Zebra Cake Turned Biscotti

I seem to fall into a pattern; one that I try to come to terms with, adjust to. It starts off with a quick job that drives me to run for an amount of time on what seems like the positive energy of this world compounded. Work happens in the midst of this; success comes in bursts. Later as it ends, I become harsher, a cracked heel. It is over and in some way, I too am over and worn out. I will sleep for days, read for hours, approach my kitchen out of necessity and watch food shows out of habit but no particular interest.  

A while later, I return after my hips have stretched and I have inhaled a large but untold number of biscuits, store-bought and homemade (not our home but another maybe mother or mother in law). Then when they are all gone I become biscuit-desperate, I make my own. Only then do I realize that I missed what I do. I missed my kitchen. I missed me.    

 Zebra Biscotti
(Adapted from BBC Food)

You'll need:
butter, to grease
4 large eggs
250 grams of granulated sugar
100 ml of milk
250 ml of sunflower oil
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
475 grams of self-raising flour
1 teaspoon of baking powder
25 grams of cocoa powder

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Butter a 23 cm cake tin. Crack your eggs and pour your sugar into a large mixing bowl. Pour in the milk, oil and vanilla extract and mix with a handheld electric whisk for a minute. Add 175 grams of your self-raising flour and whisk again until smooth. 

In a separate bowl, pour half of your mixture. Whisk in 1/2 a teaspoon of baking powder and 175 grams of flour and set aside. In the other bowl (the first bowl), mix in the cocoa powder, 125 grams of flour and the other 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder. 

In your cake tin, spoon two tablespoons of plain cake mix into the center then spoon two tablespoons of the chocolate mixture in the center and on top of the plain cake mix. Continue to do this until both cake mixes have been used up. You'll end up with alternate rings of cake mix in the tin. 

Bake in your oven for 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Remove from the oven, turn the cake out onto a wire rack and cool. Once cool, have a slice then place the cake onto a chopping board. Cut the cake into thick straight slices and arrange the soft cake, one side down, onto a baking sheet. Bake for around 15 minutes in a 190 degree Celsius preheated oven until they reach a light golden color. Transfer the biscotti onto a wire rack and cool completely before storing in an airtight container. 

Winter Stubbornness + Radishes

There is a lady that does not bore me. We have not met but she fills my Twitter timeline with paleolithic love along with her must-do-more-with-his-food-photography husband.   

So what happens when you like people but cannot seem to work around your schedule (or your lazy butt) to meet them? You ask them to guest post, to fill your little online space with energy that you may not have, that may vicariously revitalize you. So here's Rehaam and Amr - she does the writing, he takes the shots.  You do the reading and the cooking. Fair deal.  

Photo credit: Amr Adel Amin, April 2013.

It happens every year and every year we're: Egypt has no spring. We go from cold to khamaseen to beads-of-sweat-down-your-back heat. Flowers bloom right before they're singed in 40 Celsius heat. We know this. So why is it that when Egypt propelled itself straight from bitingly cold mornings to muggy, dusty ones and then propelled its way right back again did my heart fill with dread? Was my precious winter coming to an end so soon? But I hadn't yet had my fill of broccoli, spinach, cauliflower, strawberries, green leafy anythings…

Truth be told, we'd been eating salads almost every day since last summer. We'd burned out on blanched broccoli and roasted carrots and turned to spinach salads and salsas. Despite the liters of chicken stock in my freezer, I hadn't made a single winter soup. Despite seeing broccoli every time I perused the isles of the grocery store, I hadn't actually bought it once. Despite having eaten sweet potatoes almost daily last winter, I can count exactly two I've eaten this year, one of which was from the side of the road. Save your angry waving fists and head shaking, I know I've done wrong.

So I panicked. I bought strawberries like they were going out of season, literally, and froze them. I picked up broccoli and ate it three times in a row. I washed, ate and froze a total of three cauliflower heads larger than my sink would even fit. I had to do something more, I thought, to hold on to the last remaining trickles of winter. And while at the grocery store in my manic vegetation spree, I saw these bright red, perfectly round plump radishes poking out from a crate of greens. I have to buy these, I thought. I don't even like radishes but I'm going to buy them. And I did.

When I took them home, however, I was at a loss as to what I'd do to them. Radishes rarely made an appearance at my family dinner tables despite my mother's penchant for them in fattoush. Chopping them up into a salad was entirely too summery and their bitter heat wasn't my favorite in salad anyway. So I turned to my go-to cooking method for getting myself to eat vegetables I don't like: roasting.

I plucked up a bunch of leeks, pulled out some salmon from the freezer and decided I'd make a meal entirely in the oven. Never mind that it was actually pretty hot that day. Never mind that my husband's face puckered up in distaste when he slipped a slice of radish into his mouth. Never mind anything. "Those aren't going to be any good roasted, they're awful," said my husband. "You can eat all the leeks, I'll eat all the radishes." I was warming up our (already warm) house with roasted vegetables whether anyone liked it or not.

Forty-five minutes later, I had little crispy nuggets of radishes, melt-in-your-mouth sweet leeks and perfectly pink salmon. And a very warm house.

Almost burning his fingers right on the roasting pan while popping a radish into his mouth my husband said, "These are actually really good." They were good. That bitter heat was replaced with a sweetness that had a bite, and they went from crunchy to golden and crisp edges encasing soft flesh.

"All right I'll have some radishes," said Amr.

"Maybe. If you turn on the air conditioner first."

