Lebanese Festival

When I showed up at Henry and Remsen for the Our Lady of Lebanon church festival, things were just starting up. While volunteers were still busy constructing tents and taping down tablecloths, the grills were already hot, the food tables laden, and the music blaring. These people know how to prioritize.

A long buffet offered all kinds of meat and vegetable options: lamb and chicken kebabs, kibbeh (ground meat and spices) pressed into a huge casserole, dolmas, flaky savory pies, grilled corn, and all the side salads you'd expect. We got a sampler platter with lamb, muhadarra, tabloule, green beans, and fatoush, then lined up for some sajj bread.

The sajj cooking stations were metal domes heated from inside by coals or some other kind of roaring fire, and standing next to them in 90-degree weather tested your true desire for some sajj. The volunteer cooks made it look irresistible, though, laying thin discs of dough onto the hot metal and slathering them with different appetizing fillings from meat sauce to cheese to zaatar paste. When the underside was crispy and slightly blackened, they’d fold them in half and serve them straight off the stove: a Middle Eastern quesadilla. A friend got one of the meat-filled versions, and I asked for a plain piece, just to try it out.

We sat down at one of the long tables and started in on our food, pausing only when some people had to stuff a tablecloth underneath it. Though the platter was more expensive and less generous than most of the Middle Eastern restaurants in the area, it did have a noticeable homemade quality that set it apart. The dressing on the fatoush salad had the buttery sweetness that emerges from the right proportions of lemon and olive oil, and the muhadarra, a mix of lentils, rice, and sautéed onions, was extremely flavorful, much better than many versions I’ve had at restaurants, which tend to be a bit dry. The saaj was different from baked pita, chewier and less bready (which is why the sajj at Fatoush made such good breakfast tacos).

I was too full to reap all the benefits of the dessert table, but I sampled a few bites of a Lebanese pudding flavored with almond and cinnamon and sprinkled with coconut flakes. I wish I could have tried the namoura (also called basbousa), a semolina cake soaked in sweet syrup that I discovered earlier this year at my birthday dinner at Waterfalls, but I might try to make it for an upcoming birthday to make up for this missed opportunity.

I passed by the festival later in the afternoon while doing errands, and it was still going strong. By then the bouncy houses were fully inflated and filled with children, and there was still plenty of food and drinks to occupy their parents for many more hours. I could sense a dance party coming on, since I’m sure everyone was drawn to the event, as I was, by the flyer’s promise of a “DJ ALL THREE DAYS.” I didn’t wait around to find out, but I think the block partied late into the evening.

Zaatar

Sorry Fatoosh, a new restaurant has stolen my heart (and from now on will probably take a significant chunk, though a reasonable one, of my paycheck). When the waiter arrived at our table with the Vegetarian Platter for Two, I knew I would be coming back to Waterfalls Cafe. The enormous oblong plate was overflowing with hummus, babaghanouj, muhammara, the freshest taboule you can find on Atlantic Avenue (and this street provides a lot of comparisons), and studded with dolmas and falafel balls. I respect any restaurant that can provide fresh, well-seasoned food to feed three hungry people for $20, and the fact that Waterfalls is BYOB raises it to Number One Choice for My Next Birthday Party.

My mother, during the usual frenzy that occurs when ordering food for a table to share, exacerbated by her constant state of personal frenzy, had also requested an order of zaatar bread, despite having no idea what it was. Fortunately, I had always wanted to try it – it’s on the menu of any Mediterranean restaurant and I’d heard good things about it on Anthony Bourdain’s TV show, but I always go for the simplicity of plain pita. The zaatar bread at Waterfalls was a doughy flatbread brushed with olive oil and topped with crumbled feta and the special seasoning blend. It had a nice crunch from sesame seeds and the toastier edges of the crust, and the course salt and feta added just the right amount salt and tanginess. But what made it an unquestionably worthwhile upgrade from plain pita was the combination of floral and lemony spices that go into the zaatar mix.

