Menu “planning”

The other day as I was getting ready to sit down and eat my dinner, I looked at the plate and wondered “how did this happen?”  Not in an existential sort of way, but why on a particular Tuesday night am I having a dinner of North African/Central Asian meatballs with mint yogurt dressing, Moroccan carrots, and eggplant puree with Asian flavors.

It’s not like I plan menus.  I don’t sit down on Sunday afternoon and plan out my meals for the week in advance.  I’m not nearly that organized.  Nor am I a culinary flaneur, browsing through markets and waiting for inspiration.  While some of that is real, there’s a little mythology going on there as well.  There are times when I have been completely inspired by something I see in a market, but that’s not an everyday occurrence nor is it dependable.  So how does this work?

I’m reading two books right now; Food: A Culinary History by Jean-Louis Flandrin and Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane by S. Frederick Starr. In the former, I’m in a section that discusses the culinary culture of the Byzantine Empire, including influences from Arabic, Turkic, and Slavic sources. That latter has nothing to do with food but everything to do with exchanges between and among Chinese, Turkic, Persian, Arabic, Hindu, Hellenic, Jewish, Eastern Christian, Egyptian, and Central Asian cultures.  By the way, in this context Central Asia stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to Xinjiang Province in China in the east, and from Kazakhstan in the north to western Pakistan, Afghanistan, and eastern Iran in the south.

So I was in that frame of mind already and decided to try and put something together with a Central Asian flavor, without really knowing what that meant. Given that Central Asia is most known for the Silk Roads and the crossroads where trade among China, India, the Middle East, and Europe happened, I’d expect that Central Asian cuisine would be influenced by all that. I was already one step up on the process because the day before, I’d made what I can only describe as a baba ganoush gone to China.  I got the recipe from Jack Bishop’s Vegetables Every Day. The eggplant and garlic are the same as a traditional baba ganoush, but instead of tahini and/or yogurt, I was adding soy sauce, rice vinegar, and toasted sesame seeds with a sesame oil garnish.

That left me with another vegetable and a protein. I have a couple of cookbooks that specialize in creating global flavor profiles (Elisabeth Rozin’s Ethnic Cuisine is a good one) but I couldn’t find anything that matched the ingredients I already had in the house.  A little browsing, though, led me to Rozin’s Lebanese meatballs which gave me enough of a head start to improvise something I thought would work.   When I discovered a half empty jar of fig jam I bought several months ago for something else, inspiration struck.

I started by sautéing a small diced onion and some garlic and adding some ras el hanout before taking them off the heat.  Ras el hanout is a Moroccan spice blend and like India’s garam masala, there is no definitive recipe for it.  Most will have cumin, cinnamon, salt, and pepper but there are dozens of other spices that could show up as well. It has a warm, complex taste and I use it in lots of contexts, not just when making Moroccan/North African food.

After making a basic meatball mixture, I added the onions and garlic, some more ras el hanout, a little cayenne, and the rest of the jar of fig jam.  Sweetened fruits, jams, and syrups are a hallmark of Central Asian cooking and I wanted to see how this would turn out with the jam.  The presence of the ras el hanout would distinguish these meatballs from traditional Central Asian food, but it might work anyway.

Then I formed the mixture into meatballs, cooked them, and served them with a topping of simple yogurt and chopped fresh mint.  I’m jumping ahead a little, but it really did work.  The heat and depth of the ras el hanout was balanced very nicely by the sweetness of the figs and the tart coolness of the yogurt tied everything together.

With the eggplant and meatballs in place, the carrots were a no-brainer.  Moroccan carrots are almost a staple in our house.  There are lots of recipes around for making them, but my way is really quick.  Glaze the carrots on the stove and when they’re done, add some extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, and ras el hanout.  Shake the saucepan to get everything covered, and serve.

Recipe – North African/Central Asian meatballs

Ingredients

1 lb ground lamb (beef will work but not as well)

1 cup breadcrumbs

1 egg

1/4 cup cider vinegar

1 small onion diced

2 cloves garlic minced

2 tbl olive oil

2 tbl ras el hanout, separated

1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped

1/4 tsp cayenne (to taste)

1/4 cup fig jam (apricot jam, plum jam, or pomegranate syrup would all be possible substitutes) – adjust amount for desired level of sweetness

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 cup yogurt

1/3 cup fresh mint

Directions

Preheat oven to 350°

Sauté the onions and garlic over medium low heat for 10 minutes. Add 1 tbl of ras el hanout at the 8 minute mark.

Mix all the other ingredients excluding the yogurt and mint in a large bowl.  Add the onions/garlic when cool enough.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.  Scoop 1/8 cup of the meatball mixture, form it into a ball in your hands, and lay on the paper.  When done, put the baking sheet in the oven.  It should take about 15 minutes for the meatballs to be cooked but you should check regularly after 10 minutes.  The meatballs could also be panfried which would give them a better crust, but panfrying meatballs is a lot more work.

While the meatballs are cooking, mix the yogurt and the mint.  When serving the meatballs, top each one with a dollop of the yogurt.

Recipe – Asian eggplant puree

Ingredients

1 eggplant

1 tbl rice vinegar

1 tbl soy sauce

1 garlic clove, minced

1 small red or green chile, minced

1 tbl of fresh cilantro, chopped or 1 tsp dried cilantro

1 tbl sesame seeds

sesame oil to taste

Directions

Preheat oven to 450°.  Slice the skin of the eggplant in several places and put in the oven for 45 minutes or so. Remove and when cool enough, peel and place in a food processor bowl.

Add all the other ingredients to the food processor except the sesame seeds and sesame oil.  Pulse until everything is combined in a chunky puree. Place in the refrigerator for at least two hours to let the flavors come together.

When ready to serve, sprinkle the serving bowl with sesame seeds and sesame oil.  Serve with pita bread  or lavash.

Recipe – Moroccan carrots

Ingredients

4 medium size carrots, peeled and cut into 1/4″ slices

1 tbl ras el hanout (if unavailable, 2 tsp ground cumin, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ground ginger or something similar can be substituted)

1 tbl lemon juice

1 tbl extra virgin olive oil

Directions

Place the carrots in a saucepan sized so they fill the bottom of the saucepan in roughly a single layer.  Add water to come about halfway up the layer of carrots.  Partially cover and turn the heat up high.  Pay attention to the saucepan – in 6-7 minutes, the water will be close to gone and the carrots will be cooked, but waiting an extra minute or two will start scorching the carrots.  Just at the point the water is gone, add the oil, lemon juice, and spice mixture.  Cover, shake vigorously, and remove from heat.