Author: zora

RG at Home: Pie Pie Pie Pie Pie Pie!

Never mind that it’s currently too hot to roll out a pie crust: I am here to tell you that Millicent Souris’s new book, How to Build a Better Pie, will save your life.

I first made Millicent’s acquaintance at the late, great Queen’s Hideaway. Dessert was pies of a couple sorts. I ordered with less than enthusiasm. Restaurant pies are uniformly bad. If it’s a fancy place, the pastry chef has always had too much French training and makes a dense and crumbly tart shell thing. If it’s a lower-end place, they rarely believe in paying for butter, and figure a prefab crust is fine.

The Hideaway was different, though, because Millicent was in charge. She understands the rustic, American charm of a pie crust, and how it should be both flavorful and flaky–not just some sturdy container for filling. A pie is really about the crust.

I myself used to make a pretty good pie crust. But this was years ago, at a higher elevation, in a drier climate. My skillz never translated to sea level, and over the years, my pie crust has been hit and miss. I tried various gimmicks (fo-pro, vodka, you name it), but posts like this and this great post by Christina always reminded me I was overthinking it. I mean, if Choire Sicha can make a freakin’ pie crust, so can I.

Millicent was the best reminder–if you knew her, it would be crystal-clear that she’s not pulling any BS, dreamed-up-in-America’s-Test-Kitchen tricks.

So to have all her collected wisdom in a book, with photos of her actually making the crust…well, it’s a dream come true. And what’s extra-great are two things:

1) Millicent taught herself to bake pies. She didn’t come into it with expectations or decades of subconscious knowledge absorbed in her upbringing. This is not a fussy book, and the photo of the empty pie shell on the back of the book is the perfect illustration: a little lumpy and irregular, and clear where bits have been patched. Anti-Martha, pro-everyman/woman.

2) Pie is many things, and Millicent covers it all. Sweet pies, traditional pies (Shaker lemon pie, apple pie), more creative pies (sweet potato with sesame praline), savory pies, white-trash pies, English fish pies, that chocolate pie with the salt that made me dizzy at the Hideaway…

And finally: jailhouse pie.*

The last recipe in the book, Jailhouse Cheesecake, seems like a throwaway gimmick, with its “whipped topping” and “‘gram’ crackers.” But in fact it’s a gesture that reflects Millicent’s whole approach: generous, proud of ingenuity and pretty realist: “They make their own pie crust in jail. For shame if you cannot muster the strength.”

Actually, that last line shows off the third thing that really makes this book. Pie seems like a slightly frivolous thing–a novelty, a special-occasion food. But we all have warm associations with it, and it’s actually not that hard. And because Millicent is a wonderful writer, with attitude and wit, she conveys all this in a way that makes you want to get up and roll out the crust (never mind the 90-degree heat).

Baking a pie represents so much about a certain kind of cooking that’s essential to survival–it requires ingenuity and making do, but it’s also a generous gesture.

We don’t have to have children or enough money to name a hospital after ourselves or find a cure for something. We can just make food, and pass it along. That might be enough.

Amen, sister.

Millicent modeling pie at a Sunday Night Dinner

Buy this book. You won’t regret it.

*The jailhouse pie reminds me of a truly wonderful story I read in Gastronomica a few years back. Here’s a rough summary, as the original article, with pics, is a pay-only PDF.

RG at Home: Greek Frappe for Coffee Snobs

I love me a Greek frappe. When I explain this drink to people, though, it often gives them pause. That’s because the secret ingredient is Nescafe.

beach frappe
Miss June in the 2012 Frappe-Hotties Calendar. Turn-ons: home movies, nude beaches; turn-offs: poorly preserved film, weak straws

In today’s militant-foodie climate, saying you drink Nescafe is like saying you eat Rainbo bread, and not in a guilty-pleasure-reminds-of-my-latchkey-kid-days way. Still, I take perverse joy in bending Nescafe to my will, and I thank the Greeks forever for thinking up this brilliant drink, which is nothing more than a spoonful of instant coffee furiously mixed up with a little cold water, plus optional sugar and milk; ice and straw mandatory.

But, fine, I understand some people are too good for Nescafe. Or they hear the word and can only think of the evils Nestle has perpetrated in the developing world, which is a fair point.

And it’s those people I thought of yesterday when I discovered an amazing thing: you can use regular, real, good coffee to make a frappe!

Let me first explain why this took so long. In this house, we came to coffee snobbery late. In winter, we drank Turkish coffee. In summer, we drank frappes. We were at one with our Astoria ecosystem.