“Zaatar” is the Arabic word for the family of herbs that includes thyme, oregano, and savory, and it's also used to refer to the seasoning made by grinding the dried plants and combining them with toasted sesame seeds, salt and other spices. Precise recipes vary from region to region, and even from kitchen to kitchen – apparently in North Africa, wives have been known to keep their signature methods secret from their own daughters. It all sounds very complicated – I was grateful to discover when I got home that my mother had gotten me a container of zaatar spice from a specialty shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sparing me the trouble of discovering the correct ratios and ingredients myself.

I got to work looking up ways to use the stuff, and it seems there is no end to the possibilities. Zaatar can be sprinkled on hummus, rubbed on meats, swirled into labneh, mixed with olive oil to form a paste to spread on bread or bagels. It can also be discovered at the center of baked rolls or coating the exterior of balls of cured Israeli cheese. I want to try it as a seasoning for fried onions or a topping for brie and other soft cheeses, but for now my favorite way to eat it is with good bread (pita or otherwise) and deliciously grassy extra-extra-extra virgin olive oil.

Fava Beans: A Fuul Mess, Resuscitated

I’ve had a container of gigantic dried fava beans sitting in my cupboard since my parents came to visit for graduation and bought me all kinds of exciting things at Sahadi’s. The beans are a soothing green color and could be mistaken for someone's river pebble collection, plus they make a nice clicking noise when you run them through your fingers. But these were not good enough reasons to keep them in their dried form forever, so yesterday I decided to attempt to cook them.

Dried fava beans are a staple food in Egypt (where they’re called something like fuul medames, though transliterations vary wildly), so I thought I’d try out an Egyptian recipe. I concluded from some internet research that most preparations involve soaking the beans, boiling them for several hours, and serving them gently mashed with olive oil, various aromatics, and sometimes some lemon juice. It all seemed fairly straightforward, so I decided to avoid following any specific instructions and simply play it by ear.

I may have overestimated my experience with cooking dried beans, or underestimated its importance. In the morning, I put the beans in a bowl of water to soak, and when I came home from work they were slightly larger, slightly flabbier, and much more intimidating. What were once innocent-looking pebbles now seemed like vestigial organs or ancient earlobes. And I realized wasn’t entirely sure what to do with them next. I decided to remove their outer shells, fearing that if I didn’t they would never soften. When that task was completed, I rinsed my pruny fingers, covered the white inner-beans with water, and set them on the stove to cook.

Maybe the heat was too high, or maybe I wasn’t supposed to shell them, but it only took a little over an hour for them to soften – I was expecting to wait two or three hours. As they simmered, the kitchen filled with a scent that reminded me of my dinner at grandmother’s house. I suddenly realized that fava beans, under the name “broad beans,” are also frequently used in the English stews she makes. It was strange to experience that familiar smell of British cooking – like steamy socks but somehow appetizing, I swear – while making something I thought was Egyptian.

After an hour, the favas had disintegrated into a starchy grayish mush, which I strained, and then stared at. Was it salvageable? It was close to tasteless on its own, and because of its appearance I was doubtful I could convince people to eat it. It may be packed with nutrients that have sustained the Egyptian civilization for centuries, but pure nutrition is not exactly the main concern of the American palate. I was worried I had wasted half a tub of fava beans, but I added the accoutrements I had in hope of resuscitating the dish: the juice of two lemons, several splashes of olive oil, some sautéed onions and garlic, and some crumbled feta cheese.

Somehow, miraculously, it became delicious. The olive oil smoothed out the texture and the sharpness of the lemon highlighted the subtle creamy flavor of the mashed fava, which I had failed to appreciate when I had tasted it by itself. The onions added depth to the dish, and basically made the whole thing more interesting. I served a warm bowl of the stuff with baked cumin tortilla chips, and it was happily consumed by three people in a matter of minutes.

I’m not sure what lesson I should take away from this particular experiment. Cooking is less of a rollercoaster when you’re willing to follow recipes? Or: just as important as staple foods are staple food improvers – add olive oil, lemon, and onions to anything and it will taste good. Probably both are valuable, but the second lesson seems to be a powerful principle in the kind of cooking that totally ignores the first.