the counter, picking out a container deliberately. He chooses a pita and returns to the steam table, dipping the huge spoon into the aluminum tray, as he does every day at lunch time.

He is slow. S-l-o-w. But he overstuffs that pita with more love than it has ever felt in its brief, floury life.

OLD MAN: Lettuce toMAYto?

ME: Yes please.

OLD MAN: Hot sauce?

ME: Yes, please.

A few minutes pass.  Maybe I turn to the many refrigerator cases behind me to grab a kelly green bottle of elderflower soda, or to eyeball the odd imported beverages -- soda of wormwood, sherbet-colored mango lassi, names emblazoned on the labels in the font equivalent of jazz hands.

The sandwich is wrapped in wax paper and sliced in half.  Here it comes.  He turns to his co-sandwich makers, his small hands wrapped around each C-cup half of the mujaddara sandwich. 

OLD MAN: Look how beautiful.  That is a beautiful sandwich. 

His smile is genuine, and those milky glazed eyes light up.  He nestles that perfect sandwich gently into its foil container, packs a few pickles on top and puts a lid on it.

How can you not love a man like that?

--

But where's the old man today?  I ask his colleagues, one a middle eastern man with a salt and pepper mane and a lazy eye, the other a tall African man with a round nose and apple-y cheeks. 

ME: Where's the boss?

Both smile.

SALT AND PEPPER: He's in the kitchen.

I imagine him working his alchemy on another potful, a small and shrinking man smiling lovingly at the lentils and whispering his incantation --

OLD MAN: Mujaddara...

Kalustyan's
Lexington and 28th
Upstairs

Also recommended: The olive oil moistened spinach with toasted slivered almonds and onion, the turmeric eggplant.  But not in your sandwich!  Take your sandwich to go and sit in Madison Square Park -- heaven.  Also, I can't get enough of their dried California apricots and "colossal" California pistachios, roasted and unsalted.

I know we'll look back at the aughts and think, "God, salted caramel is SOOOOOO 2000s, isn't it?"  But I hope these Liddabit Sea Salt Caramels never go out of style.  It's a 2-inch bar of soft buttery goodness, shot through with the perfect amount of crunchy salt crystals and wrapped in a square of wax paper.  Best 75 cents you'll spend at the Chelsea Market.  I picked them up at Lucy's Whey, my friend Amy's fab newborn artisanal American cheese shop there. 

I also got a block of Prairie Breeze Cheddar from Iowa -- sweet, grassy and insanely good.  I am really looking forward to breakfast. 

--

NaBloPoMo is almost over, and thank god for that!  I need my sleeping time back.  I'm hoping to have something special to finish the month off tomorrow.  Check back!

Considering we met through his apartment listing on craigslist, it's funny how many random things Doug and I have in common.

These Nunu Chocolates, they're dangerous.  A little 1 1/2 inch thin of firm, stretchy dark caramel is covered in a thin layer of dark chocolate and sprinkled with a little fleur de sel.  They're too good.  And they ought to be -- they're wicked expensive at 5 in a box for $7. 

The worst part is that once you have one, you'll start thinking about them once in a while.  You'll get a flash of that bittersweet chocolate shell.  Then maybe you remember the meltaway sea salt on the back of your tongue, prepping the slate.  But in comes that damn salty-gooey siren song in your mind's palate until...you can't take it!  You must have it!  You find yourself crashing through the door of Brooklyn Larder, hunting for that infernally small, see-through cube of chocolates.  And you might share a few begrudgingly with your friends, but in a matter of four, maybe five bites, they're gone, a receding caramel dream, a dark secret your tongue will brood and pine for until your next dalliance.

I have one left.  Look at it taunting me from its plastic cage.  I will hide it in a drawer until the moment is right and the Precious and Sméagol can get some QT together.

Oof, see what happens when I open the door a crack for sugar?  It barges in and sets up camp on the sofa.  Starting tomorrow, I'm back on the no sugar wagon. 

"Mexican" "Pitas". 555!

Of the many things in Swedish culture that I embrace (and there are many -- sandwiches for breakfast, equality, 16 months PAID parental leave per child), perhaps my favorite is the cookie culture.  Lots of people know about fika, the Swedish coffee break, but part of fika is enjoying your strong cup of coffee with kakor, or cookies.



This book's title, Sju sorters kakor, means "Seven Kinds of Cookies", and it's my co-worker's wife's favorite cookbook.  Back in the day, if you had someone over for fika, it was bad form to have less than seven cookies for your guest to choose from.  The cookbook is fab, and I plan to pick one up before I leave.  Apparently, it's very popular and old school -- like The Joy of Cooking for kakor.

You may have heard of pepparkakor, the spicy, thin gingery cookies, sometimes shot through with slivers of almond.  There  are also drömkakor, or dream cookies, which are pale, airy vanilla cookies with crinkly, brittle tops.  I still have to try mazarin, the almond paste-filled tartlet cookies filled in with smooth, white icing.  There's much to explore. 

It seems to me that the Swedes like their cookies crunchy -- I don't think chewy oatmeal would fly here.  It makes  sense in the context of the fika.  What's nicer than a crunchy, sweet bite washed down with strong coffee when it's cold?  Now if only I could get used to drinking coffee in the afternoon and still sleep at night.

A useful Swedish word to use in this context is smulig -- smulor is the word for "crumbs", and smulig is the adjective form.  So after stuffing my face with sju sorters kakor at Mormor's house, I was totes smulig. My co-worker Linnéa is teaching me all the fun language flotsam.