Our standard frappe kit: Greek-made Nescafe, sugar and battery-operated "frappediser", available at Greek groceries everywhere

Then fancy-pants coffee crept in. Next thing you know, we’re sucking down the shade-grown-whatever, in vast quantities, making vintage thermoses full every day.

In anticipation of hot weather, I ordered the Toddy, on the recommendation of the hilarious and talented Hilah Cooking. We now had fancy-pants cold coffee concentrate in the fridge. Great iced coffee, but no foam. And where is the fun of drinking cold coffee, if there’s no reason to stick a straw in it?

Yesterday, Day 2 of Toddy Era (TE), I stirred my coffee extra vigorously, and noticed a bunch of bubbles formed. Not foam, but…bubbles. I was surprised. I’d always assumed the reason Nescafe foamed up when you shook it with cold water was due to the Nescafe itself, maybe the blood of malnourished African babies they put it in or something.

But here was very good and perfectly ethical coffee forming bubbles too. I quick pulled out our frappe whizzer and went to work.

Frappediser in action

Et voila. The foam appeared. I dropped in ice cubes, more cold water and milk…and then stuck in a straw, and all was good.

Mr. July in the 2012 Frappe-Hotties Calendar
.

The problem is, of course, it doesn’t taste like a frappe. It tastes like real coffee. Which to someone new to this whole frappe game is not a problem. But to someone weaned on the authentic Greek taste, it’s a little hard to adjust.

Today was Day 2 of the Toddy Frappe Era (TFE), and it’s getting easier. The new fancy-coffee overlords may have won.

...Or have they?!

(Don’t let me put you off real Greek frappe, with Nescafe. It’s fantastic. BUT you have to use made-in-Greece Nescafe, which tastes far better than ‘Merican recipe, or at least a Euro-brand instant espresso. It does foam up a little bit better and sturdier, so you can do it just by shaking Nescafe, sugar and cold water really hard in a jar with a lid on–no frappediser needed.)

The Mini-Mex Algorithm

On the occasion of a major update to my Cool Cancun & Isla Mujeres travel app (for iPhones and now for Android* too!), here’s just a few reasons to love this part of Mexico. If you’re a regular reader, you know I have a soft spot for Cancun. It’s why I wrote the app, to share all the cool things no one knows about it…and Isla Mujeres and Puerto Morelos too.

Oh, so THAT's what that stands for...
Public bench/library in the park in downtown Cancun. Just register to get a key, and check out books as you like.
Coco Bongo promo dudes hiding out from photo-mad tourists in Cancun.
Genuine maid cafe in downtown Cancun. Was just opening--unclear whether staff really dress as maids.
Aw, poor little Chocomilk! Cutest dog name ever.
Genius can with screw-top lid. And always good mango juice.
Ana is ruling the market for haircuts for dogs. She has totally blanketed Isla Mujeres in signs.
Man bites shark.
How you might feel after too many days on Isla Mujeres...
This drug is available even in the Cancun airport pharmacies. Not sure if it causes or cures.
Somehow it's more existential with 'a' at the beginning.
Queens of Carnival on Isla Mujeres, on display at the cultural center
Crazy architecture in Puerto Morelos. Everyone calls the complex in the big photo "the Star Wars building."
Grown man with a Spongebob purse. Reason I Love Mexico #3438

Egypt: On the Market

Ah, just as the blog was almost happening in real time, I found this in my Drafts folder. A little treat from the winter Egypt trip. It all makes me a bit nostalgic. They have bad taxidermy here in Beirut, but not so much of the other attractions.

Downtown Cairo is one of the world’s more nonsensical shopping districts. Every other store is selling shoes. The ones that aren’t selling shoes are selling either lavishly embroidered galabiyyas or somewhat shocking lingerie. If you wander off the main streets, you wind up in an area where all the shops sell prosthetic limbs.

I didn’t want to take a picture of the lingerie, because it seemed like too much of an obvious conversation-starter for any random dude on the sidewalk, but here’s something nice for the gentlemen:

A romantic gift for your new husband!

It’s gotten a little crazier since the revolution, as the police aren’t out to keep the sidewalk vendors in line. They’ve gone nuts downtown. It makes it very hard to walk, but I have to give props to the guys who sell men’s clothing on Talaat Harb at night. I saw one stand in the middle of traffic, forcing cars to stop, while he unpacked a bale of made-in-China Versice jeans. Occupy for ad-hoc capitalism!