Roasted Radishes

Serves 2-4

6-8 medium-sized radishes, washed, dried and sliced into same-sized wedges

1 tbs olive oil

1/2 tbs white wine vinegar

Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat your oven to 180°C/350°F and line a baking sheet or roasting pan with foil or parchment paper (I think parchment makes for a crispier vegetable). In a bowl, toss together your ingredients until the radishes are shiny. Place radishes onto your pan and shake to distribute them in one layer. Roast for 15 minutes then rotate the pan and toss your radishes. Repeat. You may need to do this one more time until your radishes are almost translucent and brown around the edges.  

Quick Fix: Mushrooms on Toast

This is not a fancy recipe. It does not require much effort and takes little time to make. Comfort food that puts me right back in my mom's living room in the early 90s, that makes me want to dig my teeth into mediocre toast. This is breakfast, lunch or dinner. 

Scallion Cream Mushrooms on Toast

You'll need:

150 grams of button mushrooms, quartered

35 grams of scallions, sliced
100 ml of light cream
1/4 of a large lemon's zest
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
A pinch of chopped parsley
A good drizzle of olive oil
2 slices of toasted bread (Use good bread if you have some.)

Cook the mushrooms over high heat to retain their moisture. Don't stir much at first to give them color. Once their color begins to change, add the scallions and toss. Cook for around 30 seconds. Pour in the cream and turn down the heat. Immediately after pouring the cream, add your lemon zest and season with salt and pepper. Add some chopped parsley if you'd like. Give it all a quick stir and turn off your heat. Pile over toasted bread while hot.    

Chef's Table: A Night for Everyone

Apologies for the photos. Low light. It should still give you a general feel.

Alfonse and Fares: two of whom many will fail to remember but a most pleasant experience did they provide at this month’s Chef’s Table, the third installment of the pop-up event now held every month at Cellardoor Bistro in the narrow streets of Maadi. Tending to our shallow desires and our relatively generous wallets, these men, our waiters for the night, worked tirelessly to be remarkably courteous, bringing the different courses, one after the other on time, after a few leisurely sips of an ordered drink.   

Our table was a reunion of sorts and a meeting of new kindred spirits: old high school friends, work colleagues and newspaper editors. Every dish presented to the table brought about conversations:  childhood memories of mom’s cooking, scouting out Egyptian food on business trips in places as far as Hong Kong and stories of Puerto Rican sofrito, a base seasoning sauce, dominating the bulk of Puerto Rico’s dishes and giving them an aromatic punch.

Pumpkin soup was ladled carefully into their small containers and arrived hot with notes of orange and a sweet musky lift from the nutty brown butter and toasted pumpernickel croutons. All that was needed, a fireplace. Immediately after came a salad, a faraway relative of the classic Waldorf with pleasing autumn colors and complementary elements - beautiful beetroot and a considerate helping of walnuts, bobbles of blanched and peeled cherry tomatoes, consistent slices of almost transparent rounds of radish, batons of tart green apples, piquant rocket leaves and blue cheese; a flashier version of an everyday salad that new attendees would feel at ease with. A cumin focaccia crostini was served alongside this crowd-pleaser and although full of flavor, it retained some moisture and did not deliver on the crunch.    

A trio of tacos came next, propped up against a dainty stand with individually hand drawn designs. Interestingly, most went first for the vegetarian moussaka taco. Layered lentils and cubed aubergine were served at room temperature and were governed by the crumbled feta; a little dry as was the sea bass ceviche taco, they both could have benefitted from a little less restraint and a heavier hand as per the respective regions of those dishes.

As a separate ceviche away from the tortilla, it was delicate and sweet. After completing the first two, the brave tried to comfort those whose fear of consuming an animal’s tongue was troubling them. The beef tongue taco stood ominously, piled high but was seasoned well, tender and layered with flavors of a familiar taco. The hero on the plate making it all meld was the guacamole, chunky but creamy and especially fresh.  

Fourth was the the “White, Pink and Gold” with several components: an Old Bay belly of salmon with a roasted pepper ratatouille that far surpassed the salmon served at the first Chef’s Table; a simple sea bass, soft and barely opaque, perched atop a small mound of fava beans adding much needed texture; and tempura crayfish tails with a brilliant bright green dill oil and a mild red pepper aioli. I would have preferred a lighter batter but would still snack on a plate of these again.  

Next arrived one of my favorites of the night - what Chefs Ayman Samir, Wesam Masoud and Moustafa El Refaey named “Banzai!”, a quick shot composed of both fresh and pickled ginger, balanced with citrus and a swirl of greek yogurt, this clever palate cleanser takes me back to my short years in Kuala Lumpur and the fusions in food that I experienced there.

The main was unexpected - an oxtail faggot with crushed peas that represented classic British fare, slow roasted leg of goat with a berry demi-glace flaunting its French and Moroccan accents, a potato terrine and a caramelized carrot purée dotted with pickled pearl onions - but despite the few glitches on my plate, a bit of unrendered fat and underseasoned potatoes, I admired the insistence of the chefs to introduce their audience to the nose to tail eating concept, starting with the beef tongue enjoyed earlier and ending with these bold flavors to nudge the timid palates at the bistro that night.   

Dessert was a chilled soup of sour cherry and amaretto, vanilla ice cream with a pinch of fleur de sel and chocolate covered dehydrated beef bacon that had people holding it up to the light, perplexed by a concept new to Cairo. Ending on a light note, the chefs wrapped up the night with complex flavors.

Favoring a quick chat with the chefs post-dégustation, I realize that Chef Ayman  Samir has not slept the night before, Chef Wesam Masoud is down with a flu but has managed to pull through and Chef Moustafa El Refaey with the inner excitement of the arrival of his recent newborn is hiding away from the diners’ eyes, working to finish off his night on a high note and go home. This is achievement: three men working with their teams to provide Cairo with a contemporary outlook on food while maintaining a sense of comfort. Ayman Samir cinched the night after all was done, “This was meant to be a night for everyone.”