LINNÉA: [After we've eaten breakfast sandwiches] Smulor, it's like this, crumbs.

ME: Ah, yes.

LINNÉA: And smulig, you say, "Jag är smulig." [I am smulig.]

ME: Oh yeah, like crumby.

LINNÉA: Yeah, crumby. [She writes down "smulig = crummy" on a Post-it for me.]

ME: Oh, no, not like crummy. Like full of crumbs. Crummy is something different. But maybe it isn't?

LINNÉA:  Oh yeah, but you know what I mean.
 

From left: Italian cantuccino (which I see everywhere here), singoalla, pepparkaka

In an effort to assimilate and truly understand the people of this land, I have stocked my larder with three kinds of cookies.  My new favorite is the little bullseye one, called Singoalla.  It's like a linzer cookie and a Vienna finger rolled into one.  Which is just what I had hoped "Mördegskex, creme med vaniljsmak och hallonfyllning" meant.  I have been regularly eating a second dinner of cookies as I wait for the internets to load.  If I come back fat, I'll blame the mobile dial-up.

97 degrees, 80% humidity.  If I had cleavage, you'd be able to poach an egg in it.  

I thought about buying some Weck jars today -- Winnie was excited about purchasing hers, and as I am totally unoriginal, I thought I would follow suit.  But why is it that all the good stuff worth preserving is only around when the weather is oppressive?  I'm getting heat stroke just thinking about turning the stove on.



This week's Greenmarket purchases:
from left to right: 1 1/3 lbs. of ground pork from Flying Pigs, French breakfast radishes, baby scallions, spinach, black Tuscan kale, cranberry pecan sourdough bread, biscotti, shiitake mushrooms, vanilla yogurt, ricotta cheese, drinkable blueberry yogurt, one pint strawberries, 5/6 lb. sugar snap peas.




Still leftover from last week's Greenmarket run:
2 red onions, 1 cucumber, one ripe, ripe greenhouse tomato, half a dozen Flying Pigs eggs, 1/4 block of Colby cheese, some strawberries, about 1/3 of a loaf of bread, a bunch of dill, a bunch of cilantro, a bunch of chives.

Still also have 1/4 of a ball of Tonjes Farms' mozzarella, which I think will be nibbled through by Wednesday.

I did clear out some stuff with today's breakfast of French toast with strawberries.  It's nice to actually save "pain perdu".  I'm using the cucumber, dill, onion and half the tomato for my lunch salad tomorrow.  All in all, I would say that only the cilantro and chives will turn before I have time to use them up.  I'm pretty pleased with how I've done so far.

I also used some leftover tomato and some of the onion and cilantro above to make guac for a party:



My friend Nancy had given me four ripe avocados last Sunday.  I knew I wasn't going to be able to eat them, so I stuck them in the fridge as soon as I got home.  Refrigeration works quite well if you want to halt the avo ripening process.  A little chopped cilantro, onion, garlic, tomato, and a repurposed cupcake clamshell for transporting the avocados and I had the perfect hors d'oeuvre.  All I had to do was pick up some chips; the hosts of the party already had jalapenos, salt, and limes on hand for my friend Shannon's knockout kiwi-chili margaritas (cribbed from the Modern):


Don't you feel refreshed just looking at that?  Muddled kiwis and seeded jalapenos, Herradura silver, triple sec, lime juice, shaken with lots of ice...I think that's it.  Viva el verano!

****
That Lysol in the background of my food pictures is incriminating, isn't it?  It's actually sitting on the window ledge behind the butcher block, far enough away from the food that I'm not going to give myself a health code violation.  Don't judge me!

Related: my friend Julie reminded me today that when I first moved to New York with no job and no money, I used to go hang out in the downstairs dining room at the Wendy's on Broadway and Bleecker.  It smelled like ammonia and cheap frying grease down there, and the company was usually less than savory, but their air conditioning was deliciously Frosty.

I'm back! A trillion thanks to Janet for keeping the seat warm! These last 12 weeks have been rough. But, in the last week, I did manage to meet up with Tanya, an EDOW reader who's a sculptor in Barcelona. (How did I accrue such a cool readership? Only you know the answer to that one, my friends.) We met up to share a bottle of Sauvignon Collio 2005 Ronco dei Tassi, a nice, acidic, full white from Friuli, over a plate of fritto misto. (Enoteca I Trulli -- very civilized for an after-work glass of wine.) Our reason for meeting up? She managed to smuggle a package of jamón ibérico de bellota from Spain for me.

How gorgeous is that? A queen among hams, bellota meat is maroon, dark like bresaola, not heavily streaked with fat. She recommended letting the refrigerated ham sit out for two hours to come to room temp so you can really taste the acorns in the fat, then serving atop slices of good baguette rubbed with ripe tomato, with fat arbequina olives and a glass of rioja or Iberian wine on the side. Obviously we're a long ways away from ripe tomatoes, so I may have to skip that part, but I'm really excited about digging in. I'll let you know how it goes. Apparently, in Spain, you just keep a leg of the jamón covered on your counter and carve thin slices off using the jamonero whenever you get hungry. I've promised to harass Tanya if I ever make it over to Spain. I gotta go to a country whose people know how to keep a pork leg on the counter for a year.

Jamón ibérico de bellota was only recently legalized in the States. If you're not going to make it to Spain anytime soon, you can get on a waiting list at Tienda.com.