More prosaically, it’s easier than ever to buy a headscarf. And women are wearing them double- and triple-ply, carefully selected to match their outfits. Haven’t seen such color-coordinating since middle school. Or felt so totally uncool.

The guy next to this was selling wigs. I am not kidding.

Competition has forced shop displays to get more outlandish. Or at least that’s how I’m rationalizing something like this:

I finally escaped from that Monty Python set...only to get trapped in Cairo.

And this:

And this might be explained by the fact that it was getting close to Halloween. Or maybe not.

Totally ripped.

I read a while ago (I believe in Max Rodenbeck’s great Cairo: The City Victorious) that when Cairo was at its peak in the early 20th century, the most elite downtown shops would display, for instance, a single perfect shoe. Now the strategy is reversed. When in doubt, put as much out on display as possible.

No, you can't win these bears by shooting balloons with a BB gun.

But when a shop is so bursting with love, as this one is, how can you not love it back? Same goes for Cairo, you see.

Beirut in Books

Astute followers of this blog will know that it has gotten terribly out of step with reality. I am not currently in the Persian/Arabian Gulf at all, but in Lebanon. I’ve been reading a lot, trying to get a grip on things–Lebanon feels more foreign to me than I expected it to. So in lieu of travel stories, this week I’ll share my reading list.

Jasmine and Fire, by Salma Abdelnour

Without the subtitle (“a bittersweet year in Beirut”), it sounds a bit like a torrid romance, and I suppose I was expecting some bodice-ripping or other high drama, so it took me a little while to get into its groove.

But in the end I was glad for it not to be a high-drama book (as so much else around here is intense). Instead it’s a low-key sort of travelogue and a meditation on what it means to be at home somewhere. And the reason I jumped at reading it (the publisher offered me a copy–it’s officially released tomorrow) is because I know Abdelnour as a food writer, so I figured that angle would be good too. And in that respect especially, it has been a great introduction to the city–Abdelnour uses food to explore Beirut, by heading off on a walkabout to the famous shwarma place, for instance, or trying out the odd processed cheese (Picon) she used to like as a kid.

Abdelnour left Lebanon with her family as a child, early in the civil war, and in the book she returns to Beirut and the apartment her family has kept, to see if she feels like she fits in better here than she did back in the U.S. Each chapter covers a month, and it glides along easily, in the present tense.

What was odd about reading it is that it was eerily in sync with what I was doing at the time. Every time I cracked open the book, it was like reading my own notes: Wait, I just walked that exact same route through the city! I just went to Tell Arqa and Akkar! I just ate that eggplant fatteh at Al Balad!

So I could write a blog post about this stuff…but you could just read this lovely book. To make it a bit easier, I’m running a giveaway of Jasmine and Fire: enter on my Facebook page.

Jasmine and Fire is very much about present-day Beirut. But I’ve also read a couple of books about the past–where the picture of the city grows a lot murkier.

Bye Bye Babylon, by Lamia Ziade

This is a short graphic novel about the good old pre-war days. Or it is at first: colorful, somewhat childish watercolor illustrations show tan ladies by the sea. But that Beirut is gone within a few pages, and the rest of the story is the author’s childhood recollections of the war–the images and the language are simple, but the story is concise and all too brutally clear.

What I found gripping was almost incidental. At one point, Ziade details all the various militias and their insignias, with slightly comical drawings of typical militia members (one machine-gun toting woman wears an oh-so-seventies rainbow T-shirt). I knew, abstractly, that many of the militias and political wings established during the war still exist in Lebanon—but seeing them laid out here, and illustrated, made me realize it concretely: Phalangists, Lebanese Forces, Amal–I’ve seen their flags in various parts of the city and around the country, marking turf. The fact that all these groups still exist—after doing such barbaric things during the war (which are detailed in this book)—is more unsettling than I’d had time to consider, especially when juxtaposed with the otherwise glossy image Beirut has now.

A World I Loved, by Wadad Makdisi Cortas

I’m only halfway through this, but I’m liking it a lot—Cortas was a passionate educator who ran a prestigious girls school in Beirut, and this is her memoir. Like Bye Bye Babylon, it’s also deeply nostalgic, but it doesn’t candy-coat anything. It also starts in an earlier era, during World War I, when the Ottoman empire was dismantled. Reading these two books in succession is not exactly comforting—I’m getting a strong sense of how deeply wrong things went in the colonial era, and how that still echoes everywhere. It’s the kind of thing you learn in grad school—colonialism is bad, sure—but it’s not until you’re actually in a place, and see that people have been working over the same problems for decades, and still are, that it really sinks in.

