"Distract the Dog" Grilled Chicken

This week's recipe,"Distract the Neighbors" grilled chicken, distracted the dog more than the neighbors.

Not like Indie needed an invitation.

Sentimental Hot Chocolate

As part of the extended short story "Native Foods," Diana lists a recipe for sentimental hot chocolate. Seemed like a good choice, especially considering whatever fresh hell awaited us for the next episode of Game of Thrones. I needed something sweet to end my weekend, and what better way to do that than whip up a pot of comforting hot chocolate?

Peaceful Lentil Soup and Comforting Velveeta Sandwiches

Honestly, I didn't know what would hit me with the Comforting Velveeta sandwiches recipe. I knew that when I read the short story that accompanied it, "Native Foods," that it was basically a grilled cheese sandwich.

Today, my day off, I decided to cook the Velveeta sandwiches and Peaceful Lentil Soup ("Rising an Arab Father in America") for dinner while Mom and Duncan were off at work.

Native Foods: Mensaf Leben

So far in this journey to cook my way through The Language of Baklava, this recipe has proved the most challenging. Not that the dish is difficult to prepare, but it requires a lot of time and someone to help you.

Hot Lunch: Nostalgic Chicken Livers

Out of all of the random facts I know, there has always been one that's stuck with me: the invention of the fork allowed people to not touch their food. By dressing up meat and arranging it neatly on a plate, and by consuming it with cutlery, its true nature is hidden. We forget that it was an animal, or a plant in the ground, because we've made it look appealing. Cooking chicken livers reminded me strongly of that, as I went from this:

To this:

This element is touched upon in "Rising an Arab Father in America," when the father and his brothers attempt to kill a lamb, and their botched attempt results in no lamb shish kabobs for dinner. 

In the short story "Hot Lunch," the author recalls a time when she attended a Catholic school. A nun, upon learning that Diana's father is Jordanian, becomes attached to Diana because her family is from "the Holy Land." The nun is invited to the Abu-Jaber house and has a meal with them, excited all the while that she would be eating the same kind of food that Jesus would have eaten.

In addition to reminding me that how we prepare, cook and dress our food hides the fact that our food comes from an animal, this story reminds me of how people, upon learning that I am half-filipino, always ask, "well, then, you must know how to cook great food!"

Food associates closely with identity. Say lumpia, and you think Filipino. Look at pita bread, and we think Middle East. When we eat from other countries it's mostly for enjoyment. But sometimes, the food becomes a way for us to understand other people. Recreating these recipes brings Abu-Jaber's stories to another dimension. But how else can I understand her stories without eating the foods from her childhood, the food that Jesus could have possibly eaten? Without knowing what chicken livers taste like, how could I possibly understand why she describes them as "nostalgic"?

Most of us won't have to kill our own meat (however, I have done this with Rainbow Trout, which I shall write about later), but when you look down into that bloody bowl of  chicken livers and wonder how anyone could have possibly thought that this was a good idea, cooking reminds us that it is a process that takes time and energy.

So now I'm reminded that several chickens gave their lives for this hot lunch. How can I look at my chickens straight in the eyes again?

Be careful, Siopao, or else I'll turn you into a hot lunch!


Recipe:

• 1/4 cup of butter 
• 4 medium onions, thinly sliced 
• 1 pound of chicken livers 
• 1/3 cup of lemon juice 
• Salt and pepper to taste

Abu-Jaber recommends singing softly to the chicken livers as they simmer, but in case you don't want to sing out loud you could listen to Egyptian singer Dina El Wedidi.

Easter Dinner: "Eat It Now" Lamb Shish Kabobs

As with all things in life, our Easter menu changed since last week. Instead of using the lentil soup recipe from The Language of  Baklava, we tried out a cream of asparagus soup recipe from Edible Ojai and Ventura County, since my mom doesn't like lentil soup. However, we went ahead with lamb shish kabobs, though I forgot to purchase the skewers, so we used a basket on the grill to cook the lamb.


Easter menu:

• Lamb chunks marinated in red wine, red vinegar, olive oil, fresh rosemary and oregano. 

• Cream of asparagus soup (recipe courtesy of the spring 2016 issue of edible Ojai and Ventura County)
• Freshly baked bread (pizza dough recipe doubled and allowed to rise over a full day)

 

• Dragon Fruit Sorbet for dessert (Brother Duncan's choice)

Wine from Brian's Cellar: 2005 Blair Fox Syrah; Paradise Road Vineyard Santa Barbara County

I had the pleasure of tasting at this vineyard three years ago, right around Christmas 2013 in the Los Olivos area.