What I’d really be interested to read is a memoir by an active militia member during the war. So far everything I’ve seen is by innocent bystanders. But I know the war’s real participants are still around. When I was standing in front of the shell of the Holiday Inn, listening to a tour guide explain the building’s strategic significance, a man drove by and shouted out his car window, fist raised in triumph, “I fought in that building!” Where’s his story?

**Remember: Go enter the Jasmine and Fire giveaway on my Facebook page!

Doha, the Rest of the Story

For spending about 72 hours in a country, I sure managed to collect a lot of photos and deep thoughts. I think the short time in Qatar made it that much easier to distill the whole visit.

Meanwhile, all my driving around the Emirates is all loose and floppy in my head, and I’m still fiddling with what I got out of it (aside from some funny pictures).

I’ll just throw a few more Doha photos at you to finish off this clutch of posts about the Persian, ahem, Arabian Gulf.

Doha: Food at Souq Waqif

I think I cottoned to Doha for one huge reason: street food.

A while back, Anissa Helou posted something on her blog about take-away food at Souq Waqif in Doha. On my Emirates trip, I’d been snooping around for traditional Emirati food, but it’s a little hard to find done well. People don’t go out for it at restaurants typically. So when I went to Doha, I went straight over to the Souq Waqif after visiting the Museum of Islamic Art.

I didn’t see the souq before they redid it, and some people say it’s too slick now, but I can handle a discreetly signed Haagen-Dazs store if the place still seems like locals use it more than be-fanny-packed tourists. I saw a lot of nice cafes and restaurants, and I was already giddy from that, since I hadn’t seen such a casual hangout space in Dubai or Abu Dhabi. And I saw lots of spices, blinged-out fabrics and even some little colored chicks for sale.

But then I rounded a corner on the far side of the market and SHAZAM!

Ragag, like a crepe complete, minus the ham...and with mayo
Homemade pickles and chutney thingies

I bellied up to one of the tables and asked to see what was in the pots. I wound up with a big container of hisw, a seed that had been boiled to jelly, and seasoned with sugar, ghee, saffron and black pepper. Then scrambled eggs were stirred in. Dude.

Better than it looks. And sounds.

I went back to those ladies and got great stuff from them all three nights I was in Doha.

Deep down, I admit I’d been feeling a little suspicious of the Emirates because there was no street food–I just couldn’t wrap my head around a place like that. To be fair, there are perfectly good reasons why you might not want to be eating food on the street, and why no one would want to sell it to you: namely, every degree of heat over 100, which is quite common.

So why does it flourish in Doha (perhaps only in this one spot in the whole country, but still), and not the Emirates? Those ladies were freezing their butts off the nights I was there. I don’t know what happens in the summer. I did read something in passing about a Qatari program to teach traditional foods–maybe that also encourages the food-sellers here?

And that’s not to say there aren’t amazingly good things to eat in the Emirates–they’re just indoors. Check out I Live in a Frying Pan, and the post she wrote for Serious Eats about Dubai eats. I got to eat lunch with Arva at a Rajasthani restaurant that filled my ghee quota for the decade.

In both places, I was happily surprised about the food. It just made me a tiny bit nervous in the Emirates to have to really plan to find it. And I would totally recommend a trip to Doha just for the Souq Waqif.

Museum of Islamic Art, Doha

I love getting on a plane with no luggage. It has happened only a couple of times in my life. I feel ridonkulously jet-set. This time, I packed just a tote bag to fly from Dubai to Doha overnight. I was going to meet some excellent smart people, and to see the Museum of Islamic Art. Doha was so great that I went back again for a few more days at the end of my trip.

I went straight from the plane to the museum, in one of Doha’s adorable Tiffany’s-blue taxis, where the West African cabbie was playing American R&B.

Looks a tiny bit like Boba Fett, right?

The museum is beautiful. Seriously, drop dead. The building is lovely.

The collection is amazing, and gorgeously arranged, all carefully spotlit in black rooms.

Screens from clay water jars
Astrolabes. Like I said, they're everywhere.

They even solved the astrolabe problem (ie, what to do with 800 of them). Nice presentation, right?

Even the food is fantastic. Alain Ducasse is on the case.

Lentil salad, egg, some kind of savory biscotti-bit, tangy sauce.

And, y’know, just to be extra-classy, they have free wi-fi.

But…I wish it said more. All the things I learned about Islamic art on this trip, I learned at the dowdier Museum of Islamic Civilization in Sharjah the day before. At that museum, many of the objects were somewhat crude replicas. But the signage told me all about calligraphy styles, the embroidery on the kiswa at the Kaaba and that elephant clock I’d seen at the Ibn Battuta Mall.

I think this is a bit of a trend in museum-ing, to just let objects speak for themselves, no interpretation. And perhaps that’s more extreme in this case, where the aim may have been to separate the objects from all this messy Islam business and the complicated past and just look at things as incredibly gorgeous works of art. Which they are.

The contrast was even more dramatic when I came back on my next visit and went to the Takashi Murakami exhibit and the Cai Gui-Qiang show at Mathaf. Both of these shows were amazing, in part because they were presented in a distinctly didactic way. “Hello, meet Takashi Murakami. He’s famous for X, Y and Z, and to appreciate him, you should know 1, 2 and 3.”

Inflatable Murakami

I admit I hadn’t appreciated Murakami before. At this show (where you can’t take pics inside), I could get up close and see the layers of acrylic paint. I saw the change in his style. And the enormous Arhat installation, huge panels in part a reaction to the Japan tsunami (here’s a detail), got me in the gut the way his glossier stuff never has.

Over at Mathaf, I learned all about this Chinese guy (who, der, is quite famous and has been doing things in NYC for ages and I’ve totally missed). The space showed work he’d created specifically for Mathaf–smart stuff showing the connection between where he’s from in China and the Gulf–along with footage of his previous pyrotechnic works and some of his wonderful early oil paintings of explosions.

Stones from Quanzhou, carved with inscriptions from the Muslim cemetery there

I even learned a ton of weird stuff about Arabian horse breeding, from a video he produced. Again, a very educational, meet-the-artist approach.

I love that Qatar is investing so heavily in art. I just want to see the next step in the Museum of Islamic Art. The absence of interpretation there seems like a waste. “Explaining” art–giving more historical background, translating some of the calligraphy–shouldn’t hurt at all. The museum could use some of the same exuberant let-us-tell-you-about-this-amazing-stuff! spirit in the other two exhibits.

For now, the most exuberant thing is the food.

Under Construction in the Emirates

During my trip to the Emirates, one of the main things I wanted to do was drive out into the desert and see the dunes. I grew up in a desert, and I’ve traveled around the deserts in Egypt a bit, but they’re not the same. I still had never seen that super-duney, English Patient kind of desert up close.

Abu Dhabi is the largest of the United Arab Emirates, and in addition to being a pretty slick and functioning city proper, it stretches way out west into the desert, up to the undefined border with Saudi Arabia.

So I drove way out to Liwa, which is a little cluster of settlements along some oases. And because even when I’m not working on a guidebook, I’m pretty curious about fancy hotels, I decided I’d drop in to the Anantara Qasr al-Sarab resort for lunch.

There are only, like, three roads in Abu Dhabi, but I managed to get lost. My Google GPS told me to turn down a dirt road, and I did. Just about the time I was realizing that a rustic approach to a luxury hotel was one thing, but this road was clearly not right, I passed a ghost town.

A mirage on the horizon

I parked my car and hiked down to the trailers. Just like in a good Western, there was a door blowing in the wind, creaking and slapping against the tinny side of a double-wide.

That was spooky enough, but then I heard the faint sound of voices. As I got closer, I realized it was a radio or a TV. Somehow, an inhabited ghost town is even creepier than an empty one.

But it was just one guard, watching TV to pass the time. He said it was fine if I took some photos.

Toilets. Lots of toilets.

Click to see full-size, for the drawing on the wall.

The trusty guard. The only other living thing around was a bird, also yellow.

Virtually everything in the Emirates has been built by guest laborers. Thousands of people can work on a major construction project–the Burj Khalifa in Dubai employed some 10,000 people. This often calls for an independent workers’ town, with bare-bones housing and other services. Smaller projects still often have an adjoining workers’ camp.

This is what I’d driven past, on this wrong road. The guard confirmed my guess–this had been the workers’ camp for the Qasr al-Sarab, which was just over a couple of dunes ahead. It was slowly being dismantled–the good parts, like the toilets, salvaged, and the trailers carted away on trucks.

I said thanks, and then drove off back down the washboarded road and back to the highway. One kilometer farther along was the proper entrance to the resort, with a perfectly smooth black surface curving through the dunes. No eyesore trailers to be seen. The resort, when I got there, was astoundingly beautiful. The construction workers did a fantastic job.

The entrance.

Every construction project in the Emirates has its own ghost town, a negative form that’s destroyed once the real sculpture is created.