Left to Right: Dad, me and sister Danica

 I had just come back from 4 months in the United Kingdom for a semester abroad, where they liked their cider, beer and ale more than wine. For our Christmas break Dad decided to take me, my sister and my Mom wine-tasting up in the Los Olivos area (yeah, where they filmed Sideways!).

"What a cool Dad!" Shannon, the tasting room attendant, said, upon hearing that my Dad was taking us on a wine-tasting tour.

Being the oenophile that he was, Dad always made sure that we knew about the wine we were tasting. And (to our dismay), he taught us how to spit out the wine so we could taste ALL the wine. We have several Blair Fox wines in Brian's Cellar, so we chose one for our Easter dinner. I'll talk about Dad's love of wine, and how he influenced my love of wine, in future blog posts.

Raising an Arab Father in America 

"Eat it Now" lamb shish kabobs refers to the first short story "Rising an Arab Father in America" in the memoir The Language of Baklava by Diana Abu-Jaber. In this story the author's father, a Jordanian who moved to the States and married an American, attempts to rediscover his roots by attempting to cook lamb shish kabobs from scratch. Having read this story some years ago at Westmont, I remember having learned from this story that the lamb must be calm before it is killed, or else the meat spoils. The father, Bud, and his brothers learned that after living for so many years in America they had forgotten how to properly kill a lamb, and spoil the meat for the shish kabobs in the process of killing a lamb that the children fawn over. 

Reading it four years later, I realize how Abu-Jaber's stories relate to me, though I am Filipino-American rather than Arab-American. I remember Dad forgetting how to kill a fish properly after so many years away from the cabin in Wyoming, or how the Philippines had changed after twenty-one years for Mom. Time changes everything, and though Abu-Jaber's story illustrates an extreme, it is amazing to look back upon one's life and realize how easily you can forget how to do something that defined your childhood.

Next week: "Nostalgic Chicken Livers" and "Bud's Special Rice for Special Company" in the short Story Hot Lunch.     

Wine-Stained Book: The Language of Baklava Challenge

I don't fancy myself a great cook. Sure, I'm a competent cook, but not a great cook.

It just so happened that my Dad was a great cook. One of his favorite past-times was watching cooking shows, movies about cooking, books about cooking, just about anything that had to do with food he loved to be a part of. He was all about the sizzling onions, watching the bread dough rise and experimenting with some darn recipe he found on the Internet. But who doesn't love good food?

My interests reside more in the literary realm, and it's harder for me to get as enthusiastic as cooking as he did. But there is something  to be said about how food described in a story breathes a higher level of  life into the author's world. Witches and wizards may cast imaginary spells, but butterbeer is something you can make and taste. The dystopian world of the Hunger Games seems too fantastic to be true, but the variety of District breads, laced with seaweed and dark ration grains, grounds the story to a reality the reader can easily access.

Though that's just fiction, such fiction grounded with such vivid sensory details is one of the keys to a great story. What better way to write with such vivid detail than to draw from your own life?

The Language of Baklava, a memoir by Diana Abu-Jaber, explores her childhood as an Arab-American through food. Each story contains one or two recipes, everything from shish kabob to baklava. After having read a few of her short stories, I mentioned the book to Dad as a way for me to read more fiction and have him cook the food. He loved the idea, but with a twist: he would read the book if I cooked the food. Well, I left him the book to think about the proposal. As per the family tradition, anything that we like likely has wine spilled on it, and lo and behold:

While he was reading it he ended up spilling wine on it. However, due to his passing in December, we never got to The Language of Baklava challenge.

So, I will attempt ("attempt" is the key word here) to cook one of the recipes associated with one short story a week. In the process I hope to learn a little more about cooking, and use it as an excuse to read through this book in its entirety.

First challenge (potential Easter meal?): Rising an Arab Father in America: "Eat it Now" Shish Kabob and peaceful vegetarian lentil soup.

The added challenged: pair the lamb shish kabobs with one of Dad's fancy wines from his infamous wine cellar for an Easter celebration.  

There's no guarantee that anything I cook will be amazing. After all, I'm only a competent cook. But let's see where this challenge will take us!